Mexico’s economy, the 2nd largest in Latin America, has hit a rough patch, weighed down by dwindling business confidence and an industrial slump.

But ahead of GDP data for the second quarter due on July 31, a debate has raged over whether all that gloom adds up to a recession.

Several banks say definitely yes – an assessment that could call into question the ability of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s eight-month-old government to deliver on his promises of development and improved fortunes for the country’s poor.

“We estimate GDP will also contract in the second quarter, putting Mexico in a technical recession, two consecutive quarters of negative growth,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a client note in late June.

The government strongly disagrees.

“There has been a slowdown on a global level,” said Finance Minister Arturo Herrera in his first press conference earlier this month, after his predecessor abruptly resigned. “But we are very, very far from thinking that we are close to a recession.”

In theory, defining whether there is a recession in Mexico could decide whether policymakers need to take action.

“If the government thinks there is a danger of recession, it could implement countercyclical measures to boost the economy a bit, or the Bank of Mexico could cut the interest rate, said Marco Oviedo, head of Latin America economics research at Barclays.

While Lopez Obrador has raised eyebrows by saying “I’ve got other numbers” when presented with negative economic news, even he does not pretend Mexico is enjoying strong growth.

The split between the government and private sector economists over the “R word” appears to focus more on how to define that highly charged term than any disagreement over substantive data.

Those who are predicting recession cite the benchmark of two consecutive quarters of economic contraction – and say the preliminary GDP figures for April-June will most likely confirm that.

However, despite being commonly used by private economists around the world, not all governments use that measure. The highly respected Cambridge, Massachusetts-based U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for example, looks at a more open-ended  significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.”

Likewise, a senior official at Mexico’s Finance Ministry, who asked not to be named, said for the ministry two quarters of successive contraction do not necessarily signal a recession.

The ministry takes more factors into account, the official said, although it has not stated what those factors are.

Jonathan Heath, a former HSBC chief economist appointed to the central bank board by Lopez Obrador’s government has also pushed back against the “two quarters” definition, which he recently called a “rule of thumb for defining a recession” but “no guarantee.”

In a move that could make the debate less political in the future, Mexico’s statistics agency INEGI last month announced the creation of a group of experts, including Heath, who will look at the way other countries measure economic cycles.

The agency said the group would decide by next year whether Mexico should create a Business Cycle Dating Committee, after studying the experience of similar committees used by the NBER, the Euro Zone, Brazil and Canada to help identify recessions.

Worst Since 2009 Crisis

Regardless of what constitutes a recession, the government’s own numbers make sobering reading.

The economy shrank 0.2% in the first quarter versus the previous three month period, in seasonally-adjusted terms, and was flat in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Pollyanna De Lima, economist and author of the IHS Markit Mexico Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index report, said that in the first quarter Mexico’s manufacturing sector was at its weakest since the series began in 2011.

Business sentiment faded “to one of the lowest levels seen in the survey history,” said De Lima.

The slowdown has matched a broader, global trend, that has caused several other Latin American economies to slash growth forecasts. The region’s largest economy, Brazil, has also been teetering on the edge of a recession. It contracted in the first quarter of the year and figures suggest it barely recovered at all in the second.

It is not uncommon for Mexico’s economy to contract in one quarter over the previous three months – it has happened five times since 2009. The global financial crisis triggered by a U.S. housing meltdown was the last time Mexico was in recession, contracting for three quarters.

But the country’s sharpest decline in industrial output in a decade, a 2.1% drop in May, made economists wonder if this time was different.

Alfonso Ramirez Cuellar, a member of Lopez Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement who chairs the budget committee in the lower house of Congress, said that instead of getting hung up over whether Mexico is technically in a recession, “we have to accept that the country’s economy is weakening and work from there.”

Mexico’s commitment to a 1% primary budget surplus makes a major fiscal stimulus unlikely, although the government could tap some rainy day funds.

Lopez Obrador’s reaction to the negative data so far has been to blame critics for adhering to a “neo-liberal” mindset, He argues that by redistributing wealth better his government is able to help economic development among the poor even with lower headline growth numbers.

“That is not a particularly strong argument. If the economy contracts you have less to distribute. (I have) never seen development in an economy that shrinks,” said Goldman Sachs’ head of Latin American research Alberto Ramos.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Monday it will order more speedy deportations of immigrants who crossed illegally and are caught anywhere in the United States, expanding a program typically applied only along the southern border with Mexico.

The rule set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday would apply “expedited removal” to any illegal crossers who cannot prove to immigration agents that they have been living in the country for two years.

Legal experts said it was a dramatic expansion of a program that cuts out review by an immigration judge. Previously, only those immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border who had been in the country two weeks or less could be quickly ordered deported.

President Donald Trump has struggled to stem an increase of mostly Central American families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to overcrowded detention facilities and a political battle over a growing humanitarian crisis.

The government said increasing rapid deportations would free up detention space and ease strains on immigration courts, which face a backlog of more than 900,000 cases.

‘Unlawful plan’

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed a lawsuit to block numerous Trump immigration policies in court, vowed to sue.

“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

The policy will create chaos and fear in immigrant communities, and could have unintended consequences, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School.

“U.S. citizens could be expeditiously removed by error,” he said. “You don’t have a lot of room to challenge that. You can’t go before an immigration judge.”

The policy comes after a U.S. Court of Appeals in California in March ruled that those ordered deported in the sped-up process have a right to take their case to a judge.

‘Credible fear’

DHS said 37%, or 20,570, of those encountered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the year to September had been in the country less than two years.

If individuals in expedited removal cannot establish a “credible fear” of prosecution in their home country, they can be quickly deported. In fiscal 2018, those in these sped-up proceedings were detained for an average of 11.4 days, according to DHS, compared to 51.5 days for those in full proceedings.

Many immigrants in deportation proceedings are released and allowed to live in the United States for the months and years it takes to decide their immigration cases.

Pope Francis has sent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a letter expressing his “profound concern” for the humanitarian situation in Syria and, in particular, the plight of civilians in Idlib province.

The Vatican said Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of Francis’ top advisers, hand-delivered the letter to Assad during a meeting Monday in Damascus attended by the Vatican’s ambassador to Syria.

It was an unusual, hands-on gesture meant to show Francis’ concern about the situation.

Assad’s office said in a statement the talks focused on political efforts to end the crisis, with Syria’s president blaming regional and Western countries for supporting insurgents.

Francis has frequently called for an end to the conflict and decried the plight of Syrian civilians. He has also condemned weapons manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe for fueling wars in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said the letter asked for civilian lives and key infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, to be protected. The letter urged Assad to take concrete steps for reconciliation and to release political prisoners, the Vatican said.

Syria’s conflict, which began in 2011, has killed more than 400,000 people. 

Greece’s newly-elected conservative government won a confidence vote on Monday on its economic policy, which includes tax cuts and measures to speed up investments.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party won a landslide election on July 7, on pledges to cut taxes and boost growth in an economy which shrank by a quarter during a protracted debt crisis.

“We are going past the era of taxes and poverty to investments and well-paid jobs,” Mitsotakis told lawmakers ahead of the vote. “It’s up to us” to write our own history, starting today by voting the government’s program statements.”

The policy was approved by all 158 lawmakers of the ruling conservative party in the 300-seat parliament.

Mitsotakis has promised to reduce property, income and corporate taxation, and carry out reforms on public administration to remove bureaucratic hurdles for investments.

He has also identified loss-making state-controlled Public Power Corp. (PPC) and the launch of a long-delayed tourist and property investment among his term’s top priorities.

Greece’s energy ministry on Monday unveiled a plan to overhaul PPC, including voluntary redundancies and selling shares in its distribution network.

The government also plans to speed up the regulatory process so that a long-delayed tourist investment project at a disused Athens airport can be launched by the end of the year, the development minister said on Monday.

A Conservative Party legislator in Britain has been charged with sexually assaulting two women.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Monday that Charlie Elphicke was charged with three counts of sexual assault.

Prosecutors say the first charge stems from an alleged attack in 2007 and the other two charges relate to two alleged attacks in 2016.

Elphicke’s lawyer, Ellen Peart, said he will “defend himself vigorously” and is confident that he will clear his name.

The 48-year-old legislator is scheduled to appear in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Sept. 6.

Prosecutors said the decision to charge Elphicke was made after a review of evidence provided by London’s Metropolitan Police.

The legislator had been suspended from the Conservative Party in November 2017 following “serious allegations,” but was controversially restored by Prime Minister Theresa May 13 months later.

European ministers met Monday in Paris seeking some unity on how to deal with migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, people who are now being blocked out of ports by Italy and Malta, dragged back unwillingly to lawless Libya or used as pawns in political standoffs across Europe.
 
Yet absent from the closed-door meeting of European Union interior and foreign ministers was Italy’s populist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who tweeted a day earlier his strong disagreement with letting France and Germany determine the bloc’s refugee policy while nations like Italy are on the front line.
 
“We intend to make ourselves respected,” Salvini declared in another tweet.
 
Despite Salvini’s absence, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas voiced hope that a solution was on the horizon.
 
“The haggling about emergency rescue in the Mediterranean must finally end,” Maas said at a briefing later for reporters. “It is really necessary that we manage to put together a coalition of those who are prepared to help, and I think we came a step closer to that today.”
 
He said talks would continue among interior ministers about how an ad hoc mechanism might look that would make it possible for Italy and Malta to open their harbors.
 
Thousands of migrants set off each year in smuggler’s boats from Libya, a war-torn North African nation where migrants are kept in prison-like camps that international authorities have called appalling. The International Organization for Migration says up to June 19, there were 2,252 arrivals in Italy and 1,151 in Malta on the central Mediterranean route while at least 343 other people died trying — all far below the numbers who arrived in previous years.
 
France has stressed the need for European countries to share the arriving migrants, who are often traveling on traffickers’ flimsy boats and rescued by humanitarian groups.
 
The meeting, called by French President Emmanuel Macron, preceded talks later Monday between Macron and the U.N. chiefs for refugees and migration.
 
On Sunday, the SOS Mediterranee, a French charity, partnering with Doctors Without Borders, announced it has returned to the sea with a new boat to save migrants, seven months after the flag was pulled from its original ship, Aquarius. The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking is heading to the Mediterranean with a 31-member crew, the group said.
 
Salvini wasted no time in warning SOS Mediterranee that Italy was not about to bend on its policy of keeping rescue ships at bay, tweeting Monday, “if someone is thinking about helping smugglers or breaking laws, be careful because we won’t be standing still.”
 
The Aquarius, SOS Mediterranee’s original rescue ship, ended its operations last fall after Panama revoked its flag and Italian prosecutors ordered the vessel seized, accusing Doctors Without Borders of illegally disposing of tons of contaminated and medical waste. The organization says the Aquarius assisted 30,000 migrants since 2016.
 
Monday’s meeting follows a gathering of EU interior ministers on the issue of rescuing migrants last week in Helsinki, Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency. Salvini hailed the progress in Helsinki, saying other ministers shared Italy’s position of revamping Mediterranean search and rescue rules with the aim of preventing immigration abuses.
 

Multiple airstrikes hit a busy market in a rebel-controlled town in northwestern Syria on Monday, killing at least 27 people and turning several buildings into piles of rubble, according to opposition activists and a war monitor. Shortly afterward, state media said rebels shelled a government-held village, killing seven.

The high death toll marked a sharp increase in the escalation between the two sides amid intense fighting. Government troops, backed by Russian air cover, try to push their way into the enclave near the Turkish border, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and other jihadi groups.

Monday’s airstrikes took place in the town of Maaret al-Numan and also wounded more than 30 people, according to the reports from the region, which has witnessed intensive airstrikes and bombardment almost every day for the past three months. The strikes came in several rounds and caused widespread destruction, burying several people under the rubble.

Hours after the airstrikes, paramedics were able to remove a little girl alive, rushing her to a nearby ambulance.

Syrian state news agency SANA said insurgents shelled the village of Jourin in the northern part of Hama province, killing seven civilians when a shell hit a moving car. State TV also reported that insurgents shelled the government-held town of Suqailabiyah, wounding four people, including a child, while a shell hit a university in the coastal city of Latakia, a government stronghold, without causing any casualties.

Idlib province and northern parts of the nearby Hama region, in the northwestern corner of Syria, are the last major rebel stronghold in the country outside the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian government forces launched their offensive in Idlib province in late April. The fighting has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

But the troops have made little progress since the push started.

“It is one of the ugliest massacres carried out by Russian warplanes,” said opposition activist Hadi Abdallah speaking on camera from the scene of the airstrike in Maaret al-Numan where destruction appeared widespread.

Syrian opposition activists said Russian warplanes carried out Monday’s attack, but Russia’s Defense Ministry dismissed the reports as a “hoax,” adding that the Russian air force didn’t “carry out any missions in that area in Syria.” There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the fighting on the ground in Syria through a network of activists, said 27 people were killed, including two children, in the strike on Maaret al-Numan. It added that the number of casualties from Monday’s airstrike was likely to rise due to the large number of wounded. The Thiqa news agency, an activist collective in northern Syria, also reported that the strike killed 27 people.

A member of the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said one of their colleagues was killed in a second airstrike that hit the market.

On Sunday, government bombing in Idlib killed at least 11 civilians according to the Observatory and first responders.

Despite the heavy bombardment, Assad’s troops have been unable to make any significant advances against the rebels or jihadi groups in Idlib. Militant groups have hit back hard, killing an average of more than a dozen soldiers and allied militiamen per day in recent weeks.

The struggling campaign underscores the limits of Syria’s and Russia’s airpower and inability to achieve a definitive victory in the country’s long-running civil war, now in its ninth year.

In neighboring Turkey, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would launch a new offensive into northern Syria if a so-called “safe zone” is not established and if threats against Turkey continue from the region.

Cavusoglu made the comments on Monday as a delegation led by U.S. Special Representative on Syria, James Jeffrey, was to hold talks in Ankara. The possible safe zone along the border with Turkey was expected to be on the agenda.

Turkey views Kurdish fighters who have fought alongside the United States against the Islamic State group as terrorists and wants the safe zone established to keep the fighters away from the border. It has recently been sending troop reinforcement to its border region.

Cavusoglu said Turkey would intervene “if there’s no safe zone and if the terrorists are not cleared and continue to pose a threat.”

 

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that in his meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday he will stress the need for political resolution to the protracted war in Afghanistan.

Khan, who is in the U.S. on a three-day official visit in a bid to repair strained bilateral ties, made the remarks to a big gathering of Pakistani diaspora in Washington late on Sunday. He had long campaigned against the use of U.S. military force to resolve the conflict even before he came to power after last year’s elections in Pakistan.

“I feel proud that now the whole world is saying Afghanistan has no military solution,” Khan told the cheering crowd, which organizers said was the biggest gathering of Pakistani Americans to date.

Earlier, a senior U.S. administration official said Trump will press Khan for assistance in advancing the Afghan peace process and encourage Pakistan to crackdown on militants within its territory. 

Pakistan has arranged Washington’s direct peace negotiations with Taliban insurgents who are fighting local and U.S.-led international troops in neighboring Afghanistan. 

The months-long U.S.-Taliban dialogue has brought the two adversaries in the 18-year-old Afghan war close to concluding a peace agreement to pave the ground for ending what has become the longest U.S. foreign military intervention.

The U.S. official said Washington appreciates “the initial steps” Islamabad has taken to facilitate the peace process but it is “reaching a critical juncture” and more needs to be done to move the process forward. 

“The president will be most interested in encouraging Pakistan to… use its leverage with the Taliban to help bring about a ceasefire and genuine inter-Afghan negotiation that includes the Afghan government….We’re hoping that the discussions are productive.”

The Taliban refuses to engage in peace talks with Afghan interlocutors until it concludes an agreement with Washington that would outline a timetable for withdrawal of all American troops. In exchange, the agreement will bind the insurgents to prevent foreign militants from using Taliban-controlled areas for international terrorism.

The Taliban insists that once the agreement is signed with the U.S. in the presence of international guarantors it will initiate inter-Afghan talks to discuss a ceasefire and issues related to political governance in the country.

Last year, President Trump suspended military training programs and canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to Pakistan. He accused the South Asian nation of offering “nothing but lies and deceit” while giving safe haven to terrorists staging deadly attacks on the Afghan side of the border.

Islamabad rejected the charges and in turn accused Washington of trying to make Pakistan a scapegoat for U.S. military failures in Afghanistan, plunging bilateral ties to historic lows. Officials in Islamabad say the progress in Afghan peace has led to the warming up of ties with Washington, prompting Trump to invite Khan for  Monday’s meeting.

In the lead up to Khan’s visit, authorities in Pakistan arrested a radical cleric, Hafiz Saeed, who is wanted by the U.S. for terrorism in India and carries a $10 million reward. Pakistani officials have also taken control of hundreds of Islamic schools, health facilities and offices run by banned organizations blamed for cross-border terrorism.

Saeed’s arrest, however, has come under scrutiny because he has previously been detained only to be freed by courts for a lack of evidence linking him to terrorism.

“We’re monitoring the situation and — but we wouldn’t want to praise Pakistan for this step too early, because, you know, we’ve seen this movie before. We’ve seen this happen in the past.  And we’re looking for sustained and concrete steps, not just window dressing,” the U.S. official told reporters.

Khan, who arrived in Washington on Saturday, is also accompanied by the Pakistani military chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The Pakistan army has long been accused of covertly maintaining ties with the Afghan Taliban and terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founded by Saeed. India accuses LeT of planning and executing the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed more than 166 people, including foreigners.

Another irritant in Pakistan’s troubled ties with the U.S. is the detention of Shakil Afridi, the jailed Pakistani doctor believed to have assisted the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks on America.

“Dr. Afridi is a hero in our country.  He helped us capture the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks…this is something that is of the utmost importance to us…it is likely to come up,” the U.S. official said when asked whether the administration would raise the issue in meeting with Khan’s delegation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make no mistake:

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

Only prudence and foresight can thwart such ploys.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 21, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wilayat structure

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

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

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

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

Exploiting grievances

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

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

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

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

Khorasan province

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

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

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

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

South East Asia

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

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

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

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

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

Africa

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

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

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

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

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

IS ideology

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His original career choice, however, had been music. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No American flights have been affected so far.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vanguard Bank disputes

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

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

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

Wider sovereignty dispute

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

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

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

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

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

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