CAIRO — An unidentified drone or drones attacked a Shiite militia base in northern Iraq early Friday, reportedly destroying parts of a weapons depot and causing casualties among Shiite militiamen and advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. 

No group claimed responsibility. The U.S. military denied any responsibility in the attack, which coincided with the U.S. downing of an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz that was reportedly threatening a U.S. naval vessel. 

Amateur video showed people shouting and explosives detonating at the Shiite militia camp following the drone attack near Tuz Kharmato. Some witnesses said several drones attacked the site, although other reports said the base might have been shelled, setting fire to a weapons depot. 

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV reported that ballistic missiles were being put together at the site under the supervision of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards. The report said the base belonged to the Shiite Badr Brigades, under the command of pro-Iranian politician Hadi al-Ameri. 

Al-Ameri warned several days ago of the dangers of a potential regional conflict between the United States and Iran. 

He said Iraq must try to stay out of a conflict in the Persian Gulf between the U.S. and Iran, which would have serious consequences for Baghdad. 

Order to Shiite militias

Tensions also were high inside Iraq as a result of an order nearly two weeks ago by Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mehdi calling on Shiite militia forces, also known as Hushd al-Shaabi, to disarm and join the regular Iraqi armed forces. 

He said Shiite militiamen who wanted to keep their arms would have to join the armed forces, while those who wished to keep their political affiliations would need to disarm. 

The attack on the Badr militia camp came just before the deadline for the closure of Hushd al-Shaabi camps, and it was not clear that any of the camps was preparing to conform with the prime minister’s order. 

Tha’er Bayati, a Sunni tribal leader in Anbar province, told Al Arabiya there were multiple explosions inside the camp from Iranian ballistic missiles that were hit in the drone attack. He also said there were heavy casualties in the attack, although Iraqi government media reported only minor casualties. 

Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, told VOA that he suspected Sunni groups with ties to Saudi Arabia might have been behind the drone attack, “in retaliation for the drone attacks on the Saudi Yanbu pipeline last month.”  

The U.S. believes drones in that attack, which destroyed several pumping stations, may have originated in Iraq. VOA could not confirm the claims. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed in Argentina Friday the U.S. has imposed financial sanctions against a Hezbollah militant group leader suspected of directing a deadly bombing in 1994 of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. The U.S. Treasury announced sanctions that freeze any assets of Salman Raouf Salman.  VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Buenos Aires.

NEW YORK — Pam Grier’s role as the owner of a hardware store in rural Nebraska in the ABC sitcom Bless This Mess isn’t a complete departure for the film legend: She lives in rural Colorado and has spent much of her life on ranches to find serenity from Hollywood life. 
 
“I commuted to work really for 50 years because I couldn’t have that lifestyle that I wanted of horses and ruralness. It would always be the city, hotels, room service,” Grier said in a recent interview.  
  
“My grandfather was the first feminist in my life, from Wyoming, who taught all of us girls how to hunt, fish and shoot, so I could bring that to this show, every element, and it just kind of fit,” Grier said. “He had this glow, this peace and this unbelievable calm about him during the day after working sunup, sundown, doing some labor. And he just was so spiritual and enjoyed life, and he would always say, ‘You know, if you wake up breathing, you’re going to have a good day.’ And so that’s been my mantra since I was a little girl.” 
 
She credits that mantra for helping her thrive in her 70th year in a life filled with plenty of highs and lows. Grier made her name as the queen of Blaxploitation films in the 1970s with roles in classics like Coffy and Foxy Brown, but struggled in Hollywood after the genre fell out fashion. She also had tumultuous romances with the likes of Richard Pryor and Freddie Prinze.  
  
The second season of Bless This Mess launches in September. 
 
Grier also was the victim of two sexual assaults — one when she was just 6 years old. She opened up about her personal struggles in her 2010 memoir, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, and while promoting the book, she learned a lot about the wide range of people who have been victims of sexual assault, including men: “I was surprised at the book signings how many men came up and just let me know that they feel better by me talking.”  
  
Grier said she’s gratified that many more of her fellow actresses are talking about their experiences with abuse in Hollywood in the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up. She marvels at the impact the movement has had in a relatively short time.  
  
“I always say: It’s about time. It takes confidence. It takes other people around you to set an example that you won’t inflame. … And it is tough to talk about it,” she said. “A lot of people haven’t healed yet.” 
 
Grier has also successfully battled cancer. While she’s still a glamour queen and sex symbol, her experience with the disease has made her eschew at least one of society’s beauty norms.  
  
“I’m so proud of my hair growing back on my legs after cancer that I don’t shave. …  I’m very grateful to have a healthy balance,” she said. 

Joe Biden was at a soul food restaurant in Los Angeles on Thursday when he blasted President Donald Trump’s “racist” taunts at a rally the night before.

“This is about dividing the country,” the early Democratic front-runner, who has been criticized for his own handling of race , told reporters. “This is about dividing and raising the issue of racism across the country because that’s his base, that’s what he’s pushing.”
Full Coverage: Election 2020

But Michael Fisher, an African American pastor from Compton who attended the event, warned Democrats to ignore Trump.

“They should absolutely not respond to ignorance,” Fischer said. “They should stay focused on the issues.”

That tension previews the uncomfortable balancing act Democrats will face in the nearly 16 months before Election Day. Trump’s escalating exploitation of racism puts the rawest divide in American life squarely on the ballot in 2020. Democrats are united in condemning his words and actions, but the question of how to counter them is much more complicated.

The party’s passionate left wing is pressing for an all-in battle, arguing that candidates’ plans to combat racism are just as important as their proposals to provide health insurance to every American. But others question whether race should be the centerpiece of the campaign to replace Trump. Several presidential candidates, meanwhile, reject the debate as a false choice, arguing they can criticize Trump for racist tactics while still advancing proposals on health care, education, the minimum wage and more.

The emotionally charged developments shook both political parties on Thursday, a day after Trump continued his verbal assault against four minority congresswomen, this time at a raucous rally in North Carolina. The president’s supporters chanted “Send her back!” after Trump criticized Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim who fled to the U.S. as a child from violence-wracked Somalia.
 

While Trump tried to distance himself from the chant on Thursday, it echoed his own comments from earlier in the week when he said the “squad” of four young Democratic congresswomen, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, should “go back” to their “crime-infested places” overseas. They are all American citizens.

After successfully campaigning on health care during last year’s midterm elections, Democrats hoped to adopt a similar “kitchen table” strategy going into 2020 that would focus on issues that appeal to all voters. Yet Trump has forced them into a moment of decision that could send the party in a far less certain direction.

The challenge was clear Thursday when Trump’s remarks consumed the 2020 debate even as Democrats on Capitol Hill voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. The vote was the latest move by Democrats to highlight their work on more traditional issues that helped them seize the House majority last fall. Yet it barely made a ripple in the national debate.

“Trump is forcing the hand of Democratic Party leaders thinking they could thread the needle. They can’t. He’s holding Klan rallies,” said Aimee Allison, who leads She the People, an advocacy group focused on women of color. “We have to be strong in the face of that and unafraid.”

Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said that to pretend racism and division aren’t top-tier concerns for voters is a fallacy.

“This is just as important an issue for Democrats to engage and win on as health care, education and wages,” he said, pointing out that Democrats got 9 million more votes than Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections.

“That wasn’t because voters all of a sudden fell in love with Democrats. That was about the direction of this country and people being uncomfortable and alarmed with what’s happening with the Republican Party under Trump.”

But others question whether to follow Trump into the racial debate at all, concerned about alienating white working-class voters who may have backed Trump in the past and are uncomfortable with allegations of racism or bigotry.

“Calling him racist, which he is, I don’t know if that helps,” said North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Gary Pearce. He called Trump’s message “profoundly disturbing, but I know it works.”

In the battleground state of Wisconsin, Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler called on his party to take a cautious approach by explaining that Trump is using racism to distract voters from failing policies.

“Trump’s use of racism as a political weapon is his only strategy to distract the public from the No. 1 issue in 2018, which was health care,” Wikler said. “He can’t claim that he stands for working people in 2020.”

Most of the Democratic Party’s crowded 2020 class weighed in on the Trump-race question — some more aggressively than others.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren left no doubt about her position: ”#IStandWithIlhan against attacks from this racist president,” she tweeted.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who is black, condemned Trump’s attacks on the squad but also sought to distance himself from Ocasio-Cortez’s description of immigrant detention centers along the southern border as “concentration camps.”

“I would not choose that, because you start to begin to create historical comparisons that I do not think are constructive,” he said. “But (the spirit is) pointing out the outrageous assault on humanity that’s going on within our own borders . It’s an assault on the humanity of all of us.”

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called Trump “un-American.”

“His constant attacks on women of color in Congress just show what a small, weak president he is,” she said in a brief interview, while trying to pivot to the economy.

“You can talk about both,” she said. “Absolutely. You have to. You have to lead on both issues.”

Juan Rodriguez, the campaign manager for Kamala Harris, said the California senator would call out Trump on the campaign trail for “vile and reprehensible” comments at every opportunity but would also talk about her policy solutions.

Harris will “not be distracted by a person, who, the way she’d characterize, is weak and wants to stoke fear,” Rodriguez said.

Republicans, too, are grappling with the racial debate that could have profound long-term consequences on the GOP’s ability to win elections in an increasingly diverse nation.

Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina, who called the chant “offensive,” was among about 10 House GOP leaders who had breakfast Thursday with Vice President Mike Pence in Washington. Walker said he cautioned Pence that attention to the chant could distract voters next year from the economy and other themes Republicans want to emphasize.

Pence concurred and said he would discuss it with Trump, said another participant in the meeting who described the conversation on condition of anonymity.

Publicly, however, the overwhelming majority of Republican elected officials stood behind the president or offered tepid criticism.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested Trump’s critics were going too far by accusing him of racism.

“We ought to tone the rhetoric down across the country using — throwing around words like racism, you know, kind of routinely applying it to almost everything,” he told Fox Business Network.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Argentina where he is expected to rally support from Latin American leaders in the U.S. fight against Middle East militant groups.

The top U.S. diplomat will deliver remarks Friday at the second Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires, where the challenges of terrorism in the hemisphere will be addressed.

On Monday, Argentina’s Security Ministry officially designated the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, which is supported by Iran, as a terrorist organization. The designation gives the U.S. another ally in its effort to develop a global coalition to contain Iran’s influence in the Middle East and beyond.

Pompeo’s visit to Argentina coincides with the 25th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. The Argentine government has said Hezbollah was responsible for the attack.

The secretary of state left Thursday to meet face-to-face with Latin American leaders  amid difficult negotiations with Mexico and Central American countries over how to best stem the flow of migrants to the southern U.S. border.

Migration root causes

Pompeo’s three-day visit will also take him to Quito, Mexico City, and San Salvador. He will seek to expand cooperation on security issues, reinforce U.S. commitment to human rights and democracy, and expand economic opportunities for citizens, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said during a Washington press briefing on Tuesday.

Migration will also be addressed when Pompeo meets with Latin American leaders. Some experts say the United States must address the root causes or “push factors” that are compelling people to flee their homes.

“You have to look at the lack of opportunity, the gang activity, the weak institutions in this region, in Central America if you are ever going to stop people from making what is a difficult and dangerous journey to the United States,” Benjamin Gedan of the Wilson Center said. “These people don’t leave taking the decision lightly.”

He said there is broad consensus among most U.S. lawmakers that President Donald Trump should not have cut U.S. foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador while at the same time asking them to reduce the flow of migrants.

Other experts reject criticism of Trump for cutting aid to the so-called Northern Triangle countries.

“How worse can things get?” asked James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation. “People are flooding north. It is obvious that money is not achieving anything.”

“If we’re going to give them money,” he added, “I think we have to come up with programs that are actually going to have impact.”

The ongoing crisis in Venezuela, where millions have fled to neighboring countries, is likely to be an important topic for Pompeo at every stop on his journey. The U.S. and more than 50 other countries support opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s leader.

Guaido contends President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election last year was invalid and wants early presidential elections. Maduro accuses the opposition of fomenting violence.

Pompeo will also stop in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and San Salvador, El Salvador, to deepen the U.S. relationship with those countries, according to the State Department.

Turkey launched airstrikes against Kurdish rebel targets in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, after the killing of a Turkish diplomat there, state-run media quoted Turkey’s defense minister as saying on Friday.

Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkish jets on Thursday hit the Qandil mountains region in northern Iraq, where the leadership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is reported to be based. A Defense Ministry statement said airstrikes were also conducted Friday against alleged PKK targets in Iraq’s Karajak region.

Akar said the offensive was launched after an employee of the Turkish Consulate in the city of Irbil was killed along with an Iraqi national in a gun attack at a Turkish-owned restaurant in the city on Wednesday. The diplomat has been identified as Osman Kose.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting although suspicion fell on Kurdish militants.
 
In Irbil, a statement issued by security forces said the lead suspect in the investigation was a 27-year-old who hails from Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.

The statement did not give further details, but said the suspect was already wanted by security agencies in Iraq’s Kurdish region.
 
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency claimed that two of the suspect’s siblings were alleged PKK militants and that a third was a legislator from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party.

“The terror organization was dealt a major blow following the heinous attack in Irbil through the most extensive aerial operation conducted lately in the Qandil region,” Anadolu Agency quoted Akar as saying.

He said the Turkish jets struck “weapons positions, shelters and caves” belonging to the PKK.

“Our struggle against terror will continue with growing determination until the last terrorist is neutralized and the blood of our martyrs are avenged,” Akar said.

Iraq’s self-governing Kurdish region is politically allied with the Turkish government, but PKK militants, who have fought a decades-long insurgency against Ankara, operate in parts of the territory. Turkey labels the group a terrorist organization.

Turkey has regularly bombed the mountainous areas where the PKK maintains bases. The group has been waging an insurgency for more than three decades.

The Turkish defense ministry announced las week that it had launched a new operation, dubbed “Operation Claw-2” aiming to destroy caves and shelters used by the PKK in the Hakurk region.

 

Mark LaMet and Lynn Davis contributed to this report.

U.S. President Donald Trump has found his latest target for acerbic ridicule — a hijab-wearing Muslim newcomer to Congress named Ilhan Omar. She is a Somali refugee but naturalized U.S. citizen whom Trump views as something less than a patriotic red, white and blue American.

Trump railed against the lawmaker Wednesday night at his 2020 re-election campaign rally in North Carolina. He stoked the packed crowd at a college basketball arena with his claims that she is proud of al-Qaida terrorists, blames the U.S. for the political crisis in Venezuela and launches “vicious anti-Semitic screeds.”

“Send her back! Send her back!” the frenzied crowd of Trump supporters chanted as he paused to listen for 13 seconds but without responding. It was reminiscent of Trump’s 2016 campaign, when supporters regularly shouted, “Lock her up!” in a call to jail his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state.

Back in Washington on Thursday, the president disavowed the chant against Omar, saying, “I was not happy with it. I disagree with it.”

Still, to Trump, Omar has in short order become a suitable proxy for opposition Democrats trying to oust him next year after a single term in the White House. He singled her out last weekend, along with three other Democratic lawmakers who also are women of color, but unlike Omar, all U.S. citizens by birth. The president said they ought to “go back” to their home countries to “fix” things there before criticizing the U.S.

House condemnation

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to condemn Trump’s remarks as “racist,” but Trump dismissed any contention he is a racist. Instead, he praised the almost unanimous support he won from Republican lawmakers who opposed the resolution, only four of whom voted with Democrats against him.

“These left-wing ideologues see our nation as a force for evil,” Trump said at the rally, describing them as “hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down.”

“They don’t love our country,” he said. “I think, in some cases, they hate our country. You know what? If they don’t love it, tell them to leave it.”

“Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country,” Trump said. “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream — frankly, the destruction of our country.”

Omar swiftly rebuffed Trump, saying, “We have said this president is racist. We have condemned his racist remarks. I believe he is fascist.”

Now in her late 30s, Omar told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she, like many refugees, does not have a birth certificate. She is the mother of two daughters and a son, ranging in age from 7 to 15. Since January she has been a congresswoman from Minneapolis, a large city in the U.S. heartland state of Minnesota. Once divorced, she is married to Somali-born Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, the father of her three children and recently an aide to a Minneapolis City Council member.

She has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for about two decades, after fleeing the civil war in Somalia with her family in 1991 when she was a child. She lived in a Kenyan refugee camp for four years before moving to the U.S. in the mid-1990s. She held several politics-related jobs in Minneapolis in recent years, before winning a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016, becoming the first Somali-American Muslim legislator in U.S. history.

Fierce critic

Last year, she won her congressional seat, overwhelming a Republican candidate to fill the seat of a Democratic congressman — Keith Ellison, also a Muslim American — who left it to win election as the state’s attorney general.

Now Omar has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics, regularly attacking his immigrant detention policies at the southern U.S. border with Mexico as immoral and assailing the country’s long-standing support and alliance with Israel, which she says comes at the expense of Palestinians living alongside the Israelis.

More broadly, she has attacked her adopted country, saying it has “failed to live up to its founding ideals,” a place that had disappointed her and so many immigrants, refugees and minorities like her.

Aside from drawing Trump’s attention and his ire, the outspoken Omar has in six-plus months in Congress often rankled her Democratic colleagues, a number of them Jewish and more broadly, regardless of their religion, longtime supporters of Israel.

Earlier this year, the freshman lawmaker made a statement that played off tropes questioning the influence of Jewish money in American politics. Later, she said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” specifically Israel.

In both instances, the uproar and condemnation from her Democratic colleagues, and many Republican lawmakers as well, was quick and unrelenting. She subsequently apologized to Jewish groups for some of her comments.

Both times, within days, the House of Representatives approved resolutions to indirectly rebuke Omar that condemned anti-Semitism. Neither statement named her, even though some lawmakers wanted to.

‘Go back’ to their countries

Omar, along with three other progressive congresswomen, argued with congressional Democratic leaders over the treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border. Omar, along with the three others Trump denigrated —  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York,  Ayana Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — wanted more compassionate control over government actions, and they voted against most Democrats. 

Asked about their split with party leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed dismissive, saying the group, collectively known as “the squad,” amounted to only four lawmakers who had rallied no one else to their views demanding more controls on the treatment of migrants.

But after Trump vilified the four with his “go back” to their countries demand, Pelosi led the fight to condemn Trump’s language as racist.

Omar’s comity with her Democratic colleagues, however, could be short-lived.

She is proposing a resolution defending the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“We are introducing a resolution … to really speak about the American values that support and believe in our ability to exercise our First Amendment rights [in the U.S. Constitution] in regard to boycotting,” Omar said.

But a competing resolution condemning the BDS movement has wide support in the House and is much more likely to win approval, if any resolution passes.

Even so, Omar remains undaunted, saying, “I am very much driven by the moral clarity that I was sent to govern with, and I’m quite confident that it will withstand pressure.”

Mexico’s president says he will use legal channels to try to get the fortune of convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman returned to Mexico.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday the money is Mexican, and would be used for anti-poverty programs.

Lopez Obrador said Mexico has erred in the past by allowing the U.S. to seize money in corruption and criminal cases against Mexican suspects.

U.S. officials have estimated Guzman’s fortune at $14 billion and a judge ordered Guzman to pay $12.6 billion as part of his U.S. life sentence announced Wednesday. That was money his drug-trafficking organization made distributing drugs in the United States.

But in the past, U.S. officials haven’t said how they intend to get their hands on Guzman’s money.

 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that budget and debt negotiators have reached an agreement on the core elements of a deal to increase the government’s borrowing cap and set a $1.3 trillion overall level for the agency budgets that Congress passes each year.

Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday, Mnuchin said negotiations with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have settled on a debt limit increase that would cover two years. He said they’ve agreed on spending levels, too, though he did not disclose them.

Still to be resolved are offsetting spending cuts to help finance the deal and other “structural issues,” Mnuchin said. The Trump administration is pressing for up to $150 billion in such cuts, well above a figure that would be easy to quickly negotiate.

”The good news is we’ve reached an agreement between the administration, the House and the Senate on top line numbers for both year one and year two,” Mnuchin said, speaking from France, where he is attending an economic summit. “We’re now discussing offsets as well as certain structural issues, and we’ve agreed as a part of that deal there would be a long-term two-year debt ceiling increase.”

At issue are two separate but pressing items on Washington’s must-do agenda: increasing the so-called debt limit to avert a first ever default on U.S. payments and acting to set overall spending limits and prevent crunching automatic spending cuts from hitting the Pentagon and domestic agencies in January.

Pelosi and Mnuchin spoke by phone again Thursday, Pelosi told reporters.

”Our conversations are continuing. We’ve been very firm though about a decision. If they want us to have this done by before we leave we have to come to a conclusion pretty soon,” Pelosi said.

Reaching an agreement also eliminates the possibility of a repeat government shutdown when the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30. President Donald Trump ended up on the losing end of a record 35-day partial shutdown last December and January.

”Nobody wants a shutdown in any scenario,” Mnuchin told the network.

Mnuchin is taking the lead for the Trump administration in negotiations. Conservative forces in the White House and House Republicans don’t like the way the deal is shaping up.

Democrats and Senate Republicans form the core of a powerful coalition favoring a deal. But House conservatives that comprise the core of Trump’s base in Congress are wary of the emerging agreement and warn that Trump may reject a deal that doesn’t have their support. The alternative is to run the government on auto-pilot, a prospect that alarms the Pentagon and its allies.

The talks have been going for weeks but took on new urgency as deficit estimates worsened, creating an unacceptable risk of default in early to mid-September. Mnuchin clarified that the risk of a debt default in September is relatively low, limited to Treasury’s “most conservative scenario.”

Former South African President Jacob Zuma has spent three days testifying at a corruption inquiry that looks into numerous allegations of cronyism and undue influence on state organs during his time in office. But observers wonder whether Zuma is bringing answers to light, or just raising more questions.

South Africa has yet to hear many actual answers from Zuma on how private interests allegedly influenced government decisions for years, leading to dubious high-level appointments.

But what Zuma has provided this week during his testimony at the so-called “State Capture” commission holds plenty of drama. In three days of near-constant talking, the former leader, whose party pressured him to resign last year, has alleged that some top politicians are spies, complained the inquiry is unfair, and said his life is now at risk.

“I just thought, for record, this commission must know that my life and my children, my lawyers, are now under threat,” he said Tuesday, on the second day of his testimony in Johannesburg.

The Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector has now gone on for more than a year, and seen dozens of witnesses.

At the center of this drama is a wealthy family, the Guptas. The Gupta family is said to have been so close to Zuma that several top politicians testified that the family offered them high-level Cabinet positions in exchange for beneficial commercial decisions.

The highest-profile Gupta family member fled South Africa shortly after Zuma resigned, and this week, Zuma’s lawyer, Thabani Masuku, has argued that the family’s absence is a problem.

“It’s highly unfair. If the Guptas are not going to be here to testify and to corroborate what Mr. Maseko has said here, it’s just unfair to ask the president to recall or to interpret what role he may have played in the removal of Mr. Maseko,” Masuku said.

The lawyer was referring to Themba Maseko, who left his job as a government communications spokesman in 2011 and recently testified on Zuma’s close ties to the Gupta family. Maseko was replaced after refusing to direct government-advertising contracts to the Guptas’ now-defunct media businesses.

Corruption was a central issue during this year’s election, and President Cyril Ramaphosa won re-election on an anti-corruption platform.

Under Zuma, the nation saw numerous fruitless anti-corruption inquiries. But Ronald Chauke of Organization Undoing Tax Abuse, a South African watchdog, says he hopes things will be different this time, because Ramaphosa has said he will allow the commissions to do their work.

Chauke also questions the testimony Zuma has offered this week.

“To be honest with you, he was falling short. Basically, it shows you that it’s like, all of a sudden, he remembers things that happened [in] the 1960s, 40, 50 years ago. But when he has to remember critical things that recently happened in the last three years or four years, he tends to say that he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t recall. So basically, it is convenient amnesia which for me actually is deliberate lying and a deliberate withholding of critical information.”

Zuma is set to testify for one more day, on Friday.

 

STATE DEPARTMENT — “My father is a fixer, a bridge-builder, a connector. He knows that a better future is one where Han Chinese and Uighur children are in school together, are friends together and have the same opportunities,” said Jewher Ilham, who pleaded for the release of her father, prominent jailed Uighur scholar and economist Ilham Tohti. 
 
She also petitioned Chinese authorities to release all Uighur girls from so-called re-education camps before Beijing hosts the 2022 Winter Olympics.  
 
Tohti has been serving a life sentence on separatism-related charges since 2014. Chinese authorities accused him of encouraging terrorism and advocating separatism in his lectures, articles and comments to foreign media.
 

The scholar and economist founded the website Uyghur Online, which is aimed at promoting understanding between Uighurs and Han Chinese. He also has been outspoken about Beijing’s treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs in the far-western Xinjiang region.  
 
“I have not spoken to him since 2014, and I have not seen him since we were separated at the airport in 2013. We were on our way to Indiana University, where my father was supposed to start a yearlong residency,” Jewher Ilham told participants of the second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, hosted by the U.S. State Department on Tuesday.  

U.S. lawmakers’ push
 
The appeal came amid a renewed push from American lawmakers urging China to change how it treats Uighurs in Xinjiang. 
 
“The violations [in Xinjiang] are of such scale, are so big, and the commercial interests are so significant that it sometimes tempers our values in terms of how we should act,” said Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Tuesday at the ministerial.  
 
“Unless we are willing to speak out against the violations of religious freedom in China, we lose all moral authority to talk about it any other place in the world,” added Pelosi.  
 
The House speaker also called for U.S. sanctions against Chinese Communist Party leaders in Xinjiang, who are responsible for the re-education camps. 
 
More than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in re-education camps that critics say are aimed at destroying indigenous culture and religious beliefs.  
 
American officials say the United States has stressed to Chinese authorities the importance of differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism. They say Tohti’s arrest “silenced an important Uighur voice that peacefully promoted harmony and understanding among China’s ethnic groups, particularly Uighurs.”  
 
In January 2019, Tohti was nominated by a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize.
 
China rejected the nomination, calling Tohti a separatist.  
 
“Ilham Tohti is convicted of dismembering the nation. What he did was meant to split the country, stoke hatred and justify violence and terrorism, which cannot be condoned in any country. The international community should have a clear understanding of this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said this year.  
 

After weathering record-breaking temperatures, parts of Europe are now gripped by a punishing drought that is shriveling harvests, sparking water shortages and taking a toll on wildlife. experts now warn Europeans must better prepare for today’s ‘new normal.’

Weeks of dry weather have left two-thirds of French departments facing water restrictions. Plants and wildlife are stressed. More than 20 departments are in the critical red category that restricts water use to only essential needs.

France is not the only European country facing a parched summer. This weather forecast in neighboring Spain indicates some rain up north, but overall the country is baking in its third driest year this century.

Dry weather also has hit parts of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Scandinavian countries. This month, Lithuania declared an emergency, with drought expected to cut its harvests by half.

All of this follows a string of record-breaking temperatures in June across much of the continent.

Climate change and adaptation expert Blaz Kurnik, of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, says that’s no coincidence.

“Drought and heatwaves are connected,” he said. “And they are amplifying each other afterwards.”

Kurnik says its hard to just blame everything on climate change. But the last couple of years were the warmest ever recorded in Europe, mirroring the global temperature rise. And this is Europe’s second drought in as many years.

Not surprisingly, farmers are worried. We’re going to irrigate some plots, this farmer told French TV, while noting that not all of the crops can be saved.

Insurance companies estimate last year’s drought cost Europe several billion dollars. Expert Kurnik points up that’s only part of the bill.

“There are also losses, which cannot directly translate into money, which are the permanent damage of the forest, the loss of biodiversity … which can recover in the next years — or not,” he said.

Europe has long been considered a climate change leader. Experts say many European Union countries have drafted comprehensive plans to mitigate the impact of hotter and drier weather in the years to come. But that’s not enough.

When it comes to sustainable water management, for instance, environmental group WWF’s European Water Policy Officer Carla Freund says there’s a disconnect between good legislation and action.

“I think we see a lack of will overall,” she said. “It’s not an area of priority for a lot of member states. I think water is seen as something that’s ubiquitous regardless. So I don’t think governments are really aware that we’re going to be facing a huge shortage problem in the future.”

A different Europe

A Swiss study out earlier this month predicts that like other parts of the world, Europe will be drastically different by 2050. London’s climate may be more like Barcelona’s today. Madrid will be more like Marakesh.

Climate change expert Kurnik says that in some ways, Europe is preparing for these changes. France’s 2003 heatwave killed 15,000 people. That didn’t happen this year. Some farmers are planting drought-resistant crops and adopting more efficient irrigation methods. But he says the efforts are patchy.

Meanwhile, next week’s forecast predicts yet another heatwave in France — with no rain in sight.

Massachusetts prosecutors on Wednesday announced they had dropped a criminal case alleging that former “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted an 18-year-old man at a bar in Nantucket over three years ago.

Prosecutors said they made the decision to drop the felony indecent assault and battery charge against the Oscar winner after the alleged victim invoked his right under the U.S. Constitution against giving self-incriminating testimony.

Spacey’s lawyers had previously accused the man of deleting text messages that would support the actor’s defense. The man invoked his Fifth Amendment rights during a hearing earlier this month concerning the whereabouts of his cellphone, which was missing.

Spacey, who won an Academy Award in 2000 for his role in “American Beauty,” had pleaded not guilty to the charge. His lawyers had called the allegations against him “patently false.”

Lawyers for Spacey and the accuser did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The actor, 59, was one of dozens of men in the entertainment industry, business and politics who have been accused of sexual misconduct following the emergence in 2017 of the #MeToo movement.

Prosecutors had charged Spacey in the Nantucket case in December.

The accuser told police Spacey had bought him several rounds of beer and whiskey at the Club Car Restaurant on Nantucket in July 2016 when he was 18 and said at one point, “Let’s get drunk,” according to charging documents.

As they stood next to a piano, Spacey groped him, he told investigators.

Families of victims and their countries’ embassies are marking the fifth anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, amid mounting evidence of Russia’s involvement in shooting the passenger plane out of the sky.

The airliner flying between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a Buk missile on July 17, 2014, over territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, killing all 298 people on board, including 80 children.

In the Netherlands, which lost 193 citizens, commemorations began on July 16, when family members of 15 of the victims assembled in the town of Hilversum for a vigil.

It was led by a priest who grows sunflowers from seeds brought from eastern Ukraine where the plane was shot down.

A separate MH17 conference took place in the Netherlands on July 16, as well as a roundtable in Washington, D.C.

Speaking in Washington, George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said that “Russia set the stage for the shoot-down of MH17 by financing, organizing, and leading proxies in eastern Ukraine.”

He also said that “Russia continues to deny the presence of its forces and materiel” in non-government-controlled parts of Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in the MH17 tragedy.

Nine embassies whose citizens perished on the flight plan to hold a memorial on July 17 in Malaysia, which lost 43 citizens.

Another memorial is taking place at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam that is closed to the media.

Investigators from the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) have concluded that a Russian antiaircraft-missile brigade transported the sophisticated projectile system from and back to Russia into Ukraine.

The JIT in June furthermore indicted three Russians with military and intelligence backgrounds and a Ukrainian man with no prior military experience on murder charges.

The four suspects are scheduled to be tried starting in March 2020 in the Netherlands, although all are believed to be in Russia.

And investigators promised to continue investigating suspects, including those in the “chain of command.”

Western states imposed sanctions on Russia after the incident, bolstering existing measures that were put into force after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

Dutch prosecutors might get to question a possible key witness of the events after an elite Ukrainian unit on June 27 detained Volodymyr Tsemakh at his home in a separatist-held city in the Donetsk region.

Tsemakh oversaw an air-defense unit in a town near the crash site.

His lawyer and daughter told local media that Ukrainian authorities are charging him with terrorism that carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Meanwhile, Tsemakh’s wife sent a pro-Moscow separatist official a picture of her husband after he was arrested with a bandaged wound on his forehead, according to online open-source sleuth Bellingcat.

TV footage uncovered by Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, showed Tsemakh claiming that he was in charge of an antiaircraft unit and that he helped hide the Buk missile in July 2014.

He furthermore shows the interviewer where the civilian airliner fell.

A July 15 RFE/RL report also outlined how Russian and Moscow-controlled media in nongovernment-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine first reported that separatists had downed a Ukrainian military plane during the time when MH17 was downed.

Leaders of a small town in Texas are abandoning a proposal that would have essentially banned abortions in their community.
 
Mineral Wells Mayor Christopher Perricone says he proposed making his town a “sanctuary city for the unborn” after the town of Waskom became the first in Texas to do so . But at a meeting Tuesday in Mineral Wells, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Dallas, city leaders voted 5-2 to take no action at the recommendation of the city’s legal staff.
 
The Star-Telegram reports that earlier Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas sent a letter to Mineral Wells council members warning that its proposal was unconstitutional.
 
There are currently no abortion clinics in either Waskom or Mineral Wells, so the measures are largely symbolic.  

 

 

Civil liberties groups are asking a federal judge for a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s effort to effectively end asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
 
The American Civil Liberties Union and others filed the request Wednesday, seeking a Thursday hearing in San Francisco. The groups sued Tuesday and want the judge to block the policy while the case is heard.
 
The Trump administration rules went into effect Tuesday and prevent most migrants from seeking protection as refugees if they have passed through another country first. It targets tens of thousands of Central Americans who cross into the U.S. through Mexico. But it also affects people from Africa, Asia, and South America who come to the southern border.
 
Immigrant advocates say the plan illegally circumvents the asylum process Congress established.

On a two-day visit to New York this month, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen vowed in a speech never to “succumb to any threats” from China. She mixed too with U.S. Congress members in America’s largest city. Reporters were allowed to cover some of her events. It is more open and welcoming  than past U.S. trips by Taiwan presidents.

Tsai, passing through New York on her way to visit former  diplomatic allies in the Caribbean, will return to Taipei after spending another two days in the United States before July 22. 

In the past, Washington has held visits by Taiwanese presidents to shorter periods, smaller cities and lower-profile activities – sometimes just aircraft refueling. The idea was to offer transit stops, for comfort and convenience, but avoid upsetting China. China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory rather than a state entitled to foreign relations. Washington and Beijing recognize each other diplomatically.

Tsai is getting to do more than usual this month because the U.S. government is upgrading relations with Taiwan and expressing exasperation with China, experts believe. 

“At this moment, I think both the Taiwan government and the U.S. government prefer to see this as kind of  a one-step further enhancement of diplomatic relationships,” said Liu Yih-jiun, public affairs professor at Fo Guang University in Taiwan.

Time, place and activity upgrades

Taiwan presidents have been allowed stopovers in the United States since the 1990s. They are officially transit stops between Taipei and visits to diplomatic allies in the Americas and South Pacific.

In 2006, Taiwan ex-president Chen Shui-bian stopped in the relatively remote city of Anchorage for a simple refueling – and he complained then of inconvenience. But Chen had ruffled the United States by provoking China at a time when U.S. officials hoped the two Asian governments would seek peace.

Seven years later, Taiwan’s ex-president Ma Ying-jeou visited New York for 40 hours but avoided slamming China in any meetings there. Ma had set aside disputes with China to start landmark negotiations with the Communist government.

Last August, in a move that upset China, Tsai became the first Taiwanese president since the 1970s to visit a U.S. federal property, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  

Shift in U.S.-China-Taiwan ties

China has blamed Tsai for shunning more negotiations. Unlike Ma, she rejects Beijing’s dialogue conditions that both sides fall under one flag.

U.S. policy toward stopovers has not changed over the years, said Aaron Huang, acting spokesman for the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei. But the Trump government has tightened Taiwan-U.S. ties by offering military aid for Taiwan as well as support for more high-level visits. 

Trump, unlike his predecessors, is battling Beijing over trade. He is resisting Chinese military expansion in the South China Sea at the same time, largely by sending Navy ships and enlisting help from third countries.

The length of Tsai’s U.S. stays this month, the choice of New York as a venue and China’s past criticism of Tsai will stir China again, said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. 

“I think from those perspectives, her visit will be interpreted as more provocative than otherwise it would have been,” Sun said.

Between her U.S. stops, Tsai is scheduled to visit Haiti, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Kitts and Nevis. Beijing protested before Tsai started her journey.

Washington next?

Tsai hopes to grow closer with the United States, especially as China pressures her toward talks through military aircraft flybys and squelching Taiwanese foreign relations, political scientists in Taipei say. 

But with U.S. stopovers routine, Taiwanese voters hope their president can take her U.S. visits even further, said Ku Chung-hua, standing board member with the Taiwan advocacy group Citizens’ Congress Watch. 

Common Taiwanese often resent China’s pressure and hope the U.S. government can help in their defense. 

Tsai almost got the chance earlier in the year, when a group of U.S. senators asked, unsuccessfully, that she be able to address Congress. 

“If she went and spoke to the U.S. Congress, that would be a big breakthrough, but if she’s just passing through for a few nights, though there’s some relaxation compared to the past, it doesn’t change approval ratings that much,” Ku said.

An International relief agency says the Taliban has forced them to close dozens of clinics in an embattled central – eastern region of Afghanistan, depriving  hundreds of thousands of people, particularly women and children, of  receiving medical treatment and health services. 

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) said in a statement issued Wednesday the insurgents’ action in the Wardak province had stemmed from last week’s deadly attack by Afghan security forces against one of the agency’s health clinics. It noted that the condemnable raid killed four people, including SCA doctors, and one employee is still missing.

“The Taliban forced SCA to close 42 out of 77 health facilities in six out of nine districts of Wardak province so far, and due to this closure, an estimated number of over 5,700 patients are affected on daily basis,” the aid agency lamented. 

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid justified their action, alleging the July 8th raid against the SCA hospital was jointly conducted by American and Afghan forces. He told VOA the relief agency’s health units have come under regular attack by pro-government forces but the SCA has not effectively protested nor has the Swedish government taken up the issue with Americans or the international community. 

“On the request of an association of local clinics, doctors and paramedical staff in Wardak, we have contacted Sweden and urged them to take immediate steps to protect their health facilities as well as staff working on them. Until then, we have told SCA to close their clinics,” Mujahid said.

“If they (Sweden) fail to act accordingly, we (Taliban) will approach and seek help from other international charity organizations to take charge of these clinics to ensure the people in Wardak continue to receive medical treatment and health services,” he added. 

The SCA country director, Sonny Mansson, denounced the insurgent move as an obvious violation of human rights and international humanitarian law.

“We demand immediate reopening of all health facilities for the people and we strongly urge all parties involved in conflict to refrain from such actions which deliberately puts civilian lives at risk”, he added.

The SCA had just days after the raid against its health clinic strongly condemned it as a serious violation of international humanitarian law and demanded an independent international investigation into the incident. The agency, however, had exclusively blamed Afghan forces for conducting the deadly raid. 

Last week’s attack on the hospital was the second in three years.  In 2016, security forces had raided the facility and dragged out two hospital patients along with their 15-year-old caretaker and later displayed their bodies.

The SCA operates in rural Afghanistan, including Taliban-controlled areas, with approximately 6,000 local staff around the country. 

While deforestation has devastated many African countries, in the west African nation of Niger more than 200 million new trees have sprung up in recent decades.  These trees, mainly a variety known locally as Gao – weren’t planted.  Instead, they were protected by Nigerien farmers who realized the trees were assets to agriculture and animal feed.  Moki Edwin Kindzeka has this report by Anne Nzouankeu in Niamey, Niger.

Monsoon flooding and landslides continued to cause havoc in South Asia on Tuesday, with the death toll rising to 78 in Nepal and authorities in neighboring northeastern India battling to provide relief to over 4 million people in Assam state, officials said.

Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center said more than 40,000 soldiers and police were using helicopters and roads to rush food, tents and medicine to thousands of people hit by the annual flooding. Rescuers also were searching for 32 missing people.

In Bangladesh, more than 100,000 people were affected by flooding in the north and forecasters warned that major rivers continued to swell across the country.

Rivers burst their banks in the northern district of Lalmonirhat, marooning villages, news reports said, quoting local water board officials.

In the Indian state of Assam, officials said floodwaters have killed at least 19 people and brought misery to some 4.5 million.

More than 85,000 people have taken shelter in 187 state government-run camps in 30 of the state’s 33 districts, the state disaster management authority said in a statement.

Atiqua Sultana, a district magistrate, said a flooded river washed away a 150-meter (490-foot) stretch of Assam’s border road with Bangladesh, flooding 70 villages on the Indian side.

Around 80% of Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the endangered one-horn rhinoceros, has been flooded by the Brahmaputra river, which flows along the sanctuary, forest officer Jutika Borah said.

After causing flooding and landslides in Nepal, three rivers have been overflowing in India and submerging parts of eastern Bihar state, killing at least 24 people, said Pratata Amrit, a state government official.

More than 2.5 million people have been hit by the flooding in 12 of 38 districts of Bihar state, Amrit said.

In Bangladesh, at least a dozen people, mostly farmers, have been killed by lightning since Saturday as monsoon rains battered parts of the low-lying country.

Bangladesh, with 160 million people and more than 130 rivers, is prone to monsoon floods because of overflowing rivers and the heavy onrush of water from upstream India.

Monsoon rains hit the region in June-September. The rains are crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season.