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. 

American cities including Atlanta, Miami and New Orleans that set goals to slash planet-warming greenhouse emissions are lacking the data to measure their progress, scientists said in a new report.

Some 40% of U.S. cities that committed to cutting emissions are unable to assess their programs because costly tallies of their emissions are inadequate, said the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a nonprofit organization.

“City resources are always tight,” said David Ribeiro, the report’s lead author and a senior research manager at ACEEE.

The lack of data could also be due to emission-cutting goals having only recently been adopted, or to insufficient political will, Ribeiro said.

Of the 75 cities surveyed, just over 20% had pledged to cut emissions and were able to measure advances with recently produced evidence.

Cities account for two-thirds of the world’s energy demand and 70% of energy-related emissions, the report said, citing cited International Energy Agency data.

Plans to cut emissions have grown increasingly ambitious in the United States since President Donald Trump vowed in 2017 to leave the landmark Paris climate accord, said Katie Walsh of CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit that supports collection of environmental data.

The report said Los Angeles pledged to reduce its greenhouse gases by 100 percent by 2050, thus virtually eliminating them, compared to 2016, with municipal data projecting it would meet that goal.

But in another 21 cities, authorities had not collected enough emission data to track their progress, it said on Wednesday.

With about 870,000 residents, Indianapolis, Indiana, was among the largest cities lacking data to assess its progress toward becoming carbon neutral – producing no more climate-changing emissions than can be offset by other means – by 2050.

Other large cities hampered by insufficient data include Nashville, Tennessee, Detroit, Michigan, and Louisville, Kentucky, the report said.

Lucy Hutyra, a Boston University associate professor of earth and environment, said pledging to reduce greenhouse gasses was a good “aspirational first step.”

But, she added, “Without a clear plan for monitoring the efficacy of emissions reduction policies, it is all aspiration.”

In nearly six months as a Democratic presidential candidate, Cory Booker has billed himself as many things: He’s both an optimist leading with “radical love” and a fighter against political machines. He’s both a supporter of “Medicare for All” and an advocate for more incremental health care policies that preserve the private insurance industry.

As the New Jersey senator prepares for a pivotal turn in the spotlight at next week’s debate, he’s trying on a new role: Joe Biden’s chief antagonist.

Ahead of an expected showdown in Detroit, Booker is blasting the former vice president as “an architect of mass incarceration.” Speaking to the National Urban League on Thursday, he assailed rivals whom he portrayed as latecomers to the fight against “structural inequality and institutional racism” — implying, without mentioning Biden’s name, that his opponent had embraced criminal justice reform to further his presidential candidacy. 

One of two black major candidates in the Democratic contest, Booker is homing in on racial justice as he struggles to emerge from the bottom tier of most national polls. He has yet to meet the donor qualifications to participate in this fall’s Democratic debate, when tougher rules are expected to winnow the crowded field. Democrats say Booker’s new approach to Biden could provide a moment to lift his campaign — or sack it with more baggage. 
 
“There’s a path that still exists for Booker, but he needs a galvanizing moment that not only boosts his hopes but also eliminates one of the opponents in front of him,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “It’s possible, but it’s a tough path ahead.”

Booker’s aides see him as on track to qualify for the September debate regardless of what may take place in Detroit. His campaign remains focused on an early state strategy that takes him to Iowa on Friday for the seventh time since entering the race.

“Cory’s performance serves as a validation for the folks who have committed their early support to his campaign” in the Hawkeye State, said Mike Frosolone, Booker’s Iowa state director. 
 
Booker’s organization is particularly strong in Iowa, where he counts nearly 50 staff members and has won a long list of potent local endorsements. Still, the campaign spent more money than it raised during the second quarter of the year, and Booker’s efforts are likely to mean little until he can get what Des Moines lawyer Grant Woodard called “his moment in the sun.”

“Something has to happen for him in the national narrative, I think, and he can really start to flex his muscle here,” said Woodard, a former Democratic operative in the state. 

Looming hurdles
 
Booker faces several hurdles at this critical juncture. Biden’s camp has responded quickly to his potshots, suggesting the former vice president is more prepared to be hit next week than he was during the first presidential debate when he stammered in answering Kamala Harris.

And, unlike the first debate, he’ll have to share the stage with Harris, whose campaign gained ground after she took aim at Biden’s recent comments about working with segregationists and his past opposition to school busing. Her broadside was so successful in part because Harris is not known for sharing personal stories.  
 
Booker, in contrast, has built a brand on a personal, uplifting approach to politics. Trying to replicate Harris could make him seem insincere.

Yvette Simpson, chief executive of the progressive group Democracy for America, urged Booker to “speak from a place that’s real to him,” warning that he has verged on “a stage where it’s more platitudes and less authentic.” On issues beyond criminal justice, she added, the debates could exert pressure on Booker to be more than “the guy in the middle” who neither directly courts the left nor actively alienates it.

‘Verbal punches’

Indeed, Booker has at times edged away from a full-bore liberal approach in his campaign’s first months. He has proposed an ambitious, progressive immigration agenda, decrying President Donald Trump as “worse than a racist,” but clarified last week that he would not use the term “concentration camps” to describe immigration detention facilities, as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has.

Booker also hasn’t fully endorsed a push by activists on the left to eliminate the Senate filibuster to help a future Democratic president accomplish his or her agenda. And on health care, Booker has joined Harris in supporting Medicare for All legislation but edged away from it on the campaign trail as Biden runs as a sharp critic of single-payer health insurance. 
 
No matter how he’s drawn into a clash with Biden on the debate stage, Booker appears firmly on track for one. And he’s taking a more pugnacious tone with Trump as well, telling NBC talk show host Seth Meyers this week that he sometimes has to resist the temptation to punch the “elderly, out-of-shape” president.

Penny Rosfjord, a member of the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee, said that combativeness among candidates “can get dangerous” but suggested that Booker has more room to get sharper given the love-first tone that he started his campaign on.

“I personally think it’s the right tone, but he will at times have to get a bit more aggressive with people,” Rosfjord said. “He might have to throw some verbal punches here and there.”

Hundreds of Catholic parishioners in Paraguay donned bird-like costumes and paraded down the streets this week to honor a 16th-century saint said to possess miraculous powers. 
 
The celebration in the municipality of Emboscada, some 45 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of the capital of Asuncion, paid tribute to St. Francis Solano, who was born in Spain in 1549 and died in Peru in 1610. He was canonized in 1726.

Wearing a suit made from the feathers of six hens, Maria Estela Pereira said she had come to show thanks. 

“I suffer from arthritis and after praying four years ago to St. Francis Solano to allow me to move from one place to another without pain, he granted me a miracle,” said the 52-year-old widow, a mother of 11 children. 
 
Modesto Martinez, a parish priest in the nearby city of San Bernardino, said there was no scholarly explanation for the procession, but birds were believed to have sung to St. Francis Solano as he lay on his deathbed.

“It is likely that the story, if real, has given parishioners the belief that St. Francis Solano is a protector of birds,” he said. 
 
There is no record of the saint ever visiting Paraguay. 

Pedro Balbuena, a 71-year-old chapel musician, said the modern-day tradition grew in popularity due to the work of Dominga Machuca, a villager who promoted the saint’s image. 
 
But Balbuena said the feathers actually symbolize Guaicuru Indians who would attack smaller tribes and Spanish colonizers to prevent them from stealing their food and weapons. 
 
“Since they were superstitious, the villagers disguised themselves as birds to scare them away, and that’s how they stopped being bothered by them,” he said.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte offered a bounty to anybody who can deliver to him the head of the communist rebel leader behind the killings of four police intelligence officers last week in an insurgency-hit central province.

Duterte said in a speech late Thursday that he raised a reward of 3 million pesos
($59,000)and would considerably increase the amount out of anger for what he described as the Islamic State group-style killings of the officers on July 18 in Negros Oriental province.
 
The officers were taken hostage, beaten up and killed then burned, Duterte said, but police and military officials gave varying accounts of how the policemen were slain. Communist guerrillas claimed responsibility for the ambush that killed the law enforcers but denied torturing them.
 
Police reported that communist rebels opened fire on the four policemen, who were traveling on two motorcycles, in an ambush then took their pistols in the coastal town of Ayungon. The New People’s Army guerrillas, they said, later withdrew to a forested hinterland after the attack.

Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Noel Clement, however, said each of the policemen was shot in the head once while likely kneeling or sprawled on the ground, citing police autopsy reports. The four were to meet an informant when they were seized by about 20 to 25 rebels, who were now being hunted.

“They were burned like (by) ISIS that’s why I got mad,” Duterte said in a speech, using the acronym of the name of the Islamic State group.
 
Duterte, who visited the wake of the officers over the weekend, said he plans to raise the bounty up to 20 million pesos ($392,000) to increase the pressure and chances of the insurgents being captured.

Duterte said he only wanted the head and not the body of the leader of the killers because a complete body would only be used by activists in a ceremony to generate sympathy _ using rhetoric that human rights activists have said could encourage state forces to commit rights violations with impunity.

The 74-year-old leader, a former government prosecutor, then asked if there were members of a left-wing human rights group called Karapatan in the audience. “You really deserve to be hit, you fools,” Duterte said of the group, which has blamed government forces for the killings of several of its activists.

Duterte has already raised international alarm for his bloody campaign against illegal drugs that has left thousands of mostly petty drug suspects dead.

The communist insurgency has raged in the Philippines for more than 50 years in one of Asia’s longest-running rebellions. Battle losses, surrenders and infighting, however, have reduced the number of armed insurgents to about 3,500 from more than 20,000 at the height of their rural-based rebellion, the military says.

A trio of forces on the Israeli left — including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak — united on Thursday ahead of the country’s upcoming elections, looking to pose a powerful contrast to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative ruling Likud party.

The newly formed “Democratic Union” said in a joint statement it would be made up of Barak’s “Democratic Israel” faction, the dovish Meretz party and senior Labor Party official Stav Shaffir.

With just a week left to present the final lists for the September balloting, all sides were concerned they might not get enough votes by themselves to cross the electoral threshold.

The move comes amid a flurry of machinations ahead of the “do-over” election in September, after Netanyahu failed to form a parliamentary majority following his victory in April’s vote. To avoid giving his opponents a chance to build an alternative government, he dissolved parliament and forced an unprecedented new election campaign.

Netanyahu’s various rivals have been seeking to seize on the rare opportunity to unseat him by putting their own differences aside. Barak, who in 1999 became prime minister by becoming the only person to date to defeat Netanyahu in a head-on showdown, dramatically came out of retirement last month with the stated ambition of toppling Netanyahu again by helping opposition forces create a large enough bloc to unseat Likud.

However, his new faction has so far failed to make much of a splash in the polls. The former military chief’s main contribution seemed to be getting under the skin of Netanyahu and his family. Though Barak is headlining the maneuver, the 77-year-old will not lead the new list and does not appear to be a candidate to replace Netanyahu himself.

The joint list will be headed by Nitzan Horowitz, the newly elected, openly gay leader of Meretz. Shaffir, a rising star in Labor, bolted from the venerable party to be second on the new list, while Barak will be placed in the tenth slot.

At a press conference in Tel Aviv with Shaffir and Barak, Horowitz said the party aimed to “create significant political power the likes of which the left hasn’t seen in years.” The three leaders all spoke of “regime change” and ousting Netanyahu from office.

With Labor announcing a joint run focused on social and economic issues with the small Gesher party, “Democratic Israel” looks to have seized the mantle of peacemaking with the Palestinians and is poised to reintroduce an agenda that has long been missing from the Israeli political discourse.

Meretz lawmaker Tamar Zandberg, a former party leader, called the new alliance a “dramatic move to strengthen the left” and a “significant boost to justice and equality as an alternative to the corrupt and messianic right.”

The move appeared to be facilitated by Barak’s apology earlier this week for the killing of 13 Arab protesters by Israeli police in 2000 while he was prime minister. Meretz relies heavily on support among Israel’s Arab minority and one of their prominent Arab lawmakers had called on Barak to apologize.

Since his return to politics, Barak has also been under fire for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier jailed on sex-trafficking charges. Barak received some $2 million in grants last decade from the Wexner Foundation, of which Epstein was a trustee, and Epstein had also invested in a start-up company founded by Barak. The former prime minister has denounced Epstein and says he has “cut all ties” to him.

The U.S. government intends to resume capital punishment after a 16-year hiatus with plans in the coming months to execute five death-row inmates convicted of murder, the Justice Department announced on Thursday.

Attorney General William Barr has directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt an execution protocol, clearing the way for the execution of the five prisoners,  according to a department statement. Three of the executions are scheduled for December and two for January 2020.   

The last federal execution in the United States took place in 2003 when Gulf War veteran Louis Jones was put to death for the kidnapping and murder of a 19-year-old soldier.

There are currently 65 inmates on federal death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. More than half of the 50 U.S. states have capital punishment laws.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Barr said in a statement. “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.”

Among the five convicts currently on death row is Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, who was convicted in 1999 of murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. All five convicts have exhausted all their appeals and other remedies, the department said.  

Capital punishment was halted in the United States in 1972 after the Supreme Court ruled it an “arbitrary punishment.” But it  was later partially reinstated in 1988, leading to the execution of three death row inmates.   

The United States is the only Western country where executions still take place. Twenty-nine states  currently have death penalty laws.  Last year, 25 death-row inmates were executed in the United States. The death penalty has been virtually abolished in Europe, where Belarus is the only country that still allows it. 

A series of blasts rocked Afghanistan’s capital Kabul Thursday morning, killing at least ten people and wounding scores of others.

A Ministry of Interior spokesman, Nasrat Rahimi, said a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a mini bus carrying the staff of the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum as they were on their way to work. A secondary explosion rocked the site of the first attack.

Secondary explosions are common in Kabul and have in the past killed first responders and journalists covering the attack. 
 

A separate car bomb hit Jalalabad road in Kabul a few hours later. Local TV channels showed footage of relatives wailing outside local hospitals as they searched for their loved ones.

Meanwhile, another blast in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, killed nine members, six women and three children, from the same family, according to Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar governor’s office.

Gulzada Sangar, a spokesman for Nangarhar civilian hospital, said five other victims of the attack are in stable condition.

Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Jalalabad road, in which they claim they targeted “foreign invaders.”
 
“Martyrdom seeker [Muhammad Kabuli] using VBIED struck convoy of foreign invaders in Spechari area of #Kabul city 9am this morning resulting in 2 SUVs destroyed & 9 senior foreign officers killed,” a Tweet from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
 
However, in the same Tweet he distanced the Taliban from the other two blasts in the city.
 
Zalmay Khalilzad in Kabul

As the violence rages in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, the man appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump to find a way to extricate the United States from Afghanistan, is in Kabul, discussing “where we are on the #AfghanPeaceProcess,” according to his tweets. He met senior Afghan leadership Wednesday, including President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani.

On Tuesday, as he arrived in Kabul, the Afghan government issued a strong press release demanding a “clarification” for President Trump’s words that “Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth if he wanted to win the war but he did not want to “kill 10 million people.”

Both Khalilzad and Taliban’s political team based in Doha have been sending out positive indicators about their ongoing negotiations, now in its seventh round.

Remaining issues

Both sides acknowledge that they have made progress on two issues: announcement of a timeline of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and promises by the Taliban that Afghan soil will not be used for terrorism against any other country.

However, there seem to be differences on two more issues on the table: announcement of a comprehensive cease-fire and agreement by the Taliban to enter into direct negotiations with the Afghan government.
 
The United States has asked Pakistan to help use its influence with the Taliban to resolve these issues. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was on a three day trip to Washington and the White House this week, promised to help.

“Now, when I go back, after meeting President Trump, and I have also spoken to President Ghani, now I will meet the Taliban and tell them to talk to the Afghan government. I believe the election in Afghanistan should be inclusive and Taliban must be included,” Khan said during a public talk at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan, U.S. government funded research organization.

North Korea fired two projectiles off its east coast, South Korea’s military said early Thursday, Pyongyang’s latest provocation amid stalled nuclear talks.

South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the projectiles were launched from near North Korea’s eastern city of Wonsan and traveled approximately 430 kilometers. They were launched at 5:34 a.m. and 5:57 a.m.  

The statement by South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff did not elaborate what kind of projectiles were launched. If Seoul’s estimate is correct, however, it would appear to be a relatively short-range projectile.

An earlier message said Seoul’s military is monitoring the situation in case of addition launches and is maintaining a ready posture.

The North Korean launch threatens to further delay nuclear talks with the United States.

U.S. officials have said they would like to begin working-level talks as soon as possible.

Last week, North Korea threatened to resume intercontinental ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests if the U.S. and South Korea go ahead with planned joint military exercises.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met last month at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, where they agreed to restart talks.

The U.S. has not responded to the latest launches.

Kim declared a moratorium on all nuclear and ICBM tests in April 2018. Pyongyang, however, launched several short-range ballistic missiles and other projectiles in May.

“Estimating the distance, it is likely that it is the same Iskander type that was shot in May,” Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in nuclear nonproliferation with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told VOA’s Korea Service.

THE HAGUE, NETHERANDS — Kosovo’s former prime minister refused to answer questions put to him Wednesday by prosecutors at a court investigating alleged war crimes by separatist fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army two decades ago. 
 
Ramush Haradinaj said he had fulfilled his obligation to the court by attending the meeting and that he did not expect to be indicted. 
 
“I came today as a suspect, in order to commit my legal obligation based on an invitation from the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers,” he said. “I followed my legal counsel’s advice not to respond to the questions.” 
 
He said prosecutors asked him in general terms about his role in the KLA and other issues, “but nothing concrete.” 
 
The court, which is part of the Kosovo judicial system, is declining to comment on the questioning of Haradinaj because it is part of an ongoing investigation. 
 
It was a brief return to The Hague for Haradinaj, who was twice acquitted of charges linked to Kosovo’s fight for independence by a U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Dutch city. 
 
Haradinaj resigned as prime minister a week ago ahead of his questioning at the court, which is looking into crimes against ethnic Serbs allegedly committed during and after Kosovo’s 1998-99 war. 
 
“I have not wanted to bring the head of the government, the state here,” he said of his decision to step down. “Today it is Ramush Haradinaj here.” 
 
At the time of the war, Kosovo was a Serbian province and Haradinaj was a top commander of the separatist forces. Most KLA members were ethnic Albanians. A bloody Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists and civilians led NATO to intervene by bombing Serbia in spring 1999. 

Venezuela’s baseball team will not compete in the Pan American Games beginning this week, but some athletes who have escaped the country’s economic collapse will play for their adopted home of Peru, host to the 18th edition of the regional multi-nation event that precedes the Olympics.

“I want a win to thank Peru for opening the doors to me,” said Juan Casas, a 33-year-old former Venezuelan professional baseball player who now pitches for Peru. “I’ll fight for it until my last breath.”

Casas will be one of three Venezuelans representing Peru at the Pan American Games thanks to a law passed in May that provided fast track to citizenship for foreign athletes who represent the country in international competition. Four Venezuelans have also been hired as coaches for the team.

Their journey from aspiring baseball stars to penniless immigrants and back again — albeit in a different country — is the kind of success story sought by hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to neighboring countries to escape the hyperinflation, recession and shortages of basic goods at home.

Growing hostility 

Casas, who also plays first base and outfield, said helping Peru win a medal could shine a positive light on immigrants like him who face growing hostility as the local Venezuelan population swells to more than 800,000, nearly 3% of Peru’s population.

The United Nations has estimated that the Venezuelan diaspora worldwide is now more than 4 million strong and growing.

The economic crisis that Venezuela’s Baseball Federation cited for not being able to send the national team to the Games continues to push thousands more Venezuelans to emigrate every day.

“Because of the crisis, my family has completely split up,” Casas told Reuters before a recent practice ahead of the start of the Games on Friday. “One [family member] is in Miami. Two in Bogota. Two in Venezuela, and I’m in Lima.”

Casas said that thanks to baseball he has made a home for himself in Lima, where he coaches a team of Japanese-Peruvian players.

Unlike in Venezuela, baseball is not big sport in Peru. Most Peruvians tend to grow up playing soccer or volleyball. But Venezuelan immigrants have brought Caribbean ways of life to countries like Peru, which spans the Pacific Coast, the Andes and the Amazon.

In Lima, Venezuelan stuffed corn patties called arepas are now as easy to find as anticuchos, the classic Peruvian street dish of beef-heart kebabs. Venezuelan musicians play salsa at local nightclubs, and the rapid-fire Spanish of Caracas is now heard across the capital.

Ernis Arias, one of the Venezuelan coaches for the Peruvian team, said before the arrival of Venezuelan players, local baseball thrived thanks to Peru’s large Japanese-Peruvian community. Baseball is hugely popular in Japan.

“We rely on a lot of kids of Japanese descent. That’s the bulk of our team. But these boys who are arriving [from Venezuela] are clearly going to contribute a lot because of their experience,” Arias said. “It’s a team that’s going to put up a fight.”

Immigration restrictions

While Peru has welcomed talented Venezuelan athletes with open arms, it has tightened restrictions on other Venezuelan immigrants, who must now have a passport and secure a visa before arriving at the border.

According to an April Ipsos poll published in local daily El Comercio, 67% of Peruvians now see Venezuelan migration as negative, up from 43% a year earlier. Top concerns cited were jobs and crime, the poll found.

The influx of Venezuelans has pushed down wages in small businesses, as the average number of workers entering the labor market each year has tripled, according to local consulting firm Macroconsult.

“Xenophobia is an issue, not wanting Venezuelans here anymore,” Casas said.

Regardless of how his team fares in the Games that run through Aug. 11, Casas is clear on his next move. As a Peruvian citizen, he plans to bring his 14-year-old daughter from Venezuela. “It’s a catastrophe over there,” he said. 

Kenya’s presidency appointed Labor Minister Ukur Yatani as acting finance minister on Wednesday, a day after incumbent Henry Rotich was charged with corruption.

Rotich, who has been in the finance post since 2013, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to corruption charges in connection with tenders for the construction of two dams.

Rotich, who was bailed on a surety of 15 million shillings, is one of 26 people facing charges related to the project. He is due to return to court on Aug. 8.

President Uhuru Kenyatta also replaced the finance ministry’s number-two official, Kamau Thugge, who was charged alongside Rotich, also pleading not guilty.

Italian construction company CMC di Ravenna, which is also implicated in the corruption investigation, has denied any wrongdoing and said late on Tuesday it was co-operating with authorities.

“The company is working with the Kenyan judicial authority to settle the matter as soon as possible,” it said in a statement.

Kenyan director of public prosecution Noordin Haji said earlier on Tuesday that Nairobi was set to seek the extradition of one of the company’s directors to face charges.

Prosecutors accuse the company and Rotich and other Kenyan officials of inflating the cost of building two dams in the west of the country to 63 billion shillings ($608 million) from an original cost 46 billion.

Prosecutors allege that advance payments were shared out in accounts belonging to the conspirators and their agents.

CMC denied any links to those arrangements. “The accusation would refer, in fact, to the conditions of the financing, by banks of primary international standing, of the public works contracted by Kenya to CMC,” it said.

Work on the two dams has not started yet, prosecutors say, an assertion the company disputes. No land where the dams are meant to be built has yet been acquired, prosecutors say.

Hundreds of senior government officials and business people face charges under an anti-corruption drive launched last year by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.

Yatani is a former lawmaker who served as ambassador to Austria and a regional governor before his appointment to the cabinet last year. He has a degree in economics and sociology.

All permanent ministerial appointees in Kenya have to be vetted by parliament.

($1 = 103.7000 Kenyan shillings)

Facebook has agreed to a $5 billion settlement over allegations that the social media company mishandled user’s personal data.

The settlement, announced in a statement Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission, is the largest reached with a tech company over user privacy.

As a result of the agreement with the government, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will have to certify, quarterly and annually, that Facebook is taking adequate steps to protect user data.

The settlement will also establish a Facebook privacy committee out of its board of directors that would make decisions surrounding privacy and data usage. Regulators sought to offset what it called Zuckerberg’s “unfettered control” to set privacy policies for the company.

The privacy committee would be responsible for approving compliance officers who would work alongside Zuckerberg in ensuring that the social media giant is within regulations and submitting certifications.

Facebook also “must conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, service, or practice before it is implemented,” the government statement said.

“Despite repeated promises to its billions of users worldwide that they could control how their personal information is shared, Facebook undermined consumers’ choices,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.

“The magnitude of the $5 billion penalty and sweeping conduct relief are unprecedented in the history of the FTC. The relief is designed not only to punish future violations but, more importantly, to change Facebook’s entire privacy culture to decrease the likelihood of continued violations. The Commission takes consumer privacy seriously, and will enforce FTC orders to the fullest extent of the law.”

The FTC opened an investigation into Facebook last year, following revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed millions of Facebook user’s private information without authorization.

In particular, regulators were interested in investigating wether Facebook had violated a 2012 settlement that instructed the company to gain user consent before sharing personal data with other parties.

Wednesday’s settlement stems from allegations by the FTC that Facebook violated the 2012 settlement by “[using] deceptive disclosures and settings to undermine users’ privacy preferences .”

Two democratic commissioners voted against the settlement, asserting that the fine did not go far enough in punishing the company.

“The proposed settlement does little to change the business model or practices that led to the recidivism,” wrote Commissioner Rohit Chopra in a dissenting statement.

“Nor does it include any restrictions on the company’s mass surveillance or advertising tactics,” he wrote

Questions of privacy have been associated with Facebook for years.

Most recently, in a hearing over the company’s plans to issue a new cryptocurrency, lawmakers from both political parties questioned how they could trust the company, given its record on protecting user privacy.

As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, Facebook admits no wrongdoing.

 

 

 

Many families in Cameroon are inquiring about the whereabouts of their loved ones after rioting was reported in two of the country’s main prisons. Inmates at a prison in the capital, Yaounde, and Buea, one of the main cities in the Anglophone southwest region, are protesting the government’s crackdown on the Anglophone separatist movement. The inmates also have other grievances.

University student Terence Meme, 21, says he has been searching for his father, Patrick Meme, since he heard that inmates of the Yaounde Central Prison at Kondengui began rioting.

“We have not heard from him and we have not seen him for the past two days and we are very worried because he is a diabetic patient and he needs regular assistance and health care,” Meme said.

Terence says his father was arrested in the English-speaking northwestern town of Ndu in February 2017 and transferred to Yaounde, where he has been in pre-trial detention as a suspected separatist fighter.

Last Monday, detained suspected armed separatists from the English-speaking northwest and the southwest regions began protesting what they called marginalization by French-speaking inmates and prison staff. They denounced overcrowding, judicial delays and what they described as deplorable conditions at the Yaounde prison, which was constructed for 750 people but now holds more than 6,000 inmates.

Rights group Amnesty International has called on authorities in Cameroon to refrain from using excessive force against prisoners, and independently and effectively investigate the use of firearms and live ammunition reported during the riot.

A second riot was reported at the Buea Central Prison on Tuesday. The government said the military intervened to restore order, but provided no other details.

The Cameroon National Commission For Human Rights and Freedoms reports an 29,000 people are being held in the country’s 80 prisons. Commission Chairperson Chemuta Divine Banda says most of the prisons are congested.

“Conditions are unbearable. Unlivable. Escaping would be a natural instinct. Prisons should not be torture centers,” Chemuta said. “We have said this clear and clear.”

Scores of people from Cameroon’s English-speaking regions have been arrested over the last two years during the conflict in which separatists have sought to form an independent state called Ambazonia.

The United Nations estimates the conflict has left about 2,000 people dead and displaced more than 500,000 others since late 2017.

…

Virtual reality, or VR, is not just a medium for software engineers who can code. Artists and filmmakers are exploring the stories they can tell with VR. A collection of such experiences are now a part of an art show called Robot Remix. The art show challenges visitors to rethink their relationship with technology, robots and the world. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the show in Pasadena, California.

French authorities in a meeting Tuesday with an Iranian envoy stressed the need for Tehran to quickly respect the 2015 nuclear accord it has breached and “make the needed gestures” to deescalate mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf region.

A statement by the French Foreign Ministry said Seyed Abbas Araghchi gave a message to President Emmanuel Macron from Iranian leader Hassen Rouhani. Macron and Rouhani spoke last Thursday.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who met with Araghchi, is working with European partners on an observation mission to ensure maritime security in the Gulf, where tensions have mounted after Iran’s seizure last Friday of a U.K.-flagged oil tanker.

Le Drian made no mention of a Europe-led “maritime protection mission” announced a day earlier by his British counterpart, Jeremy Hunt, offering instead what seems to be a softer version.  

France is working “at this moment on a European initiative” with Britain and Germany, he told lawmakers, without elaborating. “This vision is the opposite of the American initiative, which is … maximum pressure” against Iran.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes Von der Muhll said at a briefing that the initiative involves “appropriate means of surveillance” aimed at “increased understanding of the situation at sea” to facilitate traffic in a waterway that is critical to the global economy.  

Iran’s seizure Friday of British oil tanker Steno Impero and its 23-member crew in the Strait of Hormuz aggravated tensions that were already mounting with Iran’s breaching of a 2015 Iran nuclear accord among world powers.

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord last year, reinstating sanctions on Iran and raising tensions.

Nations still party to the shaky Iran nuclear deal plan to meet in Vienna on Sunday to see to what extent the agreement can be saved. The European Union said the meeting of China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, chaired by the EU, “will examine issues linked to the implementation of the (nuclear deal) in all its aspects.”

Iran began openly exceeding the uranium enrichment levels set in the accord to try to pressure Europe into offsetting the economic pain of U.S. sanctions.

Le Drian stressed the need for diplomacy to de-escalate volatile tensions, which he has said previously could lead to “an accident.”

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had imposed visa restrictions on Nigerians it said were involved in trying to undermine democracy in presidential and parliamentary elections this year.

The department did not name the individuals or say how many were affected by the visa restrictions.

President Muhammadu Buhari won a second term in February in an election marred by delays, logistical glitches and violence.

“These individuals have operated with impunity at the expense of the Nigerian people and undermined democratic principles and human rights,” spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

“The Department of State emphasizes that the actions announced today are specific to certain individuals and not directed at the Nigerian people or the newly elected government,” Ortagus added.