Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Tuesday any disruption to oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz will be a “major obstacle” for his country’s economy which has too few oil export outlets.

His government was studying contingency plans to deal with possible disruption, including looking at alternative routes for oil exports, Abdul Mahdi said.

“Iraq has too few export outlets,” Abdul Mahdi told reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “Right now, most of the Iraqi oil exports are being done through southern terminals.”

“We need to diversify our export outlets,” he said.

The prime minister’s comments came in response to a question on whether tensions between Iran and the United States could affect Iraq’s oil exports via the Strait.

A vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond, the Strait of Hormuz has been at the heart of regional tensions for decades.

Recent months have seen a bout of instability in the region, with six tankers attacked since May amid escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Many fear the tensions could affect the flow of oil. Abdul Mahdi said as part of contingency planning, his cabinet had authorized the country’s oil ministry to move forward on two projects to bolster the country’s future exports.

The ministry was tasked with conducting feasibility studies and looking at investment models to build a major pipeline to export oil from southern Iraq to Jordan’s Aqaba port, he said.
The ministry will also look at establishing an offshore oil installation in the south.

Twitter now prohibits hate speech that targets religious groups using dehumanizing language.
 
The social network already bars hateful language directed at individual religious adherents. Tuesday’s change broadens that rule to forbid likening entire religious groups to subhumans or vermin.
 
The company has come under fire – along with fellow social media networks such as Facebook and YouTube – for the prevalence of harassment and offensive language on its service.
 
Twitter’s latest update came after users wrote in thousands of responses when the company asked for suggestions on how to expand its hate speech policies.
 
The company says it may also ban similar language aimed at other groups such as those defined by gender, race and sexual orientation.

Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and the Dave Matthews Band will headline Farm Aid 2019 when the music and food festival visits Wisconsin’s dairy country in September.
 
Tickets for the Sept. 21 event at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy go on sale Friday.
 
Farm Aid says the farming economy this year resembles how things were when Nelson founded Farm Aid in 1985. Nelson says devastating weather, low prices and current federal farm and trade policies pose enormous challenges to family farmers struggling to keep their farms.
 
Other performers include Bonnie Raitt, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Margo Price, Jamey Johnson, Tanya Tucker, Brothers Osborne, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Yola, and Particle Kid.
 
Farm Aid has raised $57 million since 1985.

Amazon and Microsoft are battling it out over a $10 billion opportunity to build the U.S. military its first “war cloud” computing system. But Amazon’s early hopes of a shock-and-awe victory may be slipping away.

Formally called the Joint Enterprise Department Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military’s computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities. The Defense Department hopes to award the winner-take-all contract as soon as August. Oracle and IBM were eliminated at an earlier round of the contract competition.

But that’s only if the project isn’t derailed first. It faces a legal challenge by Oracle and growing congressional concerns about alleged Pentagon favoritism toward Amazon. Military officials hope to get started soon on what will be a decade-long business partnership they describe as vital to national security.

”This is not your grandfather’s internet,” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank. “You’re talking about a cloud where you can go from the Pentagon literally to the soldier on the battlefield carrying classified information.”

Amazon was considered an early favorite when the Pentagon began detailing its cloud needs in 2017, but its candidacy has been marred by an Oracle allegation that Amazon executives and the Pentagon have been overly cozy. Oracle has a final chance to make its case against Amazon — and the integrity of the government’s bidding process — in a court hearing Wednesday.

”This is really the cloud sweepstakes, which is why there are such fierce lawsuits,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.

Ives said an opportunity that was a “no brainer” for Amazon a year ago now seems just as likely to go to Microsoft, which has spent the past year burnishing its credentials to meet the government’s security requirements.

For years, Amazon Web Services has been the industry leader in moving businesses and other institutions onto its cloud — a term used to describe banks of servers in remote data centers that can be accessed from almost anywhere. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has been steadily catching up, as have other providers such as Google, in both corporate and government settings.

With an acronym evoking Star Wars and a price tag of up to $10 billion over the next decade, JEDI has attracted more attention than most cloud deals. A cloud strategy document unveiled by the Defense Department last year calls for replacing the military’s “disjointed and stove-piped information systems” with a commercial cloud service “that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

In a court filing last month, Lt. Gen. Bradford Shwedo said further delays in the Oracle case will “hamper our critical efforts in AI” as the U.S. tries to maintain its advantage over adversaries who are “weaponizing their use of data.” Shwedo said JEDI’s computing capabilities could help the U.S. analyze data collected from surveillance aircraft, predict when equipment needs maintenance and speed up communications if fiber and satellite connections go down.

Amazon was considered an early front-runner for the project in part because of its existing high-security cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. It beat out IBM for that deal in 2013.  

Worried that the Pentagon’s bid seemed tailor-made for Amazon, rivals Oracle and IBM lodged formal protests last year arguing against the decision to award it to a single vendor.

In an October blog post , IBM executive Sam Gordy wrote that a single-cloud approach went against industry trends and “would give bad actors just one target to focus on should they want to undermine the military’s IT backbone.”

The Government Accountability Office later dismissed those protests, but Oracle persisted by taking its case to the Court of Federal Claims, where it has pointed to emails and other documents that it says show conflicts of interest between Amazon and the government. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Wednesday. The case has delayed the procurement process, though the Pentagon says it now hopes to award the contract as early as Aug. 23.

Oracle’s argument is centered on the activities of a Defense Department official who later went to work for Amazon. Amazon says Oracle has exaggerated that employee’s role in the procurement using “tabloid sensationalism.”

Some defense-contracting experts say the conflict allegations are troubling.

”No one seems to deny that these were actual conflicts and the players affirmatively attempted to conceal them,” said Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University. “That simply cannot be tolerated.”

But Goure, whose think tank gets funding from Amazon but not from its cloud rivals Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, said the criticism is “coming from the also-rans.” He says rivals like Oracle “missed the boat” in cloud technology and are trying to make up lost ground through legal maneuvers.

The Pentagon has repeatedly defended its bidding process, though the concerns have trickled into Congress and onto prime-time TV. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted a segment last month to the cloud contract that questioned an Amazon executive’s 2017 meeting with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Carlson also aired concerns by Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who said “the allegations are incredible” and should be investigated.

A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday further detailed government emails about that meeting and another one between Mattis and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos later that year. In response, Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said the bidding process should be started over.

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said while military leaders are expected to engage with industry, no one in the defense secretary’s “front office” participated in drafting the contract requirements or soliciting bids.

Ives said it remains to be seen how much the conflict allegations will hurt Amazon or help Microsoft. Microsoft has largely stayed quiet during the dispute. In a statement, it focused on highlighting its 40-year partnership supplying the military with services such as email.

VOA Student Union’s Sahar Majid interviewed 2019 Miss District of Columbia Katelynne Cox, who talked about issues including her pageant journey and advocacy organization.

Katelynne Cox was chosen as the 2019 Miss District of Columbia last month.

Cox, a native of Washington state, is the manager of fundraising and events at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in Washington, D.C.

In the pageant, Cox was able to speak to her advocacy for the #MeToo movement.

Through the organization Silence Is Not Compliance, which Cox founded in 2016, she is providing rehabilitation resources to survivors of sexual assault and educating kids on how to prevent sexual violence.

Cox is a rape survivor, and works to inspire other women who have gone through similar trauma and have not been able to speak up.

“I am a survivor of sexual assault and was raped in college, and I wanted to turn my terrible experience into a way that could help others,” she said.

As she established Silence Is Not Compliance, Cox began lobbying for the victims for sexual assault before the U.S. Congress.

“I would argue right now, in our current policies, that victims are treated as tools for prosecution rather than victims deserving a rescue and that’s what I want to change,” she said.

Before moving to Washington, D.C., Cox attended the University of Missouri where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She also has two graduate certificates in nonprofit and public management from the school.

Cox said she became involved with the Miss District of Columbia organization for several reasons. The Miss DC pageant, which is part of the Miss America program, offers over $25,000 in scholarships each year to contestants. The winner receives a $10,000 scholarship and there are a variety of other awards available for academics.

Cox said the scholarship was one of the reasons she got involved with the organization.

Every year, the Miss District of Columbia Scholarship Organization recognizes high-achieving women between the ages of 18 and 25 who have been living or working in Washington, D.C., for at least six months preceding the date of the pageant. The program’s website says that a contestant who is not a district resident can obtain a waiver by showing her education or employment status in the District of Columbia. There is no entry fee to compete. This year’s event was held June 23.

The Miss DC organization has a partnership with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals – a Utah-based nonprofit organization that raises funds for children’s health care.

“This organization is near and dear to my heart,” Cox said, adding it gave her another reason to become involved with the Miss DC organization. Cox has been working with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals since she was a child.

In addition, the Miss DC organization provides contestants with an opportunity to pick a social impact initiative with which to become involved. “It was an amazing experience to promote my organization, Silence Is Not Compliance, as Miss DC,” Cox said.

This year, the Miss District of Columbia Pageant eliminated the swimsuit segment. It was a decision by the Miss America organization to replace it with onstage interviews of contestants.

Cox is grateful for the decision because it gave her an opportunity to talk about the #MeToo movement on stage and her experience as a survivor to connect with other survivors.

She highlighted her singing abilities for the talent portion.

“Well, my mom likes to say that I started singing before I could even talk,” she said, while telling the story of her musical journey.

Cox has worked with Red Hammer Records, a label based in Portland, Oregon, and released three albums during her teen years. She also had an opportunity to tour nationwide for her musical shows.

Cox believes scholarship programs, such as Miss America or Miss DC, provide young women with a platform to talk about social issues that need to be addressed.

“I think that inherently there is a problem with the thought that being involved in pageants is somehow sexually objectifying someone. I would argue that if you say that pageants are sexually objectifying me, then you are sexually objectifying me, not the pageant itself,” Cox said.

Cox is now gearing up for the 2020 Miss America contest, to be held on September 8 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

A delegation of more than 50 Afghans concluded a high-profile conference with the Taliban Monday with a joint statement emphasizing the need to bring civilian casualties in the nation’s civil war to zero and reaching a positive outcome in the on-going negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in Doha. 

They also emphasized the need to include all parties in the negotiations to end the 18-year-long conflict.

“All participants have full consensus that achieving sustainable, thorough, and a dignified peace, which is a demand of the Afghan people, is only possible via inclusive Afghan negotiations,” read the statement.

The conference is being hailed as a historic first for including members of the Afghan government, albeit in their personal capacity. Previously, the Taliban have been reluctant to engage directly with any government representatives, calling the Kabul administration “illegal” and a “puppet” of the Americans.

“There were cabinet ministers in the room in the past two days,” said Lotfullah Najafizada, a delegate and head of one of Afghanistan’s biggest TV news channels Tolo News, adding that in his opinion the pattern would be repeated in future dialogue. 

It was also the first intra-Afghan dialogue hosted formally by two governments—Qatar and Germany.  A previous conference in Moscow was organized by a government-linked NGO. 

The two sides agreed to the need to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan by listing targets that should be off-limits for attacks by either side including “schools, hospitals, madrassas, markets, water dams, and residential areas.”

The statement also called for ensuring women’s rights in “political, social, economic, educational, and cultural affairs, within the framework of Islamic values.”

The two sides asked for the “unconditional release of elderly, disabled, and sick inmates” by both Taliban and the Afghan government.

The two-day conference comes at a time when a team of Americans, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, is simultaneously negotiating an end to the conflict with the Taliban. 

His intermittent presence at the venue, interacting with the delegates and media in the hallways and meeting rooms of Sheraton Doha, indicated the importance the U.S. government associated with the event which the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called “a long time coming.” 

All eyes now turn to the negotiation he resumed Tuesday with the Taliban, also in Doha, which both sides claim is going well. “We progressed a lot in the last week and we hope that the few items left, we can finalize them also,” said Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who is leading negotiations with the Americans. His comments reinforced Khalilzad’s Tweet calling the last week “the most productive session to date.”

The last 6 days of talks have been the most productive session to date. We made substantive progress on ALL 4 parts of a peace agreement: counter-terrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, participation in intra-Afghan dialogue & negotiations, and permanent & comprehensive ceasefire

— U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) July 6, 2019

Still, in public at least, the two sides continue to define progress differently. Stanikzai said Monday his team was negotiating with the Americans on two issues, a time-table for the withdrawal of foreign troops and how to prevent Afghan soil from being used for terrorism. Khalilzad on the other hand, insisted the two sides had made progress on four issues, including a cease-fire in Afghanistan, and making Afghan government a part of peace negotiations.  

Several delegates said the wording of the joint statement indicated Taliban flexibility on the issue of direct negotiations with the government, which has been a stumbling block so far. 

And while most delegates from both sides exuded optimism about the outcome, they acknowledged there was a long way to go. 

“Let’s not forget, we’re in the beginning of the process. It requires formal negotiations,” Najafizada said.

Top U.S. officials say Iran should not test America’s patience, as the Islamic Republic creates nuclear material in quantities and purity above limits set in the 2015 international nuclear deal. The reaction came as the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors verified that Iran breached the limit set in the nuclear deal aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons development. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.

The $6 billion loan package for Pakistan approved by the International Monetary Fund last week will require “very ambitious” fiscal measures and sustained commitment for the bailout to succeed, IMF officials said on Monday.

The three-year agreement approved by the IMF board last week, Pakistan’s 13th bailout since the late 1980s, has seen a sharp drop in the value of the rupee currency after the central bank agreed to a “flexible, market-determined exchange rate.”

It also foresees structural economic reforms and a widening of the tax base to boost tax revenues that are currently estimated to account for less than 13% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 4-5 percentage points.

With slowing growth, a budget deficit which has climbed to more than 7% of GDP and currency reserves of less than $8 billion, or enough to cover 1.7 months of imports, Pakistan has teetered on the edge of a debt and balance of payments crisis.

Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, the Fund’s mission chief for Pakistan said the program targets were tough but Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which came to power last year vowing not to turn to the IMF, was committed.

“We certainly think that debt sustainability under the program will be assured,” he told a conference call with reporters, adding that it would require “very ambitious” fiscal consolidation, mainly through improved revenue collection.

Pakistan has a notoriously narrow tax base, with less than 1% of its 208 million population filing income tax returns, a vast informal economy and several key sectors of the official economy largely exempt from tax.

The IMF loan and the associated package of reforms that goes with it will unlock another $38 billion in loans from other international partners but commitment by Pakistani authorities in pushing through reform was essential, Ramirez Rigo said.

“Consistency and sustained implementation is key,” he said.

The 2020 budget, passed last month, approved tax measures worth some 1.7% of GDP to help cut the deficit and Pakistan has promised a multiyear effort to overhaul its tax and budget system to put its public finances on a firmer footing.

A central part of the program will involve cleaning up accumulated debts in the power and gas sectors and in loss-making state enterprises including Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Steel Mills, and Pakistan Railways.

Losses built up in the power sector now amount to the equivalent of 4% of GDP, posing a serious fiscal risk, while losses in the big three state enterprises amount to 2% of GDP, the IMF said in a report on the package.

The tough conditions of the package, which has already seen interest rates hiked by 150 basis points and which will see a raft of tax loopholes closed, has already drawn resentment among households facing inflation running at around 9%.

Ramirez Rigo said there was a risk that the difficulties of implementing some of the policies in the package were “more complicated than we have assumed” and that there would be problems in building consensus behind the reforms.

He also said any sharp rise in oil prices could unbalance the reform drive given Pakistan’s heavy dependence on imported energy.

Mexico’s newly created National Guard has detained U.S.-bound migrants and the government should make public the rules governing their power to curb immigration, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) said on Monday.

The National Guard is a security force created by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to bring down record homicide rates. But now it has been tasked with patrolling the border to placate U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods unless the country did more to stem the flow of Central American migrants heading to the United States.

“Publishing the protocols and coordination rules under which the National Guard operates in support of immigration authorities, particularly regarding the procedures for detaining persons with an illegal immigration status, is desirable,” CNDH President Luis Raul Gonzalez said in a speech. “If such protocols and rules don’t exist, establishing and publishing them is an urgent matter.”

The Mexican government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the speech.

While some 21,000 National Guard troops, nearly a third of their total ranks, have been deployed to Mexico’s northern and southern borders on immigration duties, their rules of engagement are still unclear.

Facing accusations the troops had been heavy-handed in their efforts to deter migrants from crossing the northern border, Lopez Obrador said on June 25 that the National Guard does not have orders to detain migrants.

The guardsmen themselves say they do not detain migrants but are there to advise them not to enter the United States.

Still, Reuters witnessed at least three adults and four children being detained as they tried to cross into the United States after Obrador made his statement.

Last week, Brigadier-General Vicente Antonio Hernandez, who heads the National Guard’s operations in Mexico’s southern states, said 20,000 migrants had been rescued since May 17.

Human rights groups say the migrants have been detained and some have been deported.

“There is a huge distance between what you hear from Lopez Obrador every morning and what is happening on the ground with respect to this issue. He’s not being very truthful, not being very honest with Mexican people regarding the reality of the deployment of these soldiers,” Fernando Garcia, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights, told Reuters.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Monday said they were using a court case to demand documents from President Donald Trump’s businesses in hopes of proving that they violated anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

A group of more than 200 Democratic Party lawmakers said in a statement that as part of lawsuit in federal court they had issued 37 subpoenas the Trump Organization and other entities, seeking information about foreign government payments accepted by properties in his real estate empire.

The subpoenas also seek information about trademarks granted to Trump businesses by foreign governments.

“Our goal is simple and straightforward – stopping President Trump from putting a ‘For Sale’ sign in Russian on the door to the Oval Office,” said Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Blumenthal added that the politicians were seeking “a targeted set of documents” to ensure Trump “can no longer shirk his constitutional responsibility.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing Trump in the court case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move had been expected in light of recent rulings by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington in favor of the Democratic Party lawmakers.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer, maintains ownership of his businesses but has ceded day-to-day control to his sons.

Critics have said that is not a sufficient safeguard.

In 2017, Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging Trump was illegally profiting from his businesses in various ways, including by collecting payments from foreign government officials who stay at his properties and accepting trademark registrations around the world for his company’s products.

A similar case brought the Maryland and the District of Columbia attorneys general is also making its way through the courts. 

The litigation represents the first time in U.S. history courts have interpreted the so-called “Emoluments Clauses” of the Constitution, which bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign and state governments without congressional consent.

On June 25 Sullivan rejected a request by Trump administration lawyers to halt the case and let them file an expedited appeal of key preliminary rulings he issued against the president.

On Monday the Justice Department urged an appeals court to put the litigation on hold, saying it was based on “novel and flawed constitutional premises” and allows “intrusive discovery into the President’s personal financial affairs.”