The official People’s Daily newspaper, in a front-page commentary headlined “Central Authority Cannot be Challenged,” called the protesters’ actions “intolerable.”

One group of protesters targeted China’s liaison office on Sunday night after more than 100,000 people marched through the city to demand democracy and an investigation into the use of force by police to disperse crowds at earlier protests.

Police launched tear gas to disperse the protesters. Later, protesters trying to return home were attacked inside a train station by assailants who appeared to target the pro-democracy demonstrators.

The attack on the liaison office touched a raw nerve in China. China’s national emblem, which hangs on the front of the building, was splattered with black ink. It was replaced by a new one within hours.

Police said on their official social media accounts that protesters threw bricks and petrol bombs at them and attacked the Central police station.

“These acts openly challenged the authority of the central government and  touched the bottom line of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle,” the government’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said in a statement issued Sunday.

The “one-country, two systems” framework allows Hong Kong to maintain a fair amount of autonomy in governing local affairs, but demonstrators fear the city’s rights and freedoms are being eroded.

A group of pro-China lawmakers held a news conference Monday appealing for a halt to the violence, saying it was a blow to Hong Kong’s reputation and is scaring away tourists and investors. 

They also urged police to tighten enforcement against the protesters, whom Ip labels as “rebels.”

“The violent attack on the Liaison Office … is a direct affront to the sovereignty of our country,” said Regina Ip, a former security secretary.

When asked why it took at least a half-hour for police to arrive at the suburban train station and intervene, Ip said the police were “overstretched.”

“The police have been under extreme pressure,” she said. 

Video of the attacks in Yuen Long showed protesters in black shirts being beaten by men in white shirts wielding steel pipes and wooden poles. Those under attack retreated into the trains, intimidated by the gangs of men waiting for them outside the turnstiles. The attackers then entered the trains and beat the people inside as they tried to defend themselves with umbrellas. They eventually retreated. 

One of the men in white held up a sign saying “Protect Yuen Long, protect our homes.”

Subway passengers filmed by Stand News and iCABLE angrily accused police officers of not intervening in the attack. Stand News reporter Gwyneth Ho said on Facebook that she suffered minor injuries to her hands and shoulder, and was dizzy from a head injury. The South China Morning Post reported several people were bleeding following the attacks, and that seven people were sent to the hospital.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is meeting Monday with security ministers and security officials for emergency talks about how to handle the Iranian seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

Among the potential responses Britain is considering is the prospect of imposing economic sanctions on Iran. May’s government is expected to update members of Britain’s parliament on the situation later Monday.

In an audio recording of the incident released by the maritime security risk firm Dryad Global on Sunday, a British warship warns an Iranian patrol boat against interfering with the passage of the Stena Impero oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran Revolutionary Guard commandos descending from a helicopter seized the tanker shortly thereafter.

A British naval officer can be heard telling the tanker that it was operating in international waters and that its “passage must not be impaired, intruded, obstructed or hampered.”

The British officer then tells an Iranian patrol boat: “Please confirm that you are not intending to violate international law by unlawfully attempting to board the MV Stena.”

But an Iranian officer told the tanker to change course, saying, “You obey, you will be safe. Alter your course to 360 degrees immediately, over.” 

The officer said the ship was wanted for security reasons, although Iranian officials say the seizure of the tanker was in response to Britain’s impounding two weeks ago of an Iranian supertanker at Gibraltar that was believed to be transporting 2 million barrels of crude oil to Syria. Iran claimed the Stena Impero hit a fishing boat.

Iran continues to hold the tanker and its crew of 23, a mix of 18 Indians, three Russians, a Latvian and a Filipino, but said they are in good health.

Britain has called the seizure of the Stena Impero a “hostile act.” 

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, for fomenting international tensions with Tehran, saying that only “prudence and foresight” can ease the West’s conflict with Iran.

U.S.-Iranian tensions have escalated in the year since Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 international accord aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and reimposed economic sanctions against Iran to curb its international oil trade. 

“Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire,” Zarif said on Twitter.

Make no mistake:

Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire.

Only prudence and foresight can thwart such ploys.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 21, 2019

Iran’s envoy to London, Hamid Baeidinejad, said Britain needs to contain “those domestic political forces who want to escalate existing tension between Iran and the UK well beyond the issue of ships.”

Britain’s junior defense minister Tobias Ellwood did not rule out the possibility of imposing economic sanctions against Iran, but said London would be consulting with international allies “to see what can actually be done.”

“Our first and most important responsibility is to make sure that we get a solution to the issue to do with the current ship, make sure other British-flagged ships are safe to operate in these waters and then look at the wider picture,” Ellwood told Sky News.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Saturday released video footage showing speedboats surrounding the Stena Impero before troops in balaclavas descend down a rope from a helicopter onto the vessel.

Iran said the crew members “are in full health, they are on the vessel and the vessel is… anchored in a safe place.”

Tehran said, “We are ready to meet their needs. But we have to carry out investigations with regards the vessel. God willing, we will make every effort to gather all the information as soon as possible.”

Paul Krassner, the publisher, author and radical political activist on the front lines of 1960s counterculture who helped tie together his loose-knit prankster group by naming them the Yippies, died Sunday in Southern California, his daughter said. 

Krassner died at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Holly Krassner Dawson told The Associated Press. He was 87 and had recently transitioned to hospice care after an illness, Dawson said. She didn’t say what the illness was. 

The Yippies, who included Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and were otherwise known as the Youth International Party, briefly became notorious for such stunts as running a pig for president and throwing dollar bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Hoffman and Rubin, but not Krassner, were among the so-called “Chicago 7” charged with inciting riots at 1968’s chaotic Democratic National Convention. 

By the end of the decade, most of the group’s members had faded into obscurity. But not Krassner, who constantly reinvented himself, becoming a public speaker, freelance writer, stand-up comedian, celebrity interviewer and author of nearly a dozen books. 

“He doesn’t waste time,” longtime friend and fellow counterculture personality Wavy Gravy once said of him. “People who waste time get buried in it. He keeps doing one thing after another.”

He interviewed such celebrity acquaintances as authors Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller and the late conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart. The latter, like other conservatives, said that although he disagreed with everything Krassner stood for, he admired his sense of humor. 

An advocate of unmitigated free speech, recreational drug use and personal pornography, Krassner’s books included such titles as “Pot Stories For The Soul” and “Psychedelic Trips for the Mind,” and he claimed to have taken LSD with numerous celebrities, including comedian Groucho Marx, LSD guru Timothy Leary and author Ken Kesey. 

He also published several books on obscenity, some with names that can’t be listed here. Two that can are “In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn” and “Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today.” 

For his autobiography, Krassner chose the title, “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture,” using a phrase taken from an angry letter to the editor of a magazine that had once published a favorable profile of him. 

“To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute,” the letter writer said. “He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.”

What he really was, Krassner told The Associated Press in 2013, was a guy who enjoyed making people laugh, although one who brought a political activist’s conscience to the effort. 

He noted proudly that in the early 1960s, when abortion was illegal in almost every state, he ran an underground abortion referral service for women. 

“That really was a turning point in my life because I had morphed from a satirist into an activist,” he said. 

His original career choice, however, had been music. 

A child prodigy on the violin, he performed at Carnegie Hall at age 6. Later he all but gave up the instrument, only occasionally playing it as a joke during lectures or comedy routines. 

“I only had a technique for playing the violin, but I had a real passion for making people laugh,” he would say. 

After studying journalism at New York’s Baruch College, Krassner went to work for Mad Magazine before founding the satirical counterculture magazine The Realist in 1958. He continued to publish it periodically into the 1980s. 

For a time in the 1950s, he also appeared on the stand-up comedy circuit. There, he would meet his mentor, Lenny Bruce, the legendary outlaw comic who pushed free speech to its limits with routines filled with obscenities and sexual innuendo that sometimes landed him in jail. 

Krassner interviewed Bruce for Playboy Magazine in 1959 and edited the comedian’s autobiography, “How To Talk Dirty and Influence People.” 

When the counterculture arrived in earnest in the ’60s, Krassner was working as a comedian, freelance writer, satirist, publisher, celebrity interviewer and occasional creator of soft-core pornography. To mark the death of Walt Disney in 1966, he published a colorful wall poster showing Disney cartoon characters engaging in sex acts. 

When he and other anti-war activists, free-speech advocates and assorted radicals began to plot ways to promote their causes, Krassner said he soon realized they would need a clever name if they wanted to grab the public’s attention. 

“I knew that we had to have a `who’ for the `who, what, where, when and why’ that would symbolize the radicalization of hippies for the media,” Krassner, who co-founded the group, told the AP in 2009. “So I started going through the alphabet: Bippie, Dippie, Ippie, Sippie. I was about to give up when I came to Yippie.” 

As one of the last surviving Yippies, he continued to write prolifically up until his death, his daughter said. 

His newest book, “Zapped by the God of Absurdity,” will be released later this year. And he recently wrote the introduction for an upcoming book about his old friend Abbie Hoffman, Dawson said. 

Krassner also had hoped to publish his first novel, a mystery whose protagonist is a crime-solving comedian modeled after Lenny Bruce. He got so into the story, Krassner once said, that he began to believe he was channeling Bruce’s spirit. That ended, however, when the spirit reminded his old friend one day that Krassner was an atheist. 

“He said to me, ‘Come on, you don’t even believe that (expletive),”’ Krassner recalled with a laugh. 

He is survived by his wife, Nancy Cain; brother, George; daughter, Holly Krassner Dawson; and one grandchild. 

A series of Islamic State (IS) announcements of new provinces it controls in recent weeks has renewed debate over the group’s possible resurgence after its self-proclaimed caliphate fell, with some analysts warning an increasingly decentralized IS could recover and spread its tentacles to other parts of the world.

During his first appearance last April after five years, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a new video was seen handling documents about the group’s global affiliates, including newly found provinces in Turkey and Central Africa.

In the 18-minute video by IS’ media wing al-Furqan, al-Baghdadi also welcomed new joiners from Burkina Faso, Mali and Sri Lanka.

Since its leader’s reappearance, IS has announced new “wilayats” or provinces, and has rearranged its existing ones ranging from different areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia.

Last week, IS in a new video claimed a new province in Turkey. The five-minute long video showed a group of militants pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi and asking potential sympathizers in Turkey to join the group.

Dogu Eroglu, a Turkey-based investigative journalist and expert on IS, said the video message is an effort by IS to remobilize hundreds of Turkish citizens who have returned home after partaking in conflicts in neighboring Syria.

“Starting from 2017, after the Raqqa operation of the Global Coalition to defeat IS, many people fled to Turkey, and among those, most of them had fought with IS for many years,” Eroglu told VOA. “The announcement could be a call to them.”

Wilayat structure

When Islamic State in mid-2014 announced its so-called caliphate, thousands of people traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight along its ranks. The group, through its media organizations al-Furqan and Dabiq, released in detail how it formed new “wilayats” or provinces. In each province, IS said, local jihadists should agree to implement the group’s military and governance strategy before pledging allegiance to the caliph, al-Baghdadi.

On July 2016, al-Furqan released a video titled “The Structure of the Caliphate,” in which the group claimed it had 35 “wilyats” or provinces, with 16 wilayats in Iraq and Syria, and the remaining elsewhere.

The group now holds no territory in Iraq and Syria, but continues to remain a serious insurgent group in those so-called wilayats, according to Sarhang Hamasaeed, the director of Middle East Programs at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

“They continue to stage attacks in form of explosive devices, attack security convoys, and they set up checkpoints in some places,” Hamasaeed told VOA, adding the group dependents on taxation and extortion to collect revenues.

Exploiting grievances

Hamasaeed said the group’s insurgents have been particularly active in Iraq’s Nineveh, Kirkuk, Saladin, and Diyala provinces where both the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan region claim ownership. Disputes between the two governments over the land, combined with the diversity of its ethno-religious population, has allowed IS to flourish.  

Experts say IS, as an adaptive organization, continues to exploit community grievances and looks at other areas with ethnic and religious conflict as potential hotbeds.  

Said Nazeer, Pakistan-based defense analyst and retired brigadier, said the group has used a conflict between the government in Punjab and Baloch ethnics to establish a foothold in the Balochistan province of southwest Pakistan. Similarly, the group is utilizing a land dispute between India and Pakistan to establish itself in Kashmir.

“Overall, Pakistan has contained Islamic State through operations, social media and keeping an eye on Kashmiri militants who may be recruited by [IS],” he said, adding “currently there are some 500 IS operatives in Pakistan’s jails.”

Khorasan province

In May, IS announced through its news agency Amaq that it had created provinces in India and Pakistan. The announcement served as a restructuring of its “Khorasan province,” which was founded in 2015 to cover operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Jammu and Kashmir, and parts of Iran.

Anees ur Rehman, a journalist in Afghanistan, said the IS break up of its Khorasan province shows the group is willing to adapt to new realities.

“IS attempted to spread Wahabism through very violent means, through a Khorasan province that connected Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But that vision of the caliphate proved unacceptable in Afghanistan where most Afghans follow Imam Abu Hanifa,” Rehman said, noting different sects and schools in Islamic countries.

The group at the peak of its power refused to recognize modern state boundaries, calling them a fabrication made by the West to keep Muslim nations divided.   

South East Asia

In South East Asia, where IS claims East Asia province for its operations particularly in Philippines, the group is using isolated deadly attacks to remain relevant and drive recruitment, according to experts.

Elliot Brennan, a research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, told VOA that, unlike the past when IS fighters were concentrated in an identified geographic area of southern Philippines, the group now scatters its fighters throughout the region as a new strategy.

IS affiliates Maute and Abu Sayyaf were removed from south Philippines’s Marawi in October 2017 after five months of deadly battle. Jihadists linked to IS have since claimed several deadly attacks, including January’s Jolo Cathedral bombing in southwestern Philippines that left 20 people dead and April Easter Sunday attacks on churches in Sri Lanka that killed 259.

“Fighters from the Marawi siege scattered and pose a more dispersed threat today and are harder to counter as a result,” Brennan told VOA, adding that Southeast Asian countries have failed to prevent IS’ reorganization attempt.

“The overall counter-terrorism approach in parts of Southeast Asia has been unhelpful. More needs to be done to understand and address the drivers of extremism rather than just post-facto and often heavy-handed counter-terrorism campaigns that often alienate local communities and actually drive recruitment.”

Africa

Similarly, in Africa, where IS has established decentralized provinces in Egypt, Libya, Sahel and the Greater Sahara, the group is spreading its fighters in vast deserts that are difficult to secure, said Thomas Abi-Hanna, a security analyst with Stratfor in Austin, Texas.

“Each Islamic State branch is operationally independent and there is little to no direct connections between the branches, aside from the Islamic State name,” Abi-Hanna told VOA.

He said the group tries to remain relevant by conducting high profile attacks and kidnappings to gain more local and international attention. It also disseminates propaganda through various channels to claim attacks, promote its brand and show its fighters in action throughout the region.

IS last April for the first time claimed an attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo through its new province of Central Africa. The attack in Bovata, near the town of Beni, reportedly killed at least two soldiers and a civilian and injured several others.

“While some branches may both benefit from extended smuggling and trafficking networks (Example: branches in Mali and Libya may benefit from the same arms trafficking network through the Sahel), the groups do not coordinate attacks or kidnappings,” said Abi-Hanna, adding that IS’s several branches in Africa remain effective by localizing their attention.

IS ideology

Randall Rogan, a terrorism expert at the Wake Forest University in North Carolina, charged that IS’s recent announcement of new provinces and restructuring of others indicate the group has long-term plans.

“The IS messaging should be taken very seriously,” Rogan told VOA “Although IS has lost physical territory, the virulent Islamist ideology that informs IS and its adherents continues to resonate with many disenfranchised radicalized individuals in the Muslim community and beyond.”

 

The German airline Lufthansa resumed daily direct flights to Cairo on Sunday after a one-day suspension due to unspecified safety concerns.

But British Airways still has all its flights to the Egyptian capital grounded and plans to keep them that way for six more days.

The two airlines on Saturday abruptly canceled all flights to Cairo after the British government warned of a “heightened risk of terrorism against aviation.”

Egypt’s minister of civil aviation, Lt. General Younes Elmasry, on Sunday expressed frustration that the airline suspended flights without consulting Egyptian authorities.  He met with Britain’s Ambassador to Egypt Geoffrey Adams and said the two sides would work to resolve the situation as soon as possible.

Passengers scrambled to find alternative flights after receiving a notification from the airline informing them about the decision which came into effect immediately.

In a statement, British Airways said the move was “a precaution to allow for further assessment”, without offering further details.

The U.S. State Department warned citizens Friday about traveling to Egypt. “A number of terrorist groups, including Islamic State, have committed multiple deadly attacks in Egypt, targeting government officials and security forces, public venues, tourist sites, civil aviation and other modes of public transportation, and a diplomatic facility,” the State Department said. “Terrorists continue to threaten Egypt’s religious minorities and have attacked sites and people associated with the Egyptian Coptic Church.”

It also warned of “risks to civil aviation operating within or in the vicinity of Egypt.”

No American flights have been affected so far.

 

China and Vietnam are continuing to clash over a maritime sovereignty dispute despite diplomacy and calm being displayed by other claimants to the same sea.

The Communist neighbors talk regularly about their differences party-to-party as well as through diplomatic channels. Around the rest of the contested South China Sea, claimed by six governments total, other countries have largely avoided openhanded spats over the past three years.

Yet a new dispute erupts between China and Vietnam about once a year. They’re locked in another one now over energy exploration in an area in the sea that both countries call their own.

The two countries continue to spar because of decades, if not centuries, of distrust coupled with material ambitions in the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, experts say.

“I think the big picture on China-Vietnam relations is that they would go for diplomacy and they would go for hardball games,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “It’s a very long love-hate relationship between China and Vietnam.”

Leaders in Hanoi are trying to balance their foreign policy to avoid dependence on China, despite their Communist linkage, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia.

After China and among the South China Sea claimant nations, Vietnam is the second most active seeker of oil, gas and the small expansion of its holdings on small islets.

Vanguard Bank disputes

Vanguard Bank has “frequently been at the heart of Vietnam and China’s long-standing maritime tensions, with Beijing trying to limit or block Hanoi from exploring in what it considers disputed territory,” Stratfor Worldview says. That tension flared up a lot in the 1990s, Thayer said.

Last year, Spanish driller Repsol suddenly quit a Vietnamese-approved energy exploration project at Vanguard Bank, apparently under pressure from China, foreign media reports and political experts said at the time. Vietnam still maintains outposts there.

The two countries never resolved their 2018 dispute, Thayer said. “Vietnam stood down and they didn’t buy Chinese acquiescence then to solve this matter,” he said.

Wider sovereignty dispute

A string of other incidents has shaken the two countries over the past five years. In 2014, a Chinese oil rig touched off a boat-ramming incident in the South China Sea and deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam.

In March this year, search-and-rescue officials in Hanoi said a Chinese vessel had rammed a Vietnamese boat near Discovery Reef east of Vietnam.

Vietnam’s Communist Party normally sends a special envoy to China for talks over these flaps, Thayer said.

“I think they need to find areas with mutual interest to cool off the face-off,” said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies think tank in Taiwan. “I think they will do this, because they’ve got enough trouble already and they don’t want to create another one.”

China, the strongest player in the six-way sovereignty dispute, is already using trade and investment incentives – backed by the world’s second biggest economy – to ease its sovereignty disputes with Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnam has seen an influx of Chinese tourists.

But “diplomacy will probably fail” to solve maritime sovereignty issues, Araral said.

 

President Donald Trump has renewed his attacks aimed at four Democratic congresswomen of color, alleging Sunday they are not “capable of loving our Country.”   This follows days of similar statements by the president. Critics have deemed his recent comments about Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayana Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan as ‘racist.’

U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to press Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for help on ending the war in Afghanistan and fighting militants when the two leaders meet at the White House on Monday amid their countries’ strained relations.

Last year, Trump cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to Pakistan, accusing Islamabad of offering “nothing but lies and deceit” while giving safe haven to terrorists, a charge angrily rejected by Islamabad.

Khan, who arrived in Washington on Saturday, is expected to try to mend fences and attract much-needed U.S. investment, hoping the arrest last week of a militant leader with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head will lead to a warmer reception.

“The purpose of the visit is to press for concrete cooperation from Pakistan to advance the Afghanistan peace process and to encourage Pakistan to deepen and sustain its recent effort to crackdown on militants and terrorists within its territory,” a senior U.S. administration official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States wants to make clear to Pakistan that it is open to repairing relations if Pakistan changes how it handles “terrorists and militants.”

In Afghanistan, the official said, the peace process is at a critical point and Washington wants Pakistan “to pressure the Taliban into a permanent cease-fire and participation in inter-Afghan negotiations that would include the Afghan government.”

Trump wants to end U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s cooperation will be essential to any deal to end the war and ensure the country does not become a base for militant groups like Islamic State.

Khan’s visit follows the arrest on Wednesday of Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, news that Trump welcomed on Twitter.

However, Pakistan has yet to release Shakil Afridi, the jailed doctor believed to have helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The imprisonment of Dr. Shakil Afridi has long been a source of tension between Pakistan and the United States. Washington continues to call for his immediate release, the U.S. official told reporters on Friday.

 

British officials are drawing up plans to target Iran with sanctions for its seizing of a British-flagged oil tanker in the Strait off Hormuz, and it may urge European Union countries to reimpose sanctions that were lifted in 2016 as part of Tehran’s agreement to curb its nuclear program.

The British government is under strong pressure from lawmakers to act decisively in the sharply escalating diplomatic quarrel between the two countries, but there’s growing domestic criticism in the House of Commons about the lack of naval protection for British tankers in the Strait.

HMS Montrose was an hour away from the tanker as it was being swarmed by agile, high-speed Iranian small boats and a helicopter.

Later the British officer can be heard demanding from the Iranians in a dueling conversation to “please confirm that you are not intending to violate international law by unlawfully attempting to board the MV Stena.”

The British-registered ship’s crew is made up of Indian, Latvian, Filipino and Russian members.

As reports emerged in London of likely British retaliation, the Iranian ambassador to Britain, Hamid Baeidinejad, took to Twitter to warn the British not to escalate the quarrel. 

UK government should contain those domestic political forces who want to escalate existing tension between Iran and the UK well beyond the issue of ships. This is quite dangerous and unwise at a sensitive time in the region. Iran however is firm and ready for different scenarios.

— Hamid Baeidinejad (@baeidinejad)

Lufthansa has resumed flying to Cairo following a one-day suspension due to safety concerns.

The German airline’s website shows LH582 took off from Frankfurt after an almost two-hour delay and was expected to arrive in Egypt’s capital later Sunday.

On Saturday, British Airways announced the suspension of its flights to and from Cairo for seven days for unspecified reasons related to security.

British Airways attributed its cancellations to what it called its constant review of security arrangements at all airports, calling them “a precaution to allow for further assessment.”

Lufthansa said it was suspending its flights as a precaution, mentioning “safety” but not “security” as its concern.

Company spokespeople would not elaborate on what motivated the suspensions.

 

A Sudanese civilian detained and allegedly tortured by security agents in a central town has died in custody, a doctors committee linked to the country’s protest movement said Sunday.

The man died on Saturday in the town of Dilling in the state of South Kordofan after he was detained by agents of the feared National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), the doctors committee said in a statement.

The detainee “passed away on July 20, 2019 from torture while in detention at the NISS office in Dilling,” the statement said without elaborating on the circumstances of his arrest.

“NISS continues to torture and claim innocent civilian lives illegally without facing any consequences.”

Officers of NISS were not immediately available for comment.

Rights groups and activists had regularly accused NISS agents of cracking down on dissidents and restricting freedoms during the regime of veteran leader Omar al-Bashir who was ousted in April.

It was NISS that led a sweeping crackdown on protests against Bashir’s rule that first erupted in December.

Dozens were killed and hundreds of protesters, activists and opposition leaders were arrested during the months-long campaign that led to Bashir’s overthrow and subsequent demonstrations calling for civilian rule.

Last week a power-sharing deal was inked between the protest leaders and the ruling generals who seized power after ousting Bashir.

More talks between the two sides to thrash out some pending issues have been suspended following differences within the protest movement itself over the power-sharing deal.

 

There are more than 150 patients at the “Alcor Life Extension Foundation.” Each had their body frozen cryonically shortly after death in the hopes that one day, medical science will find a cure for what killed them, and they can be revived and healed. It’s a scientifically dubious idea, but some people are willing to pay a lot of money in the hopes that one day they can come back for a long and healthy life. Iacopo Luzi has the story. 

More than 400 teenagers from all over the US spent one week of their summer vacation renovating homes by day, and sleeping on the floor of local churches by night. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, the faith-based program is giving these young people a unique opportunity to learn and grow, while helping people in need. Faith Lapidus narrates.

A family of Cuban luthiers has produced more than 500 musical instruments for Cuban schools over the past five years in an unprecedented agreement with the country’s ministry of culture, helping to fill a void in the state’s own ability to produce musical instruments.

Britain on Saturday denounced Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf as a “hostile act” and rejected Tehran’s explanation that it seized the vessel because it had been involved in an accident. 

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards posted a video online showing speedboats pulling alongside the Stena Impero tanker, its name clearly visible. Troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns rappelled to its deck from a helicopter, the same tactics used by British Royal Marines to seize an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar two weeks ago. 

Friday’s action in the global oil trade’s most important waterway has been viewed in the West as a major escalation after three months of confrontation that has already taken Iran and the United States to the brink of war. 

It follows threats from Tehran to retaliate for Britain’s July 4 seizure of the Iranian tanker Grace 1, accused of violating sanctions on Syria. 

British Defense Secretary Penny Mordaunt called the incident a “hostile act”. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he had expressed “extreme disappointment” by phone to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Britain also summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in London. 

A spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier-General Ramezan Sharif, said Tehran had seized the ship in the Strait of Hormuz despite the “resistance and interference” of a British warship which had been escorting it. No British warship was visible in the video posted by the Guards. 

Iran’s Fars news agency said the Guards had taken control of the Stena Impero on Friday after it collided with an Iranian fishing boat whose distress call it ignored. 

The vessel, carrying no cargo, was taken to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. It will remain there with its 23 crew – 18 of them Indians – while the accident is investigated, Iranian news agencies quoted the head of Ports and Maritime Organization in southern Hormozgan province, Allahmorad Afifipour, as saying. 

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Britain said the tanker was approached by Iranian forces when it was in Omani territorial waters exercising its lawful right of passage, and the action “constitutes illegal interference.” 

“Current tensions are extremely concerning, and our priority is to de-escalate. We do not seek confrontation with Iran,” the letter said. “But it is unacceptable and highly escalatory to threaten shipping going about its legitimate business through internationally recognized transit corridors.” 

Oil prices up

Zarif told Hunt that the ship must go through a legal process before it can be released, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported. 

The strait, between Iran and the Arabian peninsula, is the sole outlet for exports of most Middle Eastern oil, and the seizure sent oil prices sharply higher. The United States, which tightened sanctions against Iran in May with the aim of halting its oil exports altogether, has been warning for months of an Iranian threat to shipping in the strait. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he also discussed the situation with Hunt, his British counterpart. 

“We talked about what they’ve seen, what they know, and how they’re beginning to think about how they will respond,” Pompeo said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that was published on Saturday by the State Department. “Iran is in a place today that they have taken themselves.” 

Another oil tanker, the Mesdar, was also boarded by Iranian personnel on Friday and temporarily forced to divert toward Iran, but later was allowed to continue on its route through the strait. On Saturday Algeria’s APS news agency said the Mesdar was owned by Algeria’s state oil company Sonatrach. 

France, Germany and the European Union joined Britain in condemning the seizure. 

The three big European countries are signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that Washington undermined by quitting last year, setting Iran’s already fragile relations with the West on a downward spiral. 

Under the pact, Iran agreed to restrict nuclear work in return for lifting sanctions. The European countries opposed the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the agreement last year, but have so far failed to fulfill promises to Iran of providing alternative means for it to access world trade. 

Extreme disappointment 

“Just spoke to … Zarif and expressed extreme disappointment that having assured me last Saturday Iran wanted to de-escalate situation, they have behaved in the opposite way,” Hunt wrote on Twitter. “This has to be about actions not words if we are to find a way through.” 

Earlier he said London’s reaction would be “considered but robust” and it would ensure the safety of its shipping. 

On Friday, Hunt said the solution would be found via diplomacy and London was “not looking at military options.” Britain’s government said it had advised British shipping to stay out of the Hormuz area for an interim period. 

During the past three months of escalation, the United States and Iran come as close as ever to direct armed conflict. In June, Tehran shot down a U.S. drone and President Donald Trump ordered retaliatory air strikes, only to call them off just minutes before were to have been carried out. 

The vessel had been heading to a port in Saudi Arabia and suddenly changed course after passing through the strait. 

The United States has blamed Iran for a series of attacks on shipping around the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has rejected the allegations. Washington also said it had this week downed an Iranian drone near where the Stena Impero was seized. 

The United States is sending military personnel and resources to Saudi Arabia for the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday that President Donald Trump relished a chant by the crowd at a campaign rally this week that called for a Democratic congresswoman to be sent back where she came from. 

Trump renewed his criticism of four minority women lawmakers on Friday, saying that they had said horrible things about the United States, and defended himself from criticism over his comment that they should leave the United States if unhappy. 

A day after saying his audience in North Carolina went too far when they chanted “Send her back!” about Somalia-born Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, on Friday he defended the crowd members as “incredible patriots.” 

Appearing before her constituents in New York City for the first time since the latest flare-up between Trump and the four Democratic congresswomen, Ocasio-Cortez rejected the president’s statement that he had tried to quiet the crowd, saying he had egged them on instead. 

“Roll back the tape … He relished it. He took it in and he’s doing this intentionally,” the freshman U.S. lawmaker told about 200 constituents gathered for a town hall meeting on immigration at a school in the Corona section of Queens. 

Video of the crowd in North Carolina shouting “Send her back!” shows Trump pausing his speech and looking around the arena for about ten seconds. 

The president’s attacks on the four congresswomen – known on Capitol Hill as “the squad” – have been condemned by Democrats as racist, while many Republicans have shrugged them off. 

Last weekend Trump ignited a firestorm by tweeting the four should “go back” to where they came from if they do not like the United States. 

All four are American citizens. Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were born in the United States while Omar came as a refugee from Somalia and is a naturalized citizen. 

All four are known as sharp critics of Trump’s policies as well as the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Ocasio-Cortez said the president’s comments had been hurtful, but “men like him” have been telling women like her to go back to their own country for a long time. 

“We’re gonna stay right here,” she said to applause “That’s where we’re gonna go,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.” 

White House national security adviser John Bolton departed on Saturday for a trip to Japan and South Korea as the two countries are in the middle of a trade dispute. 

A White House National Security Council spokesman said on Twitter that Bolton planned to “continue conversations with critical allies and friends.” 

President Donald Trump on Friday offered his help to ease tensions in the political and economic dispute between the United States’ two biggest allies in Asia, which threatens global supplies of memory chips and smartphones. 

Lingering tensions, particularly over the issue of compensation for South Koreans forced to work for Japanese occupiers during World War Two, worsened this month when Japan restricted exports of high-tech materials to South Korea. 

Japan has denied that the dispute over compensation is behind the export curbs, even though one of its ministers cited broken trust with Seoul over the labor dispute in announcing the restrictions. 

The export curbs could hurt global technology companies. 

Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that South Korean President Moon Jae-in had asked him if he could get involved. 

A spokeswoman for Moon confirmed Moon had asked Trump for help at their summit in Seoul on June 30. 

During his trip, Bolton is also likely to seek support for a U.S. initiative to heighten surveillance of vital Middle East shipping lanes, which has been greeted warily by allies reluctant to raise tensions with Iran, which Washington blames for attacks on tankers. 

Japanese media has said the issue could be on the agenda when Bolton visits Japan, where any military commitment abroad would risk inflaming a divide in public opinion in a country whose armed forces have not fought overseas since World War Two. 

A South Korean official said last week Washington had yet to make any official request to Seoul on the issue. 

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, said this month Washington hoped to enlist allies in a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters off Iran and Yemen, where Washington blames Iran and Iran-aligned fighters for attacks. 

But with allies reluctant to commit new weaponry or fighting forces, a senior Pentagon official told Reuters on Thursday the aim was not to set up a military coalition but to shine a “flashlight” in the region to deter attacks on commercial shipping. 

Kathryn Wheelbarger, who briefed NATO allies in the past week on the U.S. proposal, said it was less operational and more geared toward increasing surveillance capabilities. 

Japan is the world’s fourth-biggest oil buyer and 86% of its oil supplies last year passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond. 

Japan’s position is complicated by the fact that it has maintained friendly ties with Iran which it would be reluctant to damage. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an unsuccessful bid to ease tensions in the region when he met Iranian leaders in Tehran last month. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven had assured him American citizen and rapper A$AP Rocky would be treated fairly. 
 
Trump said he assured Lofven that Rocky was not a flight risk and personally vouched for his bail. 
 
Swedish prosecutors on Friday extended Rocky’s detention by six days amid their investigation into a street fight in Stockholm. 

IRBIL / SULAIMANIYA, IRAQ – Security services in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region said Saturday that they had arrested the brother of a lawmaker serving in the Turkish parliament for the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital, Irbil. 
 
The diplomat was one of at least two people shot dead on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in a restaurant where Turkish diplomats were dining. 
 
“The Kurdistan region announced on Saturday the arrest of the man who planned the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in a restaurant in Irbil, less than a week after the attack,” the Asayish internal security service said in a statement. 
 
It did not name the suspect but said “reports indicated” that his sister served as a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament. A separate statement from another Iraqi Kurdish security force, the Counter Terrorism Department, gave the suspect’s name as Mazlum Dag. 
 
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) later confirmed that the man who arrested was the brother of one of its lawmakers, Dersim Dag. 
 
It said it strongly condemned the attack on the diplomat and that “using the attack as a reason to make one of our lawmakers a target through the name of her brother is a provocation and unacceptable.”  
 
An accomplice of Mazlum Dag’s has also been arrested, the security services said in a later statement.  

Political violence is comparatively rare in Irbil, which has been spared the civil war and ethnic strife that hit the rest of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. 
 
The shooter fled in a car driven by an accomplice, two Kurdish security officials and a witness said. The attack took place weeks after Turkey launched a new military offensive against Kurdish separatist militants based in northern Iraq. 
 
Ankara’s main enemy in Iraq is the PKK group, which has based fighters in the mountainous border region, north of Irbil, during a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkey. 
 
Turkey and the ruling Kurdish party in Irbil, the KDP, have blamed the PKK for other Turkey-related incidents in northern Iraq, including the storming of a Turkish military camp earlier this year. 

On the 50th anniversary of humanity’s first moon landing, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence paid tribute to the three American astronauts who helped make the historic event a reality.  
 
“They did more than win the space race, they brought together our nation, and for one brief moment, all the people of the world were truly one,” Pence said at an anniversary event Saturday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 
 
“Now, true to their creed, astronauts have never liked the idea of being called heroes. Yet for all they did, for all the risks they took, if Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins are not heroes, then there are no heroes,” said Pence, chairman of the National Space Council, to enthusiastic applause. 
 
On July 20, 1969, America’s lunar module named Eagle touched down at 2018 GMT, with Armstrong, the late astronaut, placing his left foot on the lunar surface six hours later. 
 
The landing was an enormous diplomatic and technological Cold War-era achievement for the U.S., which was bested by the Soviet Union in putting the first human and satellite in space. 
 
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a statement Saturday that the moon landing was a steppingstone to future space missions: “I have instructed the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) to send the next man and first woman to the Moon and to take the next giant leap — sending Americans to Mars.” 
 
The administration has launched plans to return to the moon by 2024 and land on Mars for the first time by 2033. 
 
But debate about whether to return to the moon or go directly to Mars resurfaced Friday during a White House Oval Office gathering that included Apollo 11 astronauts Aldrin and Collins. 
 
Collins, 88, who stayed in the command module while Aldrin and Armstrong descended to the moon, told Trump he supported going directly to Mars.