Boko Haram militants killed at least 65 people at a funeral in northeastern Nigeria, local officials said Sunday, revising the earlier death toll of 23.
“It is 65 people dead and 10 injured,” said Muhammed Bulama, the local government chairman. Bulama said he thought the attack was in revenge for the killing of 11 Boko Haram fighters by the villagers two weeks ago.
Nigerians last week marked the 10-year anniversary of the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has killed more than 30,000 people, displaced millions and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. The extremists are known for mass abductions of schoolgirls and putting young women and men into suicide vests for attacks on markets, mosques and other high-traffic areas.
The insurgent group, which promotes an extreme form of Islamist fundamentalism and opposes Western-style education, has defied the claims of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration that the insurgency has been crushed. The violence also has spilled into neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
Brazil deployed police to a remote Amazon village on Sunday after reports it had been overrun by armed miners following the murder of an indigenous leader, officials and tribal chiefs said.
The violence in an area of the northern Amapa state controlled by the Waiapi tribe comes as Brazil’s indigenous people face growing pressures from miners, ranchers and loggers under pro-business President Jair Bolsonaro, who on Saturday called for the “first world” to help exploit the “absurd quantity of minerals” in the Amazon rainforest.
Last Monday, a Waiapi indigenous leader was killed and his body found the following day in a river, the Amapa attorney general’s office (AGO) said in a statement.
While none of the Waiapi witnessed the “violent” killing, a council of village chiefs said on Facebook a search of the area found “trails and other signs that the death was caused by non-indigenous people.”
On Friday, a group of “armed non-indigenous” overran the nearby village of Yvytoto, prompting residents to flee, the council said. Local media called them “garimpeiros,” a term for armed miners active in the Amazon, and said they numbered 50.
After reports of the attacks emerged Saturday, members of the federal police and a military police special forces unit were dispatched, the AGO said, arriving in the village some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the state capital Macapa on Sunday.
The indigenous affairs agency FUNAI said its officers were also on the ground monitoring the police investigation.
“Law enforcement officials have reported that no hypothesis for the murder has been ruled out, nor can they can say at this time who carried out the crime,” the AGO said, as it announced the establishment of a crisis management group to oversee the investigation.
“The alleged presence of garimpeiros and other groups in the region is being investigated.”
‘Environmental psychosis’
Rich in gold, manganese, iron and copper, the Waiapi’s territory is deep inside the Amazon, making communication difficult, police said.
The Waiapi council said some of the tribe’s fighters had stationed themselves near the village occupied by the miners.
“The situation is urgent,” said Randolfe Rodrigues, an opposition senator from Amapa, on his official Facebook page.
The Brazilian Bar Association issued a statement calling on the government to protect the Waiapi’s land and ensure perpetrators of criminal offenses were “punished.”
The tribe’s territory is one of hundreds Brazil’s government demarcated in the 1980s for the exclusive use of its 800,000 indigenous inhabitants. Access by outsiders is strictly regulated.
Since taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon and indigenous tribes in order to benefit his supporters in the logging, mining and farming industries.
“We are experiencing a real environmental psychosis,” Bolsonaro said recently.
He’s also pledged to crackdown on what he’s called radical environmental activism, and also questioned the latest official figures showing deforestation increasing by 88 percent in June compared with the same period last year.
Protesters and police prepared Sunday for a likely showdown in central Hong Kong, one day after clashes led to 11 arrests and left at least two dozen injured in an outlying district toward the border with mainland China.
A midafternoon rally has been called at Chater Garden, an urban park in the financial district and about 500 meters (yards) west of the city’s government headquarters and legislature.
Police have denied a request from protest organizers to march about 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) west to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park, but at least some of the demonstrators may still try to push forward.
Protesters react as tear gas is released by police during a faceoff at the entrance to a village at Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019.
Seven weeks of protests
Hong Kong has been wracked by protests for seven weeks, as opposition to an extradition bill has morphed into demands for the resignation of the city’s leader and an investigation into whether police have used excessive force in quelling the protests.
Underlying the movement is a broader push for full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The city’s leader is chosen by a committee dominated by a pro-Beijing establishment, rather than by direct elections.
In denying the march, police cited escalating violence in clashes with protesters that have broken out after past marches and rallies.
“The police must prevent aggressive protesters from exploiting a peaceful procession to cause troubles and violent clashes,” said Superintendent Louis Lau of the police public relations branch.
The police had denied permission for Saturday’s march in Yuen Long, where a mob apparently targeting demonstrators had beat people brutally in a train station the previous weekend.
Ghost paper money usually tossed at funerals is left by protesters at the entrance to a village in Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019.
Protests into the night
Protesters and police faced off in the streets well into the night, as they’ve done repeatedly during the summer’s pro-democracy protests.
Police said that protesters removed fences from roads to make their own roadblocks and charged police lines with metal poles. One group surrounded and vandalized a police vehicle, causing danger to officers on board, a police news release said.
Officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators threw bricks and other objects and ducked behind makeshift shields.v Later, police wearing helmets charged into the train station where a few hundred protesters had taken refuge from the tear gas. Some officers swung their batons at demonstrators, while others appeared to be urging their colleagues to hang back. For the second week in a row, blood was splattered on the station floor.
Police said in a statement they arrested 11 men, between the ages of 18 and 68, for offenses including unlawful assembly, possession of offensive weapon and assault. At least four officers were injured.
The Hospital Authority said 24 people were taken to five hospitals. As of Sunday morning, eight remained hospitalized, two in serious condition.
Riot police block a road into Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019. Hong Kong police on Saturday fired tear gas and swung batons at protesters who defied warnings not to march in a neighborhood where earlier a mob brutally attacked people.
Police criticized
Amnesty International, the human rights group, called the police response heavy-handed and unacceptable.
“While police must be able to defend themselves, there were repeated instances today where police officers were the aggressors,” Man-kei Tam, the director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, said in a news release.
Police said they had to use what they termed “appropriate force” because of the bricks and other objects thrown at them, including glass bottles with a suspected corrosive fluid inside.
When Ugnius Zilinskas came to Kenyon College in Ohio to play on the basketball team, he was welcomed with open arms.
“They kind of take you as a family member,” said the student from Kedainiai, Lithuania.
Zilinskas, a junior, is one of roughly 27,000 foreign students who play on U.S. college sports teams, out of more than 1 million foreign students who attend school in the U.S. Stars like basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon of Nigeria and soccer player Christine Sinclair of Canada began as international students at American colleges before competing professionally in the United States.
Zilinskas was welcomed by Kenyon College, a Division III National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school in Gambier, Ohio. He has played basketball since he was a child in his home country and understood the ladder of college sports. But if a student comes to study in the U.S. with no knowledge of college sports, the system can seem complicated.
Here’s a breakdown.
FILE – The NCAA logo is seen at center court in Pittsburgh, Pa., March 18, 2015.
The basics
The NCAA is one of three major associations that govern college and university athletics:
These nonprofit organizations determine student eligibility, establish sport guidelines, and oversee competition among schools across North America. For instance, the NCAA issues rules that define a foul in basketball, as well as prohibiting NCAA student athletes from endorsing commercial products.
The NCAA generates billions of dollars through media rights, ticket sales, merchandise and membership fees. The revenue goes to athletic scholarships, NCAA employee salaries, and to run competitions like March Madness, a wildly popular tournament broadcast across the country.
NCAA college athletes are banned from being paid to play while enrolled in schools to ensure amateur competition in college. Critics say the big sports associations use favors, trips, free meals and gear to compensate players in other ways. Not everyone considers these actions amateur, while others say the players deserve to be paid outright for their talent and skills.
Schools are sorted into divisions: Division I schools, such as the University of Virginia and University of Michigan, generally have large student populations and many teams. The University of Virginia, for example, has more than 16,000 undergraduate students. Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, a Division II school, has a little more than 6,000 undergraduate students. Kenyon College, a Division III school, has nearly 2,000 students.
Division I and Division II institutions are highly competitive with robust athletic programs and may have athletic budgets of millions of dollars to pay for athletic scholarships, coaches, sport facilities, athletes’ medical needs and transportation.
Division I provides the largest athletic scholarships. Athletes who receive athletic scholarships in soccer or basketball, for example, may get some or all tuition waved in addition to some room and board. Division III focuses on academics and offers merit scholarships or financial aid, not athletic scholarships.
Zilinskas said a benefit of competing in college sports was playing basketball while fully engaging in his studies.
The National Junior College Administration (NJCAA) operates differently and only at two-year colleges, organizing its member institutions into three divisions. Division I members, such Bismarck State College’s basketball team in North Dakota, offer larger athletic scholarships than Division II. Member institutions decide the division in which it wants to compete.
For similar reasons as the NCAA and NAIA, NJCAA Division III members do not provide athletic scholarships to their students.
Getting ready to compete
How do students get eligibility to play at U.S. schools?
Student athletes register through the NCAA Eligibility Center online. The $150 fee can be waived for students with financial needs. School transcripts, SAT or ACT scores and country-specific documents are required in English and according to the American grading system. (The NCAA offers country-specific information on its website.)
Students must also prove their amateur status.
Once eligibility is established and a U.S. college or university offers a student athlete a scholarship, they sign a National Letter of Intent to attend and compete for one academic year.
The application process to an NCAA Division III institution is less formal. A student does not need to register officially through the NCAA. Instead, grade and credit regulations are set by each school. Students should contact the team’s coach for school-specific requirements. Again, NCAA III does not offer student sports scholarships.
The process for international student athletes interested in competing on an NAIA or NJCAA Division I or Division II are similar.
While Zilinskas had hoped to play basketball at a Division I school, that dream seemed impossible after he suffered an injury.
“No one takes a player that cannot run and sits on the bench the whole year,” Zilinskas said. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m packing my stuff, I’m going home.’ But then Kenyon gave me good financial aid. And I’m still here.”
“I would say that international students, if they’re really into athletics or doing some sports they should definitely try to do something with sports. … School is not everything, so there is a lot of different paths to go,” he said. “You can find a lot of different groups of people and academic sides and sports sides, music whatever. Meeting new people — that’s really big.”
More information about competing through the NCAA, NAIA or NJCAA can be found on the associations’ websites.
Canned soup, canned tuna, and pasta, among other things — everything you’ll find in an average American pantry, yet these little pantries are not in someone’s home but in the streets, open and accessible to anyone who needs them. Free Little Pantry is behind this initiative, a grassroots organization that was founded Arkansas two years ago, but has spread across the country. For VOA, Nataliya Leonova visited a few of these little pantries in the Washington area. Anna Rice narrates her story.
The head of a Sudanese investigative committee said on Saturday that 87 people were killed and 168 wounded on June 3 when a sit-in protest was violently broken up by security forces.
Fath al-Rahman Saeed, the head of the committee, said 17 of those killed were in the square occupied by protesters and 48 of the wounded were hit by bullets.
Georgia allowed its election system to grow “way too old and archaic” and now has a deep hole to dig out of to ensure that the constitutional right to vote is protected, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said Friday.
Now Totenberg is in the difficult position of having to decide whether the state, which plans to implement a new voting system statewide next year, must immediately abandon its outdated voting machines in favor of an interim solution for special and municipal elections to be held this fall.
Election integrity advocates and individual voters sued Georgia in 2017 alleging that the touchscreen voting machines the state has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. They’ve asked Totenberg to order the state to immediately switch to hand-marked paper ballots.
But lawyers for Fulton County, the state’s most populous county that includes most of Atlanta, and for state election officials argued that the state is in the process of implementing a new system, and it would be too costly, burdensome and chaotic to use an interim system for elections this fall and then switch to the new permanent system next year.
A law passed this year and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp provides specifications for a new system in which voters make their selections on electronic machines that print out a paper record that is read and tallied by scanners. State officials have said it will be in place for the 2020 presidential election.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued Friday that the current system is so unsecure and vulnerable to manipulation that it cannot be relied upon, jeopardizing voters’ constitutional rights.
“We can’t sacrifice people’s right to vote just because Georgia has left this system in place for 20 years and it’s so far behind,” said lawyer Bruce Brown, who represents the Coalition for Good Governance and a group of voters.
Addressing concerns about an interim system being burdensome to implement, plaintiffs’ lawyers countered that the state put itself in this situation by neglecting the system for so long and ignoring warnings. Lawyer David Cross, who represents another group of voters, urged the judge to force the state to take responsibility.
“You are the last resort,” he said.
Georgia’s voting system drew national scrutiny during the closely watched contest for governor last November in which Kemp, a Republican who was the state’s top election official at the time, narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams.
The plaintiffs had asked Totenberg in August to force Georgia to use hand-marked paper ballots for that election. While Totenberg expressed grave concerns about vulnerabilities in the voting system and scolded state officials for being slow to respond to evidence of those problems, she said a switch to paper ballots so close to the midterm election would be too chaotic. She warned state officials that further delay would be unacceptable.
But she seemed conflicted Friday at the conclusion of a two-day hearing.
“These are very difficult issues,” she said. “I’m going to wrestle with them the best that I can, but these are not simple issues.”
She recognized that the state had taken concrete steps since her warning last year, with lawmakers providing specifications for a new system, appropriating funds and beginning the procurement process. But she also said she wished the state had not let the situation become so dire and wondered what would happen if the state can’t meet its aggressive schedule for implementing the new system.
The request for proposals specifies that vendors must be able to distribute all voting machine equipment before March 31, which is a week after the state’s presidential primary election is set to be held on March 24. Bryan Tyson, a lawyer representing state election officials, told the judge the state plans to announce the new system it’s selected in “a matter of days.”
Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor, testified Friday that the state election system’s vulnerabilities and that the safest, most secure system would be hand-marked paper ballots with optical scanners at each precinct.
Four county election officials, three of whom will oversee elections this fall, testified that it would be difficult to switch to hand-marked paper ballots in time for those elections. They cited difficulties getting enough new equipment, as well as challenges training poll workers and educating voters. They also said they’d have trouble paying for the switch unless the state helps.
The two groups of plaintiffs agree that the whole system is flawed and has to go. They also believe the ballot-marking devices the state plans to implement have many of the same problems, and they plan to challenge those once the state announces which vendor has won the contract. But they disagree about what the interim solution should be.
The plaintiffs represented by Brown are asking the state to use hand-marked paper ballots along with its existing election management system and to use the ballot scanners it currently uses for paper absentee and provisional ballots for all ballots.
The plaintiffs represented by Cross want the state to implement its new election management system in time for the fall elections and to use ballot scanners along with paper ballots.
Bahrain has executed two men convicted of terrorism offenses.
The executions were carried out despite objections from international human rights groups.
The French news agency AFP reports that the two men were killed by firing squad Saturday.
Rights groups have identified the men as Ahmad al-Malali and Ali al-Arab.
Human Rights Watch says both men were Bahraini citizens who were convicted on the terrorism charges last year “in a mass trial marred by allegations of torture and serious due process violations.”
A third man was also reported to have been killed by firing squad Saturday. His conviction, however, was not connected to the al-Malali and al-Arab cases.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it is approving T-Mobile US Inc’s $26 billion takeover of rival Sprint Corp, clearing a major hurdle to a deal that would merge the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless carriers.
The companies have agreed to divest Sprint’s prepaid businesses including Boost Mobile to Dish Network Corp in order to move ahead with the merger, which was announced in
April 2018.
But the deal still faces a significant challenge. A group of U.S. state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York to block the merger on antitrust grounds,
arguing that the proposed deal would cost consumers more than $4.5 billion annually.
T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere, who will be the CEO of the combined company, said it would deliver a 5G network with lower prices, better quality and thousands of jobs, while unlocking $43 billion in synergies.
“We are pleased that our previously announced target synergies, profitability and long-term cash generation have not changed,” Legere said.
On Friday, the Justice Department and five state attorneys general said they were filing suit to enforce the settlement conditions that also include selling Virgin Mobile and Sprint prepaid and providing Dish with access to 20,000 cell sites and hundreds of retail locations.
Dish has agreed to acquire spectrum in a deal valued at $3.6 billion from the merged firm and pay $1.4 billion for Sprint’s prepaid business that serves about 9.3 million customers. Dish will get access to the combined firm’s network for seven years while it builds out its own 5G network.
Shares of T-Mobile, which is about 63 percent owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, were up 3.7% at $82.90. Shares of Sprint, which is about 84 percent owned by Softbank Group
Corp, were up 6.5% at $7.92.
Prepaid wireless phones are generally sought by lower-income people who cannot pass a credit check.
T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier with about 80 million customers, pursued the deal in order to seek scale to compete with bigger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. Sprint has about 55 million customers.
T-Mobile US on Thursday beat analysts’ estimates for second-quarter net new phone subscribers who pay a monthly bill, boosted by the U.S. mobile carrier’s wireless plans aimed at fending off its bigger rivals. The mobile carrier said it added a net 710,000 phone subscribers in the three months ended June 30.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has given his blessing to the merger in principle and said in a statement on Friday he would soon circulate a formal order.
The FCC is expected to give Dish more time to use spectrum it previously acquired but also impose strict penalties if it fails to create a consumer wireless network within a set
timeframe.
A top Sudanese editor who heads the main journalists’ union has been detained, the union said Thursday, calling on Sudan’s military rulers to free him or put him on trial.
The detention of Sadiq al-Rizaigi came as the military said it had arrested a top general, several security officers and Islamist leaders over a failed coup attempt announced earlier this month.
The Sudanese Journalists’ Union called on the ruling Transitional Military Council to “immediately release” its head Rizaigi, a prominent Islamist and editor of Al-Sayha newspaper, or that he be put on trial.
A senior journalist with Rizaigi’s newspaper told AFP that security forces had taken him away from outside the newspaper’s premises.
“We do not know where he is being held or the reasons for his detention,” said Awad Jad Al-Sayid, news editor of Al-Sahya.
On Wednesday, the military announced several arrests in connection with a failed coup attempt.
It said it had arrested General Hashim Abdel Mottalib, the head of the joint chiefs of staff, and a number of officers from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) along with leaders of the Islamic Movement and the National Congress Party.
On July 11, the military announced it had foiled a coup attempt without specifying when it took place.
Sudanese media also reported that among those arrested was General Bakri Hassan Saleh, a former first vice president and prime minister and a prominent figure in the 1989 coup that brought now ousted president Omar al-Bashir to power.
Also arrested was Ali Karty, a former foreign minister and Zubair Ahmed Hassan, an ex-finance minister, according to the reports.
During Bashir’s three-decade rule, the press was severely curtailed, according to media activists.
NISS agents cracked down regularly on journalists or confiscated entire print-runs of newspapers for publishing articles deemed critical of Bashir’s policies.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recorded at least 100 cases of journalists being arrested during the months of protests that finally led to Bashir’s ouster in April.
RSF ranks Sudan 175th out of 180 countries in its 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
The U.N. refugee agency says up to 150 refugees and migrants are believed to have lost their lives Thursday in a shipwreck on the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya.
If confirmed, the UNHCR says the shipwreak will be the biggest on the Mediterranean Sea since May 2017, when 156 people died off the coast of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Close to 140 survivors, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese, were pulled from the water.
Migrants watch the body of their fellow migrant who died after a wooden boat capsized off the coast of Komas, a town east of the capital Tripoli, Libya, July 25, 2019.
UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxley says the latest tragedy comes weeks after more than 50 people were killed when a detention center in Tajoura, on the outskirts of Tripoli, was hit in an airstrike.
“In addition to the shipwreck … a further 87 people were brought back to Libya by the Libyan coast guard, and 84 of them were transferred to Tajoura,” Yaxley said. “The total population in Tajoura now numbers nearly 300. This is completely unacceptable, and we call for their immediate orderly release.”
There were no search-and-rescue boats operated by nongovernmental organizations in the sea Thursday when the migrant boat ran into trouble, as hard-line governments such as Italy prohibit them from conducting these life-saving missions.
Yaxley says the crucial role of NGO boats must be acknowledged, and their efforts in saving lives must not be stigmatized nor criminalized.
“There also must now be a return of EU state search-and-rescue vessels to the Mediterranean,” he said. “We reiterate once again that no return of refugees and people rescued on the Mediterranean should be to Libya because it has no ports of safety.”
The UNHCR is calling for more action to arrest and prosecute smugglers and traffickers who profit from people’s desperation by facilitating their doomed voyages.
Armed men stole $40 million of gold and other precious metals Thursday from a Sao Paulo cargo terminal at South America’s busiest airport, taking two hostages, police said.
Several of the suspects arrived at the Guarulhos airport in a black pickup truck with livery resembling Brazil’s federal police, according to security footage seen by Reuters. Four men left the vehicle with their faces covered, at least one of whom had a rifle, and confronted workers at the airport, who then proceeded to fill up the pickup truck with cargo.
A police report said the thieves left with about 750 kg (1,650 lbs) of gold and other precious metals, along with two airport workers taken as hostages, and remained at large.
An airport spokeswoman said no one was hurt during the assault, but did not comment on potential hostages.
The airport is operated by GRU Airport, a consortium that includes Invepar, Airports Company South Africa, and state airport operator Infraero.
The South African unit of cigarette maker Philip Morris International opened its first flagship store in Johannesburg on Thursday, as it tries to grow demand in Africa for its alternative heated tobacco product IQOS.
The store in Sandton gives Philip Morris access to tourists and business people from Africa who frequent Africa’s richest square mile, allowing it to use its retail footprint as a springboard to expand in the rest of the continent.
“If you look at Sandton, it’s the business hub of South Africa and Africa as well so it’s the one place where we need to start with our permanent flagship store,” Philip Morris South Africa Managing Director Marcelo Nico told Reuters at the sidelines of the launch.
South Africa is the first and only market in Africa where Philip Morris sells IQOS, an acronym for “I quit ordinary smoking,” which the company says contains up to 95% fewer toxic compounds than regular cigarettes.
“We are bringing the first experience of commercializing this technology on the African continent and the objective is, based on this experience over time, roll it out in the rest of the continent,” Nico said.
IQOS heated tobacco products are seen on display as cigarette maker Philip Morris International launches its first flagship boutique store in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 25, 2019.
Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro cigarettes, launched a pilot store in Cape Town in late 2017, which operated for about a year, to test the market’s appetite, Nico said. Over time it plans to return to Cape Town with a permanent store.
The firm began selling IQOS in 2017 in South Africa with the affordable 2.4 model and later launched the IQOS 3 and MULTI in November last year.
Unlike traditional smoked cigarettes, IQOS devices electronically heat tobacco-filled sticks wrapped in paper just enough to generate an aerosol that contains nicotine. They are different from e-cigarettes such as the popular Juul device, which vaporizes a nicotine-filled liquid.
The 160-square-meter (1,722-square-foot) store’s interior is minimalistic with lounge couches, bright lighting and an information section, where consumers are shown the different effects of burnt cigarettes and IQOS through a machine that emits a white cloudy smoke for IQOS and brownish smoke for normal cigarettes.
Consumers can also hold their phones up to the large picture displays in the store in order to get detailed information, demonstrations and videos about the product.
An estimated 70% of South African adults who have switched to the product since the launch have converted fully to IQOS, the company said in 2018.
One such adult is 33-year-old Evans Manyonga, who started using IQOS two years ago because he was “coughing a lot” from cigarettes and has since converted two of his friends.
“I don’t smell of cigarettes. I don’t cough. It’s smoother and classier,” Manyonga, who has been smoking for 10 years, told Reuters at the store’s opening.
Neil Borthwick, who was trying IQOS for the first time at the launch, said, “you can smoke it anywhere without smoke or ash and it gives you that same satisfaction that you have with a normal cigarette.”
Amazon’s ramped up spending on speedier delivery for its Prime customers helped to accelerate its sales in the second quarter.
But it also crimped its profits.
The Seattle-based company reported Thursday that its sales soared a better-than-expected 20% in the quarter.
But it posted a profit for the three-month period ended June 30 of $2.62 billion, or $5.22 per share. Analysts had expected earnings per share of $5.56 per share, according to FactSet. A year ago it earned $2.53 billion, or $5.07 per share.
Amazon’s guidance for operating income for the current quarter was also well below what Wall Street expected. Its stock slipped about 1.7% to $1,941 in extended trading following the earnings report.
FILE – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, at the Economic Club of Washington, Sept. 13, 2018.
More than $800 million
Executives told analysts that the company spent more than the $800 million it had planned to spend in the second quarter to move to one-day delivery from two-day delivery for its Prime members, who pay $119 a year. The service is now available on more than 10 million items.
“Customers are responding to Prime’s move to one-day delivery — we’ve received a lot of positive feedback and seen accelerating sales growth,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO in a statement.
The move comes as Amazon faces increasing competition from the likes of Walmart and Target, both of which are speeding up deliveries. Walmart is offering next-day delivery for shoppers in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Southern California. It plans to roll out the service to 75% of the U.S. population by year-end.
Amazon’s spending on next-day Prime delivery “is an example of short-term pain for long-term gain, and is a necessary strategy to compete with brick-and-mortar’s speed advantage to the customer,” said Moody’s Amazon analyst Charlie O’Shea.
Government scrutiny
At the same time, Amazon, along with Facebook, Google and Apple, is feeling the heat from government investigations into Big Tech’s market dominance.
The Federal Trade Commission has been conducting an antitrust probe of the companies, and the Justice Department announced Tuesday it is opening a sweeping antitrust investigation of major tech companies and whether their platforms have hurt competition and stifled innovation.
The department’s announcement didn’t name any companies, but it mentions online retail services as an area of “widespread concern.”
The Trump administration, however, did name Amazon on Wednesday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC, “I think if you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, they’ve destroyed the retail industry across the United States so there’s no question they’ve limited competition.”
So far, so good
Amazon’s business remains unscathed so far. The online leader said net sales rose to $63.4 billion for the second quarter. That’s higher than the $62.5 billion forecast by analysts.
The company has buttressed its profits by expanding into businesses beyond selling goods online. Revenue at its cloud computing business, which powers the video-streaming service Netflix, digital scrapbooking site Pinterest and many other companies, rose 37% from a year ago.
Amazon’s fast-growing advertising business has also become a big money maker, selling ads to companies that want their products to show up first when shoppers search on the site.
Amazon doesn’t say exactly how much its ad business makes, but lists it as part of its “other” revenue, which rose 37% from a year ago.
The company said that its operating income would be in the range of $2.1 billion to $3.1 billion for the current quarter. Analysts had been looking for $4.39 billion, according to FactSet.
Amazon also forecast that net sales will be between $66 billion and $70 billion for the current quarter. Analysts forecast $67.28 billion, according to FactSet.
Electric power is slowly returning in Venezuela after a devastating blackout that ground activity to a virtual halt in a country beleaguered by a protracted political power struggle. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports that the Trump administration is renewing calls for the departure of embattled socialist ruler Nicolas Maduro, who remains defiant, insisting that conditions in Venezuela will improve.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party leader, began assembling his political team as soon as he took office Wednesday. New Cabinet members include the country’s first ethnic minority person to head the Treasury and several women. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Johnson’s first day on the job was marked by demonstrations by his supporters, as well as his opponents.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller told members of Congress Wednesday that his investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election did not exonerate U.S. President Donald Trump of allegedly trying to thwart the investigation. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, Mueller’s comments before two congressional committees drew very different responses from Republicans and Democrats.
Both Russia and China are denying their military aircraft violated South Korea’s territorial airspace during a joint air patrol Tuesday.
The alleged violation happened near a disputed group of islands claimed by both South Korea, which calls it Dokdo, and Japan, which calls it Takeshima.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry says it scrambled multiple fighter jets after a Russian warplane ventured into its airspace over the East Sea.
The ministry says after the South Korean jets fired warning shots, the Russian plane left South Korean territory. However, it returned a short time later, prompting the South Korean jets to fire more warning shots.
Russia’s Defense Ministry denied Seoul’s depiction of the incident, and accused the South Korean fighter jets of “unprofessional maneuvers.” A spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry told reporters in Beijing that the patrol did not “target any third party” and flew along established air routes.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry summoned officials from the Chinese and Russian embassies to lodge an official protest. Seoul says this is the first time that a Russian plane has violated its territorial skies.
The flight by two Russian and two Chinese bombers, plus early warning planes from both nations, marks a notable ramping-up of military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.
Japan also lodged its own formal protest with Seoul and Moscow over the incident. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo that South Korea’s actions were “totally unacceptable and extremely regrettable” in light of Japan’s claim over the islands.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it was opening a broad investigation of major digital technology firms into whether they engage in anticompetitive practices, the strongest sign the Trump administration is stepping up its scrutiny of Big Tech.
The review will look into “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
The Justice Department did not identify specific companies but said the review would consider concerns raised about “search, social media, and some retail services online” — an apparent reference to Alphabet, Amazon.com and Facebook, and potentially Apple.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to provide a list of companies that would be scrutinized.
Google and Apple declined to comment, referring to prior statements by executives, while Facebook and Amazon did not immediately comment.
Facebook fell 1.7% in after-hours trading, while Alphabet fell 1%, Amazon was down 1.2% and Apple was 0.4% lower.
The announcement comes a day before the Federal Trade Commission is set to announce a $5 billion penalty to Facebook for failing to properly protect user privacy.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said the Justice Department “must now be bold and fearless in stopping Big Tech’s misuse of its monopolistic power. Too long absent and apathetic, enforcers now must prevent privacy abuse, anticompetitive tactics, innovation roadblocks, and other hallmarks of excessive market power.”
In June, Reuters reported the Trump administration was gearing up to investigate whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google misuse their massive market power, setting up what could be an unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies.
A person briefed on the matter said the Justice review may also include some state attorneys general.
The Justice Department said the review “is to assess the competitive conditions in the online marketplace in an objective and fair-minded manner and to ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.”
Reuters reported on May 31 that the Justice Department was preparing an investigation of Google to determine whether the tech giant broke antitrust law.
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill alike are expressing growing concerns about the size of the largest tech firms and their market power. Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has called for breaking up companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook and unwinding prior acquisitions.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel pressed executives from the four firms about their competitive practices and noted that Google, Facebook, Amazon had a rising share of key markets.
Congress held a series of hearings last year looking at the dominance of major tech companies and their role in displacing or swallowing up existing businesses.
It is rare for the government to seek to undo a consummated deal. The most famous case in recent memory is the government’s effort to break up Microsoft Corp. The Justice Department won a preliminary victory in 2000 but was reversed on appeal. The case settled with Microsoft intact.
“There is growing consensus among venture capitalists and startups that there is a kill zone around Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple that prevents new startups from entering the market with innovative products and services to challenge these incumbents,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat who heads the subcommittee.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told CBS News last month that scrutiny was fair but “if you look at any kind of measure about is Apple a monopoly or not, I don’t think anybody reasonable is going to come to the conclusion that Apple’s a monopoly. Our share is much more modest. We don’t have a dominant position in any market.”
Google’s Adam Cohen told the House Judiciary subcommittee last week that the company had “created new competition in many sectors, and new competitive pressures often lead to concerns from rivals.”
Technology companies face a backlash in the United States and across the world, fueled by concerns among competitors, lawmakers and consumer groups that they have too much power and are harming users and business rivals.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for closer scrutiny of social media companies and Google, accusing them of suppressing conservative voices online, without presenting any evidence.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, praised the investigation and said a Senate tech task force she chairs would be looking at how to “foster free markets and competition.”
U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who has been the target of some of President Donald Trump’s fiercest attacks, has called on supporters to confront racism and false accusations while at the same time remain focused on defeating Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Omar spoke to Muslim American democratic activists Tuesday as the president continued his attacks against Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen of color for what Trump has called their unpatriotic criticism of the U.S. More from VOA’s Brian Padden.
A senior U.S. official tasked with finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue told the United Nations Tuesday that international law and consensus are not the keys to resolving the decades-old dispute.
“Those who continue to call for international consensus on this conflict are doing nothing to encourage the parties to sit down at the negotiating table and make the hard compromises necessary for peace,” Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. “In fact, they are doing the opposite – allowing people to hide behind words that mean nothing.”
Greenblatt said that international consensus is often “nothing more than a mask for inaction.”
“So let’s stop kidding ourselves. If a so-called international consensus had been able to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would have done so decades ago. It didn’t,” he said. “This conflict is also not going to be resolved by reference to “international law” when such law is inconclusive.”
Greenblatt also took aim at the Security Council resolutions agreed on the issue since 1967 – all are binding under international law – saying they have not succeeded and would not provide a path to peace.
The council has laid out the basic principles for a negotiated peace in its resolutions, including land-for-peace, affirming the vision of a two-state solution, and endorsing the so-called Quartet’s (U.N., Russia, U.S. and European Union) road map. More recently, in December 2016, it said Israeli settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law and a major obstacle to peace.
The international community has been awaiting a proposed peace plan from the Trump administration. Greenblatt, along with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, have been working on the proposal for many months.
Greenblatt said Tuesday that Trump has not decided when the political plan would be released, but that when it is, it would not be ambiguous. An economic road map was unveiled to mixed reviews at a conference in Bahrain in late June.
“I ask all of you to reserve judgment until we publish, and you read, the 60 or so pages that detail what peace could look like,” Greenblatt said. “Achieving that vision will require difficult compromises by both parties, if they are willing to make such compromises. But we believe both sides will gain far more than they give.”
He emphasized that a solution could not be forced upon the parties and said, “Unilateral steps in international and multilateral fora will do nothing to solve this conflict.”
The Trump administration came in for widespread international criticism in December 2017 when it took the unilateral step of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing that it would move its embassy there.
Greenblatt raised the issue of Jerusalem, saying that the Palestinians continue to assert that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
“But let’s remember, an aspiration is not a right,” Greenblatt said. He then added that his statement should not be interpreted as an indication of the content of the political part of the peace plan.
“Aspirations belong at the negotiating table,” he added. “And only direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can resolve the issue of Jerusalem, if it can be resolved.”
The status of Jerusalem is seen internationally as a final status issue that must be resolved at the negotiating table.
Several council members took issue with Greenblatt’s demotion of international law and consensus.
FILE – Germany’s Ambassador and current president of the Security Council Christoph Heusgen resets an hour glass between speakers at United Nations headquarters, Monday, April 29, 2019.
“For us, international law is relevant; international law is not futile,” said German Ambassador Christoph Heusgen. “We believe in the force of international law; we do not believe in the force of the strongest.”
He emphasized that council resolutions are binding under international law.
“For us, international law is not menu a la carte,” Heusgen added. He noted that there are many instances where U.S. diplomats insist on the respect and implementation of council resolutions, such as on North Korea.
Russia’s envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, also challenged Greenblatt’s assertions.
“This international consensus is international law, because Security Council resolutions are international law – they merely need to be complied with,” Nebenzia said. “The matter lies not with a lack of international consensus; rather the matter has to do with the fact that there is utter disregard for this internationally-acknowledged consensus by the United States at present.”
While the Trump administration’s peace plan has yet to be delivered, it is seen by some as already dead on arrival, as the Palestinians have rejected Washington’s ability to be an impartial mediator after its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s approval rating hit a new high because of his anti-crime work and populist appeal across class lines, a survey shows.
While many nations and groups around the world criticize him, Duterte earned a net satisfaction rating of 68 in the second quarter of 2019, according to a July 8 public opinion survey by Manila area research institution Social Weather Stations. The rating marked a new “personal record high,” the president said on his office website. He had scored 66 in March as well as in June 2017.
The president fared well in the heavily watched survey of 1,200 adults because his anti-crime campaign has made people feel safer in urban neighborhoods, common Filipinos and scholars in the country say. Duterte, elected in 2016, got there in part by letting police shoot drug crime suspects on the spot, outraged overseas rights groups believe.
Duterte also makes sense to common people because of speech and demeanor that cast him as a political outsider, analysts say. Fast economic growth has given him a boost, they observe.
“The way he presents himself is that he speaks street language,” said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. “He looks like a person who does things immediately, even of course at the expense of rule of law.”
Anti-crime wave
Duterte vowed after taking office to eradicate major crimes within three to six months. The 74-year-old leader has acknowledged personally killing criminal suspects while mayor of the second-largest Philippine city, Davao.
On the presidential office website, Duterte once swore he would “eradicate everyone involved in the illegal drug trade.”
Crime decreased to 115,539 incidents logged in the first quarter this year, down 3.3% from the same period of 2018, domestic media outlet BusinessWorld says, citing police figures.
Populist aura
The Middle class resents the failed promises of previous presidents, adding to their satisfaction with Duterte, Atienza said. Past administrations were lighter on crime, including corruption.
The middle class is solid, thanks to economic growth of more than 6% every year since the president took office.
“Duterte has created an aura for himself. It’s probably quite difficult to knock down,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “He is seen as an ordinary guy, (an) outsider.”
Criticism from domestic political opponents tends to raise his popular appeal, casting him as an “underdog,” Araral said.
Condemnations offshore
New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch has estimated there have been more than 12,000 extrajudicial killings under Duterte, nearly double an official figure of 6,600. Teenagers are among the dead. “The Philippine government’s brutal ‘war on drugs’ has devastated the lives of countless children,” the group said in a June 27 report.
Western governments as well as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have questioned the extrajudicial killings since 2016, sparking sharp rebuttals from Duterte.
He called former U.S. President Barack Obama, for example, a “son of a whore” in 2016 over Obama’s comments about the Philippine anti-drug campaign. Duterte later apologized for the remark.
A lot of people in the Philippines want the U.N. Human Rights Commission to investigate the extrajudicial killings even if Duterte himself gets high satisfaction ratings, said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the Manila-based Bagong Alyansang Makabaya alliance of leftist causes.
“We would rather look at how people stand or at how people rate the policies of the government rather than look at the overall quote, unquote, ‘satisfaction and approval ratings,’” Reyes said.
Three-year honeymoons
Three previous Philippine presidents also posted high net satisfaction ratings in the first half of their terms. They were Fidel Ramos, Corazon Aquino and later, her son Benigno Aquino. Ratings for all three fell in the second half of their terms, Social Weather Stations data show.
Duterte acknowledged the second-quarter approval figure without suggesting a reason. He must step down in 2022 due to the country’s limit of one term per president.
“As always… if you are satisfied with my work, then I’m happy. If you are not satisfied, then I’ll work more,” Duterte said July 9 in a statement on the presidential website.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Army Secretary Mark Esper to be secretary of defense, ending the longest period by far that the Pentagon has been without a permanent top official.
As voting continued, the Senate overwhelmingly backed Esper, a former lobbyist for weapons maker Raytheon Co., to be President Donald Trump’s second confirmed leader of the Pentagon.
Esper, 55, received strong bipartisan support despite some sharp questioning during his confirmation hearing by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren about his ties to Raytheon and his refusal to extend an ethics commitment he signed in 2017 to avoid decisions involving the company.
Warren, a 2020 presidential hopeful, was the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to voice opposition to Esper’s confirmation during the hearing.
Raytheon is the third-largest U.S. defense contractor.
There has been no confirmed defense secretary since Jim Mattis resigned in December over policy differences with Trump.
Many members of Congress from both parties have urged the Republican president to act urgently to fill the powerful position.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on members to support Esper as he opened the Senate on Tuesday morning.
“The nominee is beyond qualified. His record of public service is beyond impressive. His commitment to serving our service members if beyond obvious. And the need for a Senate-confirmed secretary of defense is beyond urgent,” McConnell said.
An Army veteran, Esper had served as a congressional aide and a Pentagon official under Republican President George W. Bush, before working for Raytheon. He has been Army secretary since November 2017.
Trump’s previous pick to be secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, withdrew from consideration on June 18 after reports emerged of domestic violence in his family.
The Milky Way, home to our sun and billions of other stars, merged with another smaller galaxy in a colossal cosmic collision roughly 10 billion years ago, scientists said Monday, based on data from the Gaia space observatory.
The union of the Milky Way and the so-called dwarf galaxy Gaia-Enceladus increased our galaxy’s mass by about a quarter and triggered a period of accelerated star formation lasting about 2 to 4 billion years, the scientists said.
“Yes, indeed it was a pivotal moment,” said astronomer Carme Gallart of Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Spain, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Galaxies of all types including the Milky Way began to form relatively soon after the Big Bang explosion that marked the beginning of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago, but were generally smaller than those seen today and were forming stars at a rapid rate. Subsequent galactic mergers were instrumental in configuring galaxies existing now.
The merger of the Milky Way and the dwarf galaxy Gaia-Enceladus roughly 10 billion years ago, left, and the current appearance of the Milky Way galaxy, right, are shown in this artist’s conception, July 22, 2019.
High-precision measurements of the position, brightness and distance of around a million stars within 6,500 light years of the sun, obtained by the Gaia space telescope operated by the European Space Agency, helped pinpoint stars present before the merger and those that formed afterward.
Certain stars with higher content of elements other than hydrogen or helium arose in the Milky Way, they found, and others with lower such content originated in Gaia-Enceladus, owing to its smaller mass.
While the merger was dramatic and helped shape what the Milky Way has become, it was not a star-destroying calamity.
“This crash was big in cosmic terms, but if it was happening now, we could probably not even notice at a human or solar system level,” Gallart said.
“The distances between stars in a galaxy are so huge — a galaxy is basically empty space — that the two galaxies intermix, change their global shape, more star formation may happen in one, and maybe the small one stops forming stars.
“But the individual stars in each galaxy don’t collide, don’t really notice the force of the event in a way that affects their individual evolution or the evolution of the planetary systems that may be attached to them,” Gallart said.
The Milky Way, spiral shaped with a central bar-like structure composed of stars, includes 100 to 400 billion stars, including the sun, which formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, far after the merger.
New Zealand on Monday unveiled the second round of restrictions on gun ownership in the aftermath of a deadly shooting at two mosques in Christchurch earlier this year.
The new rules include establishing a gun registry, banning gun purchases by foreign visitors, and requiring gun owners to renew licenses every five years, instead of every 10.
The proposed changes will “enshrine in law that owning a firearm is a privilege” rather than a right, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
Wellington moved swiftly after the attacks in March that killed 51 people and wounded dozens.
Six days after the attack, Ardern announced a ban on semiautomatic weapons, including the type used by the gunman in the attacks.
Since then the government has launched a buyback program to compensate people for the outlawed semi-automatics, and has collected and destroyed more than 3,200 weapons. The gun buyback and amnesty runs until December.
Police Minister Stuart Nash said the new law would allow police to monitor people’s social media accounts to determine whether they were fit to own weapons.
“What we do know is that the Christchurch terrorist was engaged on some sites which were promoting some pretty horrific material,” Nash said. “So that’s one thing police will have the ability to assess when they determine if someone is fit and proper to have a firearms license.”
The new legislation is expected to be introduced into the Parliament next month. After that, it will be subject to three months of public feedback, before it is voted on by lawmakers.
Residents of Hong Kong, already tense after weeks of protests against the city’s leader and police, were deeply shaken after masked assailants wearing white T-shirts savagely beat people dressed in black, the color of this summer’s democracy movement.
The attackers descended late Sunday on an MTR rail station in the far northern district of Yuen Long, along the border with mainland China. Victims and rail riders uploaded dozens of videos that showed people bloodied and dazed.
One witness complained that police arrived after a half hour and allegedly left after 15 minutes.
Six were arrested, as police searched for the people responsible for the beatings of 45 people late Sunday night. The targeted victims included a lawmaker, journalists, and passersby. Businesses were so worried about further tensions that shops and malls remained closed.
The smashed glass entrance to the office of pro-Beijing government lawmaker Junius Ho is seen as protesters gather in Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan district on July 22, 2019.
Kaylee Lee, a registered nurse, retreated to a women’s restroom at the station and treated wounded people with a physician. People kept pushing in to get away from the attackers.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Lee said. “Some passengers were so injured, they couldn’t walk by themselves. … It was like a zombie movie. Some zombies wanted to get inside and attack us. We keep asking them to hold the door. Don’t let them come inside.”
As the government has been accused of ignoring demonstrators’ demands, protests have grown angrier. Hours after Sunday’s march, thousands of mostly young people wearing black clothing and construction helmets, joined rolling protests.
Participants threw black paint at the Chinese national emblem outside state offices, blocked off highways and built barricades from street signs.
The National Emblem of the People’s Republic of China is seen vandalized on the Chinese Liaison Office after a march to call for democratic reforms, in Hong Kong, July 22, 2019.
By 2:30 Monday morning, all but a hundred or so protesters had left the unrest on Hong Kong Island.
Carrie Lam, the city’s deeply unpopular chief executive, condemned the rail station attacks, but criticized protesters who defaced the national emblem on Beijing’s liaison office.
“They blatantly challenged China’s national sovereignty … and angered the whole city,” she said at a press conference.
Witnesses to Sunday’s chaos faulted the police’s slow and minimal response.
“The police really cooperated with the white-colored T-shirt people,” said Mario, a bystander who asked that his last name be withheld out of fear that police might target him. “Why did the staff not do anything?” he asked.
Lam Cheuk Ting, a pro-democracy lawmaker who was bloodied in the event, said the attackers could be triad, or gang members, and said the police deliberately declined to act.
“It is a very serious misconduct in public office. It’s an offense,” he told journalists. “It’s not just a disciplinary problem, but a criminal liability they have to bear.”
Men in white T-shirts and face masks attack demonstrators and reporters at a train station in Hong Kong, China, July 21, 2019, in this still image obtained from a social media live video.
A few people at the MTR station tried to hold off the attackers by spraying them with water hoses. In a video posted on his Facebook page, Lam and a few others appear to lead people up the stairs and onto an awaiting train. Downstairs, the concourse filled with several dozen masked assailants who ran up the station stairs chasing passengers. One lunged for Lam, while others beat and kicked other passengers.
The conductor left the train doors open, and minutes later, some of the attackers burst into the train carriage waving sticks. Some passengers beat them back with umbrellas. One passenger begged the assailants to stop but was punched so hard, he fell backwards. Another attacker lunged for Lam. With glasses in hand, he sat dazed, as blood poured from his mouth.
Bystander Mario said he tried to fend off the attackers with a fire hose, but escaped by slipping under the metal gate of a closing shop.
He was still furious on Monday.
“I don’t know why suddenly there are no police in Yuen Long,” Mario said. “Why would the government do that? Why did they allow people to attack lots of people?”
Protesters demand that an independent investigation be conducted into the forceful tactics used by police during previous demonstrations. Riot squads deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds against mostly unarmed protesters, causing serious injuries.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele hailed a new chapter in his country’s relationship with the United States, thanking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for being the first top U.S. diplomat to visit his country in ten years.
For his part, Secretary Pompeo praised Bukele’s shift towards the United States.
“El Salvador with its new leadership has made a clear choice to fight corruption, promote justice and partner with the United States, and together both of our peoples will reap those benefits.”
Pompeo also praised El Salvador for declaring it does not recognize what he termed “the corrupt Maduro regime” as the legitimate government of Venezuela.
El Salvador’s Bukele spoke in English and it was clear that he has a warm rapport with Pompeo.
“We talk about fighting the gangs together, we talk about interdicting narcotics together, we talk about reducing immigration together. So I think this was a very, very important meeting. I think that it’s a game-changer.”
Asked about the U.S. freezing its foreign aid for El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to compel their leaders to stem the flow of migration to the U.S. southern border, Bukele had a strong response.
“What do we want to do in El Salvador? Do we want to get more free money? Do we want more blank checks? No. We want to improve the conditions at home.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, listens to simultaneous translation as El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele speaks at the Presidential House in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, July 21, 2019.
Bukele said it “sounds tacky” to have the top U.S. diplomat visiting and to ask him for free money.
Benjamin Gedan of the Wilson Center told VOA Bukele is much more pro-American than his predecessor, and is committed to a new approach to fighting violent gangs and drug traffickers with the U.S.
“The new president [of El Salvador] from the very beginning was very enthusiastic about the idea of working closely with the United States on any number of issues and in fact was skeptical about the role of China in El Salvador which was a source of tension with his predecessor.”
U.S. lawmakers from both major political parties are calling on the Trump administration to restore U.S. foreign aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, saying it is counterproductive to punish countries fighting extreme poverty and violence, while at the same time calling on them to reduce the flow of migration.
Before heading to San Salvador, Pompeo met with Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on an overnight stop in Mexico City. Asked by VOA whether Mexico has done enough to meet the requirements of a 45-day U.S. deadline on imposing potential tariffs, Pompeo said there has been progress, but he would consult with President Donald Trump.
“There are fewer apprehensions taking place today along our southern border, but we’ve got a long way to go yet. There is still much more work to do.”
In this handout photo released by the Mexican Government Press Office, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard meet in Mexico City, Sunday morning, July 21, 2019.
Mexico has deployed forces to its southern border to stem the flow of migration from Central America. But Benjamin Gedan of the Wilson Center said he is skeptical that Mexico has the resources to sustain this for a long time.
“Rather than addressing the root causes of migration flows from northern Central America, there is this effort to harden the U.S. border, to encourage Mexico to harden its southern border and to have Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador take their own steps to really impede the flows of individuals north to the United States.”
Before going to Mexico, Pompeo made a stop Saturday in Guayaquil, Ecuador to meet with President Lenin Moreno, the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State to that country in nine years. They also stressed common goals and improved relations between the two countries. Moreno asked for more help from the U.S. and the international community to deal with the influx of refugees to his country from neighboring Venezuela, calling it a “social apocalypse.” Pompeo discussed the ongoing crisis in Venezuela at every stop.
Pompeo started his jam-packed Latin America trip Friday in Argentina. He confirmed the U.S. has imposed financial sanctions against a Hezbollah militant group leader suspected of directing a deadly bombing in 1994 of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
“They were killed by members of a terrorist group, Hezbollah, and had help that day from Iran,” which provided “logistical support and funding through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Pompeo said at an event in Buenos Aires to rally support from Latin American leaders in the U.S. fight against Middle East militant groups.
Standing at a memorial at the site of the car bombing, Pompeo lit a candle with AMIA President Ariel Eichbaum and said the worst terrorist attack in Argentina is a stark reminder of the danger to the Western Hemisphere from Hezbollah and other groups based on the other side of the world.
“It was a moving reminder that our discussion today isn’t abstract; it’s not theoretical. The risk of terrorism is real for each and every one of us and each and every one of our citizens.”
Paul Krassner, the publisher, author and radical political activist on the front lines of 1960s counterculture who helped tie together his loose-knit prankster group by naming them the Yippies, died Sunday in Southern California, his daughter said.
Krassner died at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Holly Krassner Dawson told The Associated Press. He was 87 and had recently transitioned to hospice care after an illness, Dawson said. She didn’t say what the illness was.
The Yippies, who included Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and were otherwise known as the Youth International Party, briefly became notorious for such stunts as running a pig for president and throwing dollar bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Hoffman and Rubin, but not Krassner, were among the so-called “Chicago 7” charged with inciting riots at 1968’s chaotic Democratic National Convention.
By the end of the decade, most of the group’s members had faded into obscurity. But not Krassner, who constantly reinvented himself, becoming a public speaker, freelance writer, stand-up comedian, celebrity interviewer and author of nearly a dozen books.
“He doesn’t waste time,” longtime friend and fellow counterculture personality Wavy Gravy once said of him. “People who waste time get buried in it. He keeps doing one thing after another.”
He interviewed such celebrity acquaintances as authors Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller and the late conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart. The latter, like other conservatives, said that although he disagreed with everything Krassner stood for, he admired his sense of humor.
An advocate of unmitigated free speech, recreational drug use and personal pornography, Krassner’s books included such titles as Pot Stories For The Soul'' andPsychedelic Trips for the Mind,” and he claimed to have taken LSD with numerous celebrities, including comedian Groucho Marx, LSD guru Timothy Leary and author Ken Kesey.
He also published several books on obscenity, some with names that can’t be listed here. Two that can are “In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn” and “Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today.”
For his autobiography, Krassner chose the title, “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture,” using a phrase taken from an angry letter to the editor of a magazine that had once published a favorable profile of him.
“To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute,” the letter writer said. “He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.”
What he really was, Krassner told The Associated Press in 2013, was a guy who enjoyed making people laugh, although one who brought a political activist’s conscience to the effort.
In this May 7, 2009, file photo, author, comedian and co-founder of the Yippie party as well as stand-up satirist, Paul Krassner, 77, poses for a photo at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Calif.
He noted proudly that in the early 1960s, when abortion was illegal in almost every state, he ran an underground abortion referral service for women.
“That really was a turning point in my life because I had morphed from a satirist into an activist,” he said.
His original career choice, however, had been music.
A child prodigy on the violin, he performed at Carnegie Hall at age 6. Later he all but gave up the instrument, only occasionally playing it as a joke during lectures or comedy routines.
“I only had a technique for playing the violin, but I had a real passion for making people laugh,” he would say.
After studying journalism at New York’s Baruch College, Krassner went to work for Mad Magazine before founding the satirical counterculture magazine The Realist in 1958. He continued to publish it periodically into the 1980s.
For a time in the 1950s, he also appeared on the stand-up comedy circuit. There, he would meet his mentor, Lenny Bruce, the legendary outlaw comic who pushed free speech to its limits with routines filled with obscenities and sexual innuendo that sometimes landed him in jail.
Krassner interviewed Bruce for Playboy Magazine in 1959 and edited the comedian’s autobiography, “How To Talk Dirty and Influence People.”
When the counterculture arrived in earnest in the ’60s, Krassner was working as a comedian, freelance writer, satirist, publisher, celebrity interviewer and occasional creator of soft-core pornography. To mark the death of Walt Disney in 1966, he published a colorful wall poster showing Disney cartoon characters engaging in sex acts.
When he and other anti-war activists, free-speech advocates and assorted radicals began to plot ways to promote their causes, Krassner said he soon realized they would need a clever name if they wanted to grab the public’s attention.
“I knew that we had to have a who' for thewho, what, where, when and why’ that would symbolize the radicalization of hippies for the media,” Krassner, who co-founded the group, told the AP in 2009. “So I started going through the alphabet: Bippie, Dippie, Ippie, Sippie. I was about to give up when I came to Yippie.”
As one of the last surviving Yippies, he continued to write prolifically up until his death, his daughter said.
His newest book, “Zapped by the God of Absurdity,” will be released later this year. And he recently wrote the introduction for an upcoming book about his old friend Abbie Hoffman, Dawson said.
Krassner also had hoped to publish his first novel, a mystery whose protagonist is a crime-solving comedian modeled after Lenny Bruce. He got so into the story, Krassner once said, that he began to believe he was channeling Bruce’s spirit. That ended, however, when the spirit reminded his old friend one day that Krassner was an atheist.
“He said to me, ‘Come on, you don’t even believe that (expletive),”’ Krassner recalled with a laugh.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy Cain; brother, George; daughter, Holly Krassner Dawson; and one grandchild.
