As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tries to lure Canadian voters with climate and tax-related policy changes ahead of a national election in October, the fallout of the blackface scandal continues to dog him, and some polls showed Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer taking the lead on Tuesday.

During a campaign stop on Tuesday in Burnaby, British Columbia, Trudeau pledged to halve the corporate tax paid by companies that develop zero-emissions technologies and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“Years from now, I want to look my kids in the eyes and say we stepped up on climate change,” Trudeau said.

The Liberal leader has recently promised also to ban military-style assault weapons and to introduce a national prescription drug plan, in an attempt to get his campaign back on track as blackface photos of him from the past emerged last week and threatened his re-election bid.

While one poll suggests that strategy might be working, others showed the Conservatives taking the lead, with less than four weeks to go before the Oct. 21 vote.

The two leaders had been running neck-and-neck until Time magazine published a picture of Trudeau in dark makeup at a 2001 “Arabian Nights” party, when he was a 29-year-old teacher. Two other images and a video of him in blackface later emerged.

Now, Scheer is the clear front-runner with as much as a 5-percentage-point lead, according to three different polls conducted after the images were published and released between late Monday and early Tuesday.

“Right now, the election has become a referendum on Justin Trudeau,” Ipsos pollster Darrell Bricker said in an interview. “Is he trustworthy? Is he competent?”

Old blackface pictures of the prime minister have taken over the campaign narrative ahead of the vote and are “blotting out the sun,” Bricker said.

Conservatives would win 36% of the vote compared with 32% for the Liberals, the Ipsos poll for Global News showed, while the Angus Reid Institute puts Scheer’s party at 35% versus 30% for Trudeau’s Liberals. Ekos Politics has the Conservatives at 35.3% and Liberals at 32%.

On the flip side, the Nanos Research poll for CTV and the Globe and Mail, which is conducted daily, has the Liberals taking back the lead with 35.1% against 33.5% for the Conservatives after the policy announcements in recent days.

Trudeau made Tuesday’s announcement in B.C., on the west coast, where his party is battling against the Green Party for several seats and in the riding now held by left-wing New Democrat party leader Jagmeet Singh, who’s party has climbed in the polls since the blackface scandal.

It is also the province where his government is moving ahead with the expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline, a project that could be considered anathema to fighting climate change.

Singh, who promoted his own climate plan in Manitoba, described Trudeau’s new climate policies as “pretty words, empty promises, but no action.”

“Instead of addressing climate change, the Liberals spent billions of taxpayer dollars buying an oil pipeline that will threaten our environment and violate Indigenous rights — and the Conservatives don’t believe we’re in a climate crisis at all,” Singh said.

Scheer criticized the lack of detail in Trudeau’s recent announcements.

“He is proposing plans with no details, he’s making up policy on the fly,” Scheer said at a campaign stop in Thorold, Ontario. “So excuse me if I don’t have any confidence in Justin Trudeau’s proposals.”

Speaking at Cracker Jack’s Bar and Grill, Scheer pledged a series of measures for small businesses if elected, including lower taxes.

Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump and allegations he sought a foreign government’s help into his 2020 re-election bid.

After months of caution, Speaker Pelosi became convinced that Trump’s reported actions, and his administration’s refusal to share details, left the House no alternative but to move forward with an inquiry.

The move has the potential to reshape his presidency and further divide the nation just a year before he plans to stand for re-election.

A recent wave of abductions in Nigeria is raising fear across the country.  Unlike kidnappings involving oil militants in the south or Boko Haram in the north, which often take on political dimensions, this crime wave spans through every region, and is driven largely by economic hardship, experts say.  The government is trying to address the problem by setting up an kidnapping response team. Timothy Obiezu has this report from Abuja

Mediterranean resort town Cannes, France’s fourth-biggest cruise ship port, will ban the most polluting cruise ships from next year in a bid to boost air quality in the city.

The ban will target ships that do not respect a 0.1% cap on sulphur in their fuel and could stop some passengers from disembarking in the city famous for its film festival.

“It’s not about being against cruise ships. It’s about being against pollution,” Cannes Mayor David Lisnard told Reuters Television in an interview.

Under the European Union’s clean air policy, the cap is already enforced in Baltic, North Sea and Channel ports and it may be extended to the Mediterranean.

Cruise ships run on fuel oil which contains about 2,000 times more sulphur oxide than ordinary diesel, according to German pollution analyst Axel Friedrich.

“We will no longer accept cruise ship passengers coming from polluting cruise ships,” Lisnard said.

The exponential growth of the cruise ship industry is often criticized by residents of tourist towns but it is also increasingly considered a threat to the environment.

Three months ago, Italy’s main conservation group said Venice should be put on the United Nations’ list of endangered cities and cruise ships should be banned from its fragile lagoon to prevent an ecological disaster.

According to figures from the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the industry’s main trade association, 30 million passengers are expected to cruise on almost 300 ships this year, up from 17.8 million 10 years ago.

In July, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, which represents 40 percent of Cannes’ maritime traffic, signed a Cruise Charter agreement with the city of Cannes, promising to make its ships more environmentally friendly.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday questioned a decision by his top trade negotiators to ask Chinese officials to delay a planned trip to U.S. farming regions after trade talks last week, saying he wanted China to buy more American farm products.

Trump, speaking alongside Mnuchin, questioned his Treasury chief about the request that the Chinese delay a trip to meet with U.S. farmers in Montana and Nebraska. Mnuchin had said the trip was delayed at the administration’s request to avoid confusion over the talks.

“Why was that our request, just out of curiosity?” Trump asked.

Mnuchin explained again that the U.S. side “didn’t want confusion around the trade issues.”

Trump then interjected: “Yeah, but I want them to buy farm products.”

“There was no confusion,” Mnuchin replied. “We want them to buy agriculture. They have committed to buy agriculture. And they’re doing that”

Trump added that China had “committed to buy a lot of agriculture” and the United States should ship the products as fast as possible.

The exchange came after Chicago grain traders said Chinese importers on Monday had bought about 10 boatloads of U.S. soybeans — around 600,000 tons — to be shipped from Pacific Northwest ports from October through December. News of the deals sent soybean futures prices higher.

Cancellation of the planned trip cast a pall over conclusion of two days of U.S.-China trade talks last week, sending U.S. stocks lower. People familiar with the talks said that there were no new substantive offers made, but both the U.S. and Chinese sides said the talks were productive, and that minister-level talks would take place in early October.

Mnuchin stressed that the Chinese purchases of U.S. agriculture were “good news” in an interview with Fox Business Network and downplayed any significance to the delay of the Chinese officials’ visit to U.S. farming regions.

“It’s a sign of good gesture that they are back at the table buying agriculture,” Mnuchin told Fox Business Network.

“We just decided the timing of the trip wasn’t necessarily the perfect timing, so they’ll be rescheduling that to after our trade meetings,” he added.

Mnuchin said in the television interview that trade talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were set to resume in two weeks.

“It’s actually, I think, it’s not next week, but the following week we’ll be having those talks,” Mnuchin said.

Earlier on Monday, Mnuchin told reporters at the United Nations General Assembly that the trade talks would resume next week.

The Republican National Committee is putting a college twist on its grassroots voter registration efforts, seeking to mobilize President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The “Make Campus Great Again” initiative is offering dozens of participants training and free pizza, plus swag like campaign buttons and drink insulators to distribute. 

It started with trainings at four schools in Ohio last week. Organizers describe it as a national effort, with similar swing state training sessions already held or planned for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Denver and college Republicans in Michigan.  

It’s aimed at building on young voters’ enthusiasm and higher-than-usual turnout in last year’s midterm election and pushing back against any stifling of conservative voices in campus environments, said Mandi Merritt, a regional spokeswoman for the Trump-RNC reelection effort.  

“It serves as a way to bring conservative supporters out of the shadows of college campuses and show that they have a home in the Republican movement,” Merritt said.

In the 2018 midterms, 67% of voters ages 18 to 22 voted for Democratic House candidates, according to AP VoteCast, which surveyed voters in last year’s election. Just 31% voted for Republicans.

The outreach and mobilizing also show how the GOP is enlisting the youngest voters in its field operations and fighting for Republican votes outside the party’s base, in a demographic that favored Democrats by significant margins in recent elections, said University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven. 

“If you think the election is going to be close, this is the margin of victory,” Niven said. “This is the 1% difference that helps you get over the top… They are proclaiming: This is a state we need to fight for.”

‘Make Campus Great Again’

In Akron, which last week had the first “Make Campus Great Again” session for more than 50 students from several northeastern Ohio universities, junior Brooke Bihlman said she and fellow members of the University of Akron College Republicans will be talking with students between classes and going door-to-door on weekends in a friendly competition with their Democratic counterparts on campus to see who can register the most voters.

“I think everyone in the club right now is just feeling very excited about the future and what we can do to help,” said Bihlman, 20. “Seeing hard work pay off is obviously something that keeps a lot of us going, so it starts with the little stuff right now.” 

Persuading peers to actually cast ballots might be tougher. Eighteen-to-29-year-olds typically have a much lower turnout rate than older voters, a point noted by some of the Democratic presidential candidates already organizing heavily on campuses in Iowa, which has the first caucuses. 

Support from young voters helped propel Democrat Barack Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012, and they heavily favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. 

This time around, young Republicans touting Trump to their classmates point to a promising job market with the U.S. unemployment rate near a 50-year low , and to the president’s executive order earlier this year that required U.S. colleges to protect free speech on their campuses or risk losing federal research funding.

Even for a generation saturated in social media, there is no replacement for talking about the issues and candidates face-to-face with potential voters, said Seth Koellner, a Kent State University junior who leads the Ohio College Republican Federation. 

“It’s different than someone just scrolling past a post on Twitter,” he said. “So it really grabs someone’s attention and will cause them to actually think about what your message is.”

Climate activists plan to carry out a protest Monday in Washington by blocking key intersections and “bringing the whole city to a gridlocked standstill.”

Organizers called on people to skip work and school to participate in the protest, which follows mass rallies Friday of young people in cities around the world, that drew hundreds of thousands of people demanding urgent action to combat climate change.

It is not clear how many people will take part in the Washington protests, how authorities will deal with those blocking intersections, or the ultimate effects on those commuting in the U.S. capital.

The Vietnamese comedy channel FAP TV has become the first YouTube account to hit the 10 million subscribers mark in the Southeast Asian country of nearly 100 million people, according to an announcement on Thursday from the Asia Pacific office of Google, which owns YouTube.

Vietnam has been one of the fastest growing markets for the video site, especially after Google invested in computer servers in the country, which have sped up streaming and download times. YouTube has also invested heavily in Vietnamese language content and advertising. 

But the process has come with growing pains, too, most notably in the realms of taxes and censorship. The site has blocked videos with content critical of the government. While these actions are taken following requests from the state, YouTube says it follows the same protocol around the world when it gets requests from governments to take down clips. Videos have been blocked in countries from Algeria to Germany, with reasons cited ranging from hate speech to terrorism.

In its transparency report for Vietnam Google notes that it received a request from the Vietnamese government to remove 28 YouTube videos inciting violent protests during the Vietnamese Independence Day period (Vietnam’s Independence Day is September 2).  Google says it removed 12 videos for violating YouTube Community Guidelines that prohibit publishing instructions to commit violent acts. It restricted access to 4 other videos in Vietnam. The company did not remove the remaining 12 videos.

Google also appears to be complying with a new cyber security law in Vietnam, which requires foreign companies to set up representative offices inside the country. Some have speculated that one of the factors motivating the law is to ensure that multinational companies do not evade taxes.

Vietnam has been trying to collect taxes from both Google and YouTube, as well as other foreign tech companies that make profits from Vietnamese customers while declaring their profits to tax authorities in other countries with lower tax rates like Singapore. In contrast to a bricks and mortar store that sells bicycles, which are simple to tax, foreign tech companies tend to sell intangible services, like advertising attached to YouTube videos, which are harder to tax. 

“Aside from the matter of studying amendments to laws and regulations of tax administration, cooperation is needed between state agencies and industry,” Luu Duc Huy, head of the policy department at the Vietnamese General Department of Tax, told the government TV station, V News. “Second, cooperation is needed between the Vietnamese tax agency and other countries’ tax agencies.”

Google has said repeatedly that it follows all laws in the countries where it operates. 

It is not just Vietnam. Most countries from Thailand to France are trying to figure out how to collect taxes on YouTube and other businesses that physically operate beyond their borders but make money from citizens within the borders. As Huy noted, the solution is likely to derive from these multiple tax authorities coming together, as is now being proposed by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Five brothers came to the US from Ukraine almost two decades ago in search of the American Dream — that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in the United States. During those 20 years, they’ve had all kinds of jobs, from washing floors, to delivering mail to working at construction sites. But they had even bigger dreams, Khrystyna Shevchenko met with this unique family. Anna Rice narrates her story.
 

U.S. President Donald Trump is denying he said anything “wrong” in a telephone conversation with the new president of Ukraine during which Trump allegedly urged him to investigate the son of former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

Democrats meanwhile stepped up their criticism of the president for what they characterized as an attempt to engage a foreign leader in a scheme to damage the candidacy of Trump’s leading rival in the 2020 campaign.

Trump tweeted Saturday morning he had a “perfectly fine and routine conversation” on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and that, “Nothing was said that was in any way wrong.”

Trump accused Democrats and the news media of ignoring allegations against the Bidens and creating a false story about him.

“The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat (sic) Party, want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son, or they won’t get a very large amount of U.S. money, so they fabricate … a story about me …”

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son, or they won’t get a very large amount of U.S. money, so they fabricate a…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

The streets of Cairo were jammed on Saturday morning, as police checkpoints were erected across the city.

Hundreds of armed soldiers and police officers in riot gear patrolled Tahrir Square, one of the locations where protests broke out Friday night and the epicenter of previous demonstrations that led to the fall of former Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Mohammad Morsi.

Activists celebrated the demonstrations as a breakthrough after years of fear of police retaliation and called for continued protests against the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

People were on the streets Friday night in at least three cities, carrying signs with slogans such as “Go away Sissi!” and “The people demand the fall of the regime!”

In Cairo, gunshots were heard and tear gas was fired. By Saturday night, 166 families had told human rights workers that a relative had been arrested, according to the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights.

Pro-government news outlets blamed “terrorists” for the demonstrations, saying they were part of a larger plot to overthrow the government.

The demonstrations began after Mohammad Ali, a former contractor and actor now living in Spain, began posting videos accusing el-Sissi and the military of squandering billions of Egyptian pounds on corrupt business deals and luxurious castles.

Sixty percent of Egyptians are “poor or vulnerable,” according to the World Bank, and the gap between the rich and poor is expanding.

“No one knows what will happen, or exactly how angry Egyptian people are, or where this anger will lead them,” Nour Khalil, a human rights lawyer, said in his Cairo office. “But I am certain this time is different from the past. Yesterday, the fear barrier melted down.”

But for many Egyptians, mass protests over the past eight years have had devastating consequences, leaving them with little hope that popular pressure will lead to positive change.

“I think protesting is not good,” Um Essam, 74, said in her Cairo home. “Things will become more expensive. Young men will go to jail and no one knows when they will get out.”

In other parts of Cairo, some residents are more hopeful, saying governmental change may do something to alleviate the deep poverty.

“We were all surprised yesterday when people went out on the streets,” said Mostafa, 28, in the abandoned bakery where he lives with five cousins. The cousins, who sell small fruits, moved to Cairo to escape even deeper poverty in their village.

By Saturday evening, police in downtown Cairo were stopping pedestrians, searching through bags and mobile phones and demanding to know where people were going. In the past few years, other fledgling protest movements have ended quickly in a similar fashion.

Human rights organizations said thousands of Egyptians are already in jail for protesting peacefully. The last major demonstrations in Egypt, calling for the reinstatement of Morsi in 2013, ended in a hail of gunfire that killed up to 1,000 people.

One cousin at the old bakery, Ghareb, 34, said further protests would likely result in more arrests and violence, not the fall of the government.

And even if it were safe to hold demonstrations, Ghareb said, Egypt would face an uncertain future if the president did step down.

“If Sissi went away, who else would fill the position?” he asked.

The head of Ukraine’s state-owned oil company says Kyiv will remain able to supply Europe with natural gas from its subterranean storage units even if European Union-mediated talks don’t pan out.

“We are fully confident that Ukraine can maintain gas supply … at least during the first quarter of 2020,” Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev said Friday at a public event in Brussels.

On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine held their third round of ministerial-level talks in Brussels about the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe, where all parties hoped to negotiate

Protesters burned a Chinese flag and police fired pepper spray during a march Saturday in an outlying district of Hong Kong in renewed clashes over anti-government grievances.
 
Police accused protesters of spraying water at officers during the march by several thousand people in Tuen Mun in Hong Kong’s northwest. Reporters saw at least one person arrested.
 
The event was relatively small compared with previous demonstrations that have taken place every weekend since June. The protests started with opposition to a proposed extradition law and have expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.
 
The events are an embarrassment for China’s ruling Communist Party ahead of Oct. 1 celebrations of its 70th anniversary in power. Hong Kong’s government has announced it has canceled a fireworks display that day, citing concern for public safety.
 
Protesters in Tuen Mun marched about 2 kilometers (1 1/2 miles) from a playground to a government office building. Many were dressed in black and carried umbrellas, a symbol of their movement.
 
Protesters chanted, “Reclaim Hong Kong!” and “Revolution of our times!”
 
Most were peaceful but some took down a Chinese flag outside a government office and set fire to it. Government broadcaster RTHK said some damaged fire hoses in the Tuen Mun light rail station.
 
Organizers announced the event, due to last two hours, was ending after one hour due to the chaotic scene at the station.
 
An organizer quoted by RTHK, Michael Mo, complained that police escalated tensions by sending armed anti-riot officers.
 
That will “only escalate tension between protesters and police,” Mo was quoted as saying.
 
Elsewhere, scuffles were reported as government supporters heeded a call by a pro-Beijing member of the Hong Kong legislature to tear down protest posters at subway stations.
 
Hong Kong’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, has agreed to withdraw the extradition bill. But protesters are pressing other demands, including an independent investigation of complaints about police violence during earlier demonstrations.
 
Protesters complain Beijing and Lam’s government are eroding the “high degree of autonomy” and Western-style civil liberties promised to the former British colony when it was returned to China in 1997.
 
The protests have begun to weigh on Hong Kong’s economy, which already was slowing due to cooling global consumer demand. The Hong Kong airport said passenger traffic fell in August and business is off at hotels and retailers.
 
Police refused permission for Saturday’s march but an appeal tribunal overturned that decision. The panel on Friday gave permission for a two-hour event that it said had to end at 5 p.m.
 
Protesters in Tuen Mun also complained about a group of women from mainland China who sing in a local park. Residents say they are too loud and accuse some of asking for money or engaging in prostitution.
 
Those complaints prompted a similar march in July.
 
Also Saturday, there were brief scuffles as government supporters tore down protest posters at several subway stops, according to RTHK.
 
The campaign to tear down protest materials was initiated by a pro-Beijing member of Hong Kong’s legislature, Junius Ho.
 
Near the subway station in the Tsuen Wan neighborhood, a woman who was tearing down posters threw a bag at a reporter and a man shoved a cameraman, RTHK reported. It said there was pushing and shoving between the two sides at stations in Yuen Long and Lok Fu.
 
Ho made an appearance in the Shau Kei Wan neighborhood but residents shouted at him and told him to leave, RTHK said.
 
Ho initially called for protest signs to be torn down in all 18 of Hong Kong’s districts but he said Friday that would be reduced to clearing up trash from streets due to “safety concerns.”
 
On Wednesday, the Hong Kong Jockey Club canceled a horse race after protesters suggested targeting the club because a horse owned by Ho was due to run.
 
Later Saturday, some protesters planned to go to another district, Yuen Long, where a group of men with sticks hit protesters and subway passengers in a July 21 incident that caused controversy in Hong Kong.

 

 

With online shopping becoming more and more popular, traditional retail stores are doing everything they can to get shoppers to visit real stores. They are hoping one new piece of tech might do the trick.  Anna Rice narrates this report by VOA’s Julia Vassey in San Francisco, California.

 

Hundreds protested in central Cairo and several other Egyptian cities late on Friday against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, responding to an online call for a demonstration against government corruption, witnesses said.

Protests have become very rare in Egypt following a broad crackdown on dissent under Sisi, who took power after the overthrow of the former Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Security forces moved to disperse the small and scattered crowds in Cairo using tear gas but many young people stayed on the streets in the center of the capital, shouting “Leave Sisi,” Reuters reporters at the scene said.

Police arrested some of the demonstrators, witnesses said.

Small protests were also held in Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, Suez on the Red Sea as well as the Nile Delta textile town of Mahalla el-Kubra, about 110 km (68 miles) north of Cairo, according to residents and videos posted online.

There was a heavy security presence in downtown Cairo and on Tahrir Square where mass protests started in 2011 which toppled veteran ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Authorities could not be immediately reached to comment.

State TV did not cover the incidents.

A pro-government TV anchor said only a small group of protesters had gathered in central Cairo to take videos and selfies before leaving the scene. Another pro-government channel said the situation around the Tahrir Square was quiet.

Mohamed Ali, a building contractor and actor turned political activist who lives in Spain, called in a series of videos for the protest after accusing Sisi and the military of corruption.

Last Saturday, Sisi dismissed the claims as “lies and slander.”

Sisi was first elected in 2014 with 97% of the vote, and re-elected four years later with the same percentage, in a vote in which the only other candidate was an ardent Sisi supporter.

His popularity has been dented by economic austerity measures.

Sisi’s supporters say dissent must be quashed to stabilize Egypt, after a 2011 uprising and the unrest that followed, including an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of police, soldiers and civilians.

They also credit him with economic reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

A New York judge has ordered President Donald Trump to give a videotaped deposition in a lawsuit filed by protesters who claim they were roughed up outside Trump Tower.

State Supreme Court Judge Doris Gonzalez of the Bronx on Friday denied Trump’s effort to quash a subpoena seeking the president’s testimony.

She ordered Trump to videotape a deposition before the trial, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 26.

The lawsuit was filed by six activists who say they were assaulted by Trump security staff during a Sept. 3, 2015, protest by people upset over comments Trump made about Mexican immigrants.

The judge says Trump’s testimony is “indispensable” as someone in charge of the business and his campaign.

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a phone message.
 

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday renewed threats to dump captured Islamic State fighters on Europe’s doorstep if countries there continue to refuse to take back all their foreign fighters. 
 
Trump said he was continuing with plans to draw down forces in Syria, saying the U.S. had done the world a big favor by eliminating the terror group’s self-declared caliphate and that it was time for other countries to step up. 
 
“We’re asking them to take back these prisoners of war,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the Oval Office at the White House. 
 
“They’ve refused,” he added. “And at some point I’m going to have to say, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re either taking them back or we’re going to let them go at your border.’ ” 
 
This is not the first time Trump has chastised Washington’s European allies over the issue of IS foreign fighters. 
 
In February, after tweeting that the IS caliphate was “ready to fall,” the president took allies to task over their reluctance to repatriate the captured fighters:

The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them……..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019

According to the latest U.S. estimates, the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are still holding more than 2,000 foreign fighters in makeshift prisons in northeastern Syria, along with thousands other IS fighters from Syria and Iraq. 
 
U.S. and SDF officials have warned that attempted jailbreaks have become common, as many of the facilities, designed to serve as temporary prisons, have been pushed to their limits. 
 
“This is not sustainable,” Chris Maier, director of the Pentagon’s Defeat IS Task Force, told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. “There are not prisons controlled by forces in northeast Syria that can house 10,000 ISIS fighters.” 

But despite repeated calls by the U.S. and by the political wing of the SDF for countries to repatriate citizens and residents who left to fight for the terror group, the number of prisoners has remained fairly steady. 
 
“We ask for their countries to get them back. Nobody responds,” Sinam Mohammed, the U.S. representative of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), said last week. 
 
Cuban facility

Some U.S. officials and lawmakers have floated the idea that some of the IS fighters could be moved to a facility like the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, built after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to hold terrorists and fighters aligned with al-Qaida. 
 
But Trump on Friday rejected the idea. 
 
“The United States is not going to have thousands and thousands of people that we have captured stationed at Guantanamo Bay, held captive at Guantanamo Bay, for the next 50 years, and us spending billions and billions of dollars,” he said. 
 
“They can try them, do whatever they want,” the president said of the European countries. “If they don’t take them back, we’ll probably put them at the border and then they’ll have to capture them again.” 

Sound checks echoed from a distant main stage while Daniel Martinez whirled and danced at dusty makeshift festival grounds just after sunset in Rachel, the Nevada town closest to the once-secret Area 51 military base.

Martinez’s muse was the thumping beat from a satellite set-up pumping a techno tune into the chilly desert night Thursday.

Warm beneath a wolf “spirit hood” and matching faux fur jacket, the 31-year-old Pokemon collectible cards dealer said people, not the military base, drew him drive more than six hours from Pomona, California, alone.

“Here’s a big open space for people to be,” he said. “One person starts something and it infects everybody with positivity. Anything can happen if you give people a place to be.”

Minutes later, the music group Wily Savage started, and campers began migrating toward main stage light near the Little A’Le’Inn.

The music kicked off weekend events — inspired by an internet hoax to “see them aliens” — that Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said had drawn perhaps 1,500 people to two tiny desert towns.

Lee said late Thursday that more than 150 people also made the rugged trip on washboard dirt roads to get within selfie distance of two gates to the Area 51 U.S. Air Force installation that has long fueled speculation about government studies of space aliens and UFOs.

The Air Force has issued stern warnings for people not to try to enter the Nevada Test and Training Range, where Area 51 is located.

Lee said no arrests were made.

“It’s public land,” the sheriff said. “They’re allowed to go to the gate, as long as they don’t cross the boundary.”

Authorities reported no serious incidents related to festivals scheduled until Sunday in Rachel and Hiko, the two towns closest to Area 51. They’re about a 45-minute drive apart on a state road dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway, and a two-hour drive from Las Vegas.

Earlier, as Wily Savage band members helped erect the wooden frame for a stage shade in Rachel, guitarist Alon Burton said he saw a chance to perform for people who, like Martinez, were looking for a scene in which to be seen.

“It started as a joke, but it’s not a joke for us,” he said. “We know people will come out. We just don’t know how many.”

Michael Ian Borer, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sociologist who researches pop culture and paranormal activity, called the festivities sparked by the internet joke “a perfect blend of interest in aliens and the supernatural, government conspiracies, and the desire to know what we don’t know.”

The result, Borer said, was “hope and fear” for events that include the “Area 51 Basecamp” featuring music, speakers and movies in Hiko, and festivals in Rachel and Las Vegas competing for the name “Alienstock.”

“People desire to be part of something, to be ahead of the curve,” Borer said. “Area 51 is a place where normal, ordinary citizens can’t go. When you tell people they can’t do something, they just want to do it more.”

Eric Holt, the Lincoln County emergency manager overseeing preparations, said he believed authorities could handle 30,000 visitors at the two events in Rachel and Hiko.

Still, neighbors braced for trouble after millions of people responded to the “Storm Area 51” Facebook post weeks ago.

“Those that know what to expect camping in the desert are going to have a good time,” said Joerg Arnu, a Rachel resident who can see the festival grounds from his home.

Those who show up in shorts and flip-flops will find no protection against “critters, snakes and scorpions.”

“It will get cold at night. They’re not going to find what they’re looking for, and they are going to get angry,” Arnu said.

Some cellphones didn’t work Thursday in Rachel, and officials expect what service there was to eventually be overwhelmed.

The Federal Aviation Administration closed nearby airspace, although Air Force jets could be heard in the sun-drenched skies, along with an occasional sonic boom.

George Harris, owner of the Alien Research Center souvenir store in Hiko, said Friday and Saturday’s “Area 51 Basecamp” will focus on music, movies and talks about extraterrestrial lore.

Electronic dance music DJ and recording artist Paul Oakenfold is Friday’s headliner in Hiko.

The event also promises food trucks and vendors, trash and electric service, and a robust security and medical staff.

Harris said he was prepared for as many as 15,000 people and expected they would appreciate taking selfies with a replica of the Area 51 back gate without having to travel several miles to the real thing.

Sharon Wehrly, sheriff in adjacent Nye County, home to a conspicuously green establishment called the Area 51 Alien Center, said messages discouraging Earthlings from trying to find extraterrestrials in Amargosa Valley appeared to work.

She reported no arrests or incidents Thursday.

Her deputies last week arrested two Dutch tourists attracted by “Storm Area 51.” The men pleaded guilty to trespassing at a secure U.S. site nowhere near Area 51 and were sentenced to three days in jail after promising to pay nearly $2,300 each in fines.
 

Kuwait says it has raised security levels at its ports given ongoing regional tensions following an attack on Saudi Arabia.
 
The state-run KUNA news agency reported the decision Friday, quoting Kuwait’s minister of commerce and industry as making the announcement.

Khaled al-Roudhan said it affected both commercial ports and oil facilities.

Small, oil-rich Kuwait separately has told its military to be on heightened alert since the Sept. 14 attack on Saudi Arabia.
 
That attack halved the kingdom’s oil production and has disrupted global energy supplies.

The U.S. alleges Iran carried out the attack. Saudi Arabia says the assault was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran.” Iran denies being involved in the attack and warns any retaliatory strike on it by the U.S. or Saudi Arabia will result in “an all-out war.”