Syrian government forces captured an important village in the northwestern province of Idlib on Sunday, drawing close to a major town in the last rebel stronghold in the country, state media and opposition activists said.

 The capture of Habeet opens up an approach to southern regions of Idlib, which is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced by fighting in other parts of the country. Habeet is also close to the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which has been held by rebels since 2012, and to parts of the highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest.
 
Syrian troops have been trying to secure the M5 highway, which has been closed since 2012. Idlib is a stronghold for al-Qaida-linked militants and other armed groups.
 
Syrian troops have been attacking Idlib and a stretch of land around it since April 30. The three-month campaign of airstrikes and shelling has killed more than 2,000 people on both sides and displaced some 400,000.
 
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said the Syrian army captured the village after fierce fighting with al-Qaida-linked militants.
 
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, described the capture of Habeet as “the most important advance” by government forces since April 30. It said the overnight fighting left 18 insurgents and nine pro-government gunmen dead.
 
Syrian troops have been pushing their way into Idlib and rebel-held northern parts of Hama province in recent weeks under the cover of intense airstrikes and shelling.
 
In Damascus, meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad attended Eid al-Adha prayers in a mosque.
 
State news agency SANA showed Assad attending the Muslim prayers early Sunday at Afram Mosque along with top officials, including the prime minister and the country’s grand mufti.
 
Over the past few years, Assad’s forces have been able to capture most areas controlled by rebels in other parts of the country, including the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
 
Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to Christians and Jews) to sacrifice his son.

 

 

Tanzania was in mourning Sunday, preparing to bury 69 people who perished when a crashed fuel tanker exploded as crowds rushed to syphon off leaking petrol.

President John Magufuli declared a period of mourning through Monday following the deadly blast near the town of Morogoro, west of Dar es Salaam.

He will be represented at the funerals by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, an official statement said.

“We’re currently mourning the loss of 69 people, the last of whom died while being transferred by helicopter to the national hospital in Dar es Salaam,” Majaliwa told residents in comments broadcast on Tanzanian television.

The number of injured stood at 66, he said.

The burials will start Sunday afternoon, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Jenista Mhagama announced during the morning after relatives identified the dead.

“The preparations for the burials have been completed. Individual graves have been dug and the coffins are ready,” Mhagama said, adding that experts would be available to offer psychological counselling to the victims’ relatives.

DNA tests would be carried out on bodies that were no longer recognizable, Mhagama said, adding that families could take the remains of their loved ones and organize their own burials if they preferred.

In the latest in a series of similar disasters in Africa, 39 seriously hurt patients had been taken to hospital in Dar es Salaam while 17 others were being treated in Morogoro, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the economic capital of Tanzania.

Footage from the scene showed the truck engulfed in flames and huge clouds of black smoke, with charred bodies. The burnt-out remains of motorcycle taxis lie scattered on the ground among scorched trees.

A video posted on social media showed dozens of people carrying yellow jerricans around the truck.

‘No-one wanted to listen’

“We arrived at the scene with two neighbors just after the truck was overturned. While some good Samaritans were trying to get the driver and the other two people out of the truck, others were jostling each other, equipped with jerricans, to collect petrol,” teacher January Michael told AFP.

“At the same time, someone was trying to pull the battery out of the vehicle. We warned that the truck could explode at any moment but no one wanted to listen, so we went on our way, but we had barely turned on our heels when we heard the explosion.”

President Magufuli called Saturday for people to stop the dangerous practice of stealing fuel in such a way, a common event in many poor parts of Africa.

He issued a statement saying he was “very shocked” by the looting of fuel from damaged vehicles.

“There are vehicles that carry dangerous fuel oil, as in this case in Morogoro, there are others that carry toxic chemicals or explosives, let’s stop this practice, please,” Magufuli said.

Last month, 45 people were killed and more than 100 injured in central Nigeria when a petrol tanker crashed and then exploded as people tried to take the fuel.

Among the deadliest such disasters, 292 people lost their lives in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in July 2010, and in September 2015 at least 203 people died the South Sudan town of Maridi.

 

 

Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir said that they eased restrictions Sunday in most parts of Srinagar, the main city, ahead of an Islamic festival following India’s decision to strip the region of its constitutional autonomy.

Magistrate Shahid Choudhary in a tweet said that more than 250 ATMs have been made functional and bank branches opened for people to withdraw money ahead of Monday’s Eid al-Adha festival.

There was no immediate independent confirmation of reports by authorities that people were visiting shopping areas for festival purchases because all communications and the internet remain cut off for a seventh day.

Authorities appear to be acting with utmost caution because of a fear of a backlash from residents who have been forced to stay indoors since last Monday.

India’s main opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said there are reports of violence and “people dying” in the region. Talking to reporters in New Delhi, Gandhi said “things are going very wrong there,” and called for the Indian government to make clear what is happening.

Authorities in Srinagar said there have been instances of stone pelting by protesters but no gun firing by security forces in the past six days. Television images showed movement of cars and people in some parts of Kashmir.

State-run All India Radio quoted the region’s top bureaucrat, Chief Secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, as saying that people were coming out of their homes for Eid shopping. He also said that Srinagar and other towns witnessed good road traffic Saturday.

Modi promises normalcy

On Thursday, Modi assured the people of Jammu and Kashmir that normalcy would gradually return and that the government was ensuring that the current restrictions do not dampen the Islamic festival.

New Delhi rushed tens of thousands of additional soldiers to one of the world’s most militarized regions to prevent unrest and protests after Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government revoked Kashmir’s special constitutional status and downgrading its statehood. Modi said the move was necessary to free the region of “terrorism and separatism.”

On Saturday, Pakistan said that with the support of China, it will take up India’s unilateral actions in Kashmir with the U.N. Security Council and may approach the U.N. Human Rights Commission over what it says is the “genocide” of the Kashmiri people.

Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan and is divided between the archrivals. Rebels have been fighting New Delhi’s rule for decades in the Indian-controlled portion, and most Kashmiri residents want either independence or a merger with Pakistan.

Pakistan: Move toward genocide

“When a demographic change is made through force, it’s called genocide, and you are moving toward genocide,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad after returning from Beijing.

With India moving to erase the constitutional provision that prohibited outsiders from buying property in Jammu and Kashmir state, Indians from the rest of the country can now purchase real estate and apply for government jobs there. Some fear this may lead to a demographic and cultural change in the Muslim-majority region.

Qureshi also said that while Pakistan is not planning to take any military action, it is ready to counter any potential aggression by India.

The Indian ambassador to Pakistan, Ajay Bisaria, left Islamabad on Saturday night after Pakistan retaliated against India by lowering diplomatic ties. Fourteen other Indian mission officials and their families also left Islamabad, airport official Mohammad Wasim Ahmed said.

A regional political party from Kashmir petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the government’s move to scrap the region’s special status and divide the state into two federal territories. An opposition Congress party activist has already filed a petition challenging the communications blockade and the detentions of Kashmiri leaders.

Pilgrims on the annual Hajj in Saudi Arabia threw stones Sunday at pillars representing the devil, a symbolic casting away of evil.

More than 2 million Muslims have gathered in Saudi Arabia for the annual, five-day-long pilgrimage.

Worshippers spent the night Saturday at a large encampment around the hill where Islam holds that God tested Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son Ismail. It is also where Prophet Muhammad gave his last sermon.

The end of the Hajj coincides with Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, celebrated by Muslims around the world.

Riyadh is using tens of thousands of stewards, who help marshal the crowds to prevent stampedes that have occurred in previous years’ events, such as in 2015 when about 2,300 pilgrims were killed.

The Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is required of every Muslim at least once in their lifetime, as long as they are healthy enough and have the means to do so.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Aden Sunday in support of the Yemeni government after southern separatists effectively took over the port city, fracturing the alliance that had been focused on battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

The Sunni Muslim coalition said it attacked an area that posed a “direct threat” to the Saudi-backed government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is temporarily based in Aden.

It did not specify the site, but a local official told Reuters it had targeted separatist forces surrounding the nearly empty presidential palace in the Crater district. Hadi is based in Riyadh.

“This is only the first operation and will be followed by others … the Southern Transitional Council (STC) still has a chance to withdraw,” Saudi state TV quoted it as saying.

A rival agenda

The alliance had threatened military action if the separatists did not quit government military camps they seized in the city Saturday, after four days of clashes that killed at least nine civilians, and halt fighting.

STC Vice-President Hani Ali Brik, writing in a Twitter post marking a Muslim holiday that began Sunday, said that while the Council remained committed to the coalition it would “not negotiate under duress.” It had earlier agreed to a truce.

The United Arab Emirates-backed separatists have a rival agenda to Hadi’s government over the future of Yemen, but they have been a key part of the coalition that intervened in the Arabian Peninsula nation in 2015 against the Houthis after the group ousted Hadi from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014.

The violence complicates United Nations’ efforts to end the war that has killed tens of thousands and pushed the long-impoverished country to the brink of famine.

The fighting trapped civilians in their homes with limited water supplies in Aden, the port of which handles some commercial and aid imports. Residents said clashes had ceased Saturday night.

Coalition member the UAE, which has armed and trained thousands of southern separatists, urged calm. Riyadh said it would host an emergency meeting aimed at restoring order. Hadi’s government has asked Abu Dhabi to stop backing southern forces.

Setback for coalition

The infighting is a serious setback for the coalition in its more than four-year campaign to break the grip of the Houthis, who control Sanaa and most urban centers.

The Aden clashes began Wednesday after the separatists accused an Islamist party allied to Hadi of complicity in a missile attack on a southern forces military parade in Aden.

Analysts said that Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, Sunni Muslim allies united against Shiite foe Iran, would work together to contain the crisis even though the UAE in June scaled down its military presence in Yemen as Western pressure mounted to end the war.

“The UAE and Saudi Arabia have allied with distinct Yemeni partners. … Yet to this point in the conflict, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have worked to maintain a relative detente between competing interests in the south,” Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst at International Crisis Group, told Reuters.

“That is the approach again today,” she said, but added that there was real concern that the situation could deteriorate into “a civil war within a civil war.”

The war has revived old strains between north and south Yemen, formerly separate countries that united into a single state in 1990 under slain former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Houthis’ deputy foreign minister on Saturday said that the Aden events proved Hadi’s government was unfit to rule and called for a dialogue with other main powers in Yemen to establish a federation under a “unified national framework.”

The U.N. is trying to salvage a stalled peace deal in the main port city of Hodeidah, north of Aden, to pave the way for peace talks at a time of heightened tensions after the Houthis stepped up missile and drone attacks on Saudi cities.

The Yemen conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis deny being puppets of Iran and say their revolution is against corruption.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said for weeks he has “no problem” with North Korea testing short-range missiles, insisting they are not a threat to the United States. It seems Pyongyang got the message.

North Korean state media on Sunday cited Trump’s comments, hours after rolling out what appears to be yet another new short-range missile system that threatens U.S. allies in the region.

In an article from the official Korean Central News Agency, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson blasted South Korea for criticizing its recent launches.

“Even the U.S. president made a remark which in effect recognized the self-defensive rights of a sovereign state, saying that it is a small missile test that a lot of countries do,” the spokesperson said.

Multiple missile tests

North Korea on Saturday conducted its fifth ballistic missile launch in just more than two weeks, and seventh in the past two months. In total, North Korea has unveiled three new short-range missile systems during that period, all of which appear to be designed to evade or overwhelm U.S.-South Korean missile defenses.

On Saturday, Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently offered a “small apology” for the tests and vowed to stop the launches as soon as the current round of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises end.

Trump says Kim sent the apology in a personal letter that blasted the U.S.-South Korean military drills.

“It was a long letter, much of it complaining about the ridiculous and expensive exercises,” Trump said in the tweet. “It was also a small apology for testing the short range missiles, and that this testing would stop when the exercises end.”

The tests violate United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from any ballistic missile activity. But Trump, who wants to continue talks with North Korea, has shrugged off the tests.

“Kim knows that he can continue to launch these short-range missiles without consequences. He can continue to provoke, so long as he keeps emitting signals of hope to President Trump directly,” said Soo Kim, a former CIA analyst who now works at the U.S.-based Rand Corp.

“Kim’s plodding along faithfully according to plan. He’s dialing up the optempo (operational tempo) of his engagement with President Trump — remaining on our radar through these launches and friendly missives — to put the U.S. in a tighter bind,” she adds.

Military drills

The U.S. and South Korea began their latest round of military exercises Monday. They are scheduled to last until Aug. 20.

The drills have been scaled back to help pave the way for talks with North Korea, which views the exercises as preparation to invade. But that has satisfied neither Trump nor Kim, who have found common ground in their dislike of the drills.

“I’ve never been a fan” of the drills, Trump said Friday. “You know why? I don’t like paying for it. We should be reimbursed for it.” Trump added that he only approved the latest exercise because it helped prepare for “a turnover of various areas to South Korea.”

“I like that because it should happen,” Trump added.

The latest U.S.-South Korean drills are aimed in part at testing South Korea’s ability to retake operational control from the U.S. during wartime. The U.S. has about 28,500 troops in South Korea.

Trump has for decades complained that U.S. allies such as South Korea, Japan and others are not paying enough for U.S. military protection. North Korea appears to be exploiting those complaints in an attempt to split the alliance between Washington and Seoul.

“Breaking the alliance is exactly what Pyongyang wants, which is why it makes all this noise and tries to blame U.S.-South Korea drills for its lack of cooperation,” says Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“Pyongyang looks to exploit Trump’s preoccupation with alliance cost-sharing as well as South Korea’s deteriorating relations with Japan. Kim appeals to Trump directly about the exercises, trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul,” Easley said.

Cost-sharing dispute

Trump earlier this week announced in a tweet that South Korea had agreed to pay “substantially” more for the U.S. troop presence. South Korea refuted that allegation, saying cost-sharing negotiations with the United States have not yet begun.

The administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in has responded cautiously to Trump’s comments and shrugged off North Korea’s latest provocations. Moon has made talks with North Korea a top priority.

But Moon now finds himself in an increasingly awkward position, with both Trump and Kim openly playing off each other in order to bash Seoul.

Meanwhile, Trump has given few signs that he will loosen the pressure on South Korea.

At a fundraiser in New York Friday, Trump made fun of Moon’s accent “while describing how he caved in to Trump’s tough negotiations,” according to a report in the New York Post.

“So why are we paying for their defense,” Trump said, according to the report. “They’ve got to pay.”

Five years ago, the town of Ferguson, Missouri, made international headlines when a local white officer shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, triggering waves of riots. Masood Farivar recently visited to see what has changed in a town that has become a flashpoint for America’s struggles with poverty and race.

In 1988, sensing a need, religious leaders began delivering meals to people with HIV and AIDS who couldn’t leave their homes. From that simple idea, the nonprofit Food and Friends has grown into a Washington institution, bringing thousands of meals a day to the sick and those in need. VOA’s Unshin Lee reports.

The second season of an AMC-TV drama series follows the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and a number of bizarre deaths haunting a community.

“The Terror: Infamy” is set to premiere Monday and stars Derek Mio and original “Star Trek” cast member George Takei as they navigate the forced internment and supernatural spirits that surround them.

It’s the first television series depicting the internment of Japanese Americans on such a massive scale and camps were recreated with detail to illustrate the conditions and racism internees faced.

The show’s new season is part of the Ridley Scott-produced anthology series.

Mio, who is fourth-generation Japanese American and plays Chester Nakayama, said he liked the idea of adding a supernatural element to a historical event such as Japanese American internment. He says he had relatives who lived on Terminal Island outside of Los Angeles and were taken to camps.

Residents there were some of the first forced into internment camps after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

“If you add the supernatural element, it’s a little more accessible and now it’s like a mainstream subject and it can open up more discussion about what really happened and what’s going on right now,” Mio said.

It was a role personal to him as well. “It’s not just another kind of acting job for me,” Mio said. “I really do feel a responsibility to tell this story that my ancestors actually went through.”

From 1942 to 1945, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico and other sites.

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forced Japanese Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to leave the West Coast and other areas for the camps surrounded by barbed wire and military police. Half of those detainees were children.

Takei, who was interned in a camp as a child, said he was impressed with the show’s research into recreating the camp.

“The barracks reminded me again – mentally, I was able to go back to my childhood. That’s exactly the way it was,” Takei said. “So for me, it was both fulfilling to raise the awareness to this extent of the terror. But also to make the storytelling that much more compelling.”

The series also involves others who are connected to historic World War II events. Josef Kubota Wladyka, one of the show’s directors, had a grandfather who was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped and managed to survive.

Max Borenstein, one of the show’s executive producers who lost relatives at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, said the show’s horror genre still doesn’t compare to the horror of the internment camp.

“It was important to do the research, the lived reality that people faced,” Borenstein said. “The fact of taking people who are citizens of the country and (putting them in camps) is a great stain of our country.”

Co-creator Alexander Woo, who is Chinese American, said he believes the series is especially relevant now given the debate over immigration in the U.S. and Europe.

“The struggle that immigrants go through of embracing a country that doesn’t embrace you back is a story, unfortunately, that keeps repeating,” Woo said. “There’s going to be some people who likely didn’t know of the internment. There will be some people who had relatives in camps. We have a responsibility to be accurate.”

A cease-fire agreement has been reached to end fighting in the Libyan capital of Tripoli during the upcoming Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Libyan National Army (LNA) chief Khalifa Haftar agreed to the United Nation’s-proposed cease-fire Saturday, his spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, said at a news conference in Benghazi.

Libya’s U.N.-supported government said earlier Saturday it had accepted the proposed cease-fire for the holiday, which begins Sunday.

Militias allied with the government have been fighting since April against an LNA campaign to seize the capital.  

More than 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the World Health Organization. More than 120,000 others have been displaced.

 

Yemeni separatists have seized control of much of the city of Aden, inflicting a blow to the Saudi-led coalition that is trying to dismantle the country’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement. 
 
Yemeni security officials said Saturday that the separatists also had taken control of the presidential palace, a development confirmed by a spokesman from the Security Belt force, which is dominated by the separatists. 
 
Officials said all military camps in the southern port city also had been seized. 
 
The development complicated U.N. efforts to end the four-year war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and forced the poorest residents to the brink of famine. 
 
The latest fighting erupted Wednesday when separatists tried to break into the presidential palace after Hani Bin Braik, an ex-cabinet minister and deputy head of the so-called Southern Transitional Council, called on forces to “topple” President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi’s government.  
 
Braik accused the president and his forces of being loyal to the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the United Arab Emirates and some other countries consider a terrorist group. 
 
The internationally recognized Yemeni government has accused Braik of provocations and has called on the Saudi and UAE governments to force the separatists to stop their attacks. 
 
Aden is the seat of power for Hadi, who has been residing in Saudi Arabia since the rebels took over the capital of Sanaa in 2014. 

The U.N. refugee agency reports more than half-a-million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh have received identity documents that will give them better access to aid. 

An estimated 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living in overcrowded, squalid camps in the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.  Most of them fled there two years ago to escape persecution and violence in Myanmar.

A joint registration project by Bangladeshi authorities and the U.N. refugee agency will give identity documents to more than 500,000 of the refugees, many for the first time.  

The data on these fraud-proof, biometric cards will give national authorities and humanitarian partners a better understanding of the population and its needs.  UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic tells VOA the data collected will allow aid agencies to better help people with specific needs. 

“The point of the verification exercise, of conducting a biometric data registration is first and foremost to protect the right of the Rohingya refugees to return to their homes… It is meant to ensure far better planning and far better targeting of the assistance, of very specific types of assistance, that, for example, women would need, that children would need,” said Mahecic.

Mahecic explains the new registration cards indicate Myanmar is the country of origin.  He says that information is critical in establishing and safeguarding the right of Rohingya refugees to return to their homes in Myanmar, if and when they decide to do so.

The UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies say they do not believe conditions in Myanmar currently are safe enough for the refugees to return home.

The registration process began in June 2018.   On average, some 5,000 refugees are being registered every day.  The UNHCR says it aims to complete biometric registrations and provide identification documents for the remaining 400,000 people in Cox’s Bazar by the end of the year.

Over 2 million pilgrims are climbing Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia Saturday at the high point of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Rain, thunder and strong wind disrupted the ritual, but most pilgrims appear to have weathered the ordeal.

Rituals on Mount Arafat, where Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was reputed to have delivered his final sermon almost 1,400 years ago, is part of the final leg of the annual hajj.

Sheikh Mohammed bin-Hassan al-Sheikh delivered the ritual sermon at the Numeira Mosque on Mount Arafat, telling the crowd gathered both inside and outside the building that mercy is the single most important attribute in life.

He says that God will have mercy on those who have mercy on others and mercy should be the basis of society and all social relations, between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, mothers and other family.

Mohammed Salah Bintan, the minister in charge of the pilgrimage, told journalists that the Saudi Arabian government has spent a great deal of money to improve infrastructure used by pilgrims.

He says that major projects have been carried out during the past year, including rail transport, in order to take hajjis from one place to another and that the government is planning to spend $26 million in the future as part of (Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman’s) Vision 2030 infrastructure program.

Bassem Omar al-Qadi, a researcher at a Saudi religious institute, told state TV that the lot of pilgrims has improved considerably during the past 20 years.

He says that the main artery leading to the Numeira Mosque was a chaotic scene 20 years ago, with everyone scrambling to find a place to park, amid anger and frayed nerves, whereas today things are orderly and buses bring people on schedule as pilgrims enjoy their comfortable tent camps.

Arab media noted that Saudi authorities were allowing a number of prisoners to perform their pilgrimage this year, while they are permitted a brief furlough to attend. Mohammed, a prisoner dressed in the ritual white pilgrim’s garb described his experience.

He says that he was allowed to bring his wife with him to the pilgrimage and that he is still trying to absorb everything, since he finds it hard to believe that he is able to carry out his hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam, without any restrictions and in total tranquility. 

After pilgrims descend Mount Arafat Saturday afternoon, they will spend the night in the Valley of Muzdalifa in preparation for the conclusion of the annual hajj Sunday, with the ritual sacrifice of an animal to feed the poor.

North Korea on Saturday extended a recent streak of weapons displays by firing what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to South Korea’s military.

The fifth round of launches in less than three weeks was likely another protest at the slow pace of nuclear negotiations with the United States and the continuance of U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises that the North says are aimed at a northward invasion.

The South’s military alerted reporters to the launches hours after President Donald Trump said he received a “beautiful” three-page letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and predicted that they will have more talks to try resolving the nuclear standoff. Trump reiterated that he was not bothered by the flurry of short-range weapons Kim has launched despite the growing threat they pose to U.S. allies in the region, saying Pyongyang has never broken its pledge to pause nuclear tests.

Hours after the latest launches, Trump tweeted that Kim spent much of his letter complaining about “the ridiculous and expensive” U.S.-South Korea military exercises. He said that Kim offered him “a small apology” for the flurry of missile tests, and that he assured him they would stop when the exercises end.

Trump said that Kim wants to meet once again to “start negotiations” after the drills conclude, and that he’s looking “forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the presumed ballistic missiles were fired from the North’s east coast and flew about 400 kilometers (248 miles) on an apogee of 48 kilometers (30 miles), before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

Seoul’s presidential Blue House said the tests were likely aimed at verifying the reliability of the North’s newly developed weapons and also demonstrating displeasure over the military drills.

Hours after Saturday’s launches, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency released a statement denouncing South Korea’s recent acquisition of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets and other plans to expand its military capabilities, saying that the moves deteriorate trust between the Koreas and increase risk of war on the peninsula. The agency said the South will gain “nothing but destruction if it treats (a nation of the same race) with hostility and pursues a contest of strength.”

North Korea has unleashed a series of test firings of short-range weapons in recent weeks while saying that the joint military drills between the allies compel it to “develop, test and deploy the powerful physical means essential for national defense.”

The North did not immediately comment on the launches. South Korea has said the weapons tests don’t help efforts to stabilize peace and called for Pyongyang to uphold an inter-Korean agreement reached last year to form a joint military committee to discuss reducing military tensions.

The missile tests come amid stalled talks on the North’s nuclear program. So far, North Korea has stuck by its unilateral suspension of nuclear and long-range missile tests, which came during a diplomatic outreach to Washington last year.

Experts say Trump’s downplaying of the North’s launches allowed the country more room to intensify its testing activity while it seeks to build leverage ahead of negotiations, which could possibly resume sometime after the end of the U.S.-South Korea drills later this month.

Leif-Eric Easley, an expert at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, said North Korea is also looking to exploit Trump’s preoccupation with getting South Korea to pay more for U.S. troop deployment in the country as well as Seoul’s worsening relations with Tokyo over an escalating trade war that’s spilling over to security issues. South Korea has threatened to end a military intelligence sharing agreement with Japan in what’s seen as an attempt to pressure the United States into mediating the dispute.

“Kim appeals to Trump directly about the exercises, trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul,” Easley said. “Meanwhile, North Korean propaganda supports rising anti-Japan sentiment in South Korea, calculating that a diplomatically isolated Seoul will be more subject to Pyongyang’s coercion.”

The North described recent test-firings as a new rocket artillery system and short-range ballistic missile launches. The North’s state media said that Kim, while supervising a live-fire demonstration of newly developed, short-range ballistic missiles on Tuesday, said the launches were intended to send a warning to Washington and Seoul over their military drills.

The allies have scaled down their major military exercises since the first summit between Kim and Trump in June 2018 in Singapore created space for diplomacy. But the North insists even the downsized drills violate agreements between Kim and Trump.

The North’s recent tests have dampened the optimism that followed the third and latest meeting between Trump and Kim on June 30 at the inter-Korean border. The leaders agreed to resume working-level nuclear talks, but there have been no known meetings between the two sides since then.

In the 4½ months since U.S.-backed forces declared victory over the Islamic State terror group’s last shred of territory in Syria, there has been a steady drumbeat of doubt.

One by one, military leaders, diplomats and experts began raising concerns, aiming to convince policymakers that for all of the success in rolling back IS’s self-declared caliphate, the group was far from dead.

“This is not the end of the fight,” U.S. Special Representative for Syria Ambassador James Jeffrey warned, just days after the victory celebrations in Syria in late March.

“That will go on,” he said. “It is a different type of fight.”

A series of new reports, citing intelligence from United Nations member states, the U.S. military and other sources, now indicate it is a fight that IS is increasingly well-positioned to win.

“As long as it can gain revenue, it will remain a danger,” the Rand Corp. declared Thursday in “Return and Expand?” a report on the terror group’s finances and prospects following the collapse of its caliphate.

IS assets

The Rand report estimates IS had perhaps in excess of $400 million in assets by early 2019.

Intelligence from U.N. member states, included in another recent report, indicates even after the fall of the caliphate, IS may still have up to $300 million at its disposal.

But even if the actual figure is lower, there are no indications that efforts to defeat IS has left the terror group wanting.

“It still has certainly more than enough money to survive for quite a while,” Rand senior economist Howard Shatz, one of the authors of the Rand report, told VOA.

“It’s a cash organization. Its expenses had to match its revenues,” he said. “We haven’t seen evidence of drawing from reserves or expenses outstripping revenues.”

And despite repeated strikes targeting senior IS leaders in Syria and Iraq, the group’s infrastructure and financial leadership has remained solid.

“It is possible to lower their level of effort, to lower their competency,” Shatz said. “But if there’s any let up, they do have people who are in the organization, come up through the organization, and take over.”

“Some of those people will be better. Some of those people will be worse. But the people are there,” he said.

Estimated number of fighters

The best U.S. estimates indicate an IS pool of anywhere from 14,000 to 18,000 so-called members across Syria and Iraq, many of whom are thought to be fighters.

While many of those fighters have gone underground, others remain active, targeting key community leaders in Syria and Iraq for assassinations, and burning crops to create turmoil.

Officials with Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led military operation to counter IS, also warn the terror group has solidified in capabilities, enhancing its command and control and logistics infrastructure in Iraq.

Military and diplomatic officials say IS also has retained support in rural parts of Iraq, especially in areas extending south of Mosul all the way to Baghdad, the capital.

In Syria, where military officials describe IS as “resurgent,” the group is using large displaced persons camps, like the one at al-Hol, to its advantage.

Despite efforts by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to provide security for al-Hol, coalition officials warned the U.S. Defense Department inspector general that thousands of IS supporters have been able to spread the group’s ideology “uncontested.”

“We have been clear that there is work left to do,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson said.

“ISIS has prepared its resources to operate underground,” he said, adding that in the face of the terror groups’ resurgence, “we continue to work with allies and partners to enable stabilization efforts.”

In some ways, this is what U.S. military officials have been worried about since last year, when the Pentagon warned that despite mounting territorial losses,

In the past few months, IS has also ramped up its video messaging, showing fighters from Africa, East Asia, the Caucuses and elsewhere renewing their pledge of allegiance to al-Baghdadi.

“The so-called ISIS caliphate has been destroyed,” State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales said while briefing reporters earlier this month. “But the ISIS brand lives on around the world.”

Researchers, though, fear IS has one more card to play as the group seeks to reassert itself — its detailed record-keeping for the areas it once ruled.

“We know during the time of the caliphate, the Islamic State was recording financial details about individuals living in its territory,” said Shatz, the Rand economist.

“I don’t think that information goes away,” he said, adding when the time is right, the group knows whom to squeeze. “There are a lot of people now who are known to the Islamic State who the Islamic State could come to and try to get money from.”

A fuel tanker exploded in Tanzania on Saturday, killing 57 people and injuring 65, many of whom were siphoning petrol from the vehicle, which had crashed, state broadcaster TBC Taifa said.

The explosion occurred around 200 km (120 miles) west of the capital Dar es Salaam.

“We have been saddened by reports of an accident involving a fuel truck in Morogoro, which caught fire and burnt several people,” government spokesman Hassan Abbasi said on Twitter.

 

Thirteen people were killed and 16 were missing in eastern China Saturday in a landslide triggered by a major typhoon, which caused widespread transportation disruptions and the evacuation of more than 1 million people, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Typhoon Lekima made landfall early Saturday in the eastern province of Zhejiang with maximum winds of 187 km (116 miles) per hour, although it had weakened from its earlier designation as a “super” typhoon, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Thousands of flights were canceled in eastern China, according to the country’s aviation regulator, with most flights into and out of Shanghai’s two major airports canceled Saturday afternoon, their websites showed.

China’s weather bureau Saturday issued an orange alert, its second highest, after posting a red alert Friday, when the storm forced flight cancellations in Taiwan and shut markets and businesses on the island.

The deadly landslide occurred about 130 km north of the coastal city of Wenzhou, when a natural dam collapsed in an area deluged with 160 millimeters (6.3 inches) of rain in three hours, CCTV reported.

The storm was moving northward at 15 kph and was gradually weakening, Xinhua reported, citing the weather bureau.

High winds and heavy rains battered the financial hub of Shanghai Saturday afternoon, and Shanghai Disneyland was shut for the day.

Nearly 200 trains through the city of Jinan in Shandong province had been suspended until Monday, Xinhua reported.

More than 250,000 residents in Shanghai and 800,000 in Zhejiang province had been evacuated because of the typhoon, and 2.72 million households in Zhejiang had power blackouts as strong wind and rain downed electricity transmission lines, state media reported.

About 200 houses in six cities in Zhejiang had collapsed, and 66,300 hectares (163,830 acres) of farmland had been destroyed, CCTV said.

The storm was predicted to reach Jiangsu province by the early hours of Sunday and veer over the Yellow Sea before continuing north and making landfall again in Shandong province, CCTV said.

Coastal businesses in Zhejiang were shut, and the Ministry of Emergency Management warned of potential risk of fire, explosions and toxic gas leaks at chemical parks and oil refineries.
 

U.S.-based nuclear experts said Friday they suspected an accidental blast and radiation release in northern Russia this week occurred during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year.

The Russian Ministry of Defense, quoted by state-run news outlets, said that two people died and six were injured Thursday in an explosion of what it called a liquid propellant rocket engine. No dangerous substances were released, it said.

Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom said early Saturday that five of its staff members died.

A spokeswoman for Severodvinsk, a city of 185,000 near the test site in the Arkhangelsk region, was quoted in a statement on the municipal website as saying that a “short-term” spike in background radiation was recorded at noon Thursday.

The statement was not on the site Friday.

The Russian Embassy did not immediately respond for comment.

Liquid fuel engines don’t give off radiation

Two experts said in separate interviews with Reuters that a liquid rocket propellant explosion would not release radiation.

They said that they suspected the explosion and the radiation release resulted from a mishap during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile at a facility outside the village of Nyonoksa.

“Liquid fuel missile engines exploding do not give off radiation, and we know that the Russians are working on some kind of nuclear propulsion for a cruise missile,” said Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists.

Russia calls the missile the 9M730 Buresvestnik. The NATO alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

Kremlin priorities

A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he would not confirm or deny that a mishap involving a nuclear-powered cruise missile occurred. But he expressed deep skepticism over Moscow’s explanation.

“We continue to monitor the events in the Russian far north but Moscow’s assurances that ‘everything is normal’ ring hollow to us,” the official said.

“This reminds us of a string of incidents dating back to Chernobyl that call into question whether the Kremlin prioritizes the welfare of the Russian people above maintaining its own grip on power and its control over weak corruption streams.”

The official was referring to the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, which released radioactive airborne contamination for about nine days. Moscow delayed revealing the extent of what is regarded as the worst nuclear accident in history.

Putin boasted about the nuclear-powered cruise missile in a March 2018 speech to the Russian parliament in which he hailed the development of a raft of fearsome new strategic weapons.

The missile, he said, was successfully tested in late 2017, had “unlimited range” and was “invincible against all existing and prospective missile defense and counter-air defense systems.”

‘Not there by accident’

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said he believed that a mishap occurred during the testing of the nuclear-powered cruise missile based on commercial satellite pictures and other data.

Using satellite photos, he and his team determined that the Russians last year appeared to have disassembled a facility for test-launching the missile at a site in Novaya Zemlya and moved it to the base near Nyonoksa.

The photos showed that a blue environmental shelter, under which the missiles are stored before launching at Nyonoksa and rails on which the structure is rolled back appear to be the same as those removed from Novaya Zemlya.

Lewis and his team also examined Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships off the coast on the same day as the explosion. They identified one ship as the Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel carrier that they had tracked last year off Novaya Zemlya.

“You don’t need this ship for conventional missile tests,” Lewis said. “You need it when you recover a nuclear propulsion unit from the sea floor.”

He noted that the AIS signals showed that the Serebryanka was inside an “exclusion zone” established off the coast a month before the test, to keep unauthorized ships from entering.

“What’s important is that the Serebryanka is inside that exclusion zone. It’s there. It’s inside the ocean perimeter that they set up. It’s not there by accident,” he said. “I think they were probably there to pick up a propulsion unit off the ocean floor.”

Lewis said he didn’t know what kind of radiation hazard the Russian system poses because he did was unaware of the technical details, such as the size of the nuclear reactor.

But he noted that the United States sought to develop a nuclear-powered missile engine in the 1950s that spewed radiation.

“It represented a health hazard to anyone underneath it,” he said.

The suspect accused of carrying out last week’s mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, told police after the shooting that he had been targeting Mexicans, according to authorities.

A police affidavit released Friday said the suspect, Patrick Crusius, confessed to the shooting after getting out of his car and surrendering to police, saying, “I’m the shooter.”

The affidavit from Detective Adrian Garcia said Crusius waived his right to remain silent and, after being taken into police custody, “The defendant stated his target (was) Mexicans.”

Crusius is accused of shooting and killing 22 people and wounding two dozen others last Saturday.

Online post

Shortly before the attack, authorities believe Crusius posted online, expressing anger about a “Hispanic invasion” of the United States.

Authorities said Crusius drove more than 10 hours from his hometown near Dallas, Texas, to the predominantly Hispanic border city of El Paso to carry out the shootings. Eight of the dead were Mexican nationals.

Family members of the victims gathered at funerals on either side of the border Friday to remember their loved ones.

Also Friday, top Trump administration officials met with social media giants, including Facebook, Twitter and Google to discuss ways to reduce online extremism and try to prevent mass shootings.

“The conversation focused on how technology can be leveraged to identify potential threats, to provide help to individuals exhibiting potentially violent behavior and to combat domestic terror,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

Trump did not attend the meeting, and the White House declined to say which administration officials took part in the closed-door session.

The Washington Post reported that tech leaders expressed doubts about how much it was possible to use technology to identify potential attacks before they occur, raising concerns about privacy risks, according to sources at the meeting.

Two mass shootings

The El Paso attack came hours before another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, that left nine people dead.

The two mass shootings have led gun control activists to renew their calls for Congress to take up action to reduce gun violence.

Trump said Friday that he believes he can influence the powerful gun rights group, the National Rifle Association, to allow stronger federal background checks. However, he said he also assured the group that its gun rights views would be “fully represented and respected.”

NEW YORK — Confronted with allegations that he orchestrated a sex-trafficking ring that delivered girls to him and his high-profile acquaintances, financier Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly refused to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself, according to court records released Friday. 
 
Epstein’s responses emerged in a partial transcript of a September 2016 deposition stemming from a defamation lawsuit. The transcript was included in hundreds of pages of documents placed in a public file by a federal appeals court in New York. 
 
The deposition happened almost three years before Epstein’s July 6 arrest on sex-trafficking charges in a case that has brought down a Cabinet secretary and launched fresh investigations into how authorities dealt with Epstein over the years. The 66-year-old has pleaded not guilty. 
 
Epstein was asked in the videotaped deposition whether it was standard operating procedure for his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, to bring underage girls to him to sexually abuse. 
 
Epstein replied “Fifth,” as he did to numerous other questions, citing the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment that protects people against incriminating themselves. 
 
He also was asked whether Maxwell was “one of the main women” he used to procure underage girls for sexual activities. 

“Fifth,” he replied. 

Mar-a-Lago question

And he was asked whether Maxwell met one of the females she recruited for massages at the Mar-a-Lago resort owned by President Donald Trump in Palm Beach. 
 
“Fifth,” he replied. 
 
Asked if he was a member of Mar-a-Lago in 2000, he replied again, “Fifth,” according to the transcript. 
 
After Epstein’s arrest, Trump acknowledged that he knew Epstein but said he “had a falling out with him a long time ago.” 
 
Over 2,000 pages of documents made public by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pertained to a since-settled lawsuit against Maxwell filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers. 
 
Giuffre filed the complaint in 2015, saying Maxwell subjected her to “public ridicule, contempt and disgrace” by calling her a liar in published statements “with the malicious intent of discrediting and further damaging Giuffre worldwide.” The lawsuit sought unspecified damages. 
 
In a deposition included in the newly released papers, Giuffre said that her father, who worked at Mar-a-Lago as a maintenance manager, got her a job there in summer 2000 as a locker room attendant at the club’s spa when she was 16. 

‘We can train you’
 
She said she was reading a book on massage therapy one day when she was approached by Maxwell, who noticed the book and told her she knew someone seeking a traveling masseuse. When Giuffre said she had no experience or credentials, she recalled Maxwell said: “We can train you. We can get you educated.” 
 
The court records contain graphic allegations against Epstein, who is accused in Manhattan federal court of trafficking young girls internationally to have sex with prominent American politicians, business executives and world leaders. The papers portray Epstein as a sex slave-driver with an insatiable appetite for underage girls. 
 
“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” Giuffre said. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.” 
 
Giuffre said Maxwell instructed her to take off her clothes and give oral sex to Epstein the first time she met him after taking her to Epstein’s Florida home near Mar-a-Lago with the expectation she would be trained as a masseuse. 
 
Prosecutors have not accused Maxwell of any wrongdoing. They say they continue to investigate. 
 
In her own deposition, Maxwell called the claims another one of Giuffre’s “many fictitious lies and stories to make this a salacious event to get interest and press. It’s absolute rubbish.” She also claimed that Giuffre was 17 when she met her. 
 
Neither Maxwell’s attorney nor a public relations firm she hired responded Friday to emails from The Associated Press. 
 

Epstein’s lawyers say the federal charges that accuse Epstein of recruiting and abusing dozens of underage girls in New York and Florida in the early 2000s should never have been brought. They say Epstein is protected by an agreement he reached with federal prosecutors in Florida a dozen years ago. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigned last month after coming under fire for overseeing that deal when he was U.S. attorney in Miami. 
 
Attorney Martin Weinberg said Epstein has not committed crimes since pleading guilty to charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida in 2008. 

Photos found
 
At the time of Epstein’s arrest, prosecutors said they found a trove of pictures of nude and seminude young women and girls at his $77 million Manhattan mansion. They also say additional victims have come forward since the arrest. 
 
Epstein’s lawyers did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.