Thirteen U.S. Marines arrested in July in connection with an alleged human smuggling operation in Southern California are now facing formal charges from the military.
The charges range from failure to obey an order to drunkenness and theft, and include the alleged transportation of undocumented immigrants, according to a statement from the 1st Marine Division.
Two of the Marines, Lance Corporal Byron Law II and Lance Corporal David Salazar-Quintero, were arrested on July 3 after border patrol agents found them picking up three illegal aliens along a stretch of Interstate 8, about 11 kilometers (7 miles) north of the U.S. border with Mexico.
According to court documents, Law and Salazar-Quintero admitted to having been in contact with a recruiter, who offered to pay them for transporting the illegal immigrants from the interstate to other locations.
Law told authorities he and Salazar-Quintero were never paid for the interaction, according to the complaint.
A third Marine was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol a week later, on July 10.
The other 10 were taken into custody during what some officials described as a sting operation July 25 at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base located about 79 kilometers (49 miles) north of San Diego.
In a statement following the mass arrests, the Marine Corps’ 1st Division said the regiment’s commanding officer “will act within his authority to hold the Marines accountable at the appropriate level, should they be charged.”
In addition to the Marine Corps and U.S. Border Patrol, officials with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service also aided in the initial investigation.
According to the Marine Corps, none of the Marines detained as part of the investigation were assigned to the U.S. military operation to support efforts to secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
A bus carrying Chinese-speaking tourists crashed near a national park in southern Utah, killing at least four people and critically injuring up to 15 others, authorities said Friday.
The morning wreck near Bryce Canyon National Park left 12 to 15 people with “very critical injuries,” the Utah Highway Patrol said on Twitter.
Highway Patrol Cpl. Chris Bishop told The Associated Press that he expected the number of injured to be higher.
The tour bus with 30 people aboard crashed near a highway rest stop about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the park entrance. It’s not yet clear what caused the crash.
Highway Patrol photos show the top of a white bus smashed in and one side peeling away as the vehicle rests mostly off the side of a road near a sign for restrooms. Authorities were tending to people on the road, and others stood around covered in shiny blankets, the photos show.
Bishop said injured victims were sent to three hospitals. One of them, Intermountain Garfield Memorial Hospital, said it received 17 patients.
A spokesman for the small hospital in the tiny town of Panguitch tweeted that three people were in critical condition, 11 in serious condition and three in fair condition. Lance Madigan said Intermountain had sent two helicopters and two planes to help transport victims.
Patients also were being taken to Cedar City and St. George, Bishop said.
Bryce Canyon has the world’s largest concentration of irregular columns of rock, called hoodoos, according to the National Park Service website. The park, about 300 miles (480 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City, draws more than 2 million visitors a year.
Remnants of tropical storm Imelda have caused serious flooding in eastern Texas, including parts of Houston, forcing evacuations, flight cancellations, school closures and causing some outages. Reports of other environmental disasters come from various parts of the world, as the United Nations General Assembly prepares to discuss climate change, which is linked to human activity such as pollution and gas-fueled transportation. Zlatica Hoke reports the Trump administration so far has shunned efforts to curb pollution, and there are no signs this will change.
Afghanistan has been awash in violence for decades, and hundreds of thousands of civilians have died in the fighting. A memorial designed to remember those lost and help survivors heal recently opened in Mazar-e-Sharif. VOA’s Mirwais Bezhan visited this exhibition and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
U.S. lawmakers at a congressional hearing Thursday pushed for answers on stalled peace talks with the Taliban following President Donald Trump’s suspension of the negotiations earlier this month. The open hearing followed a closed door session in which the top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, complied with a congressional demand for more information on the negotiations. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on the questions being raised about the future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan.
The Vermont Air National Guard is due to take delivery of the first two of what will become 20 F-35 fighter aircrafts, the first guard unit to receive the next-generation fighter.
The aircraft will be based at the Burlington International Airport and are being flown to Vermont on Thursday from the factory in Fort Worth, Texas.
The delivery follows years of hard work, planning and missions in the guard’s previous aircraft, F-16s that flew continuously for weeks over New York after the 9/11 attacks and in multiple combat tours in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East.
“The F-35 coming into Burlington really secures our mission and our future for, you are talking the next three or four decades, and that allows us to serve our nation, but also to be ready to serve our state as well,” Col. David Smith, the commander of the 158th Fighter Wing that is the new home to the F-35s, said before they arrived.
But for some members of the community, the arrival of noisier aircraft marks the failure of years-long efforts to keep the Air Force from delivering the planes to an airport located among residential neighborhoods and industrial complexes in the middle of Vermont’s most populous county.
Rosanne Greco, the former chair of the South Burlington City Council and a retired Air Force colonel, said she supported basing the plane in her home city until she learned by reading the Air Force’s environmental impact statement about how noisy the F-35 is and what she feels are the dangers of having a new, unproven weapon system at a suburban airport.
“All I had to do was read what the Air Force said about the impact it would have,” Greco said. “The evidence was overwhelming it would have a very negative effect on close to 7,000 people” who live near the airport.
Smith said the Air National Guard understands the concerns of the community. The guard has modified the traffic patterns the planes will use and checked the take-off times to minimize noise disruptions. As to safety, he said that so far more than 400 F-35s have been delivered and the planes have accumulated more than 200,000 flying hours.
“It’s really important to us too to do everything we can to mitigate the impact on the community,” he said.
The Air Force describes the F-35 as its fifth-generation fighter, combining stealth technology with speed and agility. Different models are being built for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and are being sold to American allies across the world.
It is also the U.S. military’s most expensive weapons system of all time, with an estimated total cost of $1.5 trillion over the expected half-century life of the program. The model of the planes that will be based in Burlington cost about $94 million each.
Assigning F-35s, which are designed to replace a number of aging fighter models, to Vermont shows the days are long gone when Air National Guard units received hand-me-down aircraft while new planes went exclusively to active duty Air Force units, said Ian Bryan, a retired Tennessee Air National Guard pilot who worked in Washington as a legislative liaison with the National Guard Bureau.
He said Vermont, and the guard, are at the forefront of learning how to make the best use of the new airplanes.
“Ten years from now, we need to have figured out how to use this F-35 thing and it’s going to be the lead as the wings fall off some of these old airplanes,” Bryan said.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Labor Department faces a Senate confirmation hearing, even as Democrats argue that they haven’t had enough time to scour his record of legal work for corporate interests.
Although Trump tweeted in mid-July that Eugene Scalia was his pick, the committee didn’t officially receive the nomination until Sept. 11, the week before Thursday’s hearing. The Republican GOP-led Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee panel has set a vote on the nomination early next week.
A Democratic aide who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity said Democratic lawmakers see the compressed timeframe as not allowing senators to properly investigate Scalia’s history as an attorney for dozens of clients. But a Republican aide, who also requested anonymity for the same reason, said all of Scalia’s required paperwork, which would include his financial disclosure and ethics agreements, has been available for committee members to review since late August.
Trump’s nomination of Scalia is opposed by the AFL-CIO, which has described him as a union-busting lawyer who has eroded labor rights and consumer protections. But business groups are squarely behind Scalia, viewing him as a reliable opponent of regulatory overreach and red tape. If Scalia is confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be the seventh former lobbyist to hold a Cabinet-level post in the Trump administration.
Scalia, 56, served for a year as the Labor Department’s top lawyer, its solicitor, during the George W. Bush administration. But most of his career has been spent as a partner in the Washington office of the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher firm, where he has run up a string of victories in court cases on behalf of business interests challenging labor and financial regulations.
On his financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics, Scalia listed 49 clients who paid him $5,000 or more for legal services, including e-cigarette giant Juul Labs, Facebook, Ford, Walmart and Bank of America. Disclosure records show Scalia was registered in 2010 and 2011 to lobby for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Scalia is likely to be questioned about changes the Labor Department is making to an Obama-era rule on overtime pay. The Obama regulations were scheduled to take effect in 2016 but were put on hold by a federal lawsuit.
A revised proposal issued in March raised the annual pay threshold at which workers would be exempt from overtime to $35,308 from the current $23,660, expanding overtime pay to roughly 1 million workers. The Obama plan set the threshold at more than $47,000 and would have affected an estimated 4.2 million people.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, expressed concern Wednesday over Scalia’s record on protecting government whistleblowers. Grassley said on a call with reporters that while serving as Labor’s top lawyer Scalia argued not all disclosures made to Congress are protected under federal whistleblower laws and that the separation of powers doctrine prevents whistleblowers from disclosing certain information to Congress.
Trump’s previous labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, resigned in July. He had come under renewed criticism for his handling of a 2008 secret plea deal with financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead last month in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan after a July arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Deputy Labor Secretary Pat Pizzella has been serving as acting secretary until Scalia is confirmed.
Prosecutors urged International Criminal Court judges Thursday to put on trial two alleged leaders of a predominantly Christian militia involved in a bitter conflict with Muslim forces in Central African Republic, saying they armed and incited members to attack Muslim civilians in an attempt to regain power.
Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom are suspected of involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, persecution, torture and the use of child soldiers when they were senior leaders in the anti-Balaka militia. They have not entered pleas.
Prosecutor Kweku Vanderpuye told a three-judge panel at the global court that the crimes followed atrocities by Muslim forces known as the Seleka as they seized power in Central African Republic in 2013, forcing President Francois Bozize to flee into exile.
The interreligious violence left thousands dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Mosques, shops and homes were looted and destroyed. Bursts of deadly violence continue today despite attempts to make peace.
Vanderpuye alleged that Ngaissona was an influential leader of the anti-Balaka group and Yekatom a military leader who called himself Rambo and commanded thousands of fighters drawn from the ranks of local self-defense groups.
“From exile, Mr. Ngaissona and other members of Bozize’s inner circle used these groups,” Vanderpuye told judges. “They exploited the vengeance and hatred felt by the people to create a formidable fighting force which could defeat the Seleka, opening the way for them to reclaim power.”
However, the anti-Balaka did not limit themselves to fighting Seleka forces and instead “relentlessly terrorized” Muslim civilians as well, he said.
The prosecutor told judges that the anti-Balaka fighters used child soldiers to commit atrocities, recounting the story of one former child soldier who told prosecutors he was ordered to stab or cut off the ears of Muslim prisoners.
“When the prisoner was exhausted we would dig a shallow grave about knee height, put him in and then the chiefs will come back and kill him,” Vanderpuye said, quoting the former child soldier.
Ngaissona, who was chief of Central African Republic’s soccer federation when he was arrested on an ICC warrant in Paris last year, faces 111 charges. Yekatom, who was turned over to the court in 2018, faces 21 charges.
Yekatom’s lawyer, Mylène Dimitri, argued that her client cannot adequately defend himself because prosecutors are withholding evidence that they have collected in their investigations into crimes by the Seleka.
Yekatom “is defending himself in the dark,” Dimitri told the panel.
Central African Republic’s government asked the ICC in 2014 to investigate crimes allegedly committed by both the Seleka and the anti-Balaka. So far, no Seleka fighters have been publicly targeted by the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.
Judges will likely take months to decide whether to send the suspects to trial.
Cameroon’s law courts are at a standstill as lawyers for a third day Wednesday defy government threats and continue to protest what they say are widespread unbearable rights violations that include torture, illegal and prolonged detention of accused persons.
Observers say the strike may compromise the national dialogue ordered by President Paul Biya to solve the separatist conflict rocking the country.
Three hundred and eighty cases have been on the schedule at the Ekounou tribunal in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, since Sept. 16 and none of them have been heard.
Patrick Mbella, 45, who is in pre-trial detention for aggravated theft, says when he arrived at the court on Wednesday morning, his lawyer was not there.
The Ekounou Tribunal is seen in Yaounde, Cameroon, Sept. 18, 2019. (M. Kindzeka/VOA)
Mbella says he does not know what to do after the judge asked that he be taken back to detention because the government had not succeeded in convincing the lawyers to call off their strike.
Peter Seme of the Cameroon Bar Association, outside the Ekounou tribunal, read out what he called a statement from the country’s lawyers explaining why they stopped working. He listed rights violations that included the cruel humiliation of detainees by authorities.
“The appearance of naked detainees at public hearings, the extortion of confessional statements through torture and fraud, prolonged illegal detentions, situations of abusive detentions despite release orders, silence concerning some complaints made by lawyers, the refusal to acknowledge receipt of correspondences with written proof thereof,” Seme said.
Members of the Cameroon Bar Association ignored a Sept. 5 resolution adopted during a meeting convened by the government for them to call off the strike action.
Cameroonian President Biya had given instructions for judicial processes to be sped up after a prison protest last July over poor conditions that included overcrowded detention centers.
Cameroon’s minister delegate to the Minister of Justice Jean de Dieu Momo speaks at his office in Yaounde, Cameroon, Sept. 18, 2019. (M. Kindzeka/VOA)
A delegate at Cameroon’s Ministry of Justice, Jean de Dieu Momo, says nearly a million cases that were to be heard in courts all over the country this week have been affected. He offered reassurances to the lawyers, saying the government has called on the military, the police and others in the judicial system to immediately address the lawyers’ concerns.
“It is our job to make sure that the lawyers are independent, working freely without any disturbance from anyone. Lawyers, magistrates, military, people involved with security are together to work, to find out sustainable solutions,” Momo said.
Government officials expect the lawyers to call off their action soon.
Pierre Bayo, political analysts and lecturer at the University of Yaounde says the lawyers’ strike may affect the national dialogue Biya announced Sept. 10 to resolve issues in his country, which is in the midst of a separatist conflict that pits its French and English-speaking populations against each other.
He says most of the lawyers who initiated the strike had defended separatist leaders who had been sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal and also Maurice Kamto, the man who claims he won last year’s elections – a victory he alleges was stolen by Biya.
“Besides the Anglophone problem today, even more acrimonious in this country is the Kamto political leadership,” Bayo said.
Many had expected Kamto – who is now facing eight charges amounting to treason at a military tribunal in Yaounde – and some separatist leaders to be granted clemency by Biya to take part in the national dialogue. Biya declined, saying justice would take its course.
Pakistan has ruled out talks with India until India reverses recent controversial actions in the disputed Kashmir territory. Pakistan also turned down India’s overflight request for its prime minister’s upcoming visit to the United States.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan alleged while speaking to reporters Wednesday that “extremist nationalist Hindu racists” are currently in control of the government in India.
“Only an extremist and not-normal mind would place Kashmir under curfew for 45 days,” Khan said. “It is not a normal government, and until they lift the curfew in Kashmir and reverse the revocation of (Article) 370, there is no chance of talks with them,” Khan said of India.
Last month, India revoked a decades-old constitutionally provided special autonomy for its part of the divided Himalayan region and placed millions of Kashmiris under tight curfew restrictions, as well as a total communications blackout, to suppress protests and dissent.
India’s crackdown has detained hundreds of politicians, activists, doctors and lawyers in Kashmir without being charged
Khan said that in his upcoming address to the United Nations General Assembly next week, he will raise the Kashmir humanitarian crisis stemming from the Indian actions.
Pakistan also administers a part of Kashmir and claims the territory in its entirety. The recent Indian steps have raised military tensions between the nuclear-armed rival nations.
Indian leaders defend their latest actions in Kashmir, saying they will improve security and bring economic prosperity to India’s only Muslim-majority state, where separatist armed groups have waged a violent insurgency for over three decades.
In a statement Tuesday, Amnesty International condemned India for its Kashmir lockdown and detention of people under the region’s controversial “repressive Public Safety Act (PSA).
“The continued use of draconian laws against political dissidents, despite promises of change, signals the dishonest intent of the Indian government. Thousands of political leaders, activists and journalists continue to be silenced through administrative detention laws,” said Aakar Patel, the watchdog’s country head.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi confirmed the denial of New Delhi’s request for allowing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use Pakistani airspace for his official trip starting Friday to Germany and the U.S.
“Keeping in view the situation in occupied Kashmir, and India’s attitude witnessed in the tyranny and oppression (facing Kashmiris), and the violations of rights in the region, we have decided not to grant this request,” he said.
Indian officials insisted their request for the use of Pakistani airspace was in line with international “protocol for VIP” flights.
Islamabad’s overflight refusal means Modi will have to undertake a relatively longer alternate route for his flight.
Currently, Islamabad allows only civilian flights from India to use its airspace.
Pakistan blocked its airspace for all flights from India in February when the two countries came close to the brink of a third war over Kashmir. The airspace was reopened by the Pakistani government in July, but not for flights carrying Indian leaders since New Delhi canceled Kashmir’s autonomy.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he has meetings scheduled with both Khan and Modi next week, asserting his contacts with both the leaders have helped ease the latest tensions between their countries.
“I’ll see Prime Minister Modi, and we’ll be meeting with India and Pakistan (prime ministers),” Trump told reporters on Monday. “And I think a lot of progress has been made,” he said, without further elaboration.
Developing economies could face disruption from the shock waves of Britain crashing out of the European Union with no deal, according to analysts.
Brexit will affect not only Britain’s relations with the European Union, but also with hundreds of other countries with which Britain currently trades on EU terms, as Brussels sets trade policy for the entire EU bloc.
London has negotiated new post-Brexit trade arrangements with several countries, including Central American nations, Switzerland and South Korea, among others. That leaves hundreds of states — from smaller economies to relative giants like Japan and Canada — with whom trade would revert to World Trade Organization terms after a no-deal Brexit.
Striking new trade deals won’t be easy, said professor Anand Menon at a “Changing Europe” program at Kings College London.
FILE – A fruit stall displays fruit at a market in London, Aug. 7, 2019. Among Kenya’s exports to Britain are fruits and vegetables.
“Many countries with whom we try and do trade deals will say to us, ‘Yes, that would be great. We’d quite like to know what your relationship with the European Union is going to be before we sign anything with you, though.’ So, all roads lead to Brussels,” Menon said.
Such uncertainty doesn’t help countries that sell goods to Britain. For example, Kenya exports cut flowers, fruits and vegetables, with total exports to Britain estimated at $400 million per year.
Bangladesh exports nearly $4 billion worth of goods to Britain, which are currently traded under the EU’s preferential rules of origin that allocate zero or low tariffs on goods from developing countries. A no-deal Brexit will likely mean disruption, said Max Mendez-Parra, a trade expert at the Overseas Development Institute.
“The problem is that that will erode the preference that some of these countries receive. So for example, the advantage that a country such as Bangladesh and Cambodia have on certain products because they have access with a lower tariff, that would be removed.”
Speaking last month, Akinwumi Adesina, head of the Africa Development Bank, warned that the combination of a no-deal Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war were hitting African economies.
FILE – African Development president Akinwumi Adesina gives a press conference in Ouagadougou, Sept. 13, 2019.
“The industrial capacity has fallen significantly, and so the demand, even for products and raw materials from Africa, will only fall even further. So, the effect of that could have a ripple effect on African economies as the demand for their products weaken from China,” Adesina said.
Britain, meanwhile, is stepping up its search for new trade deals. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss is visiting New Zealand, Australia and Japan this week. Many of these nations’ companies have large investments in Britain and fear the chaotic fallout of a no-deal Brexit.
For smaller economies, the impact is likely to be less severe, Mendez-Parra said.
“African countries seem to be more relaxed, developing countries are more and more relaxed — except some specific countries that trade a lot with the U.K. — about the prospect of a no-deal [Brexit]. And this is because the U.K. has lost over many years the sort of importance as a destination of exports for many of these countries.”
A no-deal Brexit would hit the economies of many EU states like Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. But it is in Britain where the impact will inevitably be hardest-felt.
Police have opened a criminal investigation in the apparent arson of a home belonging to the family of former National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) chief Valeria Gontareva, which was razed early Tuesday in Kyiv.
Gontarevа, who recently spoke with VOA’s Ukrainian Service from her home in London, has warned that a series of unfortunate events are evidence that her life and the lives of family members are being threatened as a result of financial reforms she oversaw during her tenure as NBU chief from 2014-2017.
FILE – Valeria Gontareva, former chair of the National Bank of Ukraine, speaks during an interview in London, Britain, Sept. 14, 2019.
Currently a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics, Gontareva told VOA that she was hospitalized with broken bones after being struck by a car while walking through the streets of London on Aug. 26.
Ten days later, her daughter-in-law’s vehicle was set on fire in front of the family home in Kyiv, which was burned to the ground Tuesday. On Sept. 12, one week after the car was torched, Ukrainian police raided another of Gontareva’s Kyiv residential properties.
Gontarevа has told various news outlets that all of these events are tied to grievances held by banking tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, the former owner Privatbank, the country’s largest lender, which was nationalized in 2016 as a part of Gontarevа-led reforms under former president Petro Poroshenko.
Gontarevа and her Ukrainian colleagues elected to nationalize Privatbank under Ukraine’s Finance Ministry after an audit revealed $5.5 billion in unaccounted funds. The move to nationalize was strongly supported by the International Monetary Fund, which saw nationalization of banks engaged in fraud as a key step to eradicating corruption.
An oligarch’s return
Kolomoisky, who returned to Kyiv after the April 2019 election of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had been living in Switzerland and Israel since Privatbank was nationalized.
He and Privatbank’s original investors have been closely watching a series of new reforms being undertaken by Zelenskiy to see whether the nationalization may be reversed.
FILE – Ukrainian business tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky speaks with journalists on the sidelines of the Yalta European Strategy annual meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 13, 2019.
“Kolomoisky wants the withdrawal of all Privatbank lawsuits against him all over the world, and the National Bank is hindering him,” Gontarevа told VOA, explaining that she has also been named as a key witness in various international fraud cases against Zelenskiy over his former ownership of Privatbank.
It was also reported that the search of Gontarevа’s home came 48 hours after Kolomoisky met privately with Zelenskiy.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk told the Financial Times that the president is seeking a settlement with Kolomoisky over Privatbank’s nationalization, which would contradict Zelenskiy’s vigorous reform agenda and possibly upset Western backers.
FILE – People walk past a branch of PrivatBank, the country’s biggest lender, in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 18, 2019.
According to the Financial Times, IMF officials have warned that a reversal of Privatbank’s nationalization would endanger nearly $4 billion in standby funding reserved to help Ukraine recover the $5.5 billion it lost recapitalizing Privatbank.
“Whatever solution we find, we have to find it together with the IMF,” Honcharuk was quoted as saying.
On Tuesday morning, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov took to Twitter to note that the fire coincides with a Kyiv visit by IMF officials.
Although Gontarevа said she has been criticized by some Ukrainians who say the alleged threats are part of an effort to bolster her asylum claims in the West, she told VOA the issues are much bigger than her life alone.
Old-school intimidation tactics
“Independence of the National Bank guarantees the independence of monetary policy, exchange rate policy, and the macro stability of the Ukrainian economy,” she said, apparently warning that Kolomoisky’s efforts to seek compensation for the loss of Privatbank represents a return to the old-school intimidation tactics of the oligarchic era.
Kolomoisky, who denied any involvement in the injuries or property damages sustained by Gontareva or her family, spoke with reporters on the sidelines of the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv on Sept. 13.
Asked about the London hit-and-run that left Gontareva temporarily wheelchair-bound, Kolomoisky reportedly said with a smug grin: “I promised to send her a plane, not a car.”
London police said they were not treating the incident as suspicious.
Official statements
FILE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a meeting with law enforcement officers in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 23, 2019.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy’s office issued a statement calling the fire at Gontarevа’s home “a brutal crime, the rapid investigation of which should be a priority in the work of the law enforcement agencies.”
“Everyone should feel protected in Ukraine, regardless of their past or current positions and political views,” he said.
On Sept. 5, NBU board members issued a statement supporting Gontarevа’s claims that the car and house fires and London car accident are part of an organized intimidation campaign.
“Kolomoisky wants the withdrawal of all Privatbank lawsuits against him all over the world,” the former chairman of the NBU says. “And the National Bank is hindering him.”
“We regard this as a real threat to the personal integrity of the regulators who have implemented and continue to reform the financial sector, and in this way endeavor to undermine the central bank’s ability to fulfil its purpose,” the statement said.
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine has expressed support for Gontarevа, calling for “a prompt and impartial investigation into incidents involving former NBU chairman Gontareva and her family.”
Tunisia’s independent electoral commission Tuesday confirmed the stunning victories of two political outsiders in the first round of presidential voting — results seen as a major rebuff of the post-revolution political establishment.
Final results place law professor Kais Saied and business tycoon Nabil Karoui in first and second place respectively, capturing more than 18% and 16% of the vote. They now face a runoff in what is Tunisia’s second-only free and democratic presidential election.
Tunisian presidential candidate and law professor Kais Saied speaks during a press conference in Tunis, Sept. 17, 2019.
But the bigger story may be the losers, starting with Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, who received just over 7% of the vote. Defense Minister Abdelkarim Zbidi also scored in the single digits. Turnout was less than 50% — another marker of voter disaffection.
Tunisian journalist Tarek Mami of France Magreb 2 radio says Tunisians got rid of one system during the revolution — that of autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Now, they’re getting rid of the system that replaced him. Widespread corruption and soaring food prices helped to fuel voter anger.
Saied and Karoui have one thing in common — both are newcomers when it comes to running for office. Both also kept low profiles during campaigning these past weeks, but for different reasons.
FILE – Nabil Karoui, Tunisian media magnate and would-be presidential candidate, submits his candidacy to Tunisia’s electoral commission in the capital, Tunis, Aug. 2, 2019.
Karoui was jailed in August on corruption allegations — a move his supporters claim was politically motivated. Saied rejected state election funds and large rallies, favoring door-to-door campaigning. Saied is a social conservative and a frequent legal commentator on television. Karoui scored points with the poor for his foundation’s charitable works.
Social entrepreneur Wala Kasmi didn’t vote for Saied and was surprised by the results.
“But at the end, I think I’m happy about not the full results, but the results, because I think we are back to eight years ago, challenging the status quo, claiming a new model, a new system. … I think he’s the new voice of the revolution,” Kasmi said.
This is the first round in the election season. October’s legislative vote comes next, offering another test of whether Tunisians will continue to sanction the political establishment.
Living conditions have improved greatly since 2000 even for the world’s poorest people, but billions remain mired in “layers of inequality.”
That is the assessment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s third annual report on progress toward U.N. Sustainable Development Goals – 17 measures that most countries have pledged to try to reach by 2030. Those efforts are falling short, says Bill Gates.
“As much progress as we’re making, a child in many countries still over 10% are dying before the age of five. And in richer countries it is less than 1%. So the idea that any place in the world is still 10%, some almost 15%, that’s outrageous, and it should galvanize us to do a better job,” Gates told VOA.
The 63-year-old Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist sat down with VOA at the foundation’s offices in advance of the report, which was released to coincide with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.
This year’s report uses geography and gender as lenses for examining progress, particularly in terms of health and education.
It finds “an increasing concentration of high mortality and low educational attainment levels” in Africa’s Sahel region as well as in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India. People in those regions experience “multiple deprivations, including some of the highest fertility rates in the world, high levels of stunting and low vaccine coverage,” the report says.
Disadvantages fall more heavily on women than on men. Girls generally get less formal education than boys; those in sub-Saharan Africa average two fewer years of education. And even when girls obtain a good education, they’re less likely to parlay it into paid work.
“Globally, there is a 26 percentage point gap between men’s and women’s labor force participation,” according to the report.
Monitoring progress on these fronts aligns with the Gates Foundation’s commitments, which include improving global health and aiding development in low-income countries. Since its start in 2000, the foundation has spent billions on efforts such as improving vaccines and nutrition, combatting malaria and other diseases, supporting innovative toilet designs to improve sanitation, and ensuring good data collection to identify problems.
As the news site Vox has pointed out, the Gates Foundation each year outspends the World Health Organization and most individual countries on global health. It has built the world’s largest trust — $46.8 billion as of December, according to its website.
That has led some to question philanthropy’s role in development.
“The billions of dollars available to Gates, Rockefeller and Wellcome might be spent with benevolent intent, but they confer extensive power. A power without much accountability,” Wellcome communications director Mark Henderson wrote last week in Inside Philanthropy, announcing that the London-based health charity – second in spending after Gates – would increase its transparency.
Israelis are voting Tuesday in general elections as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a challenge from former military chief Benny Gantz.
Polls show Tuesday’s contest too close to call, with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party tied with Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party, with neither predicted to win a majority of seats in the 120-member Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Ten parties could win seats in the legislature.
That could possibly leave Avigdor Lieberman, a former defense minister and one-time Netanyahu ally but now a rival, as the kingmaker to form a coalition government. Lieberman, the head of the Israel Beitenu party, could double his seats in parliament from five to 10. His campaign slogan is to “make Israel normal again,” a motto aimed at combating what he says is the undue influence of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties on political life in the country.
Netanyahu made a last-day nationalist campaign pitch Monday saying if he wins re-election, he would annex all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank over the protests of Palestinian leaders.
He told Israeli Army Radio, “I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the (settlement) blocs,” including “sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage.”
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, is facing his toughest political fight to win a record fifth term to stay in power even as he is confronting possible corruption charges. Israel is staging its second national vote in less than six months, with Netanyahu unable to cobble together a parliamentary majority to form a government after the April vote.
A man hangs up an Israeli flag at a polling station as Israelis begin to vote in a parliamentary election in Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel September 17, 2019.
Gantz has presented himself as an honorable alternative to Netanyahu.
“Blue and White under my leadership will change the direction of the ship of state of Israeli democracy,” he wrote in the Maariv newspaper. “No more instigating rifts in an attempt to divide and conquer, but rather quick action to form a unity government.”
In the run-up to the election, Netanyahu has tried to bolster his nationalist support, along with an assist from his long-time friend, U.S. President Donald Trump, who last weekend floated the possibility of a mutual defense pact between the decades-long allies.
Trump said such a treaty “would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries.”
The U.S. also has another link to the Israeli election, with the Trump administration expected to release its long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan soon after the vote. The U.S. in June unveiled a $50 billion plan to boost Palestinian economic fortunes, but neither the Palestinians nor Israelis attended the announcement in Bahrain.
Netanyahu has made several campaign pledges in an attempt to win over nationalist voters. He vowed to annex the Jordan Valley, an area Palestinians consider as key farmland in any future Palestinian state. In protest, the Palestinian Authority held a cabinet meeting in the Jordan Valley village of Fasayil on Monday, a day after Israel’s Cabinet met elsewhere in the valley.
“The Jordan Valley is part of Palestinian lands and any settlement or annexation is illegal,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said at the start of the meeting. “We will sue Israel in international courts for exploiting our land and we will continue our struggle against the occupation on the ground and in international forums.”
China and Russia clashed with the U.S. and other Security Council members Monday over China’s insistence on including a reference to Beijing’s $1 trillion “belt and road” global infrastructure program in a resolution on the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan.
The mission’s six-month mandate expires Tuesday and council members met behind closed doors for over 2 1/2 hours Monday, unable to agree on a text because of China’s demand.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, the current council president, told reporters afterward that diplomats were working on a new text and “we’re in the process of reaching a compromise.”
He said the council would meet again late Tuesday morning in hopes of reaching unanimous agreement.
This is the second time in six months that the resolution to keep the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan operating has become embroiled in controversy over “belt and road” language.
Resolutions extending the mandate of the Afghan mission for a year in 2016, 2017 and 2018 had language welcoming and urging further efforts to strengthen regional economic cooperation involving Afghanistan, including through the huge “belt and road” initiative to link China to other parts of Asia as well as Europe and Africa.
But in March, when the mandate renewal came up, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Jonathan Cohen objected, saying Beijing was insisting on making the resolution “about Chinese national political priorities rather than the people of Afghanistan.”
He said the Trump administration opposed China’s demand “that the resolution highlight its belt and road initiative, despite its tenuous ties to Afghanistan and known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and lack of transparency.”
FILE – China’s Deputy Permanent Representative Wu Haitao addresses the United Nations Security Council, Aug. 29, 2018, at U.N. headquarters.
China’s deputy ambassador, Wu Haitao, countered at the time that one council member — almost certainly referring to the U.S. — “poisoned the atmosphere.” He said the “belt and road” initiative was “conducive to Afghanistan’s reconstruction and economic development,” saying that since it was launched six years ago 123 countries and 29 international organizations had signed agreements with China on joint development programs.
The result of the standoff was that instead of a one-year mandate renewal for the Afghan mission, the mandate was renewed in March for just six months in a simple text, without any substance.
Ahead of this month’s mandate expiration, Germany and Indonesia drafted a substantive resolution that would extend the mandate for a year. It focused on U.N. support for an Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled peace process, U.N. assistance in the Sept. 28 presidential election and strong backing for Afghan security forces “in their fight against terrorism.” It made no reference to China’s “belt and road” initiative.
So China and close ally Russia circulated a rival draft resolution that removes all the substantive language and simply extends the mission for a year.
Council diplomats said after Monday’s meeting that China and Russia would likely veto the German-Indonesian draft resolution, and the China-Russia draft would fail to get the required nine “yes” votes. So diplomats were meeting Monday night to draft a new resolution.
South Africa’s U.N. ambassador, Jerry Matjila, said, “I think there is a chance of a compromise.”
Two candidates who claim they will win through to Tunisia’s presidential runoff — a conservative law expert and an imprisoned media mogul —
could hardly be more different, but both bill themselves as political outsiders.
Nabil Karoui, behind bars since August 23 on charges of money laundering, is a populist showman whose political colors changed with the times, culminating in the launch of his Qalb Tounes (Heart of Tunisia) party just months ago.
Maverick Kais Saied, meanwhile, is an academic committed to social conservatism who has ploughed his own furrow.
Nicknamed “Robocop” due to his abrupt, staccato speech and rigid posture, the impeccably dressed Saied shunned political parties, avoided mass rallies and campaigned door-to-door.
Hours after polling booths closed in the country’s second free presidential polls since the 2011 Arab Spring, he declared he was in pole position.
“I am first in the first round and if I am elected president I will apply my program,” he told AFP in a spartan apartment in central Tunis.
On the campaign trail, he advocated a rigorous overhaul of the constitution and voting system, to decentralize power “so that the will of the people penetrates into central government and puts an end to corruption”.
With a quarter votes counted Monday, Tunisia’s electoral commission (ISIE) put Saied in the lead with 19 percent of the vote.
Often surrounded by young acolytes, he has pushed social conservatism, defending the death penalty, criminalisation of homosexuality and a sexual assault law that punishes unmarried couples who engage in public displays of affection.
Tunisia’s ‘would-be Berlusconi’
While Saied came from the sidelines with his unique approach to courting Tunisia’s voters — and did so with barely any money behind him — media magnate Nabil Karoui’s story is more flamboyant.
He has long maintained a high profile, using his Nessma TV channel to launch high-profile charity campaigns, often appearing in designer suits even while meeting some of the country’s poorest citizens in marginalized regions.
These charitable endeavors, including doling out food aid, “helped me to get closer to people and realize the huge social problems facing the country,” he once told AFP. “I have been touched by it.”
Unlike Saied, he previously threw his lot in with an established political party, officially joining Beji Caid Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes in 2016, after actively supporting the late president in his successful campaign two years earlier.
He formally stepped down from Nessma’s management after being criticized by international observers for his channel’s partisan conduct in 2014.
But he subsequently made no secret of continuing to pull the strings at the channel, while honing his political profile.
His supporters claim his arrest was politically motivated, but detractors cast him as a would-be Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian premier who they allege partly owns his channel.
The arrest of the controversial Tunisian businessman in August followed his indictment the previous month in an investigation that dates back to 2017 and the submission by anti-corruption watchdog I-Watch of a dossier accusing him of tax fraud.
The 56-year-old was still given the green light to run and hit the campaign trail by proxy, deploying his wife and activists from his Heart of Tunisia party to woo voters.
“Nabil Karoui is in the second round,” an official from the mogul’s party told AFP late Sunday, as the businessman sat in prison outside the capital Tunis.
Partial results from ISIE on Monday put him in the second spot.
Observers say that if Karoui does make it to the second round, it will be hard for authorities to justify keeping him behind bars without a trial.
Saied, meanwhile, has not been immune from discomforting scrutiny.
Confronted late last week in a broadcast debate with a photo showing him meeting an ex-member of a banned Salafi group, he asked: “Do I have to ask permission to meet someone?”
But in a sign of voters’ antipathy towards the overall field, the ISIE put turnout at 45 percent, down substantially from the 64 percent recorded for the country’s first democratic polls in 2014.
The date of a second and final round between the top two candidates has not been announced, but it must be held by October 23 at the latest and may even take place on the same day as legislative polls set for October 6.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held their first face-to-face talks Monday, without any visible signs of a breakthrough on an elusive Brexit deal.
The two men talked over a two-hour lunch of snails and salmon in Juncker’s native Luxembourg, amid claims from the U.K. — though not the EU — that a deal is in sight.
The European Commission said after the meeting that Britain had yet to offer any “legally operational” solutions to the issue of the Irish border, the main roadblock to a deal.
“President Juncker underlined the Commission’s continued willingness and openness to examine whether such proposals meet the objectives of the backstop”— a border provision rejected by Britain.
“Such proposals have not yet been made,” the European Commission said in a statement, adding that officials “will remain available to work 24/7.”
Johnson says the U.K. will leave the EU on the scheduled Oct. 31 date, with or without a withdrawal agreement. But he insists he can strike a revised divorce deal with the bloc in time for an orderly departure. The agreement made by his predecessor, Theresa May, was rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament.
Johnson said in a Daily Telegraph column Monday that he believes “passionately” that a deal can be agreed and approved at a summit of EU leaders on Oct. 17-18.
While the EU says it is still waiting for firm proposals from the U.K., Johnson spokesman James Slack said Britain had “put forward workable solutions in a number of areas.”
He declined to provide details, saying it was unhelpful to negotiate in public.
The key sticking point is the “backstop,” an insurance policy in May’s agreement intended to guarantee an open border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. That is vital both to the local economy and to Northern Ireland’s peace process.
British Brexit supporters oppose the backstop because it keeps the U.K. bound to EU trade rules, limiting its ability to forge new free trade agreements around the world after Brexit.
Britain has suggested the backstop could be replaced by “alternative arrangements,” but the EU says it has yet to hear any workable suggestions.
Neither side expects a breakthrough Monday, but much still rests on Johnson’s encounter with Juncker, who like other EU officials is tired of the long-running Brexit drama, and wary of Johnson’s populist rhetoric.
The British leader has vowed to leave the bloc “do or die” and compared himself to angry green superhero the Incredible Hulk, telling the Mail on Sunday newspaper: “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets, and he always escapes … and that is the case for this country.”
European Parliament Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt branded the comparison “infantile,” and it also earned a rebuke from “Hulk” star Mark Ruffalo.
Ruffalo tweeted: “Boris Johnson forgets that the Hulk only fights for the good of the whole. Mad and strong can also be dense and destructive.”
Monday’s meeting marks the start a tumultuous week, with the Brexit deadline just 45 days away.
On Tuesday, Britain’s Supreme Court will consider whether Johnson’s decision to prorogue — or suspend — the British Parliament for five weeks was lawful, after conflicting judgments in lower courts.
Johnson sent lawmakers home until Oct. 14, a drastic move that gives him a respite from rebellious lawmakers determined to thwart his Brexit plan.
Last week, Scotland’s highest civil court ruled the prorogation illegal because it had the intention of stymieing Parliament. The High Court in London, however, said it was not a matter for the courts.
If the Supreme Court overturns the suspension, lawmakers could be called back to Parliament as early as next week.
Many lawmakers fear a no-deal Brexit would be economically devastating, and are determined to stop the U.K. from crashing out of the bloc on Oct. 31.
Just before the suspension, Parliament passed a law that orders the government to seek a three-month delay to Brexit if no agreement has been reached by late October.
Johnson insists he will not seek a delay under any circumstances, though it’s not clear how he can avoid it.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Monday that the government would obey the law, but suggested it would try to find loopholes.
“I think the precise implications of the legislation need to be looked at very carefully,” he told the BBC. “We are doing that.”
The first Chinese-born woman to sit in the lower house of Australia’s federal parliament is under a sustained attack for failing to disclose her membership in organizations linked to China’s Communist Party.
There are claims Gladys Liu had connections with senior figures in Beijing’s covert political propaganda apparatus, which have raised questions about her eligibility to sit in the Australian parliament.
The lawmaker has admitted being a member of the China Overseas Exchange Association between 2003 and 2015, which at the time was part of China’s powerful State Council, the Chinese government’s central political and administrative body. The Hong Kong-born politician says her membership was entirely innocent, and has denied any conflict of interest. She said she is “a proud Australian.”
FILE – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during his visit to the Hanoi Formula One Grand Prix construction site in Vietnam, Aug. 23, 2019.
Australia’s center-right Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Liu is the victim of a “smear” campaign with a “grubby undertone”.
The political assault is led by the opposition Labor Party. It has demanded to know if the government had received warnings about her from Australia’s intelligence agencies. Ministers have declined to comment.
Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese denies the scrutiny of Liu is based on race and says he wants to get to the truth.
“What the motivation is here is to ensure that there is accountability for people’s actions. It has nothing to do with race and the only person who has raised race in these issues are, of course, prime minister Morrison,” he said.
Gladys Liu is a former speech pathologist who became an Australian citizen in 1992. Her parliamentary career has collided with growing anxiety in Australia over allegations of Chinese meddling in its domestic politics, and cyber espionage. A taskforce is to investigate foreign interference in Australian universities because of fears over China’s growing influence on campuses.
These are sensitive issues, given Australia’s reliance on China for its recent prosperity. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner.
Tunisians voted Sunday to select their next president among some two dozen candidates. More than seven million people were eligible to cast their ballot in what is only the North African country’s second free presidential election, eight years after its so-called Jasmine Revolution.
A steady stream of people filed into this primary school in the working class Tunis suburb of Ariana, lining up under posters offering instructions on how to vote. Nineteen-year-old college student Yomna El-Benna is excited to be voting for the first time.
“I’m going to vote for Mourou… for many reasons…. when I was deciding, I eliminated the persons who I’m not convinced with… they cannot lead Tunisia,” said El-Benna.
That’s Abdelfattah Mourou from the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party, running to replace 92-year-old president Beji Caid Essebsi who died in July. Mourou’s part of a dizzying lineup of presidential hopefuls, including two women. Among them: government ministers, far left politicians and jailed media tycoon Nabil Karoui. A runoff vote is expected, following next month’s legislative elections.
Zohra Goummid voted for Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. “He’s got experience, he’s young,’ she says. ‘We Tunisians know him well. The other candidates are just upstarts,” she said.
But with Tunisia’s economy sputtering and unemployment high, others are looking for new faces, outside the political establishment.
Retired professor Mohammed Sami Neffati voted for a friend of his: 61-year-old law expert Kais Saied, who opted for door-to-door campaigning instead of large rallies. He isn’t eloquent, Neffati says, but he’s got a chance, because he’s honest.
But other Tunisians stayed home, disappointed about the state of their country — and skeptical that any of the candidates can turn things around.
The al-Shabab militant group launched a series of attacks since Saturday that led to the death of at least 17 people in Somalia.
Lower Shabelle region officials told VOA Somali that the militants attacked the town of Qoryoley late Saturday using rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, killing nine people.
The town’s Mayor Sayid Ali Ibrajim told VOA that an RPG fired by the militants caused most of the casualties.
Somali government forces with support from African Union forces, who are based outside the town, repelled the attack, according to officials.
Some of the residents in Qoryoley alleged that heavy weapons fired by AU troops caused some of the civilians casualties.
The Governor of the region Ibrahim Adan Najah told VOA Somali that they are investigating the allegations. AMISOM forces did not immediately respond to the allegations.
Also in Lower Shabelle region on Saturday, two civilians were killed after al-Shabab militants fired mortars on the ancient port town of Marka during a visit by the Prime Minister of Somalia Hassan Ai Khaire.
Al-Shabab claimed they were targeting the prime minister but the Governor Najah told VOA Somali that the incident took place outside the town. Residents and security sources said one of the mortars landed in a residential area killing two women. The prime minister was unharmed and has returned to Mogadishu safely.
Governor Najah himself was attacked on Sunday after his convoy was targeted with a remote-controlled explosion while travelling in an agricultural area near the town of Shalanbod, about 20 kilometers south of Qoryoley town. According to security sources, two bodyguards were killed and four others were injured including two junior regional officials.
In the neighboring Middle Shabelle region, al-Shabab carried out a roadside explosion that killed four regional officials and injured six others on Saturday. Among the dead was Abdullahi Shitawe, deputy governor for finances, Sabrie Osman a former regional deputy minister for business, and businessman Hassan Baldos. A fourth person said to be a bodyguard was also killed. They were travelling on a road in the north of the agricultural town of Bal’ad, about 40 kilometers north of Mogadishu.
US President Donald Trump mounted an angry defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday as the controversial judge faced calls for an investigation over fresh allegations of sexual misconduct.
Trump blasted the media and “Radical Left Democrats” after a former Yale classmate of Kavanaugh alleged that the jurist — one of the most senior judges in the land — exposed himself at a freshman year party before other students pushed his genitals into the hand of a female student.
The latest allegation in The New York Times came after Kavanaugh denied sexual misconduct accusations leveled against him by two women during his confirmation to the Supreme Court last October.
“Now the Radical Left Democrats and their Partner, the LameStream Media, are after Brett Kavanaugh again, talking loudly of their favorite word, impeachment,” Trump tweeted.
“He is an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY. Such lies about him. They want to scare him into turning Liberal!”
Now the Radical Left Democrats and their Partner, the LameStream Media, are after Brett Kavanaugh again, talking loudly of their favorite word, impeachment. He is an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY. Such lies about him. They want to scare him into turning Liberal!
The new allegations came from Max Stier, who runs a non-profit in Washington. His concerns were reported to the FBI during Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation process but not investigated, according to the Times.
Stier said he saw his former classmate “with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.”
Stier has not spoken publicly about the incident but his story was corroborated by two officials, the Times said.
It is the latest in a string of accusations of unwanted sexual contact or assault against Kavanaugh since Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court.
‘Shame’
Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, while Deborah Ramirez told The New Yorker Kavanaugh had waved his penis in front of her face at a 1980s dormitory party.
FILE – Professor Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Brett Kavanaugh of a sexual assault in 1982, testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The latest allegation surfaced during a 10-month investigation by Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, and features in their upcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.”
Trump called on Kavanaugh to take legal action over the claims, suggesting also that the Department of Justice should intervene on the judge’s behalf and “come to his rescue.”
But Democrats seeking to be Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election called for the judge to be investigated.
“Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is a shame to the Supreme Court. This latest allegation of assault must be investigated,” former housing secretary and Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro tweeted.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobouchar, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was involved in a heated exchange with Kavanaugh during his confirmation, described the process as a “sham.”
“I strongly opposed him based on his views on executive power, which will continue to haunt our country, as well as how he behaved, including the allegations that we are hearing more about today,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz dismissed the new allegation, however, as “the obsession with the far left with trying to smear Justice Kavanaugh by going 30 years back with anonymous sources.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened himself to the unruly comic book character The Incredible Hulk late Saturday in a newspaper interview in which he stressed his determination to take Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Johnson said he would find a way to circumvent a recent Parliament vote ordering him to delay Brexit rather than take Britain out of the EU without a transition deal to ease the economic shock.
“The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “Hulk always escaped, no matter how tightly bound in he seemed to be — and that is the case for this country. We will come out on October 31.”
Britain’s Parliament has repeatedly rejected the exit deal Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, negotiated with the EU, and this month rejected leaving without a deal — angering many Britons who voted to leave the bloc more than three years ago.
No ‘backstop’
Johnson has said he wants to negotiate a new deal that does not involve a “backstop,” which would potentially tie Britain against its will to EU rules after it leaves in order to avoid checks on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The EU has so far insisted on the backstop, and Britain has not presented any detailed alternative.
Nonetheless, Johnson said he was “very confident” ahead of a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday.
“There’s a very, very good conversation going on about how to address the issues of the Northern Irish border. A huge amount of progress is being made,” Johnson told The Mail on Sunday, without giving details.
Johnson drew parallels between Britain’s situation in Brexit talks and the frustrations felt by fictional scientist Bruce Banner, who when enraged turned into The Incredible Hulk, frequently leaving behind a trail of destruction.
“Banner might be bound in manacles, but when provoked he would explode out of them,” he said.
FILE – British politician Sam Gyimah speaks during a People’s Vote press conference at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London, May 9, 2019.
Earlier on Saturday, former Conservative minister Sam Gyimah said he was switching to the pro-EU Liberal Democrat party in protest at Johnson’s Brexit policies and political style.
Opinion polls late Saturday painted a conflicting picture of the Conservative Party’s political fortunes under Johnson, who wants to hold an early election to regain a working majority in Parliament.
A poll conducted by Opinium for The Observer newspaper showed Conservative support rose to 37% from 35% over the past week, while Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour held at 25% and Liberal Democrat support dropped to 16% from 17%. Support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party remained at 13%.
However, a separate poll by ComRes for The Sunday Express put Conservative support at just 28%, down from 30% and only a shade ahead of Labour at 27%.
ComRes said just 12% of the more than 2,000 people it surveyed thought Parliament could be trusted to do the right thing for the country.
RIYADH/DUBAI/LONDON – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group said it attacked two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry on Saturday, knocking out more than half the kingdom’s output, in a move expected to send oil prices soaring and increase tension in the Middle East.
The attacks will cut the kingdom’s output by 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd), according to a statement from state-run oil company Saudi Aramco, or more than 5% of global oil supply.
The pre-dawn strikes followed earlier cross-border attacks on Saudi oil installations and on oil tankers in Persian Gulf waters, but these were the most brazen yet, temporarily crippling much of the nation’s production capacity. Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest exporter, shipping more than 7 million barrels of oil to global destinations every day, and for years has served as the supplier of last resort to markets.
While the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put the blame squarely on Iran, writing on Twitter that there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.”
“Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” Pompeo said.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a photo session with other leaders and attendees at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019.
Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told U.S. President Donald Trump by telephone that Riyadh had the will and capability “to confront and deal with this terrorist aggression,” according to Saudi state news agency SPA.
The United States condemned the attacks and Trump told the crown prince that Washington was ready to work with the kingdom to guarantee its security, according to the White House. The U.S. Department of Energy also said it was ready to release oil from its strategic petroleum reserve if necessary. Energy Secretary Rick Perry also said his department would work with the International Energy Agency, which coordinates energy policies of industrialized nations, if global action is needed.
Saudi Arabia, leading a Sunni Muslim coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 against the Houthis, has blamed regional rival Shiite Iran for previous attacks, which Tehran denies. Riyadh accuses Iran of arming the Houthis, a charge denied by the group and Tehran.
Coalition spokesman Col. Turki al-Malki said an investigation had been launched into who planned and executed the strikes. He said the Western-backed alliance would counter threats to global energy security and economic stability.
Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said there were no casualties from the attacks.
Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Aramco would have more information within 48 hours, and it would draw down oil in storage to compensate for the loss. Aramco is in the process of planning what is expected to be the world’s largest initial public offering.
Heart of oil market
“Abqaiq is perhaps the most critical facility in the world for oil supply,” said Jason Bordoff, who runs the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and served on the U.S. National Security Council during Barack Obama’s presidency. “The risk of tit-for-tat regional escalation that pushes oil prices even higher has just gone up significantly.”
Smoke is seen following a fire at an Aramco facility in the eastern city of Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 14, 2019.
Abqaiq is 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters. The oil processing plant handles crude from the world’s largest conventional oilfield, the supergiant Ghawar, and for export to terminals Ras Tanura — the world’s biggest offshore oil loading facility — and Juaymah. It also pumps westward across the kingdom to Red Sea export terminals.
Two of the sources said Ghawar was flaring gas after the strikes disrupted gas processing facilities. Khurais, 190 km (118 miles) farther southwest, contains the country’s second-largest oilfield.
“These attacks against critical infrastructure endanger civilians, are unacceptable, and sooner or later will result in innocent lives being lost,” the U.S. Embassy quoted Ambassador John Abizaid as saying in a Twitter post.
Andrew Murrison, a British foreign affairs minister, called on the Houthis to stop threatening civilian areas and Saudi commercial infrastructure.
It was the latest in a series of Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi cities that have largely been intercepted but have recently hit targets, including the Shaybah oilfield last month and oil pumping stations in May. Both those attacks caused fires but did not disrupt production.
“This is a relatively new situation for the Saudis. For the longest time they have never had any real fears that their oil facilities would be struck from the air,” Kamran Bokhari, founding director of the Washington-based Center for Global Policy, told Reuters.
Aramco’s CEO said in a statement that the situation had been brought under control. A Reuters witness said the fire in Abqaiq appeared to have been extinguished by early evening.
Escalating tension
Regional tension has escalated after Washington quit an international nuclear deal and extended sanctions on Iran.
FILE – Bodies lie on the ground after being recovered from under the rubble of a Houthi detention center destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes, in Dhamar province, southwestern Yemen, Sept. 1, 2019.
The violence is complicating U.N.-led peace efforts to end the Yemen war, which has killed tens of thousands and pushed millions to the brink of famine. The conflict is widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The coalition intervened in Yemen after the internationally recognized government was ousted from power in Sanaa by the Houthis, who say they are fighting a corrupt system.
The coalition launched airstrikes on Yemen’s northern Saada province, a Houthi stronghold, on Saturday, a Reuters witness said. Houthi-run al Masirah TV said a military camp was struck.
The Houthis’ military spokesman, without providing evidence, said drones hit refineries at both Saudi sites, which are more than 1,000 km (621 miles) from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and pledged a widening of assaults against Saudi Arabia.
The Afghan government will consider making a “legitimate” peace with insurgents only after national elections are held this month, an official told reporters Saturday, despite the atmosphere of political uncertainty following the sudden halt in U.S.-Taliban peace talks.
President Donald Trump abruptly called off talks to end American’s longest war last week. The Afghan government was largely shut out of the negotiations and was concerned that any finalized U.S.-Taliban deal would delay the elections while a national unity government was formed, forcing the exit of President Ashraf Ghani.
“Nothing will impede the presidential election from happening,” said the Afghan presidential spokesman, Sediq Seddiqi.
He said that a peace deal with the Taliban could come only after holding the presidential election scheduled for Sept. 28. “Legitimacy of peace cannot be achieved without elections,” he said.
Security concerns
Sediqqi also suggested that there will be a “big change” toward improving security across the country ahead of the voting. The Taliban, who consider the Afghan government a U.S. puppet, have warned Afghans not to vote and have said polling stations will be targets.
Sediqqi pointed to a Taliban delegation’s visit to Russia, just days after Trump called off talks, to say the insurgents are faced with a “political failure” of their own. He added that the Taliban should hold talks directly with the Afghan government — which they have refused to do — rather than foreign powers.
On Friday, a Taliban negotiating team visited Russia, where they held consultations with Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for Afghanistan.
The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the meeting underlined the necessity of renewing talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, and that the Taliban confirmed their readiness to continue dialogue with Washington.
It was the Taliban’s first international visit following the collapse of talks with Washington. The team was led by Mullah Sher Mohammad Stanikzai.
Trump tweeted Saturday that the Taliban was being hit hard militarily in the wake of the U.S. pulling out of negotiations following the death of a U.S. soldier.
“The Taliban has never been hit harder than it is being hit right now,” he said. “Killing 12 people, including one great American soldier, was not a good idea. There are much better ways to set up a negotiation. The Taliban knows they made a big mistake, and they have no idea how to recover!”
Moscow has twice this year hosted meetings between the Taliban and prominent Afghan personalities.
Sediqqi said that the Afghan government has suspended its own peace efforts for now. After the elections, the “progress of the peace process” will be a priority, he said.
Bomb in Kapisa province
Separately in eastern Kapisa province, a bomb killed at least three civilians who had gathered to watch a volleyball game, said Nasrat Rahimi, spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
Rahimi added that two other civilians were wounded when Friday’s blast occurred in the Tagab district. No group immediately claimed responsibility.
Also in southern Kandahar province, in an insider attack, two policemen turned on their colleagues and shot dead at least nine police officers at a checkpoint, according to a provincial official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
The attack happened in the Shah Wali Kot district late on Friday night and both attackers fled the area, the official said.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusouf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack.
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