Guatemala is saying goodbye to a U.N. commission that has helped investigate and bring to justice corrupt politicians, public officials and businesspeople for the last 12 years.

The commission known as CICIG for its initials in Spanish is ceasing operations Tuesday after President Jimmy Morales refused to renew its mandate for another two years.

Human rights prosecutor Jordan Rodas says CICIG was a nightmare for those long accustomed to getting away with brazen malfeasance.

Addressing the commission’s chief, Rodas says “the majority of the Guatemalan population acknowledges your work and thanks you for your commitment over the years.”

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General said in a statement that CICIG “made a decisive contribution to strengthen the rule of law as well as investigation and prosecution capacities in Guatemala.”

One man lost his uncle. Another is mourning for two sons. Farmers and herders in Iraq’s Baiji say mines left by the Islamic State group turned their beloved orchards into killing fields.

The improvised explosive devices, planted by jihadists trying to fend off Iraqi troops in 2015, have also discouraged scores of families from returning to their battered farming towns around Baiji, in the north of the country.

“Daesh’s ghosts are still here. Their crimes are still there, under the earth,” said local official Abu Bashir, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

His thin face contorted into a grimace as he recalled his personal loss to those “ghosts” — both his sons.

“We came back in March 2018 and found the area booby-trapped. There was nowhere we could feel safe,” he told AFP.

“As the kids were playing, a bomb exploded under my six-year-old son who was outside the house. He was killed immediately.”

Exactly a year later, in March of this year, unexploded ordnance also killed his 18-year-old son.

He said the experience had left him too scarred to try rebuilding his home, reduced to rubble by ferocious fighting between IS and security forces.

“A man bitten by a snake will be afraid of a rope, as the saying goes. After my two boys were killed, I’m afraid of everything.” 

‘This soil means so much’

Lahib, 21, has also been touched by IS’s deadly legacy.

“We got our houses back but the remnants of war are still there. Daesh left us with booby-trapped homes,” he told AFP.

“One of these homes blew up on my uncle. I saw it with my own eyes.”

The loss pushed him to join Halo Trust, a non-profit group clearing unexploded ordnance in Baiji since June as part of the United Nations’ Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

In temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), Halo Trust mine searchers scanned a field near Baiji for an IS speciality: plastic jerrycans packed with explosives and rigged to pressure plates.

The bombs appeared to have been planted in long rows parallel to a main thoroughfare to defend against incoming Iraqi troops.

Mine searchers used excavators to map out the bombs, then mechanically defused them so Iraqi troops could take the components away.

“When we talk as friends, it’s clear no one hasn’t seen injustice and explosions with his own eyes. This is why we’re doing this job,” said Lahib.

In Baiji alone, 340 explosive hazards were removed since UNMAS operations began, with up to 25 IEDs uncovered daily.

UNMAS says the scope and complexity of IED contamination in IS-controlled areas is “unprecedented,” with tripwires painted to blend in with surroundings and even Iraqi currency turned into bombs.

The fear of undiscovered threats has kept around 100 families away from the area, said Abu Mohammad, another local official.

“People want to come back, live in their homes and get on with normal lives, but when they see that this guy got blown up or that guy was killed, they stay away,” he said.

“This soil means so much to us and we hope this kind of thing — losing our loved ones, our children, our homes — doesn’t happen on it.”

A pulverized moonscape

More than 2,500 people remain displaced from Baiji, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Returns seem to be speeding up, with some 15,000 people back in their home district since December.

For the most part, however, they are returning to an utterly destroyed moonscape.

The town of Baiji is a labyrinth of mostly-abandoned buildings, still riddled with bullet holes and craters.

Twisted rebar stick out from the ruins like crushed spider legs.

UNMAS hopes clearing IS-laden explosives will allow for Baiji’s reconstruction, but other challenges remain.

The area is controlled by various Iraqi paramilitary factions that must approve any activity, which aid workers said slows down their work.

“We get authorization from one group but it doesn’t work with the others, so we end up going to four or five different groups before we can start working,” one mine removal worker told AFP.

Iraqi parliamentarians from Sunni-majority areas, including Baiji, have also complained that the government has not allocated enough reconstruction funds to the area.

“The problem is huge but the effort to fix it is small,” said Iyad Saleh, program director at Iraqi non-profit group IHSCO.

He spoke on the sidelines of an IHSCO awareness session at a Baiji elementary school, where volunteers showed pupils pictures of IEDs strewn in the dirt and warned them of the gory consequences of touching them.

“If the rate of reconstruction is so weak and slow,” said Saleh, “it will take long years to return this area to the way it was before.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday the public should have the right to choose whether ex-presidents should face trial once a bill has passed Congress making it easier to hold referendums.

Speaking after an official said an investigation had been opened on a 2014 scandal that battered the reputation of his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, Lopez Obrador said he did not want to pursue former presidents in court.

But he urged Congress to ratify a proposal approved by the lower house in March that would change the constitution to facilitate referendums and pave the way for a so-called recall vote on his presidency halfway through his six-year term.

“And once (the constitution) has been reformed and these referendums can be held, if the people ask for it and want ex-presidents to stand trial, that right is guaranteed,” Lopez Obrador said at his regular morning news conference.

On Monday, Irma Sandoval, head of the Public Administration Ministry, said the government had filed a criminal complaint against a number of former officials over the case of a luxury house acquired by Pena Nieto’s then-wife, Angela Rivera.

In November 2014, it emerged that Rivera was purchasing the house from a government contractor, sparking accusations that Pena Nieto was caught in a conflict of interest.

Pena Nieto was later cleared by a government-led investigation that critics derided as a whitewash, and the episode did lasting damage to his authority.

Sandoval did not identify the ex-officials now under scrutiny, but when asked whether the investigation led toward Pena Nieto, she responded: “We could say that, yes.”

Lopez Obrador, who took office in December, spent years campaigning against corruption in Mexican politics. But he disappointed supporters when he said he did not want to rake through the past after winning election in July 2018.

Still, in recent weeks, expectations have risen that Lopez Obrador is serious about tackling corruption.

Prosecutors have launched investigations of two top officials from the previous administration for alleged misuse of public funds, Emilio Lozoya, former boss of state oil firm Pemex, and ex-Social Development Minister Rosario Robles.

Both have denied any wrongdoing. Still, a lawyer for Lozoya said that Pena Nieto was aware of his client’s actions at Pemex.

Pena Nieto has rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing.

Lopez Obrador says Pena Nieto is not under investigation. But he likes to stress that political corruption came from the top down in Mexico, and underlined the point again on Tuesday.

“The juiciest deals done under the aegis of public office got the nod of the presidents,” he told the news conference.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump warned China on Tuesday against delays in reaching a new trade agreement in hopes he is defeated for re-election in 2020, saying that if he wins he will be “MUCH TOUGHER” in setting the terms of a deal.

Trump, who is engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff war with Beijing, said the U.S. is “doing very well in our negotiations with China,” although dates for the next round of talks planned for later this month in Washington have not been set.

“While I am sure they would love to be dealing with a new administration so they could continue their practice of ‘ripoff USA’” with hundreds of billions of dollars in trade surpluses with the U.S., Trump said that “16 months PLUS is a long time to be hemorrhaging jobs and companies on a long-shot” until a new president could replace him in January 2021. 

….And then, think what happens to China when I win. Deal would get MUCH TOUGHER! In the meantime, China’s Supply Chain will crumble and businesses, jobs and money will be gone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2019

He blamed previous U.S. administrations for getting “taken to the cleaners” by China, which the U.S. government says last year sold $419 billion more in goods to the U.S. than it bought, although Trump claimed the figure was $600 billion.

He said the European Union treats “us VERY unfairly on Trade also. Will change!”

For all of the “geniuses” out there, many who have been in other administrations and “taken to the cleaners” by China, that want me to get together with the EU and others to go after China Trade practices remember, the EU & all treat us VERY unfairly on Trade also. Will change!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2019

On Sunday, the U.S. and China imposed new tariffs on each other’s exported goods, the latest skirmish in the lengthy and contentious trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

Trump levied 15% taxes on about $112 billion worth of Chinese exported products headed to the United States, with the tariffs likely resulting in higher prices paid by U.S. shoppers on some foods, sports equipment, sportswear, musical instruments and furniture.

Meanwhile, Beijing started adding 5% and 10% tariffs on some of the $75 billion worth of U.S. exports being sent to China that it has said it will tax in the reciprocal tariff war with Washington. Initially, China said the American export of frozen sweet corn, pork liver, marble and bicycle tires were among the more the 1,700 products it would tax. 

Police in Las Vegas say rapper Fetty Wap was arrested after allegedly assaulting three employees at a hotel.
 
Police say the 28-year-old whose real name is Willie Maxwell was arrested Sunday morning on three counts of battery.
 
Local news reports say he hit a parking attendant after getting into an argument. Police originally said Wap hit an employee but later said he “committed a battery” on three.
 
Fetty Wap performed at the MTV Video Music Awards last week. He was arrested in November 2017 and charged with DUI after policy say he was caught drag racing another car on a New York City highway.

The first thing Nima Vaez-Zadeh does before starting work during football season is check up on his fantasy football team. 

“During the season when players get hurt, you’ve got to change your lineup, add people from the waivers,” the 30-year-old says. “You do spend up to an hour during lunch or whatever kind of monitoring everything, making sure you’re picking up the right people and your lineups are set.”

Fantasy football is a competition in which participants create imaginary teams from among the actual players in the National Football League (NFL). They score points based on the actual performance of their players in the real games. Money is often part of the equation. Each fantasy football participant contributes a certain amount of money to his or her respective league, which is won by the top player or players at the end of the season. 

Washington-based Vaez-Zadeh, a key account manager in the hospitality world, is one of an estimated 12.5 million adults in the United States who will play fantasy football this year. But some estimate the number is actually much higher.

The Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association (FSGA) says there are 59 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada, and that about 39 million of those players prefer fantasy football. Overall, the fantasy sports industry is worth more than $7 billion a year, according to FSGA. 

Like many Americans, Vaez-Zadeh has been playing fantasy football for years. And he doesn’t just take part in one competition. This season, he’s participating in four different fantasy football leagues with, in order, high school friends, college friends, co-workers and relatives. 

“I enjoy it. You know my dream growing up was always to be, like, a GM [general manager] of a professional team,” he says. “This is the closest I’ll ever get to it, so it kind of makes me feel like I could put together a super team on my own and monitor that.” 

But is that fun costing U.S. employers billions of dollars?

“We’re anticipating that fantasy football is going to cost employers this year around $9 billion in lost wages being paid to workers that are otherwise being unproductive participating in fantasy football activities in the office when normally they would be working,” says Andrew Challenger, vice president of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

Although there’s no conclusive way to track employer losses, Challenger estimates workers will spend

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday his country would not hold bilateral talks with the United States.

Speaking to parliament, Rouhani said the only way negotiations would happen is if the United States lifts all of its sanctions against Iran, and that such talks would involve the other signatories of the 2015 international nuclear deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement last year after being a sharp critic of the terms agreed to between Iran and a group of nations that included Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the European Union.

Trump last week expressed openness to meeting with Rouhani, saying “there’s a really good chance” they would talk.  The U.S. leader wants any new deal to go further than the 2015 pact to include not only restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activity but also banning it from testing ballistic missiles.

Rouhani reiterated Tuesday that Iran wants European nations to commit to buying oil to circumvent U.S. sanctions or else Iran plans to further step back from the nuclear agreement.

Already Iran has gone past the stated limit on the amount of enriched uranium it can hold as well the limit on the level to which it can enrich.  It hasn’t specified what the next step would be, but potential options include enriching to an even higher level or restarting centrifuges it had agreed to stop using.

Want to experience life on Mars?  You don’t have to wait till it’s possible to travel there. Spain is much closer.  Astroland, an interplanetary agency in Spain, has replicated Martian environment in a cave in northern Spain and has opened it to visitors from around the world. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the project called Ares Station attracts visitors who like adventure.

Fighting among rival factions had ground commerce to a halt at the Port of Benghazi but three years after it re-opened trade is up. Officials say the plan is to raise enough money to fully restore and expand this hub of Libyan business. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.

Nigeria generates an estimated 32 million tons of solid waste per year, one of the highest amounts in Africa. Of that figure, plastic constitutes 2.5 million tons. 

Every day in a junk yard provides an opportunity to make ends meet for 30-year-old Awodu Suleiman.

He has been here every day for six years, scouring heaps of waste for recyclables.

When he’s done gathering and sorting plastic or aluminum, Suleiman sells what he has found to recyclers for processing.

He says the work is money for him and that is why he does it with passion. Thanks to this job, Suleiman says, he was able to marry his wife. He says the money sustains them and that life has been easy with him.

Recycle, reuse

Local recyclers, including 55-year-old Mahmud Ahmed, buys plastic and aluminum waste at a low price, then converts it into reusable products, especially pots, local burners and cookware before they are sold.

Ahmed said he has recycled aluminum for more than 25 years.

“I started this work in Lagos before I came to this place,” he said. “From what I get from the sales of my pots, I’m able to pay school fees for my seven children,” he added.

The venture is nothing more than a means of daily survival for the recyclers,  but experts say local recycling has more significance.

Millions of tons of trash

Nigeria is one of the biggest contributors of solid waste in Africa with an estimated 32 million tons each year.

Environmental engineer Maryann Atseyinku, the founder of Community Waste and Recycling, says that while small in scale, local recyclers are making an impact exchanging trash for cash.

“Almost any country in the world has problems with waste management, so Nigeria is not a particularly peculiar case. The thing is the fundamental problem we have is because of the logistics that’s in the same. Waste management is pretty expensive.”

In 2009, the government awarded contracts for the procurement and installation of recyclers in 26 Nigerian cities, including the capital, but little of what they recycle is plastic.

Solid waste management is the most pressing environmental challenge facing urban and rural areas.

Nigeria’s population is estimated to double by 2050 and that could mean more solid waste hanging around and more plastic for recycling.

Lawmakers around the country are making a renewed push to ban high-capacity magazines that gunmen have used in many recent massacres, allowing them to inflict mass casualties at a startling rate before police can stop the carnage. 

Nine states have passed laws restricting magazine capacity to 10 to 15 bullets, and the Democratic-led U.S. House plans to consider a similar ban at the federal level in the coming weeks.

In arguing for the bans, politicians, experts and gun-control advocates point out that in the time it takes for a driver to wait through a stop light, a shooter with a 100-round magazine can kill and injure dozens of people.

The man who opened fire in Dayton, Ohio, last month killed nine people and injured 27 others in only 30 seconds, in part because of the 100-bullet drum attached to his rifle. It only took 85 seconds for a gunman to empty several 30-round magazines at an IHOP in Carson City, Nevada, killing four people and injuring 14 in 2011. 

Authorities have not released any information on the accessories the gunman in Odessa, Texas, used over the weekend when he opened fire on police and bystanders with an AR-style weapon.

The deadliest example occurred in Las Vegas two years ago when a gunman possessed a dozen 100-round magazines that helped him squeeze off 10 rounds per second onto a crowd of concert-goers from his hotel room, killing 58 people. 

Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock had an arsenal of high-powered rifles along with his large-capacity magazines and bump stocks – now-banned devices that attach to a gun to make it fire bullets more rapidly. The Trump administration banned bump stocks after that massacre, but the high-capacity magazines that smoothly fed hundreds of bullets into Paddock’s rifles remain legal.

“We know from video evidence that he was firing about 10 rounds per second,” said Louis Klarevas, a research professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. “The reason he was able to do that was he had a combination of assault rifles with bump stocks and large-capacity magazines. Imagine if he only had 10-round magazines. He would only have shot 10 rounds at a time.”

The Keep Americans Safe Act will soon be debated in the House Judiciary Committee. It would prohibit the transfer, importation or possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The bill is co-sponsored by three Democratic members of Congress whose states suffered mass shooting involving these magazines: Ted Deutch of Florida, Diana DeGette of Colorado and Dina Titus of Nevada.

“There is only one purpose for a high-capacity magazine: to maximize human casualties and allow gunmen to fire more rounds of ammunition at a time without reloading,” Deutch said in a statement. “But those precious seconds it takes to reload can mean saving countless lives.”

Firearm magazines are not regulated by federal law, but some states have set limits on their sizes. They include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Washington D.C. 

More Republicans are warming up to the idea as well. Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio called for legislation after the Dayton killings that would put a limit on magazine sizes, as well as a ban on the sale of military-style weapons. 

But federal legislation is expected to face deep resistance in the Republican-led Senate and from the National Rifle Association. Critics point out that there are millions of high-capacity magazines in circulation, limiting the effectiveness of a ban.

Alan Gottlieb, with the Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation, said large-capacity magazines are important for self-defense and can help when there are multiple attackers in a home.

“Plus, it only takes one second to switch out one magazine for another,” he said. “There are lots of videos on how easy it is to do that.”

The advocacy group Everytown For Gun Safety’s study of mass shootings between 2009 and 2017 found that 58 percent involved firearms with high-capacity magazines. The study looked at shootings where the magazine capacity was known and where at least four people were killed, not including the shooter. 

The cases included the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater killings in which the gunman used a 100-round magazine drum, killing 12 and injuring 70. The gunman who killed 77 people at a youth camp and in Oslo, Norway, in 2011 purchased his 30-round magazines from the U.S., according to his manifesto. The 19-year-old man who killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year also carried high-capacity magazines, according to the official Public Safety Commission report released in January that said police recovered eight 30- and 40-round magazines from the scene.

The advocacy group Sandy Hook Promise has been running a promotion on Twitter asking people to sign a petition in support of the passage of the Keep Americans Safe Act, the measure being debated Wednesday. The tweets say the man who killed dozens at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 used a 30-round magazine and 11 children were able to escape when he stopped to reload. 

The military-style firearms used in many mass shootings in the U.S. can be fired rapidly, but “the limitation to the carnage is the capacity of the magazine,” said David Chipman, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who works as a policy adviser at Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence.

Others have argued that if the shooter only has smaller-sized magazines, they’ll just carry more guns or extra magazines.

Dr. Michael Siegel, a researcher at Boston University, conducted a study on high-capacity magazines in 2017 that found that states that limit magazine size have fewer mass shootings. 

“The only thing that limits the number of causalities is the number of rounds that are in the gun, because the only thing that stops the shooter is having to reload,” Siegel said. “Even though it might only take a few seconds to reload, it provides a few moments for people to flee or for an intervention.”

Timothee Chalamet is already one of the most acclaimed young actors working today, but he says that the prospect playing young Henry V in “The King” was terrifying.

“It was a real challenge for me,” Chalamet said Monday at the Venice International Film Festival, where the film is having its world premiere. “It was terrifying at the same time but I had an amazing time.”He was drawn to the project simply because he was out of his wheelhouse. The 23-year-old has been nominated for an Oscar, but he’s never done stunts, worked with swords or played a role quite like this. And not many people his age have.

The film is drawn from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” as well as “Henry IV” parts one and two. Co-writer and co-star Joel Edgerton, who plays Falstaff, had had a formative experience doing the plays. But they’d often cast older actors who had the perceived gravitas and experience for the part.

“There was a real aversion to using younger actors for these roles,” Chalamet said. “At the time power was wielded by unusually young people…That felt new and unique to explore.”

He said there is something “disturbed” about young people having so much power.

The film follows young Henry, or Hal, from his drunken days in Eastcheap to his early days as King of England, a position he never wanted and takes reluctantly when his father, Henry IV (Ben Mendelsohn), dies.

David Michod (“War Machine”) co-wrote the script with Edgerton and co-wrote the movie even though he never saw himself doing a “swords and horses” epic. But he was intrigued to put his own spin on the plays, adding things from history and making up, “A whole bunch of stuff.”

When asked about Robert Pattinson playing a dandy version of the Dauphin — the son of King Charles of France — and whether or not that was rooted in history, Michod said, “I honestly can’t remember what’s real, what’s made up and what’s from Shakespeare.”

But, he added, having worked with Pattinson before on “The Rover,” that it was “important to me that when he appeard in the movie, he does so with razzle dazzle.”

“The King” is playing out of competition at Venice, and is one of three Netflix films, including “The Laundromat” and “Marriage Story” making their debut on the Lido. It will open in theaters Oct. 11, before hitting Netflix on Nov. 1.

Chalamet, meanwhile, also has “Little Women” coming to theaters this Christmas, reuniting him with his “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig.

“I’m really trying to just do great projects and things that are challenging,” Chalamet said. “I feel I’m really still learning and trying to chase whatever best version of an actor I can be.”

Lebanon will declare an economic emergency and the government has begun work on a plan to accelerate public finance reforms, its prime minister said Monday.

Saad al-Hariri also said the policy of keeping stable the Lebanese pound, which is pegged to the dollar, would continue.

Cabinet ministers, politicians and lawmakers who met Monday reached consensus on an outline for a plan that would put public finances and the economy on a more sustainable path, Hariri said.

“There is agreement to announce a state of economic emergency,” Hariri said.

“This difficult economic situation requires us taking speedy measures such as finishing the budget on time and reducing the deficit,” Hariri told reporters after the meeting that President Michel Aoun also attended to address a worsening economic situation.

The government would hold more meetings to speed up the work, he said.

Lebanon is grappling with one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens at 150% of GDP and years of low economic growth.

Government finances, plagued by corruption and waste, are strained by a bloated public sector, debt-servicing costs and subsidizing the state power producer.

Hariri said accelerating reforms would avoid a crisis similar to Greece, which fell into a debt crisis nine years ago and had to adopt tough austerity measures under tight supervision by foreign creditors.

“We don’t want this to happen to us. So we are taking measures to save the country,” the prime minister said.

Credit rating

Hariri said Lebanon’s credit rating downgrade by Fitch to CCC 10 days ago was a warning to take the needed measures to shore investor confidence before it was late.

Fitch said its downgrade from B- reflected “intensifying pressure on Lebanon’s financing model and increasing risks to the government’s debt servicing capacity.”

Lebanese leaders have warned of a financial crisis without changes. The impetus to enact reforms has grown with the slowdown of deposits into Lebanon’s banking sector, a critical source of finance for the state.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi has set Oct. 23 as the date for parliamentary and local elections, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said Monday.

The poll will elect 57 national assembly and 490 local government representatives, IEC spokesman Osupile Maroba said in a statement.

The leader of the political party that wins the most seats in parliament will become president of the country.

Masisi’s Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has been in power since independence from Britain in 1966, but has seen its support erode gradually, and in 2014 lost the popular vote for the first time.

Masisi came to power in April 2018 through a well-scripted transition, succeeding Ian Khama, who had served the maximum 10 years.

The BDP’s main challenger is an opposition coalition, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), which says the BDP has been in power too long and presided over increased corruption, joblessness and inequality.

Masisi has pledged reforms to address unemployment and corruption.

The World Bank has named Botswana as one of the world’s most unequal countries; Masisi has also promised to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely and reduce poverty.

Khama had handpicked Masisi as his successor but the men fell out over Masisi’s actions, most recently the lifting of a suspension on big game hunting, and Khama quit the ruling party in May.

Since then, he has helped to bring a new opposition party, the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), into being.

A political storm is brewing between Istanbul’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as Erdogan continues to publically blast  the opposition mayor with criticism.

“The mayor of Istanbul rubs shoulders with those who have links with terrorism in Diyarbakır,” said Erdogan on Sunday at a rally of supporters in Trabzon, an electoral stronghold.

“Those who cannot take up a position against terrorism cannot be a mayor or a politician,” he added.

Erdogan was referring to Imamoglu’s visit to Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. 

The Istanbul mayor met last weekend with fellow mayors of Diyarbakir, Van and Mardin. All were removed from office last month by the Interior Ministry as part of a probe into links to the outlawed Kurdish rebel group the PKK.

Imamoglu strongly condemned the mayors’ ousting as an attack on democracy. Analysts warn Erdogan is now setting his sights on the mayors of the main opposition CHP. 

“I lot of people take this as a real threat,” said international relations lecturer, Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir, Has University. “A lot of people take what happened to the three mayors in the Southeast and members to what will happen to the cities where CHP and iyi Party [junior opposition party] party control.”

In March, opposition parties handed Erdogan his worst electoral defeat, taking control of Turkey’s main cities, including Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

The CHP’s victory in Istanbul was the biggest blow to Erdogan’s prestige, ending his 25-year domination of Turkey’s largest and richest city.

Political agenda
 
Imamoglu’s rise to political stardom was assured by successfully winning the mayorship with a landslide in June’s rerun of the vote after Erdogan contested the narrow March victory. 

Imamoglu is already using the powerful platform of the Istanbul mayorship to reset the political agenda. His high-profile Diyarbakir visit is seen as a move to consolidate support among Turkey’s Kurdish vote, which was key to his Istanbul victory. 

“Imamoglu broke tradition with his party by visiting Kurdish southeast and breaking bread with sacked mayors,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “An alliance of sorts is jelling between CHP and HDP [pro-Kurdish party], which Erdogan must reverse if he wishes to cling on to power.”

Imamoglu’s politics of consensus even made inroads into Erdogan’s religious conservative base — a significant political threat to the president. 

The Istanbul mayor is playing down Erdogan’s threats to remove him.  

“Everyone should now know their limits,” Imamoglu said Sunday.

‘Power play’

Erdogan in the last few weeks, backed by pro-government media, has been ramping up his rhetoric against the Istanbul mayor.

The recent flash flooding of Istanbul while Imamoglu was on vacation drew swift condemnation by Erdogan and the media under his control.

“This can be the start of a process which can end with taking control of Istanbul and Ankara,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci, of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“Erdogan has crossed a line [removal of Diyarbakir, Van and Mardin mayors] which I think he cannot step back. It’s a power play. “
 
Financial as well as political considerations are also seen as a factor that could influence Erdogan’s decision to move against the Istanbul mayor.

Last week, Imamoglu ended 357 million liras (about $61.5 million) of funding to foundations with close ties to Erdogan’s family and inner political circle.

Among the organizations affected by the cuts include the Turkey Youth and Education Service Foundation (TURGEV), whose board includes Erdogan’s daughter Esra. The Turkish Youth Foundation (TUGVA), has the president’s son Bilal on its high advisory board.

Observers say the impact is being felt by the companies linked to Erdogan and his AKP Party.

Several pro-government media companies have laid off hundreds of workers, following Imamoglu ending lucrative advertising deals. 

A source close to the presidency claims pressure from these powerful Istanbul companies linked to Erdogan had persuaded the president to force a rerun in the Istanbul mayoral election.

Analysts suggest Erdogan could be facing similar pressure from them to oust Imamoglu. 

“He [Erdogan] seems to be decided not taking the risk, is more of the risk,” said Ozel. “I suppose the AKP will not be able to ever win again in these cities [Istanbul and Ankara] or not for a long time. So he [Erdogan] thinks it’s a risk worth taking he will do it. “

The Istanbul mayor is working hard to build on his broad political base, while at the same time introducing popular policies like a 24-hour subway service. 

The removal of a still popular mayor, elected twice this year, is seen as potentially Erdogan’s greatest gamble, threatening both political and financial turmoil.

China has lodged a case against the United States with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over U.S. import duties, the Chinese commerce ministry said on Monday.

The United States began imposing 15% tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods on Sunday – including footwear, smart watches and flat-panel televisions – as China began imposing new duties on U.S. crude, the latest escalation in a bruising trade war.

The latest tariffs actions violated the consensus reached by leaders of China and the U.S. in a meeting in Osaka, the commerce ministry said in the statement. China will firmly defend its legal rights in accordance with WTO rules, it said.
 

Comedian and actor Kevin Hart was hospitalized Sunday with major back injuries after his car crashed into a ditch, according to highway authorities.

According to the California Highway Patrol report, Hart was riding in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda — a powerful vintage car — with two other people in the wee hours of Sunday on Mulholland Highway in Los Angeles County.

The driver, identified as Jared Black, lost control of the car and it rolled into a gully.

Black, 28, and the third passenger, internet fitness model Rebecca Broxterman, were trapped inside. Hart went for help.

“Hart and Black sustained major back injuries as a result of this collision and were transported and treated at nearby hospitals,” Highway Patrol said in the report.

Broxterman, 31, sustained no injuries.

Black, Broxterman’s fiance, was determined not to have been driving under the influence at the time of the crash.

Hart, 40, is a popular comedian and actor, known for roles in “The Secret Life of Pets” and “Jumanji.”

He was asked to host the 2019 Oscars, but pulled out when old homophobic tweets of his resurfaced.

Plans announced by Myanmar’s military to prosecute soldiers for actions at a village where security forces reportedly killed as many as 400 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority drew skepticism Monday from the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch.

The military announced over the weekend that investigations had determined that orders were not properly followed at a village in Rakhine state. It gave no dates or other details of the offense, but said a court martial is being convened to act “in accordance with the military discipline due to the weakness in following the instructions in some of the incidents at Gutabyin village.”

The Associated Press reported in January last year that evidence indicated that security forces had carried out a massacre in the village, also known as Gu Dar Pyin, and that the victims were buried in at least five mass graves. The military known in Myanmar as the Tatmadaw denied the report, and it is unknown if the new announcement is related to the same incident.

Human Rights Watch said Monday that the announcement did not indicate a change of attitude by the military, which denies carrying out abuses in a self-proclaimed counter-insurgency campaign two years ago that resulted in more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh. It has said its military operations in Rakhine were justified in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

Many human rights groups have accused Myanmar of carrying out genocide or ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. A U.N. fact-finding mission has documented major abuses in Rakhine since 2016, including widespread killings and torching of villages, and said its findings warrant prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity in a forum such as the International Criminal Court.

“The Tatmadaw’s decision to court-martial a few soldiers is hardly enough when we’re talking atrocities that included murder, torture, rape and arson that destroyed people and their communities. This court-martial looks like just another game to divert international attention by sacrificing a few low-level scapegoats,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said in an email, urging that it should be the military’s top commanders who face punishment.

“You can tell the Tatmadaw are not serious since they refuse to review their overall operation and hide these court-martial proceedings behind closed doors, out of sight of the public and media,” Robertson said. “No one should be fooled to think this action marks  any change of attitude in Myanmar’s military, which is still denying they violated the rights of the Rohingya in the first place, and seeking to evade all international accountability for their crimes.”   
 
Myanmar has rejected the legitimacy of the U.N.’s fact-finding mission and asserted it is carrying out its own investigations. The announcement of the planned prosecutions came after what it said was investigations carried out by the military’s own Court of Inquiry.
 
Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer who is one of the U.N. mission’s three international experts, last month told an informal Security Council meeting on accountability in Myanmar that they believe a domestic judicial process is not possible at this time.

She pointed to seven soldiers who were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison with hard labor for the killings of 10 Rohingya villagers but then were released after just nine months “because of the national and political pressure.” The arrests followed an investigation by two Reuters journalists who were imprisoned for their reporting on the killings.

Last year’s Associated Press report said the existence of five mass graves in the village under investigation had been confirmed through multiple interviews with more than two dozen survivors in Bangladesh refugee camps and through time-stamped cellphone videos.  It said its reporting showed a systematic slaughter of Rohingya civilians by the military, with help from Buddhist neighbors.

The story said it was unclear just how many people died, but that community leaders in the refugee camps compiled a list of 75 dead up to that point, and villagers estimated the toll could be as high as 400, based on testimony from relatives and the bodies they’ve seen in the graves and strewn about the area.

U.S. President Donald Trump is praising law enforcement in West Texas where seven people were killed when a gunman opened fire on people after fleeing a traffic stop. Trump on Sunday called the shooting rampage “a very sad situation.” But when asked what legislation might result from the shooting, he did not have a definitive answer. Despite the rising toll from mass shooting in the United States, many politicians are reluctant to call for tougher gun control laws for fear of losing the votes of gun rights supporters and campaign contributions from the gun lobby. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

Far from just playing backgammon or shuffleboard, today’s senior citizens may want to renew their gym memberships.  A new, small-sample study says that older adults benefit from the types of exercise just years ago thought too risky for their bodies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi stretches and warms up for this story.