Vince Gill might make people break down in tears when they listen to his vulnerable new record in which he sings about regret, marriage, faith, sexual abuse and hard choices. But then again, so did he.

When the country singer recorded his song “When My Amy Prays,” about his relationship with God through his wife Amy Grant, he choked up. His normally pristine tenor voice faltered. He decided to leave it as is.

“I don’t so much anymore feel like I want to get impressed by music as much as I want to get in it and be moved,” said the 21-time Grammy winner at his home in Nashville after finishing a recent European tour with The Eagles. “There’s a lot of life tied up in these songs and it gets somewhat emotional sometimes.”

“Okie,” out Friday, is one of his most personal and honest albums in years, full of songs that he waited a lifetime to write and record. Forty years into an unprecedented career, 62-year-old Gill has always been known for his emotionally wrought performances of songs like “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” written after the death of his brother, or heart-wrenching love songs like “Whenever You Come Around.” But “Okie” reveals a lot about Gill’s core truths, whether it’s spiritual or life lessons or wisdom he’s gained from other songwriters like Guy Clark and Merle Haggard.

“These days it’s awful hard to get a fair assessment of what truth is,” Gill said. “Because people are afraid to tell the truth sometimes because they’ll get barbecued for it, you know. And that’s no way to live. It’s no way to be.”

One of the most striking songs on the album is “Forever Changed,” about child sexual abuse. Gill doesn’t assume he knows what that is like, but he said he was inspired by an experience he had as a seventh-grade kid.

“I was on the basketball team and the basketball coach, the gym teacher called me into his office,” Gill said. “I’m sitting on his desk and the hand goes on my leg and it goes further and further up.”

Gill said he ran away and nothing further happened, but he thought about it a lot and kept trying to find the right words. “Sometimes the innocent don’t have a voice,” said Gill. “When you’re a kid and somebody is abusive to you, you don’t know how to handle it. You don’t know how to deal with it.”

He sang the song when he was rehearsing for a show years ago and a woman in his band heard it and ran off the stage crying.

“She came to me later and said, ‘How did you know that’s my story?’” Gill said.

On “What Choice Will You Make,” Gill writes from the perspective of a woman abandoned and shunned because of an unplanned pregnancy, and he asks the listener to just empathize. In a time when women’s reproductive choices are highly politicized, he just wanted to put people in her shoes when no answer seems like the right one.

“Its intent is not me telling you what you should or shouldn’t do,” he said. “I like seeing it be told in the hands of kindness, rather than the hands of judgment.”

Gill’s learned a lot about leading with kindness and his own faith from his wife, the Grammy-winning contemporary Christian music star. Gill didn’t grow up in the church, but he thinks most people assume him to be “a Bible thumper” because of his wife. But he said he’s just striving to be a good person and treat all people with respect.

Charlie Worsham is one of many young country artists that Gill has taken under his wing over the years and they wrote a song together on the album called “Black and White,” which questions the nostalgia for so-called simpler times when the country today seems so divided.

“I got to bear witness to someone with a good heart and with a sharp mind be able to put, so eloquently into three minutes, what I think a lot of people are carrying in their hearts right now,” Worsham said, “no matter what their political beliefs are.”

Even if the album feels weighty in its topics, Gill wants to lift people up with his songs.

“There’s a glimmer of hope in some of these songs,” he said. “I think if you don’t have any hope, then you’re lost.”    

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged China on Monday to “act in a humanitarian manner” to resolve differences with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Pence called on Beijing to honor its 1984 agreement with Britain, which led to Britain’s 1997 turnover of Hong Kong to China’s control, but allowed freedoms not permissible in mainland China, including the right to protest.

Pence, in an address to the Detroit Economic Club, quoted President Donald Trump as saying that “it’ll be much harder” for the U.S. to reach an accord on a new trade deal with China “if something violent happens in Hong Kong.” 

“I want to assure you, our administration will continue to urge Beijing to act in a humanitarian manner and urge China and the demonstrators in Hong Kong to resolve their differences peaceably,” Pence said.

Pence’s remarks came as Twitter, the social media company, said that 936 accounts originating in China, in “a coordinated state-backed operation,” have been attempting to undermine “the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement” in Hong Kong. 

In addition, Facebook said it had suspended numerous accounts that are tied to China’s disinformation campaign against the protesters.

Twitter and Facebook are blocked from use in China. Twitter said some of its accounts were accessed through unblocked internet addresses. “Covert, manipulative behaviors have no place on our service,” Twitter said.

Canada, EU statement

On Sunday, tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators marched peacefully through the streets of Hong Kong, the 11th weekend in a row of anti-government protests.

The Civil Human Rights Front, the driving force behind the Hong Kong protests throughout the summer, had called for a “rational, non-violent” demonstration Sunday. Protesters had previously clashed with police in the streets during other weekend protests and for two days last week at Hong Kong’s international airport, leading to the cancellation of nearly 1,000 flights.

On the eve of Sunday’s rally, Canada released a joint statement with the European Union in defense of the “fundamental right of assembly” for Hong Kong citizens.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini said, “Fundamental freedoms, including the right of peaceful assembly … must continue to be upheld.”

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa published a statement on its website, saying that Canada should “immediately stop meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

Taiwan’s offer

Meanwhile, Taiwan has offered to grant political asylum to participants in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, an offer that also has angered China.  
 
The spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Ma Xiaoguang, said Monday the offer would “cover up the crimes of a small group of violent militants’” and encourage their “audacity in harming Hong Kong” and turn Taiwan into a “haven for ducking the law.” 
 
Ma demanded Taiwan’s government “cease undermining the rule of law’” in Hong Kong, cease interfering in its affairs and not “condone criminals.”

Hong Kong residents say they worry about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” policy that has been in place since the territory’s return from British rule to China.

Demands

The protests have coalesced around five demands, including the complete withdrawal of an extradition bill, an investigation of police violence during the protests and exoneration for all those arrested in the demonstrations.

Most iterations of the demands also call for the resignation of Carrie Lam, the Beijing-backed chief executive in Hong Kong, and some form of enhanced democratic freedoms, such as universal suffrage.

Trump, whose administration is engaged in a lengthy tit-for-tat tariff war with China as the world’s two biggest economies try to negotiate a new trade pact, said last week that Chinese President Xi Jinping should personally negotiate with the demonstrators to reach an accord on the rights of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people.  
 
“If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem. I have no doubt!” Trump said on Twitter.

Turkish authorities have expelled the mayors of the three main cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, provoking protests and political condemnation. Their expulsion comes as Turkish forces are poised to launch a military operation against Syrian Kurdish militants.

The pro-Kurdish HDP mayors in Van, Mardin, and Diyarbakir, were replaced by state-appointed trustees Monday. The ruling AKP accuses the mayors of supporting the Kurdish insurgent group the PKK, an allegation the HDP denies.

The Turkish Interior Ministry said the personnel action was part of a terrorism investigation.

“For the health of the investigations, they have been temporarily removed from their posts as a precaution,” read an Interior Ministry statement.

More than 400 people were detained Monday in a nationwide operation against the outlawed PKK, which Turkey, the European Union and United States have designated as a terrorist organization.

“This is a new and clear political coup. It also constitutes a clearly hostile move against the political will of the Kurdish people,” read a joint statement by the HDP leadership.

Under emergency powers introduced after a failed coup in 2016, and a subsequent new constitution, which gave sweeping powers to the presidency, the HDP has faced a significant crackdown.

In the past three years, 88 HDP mayors have been removed from office and dozens of members of parliament jailed, including the party’s former leader, Selahattin Demirtas.

The Van, Mardin and Diyarbakir mayors were elected with more than 50% of the vote in local elections last March. Their election ended the rule of state-appointed trustees.

Protests erupted in all three cities as news spread about their expulsion. Security forces using tear gas and water cannons quickly quelled the unrest. Anger over their dismissals also led to demonstrations in other towns and cities.

Ankara strongly defended the mayors’ removals. 

“Action against municipalities that supported terrorism is inevitable in our struggle for democracy,” said Vice President Fuat Oktay.

The main opposition, CHP, was quick to condemn the dismissals. Deputy leader Sezgin Tanrikulu called the action a “coup.” Veli Agbaba, another senior party figure, equated it with fascism.

“Coups are not just made with tanks, cannons and rifles. The removal of three elected mayors in their fourth month in office and replacement with appointed caretakers is a coup against the political preferences of the people,” Tanrikulu wrote in a statement.

Condemnation extended to former close colleagues of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“The dismissal of the newly elected mayors is not right for our democracy,” tweeted former President Abdullah Gul.

While Erdogan’s former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, also criticized the mayors’ dismissal, saying the democratic will has to be respected, both Davutoglu and Gul, now politically estranged from Erdogan, are reportedly working on setting up rival political parties.

Some observers are interpreting Monday’s development as an attempt by Erdogan to reestablish his political authority after suffering a series of political blows, culminating in the loss in March of the mayorship in Istanbul, ending 15 years of rule by his AKP.

“This is a power play by Erdogan,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, “as he (Erdogan) is facing challenges of new political parties by Gul and Davutoglu, as well as other challenges in and outside Turkey.

“I expect the other HDP mayors to be removed soon, that is another 11 mayors, I think,” Bagci added.

Bagci says he thinks Erdogan needs to explain his actions. “The government says the HDP is linked to terrorism, but the courts allowed the party and these mayors to participate in the elections only a few months ago.”

The HDP is calling on all political parties to take a stand. “All political parties and society should react to this coup against the will of the people,” Garo Paylan, an HDP parliamentary deputy, said on Twitter. “If you remain silent, then the next in line could be Ankara and Istanbul.”

In the aftermath of electoral setbacks, Erdogan is increasingly courting Turkish nationalists. The AKP’s parliamentary coalition partner, the national MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, welcomed Monday’s personnel action against the mayors.

In his early years of rule, Erdogan as prime minister had courted Kurdish voters, granting several concessions on language rights and initiating a peace process with the PKK that collapsed amid mutual recrimination in 2015.

“As he (Erdogan) uttered so many times, he really doesn’t understand why Kurds are still demanding,” said sociology professor Mesut Yegen of Istanbul’s Sehir University.

“He basically thinks all their problems have been solved. He is a man that really can’t understand the basics of the Kurdish question. But Kurdish people are really furious,” Yegen added.

There had been speculation that Erdogan was considering resuming peace talks with the PKK in a bid to rejuvenate his political fortunes. Several opinion polls indicate plummeting support for his AKP, and his presidency.

Earlier this month, imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan issued a statement through his lawyers in which he called for a restart of peace talks. Erdogan did not respond to Ocalan’s call.

The firing of the mayors is being interpreted as Erdogan committing his fortunes to courting Turkish nationalists, who vehemently oppose any peaceful resolution of the decades-long conflict with the PKK.

A further escalation in the conflict against the PKK is looming. Turkish forces are poised to launch a major offensive against the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG, which Ankara accuses of being affiliated with the PKK.

The YPG is a close ally in Washington’s war against the Islamic State terror group. Earlier this month, in talks in Ankara, U.S. officials tentatively agreed to work together to address Turkish security concerns over the YPG. But many details of that cooperation remain unresolved.

Observers say the latest crackdown on the HDP indicates Erdogan remains determined to step up pressure both inside and outside Turkey on what he perceives as security threats.

Women, peace and security are on the agenda at a military conference in Ghana this week, where experts say deploying women into peacekeeping forces will make missions more effective and make civilian women feel safer in reporting abuses. 

Vida Nyekanga, a warrant officer in Ghana’s military, has been deployed for peacekeeping missions across Africa and in Lebanon. Being a woman, she says, gives her certain access to people and information her male counterparts might not have. 

Women felt more comfortable speaking to other women, she found, especially when they took part in their daily activities. 

“When we see the local women cooking, we try to join them to do the cooking,” Nyekanga said. “In the farms, we go to help them, and in the medical outreach we try to interact with them and we see them coming close, so through that we get vital information from them.”

Ghana is well known for its contributions to peacekeeping forces, and deploys large numbers of women in a field that generally has few. 

Currently, women make up 4.9 percent of global peacekeepers, but the United Nations has a target of 15 percent by 2028. 

At the first day of the Africa Endeavor 2019 conference, female military personnel from across the world gathered to discuss the roles men and women play in peacekeeping operations.

Studies show an increase in the number of female peacekeepers increases mission effectiveness and leads to a higher reporting of sexual- and gender-based violence, as well as lower levels of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Ghana Armed Forces Brigadier General Constance Edjeani-Afenu can attest to this.

“Women have specific roles to play in conflict areas where we have had cases of rape, sexual violence and stuff like that,” Edjeani-Afenu said. “We have women who, when they go on patrols, reach out to these women and they open up and are able to talk and they get help when they are supposed to get help.”

In recent years, there have been widespread allegations of peacekeepers sexually abusing civilians while stationed in African conflict zones. 

The United Nations has launched a project on improving peacekeepers’ performance and behavior, with a strong emphasis on leadership and accountability. 

A Virginia teen volunteering at the Alexandria National Cemetery three years ago noticed a rundown plot nearby where overgrown trees blocked the signed marking it as the Douglass Memorial Cemetery.
 
Sixteen-year-old Griffin Burchard says the cemetery named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass was covered in leaves and had signs of flooding. He soon got his Boy Scout troop, Troop 4077, to help restore the site.
 
They unveiled a new historic marker for the plot Thursday, timing the ceremony to coincide with the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans’ arrival in Virginia. It quotes Douglass: “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
 
Burchard led the monthslong restoration as his Eagle Scout project. Spurred by his efforts, the city got state money to determine how people are buried there.

Some schools reopened in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, on Monday in an effort to ease the unprecedented two-week lockdown in the Himalayan region, but classrooms remained virtually empty as parents were fearful of sending children out.  

“We appeal to parents to send their children wherever schools have been reopened. Security is our responsibility,” Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, Srinagar’s top administrative officer, had said.

The government had announced that classes would resume at nearly 200 elementary that were closed after Indian-controlled Kashmir was virtually shut down since it was stripped of its autonomous status and brought under New Delhi’s direct control.

Several residents, however, told reporters that with communication links still down, they preferred to keep children at home due to fears of unrest. “It is better that they first restore mobile phone networks; only then can our child go to school safely,” one parent told an Indian television network.

Some landlines have been restored in the Kashmir valley, but mobile phones and the internet are still cut off.  

Government offices reopened Monday and a smattering of traffic returned to the city’s heavily guarded streets. Some public buses are operating in rural areas and officials say they have begun to lift restrictions.  

 “It’s a step-by-step calibrated process, but the movement is certainly in the direction of further easing,” said Rohit Kansal, principal secretary in Srinagar, on Sunday.

But on the ground, the region continues to be largely shuttered. Markets are still closed and few people are venturing out of their homes amid reports of scattered protests in several parts of the city.

Authorities reimposed curbs in Srinagar on Sunday after reports of weekend clashes involving hundreds of residents and police in several neighborhoods.

Officials have given little information about the demonstrations that have taken place or the number of people who have been arrested since the strict security clampdown. India has defended the crackdown, saying it is necessary to avoid violence.

Hundreds of activists, politicians and separatist leaders are under arrest. The French news agency (AFP) has quoted an unidentified local official as saying that 4,000 people are in detention.

India’s dramatic move to end Kashmir’s autonomy has deepened tensions with its rival Pakistan, which has fiercely opposed the step in the disputed region that is split between the two but claimed by both.

New Delhi appeared to toughen its stand with Pakistan on Sunday with Defense Minister Rajnath Singh stating that there would be no talks with its rival until Pakistan clamped down on anti-India militant groups based in its territory. He also said any negotiations would only focus on Pakistani Kashmir.

India has defended its move to change Kashmir’s status saying it was necessary to integrate it with the rest of the country and end terrorism, but critics fear it could deepen resentment and anger in the region where a three-decade violent separatist insurgency has killed tens of thousands.

Kashmir has been a regional flashpoint for decades. India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, have fought wars over Kashmir since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

The U.S. on Monday gave Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei another 90 days to buy supplies it needs from U.S. companies to build its electronic products, for the moment brushing aside concerns that Huawei was a U.S. national security risk.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the Fox Business Network that the reprieve for Huawei would help U.S. customers, many of whom operate networks in rural America. Huawei spent $70 billion on component purchases in 2018, $11 billion of it from U.S. companies.

“We’re giving them a little more time to wean themselves off” sales to Huawei, Ross said.

At the same time as granting the delay in ending sales to Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, Ross added 46 Huawei affiliates to the Entity List, an economic blacklist covering restrictions on U.S. transactions with the Huawei-related ventures.

The 90-day extension on U.S. sales to Huawei extends to Nov. 19, giving it the ability to maintain existing telecommunication networks and offer software updates for electronic products it has already sold.

Ross dismissed concerns about what happens in three months, saying, “Everybody has had plenty of notice of it. There have been plenty of discussions” with President Donald Trump.

The U.S. first blocked Huawei from U.S. purchases earlier this year, part of the lengthy and so far unsuccessful trade negotiations between the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies. But Trump, after an appeal from Chinese President Xi Jinping, eased the sanctions against Huawei, allowing continued limited sales.

Huawei is still blocked from buying American parts for new products without special U.S. licenses. Ross said more than 50 companies have sought waivers to sell to Huawei, but none has been granted.

The U.S. has claimed that Huawei’s smartphones and network equipment could be used to spy on Americans, an allegation the company has rejected.

“Technically, Huawei says they’re a privately owned company, ” Ross said, “but under Chinese law, even private companies are required to cooperate with the military and with the Chinese intelligence agencies, and they’re also required not to disclose that they are doing so.”

Even as his administration granted the reprieve on Huawei transactions, Trump said Sunday, “I don’t want to do business at all, because it is a national security threat.”

The U.S. has also alleged that Huawei is linked to foreign policy risks for the U.S.

As part of the blacklist designation against Huawei, the U.S. cited a pending federal criminal case accusing Huawei of violating the U.S. prohibition against business transactions with Iran. Huawei has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “Pan-European Picnic,” an event on the border of Austria and Hungary considered to have helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Both leaders are expected to make speeches during a religious ceremony Monday in the border town of Sopron before holding bilateral talks over lunch.

Merkel on Saturday thanked Hungary for “having contributed to making the miracle of German reunification possible” by briefly opening the Iron Curtain on Aug. 19, 1989, allowing 700 refugees from Communist-ruled East Germany to cross the border into the West.

Relations between Berlin and Budapest have grown frostier in recent years amid Orban’s hard-line stance against refugees and German criticism of Hungary’s authoritarian policies.

Italy’s ruling League party would seek tax cuts in the 2020 budget by rising the country’s deficit a little bit, its economics spokesman said on Monday.

League chief Matteo Salvini pulled the plug last week on its coalition government with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, starting a potential countdown to elections, which the country may need to tackle alongside preparing its budget in the fall.

“We need to pursue a tax cut and it is obvious that a small proportion will be funded with the deficit”, League’s economics chief Claudio Borghi said in an interview with state-owned television RAI.

Thousands of protesters in Indonesia’s West Papua province have set fire to a local parliament building.

 Vice Gov. of West Papua province Mohammad Lakotani said Monday’s demonstration was sparked by accusations that security forces arrested and insulted dozens of Papuan students in the East Java province cities of Surabaya and Malang on Sunday.He said an angered mob set fire to tires and twigs in Manokwari, the provincial capital. Television footage showed orange flames and gray smoke billowing from the burning parliament building.

Several thousand protesters also staged rallies in Jayapura, the capital city of the neighboring province of Papua, where an insurgency has simmered for decades. Many in the crowd wore headbands of a separatist flag.

Violence was largely averted in Portland, Oregon, where police established concrete barriers, closed streets and bridges, and seized a multitude of weapons to preempt clashes between right-wing groups and anti-fascist counterprotesters. on Saturday. But at least 13 people were arrested and the protesters vowed to return to the West Coast city

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he has spoken with Apple Inc’s Chief Executive Tim Cook about the impact of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports as well as competition from South Korean company Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Trump said Cook “made a good case” that tariffs could hurt Apple given that Samsung’s products would not be subject to those same tariffs. Tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, including consumer electronics, are scheduled to go into effect in two stages on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15.

“I thought he made a very compelling argument, so I’m thinking about it,” Trump said.

Trump made the comments while speaking with reporters on the Tarmac at the Morristown, New Jersey, airport.

Apple was not immediately available for comment outside normal business hours.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would likely wait until after Israel’s Sept. 17 elections to release a peace plan for the region that was designed by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is the main architect of a proposed $50 billion economic development plan for the Palestinians, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon that is designed to create peace in the region. 

Thousands of people were left homeless when a fire raged through a slum in Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka.

“According to our investigation committee 1,200 shanties were damaged and out of this 750 shanties burnt totally,” said Enamur Rahman, junior minister for Disaster Management and Relief on Sunday.

The official count put the number rendered homeless at 3,000, but most media reports said at least 10,000 were left without shelter and some even put the count as high as 50,000.

Officials said four people were injured in the fire but luckily there were no fatalities since most people were away celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

As the government tries to find a more sustainable solution for those who lost their homes, it is also trying to address immediate needs.

“We are providing them with food, water, mobile toilets and electricity supply,” municipal official Shafiul Azam told The Guardian.

Fires at factories, slums and markets are common in Bangladesh.

At least 25 people were killed in March this year when fire broke out in a 22-story commercial building in Dhaka’s upscale area of Banani.

 

Secret British government documents have warned of serious disruptions across the country in the event that the U.K. leaves the European Union without a trade deal on Oct. 31, according to a report.

The Sunday Times newspaper published what it said was what the British government expects in the case of a sudden, “no-deal” Brexit. Among the most serious: “significant” disruptions to the supply of drugs and medicine, a decrease in the availability of fresh food and even potential fresh water shortages due to possible interruptions of imported water treatment chemicals.

Although the grim scenarios reportedly outlined in the government documents have long been floated by academics and economists, they’ve been repeatedly dismissed as scaremongering by Brexit proponents.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is ready to leave the EU regardless of whether he is able to renegotiate the Brexit deal struck with Brussels by his predecessor, Theresa May.

His own officials, however, have warned that with a no-deal Brexit, the sharing of law enforcement data and the health of Britain’s crucial financial services industry could be in jeopardy after Oct. 31.

The documents published by the Times also quote officials as warning that up to 85% of all trucks wouldn’t be ready for French customs at the critical English Channel crossing that day, causing lines that could stretch out for days. Some 75% of all drugs coming into Britain arrive via that crossing, the memos warned, “making them particularly vulnerable to severe delays.”

The officials foresee “critical elements” of the food supply chain being affected that would “reduce availability and choice and increase the price, which will affect vulnerable groups.”

Britain’s Cabinet Office didn’t return a message seeking comment on the documents, but Michael Gove, the British minister in charge of no-deal preparations, insisted that the files represented a “worst case scenario.”

Very “significant steps have been taken in the last 3 weeks to accelerate Brexit planning,” he said in a message posted to Twitter.

But the documents, which are titled “planning assumptions,” mention a “base scenario,” not a “worst case” one. The Times quoted an unnamed Cabinet Office source as saying the memos were simply realistic assessments of what was most likely to happen.

The opposition Labour Party, which is trying to delay Brexit and organize a government of national unity, held up the report as another sign that no-deal must be avoided.

“It seems to me is what we’ve seen is a hard-headed assessment of reality, that sets out in really stark terms what a calamitous outcome of no-deal Brexit would mean for the United Kingdom,” lawmaker Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sky News television. “The government is reckless in the way it’s been pushing forward with no-deal planning in this way.”

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the country is ready for Brexit, even without a deal to smooth the transition.

Merkel said Sunday during an open house at the chancellery in Berlin that she would “try everything in my power to find solutions” and that “I believe that it would be better to leave with an agreement than without one.”

But she added that “should it come to that we are prepared for this eventuality too.”

Last week, militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) terror group stormed into a Christian village in northern Mozambique, burning houses and forcing residents to flee their homes, local reports said.

A few days before that, militants entered another village in the same province, torching houses throughout the region.

IS has claimed responsibility for both attacks via its social media outlets.

The recent attacks in the southeast African country signals a growing presence of IS militants who have carried out similar attacks against the military and local residents in the Muslim-majority northern part of Mozambique.

“We were no longer safe in the village,” said Mariamo Assy, a resident of Ntuleni village in Cabo Delgado, who was displaced due to last week’s violence.

She told VOA that they sought refuge in a nearby village to avoid getting caught up in the militants’ onslaught.

North Mozambique

Since 2017, such attacks in northern Mozambique have increased, killing more than 200 people and wounding hundreds more, local sources said. Militants also have burned or destroyed over 1,000 homes over the past two years.

Experts say that economic grievances, which have particularly increased in recent months following tropical cyclones that have struck Mozambique, have made many young Mozambicans more prone to terrorism and criminal activities.

The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the situation in the northern part of the country, especially in the Cabo Delgado province, “has been deteriorating at a rapid pace.”

“Terrorist and organized crime groups are taking advantage of the precarious situation for their illicit trade or recruit locals who are desperate to compensate for their losses,” Cesar Guedes, the UNODC Representative in Mozambique, said in a statement in July.

Several radical militant groups have been active in Cabo Delgado in recent years. One of such group is Ansar al-Sunna, which has been responsible for dozens of terror attacks against civilians and government forces in northern Mozambique.

The group is known locally as al-Shabab and also goes by Ahlu al-Sunna and Swahili Sunna.

With suspected links to IS, little is known about Ansar al-Sunna and its political objectives.

“Usually groups such IS, Al Shabab [in Somalia] and others have a clear purpose, but in the case of Cabo Delgado, we don’t know what these militants are fighting for,” said Liazzat Bonate, a Mozambican lecturer at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago.

However, she added that ill-treatment by local authorities in northern Mozambique has led many young Muslims to pick up arms against government forces.

There is a “narrative of suffering [from government policies] among the rural population there and some groups have resorted to armed violence as a response,” Bonate told VOA.

IS expansion

After losing all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, IS seems to be shifting its strategy and focusing on local militant groups in Africa and elsewhere that have pledged allegiance to the terror group.

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared in a video in April, encouraging his followers to wage attacks on behalf of IS throughout the world. He referenced IS affiliates that have been active in several African countries.

“There is absolutely a link between ISIS’s territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria and the rising threats in Mozambique and elsewhere,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center in New York, using another acronym for IS.

IS “is expanding as a way of hedging its bets, seeking to build redundant and resilient networks in areas where the group previously did not maintain a presence. Mozambique is one example,” he told VOA.

Regional spillover

Violent attacks carried out by radical militant groups in Mozambique could have an impact on neighboring countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, which have their own struggles with terrorist groups in recent years, some experts warn.

“I’d be particularly concerned about IS in Mozambique making inroads or connections to jihadists in Kenya, especially as IS might look to poach fighters from al-Shabab,” said analyst Clarke.

And “if [what’s happening in northern Mozambique] is in fact jihadism, then it could take years to fight them, because these militants can get financial support from [jihadist networks] to continue the fight,” Bonate said.

U.S. stance

U.S. officials also have acknowledged that Mozambique has been facing challenges in dealing with violent extremism in the northern part of the country.

“The United States and other regional and international partners have been engaged in helping the government develop a holistic security, community engagement and communication approach,” Stephanie Amadeo, director of the Office of Southern African Affairs at the U.S. State Department, said in June during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

“The goal for this approach is to address governance and development issues and provide increased training to build the capabilities of Mozambican security forces,” she added.

But analyst Clarke says “the U.S. seems to be reducing its military footprint in Africa even as [the U.S. military is] highlighting the threat to the continent posed by jihadist groups.”

“A pivot toward great power competition will inevitably mean that the U.S. will have fewer resources to dedicate to the counter-terrorism mission in Africa,” he said.

“This could lead to a resurgence of jihadist violence in sub-Saharan Africa which will have destabilizing effects in already weak states,” Clarke added.

Authorities in Gibraltar on Sunday rejected the United States’ latest request not to release a seized Iranian supertanker, clearing the way for the vessel to set sail after being detained last month for allegedly attempting to breach European Union sanctions on Syria.

The ship was expected to leave Sunday night, according to a statement on Twitter by Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain.
 
The tanker’s release comes amid a growing confrontation between Iran and the West after President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers over a year ago.
 
Shortly after the tanker’s detention in early July near Gibraltar — a British overseas territory  — Iran seized the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero, which remains held by the Islamic Republic. Analysts had said the Iranian ship’s release by Gibraltar could see the Stena Impero go free.
 
Gibraltar’s government said Sunday it was allowing the Iranian tanker’s release because “The EU sanctions regime against Iran  — which is applicable in Gibraltar  — is much narrower than that applicable in the US.”

In a last-ditch effort to stop the release, the U.S. unsealed a warrant Friday to seize the vessel and its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of light crude oil, citing violations of U.S. sanctions as well as money laundering and terrorism statutes.
 
U.S. officials told reporters that the oil aboard the ship was worth some $130 million and that it was destined for a designated terror organization to conduct more terrorism.
 
The unsealed court documents argued that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are the ship’s true owners through a network of front companies.
 
Authorities in Gibraltar said Sunday that, unlike in the U.S., the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not designated a terrorist organization under EU, U.K. or Gibraltar law.
 
The Iranian ship was detained while sailing under a Panamanian flag with the name Grace 1. As of Sunday, it had been renamed the Adrian Darya 1 and had hoisted an Iranian flag. Workers were seen painting the new name on the side of the ship Saturday.
 
Iran has not disclosed the Adrian Darya 1’s intended destination and has denied it was ever sailing for Syria.
 
The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, said he had been assured in writing by the Iranian government that the tanker wouldn’t unload its cargo in Syria.
 
Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain, said in a series of tweets that “round-the-clock efforts to carry out port formalities and deploy the full crew onto the ship” had taken place since Gibraltar lifted the vessel’s detention Thursday.
 
The Astralship shipping agency in Gibraltar, which has been hired to handle paperwork and arrange logistics for the Adrian Darya 1, had told The Associated Press that a new crew of Indian and Ukrainian nationals were replacing the sailors on board.
 
Astralship managing director Richard De la Rosa said his company had not been informed about the vessel’s next destination.
 
Messages seeking comment from the Iranian Embassy in London were not immediately returned.
  

Restrictions continued in much of Indian-administered Kashmir on Sunday, despite India’s government saying it was gradually restoring phone lines and easing a security lockdown that’s been in place for nearly two weeks.

Soldiers manned nearly deserted streets and limited the movement of the few pedestrians who came out of their homes in Srinagar, the region’s main city.

The security crackdown and a news blackout were installed following an Aug. 5 decision by India’s Hindu nationalist government to downgrade the Muslim-majority region’s autonomy. Authorities started easing restrictions on Saturday.

But the Press Trust of India news agency said authorities re-imposed restrictions in parts of Srinagar after violence was reported on Saturday.

About 300 Kashmiris returned to Srinagar on Sunday from a Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Many of them became emotional while reuniting with their family members who met them at the city’s airport. Due to the security and communications lockdown, many travelers were unable to contact anybody in the Kashmir region.

“Neither us nor our relatives here knew if we were dead or alive,” Muhammad Ali said after returning from the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

Public transport buses started operating in some rural areas in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Saturday. Cellphone and internet services resumed in some districts, but news reports said that happened only in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region, which was not threatened by anti-India protests.

The New Delhi government’s decision on Kashmir’s status has touched off anger in the region and raised tensions with Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India, but both claim the region in its entirety. The nuclear-armed archrivals have fought two wars over the territory.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan demanded that United Nations observers be deployed to the troubled region.

“This threatens 9 million Kashmiris under siege” in Kashmir, “which should have sent alarm bells ringing across the world with UN Observers being sent there,” Khan said Sunday on Twitter.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh dismissed the idea, and said that if talks are held between New Delhi and Islamabad they would only be on Pakistani-administered Kashmir, not on India’s part of the region.

An exchange of gun and mortar fire between Indian and Pakistani forces was reported on Saturday across the militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between the countries. India said one of its soldiers was killed in the exchange.

Meanwhile, ordinary people in the region continue to feel the impact of the restrictions.

Nazir Ahmad, a retired engineer who lives in Srinagar, said Saturday that residents were still facing difficulties in buying items such as vegetables, milk and medicine. He said his father is sick and needs a constant supply of medicine, which the family is finding difficult to procure.

“There is no internet, no telephone, no communication, no transportation,” said Ahmad, describing the situation as living through a “siege.”

“We are living like animals,” he said. “So I request everybody, please come and solve this situation. Nobody is coming out” of their homes.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended the Kashmir changes as freeing the territory from separatism, and his supporters have welcomed the move. One of the constitutional revisions allows anyone to buy land in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which some Kashmiris fear could change the region’s culture and demographics. Critics have likened it to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.

 

 Jaffar Mjasiri contributed to this article.

A Tanzanian regional governor is calling for a nationwide public database listing married men as a means of protecting prospective brides from humiliation and heartbreak, he says.

Paul Makonda, the top official in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam, announced his plan earlier this week. He proposed the database after saying women had complained to him of lovers who had pretended they were single and promised marriage but then deserted them, along with children they’d fathered. The women were left without financial or other support.

“We can see from our women, they are suffering a lot,” Makonda told VOA in a phone call Wednesday. He said that at least one despondent woman had become suicidal “because somebody has been cheating [on] her. … We have to find a way to protect these women.”

The official offered this rationale for the campaign: “If the family is not going well, don’t expect the country to be in a good position. Everything starts from the family. … So it is our responsibility as a government to make sure that people are living in harmony.”

Anna Henga, executive director of the independent Legal and Human Rights Center  in Tanzania, said she considers the proposed public database “an infringement on human rights and the right to privacy.”

She pointed out that Tanzania has optional registration for marriage, whether civil or religious, monogamous or polygamous. The national Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency notes only that if a couple does register to marry, the registrar must “cause the intention to be made known locally by such means as may be prescribed. …”

“A relationship is a private matter,” Henga said. A searchable database is “not fair.”

Familiar with controversy

Makonda, appointed to his post in March 2016 by President John Magufuli, has made headlines with other controversial campaigns.

In April 2018, he ignited a social media storm by announcing a house-to-house campaign to screen for prostate cancer. The Citizen of Kenya reported that doctors sounded opposition because of logistical and privacy challenges over digital rectal examination, commonly known as the “finger” method.

In late October, Makonda urged the public to provide the names of any suspected homosexuals in Dar es Salaam, so they could be tracked down and arrested.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet joined in the public outcry against the effort, saying Tanzania’s government and all its citizens “should work to combat prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” Tanzania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that Makonda’s plan reflected his own opinion and said that the national government would “continue to respect all international agreements on human rights that have been signed and ratified.”

Homosexuality is outlawed in much of Africa, including Tanzania. Makonda said he wanted to identify LGBTQ individuals so they could be provided counseling.

Kenyan campaign

Makonda’s call for a searchable database of married individuals takes a slightly different tack from a name-and-shame campaign begun earlier this month by a governor in neighboring Kenya. In early August, Mike Sonko of Nairobi invited women there to expose politicians and other prominent individuals who had fathered children out of wedlock, Kenya news media reported.

Sonko’s communications director reported the office within days had gotten complaints about at least 16 high-profile deadbeat dads 13 members of parliament and three governors the Kenyan diaspora news site Mwakilishi reported.

 

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren framed their Democratic presidential bids in personal, faith-based terms Saturday before black millennial Christians who could help determine which candidate becomes the leading progressive alternative to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Sanders, the Vermont senator whose struggles with black voters helped cost him the 2016 nomination, told the Young Leaders Conference that his family history shapes his approach to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the rise of white nationalism in the United States.

“I’m Jewish. My family came from Poland. My father’s whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism,” Sanders said at the forum led by the Black Church PAC, a political action committee formed by prominent black pastors.

“We will go to war against white nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives,” Sanders said, promising to use the “bully pulpit” to unite instead of divide. 

Warren, a Massachusetts senator and United Methodist, quoted her favorite biblical passage, which features Jesus instructing his followers to provide for others, including the “least of these my brethren.”

“That’s about two things,” Warren said. “Every single one of us has the Lord within us. …. Secondly, the Lord does not call on us to sit back. The Lord does not just call on us to have a good heart. The Lord calls on us to act.”

Sanders and Warren are looking for ways to narrow the gap with Biden, who remains atop primary polls partly because of his standing with older black voters. Polls suggest that younger black voters, however, are far more divided in their support among the many Democratic candidates.

The senators, both of whom are white, connected their biblical interpretations to their ideas about everything from economic regulation and taxation to criminal justice and health care.

“This is a righteous fight,” Warren said, who noted that she’s taught “fifth-grade Sunday School.”

Sanders, while not quoting Scripture as did Warren, declared that “the Bible, if it is about anything, is about justice.” His campaign, he said, is “not just defeating the most dangerous president in modern American history. We are about transforming this nation to make it work for all of us.”

Warren and Sanders received warm welcomes, with notable enthusiasm for their proposals to overhaul a criminal justice system both derided as institutionally racist and to eliminate student loan debt that disproportionately affects nonwhites. 

“They obviously tailored their message in a way that would resonate with this audience,” said Chanelle Reynolds, a 29-year-old marketing specialist from Washington, D.C. “But that means they spoke to issues and concerns that we care about.”

Reynolds described her generation of black voters – churchgoing or not – as more engaged than in the past, but cautious about choosing among candidates months before the voting begins. “I’m going to take my time,” she said, adding that “the last election, with Trump, shook us up, and we’re not going to let this one go by.” 

Indeed, the youngest generation of voters typically doesn’t shape presidential primary politics, for Democrats or Republicans. 

Impact of black voters

Black voters collectively have driven the outcome of the past two competitive Democratic nominating fights. But Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 built their early delegate leads largely on the strength of older black voters in Southern states with significant African American populations. 

Those states again feature prominently in the opening months of Democrats’ 2020 primary calendar, giving black millennials in metro areas such as Atlanta, along with Nashville, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, a chance to wield their influence early in the process. 

Beyond the primaries, the eventual Democratic nominee will need younger black voters to flip critical states that helped elect Trump: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. 

“Anybody who’s not talking to every community, particularly within the African American community, you’re running a fool’s race,” said the Rev. Leah Daughtry, a pastor from Washington, D.C., and member of the Democratic National Committee, who co-moderated the Black Church PAC forum.

Three other 2020 candidates – Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Obama housing chief Julian Castro and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana – attended the conference on Friday. Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris are the most prominent black candidates in the 2020 race.

Mike McBride, a pastor who was Daughtry’s fellow moderator, stressed that the black church and the black community as a whole are not monolithic. Democrats, he said, must reach beyond the traditional Sunday services in places such as South Carolina, the first primary state with a sizable black population. 

“We need candidates to show up on our turf, not always asking us to show up on their turf,” McBride said in an interview. 

Daughtry said all Democratic candidates were invited, and she noted the absence of other leading candidates, including Biden, who is attending campaign fundraisers in the Northeast this weekend.

“He missed an opportunity,” Daughtry said, to “make his case” to younger voters “who don’t know him like older folks do.”