Nearly half the House Democrats now support an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump — a milestone but still probably not enough to push Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch proceedings.

A tally by The Associated Press on Wednesday showed 114 Democrats in the House, and one Republican-turned independent, are now publicly backing an inquiry, a notable spike in the days since special counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill. Some two dozen House Democrats, and two top senators, added their names after Mueller’s public appearance last week.

The numbers also show the limits. Even with half the Democrats favoring impeachment efforts, it’s not seen by leadership as a working majority for quick action. Pelosi, who needs at least a 218-vote majority to pass most legislation in the House, has been unwilling to move toward impeachment without a groundswell of support — both on and off Capitol Hill.

“The dynamics have shifted,” said Kevin Mack, the lead strategist at Need to Impeach, a group funded by Tom Steyer, who’s now a Democratic presidential contender and stepped down from the organization. “It’s time to get it started. It’s not enough to keep kicking the can down the road, running out the clock.”

For Democrats who won control of the House, partly on the promise of providing a checks-and-balance on the Trump administration, the weeks ahead will be pivotal as lawmakers hear from voters during the August recess and attention turns toward the 2020 election.

Outside groups have struggled to make inroads with the House, despite tens of thousands of phone calls and office visits pushing lawmakers to act more urgently. Steyer’s group and another founded by activist Sean Eldridge have been key advocates for impeachment. But it’s taken longer than expected to reach this benchmark, some say. Their work may become more daunting ahead of the primary elections if Democrats are reluctant to take greater strides toward impeachment.

Still, what’s striking about the growing list of House Democrats who support some sort of impeachment inquiry is as much the names as the numbers.

This week, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, became the ninth to call for impeachment inquiry — almost half of the House’s committee chairmen now on record in favor.

Engel said the president’s “repeated abuses have brought American democracy to a perilous crossroads.” His committee is among those investigating Trump’s business dealings and ties to Russia – and running into obstruction by the administration that some say are grounds for impeachment.

Also joining the list in the immediate aftermath of Mueller’s testimony was a top party leader, Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., the vice chair of the Democratic caucus, who said the House has been met with “unprecedented stonewalling and obstruction” by the Trump administration.

“That is why I believe we need to open an impeachment inquiry that will provide us a more formal way to fully uncover the facts,” she said.

Two top Democratic senators, Patty Murray of Washington and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the third and fourth-ranking members of leadership, also announced their support for a House impeachment inquiry.

Republican-turned independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan announced his support for impeachment shortly after he said he read Mueller’s findings about Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s response.

Mueller’s testimony was supposed to be a game changer, his appearance months in the making since the April release of his 448-page report. But the 74-year-old Mueller’s halting testimony and one-word answers left a mixed result.

Pelosi swiftly assembled lawmakers behind closed doors the evening after Mueller testified. The speaker has held Democrats in line on her strategy, with many deferring to her leadership. 

Pelosi’s only counsel was that if they needed to speak in favor of impeachment, they should not to turn it into a moral ultimatum. It was a signal that Democrats should not badmouth lawmakers who were still reluctant to call for an inquiry, according a person familiar with the private session and granted anonymity to discuss it.

While the speaker called Mueller’s appearance “a crossing of a threshold,” she also quickly pivoted to the House’s legal action against the White House, saying Democrats are building the case that Trump is obstructing their ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch.

“We still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Pelosi said. She reminded that the Watergate case burst open after the House sued for access to audio tapes Richard Nixon made in the White House.

“We want to have the strongest possible case to make a decision as to what path we will go down and that is not endless, in terms of time, or endless in terms of the information that we want,” she said.

Still no lawsuit

Yet the House Judiciary Committee has yet to file a lawsuit on one of their next priorities — enforcing a subpoena against Donald McGahn. That filing could come as soon as this week, but the process could take several months, pushing the impeachment timeline closer to the end of the year and the presidential primaries.

The former White House counsel is among long list of administration officials who have refused to testify or provide documents to the panel under orders from Trump. The suit would challenge White House claims that such officials have “absolute immunity” from such testimony.

In a separate case, the committee is in court trying to obtain secret grand jury information underlying Mueller’s report. In a court filing Wednesday, the committee and the Justice Department agreed to next steps in that matter by the end of September, pushing any resolution until October.

Pelosi is of the mindset that impeachment should not be done for political reasons, or not done for political reasons, as she pursues a step-by-step case. In many ways, she is protecting those lawmakers who joined the House from districts Trump creating the House majority, from having to make tough choices on impeachment. But critics say Pelosi is depriving Democrats of a clear vote on impeachment, and they say that decision will leave voters deflated for the 2020 election.

The group Stand Up America, which is part of a coalition with MoveOn, Indivisible and other advocates of impeachment, believes the August recess will be a critical moment to convince lawmakers to go on the record.

“If lawmakers in Congress haven’t felt the pressure to start an impeachment inquiry, they haven’t been listening,” said Eldridge, the group’s founder and president, in a statement. “During the August recess we will ensure that every member of Congress hears from their constituents on why it’s the only path forward.”

Fire broke out at an Exxon Mobil oil refinery in Texas on Wednesday, sending a large plume of smoke into the air, in the latest of a series of petrochemical industry blazes this year in the Houston area.

The fire began around 11 a.m. at an Exxon Mobil facility in Baytown, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Houston.

The city of Baytown said the fire is in an area that contains polypropylene material and that Exxon Mobil has requested some nearby residents to shelter in place as a precaution.

It was not immediately known if there were injuries.

Television video from the fire showed dark smoke rising into the air from a large metal stack that was on fire. Crews were dousing the stack and surrounding structures with water.

In a statement, Irving, Texas- based Exxon Mobil said the fire occurred at its Olefins plant, which produces ethylene, a chemical used to make plastic and industrial products. Ethylene is highly flammable. According to records kept by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Olefins plant had 68 tons (69 metric tons) of ethylene on site in 2017. It also had large quantities of other potentially hazardous chemicals, including ammonia, benzene, and propylene.

Exxon Mobil said it was conducting air quality monitoring at the site on Wednesday and it was cooperating with regulatory agencies.

“Our first priority remains the safety of people, including our employees, contractors and the community,” the company said.

The Olefins plant is part of the company’s 3,400-acre refinery complex in Baytown. It is one of eight plants that Exxon agreed to retrofit with anti-pollution technology in a settlement with the U.S. government. The company also agreed to pay $2.5 million in fines to federal and state authorities after being accused of violating the Clean Air Act with industrial flares from its factories.

Wednesday’s fire is the latest one to have taken place at Houston-area petrochemical facilities this year, including one at another facility on the Exxon Mobil Baytown complex.
On March 16, a fire erupted at a refinery on Exxon Mobil’s Baytown complex. The fire was extinguished hours later, but Harris County officials say it continued to release toxic pollutants for eight more days. The county has sued Exxon Mobil, accusing the company of violating the federal Clean Air Act.

Also in March, a fire burned or days at a at a petrochemical storage facility in nearby Deer Park and caused chemicals to flow into a nearby waterway.

In April, one worker died after a tank holding a flammable chemical caught fire in nearby Crosby.

 

Harold Prince, a Broadway director and producer who pushed the boundaries of musical theater with such groundbreaking shows as “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Cabaret,” “Company” and “Sweeney Todd” and won a staggering 21 Tony Awards, has died. Prince was 91.

Prince’s publicist Rick Miramontez said Prince died Wednesday after a brief illness in Reykjavik, Iceland. Broadway marquees will dim their lights in his honor Wednesday night.

Prince was known for his fluid, cinematic director’s touch and was unpredictable and uncompromising in his choice of stage material. He often picked challenging, offbeat subjects to musicalize, such as a murderous, knife-wielding barber who baked his victims in pies or the 19th-century opening of Japan to the West.

Along the way, he helped create some of Broadway’s most enduring musical hits, first as a producer of such shows as “The Pajama Game,” “Damn Yankees,” “West Side Story,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” He later became a director, overseeing such landmark musicals as “Cabaret,” “Company,” “Follies,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”

ir Andrew Lloyd Webber, reached by phone Wednesday, told The Associated Press it was impossible to overestimate the importance of Prince to the stage. “All of modern musical theater owes practically everything to him.”  

Lloyd Webber recalled that, as a young man, he had written the music for the flop “Jeeves” and was feeling low. Prince wrote him a letter urging him not to be discouraged. The two men later met and Lloyd Webber said he was thinking of next doing a musical about Evita Peron. Prince told him to bring it to him first. “That was game-changing for me. Without that, I often wonder where I would be,” Lloyd Webber said.

Tributes also poured in from generations of Broadway figures, including “The Band’s Visit” composer David Yazbek, who called Prince “a real giant,” and the performer Bernadette Peters, who called it a “sad day.” “Seinfeld” alum Jason Alexander, who was directed by Prince in “Merrily We Roll Along,” said Prince “reshaped American theater and today’s giants stand on his shoulders.” Composer Jason Robert Brown hailed Prince’s “commitment and an enthusiasm and a work ethic and an endless well of creative passion.”

In addition to Lloyd Webber, Prince, known by friends as Hal, worked with some of the best-known composers and lyricists in musical theater, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, John Kander and Fred Ebb, and, most notably, Stephen Sondheim.

”I don’t do a lot of analyzing of why I do something,” Prince once told The Associated Press. “It’s all instinct.”

Only rarely, he said, did he take on an idea just for the money, and they “probably were bad ideas in the first place. Theater is not about that. It is about creating something. The fact that some of my shows have done so well is sheer luck.”

During his more than 50-year career, Prince received a record 21 Tony Awards, including two special Tonys — one in 1972 when “Fiddler” became Broadway’s longest running musical then, and another in 1974 for a revival of “Candide.” He also was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor.

He earned a reputation as a detail-heavy director. Barbara Cook in her memoir “Then & Now” wrote: “I admire him greatly, but he also did not always make things easy, for one basic reason: he wants to direct every detail of your performance down to the way you crook your pinky finger.”  

A musical about Prince called “Prince of Broadway” opened in Japan in 2015 featuring songs from many of the shows that made him famous. It landed on Broadway in 2017.

It was with Sondheim, who was the lyricist for “West Side Story,” that Prince developed his most enduring creative relationship. He produced “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1962), the first Broadway show for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics.

They cemented their partnership in 1970 with “Company.” Prince produced and directed this innovative, revue-like musical that followed the travails of Bobby, a perpetual New York bachelor ever searching for the right woman.

”Company” was followed in quick succession by “Follies” (1971), which Prince co-directed with Michael Bennett; “A Little Night Music” (1973); “Pacific Overtures” (1976); and “Sweeney Todd” (1979).

Their work together stopped in 1981 after the short-lived “Merrily We Roll Along,” which lasted only 16 performances. It wasn’t to resume until 2003 when Prince and Sondheim collaborated on “Bounce,” a musical about the adventure-seeking Mizner brothers that had a troubled birth and finally made it to Broadway as “Road Show.”

Prince was mentored by two of the theater’s most experienced professionals — director George Abbott and producer Robert E. Griffith.

”I’ve had a unique life in the theater, uniquely lucky,” Prince said in his midlife autobiography, “Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre,” which was published in 1974. “I went to work for George Abbott in 1948, and I was fired on Friday that year from a television job in his office. I was rehired the following Monday, and I’ve never been out of work since.”

Born in New York on Jan. 30, 1928, Prince was the son of affluent parents, for whom Saturday matinees in the theater with their children were a regular occurrence. A production of “Julius Caesar” starring Orson Welles when he was 8 taught him there was something special about theater.

”I’ve had theater ambitions all of my life,” he said in his memoir. “I cannot go back so far that I don’t remember where I wanted to work.”

After a stint in the Army during the Korean War (he kept his dog-tags on his office desk), he returned to Broadway, serving as stage manager on Abbott’s 1953 production of “Wonderful Town,” starring Rosalind Russell.

The following year, he started producing with Griffith. Their first venture, “The Pajama Game,” starring John Raitt and Janis Paige, was a big hit, running 1,063 performances. They followed in 1955 with another musical smash, “Damn Yankees,” featuring Gwen Verdon as the seductive Lola.

In 1957, Prince did “West Side Story,” a modern-day version of “Romeo and Juliet” told against the backdrop of New York gang warfare. Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and with a score by Bernstein and Sondheim, it, too, was acclaimed.

Yet even its success was dwarfed by “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964), which Prince produced and Robbins directed and choreographed. Set in Czarist Russia, the Bock-Harnick musical starred Zero Mostel as the Jewish milkman forced to confront challenges to his way of life.

Prince had gotten his first opportunity to direct on Broadway in 1962. The musical was “A Family Affair,” a little-remembered show about the travails of a Jewish wedding. Its Broadway run was short — only 65 performances — but “A Family Affair” gave Prince a chance to work with composer John Kander.

Four years later, Kander would provide the music for one of Prince’s biggest successes, “Cabaret,” based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories.”

And it was “Cabaret” that established Prince as a director of first rank. With its use of a sleazy master of ceremonies (portrayed by Joel Grey), the musical juxtaposed its raunchy nightclub numbers with the stories of people living in Berlin as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s.

”I became a producer because fate took me there, and I was delighted,” Prince recalled in his book. “I used producing to become what I wanted to be, a director. [Ultimately, I hired myself, which is more than anyone else would do.]”

As he became more interested in directing, he withdrew from producing altogether.

mong his more notable achievements: “On the Twentieth Century” (1978) and two of Lloyd Webber’s biggest hits, “Evita” (1979), starring Patti LuPone as the charismatic Argentinian, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” in London (1986), New York (1988) and around the world.

”Phantom” is the longest-running musical on Broadway and hit producer Cameron Mackintosh noted that in a statement mourning Prince’s death: “The Gods of the theater salute you, Hal.”

Prince was a champion of imagination in the theater and tried never to rely on technology to give his shows pop, preferring canvas to LEDs.

”I believe the theater should take advantage of the limitations of scenery and totally unlimited imagination of the person who is sitting in the audience,” he told the AP in 2015. “I like what the imagination does in the theater.”

He explained that in one scene of “Phantom of the Opera” in London, candles come up at different times thanks to stage workers cranking ancient machinery, but on Broadway that function was automated.

”I would sit in the house and I’d see the candles come up. Something told me that was not as exciting as when the candles came up in London,” he said. “So I said, `Let’s make this tiniest adjustment so they don’t all come up at exactly the same time.’ Now, no one knows that. No one could care less. But it meant something to me.”

Prince worked for the expansive Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky, overseeing productions of the Tony-winning “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1993), a lavish remounting of “Show Boat” (1994) and a short-lived revival of “Candide” (1997).

Yet there were creative misfires, too. Among his more notorious flops was the five-performance “A Doll’s Life,” a musical follow-up to Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” It began where the play ends, when Nora walks out on her husband. And Prince directed the American production of Lloyd Webber’s “Whistle Down the Wind” (1997), which didn’t get past its Washington tryout, although the London production, with a different director, had a longer run.

Prince also worked as an opera director, with productions at the Metropolitan Opera House, the Chicago Lyric Opera, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera and more. And he directed two films, “Something for Everyone” (1970) and a screen version of “A Little Night Music” (1977).

”To be a both a genius and a gentleman is rare and extraordinary,” said Thomas Schumacher, chairman of The Broadway League. “Hal Prince’s genius was matched by his generosity of spirit, particularly with those building a career.”

Prince is survived by his wife of 56 years, Judy; his daughter, Daisy; his son, Charles; and his grandchildren, Phoebe, Lucy, and Felix.

Four inmates allegedly involved in deadly clash between prison gangs have died of asphyxiation while being transferred to a safer lockup, Brazilian authorities said Wednesday, even as they continued trying to identify the 58 who died in the riot.

The Para state public security office said the four were discovered dead when the prison vehicle arrived in the town of Maraba.

They said vehicle had four compartments and was carrying 30 handcuffed inmates who were suspected of involvement in Monday’s clash gangs at the Altamira prison.

Authorities said the four who died were from the same gang and said they are investigating.

The prisoners were among 46 being sent to other prisons, including stricter federal ones. Local authorities confirmed late Tuesday at least 33 inmates had been moved to the state capital of Belem, from where they would be sent to other jails.

Only 15 of the bodies from the riot had been released to family members by late Tuesday. Workers at the coroner’s office said they were slowed by the small size of the facility as well as problems with lighting that meant they had to stop working at 6:30 p.m.

In the Amazon heat, the bodies were being kept in a large refrigerated truck.

Dozens of frustrated family members spent the day waiting outside the morgue, and forensic expert Marcel Ferreira said some passed out when called on to identify the bodies of beheaded loved ones. Sixteen of the inmates had been decapitated.

State officials said clashes erupted in Altamira early Monday when the local Comando Classe A gang attacked a wing of the prison holding members of the rival Comando Vermelho, or Red Command.

In many of Brazil’s prisons, badly outnumbered guards struggle to retain control over an ever-growing population of inmates, with jailed gang leaders often able to run their criminal activities from behind bars.

Comando Classe A members allegedly set fire to the temporary containers where inmates belonging to Red Command were being held while construction of another wing was underway. Most of the victims died of asphyxiation.

“This is clearly a declaration of war on the Red Command,” said Jean-François Deluchey, adjunct professor in political science at the Federal University of Para who has been studying the region for 20 years.

Authorities have not yet revealed the exact motive for the clash, only confirming that it was a fight between criminal groups. But several recent prison massacres have been attributed to gangs battling to control drug-trafficking routes in the multibillion-dollar Amazon drug trade.

In May, two days of unrest in the neighboring state of Amazonas left 55 prisoners dead in four different prisons of that state’s capital, Manaus. In 2017, more than 120 inmates died in prisons across several northern states.

“It’s the same logic, the same movement,” Deluchey said. According to him, Red Command has a strong presence in the north and is trying to expand further in the region.

Deluchey said it is hard to confirm with certainty, but initial reports indicated that Comando Classe A, a local gang thought to have been created recently inside the Altamira prison, is linked to another powerful Brazilian gang, First Capital Command.

“The First Capital Command is losing grounds and it looks like Comando Classe A is helping them stop the hegemony of Red Command,” he said.

The professor said he had already seen promises of retaliations by members of Red Command for Monday’s attack.

Gruesome violence is often used in Brazilian prisons to gain respect and send a strong message to new arrivals, he said. “Violence is to impress, to frighten, so that new (inmates) join the side of those who decapitate, and not the decapitated.”

The killings represent a challenge for the far-right administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro ran a tough-on-crime campaign, promising to curb epidemic violence in Brazil, including in its overcrowded and out-of-control prisons.

The president publicly addressed the killings Tuesday in a video published on the online G1 news portal. Asked by journalists whether security should be strengthened at Altamira prison, Bolsonaro replied: “Ask the victims of those who died in there what they think.”

Brazil has the world’s third-largest prison population, behind the United States and China, with more than 720,000 individuals behind bars, according to official data from 2017. Some Brazilian prisons have more than three times as many inmates as their maximum capacity.

At Altamira, a local judge revealed in a July report examined by The Associated Press that he had counted 343 detainees in a facility authorized for a maximum of 163 people.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met political leaders Wednesday in Northern Ireland, where he faces a doubly difficult challenge: restoring the collapsed Belfast government and finding a solution for the Irish border after Brexit.

Northern Ireland’s 1.8 million people have been without a functioning administration for 2 1/2 years, ever since the Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government collapsed over a botched green-energy project. The rift soon widened to broader cultural and political issues separating Northern Ireland’s British unionists and Irish nationalists.

Johnson was meeting with the leaders of the five main political parties in hopes of kick-starting efforts to restore the Belfast government.

“My prime focus this morning is to do everything I can to help that get up and running again, because I think that’s profoundly in the interests of people here, of all the citizens here in Northern Ireland,” Johnson said.

Yet opponents say Johnson can’t play a constructive role because his Conservative government relies on support from the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest of Northern Ireland’s pro-British parties. Without the votes of the DUP’s 10 lawmakers in London, Johnson’s minority government would collapse.

Critics say that gives the pro-Brexit DUP an oversized influence with the British government that has unsettled the delicate balance of power in Northern Ireland.

Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, accused Johnson of being the DUP’s “gofer.” “He tells us he will act with absolute impartiality. We have told him that nobody believes that,” she said.
 
Protesters greeted Johnson at Stormont, the seat of the suspended Northern Ireland government outside Belfast, including border residents, steelworkers at a Belfast shipyard threatened with closure and anti-Brexit demonstrators.

Northern Ireland is key to securing the U.K’.s departure from the European Union and is likely to be among the hardest-hit areas if it goes wrong.

A divorce agreement between the U.K. and the EU has foundered largely because of the complex issue of the currently invisible 300-mile (550 kilometer) border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and EU member Ireland. An invisible border is crucial to the regional economy, and also underpins the peace process that ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Both Britain and the EU have promised there will be no hard border after Brexit, but they disagree about how to avoid it.

The EU and Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, came up with a solution known as the backstop _ an insurance policy to guarantee an open border if no other solution can be found. But British Brexit-backers loathe the backstop because it locks Britain into EU trade rules to avoid customs checks, something they say will stop the U.K. from striking new trade deals around the world.

Johnson became prime minister last week by promising pro-Brexit Conservatives that the U.K. will leave the EU on the scheduled date of Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal.

He is insisting the bloc make major changes to May’s deal, which was rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament. He says the backstop must be abolished and is refusing to hold new talks with EU leaders unless they agree.
 
Johnson sent his Europe adviser, David Frost, to Brussels on Wednesday to deliver that message in person. Downing St. said Frost would tell EU officials that “we will work energetically for a deal but the backstop must be abolished. If we are not able to reach an agreement, then we will, of course, have to leave the EU without a deal.”
 
The bloc is equally adamant that Brexit deal won’t be reopened and the backstop must stay.

The stalemate has sent the pound plunging to its lowest levels in more than two years, as businesses warn that no amount of preparation can eliminate the economic damage if Britain crashes out of the bloc without a deal on exit terms and a transition period to smooth the way.

The currency was trading Wednesday at 1.2161, up slightly from a day earlier but still its lowest level since March 2017.

Business confidence has also been battered. Britain’s auto trade body said Wednesday that investment in the industry effectively stopped in the first half of this year amid no-deal fears.
 
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said companies made just 90 million pounds ($110 million) of new investments in January-June, compared with an average annual total of 2.7 billion pounds over the previous seven years. Car production dropped 20.1% in the first half of 2019.
 
“The fear of no deal is causing investors to sit on their hands,” said chief executive Mike Hawes.

Since he took office a week ago, Johnson has been touring England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but it has not been a triumphal parade.

Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU has strained the bonds among the four nations that make up the U.K. A majority of voters in England and Wales backed leaving in the referendum, while those in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain.

Johnson has been booed by protesters I”the Scottish city of Edinburgh and the Welsh city of Cardiff and accused of playing “Russian roulette” with the agriculture industry by farmers who face high tariffs on their exports to Europe if there is a no-deal Brexit.

Huawei remained the No. 2 global smartphone vendor in the past quarter despite tough U.S. sanctions imposed on the Chinese technology giant, market trackers said Wednesday.

The Chinese firm managed to boost its sales even as the overall market declined, remaining on the heels of sector leader Samsung and ahead of U.S.-based Apple.

According to Strategy Analytics, overall global smartphone sales fell 2.6 percent to 341 million units in the April-June period, but showed signs of stabilizing after several quarters of declines.

Samsung increased its market share to 22 percent, helped by a seven percent rise in handset sales, with growth seen in the mid-range and entry segments. The South Korean giant stayed ahead of Huawei, which was at 17 percent, and Apple at 11 percent of the market.

“Huawei surprised everyone and grew its global smartphone shipments by eight percent annually,” said Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston.

“Huawei surged at home in China during the quarter, as the firm sought to offset regulatory uncertainty in other major regions such as North America and Western Europe.”

The research firm estimated that Apple, which released its results this week without details on unit shipments, saw an eight percent drop in iPhone sales in the quarter.

“Apple is stabilizing in China due to price adjustments and buoyant trade-ins, but other major markets such as India and Europe remain challenging for the expensive iPhone,” said Woody Oh, director at Strategy Analytics.

Huawei decline predicted

A separate report by Counterpoint Research offered similar findings, showing Samsung, Huawei and Apple in the three top spots as overall sales fell.

Analyst Tarun Pathak at Counterpoint said however the U.S. ban on technology sales to Huawei will have an impact in the coming months.

“The effect of the ban did not translate into falling shipments during this quarter, which will not be the case in the future,” Pathak said.

“In the coming quarters, Huawei is likely to be aggressive in its home market and register some growth there, but it will not be enough to offset the decline in its overseas shipments. This will further lead to the decline of the overall smartphone market in 2019.”

The surveys indicated Chinese makers Xiaomi and Oppo holding the fourth and fifth spots, largely due to sales in their home markets.

According to Counterpoint, the combined global smartphone market share of Chinese majors Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Realme reached 42 percent, the highest it has ever been. 

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles early Wednesday, according to South Korea’s military, Pyongyang’s second launch in less than a week amid stalled nuclear talks. 

The missiles, launched from near the eastern port city of Wonsan, flew for about 250 kilometers and reached an altitude of 30 kilometers, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. 

The launch comes six days after North Korea’s previous ballistic missile test, which it said was a response to South Korea’s decision to purchase U.S. weapons and hold military drills with the United States.

A South Korean defense ministry official said the missiles launched Wednesday appear to be similar to those launched last week, since they both flew at a relatively low altitude, according to the Yonhap news agency.

South Korea’s National Security Council, which held an emergency meeting Wednesday, voiced “strong concerns” over the launch, which it said could have a “negative impact on efforts to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.” 

Pyongyang last week tested what appears to be its own version of a Russian-made Iskander short-range ballistic missile. The North also tested that missile in May. 

The launches are consistent with North Korea’s recent pattern of escalating pressure on Washington and Seoul, even while being careful not to completely upset nuclear talks. 

North Korea has said it could restart intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests if Seoul and Washington go ahead with military exercises planned for later this year. Pyongyang has also said it may not resume working-level nuclear talks with the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump has not responded to the latest launch, but shrugged off North Korea’s launches last week as short-range missiles that “many other countries test.” 

“I have a good relationship with him. I like him. He likes me. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said earlier Wednesday. 

A U.S. official told VOA “we are aware of reports of a missile launch from North Korea…and we will continue to monitor the situation.”

North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under United Nations Security Council resolutions. But U.S. and South Korea have downplayed the launches, in an apparent attempt to preserve talks with the North. 

Many analysts have said that approach virtually ensures that North Korea will test more missiles, which will allow Pyongyang to further perfect its short-range missile technology.

“It is not appropriate to shrug off these tests as ‘short range.’ These missiles represent technological developments that threaten U.S. allies and forces in Asia,” says Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. 

Trump says he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to restart working-level talks during their meeting in late June at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. 

White House officials described the DMZ meeting as a possible breakthrough in the talks, which broke down in April after Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal at their second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.

North Korea is seeking sanctions relief and security guarantees from the United States in exchange for partial steps to dismantle its nuclear program. 

The Trump administration has been reluctant to ease sanctions until North Korea commits to abandon its entire nuclear weapons program. But more recently, U.S. officials have signaled more flexibility.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday he hopes the two sides can find “creative solutions” for unlocking the talks.

Double Olympic champion Caster Semenya will not defend her 800-meters title at the World Championships in September after the Swiss Federal Tribunal reversed a ruling that temporarily lifted the IAAF’s testosterone regulations imposed on her, a spokesman for the athlete said Tuesday.

Semenya is appealing the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruling that supported regulations introduced by the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

These say that XY chromosome athletes with differences in sexual development (DSDs) can race in distances from 400 meters to a mile only if they take medication to reach a reduced testosterone level.

“I am very disappointed to be kept from defending my hard-earned title, but this will not deter me from continuing my fight for the human rights of all of the female athletes concerned,” Semenya said in a statement from her representative.

CAS is based in Lausanne and comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland’s highest court.
The IAAF said they would only comment once they have read the full reasoning behind the judgment.

“We understand the Swiss Federal Tribunal will be publishing its full decision on this order tomorrow [Wednesday] and the IAAF will comment once the tribunal makes its reasoning public,” a spokeswoman told Reuters.

The South African had been given a reprieve last month by the Swiss court, which temporarily lifted the IAAF’s regulations from her until the final outcome of her appeal.

“The Supreme Court emphasized the strict requirements and high thresholds for the interim suspension of CAS awards and found that these were not fulfilled,” the statement said.

Lawyer: Still hopeful

Dorothee Schramm, the lawyer leading Semenya’s appeal, says they are still hopeful of a permanent lifting of the regulations.

“The judge’s procedural decision has no impact on the appeal itself. We will continue to pursue Caster’s appeal and fight for her fundamental human rights. A race is always decided at the finish line,” Schramm said.

Semenya ran the quickest-ever 800 meters on United States soil at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting on June 30 in a time of 1:55.70.

She told reporters afterward that she would not compete at the World Championships in Doha if barred from running her preferred distance, having earlier hinted she could enter longer races in the future that are not covered by the regulations.

One of the country’s biggest credit card issuers, Capital One Financial, is the latest big business to be hit by a data breach, disclosing that roughly 100 million people had some personal information stolen by a hacker. 

The alleged hacker, Paige A. Thompson, obtained Social Security and bank account numbers in some instances, as well other information such as names, birth dates, credit scores and self-reported income, the bank said Monday. It said no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised. 

Capital One Financial is just the latest business to suffer a data breach. Only last week Equifax, the credit reporting company, announced a $700 million settlement over its own 2017 data breach that impacted half of the U.S. population. Other companies that have had breaches include the hotel chain Marriott, retail giants Home Depot and Target.

What happened?

Thompson, 33, who uses the online handle “erratic,” allegedly obtained access to Capital One data stored on Amazon’s cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services in March. She downloaded the data and stored it on her own servers, according to the complaint. 

Thompson was a systems engineer at Amazon Web Services between 2015 and 2016, about three years before the breach took place. The breach went unnoticed by Amazon and Capital One.

Thompson used the anonymous web browser Tor and a Virtual Private Network in extracting the data — typical methods hackers use to try to mask infiltrations — but she later boasted about the hack on Twitter and a chat group on Slack, posting screenshots as evidence of her exploit.

It was only after Thompson began bragging about her feat in a private group chat with other hackers that someone reached out to Capital One to let them know on July 17. 

Once the informant told Capital One, the company closed the vulnerability. The company verified its information had been stolen by July 19 and started tracking Thompson and working with the FBI. The FBI raided Thompson’s residence on Monday and seized digital devices. An initial search turned up files that referenced Capital One and “other entities that may have been targets of attempted or actual network intrusions.”

What did Thompson take?

The data breach involves about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.

Prosecutors said a misconfigured Capital One firewall let Thompson access folders of data that Amazon Web Services was hosting for the bank. Thompson sent a command that returned a list of more than 700 folders and copied data from an unspecified number of them.  

Capital One said the bulk of the hacked data consisted of information supplied by consumers and small businesses who applied for credit cards between 2005 and early 2019. The hacker also was able to gain some access to fragments of transactional information from dates in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The bank said it believes it is unlikely that the information obtained was used for fraud, but the investigation is ongoing.

Capital One says 140,000 individuals had their Social Security numbers accessed, and another 80,000 had their bank account information accessed.

How did Capital One handle the breach?

Capital One says once it learned of the breach on July 17, it immediately closed the vulnerability, and it was able to figure out what Thompson accessed 36 hours later, on July 19. The company was able to build a profile on Thompson from their internal investigation, and handed that to the FBI, who arrested her 10 days later, the day the bank disclosed the breach. 

By contrast, it took Equifax six weeks before it publicly disclose its security incident, which was similar in size.

What to do

Capital One said it will reach out to those affected using “a variety of channels.” 

That bank said it will make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected. The company also said that consumers can visit www.capitalone.com/facts2019 for more information. In Canada, information can be found at www.capitalone.ca/facts2019.

Consumers should also obtain copies of their credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com. By federal law, consumers can receive a free copy of their credit report every 12 months from each of the three big agencies — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Look over all of your listed accounts and loans to make sure that all of your personal information is correct and that you authorized the transaction. If you find something suspicious, contact the company that issued the account and the credit-rating agency.

You may also want to consider freezing your credit, which stops thieves from opening new credit cards or loans in your name. This can be done online. Consumers can freeze their credit for free because of a law that President Donald Trump signed last year. Before that, fees were typically $5 to $10 per rating agency.

You’ll need to remember to temporarily unfreeze your credit if you apply for a new credit card or loan. Also keep in mind that a credit freeze won’t protect you from thieves who file a fraudulent tax return in your name or make charges against an existing account.

You should also change your passwords regularly. CreditCards.com industry analyst Ted Rossman recommends using a password aggregator like LastPass that helps create strong, unique passwords for all of your logins.
 

Canadian police said Tuesday they have pulled out of a remote northern town after an intensive search turned up no sign of two fugitive teenagers suspected of killing three people — a college professor, a North Carolina woman and her Australian boyfriend.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used dogs and drones, helicopters, boats and even a military Hercules aircraft to scour the area around York Landing, Manitoba, but were unable to confirm a possible sighting of the two men reported by members of a neighborhood watch group.

The RCMP tweeted Monday that “the heavy police presence in York Landing has been withdrawn & policing resources in the community will return to normal.”

That shifts the hunt for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky back toward another remote town, Gillam, where a vehicle that had been used by the suspects was found burned last week.

Nineteen-year-old McLeod and 18-year-old Schmegelsky have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, a University of British Columbia professor whose body was found last week in British Columbia. 
 
They are also suspects in the fatal shootings of Australian Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese of Charlotte, North Carolina, whose bodies were found July 15 along the Alaska Highway about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from where Dyck was killed.

A manhunt for the pair has spread across three provinces.

Sherman Kong, whose Maple Leaf Survival company in Winnipeg teaches wilderness and extreme cold weather survival tactics, said the terrain around Gillam — 1,100 kilometers (660 miles) north of Winnipeg — is dense and swampy. It’s inhabited by wildlife like bears, as well as insects “that are relentless and quite abundant.”

There is a possibility the two already may have died from an animal attack, dehydration, a serious injury or other causes, Kong said.

But he said that every year, people without formal training survive being lost in the wilderness.

“If we expect these two gentlemen are motivated, and even if they have a certain level of survival skills, that coupled with their intent on not being captured, can often be enough to allow someone to remain at large in the bush and survive longer,” Kong said in an interview with The Associated Press.

A multi-day international music festival in Lebanon said Tuesday that it’s cancelled a planned concert by a popular Mideast rock band whose lead singer is openly gay, apparently caving to pressure after weeklong calls by some Christian groups to pull the plug on the show, as well as online threats to stop it by force.

Festival organizers released a statement saying the “unprecedented step” of cancelling the performance by Mashrou’ Leila was done “to prevent bloodshed and maintain peace and stability.”

”We apologize for what happened, and apologize to the public,” it added.

Some church leaders and conservative politicians set off a storm of indignation on social media this week when they demanded that the Mashrou’ Leila concert be canceled, accusing the Lebanese group of blasphemy and saying some of its songs are an insult to Christianity. The band, known for its rousing music and lyrics challenging norms in the conservative Arab world, soon became the center of a heated debate about freedom of expression.

Online, some groups and users posted threats suggesting they would violently stop the concert.

Mashrou’ Leila was scheduled to perform in the coastal city of Byblos on Aug. 9, marking the third time the group takes part in the annual Byblos International Festival. The other performances will still take place.

The cancellation triggered a storm of protests and a campaign of solidarity with the band on social media by Lebanese who described it as shameful and a dangerous precedent.

”This is a step back for Lebanon, which has always prided itself on embracing diversity and being a center for music, art and culture,” tweeted Aya Majzoub, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Amnesty International, in a statement, said the decision to cancel the show is an “alarming indicator” of the deteriorating state of freedom of expression in Lebanon.

”This is the direct result of the government’s failure to take a strong stand against hatred and discrimination and to put in place the necessary measures to ensure the performance could go ahead,” Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director Lynn Maalouf said.

There was no immediate comment from the band, which last week issued a statement denouncing the “defamatory campaign” and saying that some of the lyrics from their songs were being taken out of context and twisted.

The group has been a champion of LGBT rights in the Arab world and regularly sings about controversial subjects such as sectarianism, corruption and other social and political problems.

The band has previously been banned from performing in Jordan and Egypt, but censorship demands threatening its concert in the more liberal Lebanon — where it has performed on numerous occasions — are new.

On Monday, dozens of Lebanese held a protest in downtown Beirut objecting to the proposed ban and rejecting attempts by Christian clergymen and some right wing groups to ban the group.

”Regardless of our opinion of the songs and the band, we need to defend freedom of expression, because freedom is for everyone and for everybody. The day it stops, it stops for everybody,” said writer and director Lucien Bourjeily.

The band, whose name translates as “Night Project,” was founded 10 years ago by a group of architecture students at the American University of Beirut whose songs challenged stereotypes through their music and lyrics.

Riding on the wave Arab Spring uprisings that swept the Middle East, the band was embraced by Arab youth who see its music as part of a cultural and social revolution. The band members have gone on to gain worldwide acclaim, performing in front of sold-out crowds in the United States, Berlin, London and Paris.

Boston police are tracking nearly 5,000 people — almost all of them young black and Latino men — through a secretive gang database, newly released data from the department shows.

A summary provided by the department shows that 66% of those in its database are black, 24% are Latino and 2% are white. Black people comprise about 25% of all Boston residents, Latinos about 20% and white people more than 50%.

The racial disparity is “stark and troublesome,” said Adriana Lafaille, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which, along with other civil rights groups, sued the department in state court in November to shed light into who is listed on the database and how the information is used.

Central American youths are being wrongly listed as active gang members “based on nothing more than the clothing they are seen in and the classmates they are seen with,” and that’s led some to be deported, the organizations say in their lawsuit, citing the cases of three Central American youths facing deportation based largely on their status on the gang database.

”This has consequences,” Lafaille said. “People are being deported back to the countries that they fled, in many cases, to escape gangs.”

Boston police haven’t provided comment after multiple requests, but Commissioner William Gross has previously defended the database as a tool in combating MS-13 and other gangs.

One 24-year-old native of El Salvador nearly deported last year over his alleged gang involvement said he was a victim of harassment and bullying by Bloods members as a youth and was never an MS-13 member, as police claim.

The man spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution from gang members.

He said he never knew he’d made the list while in high school until he was picked up years later in a 2017 immigration sweep.

The gang database listed him as a “verified” member of MS-13 because he was seen associating with known MS-13 members, had feuded with members of the rival Bloods street gang, and was even charged with assault and battery following a fight at school, according to records provided by his lawyer, Alex Mooradian.

Mooradian said he noted in immigration court that the man, who was granted special immigrant juvenile status in 2014, reported at least one altercation with Bloods members to police and cooperated with the investigation. Witnesses also testified about the man’s good character and work ethic as a longtime dishwasher at a restaurant.

”Bottom line, this was a person by all metrics who was doing everything right,” said Mooradian. “He had legal status. He went to school. He worked full time. He called police when he was in trouble. And it still landed him in jail.”

Boston is merely the latest city to run into opposition with a gang database. An advocacy group filed a lawsuit this month in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing the city’s database violates constitutional rights. Portland, Oregon, discontinued its database in 2017 after it was revealed more than 80% of people listed on it were minorities.

In Chicago, police this year proposed changes after an audit found their database’s roughly 134,000 entries were riddled with outdated and unverified information. Mayor Lori Lightfoot also cut off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement access ahead of planned immigration raids this month.

California’s Department of Justice has been issuing annual reports on the state’s database since a 2017 law began requiring it. And in New York City, records requests and lawsuits have prompted the department to disclose more information about its database.

In Boston, where Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh has proposed strengthening the city’s sanctuary policy, the ACLU suggests specifically banning police from contributing to any database to which ICE has access, or at least requiring police to provide annual reports on the database. Walsh’s office deferred questions about the gang database to police.

Like others, Boston’s gang database follows a points-based system. A person who accrues at least six points is classified as a “gang associate.” Ten or more points means they’re considered a full-fledged gang member.

The points range from having a known gang tattoo (eight points) to wearing gang paraphernalia (four points) or interacting with a known gang member or associate (two points per interaction).

The summary provided by Boston police provides a snapshot of the database as of January.

Of the 4,728 people listed at the time, a little more than half were considered “active” gang associates, meaning they had contact with or participated in some form of gang activity in the past five years. The rest were classified as “inactive,” the summary states.

Men account for more than 90% of the suspected gang members, and people between ages 25 and 40 comprise nearly 75% of the listing.

The department last week provided the summary along with the department’s policy for placing people on the database after the AP filed a records request in June.

The ACLU was also provided the same documents in response to its lawsuit as well as a trove of other related policy memos and heavily redacted reports for each of the 4,728 people listed on the database as of January, according to documents provided by the ACLU and first reported Friday by WBUR.

The ACLU has asked the city for less-redacted reports, Lafaille said. It’s also still waiting for information about how often ICE accesses the database and how police gather gang intelligence in schools.

”After all this time, we still don’t have an understanding about who can access this information and how it’s shared,” she said. “That’s something the public has a right to know.”

A top human rights group is suing the Trump administration, accusing it of still separating migrant children from their parents despite last year’s court order against it. 

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge Tuesday in San Diego to block the practice.

“It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents. Over 900 more families join the thousands of others previously torn apart by this cruel and illegal policy,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said.

According to the ACLU, nearly 1,000 children have been taken away from their parents since President Donald Trump ordered family separations stopped in June 2018, followed by a court order to reunite the families.

Trump said then that his policy is to “maintain family unity” unless the parent poses a risk to the child.

But the group says border patrol agents are snatching migrant children away from their mothers and fathers because of alleged minor crimes such as traffic tickets. 

ACLU filing

The ACLU’s court filing describes how a guard took a little girl away from her father because she had a wet diaper. The guard allegedly called the father a bad parent. 

Another toddler was having trouble walking because she was recovering from a fever. She was taken from her parents, who were accused of neglect. Her father was deported.

One father with a speech impediment had trouble answering agents’ questions and lost his 4-year-old son. Other families were torn apart because of clerical errors on paperwork, or parents were accused of having fake birth certificates. 

‘Devastating’ toll

Gelernt says agents are using what is supposed to be a genuine concern for child safety as a loophole to separate families.

“What everyone understands intuitively and what the medical evidence shows, this will have a devastating effect on the children and possibly cause permanent damage … not to mention the toll on the parents,” he told The Washington Post.

The Trump administration has not yet responded to the ACLU’s lawsuit.

Testifying before Congress two weeks ago, Acting Homeland Security Chief Kevin McAleenan said family separations are “extraordinarily rare.” He said the separation process is “carefully governed by policy and by court order” and is “in the interest of the child.”

Taha Shakouri keeps finding remote corners to play in at a Tehran children’s charity hospital, unaware that his doctors are running out of chemo medicine needed to treat the eight-year-old boy’s liver cancer.

With Iran’s economy in free fall after the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported medicines have soared as the national currency tumbled about 70% against the dollar. Even medicines manufactured in Iran are tougher to come by for ordinary Iranians, their cost out of reach for many in a country where the average monthly salary is equivalent to about $450.

Iran’s health system can’t keep up and many are blaming President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign for the staggering prices and shortages. The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for everything from staples and consumer goods to housing skyward, while raising the specter of war with the U.S.

Taha’s mother, Laya Taghizadeh, says the hospital provides her son’s medication for free – a single treatment would otherwise cost $1,380 at a private hospital. She adds the family is deeply grateful to the doctors and the hospital staff.

“We couldn’t make it without their support,” says the 30-year-old woman. “My husband is a simple grocery store worker and this is a very costly disease.”

The Iranian rial has plunged from 32,000 to $1 at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers to around 120,000 rials to the dollar these days, highly affecting prices of imported medicines. The nuclear deal had raised expectations of a better life for many Iranians, free of the chokehold of international sanctions.

The landmark accord lifted international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, but now the deal has all but unraveled and new and tougher U.S. sanctions are in place.

While the United States insists that medicines and humanitarian goods are exempt from sanctions, restrictions on trade have made many banks and companies across the world hesitant to do business with Iran, fearing punitive measures from Washington. The country is cut off from the international banking system.

Last week, Health Minister Saeed Namaki said budget cuts because of the drop in crude exports have dramatically affected his department. The U.S. sanctions have targeted all classes of Iranians, he added.

“The American claims that medicine and medical equipment are not subject to sanctions is a big and obvious lie,” Namaki said.

“Our biggest concern is that channels to the outside world are closed,” said Dr. Arasb Ahmadian, head of the Mahak Children’s Hospital, which is run through charity donations and supports some 32,000 under-16 children across Iran.

The banking sanctions have blocked transactions, preventing donations from abroad, he said. Transfers of money simply fail, including those approved by the U.S. Treasury.

“Indeed, we are losing hope,” said Ahmadian. “Medicines should be purchasable, funding should be available and lines of credit should be clearly defined in the banking system.”

Medicine shortages

Official reports say Iran produces some 95% of the basic medicines it needs and even exports some of the production to neighboring countries.

But when it comes to more sophisticated medication and medicines for costly and rare illnesses and medical equipment, Iran depends heavily on imports. And though the state provides health care for all, many treatments needed for complicated cases are simply not available. Many prefer to go to private hospitals if they can and avoid long waiting lists at state ones.

Long lines form every morning in the 13-Aban Pharmacy in central Karimikhan Street, where people come looking for rare medicines for sick family members.

Hamid Reza Mohammadi, 53, spends much of his free time going in search of drugs for his wife and daughter, both of whom suffer from muscular dystrophy.

“Two, three months ago I could easily get the prescription filled in any pharmacy,” Mohammadi said, reflecting how quickly things have deteriorated.

Pharmacist Peyman Keyvanfar says many Iranians, their purchasing power slashed, cannot afford imported medicines and are looking for domestically manufactured substitutes. “There has been a very sharp increase in the prices of medicines, sometimes up to three to four times for some,” he said.

Those who still have some cash often turn to the black market.

Mahmoud Alizadeh, a 23-year-old student, rushed to the shady Nasser-Khosrow Street in southern Tehran when he got word his mother’s multiple sclerosis drug was available there.

“She is just 45 years old, it’s too soon to see her so badly paralyzed,” he said.

He pays three times more for the drug on the street than he did in May 2018. “I don’t know on whom Trump imposed sanctions except that he is punishing terminally ill people here.”

Many travel from rural areas to bigger cities in search of drugs for their loved ones.

Hosseingholi Barati, a 48-year-old father of three, came to Tehran from the town of Gonbad Kavus, about 550 kilometers (350 miles) to the northeast, looking for medication for his leukemia-stricken wife. He says he has spent $7,700 so far on her illness.

“It’s a huge strain,” he said. “I have sold everything I owned and borrowed money from family and friends.”

 

The U.N. human rights chief calls the murder of the leader of Brazil’s indigenous Wajapi tribe “reprehensible” and demands the Brazilian government respect the integrity of indigenous territories.

“The Brazilian government’s proposed policy to open up more areas of the Amazon to mining could lead to incidents of violence, intimidation and killings,” Michelle Bachelet said Monday. “When indigenous people are pushed off their lands, it is not just an economic issue. As the U.N Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes clear, it affects their entire way of life.”

The body of Wajapi chief Emrya Wajapi was found in a river last week. The tribe controls part of Brazil’s northern Amapa state. 

The Brazilian government set aside part of the state in the 1980s for the use of 800,000 tribespeople.

But Brazil’s new far right president Jair Bolsonaro has called on other nations to exploit what he calls the “absurd quantity of minerals” in the Amazon rainforest, despite the irreversible environmental damage such actions could bring.

Bolsonaro is supported by Brazilian logging, mining, and farming industries whose interest in the Amazon could lead to a “new wave of violence aimed at scaring people off their ancestral lands,” Bachelet warns.

The 2007 U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says such populations “shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories, their environments shall be protected, and any relocations that are absolutely necessary can only take place with their free and informed consent.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met in Cairo Monday powerful Sudanese military General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, whose forces have been accused of carrying out a brutal crackdown on protesters.

In his first official visit to the Egyptian capital, the deputy chief of Sudan’s military council widely known as Hemeti, “presented the latest developments on the current situation in Sudan”, the Egyptian presidency said.

Sisi, the former general turned president, reiterated Egypt’s “strategic support” in maintaining “the stability and security” of its neighbour Sudan, the presidency added.

Cairo has been a steadfast ally of Khartoum’s military leaders after long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir was toppled on April 11 after months of protests.

Hemeti, commander of the Rapid Support Forces – the feared paramilitary group accused of war crimes in Darfur under Bashir – has also shored up support from Gulf allies, meeting with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May.

Triggered in December with the tripling of the price of bread, the protests in Sudan quickly transformed into a challenge to the Bashir regime, in power for 30 years.

Demonstrations continued after his ouster to demand civilian rule.

On June 3, at least 127 protesters were killed and scores wounded in a raid on a sit-in at the epicentre of the demonstrations, according to doctors linked to the protest movement.

A joint probe by prosecutors and Sudan’s ruling military council showed that security forces, including an RSF general, took part in the raid on the protest camp — despite having no orders from their superiors to do so.

Hemeti has consistently denied that his men were involved in the crackdown, which triggered international outrage.

The general’s meeting with Sisi comes a day after Sudanese police fired tear gas at scores of protesters demanding an independent probe into the June raid.

On July 17, Sudanese protesters and ruling generals signed a power-sharing deal that aims to form a joint civilian-military ruling body which in turn would install civilian rule.

Talks are to resume Tuesday to iron out remaining issues between the two sides.

 

Protests broke out in Bahrain after the execution of two Shi’ite Muslim activists on terrorism-related charges revived tensions over the weekend in the Sunni-led kingdom, a Western ally that has cracked down on dissent since a failed 2011 uprising.

Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Bilad al-Qadeem suburb where one protester died from gas inhalation on Saturday, four activists said. A government spokesperson said in a statement sent to Reuters that the man died from natural causes, but did not comment on the protest.

People also took to the streets in several Shi’ite villages and neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital Manama on Sunday night in response to Saturday’s execution of Ali al-Arab and Ahmed al-Malali, who were sentenced to death last year on “terrorism crimes” in a mass trial.

Videos and pictures posted on verified social media accounts of activists showed demonstrators clashing with security forces, burning ties and building roadblocks.

The protests are the most significant unrest in more than two years in the island state, headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, since authorities in 2017 executed three Shi’ite men convicted of killing three policemen in a bomb attack.

The ruling Al Khalifa family has kept a lid on dissent since the mostly Shi’ite opposition staged a failed uprising in 2011.

Saudi Arabia sent in troops to help crush that unrest in a mark of concern that any major unrest or power-sharing concession by Bahrain could inspire Saudi Arabia’s own Shi’ite minority.

Activists abroad have called for further protests over the executions, which were criticized by international rights groups on the grounds that the men’s confessions were obtained through torture. Manama denies the charges.

“There are calls and there will be more protests in the coming days, but the repression is very violent and authorities are retaliating with collective punishments,” said Ali Alaswad, a senior member of the dissolved opposition group al-Wefaq, who has lived in exile in London since 2011.

Bahrain has closed the main opposition groups and prosecuted scores of people, stripping hundreds of their nationalities, in mass trials. A number of activists have fled abroad.

Many Shi’ites say they are deprived of jobs and treated as second-class citizens in the country of 1.5 million. Authorities deny the allegations and accuse Iran of fostering unrest that has seen demonstrators clash with security forces, who have been targeted by several bomb attacks. Tehran denies the allegations.

Anger at funeral

Analysts say they do not expect a repeat of past widespread violence given measures to stifle dissent in Bahrain, which has been emboldened by a crackdown on dissent in neighboring Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“Bahrainis know an escalation, as happened in 2011, will not only be met with brutality, but also with the occupation by Saudi Forces in the form of the Gulf Peninsula Shield,” said Marc Owen Jones of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, referring to a common Gulf Arab force.

On Sunday, hundreds of people attended the funeral of Mohammad Ibrahim al-Mokdad, 22, who died after taking part in Saturday night’s protest. The government spokesperson said a medical report “confirms illness as cause of death”.

“With our souls, with our blood, we will redeem you, martyr,” mourners could be heard chanting in several videos of the funeral posted on activists’’ social media accounts.

Many were holding pictures of the executed activists, who were among three men executed on Saturday. Authorities said, without identifying any of the men, said that the three were convicted in two separate cases, one involving the killing of a police officer and the other the killing of a mosque imam.

Data compiled by London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) showed that 17 people in Bahrain are currently on death row on political grounds, including eight at imminent risk of execution.

“The regime uses executions as a vengeance tool… the Judiciary in Bahrain is corrupt and it is part of the security apparatus,” said al-Wefaq’s Alaswad.

The authorities have denied targeting the opposition and say they are protecting national security.

 

Iranians sending images to a U.S.-based activist over an anti-headscarf campaign could face up to 10 years in prison. 
 
The activist, Masih Alinejad, founded the “White Wednesdays” campaign in Iran to encourage women to post photographs of themselves without headscarves online as a way of opposing the compulsory hijab.
 

The semi-official Fars news agency on Monday quoted the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, as saying that “those who film themselves or others while removing the hijab and send photos to this woman … will be sentenced to between one and 10 years in prison.”
 
The Islamic headscarf is mandatory in public for all women in Iran. Those who violate the rule are usually sentenced to two months in prison or less, and fined around $25.

When much of Venezuela was plunged into darkness after a massive blackout this week, President Nicolás Maduro blamed the power outage on an “electromagnetic attack” carried out by the U.S.

The claim was met with skepticism. Blackouts are a regrettably frequent part of life in Venezuela, where the electric grid has fallen into serious disrepair. And Maduro’s administration provided no evidence of an electromagnetic attack.

“In Venezuela, it’s a lot easier for him to say we did something to him than he did it to himself,” said Sharon Burke, senior adviser at New America, a nonpartisan think tank, and former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy at the Department of Defense. “Their grid, it’s decrepit. It’s been in very poor shape. They’ve been starving their infrastructure for years.”

Nevertheless, Maduro’s claim has raised questions over what exactly is an electromagnetic attack, how likely is it to occur and what impact could it have.

WHAT IS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC ATTACK?

The phrase “electromagnetic attack” can refer to different things, but in this context most likely refers to a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, about 30 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Once the weapon is detonated, an electromagnetic pulse can travel to the Earth’s surface and disrupt a wide variety of technology systems from appliances to a nation’s electric grid. Some characteristics of an electromagnetic pulse are similar to disturbances caused by solar flares.

There are also smaller electromagnetic pulse weapons that are being developed, but they would be unlikely to cause a power outage as large as the one Venezuela experienced, experts said.

The term electromagnetic attack also can refer cryptography, or an attack where the perpetrator is seeking secret keys or passwords, but that’s more likely to be directed at portable electronic devices, not electric grids, said Shucheng Yu, an associate professor of electrical & computer engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology.

HAS ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE TECHNOLOGY EVER BEEN USED?

In the 1962, during the Cold War, the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon above the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, and the experiment — known as Starfish Prime — knocked out power to traffic lights and telecommunications in parts of Honolulu, illuminating the sky and even leading hotels to host viewing parties, according to news reports.

Russia conducted a series of “high-altitude nuclear bursts” in 1961 and 1962 to test electromagnetic pulse impacts over Kazakhstan and destroyed that country’s electrical grid, according to testimony to Congress from the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack.

COULD VENEZUELA HAVE SUFFERED FROM AN ELECTROMAGNETIC ATTACK?

While several countries have capabilities to detonate a nuclear weapon and cause an electromagnetic pulse, it’s unlikely that such a maneuver would escape the world’s attention.

“If he’s suggesting that the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon above the atmosphere, you think that would happen without anyone noticing? I don’t think so,” Burke said of Maduro’s claim. “You can’t secretly detonate a nuclear weapon.”

A senior U.S. administration official said Maduro is to blame for the latest blackout because his government has mismanaged the economy and is responsible for the destruction of his country’s infrastructure. The official was not authorized to respond to questions about the blackout and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Unlike a cyberattack, which can be carried out by a hacker in a basement, generating an electromagnetic pulse requires a state-sponsored weapon.

“It’s hard to imagine that actor being incentivized to pull off and conduct such an attack. It would be pretty aggressive to do that,” said David Weinstein, chief security officer at Claroty, a security company that specializes in protecting infrastructure. “Also, the power fails easily in Venezuela anyway, so it’s almost like a waste of the capability.”

HOW MUCH OF A THREAT DOES AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE ATTACK POSE?

It depends on who you ask. While the technology to launch an electromagnetic attack exists, and the impacts could cause widespread damage to electronics, some security experts believe the likelihood of such an attack is low and the threat is overstated.

“If they want to knock out the grid, I was trying to think of 12 ways to do it, this wouldn’t be high on the list,” said Bill Hogan, professor of global energy policy at Harvard University. “The (U.S.) system is run very conservatively, there’s a lot of redundancy, and you’d have to be pretty sophisticated to knock out a lot of it.”

Others are convinced that an electromagnetic attack could wipe out vast swaths of the U.S. power grid for prolonged periods, potentially killing most Americans.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a think tank funded primarily by utilities, found in an April study that an electromagnetic pulse could trigger regional service interruptions but would not likely trigger a nationwide grid failure in the U.S.

But the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, which has been sounding the alarm on the possibility of this type of attack for years, said in 2017 Congressional testimony that a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack would inflict massive widespread damage to the electric grid. An attack on the U.S., it warned, would inevitably lead to a widespread protracted blackout and thousands of electronic systems could be destroyed, risking millions of lives.

President Donald Trump called on the Secretary of Defense to conduct research to understand the effects of EMPs in an executive order in March, and called on the Secretary of State to work with allies to boost resilience to potential impacts to EMPs.

“I think it’s a good thing that awareness has grown, and the potential risks and consequences have captured people’s attention, but at the same time, the much more practical and frankly the threat that we’re facing on a day-to-day basis is the cyber threat,” Weinstein said.

WASHINGTON – Observations of light coming from a star zipping in orbit around the enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy have provided fresh evidence backing Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory of general relativity, astronomers said Thursday. 
 
Researchers studied a star called S0-2, boasting a mass roughly 10 times larger than that of the sun, as it travels in an elliptical orbit lasting 16 years around the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* residing at the center of the Milky Way 26,000 light years from Earth. 
 
They found that the behavior of the star’s light as it escaped the extreme gravitational pull exerted by the black hole, with 4 million times the sun’s mass, conformed to Einstein’s theory’s predictions. The famed theoretical physicist proposed the theory, considered one of the pillars of science, to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces. 
 
While Einstein’s theory held up in the observations of this star, astronomer Andrea Ghez of the University of California-Los Angeles said it may not be able to fully account for what happens in the most exotic possible gravitational environments like those of black holes. These extraordinarily dense celestial entities exert gravitational fields so strong that no matter or light can escape. 
 
The study detected a commingling of space and time near the black hole as predicted by Einstein’s theory. Isaac Newton’s 17th-century law of universal gravitation could not account for these observations, Ghez said. 
 
“Newton had the best description of gravity for a long time but it started to fray around the edges. And Einstein provided a more complete theory. Today we are seeing Einstein’s theories starting to fray around the edges,” said Ghez, who led the study published in the journal Science. 
 
At some point a more comprehensive theory of gravity may be required, she said. 
 
The study, relying heavily on data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, focused on an effect called gravitational redshift.  
 
Einstein’s theory foresees the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation including light lengthening as it escapes the pull of gravity exerted by a massive celestial body like a black hole. 
 
Photons — particles of light — expend energy to escape but always travel at the speed of light, meaning the energy loss occurs through a change of electromagnetic frequency rather than a slowing of velocity. This causes a shift to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, a gravitational redshift.