AdNewLine

As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic mission to land humans on the surface of the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh presents this reflection of the monumental achievement through the eyes of the NASA astronauts themselves. In exclusive interviews Farabaugh gathered, the men of the Apollo program reflect on the path to the moon, and what lies beyond.
 

…

Congressional Democrats are pushing for new protections for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They unveiled legislation this week that reflects the lawmakers’ increasing anger and concern over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But Republicans accuse Democrats of refusing to acknowledge an immigration crisis exists and making the problem worse. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.

…

The attorney general for the District of Columbia issued subpoenas Friday to the National Rifle Association and its charitable foundation seeking financial records in an investigation into their nonprofit status.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement his office “has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act.”

The announcement, first reported by the Washington Post, follows similar action in April by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who sought documents in a probe that the New York Times said involved the powerful gun lobby group’s tax-exempt status.

William Brewer, an attorney for the NRA, said the group “will cooperate with any appropriate inquiry into its finances.” 

“The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance,” Brewer said in an emailed statement Friday.

With more than 5 million members, the NRA is, by far, the most powerful and well-connected gun lobby in the United States. It has worked closely with legislators to protect firearms manufacturers from liability for gun violence and pushed a ban on U.S. health officials promoting gun control.

“We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors,” Racine said.

Racine’s office has the power to bring court actions to dissolve or place in receivership a nonprofit corporation that misuses funds or acts contrary to its nonprofit purposes.

…

Mexicans are dismayed by the continued increases in the price for avocados, a staple of the country’s cuisine.

The government says increased demand in the United States and a slight drop in production are to blame.

The price in the United States hit $2.23 per pound this week. The most expensive stores in Mexico price them about the same, though the average price is just less than $2.

Some Mexicans say they have cut back on buying avocados because of the high prices.

But it’s also led to outrage, as recipes have begun appearing in Mexico for making so-called guacamole without avocados.
 

…

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he had invited his son Eduardo to become ambassador to the United States, underscoring his family’s influential role in the country’s diplomacy and domestic politics.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, currently a federal congressman, told reporters separately he would accept the role if nominated. His father said earlier that the appointment would hinge on his son’s acceptance.

“If it is a mission given by the president, I would accept,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told reporters, adding he was prepared to resign from Congress if the president appoints him. He added the ultimate nomination still depended on conversations with his father and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo.

The appointment would need to be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before passing to the full upper house for confirmation.

Brazil’s previous ambassador to Washington retired in April. The far-right Brazilian president, who said his campaign last year was inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has made friendly overtures to the American leader and made similar use of family members as official advisers.

Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, is advancing his conservative social agenda as a senator.

Carlos Bolsonaro, another son of the president and a Rio de Janeiro city councilman, has taken a role in his father’s social media communications and stirred controversy by attacking members of the Brazilian Cabinet.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third of the president’s four sons and a daughter from three marriages, has counseled his father on foreign affairs.

After his father’s election in October, Eduardo Bolsonaro was one of his first envoys to Washington, where he met with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and was spotted wearing a “Trump 2020” cap.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon named the younger Bolsonaro the Latin American leader of his right-wing nationalist organization, “The Movement.”

During the Brazilian leader’s White House visit in March, Trump heaped praise on Eduardo Bolsonaro, who sat by his father during an Oval Office chat while Brazil’s foreign minister and ambassador in Washington were nowhere to be seen.

…

Syphilis cases have soared in Europe over the last decade and become, for the first time since the early 2000s, more common in some countries than new cases of HIV, health experts said Friday.

Reported cases of the sexually transmitted disease are up by 70% since 2010, a report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed, with the rise driven by more unprotected sex and riskier sexual behavior among gay men.

“The increases in syphilis infections that we see across Europe … are a result of several factors, such as people having sex without condoms and multiple sexual partners, combined with a reduced fear of acquiring HIV,” said Andrew Amato-Gauci, an ECDC expert on sexually transmitted infections.

The European report comes after the World Health Organization said last month that around a million people each day worldwide catch a sexually transmitted infection.

Left untreated, syphilis can have severe complications in men and women, including causing stillbirths and newborn deaths and increasing the risk of HIV. Syphilis was one of the leading causes of baby loss globally in 2016.

The Stockholm-based ECDC, which monitors health and disease in Europe, said that overall, more than 260,000 syphilis cases were reported from 30 countries from 2007 to 2017.

In 2017, syphilis rates reached an all-time high with more than 33,000 reported cases, the ECDC said. This meant that for the first time since the early 2000s, the region reported more cases of syphilis than new cases of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

But the problem varied significantly by country, with rates more than doubling in five countries — Britain, Germany, Ireland, Iceland and Malta — but dropping by 50% or more in Estonia and Romania.

Close to two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017 where sexual orientation was known were in men who have sex with men, the ECDC report said, while heterosexual men contributed 23% of cases and women 15%.

The proportion of cases diagnosed among men who have sex with men ranged from less than 20% in Latvia, Lithuania and Romania to more than 80% in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain.

Amato-Gauci said complacency among men who have gay sex and seem unconcerned about HIV risks appeared to be fuelling the problem. 

“To reverse this trend, we need to encourage people to use condoms consistently with new and casual partners,” he said.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized Bitcoin, Facebook’s proposed Libra

digital coin and other cryptocurrencies and demanded that companies seek a banking charter and make themselves subject to U.S. and global regulations if they wanted to “become a bank.”

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump wrote on Twitter.”If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks, both National and International,” he added.

Trump’s comments come one day after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers that Facebook’s plan to build a digital currency called Libra cannot move forward unless it addresses concerns over privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.

Powell said the Fed has established a working group to follow the project and is coordinating with other government’s central banks. The U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council, a panel of regulators that identifies risks to the financial system, is also expected to make a review.

Hours earlier on Thursday, Trump criticized large technology companies at an event at the White House, who he said treated conservative voices unfairly.

The Internet Association, a trade group representing major tech firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, said, “Internet companies are not biased against any political ideology, and conservative voices in particular have used social media to great effect.”

…

The Democratic presidential field continues to shift as one candidate drops out and another joins an already crowded group hoping to oust President Donald Trump from office next year.  Former Vice President Joe Biden remains the leading contender but finds himself fending off increasingly strong challenges from two senators—Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the shifting sands of the Democratic race from Washington.

…

The Islamic State terror group is adapting to the loss of its self-declared territorial caliphate by returning to its origins and becoming once again a more local, Iraq-focused insurgency, and is recruiting in remote border areas in Iraq’s western desert. But it still harbors ambitions to strike in the West, warn European officials and analysts.

Britain’s Security Minister Ben Wallace on Thursday warned that Islamic State and rival jihadists in al-Qaida remain a serious threat to the West. Exploiting the internet and social media platforms, IS can still recruit Westerners, and if not organize attacks itself at least inspire adherents to strike, he said.
 
“That means that everyone has potentially an ISIS problem in every country around the world,” he told Britain’s Sky News. “It is a different type of threat because at the moment it’s manifesting itself in lone actors.”
 
For security services the threat is unpredictable “because they have to watch one person who may be just literally talking to themselves on one day and the next day they’ll go and grab a knife or a truck.”
 
Still a threat

But IS has not lost the ambition to plot and organize terror attacks in the West itself.
 
In the current top IS leadership, two out of 12 members of al-Lajna al-Mufawada, the group’s Cabinet, are tasked with overseeing operations abroad. They are Sukru Tuncer, a Frenchman of Turkish origins, and Abu ‘Ammar al-Sa’udi, a Saudi. But analysts say Daesh, the group’s Arab acronym, has had to return to its roots as a mainly Iraq-based insurgency force and is undergoing a generational change. Nonetheless it has the capacity to reemerge, if it’s ignored.
 
“It still survives as result of the temporary lack of interest that various belligerents in the Syrian war show in the region in which Daesh remains,” say analysts Ronen Zeidel and Hisham al-Hashimi in a study of the group published in the latest edition of Perspectives on Terrorism, a peer-reviewed journal. “This lack of attention works in favor of the organization and is willing it to regroup,” they argue.

“In Iraq they maintain a clandestine presence in the Hamrin and Makhul hilly region between the provinces of Salah al-Din, Diyala and Kirkuk, in Sharqat and Qiyara south of Mosul and in the western desert. This presence is confined to uninhabited areas, but poses a daily threat to the population in the Sunni periphery,” they say. Among the prime goals of the leadership is to sow and reactivate “sleeper cells” in Iraq for attacks in bigger cities and to transfer fighters across border with Syria into Iraq in order to increase its presence there, they say.
 
Different strategies

In Syria, IS is training and recruiting in the desert areas south-west of the Euphrates, an area supposedly under control of the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad, but neglected now as the Syrian army focuses on the last remaining enclave of anti-Assad rebels and al-Qaida-tied groups in north-west Syria. But the modes of IS operation differ between Iraq and Syria, where the threat of air strikes forces the group to be be defensive.

In Iraq the group’s commanders have more freedom to plan operations and attacks have increased in tempo steadily over the last year with government officials and local ‘collaborators’ targeted in the Sunni countryside. Executions in villages Mukhtars (local dignitaries) are filmed as a lesson to others.
 
“Defeat brought the organization back to its basic essence: a small, marginal Sunni-Iraqi terror/guerrilla force, capable of waging small wars, intimidating populations and carrying out terror attacks in peripheral areas, exploiting the geopolitical and governmental vacuum there. In fact, Daesh became a more practical, matter-of-fact organization. Its organizational changes are impressive. Apparently, this is the heritage of men who served in Saddam Hussein’s highly organized security services,” write authors Zeidel and al-Hashimi.
 
Generational change

The group, though, is undergoing a generational change and has become even more Iraqi in character. Ten out of twelve of the IS Cabinet are Iraqis; and of the 26 top field commanders 21 are Iraqis, three are Syrian. Of the remaining two one is Saudi and another European. It is estimated that just one out of 50 fighters comes from outside either Syria or Iraq.
 
“As long as the situation in Syria remains as it is and the lethargy of the Iraqi state in providing security to the peripheral Sunni areas continues, Daesh will enjoy more years of survival and might become a more threatening menace, especially to Iraq,” Zeidel, a researcher in the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, and al-Hashimi, an analyst at Al-Nahrayn Center for Security and Strategic Studies, Baghdad. But as an insurgency forces Daesh is not imperishable, they argue.

…

Las Vegas police learned from the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history to secure high-rise buildings overseeing open-air crowds and train more officers with rifles to stop a shooter in an elevated position, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Wednesday.
 
Among 93 recommendations in a newly released department “after-action review” are requirements to plan ahead with neighboring police, fire, hospital and coroner officials; to let responding officers remove reflective vests so they’re less of a target to a shooter; and to ensure more paramedics and trauma kits are available at large-scale events.
 
“We hope we never have to use these procedures that we are putting in place,” said Lombardo, who characterized the report as “our textbook on our response” to the October 2017 massacre that killed 58 people at an open-air music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. He said it’s now required reading for every Las Vegas police officer above the rank of sergeant.
 
Lombardo noted that report authors Capt. Kelly McMahill and Detective Stephanie Ward studied other mass casualty incidents around the country, and said he hoped the Las Vegas report would help others prepare.
 
The 158-page document acknowledged communications snags similar to those described in a separate August 2018 “after-action report” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Clark County Fire Department and Las Vegas police.
 
That 61-page document said communications were overwhelmed by 911 calls, the number of victims, and by false reports of active shooters at other Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos and nearby McCarran International Airport.
 
Lombardo, the elected head of some 5,000 officers, said the new report focuses on internal department “preparedness, response and recovery.”
 
It comes almost a year after Las Vegas police closed the criminal investigation with a 187-page criminal investigation report and nearly six months after the FBI issued a three-page summary of its behavioral analysis of gunman Stephen Paddock.
 
Paddock, 64, a former accountant and high-stakes video poker player with homes in Reno and the southern Nevada resort community of Mesquite, killed himself before officers reached his hotel room.
 
The FBI said Paddock sought notoriety but that investigators found no “single or clear motivating factor” for the shooting.
 
Investigators said Paddock planned meticulously and acted alone amassing an arsenal of assault-style weapons before opening fire from a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort into a crowd of 22,000 country music fans below. Authorities said more than 850 people were wounded or injured fleeing the gunfire.
 
Lombardo noted the NFL’s Oakland Raiders plan to move to Las Vegas and begin play in 2020 at a 65,000-seat Las Vegas Stadium being built just off the Las Vegas Strip.
 
He said policing changes will apply to scheduled events drawing at least 15,000 people, and the report listed more than 17 such events: New Year’s Eve fireworks on the Strip; conventions including the Consumer Electronics gadget show at the Las Vegas Convention Center; NASCAR races at Las Vegas Speedway; the Las Vegas Rock `n’ Roll Marathon; uncounted hotel “day club” pool parties; and 41 NHL Vegas Golden Knights hockey home games per year at T-Mobile Arena.
 
Lombardo noted that Las Vegas police already make presentations about what the department experienced in October 2017 to law enforcement officials in the U.S. and abroad. He said the department has already implemented 40% of the new report’s recommendations.
 
The release comes a week after Las Vegas police confirmed the firing in March of a veteran officer who froze in a hotel hallway one floor below while Paddock rained rapid gunfire into the concert crowd below.
 
Lombardo said an unspecified number of other officers received lesser discipline for turning off or failing to activate body-worn video cameras, and one for accidentally firing a three-round burst of gunfire inside Paddock’s suite.
 
Police union executive director Steve Grammas said the dismissed officer, Cordell Hendrex, was one of two officers disciplined following departmental reviews of their actions during the shooting. The union is fighting to get Hendrex reinstated.
 
Grammas said the only other officer he knew of who had been disciplined for actions during the shooting got his job back after an arbitrator reviewed his firing.
 
Grammas declined to identify that officer, but said he had at least seven years on the job.
 
The Las Vegas Police Protective Association official said the officer had been accused of making comments the department deemed unbecoming and of telling a woman to keep moving away from the scene of the shooting instead of investigating her complaint that she had been a victim of a crime.
 
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump will host Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, at the White House on July 22 for official talks aimed at “creating conditions” for an “enduring partnership” and cooperation to secure a peaceful South Asia.  
 
The White House said Wednesday that that the two leaders would discuss such issues as counterterrorism, defense, energy and trade.  
 
Peace efforts in Afghanistan are expected to be high on the agenda.  
 
“The visit will focus on strengthening cooperation between the United States and Pakistan to bring peace, stability and economic prosperity to a region that has seen far too much conflict,” a White House statement said. 
 
Khan’s first interaction with Trump is seen in the region as signaling a thaw in the often acrimonious relationship between Washington and Islamabad.  
 
The acrimony stems from U.S. allegations that, despite having received billions of dollars in financial assistance as an ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan has harbored Taliban leaders and fighters and other militants who plot deadly attacks against American and NATO troops in Afghanistan and rival India. Islamabad rejects the charges.  

Since taking office, Trump has suspended all military cooperation and assistance to Pakistan, alleging the country has “given us nothing but lies and deceit.”  
 
Khan took office nearly a year ago and argued with Trump on Twitter a few months later about the U.S. allegations. He defended Pakistan’s counterterrorism successes, saying the country had suffered tens of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars in losses to its national economy while fighting America’s war on terrorism. 
 
However, Islamabad has since helped arrange direct peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year Afghan war. The effort is credited with easing tensions, which prompted Trump to acknowledge in February that the two countries had recently “developed a much better relationship.” 
 
Analysts do not expect anything major to emerge from the Trump-Khan meeting, but they note it could still go a long way toward improving bilateral ties because both leaders dislike the status quo and have strong personalities. 
 
Trump has consistently been critical of U.S. involvement in foreign wars while Khan is known for leading anti-war campaigns and calling for seeking a politically negotiated settlement to the Afghan war, even when his party was in the opposition. 

…

A former Caribbean soccer official has been ordered to pay a $79 million penalty stemming from the FIFA bribery scandal.

A federal judge in New York City imposed the judgment against Jack Warner in a lawsuit brought by the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football.

The 2017 suit accused Warner of embezzling millions of dollars from the soccer association. It said he arranged kickbacks in connection with broadcasting rights for regional tournaments.

The civil allegations mirrored ones in a U.S. criminal investigation that has resulted in convictions of several top soccer officials.

Warner is still fighting extradition in Trinidad and Tobago, where he has denied any wrongdoing. There was no immediate response on Wednesday to an email sent to one of his extradition lawyers.

…

Ask about Jeffrey Epstein on St. Thomas and rooms go quiet. Some people leave. Those who share stories speak in barely audible tones.

The 66-year-old billionaire bought Little St. James Island off this U.S. Caribbean territory more than two decades ago and began to transform it — clearing the native vegetation, ringing the property with towering palm trees and planting two massive U.S. flags on either end. When guides took scuba divers to spots near the island, security guards would walk to the water’s edge.

It was off-putting to residents of St. Thomas — a lush tropical island east of Puerto Rico with winding roads through mountains dotted with dainty Danish colonial-era homes. Then, when Epstein pleaded guilty in a 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, his need for privacy began to appear more sinister.

“Everybody called it `Pedophile Island,”’ said Kevin Goodrich, who is from St. Thomas and operates boat charters. “It’s our dark corner.”

Many people who worked for Epstein told The Associated Press this week that they had signed long non-disclosure agreements, and refused to talk. One former employee who declined to be identified said Epstein once had five boats, including a large ferry in which he transported up to 200 workers from St. Thomas to his island every day for construction work.

The man said he saw a handful of young women when he was on Epstein’s property but he believed they were older than 18.

“When he was there, it was keep to yourself and do your thing,” the man recalled, adding that Epstein paid well and would give away older machinery and surplus including lumber to his employees.

Epstein built a stone mansion with cream-colored walls and a bright turquoise roof surrounded by several other structures including the maids’ quarters and a massive, square-shaped white building on one end of the island. Workers told each other it was a music room fitted with a grand piano and acoustic walls. Its gold dome flew off during the deadly 2017 hurricane season.

Locals recalled seeing Epstein’s black helicopter flying back and forth from the tiny international airport in St. Thomas to his helipad on Little St. James Island, a roughly 75-acre retreat a little over a mile (about 2 kilometers) southeast of St. Thomas.

Epstein later bought neighboring Great St. James Island, which once was popular with locals and tourists for its main attraction, Christmas Cove, a place where you could hang out and order pizza and have it delivered via boat.

“He wasn’t well received,” recalled Spencer Consolvo, a St. Thomas native who runs a tourist shop near a large marina. “People think he’s too rich to be policed properly.”

Federal authorities consider the smaller of the two islands to be Epstein’s primary residence in the United States, a place where at least one alleged victim said in a court affidavit that she participated in an orgy, as well as had sex with Epstein and other people. She said she saw former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the island, but that she never saw him having sex with anyone. A Clinton spokesman issued a statement saying he never visited there.

A day after he pleaded not guilty in a New York courtroom to charges of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, there was scant movement on the Caribbean island. Hurricane shutters covered the windows, locals hadn’t seen any lights at night and a lone worker drove a bright blue golf cart around the property.

At a nearby office that locals say Epstein owns in a seaside strip mall, a man in a T-shirt and sunglasses on his head opened the door a crack, shook his head vehemently when asked about Epstein and locked the door. The firm, Southern Trust Company Inc., hired Cecile de Jongh, wife of former Gov. John de Jongh, as its office manager, according to records with the U.S. Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority.

Meanwhile, Epstein’s arrest also prompted the U.S. Virgin Islands representative in Congress, Stacey Plaskett, to announce she would give the money Epstein had donated to her campaigns to charitable groups.

Now that Epstein has been arrested a second time, locals say tourists are increasingly asking about his islands when they visit St. Thomas. A woman who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job running a charter company said she was elated when Epstein got arrested but is now vexed at tourists’ curiosity, saying she reluctantly shares whispered details of his case to prying adults if children are around.

Some of that fascination aggravates Vernon Morgan, a taxi driver and St. Thomas native.

“It brought some kind of notoriety to the Virgin Islands,” he said. “We would much rather that the Virgin Islands be seen in a different light.”

…

A U.S. court ruling that it is unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to block critics on Twitter has reignited criticism of politicians who ban detractors from their social media accounts. 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled unanimously Tuesday that because Trump’s Twitter account is a “public forum,” he can’t block users who disagree with him. Since the earliest days of his administration, Trump has used Twitter to make on-the-fly policy, lash out at his critics and voice his opinion on virtually every subject. To many, his Twitter page has become the face of his presidency. 

“The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the panel. 

Lesson for politicians

While Parker stressed the ruling does not extend to all social media accounts operated by public officials, First Amendment advocates said the decision nonetheless serves as a lesson to politicians who block critics from “private” social media accounts that often double as communication platforms with the public. There are at least a half-dozen other lawsuits pending against U.S. politicians, from county officials to governors, who have sought to silence their critics on social media. 

“We hope that as a result of this decision, public officials will take note and recognize that they need to be able to withstand criticism from their constituents,” said Carrie DeCell, a staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which two years ago filed the lawsuit that led to Tuesday’s ruling. 

Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed similar lawsuits against public officials, said the ruling should remind politicians that “blocking critics from an official social media account is unconstitutional.” 

“Social media is the new town hall — once an official opens either up to the public, they can’t selectively exclude those whose views they disagree with,” Bhandari said. 

Trump has nearly 62 million followers on Twitter. His tweets are widely shared, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times, generating both deep praise and harsh criticism — all out on a free-for-all, no-holds-barred platform.

Despite the freewheeling nature of his Twitter page, Trump, who runs the account with the help of his social media director, Dan Scavino, is known to have banned several dozen followers in recent years. 

The lawsuit was brought in July 2017 on behalf of seven followers blocked by Trump and centered on whether the First Amendment applied to @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. 

Government lawyers representing Trump argued in court that it did not because Trump’s account was “private” and that he used it exclusively as “a vehicle for his own speech.”

But lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the account is for all practical purposes a “public forum” and that Trump violated the seven individuals’ First Amendment rights by banning them from his page. 

Both a district court in May 2018 and the appeals court on Tuesday agreed with the plaintiffs. After the district court ruling, all seven plaintiffs were quietly unblocked from Trump’s Twitter account. In addition, the Knight Institute asked for the unblocking of 20 to 30 others who had been banned by Trump. Most of those, too, were unblocked, DeCell said.

Trump is not the only politician sued over blocking social media critics. The ACLU is suing officials in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland and Virginia on behalf of constituents who were blocked on social media. In addition, it has sent letters to politicians in Nebraska and New York to unblock users or face lawsuits.

Demanding to be unbanned

In April, the New York Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Republican Congressman and Trump ally Peter King demanding that he “unban” dozens of constituents on Facebook.

King had argued that he had the right to block people from the “Congressman Peter King” Facebook page because it was a campaign account, and not one used for his congressional work. But the ACLU countered, “King wrapped the page in the trappings of his office and used it as a tool of governance.”

In response, King in May created a new, official Facebook page that will not ban users based on their views while continuing to use his original page for campaign purposes.

“We are pleased that the congressman agreed to launch a new Facebook page that will serve as his official government account from which he will not block users,” said Antony Gemmell, a staff attorney at the NYCLU.”Similar to [Tuesday’s] ruling on the president blocking people from his Twitter account, the congressman cannot block people from his official government Facebook page simply because he disagrees with their opinions.” 

The Justice Department said it was “disappointed” with the appeals court’s decision and was “exploring possible next steps.” 

“As we argued, President Trump’s decision to block users from his personal Twitter account does not violate the First Amendment,” DOJ spokesperson Kelly Laco said.

Hans von Spakovsky, a legal affairs fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the appeals court made “a very basic mistake of law and a basic factual mistake” and that the Justice Department should appeal the decision.

“The First Amendment only applies in a public forum such as a public park,” von Spakovsky said. “But Twitter is not a public forum. Twitter is a private company.”

…

Brazilian mining giant Vale SA has been hit with its first conviction for a rupture of a containment dam that sent a tidal wave of mining waste through a rural community, killing nearly 300 people in January.

A state court announced the conviction in a statement posted on its website Tuesday.

Judge Elton Pupo Nogueira ordered Vale to pay for repairing “all the damages caused by the tragedy.” He did not set a specific amount for the company to pay, but said the costs will be related to the deaths as well as damage to the environment and local economy.

The judge maintained a freeze on $2.9 billion in Vale assets. The court statement said Vale’s defense did not deny responsibility for the damages caused by the dam rupture.

…

The Trump administration is urging Turkey to stop oil-and-gas drilling off the coast of the divided island of Cyprus.

“This provocative step raises tensions in the region,” the State Department said late Tuesday. “We continue to believe the island’s oil-and-gas reserves, like all of its resources, should be equitably shared between both communities in the context of an overall settlement.”

There has been no comment so far from Turkey which sent a drilling ship to the Mediterranean off Cyprus Monday, sparking a protest by the Greek Cypriots.

Cyprus has been split between a Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south since 1974 when Turkey sent troops to the island in response to a Greek military coup.

The Greek south has international recognition while only Turkey recognizes the government in the north.

Negotiations to reunify the island have been hung up over several issues, including sharing the energy resources and the presence of Turkish forces. 

…

The powerful Mojave Desert earthquakes that rocked California ended a years-long lull in major seismic activity and raised new interest in an early warning system being developed for the West Coast.

The ShakeAlert system is substantially built in California and overall is about 55% complete, with much of the remaining installation of seismic sensor stations to be done in the Pacific Northwest, said Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Areas that have the appropriate number of sensors include Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle-Tacoma region, de Groot said.

The system does not predict earthquakes. Rather, it detects that an earthquake is occurring, rapidly calculates expected intensity levels and sends out alerts that may give warnings ranging from several seconds to perhaps a minute before potentially damaging shaking hits locations away from the epicenter.

Depending on the distance, that could be enough time to automatically slow trains, stop industrial machines, start generators, pull a surgical knife away from a patient or tell students to put the “drop, cover and hold” drill into action.

For alerts to be useful, delivery has to be timely, and that’s a problem with current cellphone technology. For cellphone delivery, the USGS ultimately intends to use the same system that delivers Amber Alerts, sending signals to everyone in reach of cellphone towers in defined areas where damaging shaking is expected. 

Pilot programs involving select users have been underway for several years. In October, the USGS announced the system was ready to be used broadly by businesses, utilities, schools and other entities following a software update that reduced problems such as false alerts typically caused by a big quake somewhere in the world being misidentified as a local quake.

Currently, the only mass public notification is possible through a mobile app developed for the city of Los Angeles and functional only within Los Angeles County. 

The ShakeAlertLA app did not send alerts for last week’s two big quakes, but officials said it functioned as designed because the expected level of shaking in the LA area – more than 100 miles from the epicenters- was below a trigger threshold.

Thresholds for alerting are important because California has daily earthquakes.

“Imagine getting 10 ShakeAlerts on your phone for really small earthquakes that may not affect you,” de Groot said. “If people get saturated with these messages it’s going to make people not care as much.”

In the Mojave Desert on Monday, rattled residents cleaned up and officials assessed damage in the aftermath of Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake and Friday’s magnitude 7.1 quake centered near Ridgecrest.

President Donald Trump on Monday declared an emergency exists in California because of the quakes, paving the way for federal aid. The declaration authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

It could be several more days before water service is restored to the small town of Trona, where officials trucked in portable toilets and showers, said San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert. 

Ten residences in Trona were red-tagged as uninhabitable and officials expect that number to increase as inspectors complete surveys. Wert said he’s seen homes that shifted 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) off their foundations. 

Electricity was restored to Trona over the weekend, allowing people to use much-needed air conditioners as daytime temperatures approached 100 degrees (38 Celsius). 

Teams will need several more days to finish assessments in nearby Ridgecrest, where the number of damaged buildings will likely be in the dozens, Kern County spokeswoman Megan Person said.

Person says officials are bringing in counselors to help residents still on edge as aftershocks rattle the area. 

“You can’t feel every single one, but you can feel a lot of them,” she said. “Those poor people have been dealing with shaking ground non-stop since Thursday.”

…

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the extradition bill that sparked the territory’s biggest political crisis in decades was dead, admitting that the government’s work on the bill had been a “total failure.”

The bill, which would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China to face trial, sparked huge and at times violent street protests and plunged the former British colony into turmoil.

In mid-June, Lam responded to huge protests by suspending the bill, but on Tuesday she said “there are still lingering doubts about the government’s sincerity or worries whether the government will restart the process in the legislative council.”

“So, I reiterate here, there is no such plan, the bill is dead,” she told a news conference.

Lam’s declaration appeared to be a win for opponents of the bill, but it was not immediately clear if it would be enough to satisfy them.

Demonstrators have also called for Lam to resign, for an independent investigation into police actions against protesters, and for the government to abandon the description of a violent protest on June 12 as a riot.

Hong Kong was returned to China from Britain in 1997 with the promise of a high degree of autonomy, but in recent years there has been growing concern about the erosion of those freedoms at the hands of Beijing.

The crisis over the extradition bill has been the biggest challenge Beijing has faced to its rule in the territory in the 22 years since it re-gained control over Hong Kong.

The planned bill triggered outrage across broad sections of Hong Kong society amid concerns it would threaten the much-cherished rule of law that underpins the city’s international financial status.

Lam’s appearance on Tuesday was her first since a rare pre-dawn news conference a week ago after protesters besieged and ransacked the legislative building in the heart of the city.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that allows freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China, including the right to protest and an independent judiciary.

Lawyers and rights groups say China’s justice system is marked by torture, forced confessions and arbitrary detention, claims that Beijing denies.

…

People packed the decks of the Japanese whale-watching boat, screaming in joy as a pod of orcas put on a show: splashing tails at each other, rolling over, and leaping out of the water.

In Kushiro, just 160 kilometers south of Rausu, where the four dozen people laughed and cheered, boats were setting off on Japan’s first commercial whale hunt in 31 years.

Killed that day were two minke whales, which the boats in Rausu also search for glimpses of – a situation that whale-watching boat captain Masato Hasegawa confessed had him worried.

“They won’t come into this area – it’s a national park – or there’d be big trouble,” the 57-year-old former pollock fisherman said. “And the whales we saw today, the sperm whales and orcas, aren’t things they hunt.”

“But we also watch minkes,” he added. “If they take a lot in the (nearby) Sea of Okhotsk, we could well see a change, and that would be too bad for whale watching.”

Whale-watching is a growing business around Japan, with popular spots from the southern Okinawa islands up to Rausu, a fishing village on the island of Hokkaido, so far north that it’s closer to Russia than to Tokyo.

The number of whale watchers around Japan has more than doubled between 1998 and 2015, the latest year for which national data is available. One company in Okinawa had 18,000 customers between January and March this year.

In Rausu, 33,451 people packed tour boats last year for whale and bird watching, up 2,000 from 2017 and more than 9,000 higher than 2016. Many stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants, and buy local products such as sea urchins and seaweed.

“Of the tourist boat business, 65 percent is whale watching,” said Ikuyo Wakabayashi, executive director of the Shiretoko Rausu Tourism Association, who says the numbers grow substantially each year.

“You don’t just see one type of whale here, you see lots of them,” she said. “Whale-watching is a huge tourist resource for Rausu and this will continue, I hope.”

Wakabayashi was drawn to Rausu by whale-watching; a native of the western city of Osaka, she fell in love with the area after three trips there to see orcas.

“I thought this was an incredible place,” she said. “Winters are tough, but it’s so beautiful.”

Hasegawa, who says he has a waiting list of customers in high season, has ordered a second boat.

“Right now, the lifestyle we have is good,” Hasegawa said. “Better than it would have been with fishing.”

Small Industry

The five whaling vessels moored at Kushiro port on Sunday, the night before the hunt resumed, were well-used and well-maintained. Crew members came and went, carrying groceries or towels, heading for a public bath.

Barely 300 people are directly involved with whaling around Japan, and though the government maintains whale meat is an important part of food culture, the amount consumed annually has fallen to only 0.1 percent of total meat consumption.

Yet Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – himself from a whaling district – left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and returned to commercial whaling on July 1.

Whaling advocates, such as Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-type Whaling Association, celebrated the hunt.

“We endured for 31 years, but now it’s all worth it,” he said in Kushiro on Monday night after the first minkes were brought in to be butchered. “They’ll be whaling for a week here, we may have more.”

Everybody acknowledges that rebuilding demand could be tough after decades of whale being a pricey, hard-to-find food.

Consumption was widespread after World War II, when an impoverished Japan needed cheap protein, but fell off after the early 1960s as other meat grew cheaper.

“Japan has so much to eat now that food is thrown out, so we don’t expect demand for whale will rise that fast,” said Kazuo Yamamura, president of the Japan Whaling Association.

“But looking to the future, if you don’t eat whale, you forget that it’s a food,” he said. “If you eat it in school lunches, you’ll remember that, you’ll remember that it’s good.”

Pro-whaling lawmaker Kiyoshi Ejima said that subsidies were unlikely, but that the government should be careful not to let the industry founder. About 5.1 billion yen ($47.31 million) was budgeted for whaling in 2019.

“If we pull away our hands too soon, a lot of companies will fail,” he added.

The goal of selling whale throughout Japan may be impractical, said Joji Morishita, Japan’s former IWC commissioner.

“The alternative … is to just limit the supply of whale meat to some of the major places in Japan that have a good tradition of whale eating,” Morishita said, adding that the meat is difficult to thaw and cook.

In areas for which whaling is a tradition, this niche market could promote tourism, which Abe has made a pillar of his economic plan.

“Whale eating in a sense is ideal – it’s different, it’s well-known, and for better or worse, it’s very famous,” Morishita said. “Taking advantage of this IWC withdrawal, I think there are business chances that are viable.”

Whales Up Close

For Rausu, on Hokkaido’s remote Shiretoko Peninsula, the viable business is whale watching.

Foxes run through the streets of the city’s downtown, which clings to a narrow strip of land below mountains and faces the Nemuro Strait. Summer often brings thick fog, while winter storms can leave waist-high drifts.

Though fishing was long Rausu’s economic backbone, the industry has taken a hit from declining fish stocks, which locals blame on Russian trawlers and falling prices. The population has dropped by several hundred annually, slipping below 5,000 this year.

Hasegawa, a fourth-generation fisherman, began his tour boat business in 2006. Though the first few years were a struggle, he is now happy with his choice as Rausu’s reputation grows globally.

On a recent weekday, customers packed the parking lot at a wharf lined with squid-fishing boats, waiting to board Hasegawa’s boat and those of three other companies. Hasegawa’s customers came from all over Japan and several foreign countries.

“Today there were more (whale) jumps than usual; it was fantastic,” said Kiyoko Ogi, a 47-year-old Tokyo bus driver who’s been whale-watching in Rausu three times. “I’m really opposed to commercial whaling; seeing whales close is so exciting.”

Whale hunting was never big in Rausu, and though Hasegawa said there once was “trouble” with people hunting small Baird’s beaked whales nearby, those fishermen now stay far from the tours and will tell him where to find orcas and sperm whales.

But he’s dubious about whether demand for whale meat will ever pick up. Restaurants and hotels in Rausu avoid serving it.

“We get a lot of kids in summer vacations. If you tell them on the boat that ‘this is the whale we ate last night,’ they’d cry,” he said.

“If they serve whale, nobody from overseas will come, especially Europeans,” he added. “Given that the national government is trying to woo overseas tourists so much, its thinking (on whaling) seems a bit wrong.”

($1 = 107.7900 yen)

…

A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck southwest Iran near the border with Iraq on Monday, causing one death due to a heart attack and dozens of injuries, the country’s relief and rescue organisation said.

The quake, whose epicenter was in the Masjed Soleiman area of Khuzestan province, hit at 11:30 am (0700 GMT) at a depth of 17 kilometers, the national seismological center reported.

The region was rattled by seven aftershocks, the strongest of which measured 4.7 magnitude, it said.

At least 45 people were injured, the head of Iran’s relief and rescue organization, Morteza Salimi, told state TV.

“One citizen at Masjed Soleiman also passed away due to a heart-attack after the earthquake,” Salimi said.

In nearby cities and villages affected by the quake, there were “only minor cracks in buildings” and roads to some villages were cut off.

Iran sits on top of major tectonic plates and sees frequent seismic activity.

In November 2017 a 7.3-magnitude tremor in the western province of Kermanshah killed 620 people.

In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake in southeast Iran decimated the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people.

Iran’s deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in northern Iran, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless.

…

Monday the country had surpassed the limits on how much it was allowed to enrich uranium under the 2015 international nuclear deal.

Iranian state media quoted spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying enrichment levels had reached nearly 5%, breaching the 3.67% limit set in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

He also said Iran could consider continuing on to enriching uranium to 20% as the next step in its move to back away from its commitments under the nuclear deal, unless it gets the help it wants on sanctions relief.

Uranium enriched to 5% is sufficient to produce fuel for nuclear power plants, but still far below the 90% needed for building a nuclear weapon.

Iran has been hinting at, and subsequently following through on, pledges to increase its nuclear activity while demanding other signatories to the nuclear agreement — particularly those in Europe — do more to help Iran economically as it deals with negative effects of sanctions the United States has imposed since pulling out of the deal last year.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week Iran was prepared to enrich “any amount that we want” beyond the 3.67% level. He further pledged to resume construction of the Arak heavy water reactor, a project Iran agreed to shut down when it signed the 2015 deal.  Iran has also already gone past the limit for the amount of enriched uranium it is allowed to keep in its stockpile.

The moves have drawn concern from Europe.  EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters Monday the bloc is “extremely concerned” about Iran’s boost in enrichment and that it is urging Iran to “stop and reverse all activities” that are not consistent with its commitments under the nuclear deal.

In the United States, President Donald Trump warned Iran on Sunday it “better be careful.”  

He did not specify to reporters any specific reactions his administration was considering, but reiterated the position that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump made his comment hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that Iran’s decision will lead to “further isolation and sanctions.”

“Nations should restore the longstanding standard of no enrichment for Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s regime with nuclear weapons would pose an even greater danger to the world,” Pompeo wrote.

The deal came in response to allegations Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, and in return for the restrictions that were put in place to allay those concerns, Iran won badly needed relief from sanctions that harmed its economy.

…

A South Korean man has defected to North Korea to permanently live there and work for its unification with the South, Pyongyang’s state media reported.

Choe In-guk is the son of two high level diplomats who also defected to the communist North in 1984 after a political dispute with then-South Korean President Park Chung-hee.

The state-run North Korean Uriminzokkiri website reported that Choe would work at the guidance of the country’s Chairman Kim Jong Un.

The website published images and footage showing Choe in a beret reading a statement upon his arrival at Pyongyang’s international airport.
 
Choe said he is over 70 years old and that he  made the decision to fulfill his parents’ “dying wishes” for him to “follow” North Korea and work for the unification of both countries,  a written statement published on the website said.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Choe was in North Korea without special permission from the Seoul government. A ministry spokesman told reporters Monday that authorities were trying to find out details about Choe’s travel to the North.

The ministry also said that Choe had been allowed to make 12 authorized trips to North Korea since 2001 to visit his parents’ cemetery and attend a death anniversary for his mother.

South Koreans defection to North Korea is very rare and the North is known to have repatriated them in the past.  

…

The heavily favored United States team has defeated Netherlands 2-0 in the women’s World Cup soccer final in Lyon, France, securing its fourth title and winning back-to-back tournaments for the first time.

The Americans defeated four other European teams — Sweden, Spain, France and England — on their way to the final, and dominated Sunday in defeating the reigning European champion Dutch.

Football analysts say the United States women’s national team went into the match as favorites because of their greater depth and experience than the Dutch.

One of the top American players, Megan Rapinoe, who sat out the semi-final win over the British with a slight hamstring strain, scored the opening goal for the U.S. side on a penalty kick in the 61st minute. Rose Lavelle added a goal in the 69th minute to seal the victory.

Former U.S. soccer star Julie Foudy explained before the match what was at stake for the Americans.

“They’ve done all the hard stuff. Weathering the storm that was the Spanish game. Beating the hosts in Paris. Knocking out a very good English team. But they … must bring it home to secure their legacy, especially against a team that doesn’t have the same depth of talent and which is playing on less rest,” she said.

Even as its success in the tournament earns it unprecedented acclaim at home, the U.S. women’s team is suing the country’s soccer federation for equal pay with members of country’s much less successful men’s national team. The pay disparity is pronounced, with female soccer players’ base salary roughly $30,000 less a year than their male counterparts. The players agreed to submit to arbitration following the end of the tournament.

The soccer federation awarded the men’s team a $5.4 million bonus after it lost in the round of 16 at the 2014 World Cup, while handing the women’s team $1.7 million when it won in 2015.

Rapinoe has also feuded with U.S. President Donald Trump, saying that in opposition to his presidency she would not accept an invitation to go to the White House if the Americans won the title.

Trump said in response, “Megan should WIN before she TALKS,” and invited the whole team whether it wins or loses the title.

…

Malawi President Peter Mutharika has warned of unspecified action against the leaders of violent protests following his narrow recent election victory. 

Mutharika, whose legitimacy is being challenged by key opposition leaders, said during the country’s 55th Independence Day celebration in Blantyre on Saturday that he has learned the protests have nothing to do with election results, but are aimed at toppling his government. The protests organizers dispute this and say they cannot be intimidated.

The celebrations started with a morning of prayer, with religious leaders appealing for the return of peace and unity to a country now torn by political violence.
 
Malawi has faced street protests, which in many cases turned violent, since the Malawi Elections Commission announced on May 27 that President Mutharika had been re-elected.
 
The MEC declared Mutharika the winner with 39 percent of the vote, and said opposition Malawi Congress Party leader Lazarus Chakwera was a close second with 35 percent.
 
Vice President Saulos Chilima’s opposition United Transformation Movement Party came in third with 20 percent.
 
Chakwera and Chilima are challenging the election results in court, alleging ballot-stuffing and the use of a popular correction fluid to alter ballots.
 
Both opposition leaders shunned Mutharika’s Independence Day speech, in which he called for peace.

“This is the day we must raise our flags of patriotism,” said Mutharika. “This is a day everyone must show how we love this country. Malawi is the only country that we have. If we destroy this country, as we are currently doing, we have destroyed ourselves.”
 

However Mutharika had harsh words for the organizers of the protests. He said he knows that opposition leaders want to use the protests to unseat him because they lost the election “big time.”   

“Let me assure them that they will take over this government over my dead body. They will never, never take over this country. Let me warn them,” he said.
 
Mutharika said his government will soon hold accountable those who are leading the violent protests.
 
Gift Trapence is the deputy chairperson of the Human Rights Defenders Forum, a civil society group organizing the protests.

“We are not targeting unseating the government.  But our issue is with Dr. Jane Ansah, who failed to manage the election,” said Trapence.
 
Trapence said the protests will continue until Ansah resigns.
 
“You cannot be intimidated because for us to do demonstration is in our [Malawi] constitution. So, for us to be intimidated because people were exercising their rights, that’s something regrettable,” he said. 
 
Political commentator Vincent Kondowe said Mutharika could have used the occasion to call for peace talks with the opposition leaders.

“I think the president coult have gone further and reach out to the opposition and probably call for dialogue and then thereafter, moving forward peacefully. Because what it means now, where the tempers are already very high, it sparks more violent protests, on the side of opposition,” said Kondowe.

The protesters said Friday that they would hold another protest in Blantyre on Monday should Ansah fail to resign by before then.
 

…

Discord broke out in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition Sunday, after the United States urged the country to send ground troops to Syria as Washington looks to withdraw from the region.

“We want ground troops from Germany to partly replace our soldiers” in the area as part of the anti-Islamic State coalition, U.S. special representative on Syria James Jeffrey had told German media including Die Welt newspaper.

Jeffrey, who was visiting Berlin for Syria talks, added that he expects an answer this month.

Last year U.S. President Donald Trump declared victory against IS and ordered the withdrawal of all 2,000 American troops from Syria.

A small number have remained in northeastern Syria, an area not controlled by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Washington is pushing for increased military support from other members of the international coalition against IS.

“We are looking for volunteers who want to take part here and among other coalition partners,” Jeffrey said.

A clear rejection of the American request came from Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD).

“There will be no German ground troops in Syria with us,” tweeted a member of the interim SPD leadership, Thorsten Schaefer-Guembel.

“I don’t see people wanting that among our coalition partners” in Merkel’s centre-right CDU, he added.

But deputy conservative parliamentary leader Johann Wadephul told news agency DPA that Germany should “not reflexively reject” the US call for troops.

“Our security, not the Americans’, is being decided in this region,” added Wadephul, seen as a candidate to succeed Ursula von der Leyen as defense minister if she is confirmed as European Commission chief.

Syria’s war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

‘This isn’t a banana republic’

Washington has two goals in northeastern Syria: to support the US-backed Kurdish forces that expelled IS from northern Syria as they are increasingly threatened by Turkey, and to prevent a potential IS resurgence in the war-torn country.

The US is hoping Europe will help, pressuring Britain, France and now Germany, which has so far deployed surveillance aircraft and other non-combat military support in Syria.

However Germany’s history makes military spending and foreign adventures controversial.

Berlin sent soldiers to fight abroad for the first time since World War II in 1994, and much of the political spectrum and the public remains suspicious of such deployments.

As well as the SPD, the ecologist Greens, liberal Free Democrats and Left party all urged Merkel to reject the US request for troops.

The US appeal comes after Trump has repeatedly urged Berlin to increase its defence spending, last month calling Germany “delinquent” over its contributions to NATO’s budget.

But such criticisms have more often hardened resistance to forking out more on the military rather than loosening the country’s purse strings.

Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told business newspaper Handelsblatt on Saturday that Trump wanted “vassals” rather than allies.

“I’d have liked the federal government to tell him once or twice that it’s none of his business” how much Germany spends on defense, Schroeder said.

“This isn’t a banana republic here!”

…

British Interior Minister Sajid Javid will soon formally endorse Boris Johnson to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and the country’s next prime minister, the Sunday Times reported. 

Johnson is the front-runner in a contest with Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt to be the next leader. Voting is due to close on July 22, with the winner set to be announced the following day. 

Johnson has pledged to leave the European Union with or without a deal on Oct. 31 if he becomes prime minister, while Hunt has said that he would, if absolutely necessary, go for a no-deal Brexit. 

The Sunday Times said Javid has positioned himself to be Johnson’s finance minister, taking over from current Finance Minister Philip Hammond. 

It reported that in a speech on Tuesday, Javid will say: “Trust in our democracy will be at stake if we don’t make Oct. 31 a ‘deal or no deal’ deadline. To prepare that, we are agreed on the need for ramped-up no-deal preparations, including a budget.” 

The newspaper also said that Johnson would visit the United States before the end of September to meet President Donald Trump. 

…

Tunisia’s Coast Guard recovered on Saturday the bodies of 14 African migrants who drowned when their boat carrying more than 80 people sank after setting off for Europe from neighboring Libya, the Tunisian Red Crescent said.

Tunisian fishermen rescued four people but one later died at a hospital, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said Thursday. The others on the overcrowded boat were feared drowned.

At least 65 migrants heading for Europe from Libya drowned last May when their boat capsized off Tunisia.

Libya’s west coast is a main departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe, though numbers have dropped because of an Italian-led effort to disrupt smuggling networks and support the Libyan Coast Guard.

Although the fighting in Libya has made the situation more difficult for human smugglers, international aid officials have warned it could also prompt more Libyans to flee their country.

Libyans who are picked up by the Libyan Coast Guard are routinely taken back to Libya and detained. The United Nations has pleaded with Libya’s government to free the detainees, some of whom have been locked up for years.

In May, 108 migrants and refugees were sent to the Tajoura detention center near Tripoli, which was hit by airstrikes on Tuesday night that killed at least 53 people.

…

Officials in Southern California expressed relief Saturday that damage and injuries weren’t worse after the largest earthquake the region has seen in nearly 20 years, while voicing concerns about the possibility of major aftershocks in the days and even months to come.

No fatalities or major injuries were reported after Friday night’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which jolted an area from Sacramento to Mexico and prompted the evacuation of the Navy’s largest single landholding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert.

The quake struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Ridgecrest, the same area of the desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier. It left behind cracked and burning buildings, broken roads, obstructed railroad tracks and leaking water and gas lines.

The light damage was largely because of the remoteness of the area where the earthquake occurred, but Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned after touring Ridgecrest that “it’s deceiving, earthquake damage. You don’t notice it at first.”

He estimated more than $100 million in economic damages and said President Donald Trump called him to offer federal support in the rebuilding effort.

“He’s committed in the long haul, the long run, to help support the rebuilding efforts,” Newsom said of Trump.

City of 28,000

About 28,000 people live in the Ridgecrest area, which is sandwiched between more populated areas of Southern California and Las Vegas’ Clark County. But seismologists warned that the area could see up to 30,000 aftershocks over the next six months.

April Hamlin said she was “already on edge” when the second quake rattled her Ridgecrest home. She and her three kids initially thought it was another aftershock.

“But it just kept on intensifying,” she said. “The TV went over, hanging by the cord. We heard it break. We heard glass breakage in the other rooms, but all we could do was stay where we were until it stopped.”

With the possibility of aftershocks and temperatures forecast to reach 100 degrees (38 Celsius) over the next several days, officials were taking precautions.

Emergency aid

The California National Guard was sending 200 troops, logistical support and aircraft, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin said. The Pentagon had been notified, and the entire California Military Department was put on alert, he said.

Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake said in a Facebook post that nonessential workers were evacuated and operations halted. The epicenters of both quakes were on the base, and officials said they are continuing to assess damage. Officials said most employees live off the base and in Ridgecrest, but they authorized the evacuation so those who live on base can be eligible for reimbursements.

The California Office of Emergency Services brought in cots, water and meals and set up cooling centers in the region, Director Mark Ghilarducci said.

State highway officials shut down a 30-mile (48-kilometer) section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley because of a rockslide and severe cracking. The move left Trona temporarily cut off. California Department of Transportation spokeswoman Christine Knadler said crews worked through the night to patch the roadway, but it remained rough and uneven.

Ron Mikulaco, 51, and his nephew, 23-year-old Brad Fernandez, stood on the road Saturday looking at the cracks. The pair drove from Huntington Beach, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) southwest of Ridgecrest. Mikulaco, an amateur geologist, wanted to show his nephew “the power of Mother Nature,” and they had the epicenter’s latitude and longitude coordinates ready.

“We put that in the GPS, and we’ll get as close as we can,” Fernandez said.

In Ridgecrest, local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service. But police Chief Jed McLaughlin said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”

Two building fires, one involving a mobile home, were quickly doused, McLaughlin said, and natural gas lines where leaks were reported were shut off.

When asked to describe what he has been going through in the past two days, the chief said: “Grief, shock and then, for me, pride in what I’ve seen from here, my people. It’s been a vast range of emotions, and I think the whole community’s going through that.”

Town cut off

In Trona, a town of about 2,000 people considered the gateway to Death Valley, fire officials said up to 50 structures were damaged. San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood said FEMA delivered a tractor-trailer full of bottled water because of damage to water lines. Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county.

Julia Doss, who maintains the Trona Neighborhood Watch page on Facebook, said the only food store in town is a Family Dollar store that was shuttered Saturday.

“The only way to get food is to drive to Ridgecrest, and with only three gas stations in town I’m worried we may soon run out of fuel,” Doss said.

Antoun Abdullatif, 59, owns liquor stores and other businesses in Ridgecrest and Trona.

“I would say 70% of my inventory is on the floor, broken,” he said. “Every time you sweep and you put stuff in the dust bin, you’re putting $200 in the trash.”

But he has stopped cleaning up, believing another earthquake is on the way.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the new quake probably ruptured along about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of fault line and was part of a continuing sequence. The seismic activity is unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault is far away.

Egill Hauksson, another Caltech seismologist, said later in the day that scientists believe the continuing sequence could produce more than 30,000 quakes of magnitude 1 or greater over six months. He said the probability of a magnitude 7 over the next week is about 3%, but one or two magnitude 6 quakes are expected. 

…