Coast Guard rescuers pulled four trapped men alive from a capsized cargo ship Monday, drilling into the hull’s steel plates to extract the crew members more than a day after their vessel overturned while leaving a Georgia port.

All four were described as alert and in relatively good condition and were taken to a hospital for further evaluation.

“Best day of my 16-year career,” Lt. Lloyd Heflin, who was coordinating the effort, wrote in a text message to The Associated Press.

A video posted online by the Coast Guard showed responders clapping and cheering as the final man, wearing only shorts, climbed out of a hole in the hull and stood up.

Three of the South Korean crew members came out in the mid-afternoon. The fourth man, who was trapped in a separate compartment, emerged three hours later.

The rescues followed nearly 36 hours of work after the Golden Ray, a giant ship that carries automobiles, rolled onto its side early Sunday as it was leaving Brunswick, bound for Baltimore.

“All crew members are accounted for,” Coast Guard Southeast wrote on Twitter. “Operations will now shift fully to environmental protection, removing the vessel and resuming commerce.”

In the hours immediately after the accident, the Coast Guard lifted 20 crew members into helicopters before determining that smoke and flames and unstable cargo made it too risky to venture further inside the vessel. Officials were concerned that some of the 4,000 vehicles aboard may have broken loose.

That left responders looking for the remaining four crew members. At first, rescuers thought the noises they were hearing inside could be some of the vehicles crashing around. But by dawn Monday, they were confident that the taps were responses to their own taps, indicating someone was alive inside.

“It was outstanding when I heard the news this morning that we had taps back throughout the night,” Capt. John Reed said. Those sounds helped lead rescuers to the right place on the 656-foot (200 meter) vessel and provided motivation.

“They were charged up knowing the people were alive,” Reed said.

On Monday morning, rescuers landed on the side of the Golden Ray and rappelled down the hull. Heflin, who was coordinating the search, said they found three men in a room close to the propeller shaft, near the bottom of the stern. Responders began drilling, starting with a 3-inch (7.5-centimeter) hole. Coast Guard officials brought the ship’s chief engineer, who was rescued Sunday, out to the ship to translate, and found the three men were “on board and OK,” as Heflin put it.

Reed said rescuers passed food and water through the hole to the men. They also provided fresh air to the propeller room, which Reed said was even hotter than outside, where the high was 93 degrees (34 Celsius).

Responders set up a tent on the hull and began drilling additional holes, eventually making an opening large enough to insert a ladder and help the men climb out.

“It was like connect the dots,” Reed said of the hole, which grew to 2 feet by 3 feet (0.6 meters by 1 meter).

The fourth rescue was a greater challenge. That crewman was behind glass in a separate engineering compartment on another deck, Reed said.

The Golden Ray is now stuck in the shipping channel, closing one of the busiest U.S. seaports for shipping automobiles. One ship is unable to leave port and four more are lined up outside waiting to come in, according to ship-tracking website Marine Traffic.

A statement issued Monday by the South Korea foreign ministry said the crew members were isolated in an engine room. It said 10 South Koreans and 13 Filipinos had been on board, along with a U.S. harbor pilot, when the ship began tilting.

Position records for the Golden Ray show the ship arrived in port in Brunswick Saturday evening after making the short sail from a prior stop in Jacksonville, Florida. The ship then departed the dock in Brunswick shortly after midnight and was underway only 23 minutes before its movement stopped in the mouth of the harbor where it capsized, according to satellite data recorded by Marine Traffic.

Port officials were “working closely with the Coast Guard to reopen the channel,” Georgia Ports Authority Executive Director Griff Lynch said in a statement after the final man was rescued.

The cause of the capsizing remains under investigation. Marine Traffic shows the Golden Ray overturned as it was passed by another car carrier entering St. Simons Sound.

At the time, the skies were clear and the weather calm, with a southerly breeze of only 5 miles per hour, according to National Weather Service records.

Many of those rescued were taken to the International Seafarers’ Center in Brunswick. Sailors arrived with only what they were wearing when rescued. A restaurant donated a meal, and the volunteer-run center provided the seamen with clothes, toiletries and Bibles.

The vessel is owned by Hyundai Glovis, which carries cars for automakers Hyundai and Kia as well as others.

In a statement, the company thanked the Coast Guard for saving the crew and sought to assure the public that it would now focus on “mitigating damage to property and the environment.”

It’s a warm night in Indonesia and the air is filled with excitement as villagers watch a puppet show accompanied by traditional music.

To the rhythmic beat of cymbals, drums and a bamboo harmonica, the hand-held puppets wearing brightly colored batik headdresses and sarongs fight, and one gets flung off the stage.

This vivid performance is the brainchild of Drajat Iskandar, who has been lending a hand to revive the near-extinct art of “wayang bambu,” or bamboo puppetry.

Once enjoyed by generations of Sundanese, Indonesia’s second most-populous ethnic group who originate from the central island of Java, the delicate art has almost disappeared from modern stages.

Iskandar, 47, has updated his bamboo puppets by making them three-dimensional, unlike conventional two-dimensional ones.

This is done by weaving bamboo strips together to form an intricate head and torso fixed over two perpendicular bamboo sticks. The puppet is then dressed in a headdress and sarong.

The narratives Iskandar’s puppet troupe perform are also updated to reflect modern society, instead of the usual stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

“I try to portray local stories and folklore from our community with bamboo puppets,” Iskandar said. “The stories we perform are also inspired by current issues, like brawls between students, drug problems, sexual freedom, and politics.”

Iskandar learned the art of “wayang bambu” from his father, who was also a puppeteer. A former artist, he started developing his own “wayang bambu” style of performance nearly two decades ago.

Now he has a full puppet troupe, along with an orchestra of 12 musicians that accompany each show, and has been training pupils to preserve the art form.

Iskandar and his pupils regularly visit a bamboo grove near his home to gather materials to assemble new puppets and make the minor repairs needed after the sometimes frenetic shows.

He says bookings for his troupe’s performances have steadily increased over the years. They’re also a hit since they perform in the Sundanese language.

“Members of the community, from children to the elderly, can understand and enjoy this new form of Sundanese culture, and the storyline is also very interesting,” said Pupung Syaiful Rohman, a resident of Ciapus village, in West Java province, where the recent performance was staged.

The U.S. military is likely to accelerate the pace of its operations in Afghanistan to counter an increase in Taliban attacks, a senior U.S. general said Monday following Washington’s suspension of peace talks with the insurgents.

U.S. Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, said during a visit to Afghanistan that the Taliban overplayed its hand in peace negotiations by carrying out a spate of high profile attacks, including one that killed a U.S. soldier last week.

The Taliban, which controls more territory than at any time since 2001 when it governed the country, said on Sunday that more American lives would be lost.

McKenzie declined to comment on the Taliban statement. But he noted that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were hardly “defenseless.”

“We’re certainly not going to sit still and let them carry out some self-described race to victory. That’s not going to happen,” McKenzie told a group of reporters traveling with him during a stop at Bagram Airfield in northeastern Afghanistan.

Asked whether increasing operations against the Taliban could include airstrikes and raids by U.S. and Afghan commandos, McKenzie responded: “I think we’re talking a total spectrum.”

“And, again, whatever targets are available, whatever targets can be lawfully and ethically struck, I think we’re going to pursue those targets,” he said.

Taliban miscalculation

The insurgents’ determination to step up both attacks on provincial centers and suicide bombings even as peace talks were taking place was a major factor in pushing U.S. President Donald Trump to announce on Saturday that he was canceling the talks aimed at ending America’s longest war of 18 years.

The halt to the negotiations has fueled fears of even more violence across Afghanistan, with heightened security warnings in the capital Kabul and other centers ahead of a presidential election scheduled for Sept. 28.

Trump, a longtime critic of the Afghan war, and the billions of dollars it costs, had been preparing an unprecedented meeting with the insurgency’s leaders at the presidential compound in Camp David, Maryland.

But he called off the event after the latest violence.

Reuters has reported on growing misgivings that had been building within Trump’s administration about the peace deal negotiated by a special U.S. envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. McKenzie said he believed the Taliban underestimated the delicate nature of the talks with Washington, even in their later stages.

“I think they overplayed their hand,” McKenzie said. “They misjudged the character of the American people. I think they misjudged the character of the president of the United States.”

U.S. troops

The growing tension on the ground in Afghanistan adds to the uncertainty about the future course for American forces, many of whom must now simultaneously brace for an increase in fighting while also awaiting potential orders to withdraw.

The United States has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, a figure that Trump has said he would like to reduce to about 8,600.

McKenzie declined to speculate on next steps even as he visited American troops at bases in Afghanistan, flying in from neighboring Pakistan over rugged, mountainous terrain.

Asked what his message was in his talks on Monday with U.S. special operations forces, medical teams and other personnel, McKenzie told reporters that they would need to keep fighting the “hard fight” for now.

“We just have to hold the line right now,” McKenzie said.

“We’re going to make some decisions, I think, back in our nation’s capital over the next few days and that will give us increased guidance going ahead,” he added, without elaborating.

The United Nations’ chief human rights official said Monday that millions of Venezuelans continue to suffer rights violations, including dozens of possible extrajudicial killings carried out by a special police force.
 
Nongovernmental organizations report that the Special Action police force carried out 57 suspected extrajudicial killings in July alone within Caracas, Michelle Bachelet said in an oral presentation on Venezuela to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Bachelet’s presentation followed a scathing written report issued in early July that drew a government backlash. It found a “pattern of torture” under the government of President Nicolas Maduro and citing violations like arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and enforced disappearances.

Bachelet’s latest presentation noted some areas of progress, while pointing to more cases of human rights violations and declining conditions as more than 4 million Venezuelans have fled a country beset by hyperinflation that leaves monthly minimum wages equal to $2.
 
While Bachelet said she had called for officials to dismantle the feared Special Action police force, the unit has actually received ongoing support from the highest levels of the government, she said.
 
Bachelet raised concern that groups that collaborated with her in the earlier report have since come under criticism and threats by senior officials.
 
“Reprisals for having cooperated with the United Nations are unacceptable,” she said. “I urge the authorities to take preventative measures.”

Bachelet said she worried about a proposed law criminalizing the activities of human rights organizations that receive money from abroad, which could further erode democracy in Venezuela, a once wealthy oil nation.

Areas of progress
 
Highlighting advances, Bachelet said a member of her team recently was allowed to visit the Ramo Verde Military Center — a prison commonly used to hold what opposition leaders consider political prisoners — with an agreement for visits to come. The government also has released 83 people whose arrests human rights observers considered arbitrary, she said, adding that officials have agreed to consider another 27 cases, expecting action soon.
 
The only way to overcome Venezuela’s human rights crisis is for Maduro’s government and the opposition led by National Assembly President Juan Guaido to return to negotiations overseen by Norway, Bachelet said, and renewed her offer to support all such efforts.

Maduro’s government didn’t immediately respond to Bachelet’s latest comments, but officials rejected earlier criticism as biased and demanded she make corrections.

Fifty U.S. states and territories, led by Texas, announced an investigation into Google’s “potential monopolistic behavior.”
 
The Monday announcement closely followed one from a separate group of states Friday that disclosed an investigation into Facebook’s market dominance. The two probes widen the antitrust scrutiny of big tech companies beyond sweeping federal and congressional investigations and enforcement action by European regulators.

Nebraska attorney general Doug Peterson, a Republican, said at a press conference held in Washington that 50 attorneys general joining together sends a “strong message to Google.”
 
California and Alabama are not part of the investigation, although it does include the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Tara Gallegos, a spokeswoman for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, declined to confirm or deny any state investigation and would not comment on the announcement by the other states.

Mike Lewis, a spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, also said the state’s legal team had no comment on the probe.

The news conference featured a dozen Republican attorneys general plus the Democratic attorney general of Washington, D.C.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a market value of more than $820 billion and controls so many facets of the internet that it’s fairly impossible to surf the web for long without running into at least one of its services. Google’s dominance in online search and advertising enables it to target millions of consumers for their personal data.
 
Google expects the state authorities will ask the company about past similar investigations in the U.S. and internationally, senior vice president of global affairs Kent Walker wrote in a blog post Friday.
 
Critics often point to Google’s 2007 acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick as pivotal to its advertising dominance.
 
Europe’s antitrust regulators slapped Google with a $1.7 billion fine in March for unfairly inserting exclusivity clauses into contracts with advertisers, disadvantaging rivals in the online ad business.
 
One outcome antitrust regulators might explore is forcing Google to spin off search as a separate company, experts say. Regulators also could focus on areas such as Google’s popular video site YouTube, an acquisition Google scored in 2006.
 
Joining Paxton, a Republican, in the investigation are the attorneys general of almost all U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Google response
 
Google has long argued that although its businesses are large, they are useful and beneficial to consumers.
 
“Google is one of America’s top spenders on research and development, making investments that spur innovation,” Walker wrote. “Things that were science fiction a few years ago are now free for everyone — translating any language instantaneously, learning about objects by pointing your phone, getting an answer to pretty much any question you might have.”
 
But federal and state regulators and policymakers are growing more concerned not just with the company’s impact on ordinary internet users, but also on smaller companies striving to compete in Google’s markets.
 
“On the one hand, you could just say, ‘well Google is dominant because they’re good,’” said Jen King, the director of privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. “But at the same time, it’s created an ecosystem where people’s whole internet experience is mediated through Google’s home page and Google’s other products.”

Three possible targets

Experts believe the probe could focus on at least one of three areas that have caught regulators’ eyes.
 
A good first place to look might be online advertising. Google will control 31.1% of global digital ad dollars in 2019, according to eMarketer estimates, crushing a distant second-place Facebook. And many smaller advertisers have argued that Google has such a stranglehold on the market that it becomes a system of whatever Google says, goes — because the alternative could be not reaching customers.
 
“There’s definitely concern on the part of the advertisers themselves that Google wields way too much power in setting rates and favoring their own services over others,” King said.

Another visibly huge piece of Google’s business is its search platform, often the starting point for millions of people when they go online. Google dwarfs other search competitors and has faced harsh criticism in the past for favoring its own products over competitors at the top of search results. European regulators also have investigated in this area, ultimately fining Google for promoting its own shopping service. Google is appealing the fine.
 
Google’s smartphone operating system, Android, is the most widely used in the world.
 
European regulators have fined Google $5 billion for tactics involving Android, finding that Google forced smartphone makers to install Google apps, thereby expanding its reach. Google has since allowed more options for alternative browser and search apps to European Android phones.
 
The U.S. Justice Department opened a sweeping investigation of big tech companies this summer, looking at whether their online platforms have hurt competition, suppressed innovation or otherwise harmed consumers. The Federal Trade Commission has been conducting its own competition probe of Big Tech, as has the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust.

The head of the National Weather Service is defending forecasters who contradicted President Donald Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian posed a threat to Alabama as it approached the United States.
 
Director Louis Uccellini told a meteorology convention Monday that forecasters in Birmingham did the right thing when they tried to combat public panic and rumors that Dorian posed a threat to Alabama. Uccellini says it was only later that they found out the source of the mistaken information.

Speaking at a meeting of the National Weather Association in Huntsville, Alabama, Uccellini said Birmingham forecasters “did what any office would do” to protect the public.
 
Trump has defended his tweet about Alabama and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an unsigned statement critical of the Birmingham forecasters on Friday.

President Donald Trump on Monday denied anything improper in the use by military personnel and Vice President Mike Pence of his luxury golf resorts while on official travel abroad.

The Air Force announced a review following an uproar over the revelation that the crew of a C-17 transport plane stayed at the Trump Turnberry in Scotland during a layover between Kuwait and Alaska.

Similar questions have been raised over the ethics of Pence and his entourage staying at the Trump family’s Doonbeg golf resort in Ireland this month while on an official visit to the country.

Trump, who has raised eyebrows by integrating his family business empire’s golf courses into his own presidential schedule, said that government officials’ use of his properties was a coincidence.

“NOTHING TO DO WITH ME,” he tweeted about the Air Force use of Turnberry, although he added that the officers “have good taste!”

He also defended the Pence group’s use of Doonbeg, saying the vice president wanted to visit the town because of family links, even though his official meetings were in Dublin, on the other side of Ireland.

“I had nothing to do with the decision of our great @VP Mike Pence to stay overnight at one of the Trump owned resorts in Doonbeg, Ireland. Mike’s family has lived in Doonbeg for many years, and he thought that during his very busy European visit, he would stop and see his family!”

The Pentagon said in a statement that the Scottish layover “adhered to all guidance and procedures,” but it acknowledged that there might be at least an image problem.

“We understand that US Service members lodging at higher-end accommodations, even if within government rates, might be allowable but not advisable,” the military said.

“We must still be considerate of perceptions of not being good stewards of taxpayer funds that might be created through the appearance of aircrew staying at such locations,” it said.

“Therefore, we are reviewing all associated guidance.”

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, said last Friday that they will probe whether Trump has broken laws against profiting from the presidency.

Trump has separated himself from his family’s real estate and golf business. However, he makes regular use of his own golf courses in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia.

While at the G7 summit in France, he pitched his Doral resort in Florida as the venue for next year’s gathering, arguing that his property is almost unique in the United States as a suitable location for the huge event.

Security officials these days are anything but shy when they describe the dangers facing the United States in cyberspace.

“We’re in the midst, I think we all know, of a global cyber pandemic,” the National Security Agency’s top lawyer warned at a conference last week.

And NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell did not stop there.

“I think it’s probably fair to say it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he added.  “The opportunities for cyber mischief are increasing at a great rate… The opportunities for our ability to defend against it are not increasing at the same rate.”

The costs are significant.  

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center took in more than 351,000 complaints in 2018, the last full year for which data is available, with losses to companies and individuals topping $2.7 billion.

And officials are quick to point out, those are only the cases they know about. Many go unreported. And the potential impact is not insignificant.

U.S. officials have described the country’s economy as a “cross-cutting” of various systems that have been integrated into a “common fabric.” But they say U.S. adversaries, like China, see a web of interconnected targets, much of which is not within the purview of U.S. government agencies.

 “Much of what we care about in the U.S. is in private hands,” said Tonya Ugoretz, the deputy assistant director for cyber, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“There’s no shortage of vulnerabilities and opportunities for malicious actors,” she added, speaking this past week at a security conference.  “We see that landscape only growing in complexity.”

Smart devices vulnerabilities

A chief concern is what is often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), which include a whole host of so-called smart devices, from mobile phones to refrigerators to teddy bears, that are connected to the internet.

While being able to use a smart phone to talk to a refrigerator to figure out what to pick up at the grocery store may be convenient, it can also be risky.  A criminal who can hack into the home network and the refrigerator could theoretically use that opening to access a bank account or other sensitive material.

When experts add in the impact of new and growing technologies, like artificial intelligence or 5G wireless networks, many see danger.

“It’s increasing the opportunities or the attack surfaces, as military folks like to call it, for mischief,” according to the NSA’s Gerstell. “That’s increasing at an extraordinary, breathtaking rate.”

Extensive damage

Defending the growing target list for cyberattacks is difficult, as is undoing the damage.

While the U.S. has had some success in recovering lost or stolen funds — the FBI reported a recovery rate of about 75% in 2018 — the damage from stolen data or trade secrets can linger.

At the same time, there is a growing frustration especially among private sector companies that the U.S. government is holding them back from taking more aggressive, and perhaps more effective, action.

“What they are facing is not just routine criminal activity but it’s often blended, that the criminals are linked to nation states and that nation states are increasingly conducting criminal activities,” said John Carlin, a former assistant attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice, who now represents companies that have been victimized by cyberattacks.

Limited powers

“They are neither permitted because of the national security implications to take steps on their own to disrupt attacks that are occurring or to take acts to collect information outside of their networks,” he said. “Nor are they getting additional actionable intelligence on the front end of the threat so that they can take precautionary steps to protect themselves.”
 
As a result, there has been persistent talk that companies should be allowed to “hack back,” to track and retaliate against cyber actors who have targeted them.

There are already indications that companies are going after their attackers.

“There are signs it is going on in an international sort of emerging market for what you might call defense services,” according to Wyatt Hoffman with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Cyber Policy Initiative.

“Much of the evidence is anecdotal,” he said. “But there is evidence that, for instance, in the financial sector in different parts of the world, there are banks that will hire firms to do kind of server take down services where if they’re if they’re suffering from a [denial of service] attack or a persistent threat, they’ll hire a firm in a jurisdiction where it’s a little more permissive.”

For now, such “hack backs” are not legal in the U.S. and attempts by lawmakers to make it legal have not gained sufficient traction in Congress.

U.S. government officials also continue to request that any companies that suspect they have been hacked contact law enforcement.

“Most of the studies I’ve seen suggest that the average time it takes to discover a data breach is about six months, certainly months,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Hickey said during a recent panel discussion on hacking back.

“The odds that the hackers will have transferred it [the data] only once to an identified IP address and left it there without copying it or removing it from the United States in that time strikes me as very, very unlikely,” he added.

Some software providers agree, and have joined with government officials to warn companies against taking matters into their own hands.

“It just doesn’t work,” said Rich Boscovich with Microsoft’s, Digital Crime Unit, warning of unintended consequences. “The liability there is enormous. So, hacking back is not something that you want to do.”

 

 

 

Russian voters handed setbacks to Kremlin-affiliated candidates in Moscow and other local elections nationwide — losses that came despite a near total ban on opposition candidates that sparked a summer of street protests and mass arrests in the capital.  

With most of the vote counted, returns showed pro-Kremlin candidates lost over a third of seats in the race for Moscow’s city council — suggesting a plan by the opposition to consolidate votes around targeted opponents of the Kremlin had been relatively successful. 

Meanwhile, Kremlin-backed candidates appeared poised to hold on to the important governor posts in 16 regions, including Russia’s second capital, Saint Petersburg.

The independent election monitoring organization Golos reported  “the mass use” of cash incentives and busing of voters to election precincts in Siberia and the Far East.  It also complained of a lack of access by vote monitors and journalists to precincts. 

Ella Pamfilova, the head of Russia’s Election Commission, who had been subject of a mysterious attack on the even of the vote, accused Golos of reproducing claims of fraud from previous elections. 

The closely watched Moscow elections — which have been marred by past vote rigging —proceeded largely without incident.  Several videos, however, circulated on social media showing ballot stuffing at a few polling stations. 

Election Repression 

For many, the vote was characterized by which candidates were not in the race.

Russia’s Election Commission banned the vast majority of opposition candidates alleging they did not have the required number of signatures to participate. 

The move prompted a rolling series of street protests in Moscow and Saint Petersburg that saw some 2,500 arrests — effectively turning a somewhat minor race into a test of political freedoms in President Vladimir Putin’s managed democracy.

Banned opposition candidates spent much of the summer in prison. A handful of protesters faced even harsher punishment — several receiving prison terms of 3-5 years for participating in what the government says are “unauthorized rallies.” 

Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed complaints about the lack of competition.

“It’s not important how many candidates there are — what matters is the quality,” said the Russian leader as he cast his vote in Moscow. 

Putin has said Russians have the right to protest but has also warned that authorities would not tolerate those who break exiting laws.  

In a reminder of that threat, a dozen demonstrators were arrested in Moscow Sunday while trying to raise public awareness over the harsh sentences issued by Russian courts earlier in the week. 

Where is the Party of Power? 

The vote seemed to confirm recent polls that showed a collapse in support for the government and its ruling United Russia party. 

Indeed, United Russia — formally, still the ‘party of power’ in Russia’s Parliament — was nearly absent from the ballot as party regulars recast themselves as ‘independents’ to avoid voters’ ire. 

Yet they faced another challenge. 

With opposition candidates barred from participation, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny called on voters to avoid diving their votes and embrace a ‘smart voting’ strategy.  The plan amounted to outing Kremlin-affiliated candidates and urging voters to strategically cast their ballots for whatever other candidate has the best chance of winning. 

I’ll vote for whatever smart vote candidate Navalny tells me to,”  said Sergey Shepetev, 38, who spoke to VOA at outside a precinct in central Moscow. 

“I don’t even remember his name. But I’ll vote for him.  Anything to beat United Russia.” 

Still, Navalny’s plan clearly tested the limits of opposition voters loyalty — in effect asking them to support candidates with ideas they clearly despised. 

“I went and Smart Voted. What could be more repulsive?” asked Konstantin Sonin, a leading Russian economist, in a post to Facebook where he detailed his vote for a communist candidate. 

“Voting for him, I voted “against all” — against everyone who ruined the Moscow elections.” 

Election interference

The election was also characterized by accusations of foreign interference.

In advance of the vote, Russia’s Duma held investigations accusing the US and several media companies of trying to foment a street revolution. 

On Sunday, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s Internet governing body, made similar “election interference” charges against American tech giants Google and Facebook, saying the companies had run online political ads banned on election day.   

Yet the biggest factor in the race appeared to be low voter turnout — which hovered in the upper teens across the country and just over 20% in the capital. 

“What elections? I have to work,” grumbled a cashier in Moscow when asked about the elections.   

“I couldn’t vote if I wanted to.” 

Hezbollah said Monday its fighters shot down an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon.

The militant group said in a statement it used “suitable weapons” to take down the drone, and that the aircraft was in its possession.

The Israeli military reported one of its drones went down in the same area, but did not specify a cause.  Israel said it was a “simple drone” and that there were no concerns about important information being taken from it.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned last month that his fighters would attack any Israeli drones that entered Lebanese airspace.

The development comes a week after Hezbollah and the Israeli army traded fire for the first time in years as Hezbollah launched anti-tank missiles into Israel and the Israeli forces responded with artillery.

The two sides fought a month-long war in 2006.

The Bahamians are burying their dead and looking for survivors after Category 5 storm ravaged parts of the archipelago leaving 70,000 homeless

A charity ship run by humanitarian groups in the Mediterranean spent a rainy Sunday searching open waters for a fragile rubber boat overloaded with migrants before finally plucking 50 people to safety not far off Libya’s coast.

The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, which is operated jointly by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, sent its own boats to pick up a pregnant woman close to full term, 12 minors and 37 men, all from sub-Saharan Africa.

“God bless you!” one of the men told the rescuers as they passed life vests to the wet and barefoot passengers.

At least two people feeling ill collapsed upon arrival on the Ocean Viking, while three others were soaked in fuel and two were suffering from mild hypothermia. The operation was witnessed by an Associated Press journalist aboard the ship, which found the migrant boat some 14 nautical miles (16 statute miles) from Libya.

The rescue occurred 14 hours after the Ocean Viking as well as Libyan, Italian and Maltese authorities, the United Nations’ refugee agency and Moonbird, a humanitarian observation plane, received an email by Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrants. It was an urgent call seeking help for the rubber boat carrying 50 people without a working engine.

The Ocean Viking, which was already in the Libyan search and rescue zone of the central Mediterranean, informed all authorities that it was beginning an active search for the migrant boat. Throughout the morning, the charity ship chased several objects spotted on the horizon, including what turned out to be a floating palm leaf tangled with fishing gear and an empty small fishing boat.

Throughout the morning, the ship tried to contact Libyan officials without success. The AP journalist witnessed at least three phone calls to the Libyan Joint Rescue and Coordination Center that went unanswered.

The blue rubber boat jammed with the migrants was finally spotted on the horizon near a fishing boat at 1:30 p.m. The fishing boat did not respond to radio contact by the Ocean Viking, which then launched its rescue boats.

At 2:30 p.m., the Libyan Coastguard finally answered the phone and the Ocean Viking reported that its crew was in the process of rescuing the migrants.

A European Union plane taking part in the Operation Sophia anti-human trafficking operation flew over the Ocean Viking, the migrant boat and the fishing boat multiple times shortly before the people were rescued.

As required by maritime law, the ship asked Libyan authorities responsible for rescue coordination in that part of the Mediterranean to provide a place of safety to disembark the rescued migrants, but it also made the same request to Italian and Maltese officials. There was no immediate response.

International migration and human rights bodies say Libya is not a place of safety, and Doctors Without Borders does not consider any North African country safe for disembarkation of the migrants.

But for more than a year, migrant rescues performed by non-governmental groups have frequently led to sometimes weeks-long standoffs trying to get European authorities to allow migrants to be landed.

Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of  secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.

The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.

Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.

Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula. 

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.

“Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.

“The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.

State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue. 

Nissan Motor Co’s nominating committee will discuss Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa’s resignation and possible successors at a meeting on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Saikawa has expressed his desire to resign from the troubled automaker and is not “clinging to his chair”, the source said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public.

The Nikkei newspaper earlier reported that Saikawa told reporters on Monday he wanted to “pass the baton” to the next generation as soon as possible. The executive has come under pressure since admitting last week to being improperly compensated.

 

Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and congressman, joined the Republican race against President Donald Trump on Sunday, aiming to put his Appalachian trail travails behind him for good as he pursues an admittedly remote path to the presidency.

“I am here to tell you now that I am going to get in,” Sanford said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” ″This is the beginning of a long walk.”

When asked why he was taking on an incumbent who’s popular within the party, Sanford, who has acknowledged his slim chances by saying he doesn’t expect to become president, said: “I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as the Republican Party, we have lost our way.”

Sanford joins Joe Walsh, a former tea-party-backed, one-term congressman from Illinois, and Bill Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, as primary challengers to Trump.

“This vanity project is going absolutely nowhere,” said Drew McKissick, the South Carolina Republican Party chairman.

Sanford tweeted that he respects “the view of many Republican friends who have suggested that I not run, but I simply counter that competition makes us stronger.”

“Humbly I step forward,” he said.

The 59-year-old Sanford has long been an outspoken critic of Trump’s, frequently questioning his motivations and qualifications during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and calling Trump’s candidacy “a particularly tough pill to swallow.”

Ultimately, though, Sanford said he would support Trump in the 2016 general election, although he had “no stomach for his personal style and his penchant for regularly demeaning others,” continuing a drumbeat that the then-candidate release his tax returns.

As Sanford sought reelection to his post representing South Carolina’s 1st District in 2018, drawing a primary challenger who embraced Trump, the president took interest in the race. State Rep. Katie Arrington repeatedly aired ads featuring Sanford’s on-air critiques of Trump and attached the “Never Trump” moniker to Sanford, a condemnation in a state that Trump carried by double digits in 2016.

Although unlikely to have had a significant impact on the results, Trump endorsed Arrington just hours before the polls closed, tweeting that Sanford “has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign” and that “He is better off in Argentina” — a reference to Sanford’s secret 2009 rendezvous to South America for an extramarital affair while his in-the-dark gubernatorial staff told reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Asked Sunday if that incident could be a distraction to his campaign, Sanford said that the aftermath had forced him to attain a new “level of empathy.”

“I profoundly apologize for that,” he added, noting that South Carolina voters subsequently forgave him politically and sent him back to Congress.

 

The history-making storm known as Dorian got in its last licks Sunday before heading into the North Atlantic for its welcome demise.

Dorian – now what is known as a post-tropical cyclone – battered the Canadian Maritime provinces and far-eastern Quebec with tropical storm force winds, tearing off the roofs of homes and buildings, uprooting trees, and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands.

No Canadian storm deaths are reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions to U.S. aircraft over the Bahamas to reserve the airspace for search and rescue missions.

The FAA says its order came at the request of the Bahamian government.

The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development Mark Green, toured Abaco and Great Bahama islands. He said parts look as if a nuclear bomb had gone off.

“We recognize that there’s a long road ahead but we’re going to work closely with the prime minister and his government to make sure that we help provide immediate relief,” Green said Sunday.

The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard are bringing in what is needed most — food, water sanitation, and emergency shelter. Relief has also poured in from the United Nations, Red Cross, British naval ships, and private cruise lines.

The current death toll on the Bahamas is 43. But officials say thousands are missing and that the number of fatalities is certain to keep climbing.

Many on Abaco lost everything – their homes, their possessions, and any way to make a living. The number of homeless is estimated to be 70,000.

Dorian was the strongest storm ever to strike the Bahamas, hitting as a Category 5 with massive amounts of rain and wind gusts as high as 320 kilometers per hour.

Conditions in the atmosphere above the storm kept it parked over the islands for almost two days last week, making it an especially destructive storm.

Dorian also lashed the Carolinas on the U.S. East Coast, destroying homes, flooding beach resorts, and spawning more than 20 tornadoes that caused further damage.

 

An Iranian oil tanker at the center of a major diplomatic dispute with the United States has sold its cargo in violations of international sanctions, Iran said.

“The Adrian Darya oil tanker finally docked on the Mediterranean coast … and unloaded its cargo,” Iran’s state news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying on Sunday. He didn’t elaborate on the country involved.

The tanker was carrying 2.1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil.

The tanker went dark last week and has been photographed by a satellite off the coast of Syria.

The ship was detained by British Marines off Gibraltar in July after it was suspected of violating European Union sanctions against oil sales to Syria. It was held in the British territory for six weeks and eventually released, over the objections of the U.S., after Gibraltar said it has received assurances that it would not head for any countries under EU sanctions.

Since then, U.S. has pursued the tanker, tried to offer a multi-million dollar bribe to its captain to turn over the ship and issued sanctions against its crew.

Also Sunday, Mousavi hinted that Iran might soon release the British-flagged tanker seized by Iran in what many saw as a retaliatory move.

The Stena Impero was going through the final legal processes and “the boat will be released in the coming days,” Mousavi said without giving further details.

The ships’ seizures were one of several related incidents in recent weeks triggering increased tensions between Tehran and Western nations.

The United States and Iran have shot down each other’s unmanned drones, and Western countries have accused Tehran of carrying out other attacks on ships in the Gulf, where a fifth of the world’s oil production passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The incidents stem at least in part from U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal last year from the 2015 international nuclear agreement aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. Trump then re-imposed debilitating sanctions, which have hobbled the Iranian economy.

 

The lander module from India’s moon mission was located on the lunar surface on Sunday, one day after it lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the nation’s space agency said.

The Press Trust of India news agency cited Indian Space and Research Organization chairman K. Sivan as saying cameras from the moon mission’s orbiter had located the lander. “It must have been a hard landing,” PTI quoted Sivan as saying.

ISRO officials could not be reached for comment.

The space agency said it lost touch with the Vikram lunar lander on Saturday as it made its final approach to the moon’s south pole to deploy a rover to search for signs of water.

A successful landing would have made India just the fourth country to land a vessel on the lunar surface, and only the third to operate a robotic rover there.

The space agency said Saturday that the lander’s descent was normal until 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the lunar surface.

The roughly $140 million mission, known as Chandrayaan-2, was intended to study permanently shadowed moon craters that are thought to contain water deposits that were confirmed by the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008.

The latest mission lifted off on July 22 from the Satish Dhawan space center in Sriharikota, an island off the coast of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

After its launch, Chandrayaan-2 spent several weeks making its way toward the moon, ultimately entering lunar orbit on Aug. 20.

The Vikram lander separated from the mission’s orbiter on Sept. 2 and began a series of braking maneuvers to lower its orbit and ready itself for landing.

Only three nations – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – have landed a spacecraft on the moon.

 

The Afghan Taliban have denounced President Donald Trump’s decision to call off peace talks with the insurgent group, claiming American interlocuters were happy with a deal both sides had negotiated in Doha, and that September 23 had been decided as a date to move to the next step—the start of negotiations with other Afghan factions.

In a Pashto language statement Sunday, the insurgent group also claimed it will not give up its fight and that the U.S. will be forced to return to negotiations eventually.

Trump called off the peace deal with the Taliban in a series of Tweets, blaming “an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people.”

….an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that President Donald Trump “made the right decision” to call off peace talks with Taliban leaders at his presidential retreat because of the terrorist group’s on-going attacks in Afghanistan.

“We need to see them capable of delivering on their promises” to end violence in the war-torn country before they are “rewarded” with a meeting with Trump, Pompeo told CNN. He made no commitment on whether or when peace talks would resume.

The top American diplomat said Trump’s planned Sunday meetings at his Camp David retreat outside Washington with the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, albeit separate talks with each, were set in the belief that they “could further America’s national interest” to end the 18-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Negotiators for the U.S. and Taliban have held nearly a year of peace talks.   U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad last week said his team of negotiators had drawn up a draft framework agreement that, if approved by President Trump, would allow 5,000 American troops to leave five military bases in the country within 135 days.

The longest war in American history started with U.S. military efforts to wipe out al-Qaida terrorist training grounds protected by the Taliban that were used to launch the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. that killed nearly 3,000 people, with the 18th anniversary of the attack coming up on Wednesday.

Trump disclosed the Camp David talks, which he said were “unbeknownst to almost everyone,” as he called them off, following a car bomb blast in Kabul last week that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier.

Trump, on Twitter, said the Taliban had carried out the attack “in order to build false leverage” at the talks. But he said if the Taliban “cannot agree to a cease-fire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then it probably doesn’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight.”

….only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)