TEKNAF, BANGLADESH – Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh said Wednesday that they did not want to return to their homes in Myanmar, raising doubts about a fresh attempt to repatriate the stateless, mainly Muslim minority.
On Thursday, Bangladesh and Myanmar were hoping to begin repatriating a few of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled a military crackdown two years ago, after a previous attempt in November failed.
Officials from the United Nations and Bangladesh’s refugee commission have been interviewing more than 200 shortlisted families in the settlements in southeast Bangladesh to find out if they would return to Rakhine state.
Bangladesh refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam told AFP five buses and two trucks had been hired to take the refugees to a land port.
A Rohingya man sells betel leaves in a market at a camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, Aug. 21, 2019.
But several Rohingya interviewed by the United Nations told AFP they did not want to go home until their safety was guaranteed and they were recognized as citizens in the Buddhist-majority country.
“It is not safe to return to Myanmar,” Nur Islam, a Rohingya Muslim who was among nearly 3,500 refugees earmarked for repatriation, told AFP.
Rohingya community leader Jafar Alam told AFP the refugees had been gripped by fear since authorities announced the fresh repatriation process.
They also feared being sent to camps for internally displaced people if they went back to Myanmar.
No family consents
A U.N. official who was part of the team interviewing the Rohingya cast doubt on when the repatriation might start, saying: “We have yet to get consent from any refugee family.”
In New York, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday that repatriations had to be done in a “voluntary nature.”
“Any return should be voluntary and sustainable and in safety and in dignity to their place of origin and choice,” Dujarric told reporters.
“It’s important for refugees to have the full information they need to be able to make that decision.”
The U.N. Security Council met behind closed doors on the issue on Wednesday.
Rohingya people are seen at a camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, Aug. 21, 2019.
Some 740,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in August 2017 from a military offensive in Myanmar — joining 200,000 already there — but virtually none have volunteered to return despite the countries signing a repatriation deal in late 2017.
The new push follows a visit last month to the camps by high-ranking officials from Myanmar led by Permanent Foreign Secretary Myint Thu.
Sunday will mark the second anniversary of the crackdown that sparked the mass exodus to the Bangladesh camps.
The Rohingya are not recognized as an official minority by the Myanmar government, which considers them Bengali interlopers despite many families having lived in Rakhine for generations.
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a rule that allows officials to detain migrant families indefinitely while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States, abolishing a previous 20-day limit.
The rule, which is certain to draw a legal challenge, would replace a 1997 court settlement that limits the amount of time U.S. immigration authorities can detain migrant children. That agreement is generally interpreted as meaning families must be
released within 20 days.
It was the Republican administration’s third major regulation restricting immigration in little more than a month, all during an unsettled period when senior immigration officials hold “acting” titles lacking U.S. Senate confirmation.
Trump has made cracking down on legal and illegal immigration a hallmark of his presidency after campaigning in 2016 on a promise, so far unfulfilled, that Mexico would pay for a border wall to keep migrants from entering the United States.
FILE – Immigration activists rally outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments over the Trump administration’s plan to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census, in Washington, April 23, 2019.
In what would be another attempt to dismantle established immigration law, Trump told reporters on Wednesday his administration was seriously looking at ending the right of citizenship for children born to non-citizens within the United States.
Immigration officials are looking for any kind of deterrent to reverse a record surge in families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials say they have caught or rejected 475,000 family members in the past 10 months, more than three times any previous full year.
On July 15 the administration unveiled a rule to bar almost all immigrants from applying for asylum at the southern border, and on Aug. 12 it announced regulation denying visas and permanent residency for those who fail to make enough money.
Multiple lawsuits were filed within days of the two previous immigration rules.
Legal challenges have held up many of Trump’s initiatives, but immigration advocates say he has managed to build an “invisible wall” through executive actions bypassing Congress.
The administration framed the policy as a humane approach to a crisis.
“To protect these children from abuse, and stop this illegal flow, we must close these loopholes. This is an urgent humanitarian necessity,” Trump said in a statement.
FILE – Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller arrives for a meeting with the president on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 19, 2018.
Critics counter that Trump and Stephen Miller, his aide on immigration, are using a series of heartless policies to animate hard-core political supporters.
“The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said in a statement, adding that she expected a federal judge would strike down the new rule.
Pediatricians have said children may suffer numerous negative physical and emotional symptoms from detention, even if only brief. The American Psychoanalytic Association on Wednesday branded the Trump policies as “psychological warfare.”
‘Cruel’ policies
“It has become clear that the current administration uses cruel language, policies and abuse with the objective of deterring immigrants and asylum-seekers,” said Lee Jaffe, president of APsaA.
Officials said the families would receive mental health treatment and other services in facilities that are held to high standards of care.
“They’re campus-like settings with educational, medical, dining and separate, private living facilities,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told Fox News.
Robyn Barnard, an attorney for the nonprofit organization Human Rights First, challenged that characterization, saying that just because a facility is in a pastoral setting does not make it more humane.
“A gilded cage is still a cage,” Barnard said. “There are locks on the doors, there is no freedom of movement. It is for all intents and purposes a prison.”
Flores settlement
The latest action tears apart the Flores Settlement Agreement that had placed limits on how long children of families seeking asylum could be held in detention, enabling the U.S. government to release tens of thousands of families pending the resolution of their cases.
Trump officials had blamed Flores for the spike in immigration, especially of Central American families, saying it encouraged migrants to bring children with them so they could be released into the United States pending their court cases.
Families typically wait several months for their cases to work their way through immigration court, and the new rule would allow the DHS to keep those families at detention facilities.
The rule will be published in the Federal Register on Friday and will take effect 60 days later. The implementation deadline could slip, however, depending on the success of any court challenges.
President Donald Trump is denying reports he told the NRA chief that expanded background checks for gun buyers are “off the table,” and now says he backs such measures.
Trump spoke to reporters outside the White House Wednesday as he appears to waver back and forth on how he plans to address gun violence in the United States.
He said Wednesday he is considering ways to make background checks stronger, but warned of what he calls the “slippery slope” he believes would restrict legal gun ownership.
“I want guns in the hands of people that are mentally stable,” Trump said Wednesday. “I want them to be easily able to get a gun. But people who are insane, people who are sick, I don’t want them to be able to get a gun.”
Trump expressed strong support for more background checks after two gunmen massacred 31 people earlier this month in EL Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
FILE – National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre speaks at the NRA Annual Meeting of Members in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 27, 2019.
But he seemed to grow lukewarm toward tougher gun measures after conversations with Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, White House officials have said.
A report by The Atlantic magazine Tuesday said Trump told LaPierre that expanded background checks were “off the table.”
Trump said Wednesday, “We have a lot of background checks right now, but there are certain weaknesses. We want to fix the weaknesses.”
He has also noted that many of his supporters are strong believers in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to own guns.
Some Democrats who wholly support more gun control say they are upset with Trump’s perceived back-and-forth on background checks.
“It’s time for Republicans and President Trump to decide whose side they’re on,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said. “Are they going to stand with 90% of Americans who want universal background checks, or are they going to once again kowtow to the desires of the gun lobby?”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted that Trump’s “retreats are heartbreaking, particularly for the families of the victims of gun violence.”
FILE – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer heads to a briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 10, 2019.
White House and congressional teams from both parties have been talking about ways to strengthen gun laws. But the NRA has been a major force on Capitol Hill in opposing more regulations.
A gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart store in El Paso Aug. 3 in a shooting that appears to have targeted Mexicans. The suspect is in jail.
Hours later, another gunman shot and killed nine others in Dayton before police killed him. The motive for that attack is still unclear
Both shooters used military-style assault weapons.
The killings, along with past mass shootings and a recent spate of threatened shootings, have renewed the nationwide debate over gun control in the U.S.
The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said on Tuesday in an official notification to Congress.
The potential deal is for 66 aircraft, 75 General Electric Co engines, as well as other systems, the agency said in a statement, adding it served the interests of the United States and would help Taiwan maintain a credible defense.
China has already denounced the widely discussed sale, one of the biggest yet by the United States to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. It has warned of unspecified “countermeasures.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, a Republican, has welcomed the proposed sale of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-16 jets.
“These fighters are critical to improving Taiwan’s ability to defend its sovereign airspace, which is under increasing pressure from the People’s Republic of China,” he said in a recent statement.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Monday that President Donald Trump notified Congress of the sale last week.
Pompeo told Fox News the sale was “consistent with past U.S. policy” and that the United States was “simply following through on the commitments we’ve made to all of the parties.”
In Tapei, President Tsai Ing-wen said the sale would help Taiwan build a new air force and boost its air defense capacity.
In a post on Facebook, Tsai said she was grateful for Washington’s “continuous support for Taiwan’s national defense.”
“With strong self-defense capacity, Taiwan will certainly be more confident to ensure the cross-strait and regional peace and stability while facing security challenges,” she said.
Taiwan unveiled its largest defense spending increase in more than a decade last week, amid rising military tensions with China.
U.S. envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun says the Trump administration is ready to resume stalled negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program.
Speaking Wednesday in Seoul where he was meeting with South Korean officials, Biegun said the United States is “prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea.”
President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter earlier this month that he had received a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressing a desire “to meet and start negotiations” after the conclusion of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises, which ended Tuesday.
North Korea considers the exercises a threat to its existence, and since late last month it carried out six short-range ballistic missile tests that Kim said were in response to the drills.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday he was concerned about the latest missile tests, disagreeing with Trump, who has shrugged off their importance.
“I wish that they would not” launch the missiles, the top U.S. diplomat told CBS News.
The two latest projectiles, fired last Friday, flew 230 kilometers into the waters off North Korea, but, aimed differently, could reach South Korea as well as American troops and civilians living there.
Trump has voiced his discontent as well, not about North Korea’s missile tests, but about the costs of the military drills with Seoul.
President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, left, walk up to view North Korea from the Korean Demilitarized Zone from Observation Post Ouellette at Camp Bonifas in South Korea, Sunday, June 30, 2019.
Asked about the missile tests, Trump told reporters, “I have no problem. These are short-range missiles.”
Trump called the missiles “smaller ones.” He said earlier this month that Kim had sent him “a really beautiful letter” that included a “small apology” for conducting the missile tests.
The U.S. leader has held out hope that he can bring about Pyongyang’s denuclearization by the time his first term in the White House ends in January 2021.
Pompeo acknowledged in the CBS interview, however, that the United States and North Korea “haven’t gotten back to the table as quickly as we would have hoped” to continue the nuclear weapons talks.
Pompeo said the U.S. knew “there will be bumps along the way” in the negotiations.
“We hope Chairman Kim will come to the table and a get a better outcome” than by maintaining North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, he said.
“It will be better for the North Korean people,” Pompeo concluded. “It’ll be better for the world.”
China hopes to welcome the United States “back to the negotiating table” to discuss global efforts to limit climate change at a United Nations summit to be hosted by Chile in December, its top climate change envoy said on Tuesday.
Xie Zhenhua, China’s Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs, told journalists during a visit to a solar energy plant outside the Chilean capital Santiago that China would provide “full support to the Chilean presidency of this meeting.”
The summit was “strong proof that a multilateral negotiation process is successful, that multilateralism is working,” he said.
Asked if the U.S. approach to the threat of climate change under President Donald Trump and the U.S.-China trade dispute might affect the outcome in Santiago, Xie replied: “China and the U.S. has many differences but we do have some common grounds on climate change issues as well and we welcome them back to the negotiating table on climate change, we are very open to that.”
Trump has signaled his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord and been dismissive of regulations aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions. He has also expressed his preference for bilateral trade pacts over multilateral agreements.
In July, China pledged on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka to show “the highest possible ambition” in the fight against climate change. Experts and policy advisors say the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter could introduce new and more stringent carbon targets next year.
Xie said China would back a bid by the U.N. secretary-general and climate change envoy to persuade all countries to update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) goals to keep global warming to well below two degrees centigrade.
“The most important objective is to identify the new NDCs for the post-2020 period and link those new NDCs together with the financial support from the developed countries as promised,” Xie said. “To have that financial support in place is very important and that’s the objective we would like to achieve.”
China is a key investor in Chilean renewable energy projects and manufactured half of the solar panels at the 110MW Parque Quilapilún solar plant Xie visited with environment minister Carolina Schmidt.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen thanked the United States on Tuesdsay for approving the sale of 66 advanced F-16V fighter jets and urged rival China to respect Taiwan’s right to defend itself.
President Donald Trump announced approval of the $8 billion deal on Sunday. The sale is expected to further inflame U.S. relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
Tsai on Tuesday also applauded previous arm sales already announced by Trump’s administration, saying those reaffirmed the United States’ “long-standing commitment to helping maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
Trump’s announcement begins a period of consultation with Congress, and a formal announcement of the sale could be made as early as next month unless lawmakers object. The State Department, which would ultimately authorize the sale, declined to comment, but members of Congress from both parties welcomed the proposal.
China fiercely opposes all arms sales to Taiwan but has specifically objected to advanced fighter jets such as the F-16V, whose Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar is compatible with the F-35 stealth fighters operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines. The U.S. is also installing upgraded electronics, including AESA radars, on Taiwan’s existing fleet of 144 older F-16s.
While the U.S. cut formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to recognize Beijing, U.S. law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.
Since 2008, U.S. administrations have notified Congress of more than $24 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan, including in the past two months the sale of 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, valued at $2.2 billion. The Trump administration alone has notified Congress of $4.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.
Tsai has rejected Chinese pressure to unite Taiwan and China under a “one-country, two-systems” framework and soon after her 2016 inauguration, Beijing cut contacts with her government over her refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan is part of China.
Beijing has sought to increase Taiwan’s international isolation by reducing its diplomatic allies to just 17 and stepped up military intimidation, including by holding military exercises across the Taiwan Strait and circling the island with bombers and fighters in what are officially termed training missions.
On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing had made solemn complaints'' to the U.S. over the planned F-16V sale. Geng called on Washington tofully recognize the serious dangers of the arms sale to Taiwan” and cancel it immediately or bear the consequences.
“China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own interests according to the development of the situation,” Geng said.
Only a dozen airlines will eventually share the aviation market for major international routes, predicts Lufthansa’s CEO, while a possible future economic crisis could “accelerate” a consolidation in air travel.
“The sector is evolving towards a dozen companies operating worldwide” on major international routes, in addition to smaller national or regional airlines, Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr told reporters late Monday.
Without naming them, Spohr forecast there would be “three in the United States, three in China, three in the Gulf and three in Europe”.
The Lufthansa chief executive warned that any future economic crisis could hit European airlines particularly hard, but predicted a downturn could “accelerate” mergers and acquisitions.
“If there is one positive aspect to the flattening of the global economy, and certainly also the worsening figures for all airlines — unfortunately also for us — it is that the consolidation process will tend to accelerate,” Spohr added.
The recent bankruptcies of German low-cost airlines Air Berlin and Germania have enabled Lufthansa to buy back flight routes and aircraft.
The airline industry is “much more cyclical” and at the mercy of economic developments than others, Spohr said, with the sector suffering from international trade tensions.
Lufthansa wants to “and will play an active role” in any future consolidation in the sector, said the airline boss, whose company’s net profit dropped by 70 percent in the second quarter.
Spohr said Lufthansa faced strong competition from low-cost airlines in a “unique price war”, however “we will not be driven out of our domestic market” by low-cost companies like Ryanair, because the German airline “has the financial strength to resist” competition.
An unmanned Indian space probe successfully entered lunar orbit Tuesday, passing a crucial step towards a historic milestone for the country’s fledgling space program.
The arrival of the $141 million Chandrayaan-2 probe comes nearly a month after it was launched into space aboard India’s powerful Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark Three rocket. The probe will orbit the moon for two weeks before its Vikram lander — named after Vikram Sarabhai, the scientist regarded as the “father” of India’s space program — will undock from the mothership and land on the moon’s South Pole. It will then release a small rover dubbed Pragyan that will roam for 14 days, mapping the moon’s surface, conducting experiments to search for signs of water and assessing its topography and geology.
If the planned September 7 landing is successful, India will join the United States, Russia and China as the only nations to achieve a soft landing of a spacecraft on the moon. It will also become the first nation to attempt a controlled landing on the moon’s South Pole.
Although India was a relative latecomer to the space race, it has developed a reputation for conducting its space explorations at a fraction of the cost spent by countries like the United States. It first placed an unmanned spacecraft in lunar orbit in 2008, which helped confirm the presence of water on the lunar surface.
Among other goalposts India has set in the coming years is to put a space station in orbit, an astronaut in space by 2022, a robotic mission to Mars and a mission to explore the sun.
New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that citizenship appears to narrow the economic gap between the foreign-born and native-born in the United States.
The 2018 figures released Monday offer a view of immigrants’ education, wealth, and the jobs they work in. They also look at differences between naturalized immigrants and those who aren’t citizens.
Their release come as the U.S. is engaged in one of the fiercest debates in decades about the role of immigration.
Stopping the flow of immigrants into the U.S. has been a priority of the Trump administration, which has proposed denying green cards to immigrants who use Medicaid and fought to put a citizenship question on the decennial Census questionnaire.
Monday’s figures show naturalized immigrants had a slightly smaller median income than the native-born.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday was forced to postpone a conference it organized in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Palestinian officials and factions called for a boycott and threatened to organize protests.
The Palestinians cut all ties with the U.S. after it recognized disputed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017, and view the Trump administration as unfairly biased following a series of actions seen as hostile to their aspirations for an independent state.
The embassy had organized a conference this week to bring together alumni of U.S. educational and cultural programs, including dozens of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who received permission from Israel to attend. The territory has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power there in 2007.
The Palestinian leadership viewed the conference as an attempt to circumvent its boycott of the U.S. administration.
“We are aware of recent statements regarding a planned event for alumni of U.S. educational and cultural programs,” the U.S. Embassy said. “In order to avoid the Palestinian participants being put in a difficult situation, we have decided to postpone the event for now.”
It said this and other events “are designed to create opportunities for exchange and dialogue between Americans and Palestinians at the grassroots level.”
“This event in particular is intended to give alumni of all ages and backgrounds from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza an opportunity to network with each other and to engage in leadership and capacity building activities,” it said.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for their future state. The Trump administration is at work on a long-awaited peace plan, but has not endorsed a two-state solution to the conflict. The Palestinians have already dismissed the plan, saying it is certain to be slanted toward Israel.
Representatives of several Palestinian factions held a press conference Monday at the hotel where the meeting was to have taken place.
Spokesman Isam Baker told The Associated Press that the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group, had reached out to the hotel management and the invitees asking them to boycott the meeting.
“Most of the invitees and the hotel administration agreed with us that the invitation has political implications and it is not innocent,” he said.
“The U.S. administration, which has cut off all aid to our people, shut down our office in Washington and placed huge pressure on our leadership to accept a pro-Israel political plan will not do any good for our people” he said. “Therefore, we are boycotting any activities it organizes.”
The U.S. cut more than $200 million in development aid to the Palestinians last year, gutting several long-running programs .
A statement released Sunday by the “national and Islamic forces of the Ramallah governorate” said they were determined to thwart the conference, calling it an attempt to “break the will of the Palestinian people.” It said they planned to organize a “mass popular event to prevent this activity by all available means,” calling for a sit-in and marches.
The youth wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party also called for a boycott. It vowed to “exercise all forms of legal and popular pressure to express rejection of this conference being held on occupied Palestinian land.” It also called for an “apology” from the hotel.
In Uganda, a coach’s passion for baseball is getting schools to embrace America’s favorite pastime. But a lack of government support means baseball in Uganda is heavily dependent on donations. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.
Delegates at a U.N. wildlife conference in Geneva voted Sunday to ban the practice of taking baby elephants from their natural habitat and placing them in zoos and circuses.
Forty-six countries at the UN Convention ion International Trade in Endangered Species voted to outlaw the practice, white 18 voted against it, including the United States. Nineteen abstained.
The ban proclaims entertainment venues to be “unacceptable and inappropriate destinations” for elephants.
“This decision will save countless elephants from being ripped away from their families in the wild and forces to spend their lifetimes imprisoned in substandard conditions at zoos,” the Humane Society International said Sunday. “The capture of baby elephants is horribly cruel and traumatic to both the mothers, their calves and the herds that are left behind.”
Sunday’s decision specifically targets Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
CITES says Zimbabwe has sent more than 100 baby elephants to China since 2012, traumatizing the animals who it says are beaten, kicked, and treated cruelly by their handlers. Several have died.
The U.S. has opened up secret communications with Venezuela’s socialist party boss as members of President Nicolas Maduro’s inner circle seek guarantees they won’t face retribution if they cede to growing demands to remove him, a senior administration official has told The Associated Press.
Diosdado Cabello, who is considered the most-powerful man in Venezuela after Maduro, met last month in Caracas with someone who is in close contact with the Trump administration, said the official. A second meeting is in the works but has not yet taken place.
The AP is withholding the intermediary’s name and details of the encounter with Cabello out of concern the person could suffer reprisals. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the talks, which are still preliminary.
Cabello is a major power broker inside Venezuela, who has seen his influence in the government and security forces expand as Maduro’s grip on power has weakened. But he’s also been accused by U.S. officials of being behind massive corruption, drug trafficking and even death threats against a sitting U.S. senator.
The administration official said that under no circumstances is the U.S. looking to prop up Cabello or pave the way for him to substitute Maduro. Instead, the goal of the outreach is to ratchet up pressure on the regime by contributing to the knife fight the U.S. believes is taking place behind the scenes among competing circles of power within the ruling party.
Similar contacts exist with other top Venezuelan insiders, the official said, and the U.S. is in a listening mode to hear what it would take for them to betray Maduro and support a transition plan.
Cabello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But an aide said the U.S. has been increasingly knocking on his door, desperately looking to establish contact. The aide rejected the notion Cabello was somehow betraying Maduro, saying that Cabello would only meet with Americans with the president’s permission and if it contributes to lifting sanctions he blames for crippling the oil-dependent economy. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to discuss political affairs publicly.
A person familiar with the July encounter said Cabello appeared savvy and arrived to the meeting with the U.S.-backed envoy well prepared, with a clear understanding of Venezuela’s political problems. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter.
As Venezuela’s crisis grinds on, a predictable pattern has emerged where Juan Guaido, who the U.S. and dozens of other countries recognize as Venezuela’s rightful leader, has been unable to woo the military and take power but Maduro lacks enough strength to apprehend his rival or rescue the collapsed economy amid ever-tightening U.S. sanctions. This month, the U.S. slapped a new round of sanctions that seizes all of the Maduro government’s assets in the U.S. and threatens to punish companies from third countries that continue to do business with him.
Talks sponsored by Norway between the opposition and government have been slow-going and were suspended this month by Maduro, who accused Guaido of celebrating the U.S.’ “brutal blockade.” Neither Cabello, the Venezuelan military or U.S. government are a party to those talks.
To break the stalemate, some conspirators are looking to the U.S. to devise a plan to protect government insiders who turn against Maduro from future prosecution. The U.S. has repeatedly said it would offer top socialists relief from sanctions if they take “concrete and meaningful actions” to end Maduro’s rule. In May, it quickly lifted sanctions against Maduro’s former spy chief, Gen. Manuel Cristopher Figuera, after he defected during a failed military uprising.
As head of the constitutional assembly, Cabello has the power to remove Maduro, a position that could come in handy in any negotiated transition. But to date he’s run the institution, which the U.S. considers illegitimate, as a rubber-stamping foil to the opposition-controlled congress, showing no signs of possible deception.
It’s not clear who initiated the contact with Cabello. But the U.S. official said Cabello was talking behind the back of the embattled socialist despite his almost daily displays of loyalty and frequent harangues against President Donald Trump.
An opposition politician briefed on the outreach said Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and Interior Minister Nestor Reverol are among those in indirect contact with the Americans, underscoring the degree to which Maduro is surrounded by conspirators even after an opposition-led military uprising in April was easily quashed. The politician spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the talks. The AP was unable to verify the opposition politician’s account.
Cabello, 56, has long been seen as a rival to Maduro, someone who has more pragmatic economic views and is less ideologically aligned with communist Cuba. He sat to the right of Hugo Chavez when the late socialist designated Maduro, to his left, to be his successor in his last public appearance before dying of cancer in 2013.
By all accounts Cabello was not among the high-placed officials who were in on a plot to remove Maduro in April, when Guaido and his mentor Leopoldo Lopez appeared on a bridge in eastern Caracas surrounded by a small contingent of armed troops. Since the uprising’s failure, the retired army lieutenant has seen his influence in the government and security forces expand, with the appointment of a cousin to head the army and the placement of another ally atop the feared SEBIN intelligence police.
He also remains popular with the Chavista base, having crisscrossed the country the past five years with a much-watched program on state TV that is a vehicle for pounding the opposition and U.S.
“A fraternal salute, brother President,” Cabello said in the most-recent program, where Maduro called in as a special guest. “We have no secrets, no lies here. Every time we do something we will inform the people, so that with a clear conscience they can take informed decisions and fix positions.”
The U.S. has tried to negotiate with Cabello before. In 2015, Thomas Shannon, who was then counsellor to Secretary of State John Kerry, met with Cabello in Haiti to pave the way for legislative elections that the opposition won by a landslide.
But until now, the Trump administration has shown deep scorn for Cabello, hitting him with sanctions last year for allegedly organizing drug shipments and running a major graft network that embezzled state funds and invested the stolen proceeds in Florida real estate. The U.S. also believes he discussed a plot to kill Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has called him “Venezuela’s Pablo Escobar.”
“Cabello is one of the worst of the worst inside of Venezuela,” said Fernando Cutz, a former senior national security adviser on Latin America to both President Barack Obama and Trump. “If the strategy is to try to negotiate with the mafia boss, he’s your guy. But that’s a strategy that carries some heavy risks.”
Mourners in Iceland gathered Sunday to bid a final farewell to 700-year-old Okjokull, the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change.
After about 100 people, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Environment Minister Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson, and former Irish President Mary Robinson, made a two-hour hike up the Ok volcano for the ceremony.
Children installed a memorial plaque to the glacier, now called just “Ok,” its name missing “jokull”, the Icelandic word for glacier.
People climb to the top of what once was the Okjokull glacier, in Iceland, Aug. 18, 2019.
The plaque bears the inscription “A letter to the future”, and is intended to raise awareness about the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change.
“In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it,” it reads.
The dedication, written by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, ends with the date of the ceremony and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air globally – 415 parts per million (ppm).
“We see the consequences of the climate crisis,”Jakobsdottir said. “We have no time to lose.”
A girl holds a sign that reads ‘pull the emergency brake’ as she attends a ceremony in the area which once was the Okjokull glacier, in Iceland, Aug. 18, 2019.
Jakobsdottir said she plans to make climate change a priority when Nordic leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Reykjavik on Tuesday.
Okjokull was was officially declared dead in 2014 when it was no longer thick enough to move. but now all that’s left of the glacier is a small patch of ice atop a volcano.
Glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson of the Icelandic Meteorological Office was the first to declare Okjokull dead.
When enough ice builds up, the pressure forces the whole mass to move. “That’s where the limit is between a glacier and not a glacier,” Sigurdsson explains. “It needs to be 40 to 50 meters thick to reach that pressure limit.”
Authorities in Afghanistan say the death toll has risen to more than 63 and injured to 183 in the overnight suicide bombing at a packed wedding hall in the capital, Kabul.
The victims were mostly members of the minority Shi’ite Hazara community.
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi confirmed the casualty toll in a statement issued early Sunday, saying women and children were among the victims.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the carnage, one of the worst attacks against Afghan civilians in recent years.
The Taliban denied its involvement and condemned the bombing. A spokesman for the insurgent group said “such barbaric deliberate attacks against civilians including women and children are forbidden and unjustifiable.”
Afghan police men stand guard outside the wedding hall after an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug.18, 2019.
Almost all recent bombings in the city, particularly against the Hazara community, have been claimed by Islamic State’s Afghan branch, known as Khorasan Province.
Rahimi in a statement he issued shortly after the attack said the blast occurred just before midnight on Saturday and police and ambulances quickly reached the site to transport victims to Kabul hospitals.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict in Afghanistan, where more than 1,500 were killed or wounded in July alone, according to the United Nations.
The latest Afghan violence comes as peace talks between the United States and the Taliban have come close to reaching an agreement to end the 18-year-old war.
As back to back mass shootings in the U.S. prompt more difficult debates on gun laws, researchers at University of Southern California (USC) are working on a different, perhaps less controversial method of keeping people inside buildings safe and deterring people who want to commit acts of mass violence.
Design and Behavior
Engineers and computer scientists are exploring building design and technology seeking ways to protect people. Recent innovations offer many possibilities, from placement of exits to the number of hiding spots and even walls that move. But before designs can be put in place, researchers must first observe the behavior of the building’s occupants.
How do the people inside a building respond when an active shooter is present? Will their behavior change if the building is designed in a different way? Virtual reality (VR) is the first step to answering these questions and helping engineers create a safer building according to USC assistant professor Gale Lucas, who conducts research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Computer Science Department and Institute for Creative Technologies.
“We’re interested in looking at how different building attributes affect responses to incidents of extreme violence, and that’s something that we can’t manipulate easily in the real world, but in virtual reality all of that is possible and it’s possible safe and ethically,” Lucas said.
Building design features that could make a building safer in mass shooting incidents include the number of exits and hiding places in a building or even whether glass windows are clear or frosted. Many of the features are based on recommendations from government agencies and security experts.
“There are so many recommendations out there and there’s so much money being invested on these recommendations but they’re not well tested in the real world in terms of how they play out,” said Burcin Becerik-Gerber, professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC. She and Lucas co-direct USC’s CENTIENTS, the Center for Intelligent Environments.
Virtual reality can safely and cheaply simulate real world situations. Virtual building designs can also easily be changed and adapted for different types of buildings said Becerik-Gerber.
Later this year, various building designs in a school and an office setting will be tested out in the virtual world with more than 200 real world teachers and office workers on treadmills, using VR so they can run away from the shooter in the virtual world.
Building features however may not be one size fits all. For example, frosted glass on doors to a room that may keep people safe in an active shooter situation may not be ideal during a normal school day when people want to be able to look inside a classroom to deter child predators.
“I think the answer is having more dynamic kinetic elements instead of thinking building elements as static. We’re talking about maybe frosted versus normal glass, but they can have the intelligence when the building senses the threat,” said Becerik-Gerber.
Intelligent Threat-Sensing Building
Instead of an either or, why not have a glass window that can do both said Becerik-Gerber. Artificial intelligence and sensors in a building can allow it to frost a clear window when it senses a threat.
“It could be the case where there are sensors when they pick up the noise levels. If there is a shooting, obviously there it will come with some increased noise levels and shouting and other clues. So the building can have for example, dynamic walls that lock up maybe the bad actors in the building,” suggested Becerik-Gerber.
An intelligent building can also produce digital signage that points occupants to the safest exits, away from the violence.
Researchers said having intelligent buildings can be possible not too far in the future. The technological elements needed to make a building sense danger and respond to keep its occupants safe are available. There just has to be the willingness to incorporate the elements and implement them into buildings.
Through their three-year project on building design and virtual reality, funded by the National Science Foundation, the researchers at USC aim to better understand how different design features influence people’s behavior. Once they have the data, they can present their findings to security experts and other stakeholders so one day, in the near future, better buildings with intelligence incorporated into the building’s DNA can be created to keep it’s occupants safe from acts of mass violence.
Britain will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show.
The Times said the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios.
They said up to 85% of lorries using the main channel crossings “may not be ready” for French customs, meaning disruption at ports would potentially last up to three months before the flow of traffic improves.
The government believes a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic will be likely as current plans to avoid widespread checks will prove unsustainable, the Times said.
About 4,000 people have held a rally in Moscow to demand fairness in upcoming city council elections, and solo pickets protesting the exclusion of some opposition and independent candidates are taking place at prominent monuments.
The actions Saturday have been much smaller and less heated than recent weekend protests over the issue. Two unauthorized demonstrations were previously harshly broken up by police, with more than 2,000 people detained altogether; a sanctioned demonstration last week attracted as many as 60,000 people, the largest protest in several years.
The authorized rally on Saturday was organized by the Communist Party. The solo pickets are following a law that demonstrations by a single person do not require official permission.
Aramco and Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
The oil field at Shaybah is in the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter, a sea of sand where temperatures routinely hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 degree Fahrenheit).
The site is also just a few kilometers (miles) from the border of the United Arab Emirates and some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from rebel-held territory in Yemen, demonstrating the range of the Houthis’ drones.
Sudan’s Transitional Military Council and protest leaders have signed a historic power-sharing agreement in the capital, Khartoum.
The pact opens the way for the two factions to form a joint military and civilian council that will lead Sudan for three years until elections are held for a civilian-led government.
The transition deal follows months of demonstrations that erupted in December over the high price of fuel, and eventually evolved into demands for authoritarian President Omar al-Bashir to step down.
The military forcibly removed Bashir from power in April, but the demonstrators continued with protests, calling for democracy after 30 years of Bashir’s rule.
The transitional council and the opposition leaders agreed to form the transitional government in July after three months of violent protests that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators.
Under the agreement that was formalized Saturday a prime minister is to be named Tuesday (Aug. 20) and eight days later, the cabinet ministers are to be revealed. The military will remain in charge of the country for more than a year before the civilians take over.
“I am 72 and for 30 years under Bashir, I had nothing to feel good about,” Ali Issa Abdel Momen told the French news agency AFP. “Now, thanks to God, I am starting to breathe.”
Bashir has been on the wanted list of the International Criminal Court since 2009, on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.
Thirty years ago, the Iron Curtain dividing Europe lifted.
Next week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Hungary to commemorate the anniversary of a peace protest on the border with Austria that helped pave the way for the mass flight of East German citizens to the West. The Berlin Wall was torn down three months later, and 1989 went down as an era-changing year that ended the three-decade-long Soviet occupation of the countries of Central Europe.
The commemoration on Aug. 19 will include an ecumenical service in the Lutheran church of Sopron, and is to be held near where 600 East Germans plowed through the border gates to enter the West. Hungarian authorities had announced the border would be opened symbolically later for three hours, but the crowd was too impatient to wait for freedom — and in no mood to receive it as a gift from increasingly superannuated Communist bosses.
FILE – An East German refugee shows off a newly acquired West German passport just before crossing the Hungarian border into Austria, Sept. 10, 1989.
Three years later, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his triumphalist book The End of History and the Last Man, celebrating the ascendency of Western-style liberal democracy. Humanity, he argued, was reaching “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
But history did not end in 1989.
Hungary only ‘partly free’
For some, the awkward pairing next week of Germany’s Merkel and Hungary’s authoritarian-inclined prime minister, Viktor Orban, will be symbolic of the return of history, of a new, unfolding east-west cleavage. The pair will be celebrating the rebirth of democracy, but Orban has been accused of backsliding on democracy by systematically dismantling the Western-style institutions his country has struggled to establish since the crumbling of Communism.
This year, Freedom House, a U.S.-based research group, described Hungary as only “partly free,” the first time it has withheld from a European Union member state the designation “free.” It has accused Orban’s government of having “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”
FILE – German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a news conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, Feb. 7, 2019.
Hungary’s firebrand populist, an anti-Communist liberal-turned-conservative who’s enjoying a burgeoning friendship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, has remained undeterred in shaping what he likes to call an “illiberal democracy.”His warming relationship with Putin is seen by some as an alliance between two emblematic nationalistic strongmen.
Other populist leaders in the Central European states of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have also been accused of seeking to erode democratic checks and balances, of curbing judicial independence, politicizing the civil service and seeking to expand state control over the media and civil society, prompting protests and liberal outrage at their linking of Christianity with patriotism.
Their current populist governments have been the strongest critics of the migrant policies coming out of Brussels, refusing to accept migrants under an EU burden-sharing refugee resettlement plan. They have strained and bellyached at the restrictions and strictures placed on them by EU membership and what they see as an overbearing Brussels.
Growing EU divisions
All four members of the so-called Visegrad group of nations have been labeled in some ways as “flawed” democracies by rights monitors as their governments surf a powerful wave of Central European populism that they hope will reshape the regional bloc by reducing the power of EU institutions and returning it to national governments. The drumbeat of populism has been heard in the neighboring former Communist states in the Balkans and the Baltics.
Their clashes are seen by some liberal critics as tempting geopolitical fate. “It’s hard to deny that divisions between so-called old and new [EU] member states are growing,” according to Jakub Wisniewski, a Polish political analyst and director of the Slovakia-based GlobSec Policy Institute, a research organization.
He places the political differences now between east and west as having their origins in the past. “Central Europe is still markedly different from the rest of the EU — politically, economically and, most of all, culturally,” he argues.
National electorates in Central Europe are “more conservative, and more preoccupied with health care and local corruption than melting ice-caps or #MeToo. They are also less self-assured, hence their anxieties about Muslim immigration or leftist internationalism,” he adds.
The populists of Central Europe say their critics make the mistake of equating “liberal democracy” only with versions espoused by the political left or center and that there are quite legitimate conservative and nationalist varieties, too.
Liberal pessimists lament the rise of the nationalist populism, but optimists highlight the rambunctious politics of the region, which, this year, has seen liberal gains in electoral politics.
FILE – Slovakia’s President Zuzana Caputova reviews the guard of honor at the Presidential Palace after her swearing-in ceremony in Bratislava, Slovakia, June 15, 2019.
In March, an environmental activist, Zuzana Caputova, became the first woman to be elected president of Slovakia. Her election followed massive anti-government street protests last year triggered by the slayings of an investigative reporter and his fiancee that led to the fall of Robert Fico’s conservative coalition government.
Farther south, April saw nationalists defeated in the presidential election in North Macedonia and pro-European moderates winning elections in Latvia and Lithuania. Street protests have been mounted in the Czech Republic against Andrej Babis, the prime minister, who’s been charged with fraud. They have been the largest seen since 1989.
For all of the rise of nationalist populism, pollsters and analysts say the voters of Central Europe remain firm adherents to the EU.
Populists have to be careful not to push too far on the anti-EU front. Julius Horvath, an economic professor at the Central European University told VOA earlier this year, “Populations would not like a rupture with Europe.”
Police in Portland, Oregon, are mobilizing in preparation for Saturday when far-right protesters are expected to come face-to-face with local anti-fascist counter-demonstrators.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler joined leaders of the city’s religious, police and business groups to warn groups “who plan on using Portland on August 17th as a platform to spread your hate.” Those groups are “not welcome here,” he said.
He said all of Portland’s nearly 1,000 police officers will be on duty Saturday and will be helped by the Oregon State Police and the FBI.
Saturday’s rally is organized by a member of the Proud Boys, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Expected to join them are the American Guard, Three Percenters, Oathkeepers and Daily Stormers.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Guard is a “white nationalist group,” Three Percenters and Oathkeepers are “extremist” anti-government militias, and the Daily Stormers are “neo-Nazis.”
Countering the right-wingers is Portland’s Rose City Antifa, an anti-fascist group that has called on its members to take to the streets in an opposing rally.
FILE – Antifa counter-protesters, rallying against right-wing group Patriot Prayer, light a smoke grenade in Portland, Oregon, Sept. 10, 2017.
Antifa in the United States have grown more visible recently and experts say antifa groups are not centrally organized, and their members may espouse a number of different causes, from politics to race relations to gay rights. But the principle that binds them — along with an unofficial uniform of black clothing and face masks — is the willingness to use violence to fight against white supremacists, which has opened them to criticism from both left and right.
At a June rally in Portland, masked antifa members beat up a conservative blogger named Andy Ngo. Video of the 30-second attack grabbed national attention.
The city’s leadership and residents are on edge ahead of the rallies. Many summer staples like music festivals and recreational events have been canceled. A 5K race has changed its course to avoid possible violence and most businesses in the area plan to close for the day.
Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong are calling for support from Western nations. As Mike O’Sullivan reports from Hong Kong, demonstrators took to the streets again on Friday, as several student leaders described what they called anonymous attempts at intimidation.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is “safe” and in a hospital for evaluation after his plane crashed in east Tennessee, the NASCAR television analyst and retired driver’s sister tweeted.
Earnhardt’s sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, tweeted that the driver’s wife, Amy, and 15-month-old daughter, Isla, also were on the plane along with two pilots.
“Everyone is safe and has been taken to the hospital for further evaluation,” she tweeted. “We will have no further information at this time.”
Federal Aviation Administration officials said a Cessna Citation rolled off the end of a runway and caught fire after landing at Elizabethton Municipal Airport at 3:40 p.m. Thursday. FAA officials said the preliminary indication is that two pilots and three passengers were aboard.
FILE – Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks to reporters during NASCAR auto racing pre-race activities at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla., July 6, 2018.
The National Transportation Safety Board tweeted that it’s sending two representatives to Elizabethton to begin investigating the crash.
Carter County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Thomas Gray confirmed Earnhardt was aboard but said he wasn’t one of the pilots.
Earnhardt retired as a full-time driver in 2017 and has been working as an analyst for NBC. He is part of the scheduled broadcast team for Saturday night’s Cup Series event in Bristol, Tennessee.
Deadly crashes
This incident comes 26 years after former driver and 1992 Cup champion Alan Kulwicki died in a plane crash while on his way to the spring race at Bristol from a promotional appearance in Knoxville, Tennessee. That crash at Tri-City Regional Airport in Blountville, Tennessee, killed a total of four people.
Earnhardt was part of Rick Hendrick’s racing team in 2011 when Hendrick broke a rib and a collarbone while on a small jet that lost its brakes and crash landed in an airport at Key West, Florida. Hendrick’s son, brother and twin nieces were among 10 people killed in a 2004 crash of a plane traveling to a race in Virginia.
Previous injuries
This isn’t the first fiery crash for Earnhardt. He still has a burn scar on his neck from a crash at Sonoma in 2004 during warmups for an American Le Mans Series race that left him with second-degree burns.
Earnhardt has a history of concussions that plagued him over his final years as a driver.
He won NASCAR’s most popular driver award a record 15 times with 26 career Cup victories.
The criminal history of a man suspected of barricading himself inside a Philadelphia rowhome should have prevented him from legally owning the firepower he used Wednesday to wound six police officers in a standoff that carried deep into the night, authorities said.
Maurice Hill, who authorities say had at least a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun when he opened fire on officers serving a drug warrant, has on his record multiple arrests in Philadelphia and adjacent Delaware County between 2001 and 2012, according to online records.
He has convictions for an array of crimes that include assault, perjury, fleeing and eluding, escape, and weapons offenses.
Hill, 36, served two stints in state prisons — three, counting a return for a probation violation. He was also hit with a 55-month federal prison term over a pair of convictions for being a felon in possession of firearms.
Pennsylvania prison officials said Hill served about 2-1/2 years on drug dealing charges and was paroled in 2006, and then did more than a year for aggravated assault before being released in 2013.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said Thursday that Hill’s arrest history also includes burglary, resisting arrest, taunting a police animal and reckless endangerment, although he cautioned not all resulted in convictions.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, center right, speaks during a news conference at City Hall in Philadelphia, Aug. 15, 2019.
“I think what it says is that the system had multiple contacts with this man, and the system … did things that obviously did not stop this incident,” Krasner said.
Authorities are trying to determine whether there is an outstanding warrant pending against Hill, based on a docket reference to a March 2018 probation violation, said Philadelphia-based U.S. Attorney William McSwain.
“He’s an individual who spent most of his adult life sort of bouncing in and out of the criminal justice system,” McSwain said.
Negotiations
The prospect of a return to prison was on Hill’s mind during telephone negotiations to end the nearly 8-hour standoff, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said.
Hill told him he had an extensive record and “did not want to deal with prison again,” the commissioner recounted.
Ross expressed amazement that the standoff ended with no one dead and no life-threatening injuries, despite the gunman firing over 100 rounds.
The six officers who were struck by gunfire were released from hospitals Wednesday night.
Ross said officers “had to escape through windows and doors to get [away] from a barrage of bullets.”
It “could have been far worse,” Ross said Thursday outside the Philadelphia Police Department. “This was a very dynamic situation, one that I hope we never see again.”
Hill, who has so far not been charged with crimes, came out of the home in the wee hours of Thursday after police used tear gas. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation and then placed in custody.
The tear gas prevented investigators from entering the house for much of Thursday, but members of the crime scene unit were seen moving in and out of it in the evening.
Officers trapped
While standoffs with police are not uncommon, the situation in Philadelphia drew particular attention because of how long gunfire was exchanged and the fact that the commissioner made the unusual decision to speak to the shooter directly and that two police officers were trapped during the standoff.
Those officers were safely extracted by a SWAT team, as were three people that officers had taken into custody inside the house before the shooting broke out.
Hill’s lawyer, Shaka Johnson, said Hill called him during the standoff asking for help surrendering. Johnson then called Krasner, and the two men patched in both Hill and the police commissioner, according to Krasner.
Hill told Johnson he wanted to make it out alive to see his newborn daughter and teenage son again.
On Thursday, politicians from Pennsylvania called for new gun control measures. Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters he called on state and federal lawmakers to “step up or step aside” and let cities deal with the problem themselves. He did not give specifics on what he wanted to see done.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer says the U.S. welcomes an agreement that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political leaders recently signed as part of an effort to break the deadlock in forming the government. But that “hard-line rhetoric” by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik could scuttle progress.
On Aug. 5, leaders of the country’s three most influential parties agreed on 12 key issues to resolve as a primary step toward formation of a new government. Based on that list, the leaders then agreed to finalize a deal to open a new government within 30 days, which would keep the country on track toward future NATO membership.
Matthew Palmer, U.S. State Department Director for South Central European Affairs speaks during an interview with Reuters in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Dec. 4, 2018.
Lawmakers, however, have since made little progress toward a binding agreement, as Bosnian Serb leaders are strongly opposed to membership in a western military alliance, while Bosniak and Bosnian Croat lawmakers support it.
On Tuesday, Dodik, leader of Serb-majority Republika Srpska, vowed to torpedo a number of major reforms in the country, including the formation of joint armed forces and a state court and police agency, unless a state-level government is formed soon.
“You know, I don’t think that those kinds of threats are really going to help create the kind of political climate conducive to compromise and agreement,” Palmer said in an interview with VOA’s Bosnian Service. “So I’m hopeful that president Dodik doesn’t maintain that kind of hardline rhetoric. I think it’s fundamentally unhelpful and creates a political climate in which you have winners and losers rather than the opportunity for everybody to come out with a little bit of what they want and in a position to accept that they’ve won something.”
Palmer also said he’s optimistic that the stalled deal to form a government and submit an Annual National Program (ANP) to the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels — a required step along the path toward NATO membership — can move forward.
“We think it’s a positive development that the leaders of three of the major parties were able to come together and identify compromise as the path forward on both the EU and the NATO track and on government formation,” Palmer said. “We understand in particular that both President [Željko] Komsic and President [Šefik] Dzaferovic have made clear that they would like to see an” ANP submitted to Brussels.
“We’re hopeful that the presidency can come together and agree on a path forward that that works for all.”
Dodik has said that the issue of NATO must not be on the agenda of the three-member state presidency session currently scheduled for Aug. 20, at which the formation of a state government will be discussed.
Bosnia will not hand over the ANP to Brussels. It does not say anywhere that it will. The agreement says nothing [about it],” Dodik said.
The tiny Balkan country of roughly 3.5 million residents applied for EU membership in 2016, following years of constitutional reforms and engagements with the 1995 Dayton Accords that put an end to the nearly 4-year-long Bosnian war.
NATO offered a Membership Action Plan to Bosnia in 2010 but declined to “activate” it until all conditions are met. Submitting its first ANP is a key part of that process.
Immigration raids in the U.S. led to the apprehension of more than 1,500 undocumented immigrants at job sites last year. They are among about 250,000 immigrants deported in 2018 by the Trump administration. On average about 15 employers per year face criminal charges for hiring undocumented workers. As VOA’s Brian Padden reports, advocates and opponents of tighter immigration restrictions argue that raids do little to deter illegal immigration as long as employers are not held accountable.
