The sun sets in Caracas after opposition protests failed to win military support to oust Venezuelan President Maduro and violent street clashes left four people deadhttps://t.co/UCwFP4qHVg
VIDEO: Cyclone Fani, one of the biggest storms to come off the Indian Ocean in recent years, makes landfall in eastern India pic.twitter.com/CHSKU20tSO
Sirens wailed and Israelis came to a standstill for a two-minute moment of silence to remember the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. pic.twitter.com/BDVdYHMG78
* ISIS released propaganda video featuring leader for the first time since 2014 * Al-Baghdadi's location has been narrowed down from 17 locations to just four * Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi warned IS will try attempt further attacks
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's location has been narrowed down to just four locations after the terrorist group released a propaganda video featuring him for the first time in five years.
Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said the purported appearance by the jihadist group's elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi showed him in what appeared to be a 'very simple and isolated' location.
Mahdi did not confirm which country al-Baghdadi was in, but Iraqi security adviser Hisham al-Hashemi said officials had narrowed his whereabouts from 17 to a possible four locations.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his consort General Suthida Vajiralongkorn, named Queen Suthida, during their wedding ceremony in Bangkok. Just days before his official coronation, the king married the deputy head of his personal guard force and gave her the title Queen Suthida. Thailand Royal Household via REUTERS
Sailors load sonobuoys into a transport trailer. The small sensors are key for U.S. anti-submarine efforts, but production may be threatened in the coming years. (US Navy/Lt. Cmdr Alan Johnson/Released)
WASHINGTON — A key tool in the U.S. Navy's fight against Russian and Chinese submarines weighs eight pounds, is three feet long and it doesn't even explode.
The sonobuoy is an expendable, waterborne sensor that has been air-dropped by the hundreds to detect enemy subs, a go-to capability for America and its allies for decades. The Pentagon wants to buy 204,000 sonobuoys in its fiscal 2020 budget request, a 50 percent spending increase over 2018.
But just as the U.S. military needs them most, this critical capability is under threat, and it's got nothing to do with an enemy nation. Without government investment in the market, the Pentagon says it may no longer have a reliable supplier, according to officials who spoke to Defense News.
A nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is seen during a military display in the South China Sea April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Recent visitors to the bay surrounding a submarine base on the southern coast of China's Hainan Island describe a curious nocturnal phenomenon. Powerful spotlights are sometimes trained directly on the ocean frontages of neighboring hotels at night, making visibility out to sea virtually impossible. Some of the lights are mounted on land and others on passing naval patrol boats.
"The effect is incredible," said one recent visitor. "The glare is so great you can hardly stand it on the balcony. You go inside and draw the curtains tight."
The blinding lights cannot obscure something of intense interest to the world's military intelligence agencies: evidence that China has made a breakthrough in its drive to rival America and Russia as a nuclear arms power.
Satellite imagery reveals the regular presence of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines at the strategic base near the resort city of Sanya. Specialized surface warships and aircraft designed to protect the subs are prowling key waterways off the coast. Facilities at the base appear to have been built to store and load ballistic missiles. Antenna arrays that support the hunt for foreign submarines have appeared on Chinese-held islands in the hotly contested South China Sea. And a veteran submariner has been appointed to command Chinese forces in the south of the country.
The U.S. military may no longer track how much territory the Afghan government controls, but here's at least one definite metric of success: Afghan AC-208 pilots are no longer trained in the United States because more than 40 percent of the students training to fly the aircraft end up deserting within U.S. borders.
This latest nugget is tucked within the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction's recent report about the (lack of) progress in Afghanistan.
"Those students that did not go AWOL were pulled back to Afghanistan to complete their training: as a result, only one class graduated from the U.S.-based program," the report says. "The second and third classes will continue and finish their training in Afghanistan."
F-35A Lightning II test aircraft assigned to the 31st Test Evaluation Squadron from Edwards Air Force Base, California, released AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9X missiles at QF-16 targets during a live-fire test over an Air Force range in the Gulf of Mexico on June 12, 2018. The Joint Operational Test Team conducted the missions as part of Block 3F Initial Operational Test and Evaluation.
Air Force officials told lawmakers May 2 that while they continue to drive down the sustainment cost of the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, it will be "multiple years" before it can reach the same cost per flying hour as an F-15EX.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee Thursday, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the F-35 program executive officer, said the F-35 Joint Program Office is targeting a cost per flying hour of $34,000 by Fiscal Year 2024.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has finally flown its variant of the F-35 in combat, using two of the aircraft to take out an ISIS tunnel network and weapons cache in Iraq on April 30.
Tuesday's airstrikes — the first U.S. use of the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing model at war — follow the combat employment Israel Defense Forces' F-35As in May 2018 and U.S. Marine Corps' F-35Bs in September 2018.
According to U.S. Air Forces Central Command, the airstrike occurred at Wadi Ashai, in northeast Iraq. An April 24 news release from U.S. Central Command stated that ISIS fighters "have been attempting to move munitions, equipment and personnel" to Wadi Ashai in order to "set conditions for their resurgence," prompting a counter-offensive by Iraqi Security Forces and supported by Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.
The United States thought all the pieces were in place for Maduro to leave. Then everything came crashing down.
In the effort to topple Nicolás Maduro, Colombia's ambassador to the United States once told me, the military men propping up Venezuela's authoritarian president are like chess pieces.
If they defect from the regime, "you lose that chess piece," Francisco Santos explained. "They work better from the inside."
As Tuesday, April 30, began, the United States and its allies thought they finally had checkmate, after months of building up the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate president and recruiting more than 50 nations to their cause.
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognised as the country's rightful interim ruler, gestures as he speaks to supporters during a rally against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and to commemorate May Day in Caracas Venezuela, May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans heeded opposition leader Juan Guaido's call to take to the streets on Wednesday in a bid to force President Nicolas Maduro from power, but there was little concrete sign of change in a crisis that increasingly looks like a political stalemate.
Guaido had called for the "largest march" in Venezuela's history and said on Twitter that "millions of Venezuelans" were in the streets in "this final phase" of his move to oust Maduro.
But by late afternoon, many of the protesters in the capital Caracas had drifted home. National Guards fired tear gas at a hardcore of demonstrators who remained, and one injured demonstrator was carried by others to a first aid truck, Reuters video showed.
China is continuing to modernize its armed forces in order to transform its military into a major global power and using espionage to steal cutting edge technology for military purposes, according to a newly released Pentagon report on China's military.
"China uses a variety of methods to acquire foreign military and dual-use technologies, including targeted foreign direct investment, cyber theft, and exploitation of private Chinese nationals' access to these technologies, as well as harnessing its intelligence services, computer intrusions, and other illicit approaches," the Congressionally mandated Department of Defense report said.
"China obtains foreign technology through imports, foreign direct investment, the establishment of foreign research and development (R&D) centers, joint ventures, research and academic partnerships, talent recruitment, and industrial and cyberespionage," the report added.
* The House Intelligence Committee formally referred Erik Prince, a former informal adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, to the Justice Department for criminal investigation on Tuesday. * House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asked Attorney General William Barr to investigate whether Prince gave false testimony to the panel in November 2017. * Schiff said the committee identified at least six categories of "materially false" statements Prince made about two meetings: one that took place in the Seychelles in January 2017, and another that took place at Trump Tower in August 2016.
The House Intelligence Committee formally referred Erik Prince, a businessman and informal adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation on Tuesday.
Prince is the former head of the military contracting firm Blackwater USA, which is now known as Academi. He is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education.
In a letter to Attorney General William Barr, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asked the department to investigate Prince for giving false testimony to the panel when he appeared for a hearing in November 2017 as part of its investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 US election.
WNU Editor: This is the beginning of a war between Democrats and Republicans in making criminal referrals to the Justice Department. In the case of the Republicans, they have already hinted that Fusion GPS executives who were involved in the Steele Dossier with the Hillary Clinton campaign will be criminally referred to the Justice Department.
More News On The U.S. House Intelligence Committee Making A Criminal Referral To The U.S. Justice Department For Former Blackwater Founder Erik Prince To Be Investigated For Perjury
Here is Hillary Clinton's hypothetical about a candidate calling on China to hack Trump's taxes, and why Republicans putting partisanship over national security is a dangerous thing. pic.twitter.com/AIjJYRiTfE
* Former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton trolled President Trump is hypothetical situation * She suggested a Democratic candidate publicly call for China to obtain Trump's tax returns, which he refuses to release * She was referencing Trump's July 2016 press conference where he appealed to Russia to find her 30,000 deleted emails * The special counsel's report found Trump's comments were not collusion or obstruction, because those charges require some sort of secrecy
Hillary Clinton proposed a theoretical situation where a Democratic candidate call on China to obtain the president's tax returns in a hit at his behavior during the 2016 campaign.
'Imagine that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show, and that person said, 'You know, the only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians, is China,'' Clinton said during an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Wednesday night.
''And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don't we ask China to back us?'' Clinton continued in the hypothetical situation. ''China, if you're listening, why don't you get Trump's tax returns. I'm sure our media would richly reward you.''
WNU Editor: You do not need China to find President Trump's returns. The IRS already has them. I know that she is not serious, but unlike President Trump, she is not very good at making a joke.
George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, was the target of an F.B.I. investigation into connections between the campaign and Russia.CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?
The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign's links to Russia.
The American government's affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. Last year, he called it "Spygate."
The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims.
WNU Editor: This is an explosive story and a follow up on a previous New York Time's report from last year .... New York Times Reveals How U.S. Intelligence And The Justice Department Targeted And Spied On The Trump Campaign During The Election Campaign (May 17, 2018). The New York Times is trying to rationalize why the FBI sent an agent to spy on a Trump aide, and in the process giving them cover for why they did it. Good luck on that. This is (again) another validation on previous claims by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. So why did the New York Times release this story today? To get ahead of Attorney General Barr's upcoming investigation on what precipitated the investigation/spy operation on the Trump campaign. To say that I smell panic in those who are afraid on what Attorney General Barr is going to find is an understatement.
Update #2: The MI6 connection via through the use of Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper in this FBI operation is intriguing. Did MI6 sanctioned this operation, and what role did the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community specifically play in using Professor Stefan A. Halper in this operation? And then there is this interesting Pentagon connection to Stefan A. Halper .... Pentagon Analyst Stripped Of His Security Clearances After Questioning Exorbitant Contracts for Trump-Campaign Spy Stefan Halper (August 17, 2018).
Update #3: George Papadopoulos has already commented on this article. He agrees with the New York Times, but is saying that it was not an FBI agent that was sent to spy on him, but a CIA agent (link here). A direct tie to former CIA Director John Brennan? And if true did he approve it?
....embargo, together with highest-level sanctions, will be placed on the island of Cuba. Hopefully, all Cuban soldiers will promptly and peacefully return to their island!
The chaos in Venezuela could take down more than just the Maduro regime, according to one strategist.
"The Cubans are the ones who are running the show in Venezuela," Bulltick Chief Global Markets Strategist Kathryn Rooney Vera told Yahoo Finance's "On the Move" on Wednesday. "As soon as Venezuela falls, what we are going to see is Cuba fall in its wake."
Cuba is among numerous countries including Russia, China, and Iran that have stood firm behind President Nicolás Maduro.
President Donald Trump has threatened action against those backing the current regime, tweeting:
WNU Editor: I do not see the Communist regime falling any time soon in Cuba, even with the loss of Venezuelan oil and aid. Maybe in a decade or two a change will happen, but definitely not today. The Latin American government that is most vulnerable if the Maduro regime in Venezuela falls is the President Ortega's government in Nicaragua.
* "There's no turning back," Juan Guaido, opposition leader, said as he addressed thousands of supporters on the streets of Caracas on Wednesday. * Maduro has accused protesters of "serious crimes" that would "not go unpunished." He also repeated claims that the U.S. was plotting a coup against him. * The United Nations has called on all sides to show "maximum restraint."
Venezuelan opposition supporters gathered for a second day of mass protests against embattled President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after violent clashes with pro-government forces.
"There's no turning back," Juan Guaido, opposition leader, said as he addressed thousands of supporters on the streets of Caracas on Wednesday.
The leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly described the latest wave of anti-government demonstrations as an "irreversible process" and promised to continue protesting every day in order to "achieve freedom."
WNU Editor: When Juan Guaido called for the military to join the opposition two days ago, I commented that it was too soon to launch such an operation .... Is A Coup Underway In Venezuela? (April 30, 2019). Sadly .... I was right. There are still too many in Venezuela who believe in the revolution (about a third of the population if not more), and are too dependent on the Maduro regime for their survival. It is going to take another year or two of suffering and hardship before the will of these supporters are finally broken, and it will only be after that is when many elements of the military will finally join the opposition. Bottom line .... President Trump is right, life is going to get worse in Venezuela.
Nancy Pelosi: "[Barr] lied to Congress. If anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime. Nobody is above the law. Not the President of the United States and not the attorney general." Via CBS pic.twitter.com/uJN6hUgpwY
* House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr "lied to Congress." * She says misleading lawmakers would be a "crime" if anyone else did so. * A Justice Department spokeswoman calls Pelosi's comments "reckless, irresponsible and false."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress about Robert Mueller's report and Mueller's issues with how Barr has characterized the special counsel's findings.
"What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America is not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States. That's a crime," the California Democrat told reporters.
WNU Editor: I concur with this commentary .... Barr Released the Mueller Report. How Is That a Scandal? (Eli Lake, Bloomberg). After two years of non-stop coverage of Russia-Trump collusion, we are now at a point where this has become a loud squabble over a summary of a report that was released in full. A report that even though many have demanded to release it in full, only two Republican politicians have bothered to show-up and read the non-redacted version .... Just 2 lawmakers have seen less-redacted Mueller report (Politico). So how can Congress ask questions when they have not even bothered to read it? You tell me.
My prediction on where this is all heading. Listening to Attorney General William Barr's testimony this morning (sorry, I am a day late), he strikes me as someone who is on top of the file, and knows far more on where all of this is heading than members in Congress and the media. More to the point. The investigation on the previous administration's authorization to conduct a surveillance/spying operation against the Trump campaign and what did the U.S. Justice Department and other departments did during the transition phase will go on, and will probably escalate when the Inspector General's report on how the Justice Department conducted itself during this is period is released later this month or next. And after that ..... mark my words .... a Special Counsel or equivalent will be appointed to investigate this with all the necessary legal powers. If anyone thinks that today's political and media reaction to yesterday's Barr hearing is huge, they have seen nothing yet.
More News On The Political War Between U.S. Attorney General Barr And Democrats
As the Trump administration attempts to secure a peace deal with the Taliban to finally end the war, the bloodshed of Afghans is only rising.
According to the latest assessment released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) the number of Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) casualties received between December 1 last year and February of this year, "were approximately 31 percent higher than the same period one year prior."
The Pentagon watchdog group also pointed out that "enemy-initiated attacks rose considerably: the monthly average attacks from November 2018 through January 2019 increased by 19 percent compared to the monthly average over the previous reporting period" which was August through to the end of October.
KABUL (Reuters) - American and Taliban officials resumed talks in Qatar on Wednesday aimed at ending a 17-year war in Afghanistan, while the Afghan government hosted a rare assembly in Kabul to ensure its interests are upheld in any peace deal.
The Taliban issued a statement saying the U.S. special envoy for peace in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had met the Taliban's political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is heading the Islamist militants' delegation.
"Views were exchanged about key aspects for a peaceful resolution of the Afghan issue," its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
The talks are part of U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to end America's longest war, which began when U.S.-backed forces ousted the Taliban weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
* The PM sacked Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary following a leak of secret information last week * Is alleged he revealed National Security Council discussions about Huawei's involvement in UK's 5G network * He has 'strenuously' denied being involved in the leak, despite claims of 'compelling evidence' against him * Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said it was a 'shame she didn't recognise' how he had kept her as the PM in past * Williamson also suggests that Mrs May's investigator Sir Mark Sedwill was settling a vendetta against him * Growing calls were made for him to face police action, including from Labour deputy leader Tom Watson
Theresa May sacked Gavin Williamson over the Huawei leak after his 11-minute call to a journalist was uncovered by her civil service enforcer, it was revealed today.
Sir Mark Sedwill pored over the Defence Secretary's phone records and found he had spoken to Daily Telegraph reporter Steven Swinford on the day of National Security Council discussions about Huawei's potential access to the UK's 5G network.
Mrs May fired him last night claiming there was 'compelling evidence' he was responsible for the leak - but Mr Williamson claims he spoke to Swinford about the Tory leadership and Brexit and said the PM had 'just sacked someone who is not guilty', adding: 'I swear on my children's lives that I'm innocent.'
Mr Williamson said he had been 'completely and utterly screwed' and implied his sacking was down to Sir Mark settling a vendetta against him.
Protesters in Benin have torched businesses, hurled stones, and smashed the windows of government buildings and continued their protests overnight, remaining on the streets today 🇧🇯https://t.co/IwLKA4Wu32
Democrats have shifted the focus of their attacks from the conclusions of the Mueller report to the narrative around its release. Such a move is purely political, writes @elilakehttps://t.co/QFBj3yHn99
China now has a force of ballistic missile submarines that can launch nuclear attacks from beneath the waves - and appear to be heading out on patrols https://t.co/eXGh60iqLWpic.twitter.com/ME9Cje2qGN
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern got engaged to her longtime partner Clarke Gayford over Easter weekend, reports the Associated Press.
A spokesman said the pair got engaged in the beach town of Mahia on the country’s North Island but declined to give further comments, after reporters noticed Ardern wearing a ring on her middle finger on Friday, according to the AP.
Gayford is a host on a television fishing show called Fish of the Day and is their daughter’s main caregiver.
Ardern, 38, met Gayford, 41, at a restaurant awards event in 2012, according to the New Zealand news website Stuff.
The pair have a child, Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford, who was born in June 2018. Ardern is the second elected head of state ever to give birth while in office (after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto) and the first world leader to bring a baby to the U.N. General Assembly.
The Prime Minister has received praise for the leadership she has shown since a gunman opened fire on two mosques and left 51 people dead in the city of Christchurch on March 15. In the wake of the attack, she quickly pushed through regulations banning assault weapons, and she has spearheaded efforts to end online extremism.
(NEW DELHI) — Cyclone Fani made landfall on India’s eastern coast on Friday as a grade 5 storm, lashing beaches with rain and wind gusting up to 205 kilometers (127 miles) per hour.
The India Meteorological Department said the “extremely severe” cyclone in the Bay of Bengal hit the coastal state of Odisha around 8 a.m., and was forecast to weaken to a “very severe” storm as it moved north-northeast toward the Indian state of West Bengal.
In Bhubaneswar, a city in Odisha famous for an 11th-century Hindu temple, palm trees whipped back and forth like mops against skies made opaque by gusts of rain.
The national highway to Puri, a popular tourist beach city, was littered with fallen trees and electricity poles, making it impassable. A special train ran Thursday to evacuate tourists from the city.
The airport in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, closed from 3 p.m. Friday to Saturday morning. At least 200 trains were canceled across India.
The National Disaster Response Force dispatched 54 rescue and relief teams of doctors, engineers and deep-sea divers to flood-prone areas along the coast and as far afield as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a group of islands that comprise a state located about 1,300 kilometers (840 miles) east of mainland India in the Bay of Bengal.
On India’s cyclone scale, Fani is the second-most severe, equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.
Some of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record have occurred in the Bay of Bengal. A 1999 “super” cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha. Due to improved forecasts and better coordinated disaster management, the death toll from Cyclone Phailin — an equally intense storm that hit in 2013 — were less than 50, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
The 1999 super cyclone reached wind speeds of 260-280 kph (161-173 mph) per hour, said India Meteorological Department scientist Dr. M. Mohapatra.
“This is not as bad,” he said.
Around 1.2 million people were evacuated from low-lying areas of Odisha and moved to nearly 4,000 shelters, according to India’s National Disaster Response Force. Indian officials put the navy, air force, army and coast guard on high alert.
Odisha Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi, who said the evacuation effort was unprecedented in India, said communications were disrupted in some areas, but no deaths or injuries had been reported.
In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh just south of Odisha, Fani topped electricity poles and uprooted others, leaving them in sharp angles. In the Srikakulam district, where around 20,000 people had been evacuated, thatched-roof houses collapsed and fishing boats left unmoored on beaches had been sliced into shards.
The district experienced wind speeds of 140 kph (87 mph) and received heavy rains but no loss of life or major damage was reported, district collector J. Niwas said.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department said the storm would reach the southwestern part of Bangladesh by Friday.
Aid agencies warned that the more than 1 million Rohingya from Myanmar living at refugee camps near the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar were at threat. Hillol Sobhan, local communications director for the aid group Care, said it had emergency supplies for the refugees in Cox’s Bazar.
The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority said it suspended operations of all vessels. Authorities also halted activities at Chittagong Seaport, which handles 80% of the country’s overseas trade.
The Vietnamese woman accused of killing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother has been released from prison, bringing an inconclusive close to the shocking case of a brazenly public assassination that captured the world’s attention a little more than two years ago.
Doan Thi Huong, 28, left the Malaysia jail Friday, her lawyer confirmed to TIME, and will be flown home in the evening. Huong was sentenced in early April to three years and four months in prison after she accepted a lesser charge of “voluntarily causing injury,” and her early release was expected.
The release comes just less than two months after Siti Aisyah, the Indonesian woman who was also tried in the case, was unexpectedly freed.
On Feb. 13, 2017, Kim Jong Nam was waiting for a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia when two women approached him. One grabbed him from behind while the other pressed her hand to his face, CCTV footage showed. It was later revealed that he was exposed to the toxic VX nerve agent, a synthetic chemical weapon so lethal that just a fraction of a drop can fatally disrupt the nervous system.
Shortly after, Kim began to feel ill and eventually died en route to the hospital. He was 45, and was the presumed heir to the hermit state until he fell out of favor and moved to Macau after a 2001 incident during which he was seized by Japanese authorities in a Tokyo airport for traveling on a forged passport. Still, there is speculation that Kim Jong Un felt threatened by the older half-sibling, who criticized the regime from afar.
Huong and Aisyah, both apprehended in the days after being captured on security cameras, pleaded not guilty. They said that they thought they were executing a prank for a TV show and did not know who the man was or that they were carrying out a hit. Malaysian authorities charged the two with murder, and also named four North Korean men as suspects, though none have been charged.
Huong’s release marks an end to the two-years-long case, but it hardly brings closure to the crime.
“The planners, organizers, and overseers of the assassination of Kim Jong Nam have indeed ‘gotten away with it,'” Evans Revere, formerly the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told CNN. “No one will be held responsible for this horrific attack in which a weapon of mass destruction was used to kill a human being in an international airport.”
Saudi Arabian authorities on Thursday temporarily released at least four women’s rights activists whose arrests, on charges of undermining state security, had provoked an international outcry and added to criticism of the kingdom’s human rights record.
The detainees who were freed pending trial included Hatoon Al Fassi, a historian; researcher Abeer Namankani; and Amal Al Harbi, according to Mohammed al-Turki, who works in the office of Faraj al-Oqla, a lawyer who represents the women.
They “are now at home with their families,” Al-Turki said, pointing out that further court proceedings await the women after the holy month of Ramadan. “They are in good health,” he added. “We saw them. They’re in good spirits.”
Loujain Al-Hathloul, 29, the best known of the female detainees, remains in custody. Three more women who had been in custody with them were temporarily released in March. Their trial is expected to resume after Ramadan.
It wasn’t clear why the women were released or under what conditions, and the government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
It could be a gesture of leniency before Ramadan. Sending the women home after months of detention — even temporarily — could also be a sign that the kingdom is trying to bring an end to a case that stirred controversy at home and abroad as it also deals with the fallout from the murder of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and continuing criticism of the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.
The women had become a symbol of a political crackdown led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, even as he opens up the economy and loosens social restrictions. Their arrests, beginning in May 2018, precipitated a diplomatic crisis with Canada that’s yet to be fully resolved.
Some of the women had fought for years to end Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving — lifted soon after their arrests — and spoke out against the country’s guardianship system, which requires women to get permission from a male relative to travel or marry.
Prince Mohammed has said their arrests were unrelated to their activism. The group was accused of “coordinated activity to undermine the security, stability and social peace of the kingdom,” the prosecutor has said.
Al-Hathloul, however, faces charges that include communicating with diplomats and journalists, according to people familiar with an indictment that makes no mention of earlier statements that the women were arrested for ties to foreign intelligence.
The women’s detention came under even more scrutiny after human rights groups said some of them were tortured. The government has vehemently denied such mistreatment and said that the prisoners were granted all of their rights. But several of the prisoners testified during their trials that they had been physically and psychologically abused, according to people familiar with the matter.
The kingdom’s overall clampdown on domestic criticism doesn’t appear to be softening. In April, authorities arrested several writers and intellectuals — including two dual Saudi-American citizens — and separately, carried out a mass execution of 37 men, many of them members of the Shiite minority who had been convicted of involvement in unrest and violence during the Arab Spring.
(NICOSIA, Cyprus) — The Cypriot justice minister resigned Thursday as criticism of police mounted for mistakes that may have let a serial killer claim more victims. The president vowed that Cyprus would solve these slayings and promised better protections for the island’s foreign workers.
A detained Cypriot army captain has admitted to killing seven foreign women and girls, but he has not been named because he has not yet been formally charged. Critics say Cypriot police did little to investigate the disappearances of the women because they were low-paid workers who came to the eastern Mediterranean island from other countries. Two of the victims — a Romanian mother and her eight-year-old daughter — had vanished in 2016. Other victims include three Filipino women and one of their six-year-old daughters as well as a woman believed to be from Nepal.
Police Chief Zacharias Chrysostomou is slated to meet with the Cypriot president on Friday amid speculation his position is also in jeopardy.
Search crews on Thursday continued to scour the bottom of a poisonous mining lake west of Nicosia, the capital, where the suspect told police that he dumped three of his victims after putting their bodies inside suitcases. One body was found there Sunday.
Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou said he was stepping down as a matter of “conscience and principle” because the killings have deeply shaken the island nation of just over a million people.
But Nicolaou said it was “completely unfair” to blame either himself or the government for any investigative lapses by police involving missing persons’ reports because a minister “doesn’t get involved nor should he get involved” in those probes. He said law enforcement authorities never told him about any such reports.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said he accepted Nicolaou’s resignation with “deep regret.” He reiterated that he shares the public’s revulsion over the killings and vowed that the government is determined to solve “these abhorrent murders.”
MATTHIEU CLAVEL—AFP/Getty ImagesProtesters hold banners as they demonstrate in support of the victims of a suspected serial killer in front of the presidential palace in Nicosia, Cyprus.
He said Cyprus owes an apology to the families of the victims, whose bodies will be returned to their home countries at state expense. He also announced the creation of a special department under the Ombudsman’s office to examine up to 3,600 complaints filed by foreign workers against their employers.
Anastasiades on Friday is meeting with diplomats from countries with a large number domestic workers living in Cyprus to express his sorrow for the victims and to apologize for “failures in the handling of these cases.”
Nicolaou said he would ask the police complaints commission to go ahead with an independent probe into police handling of the serial killer case. “We’ve all gone through difficult days because of this unprecedented case,” Nicolaou said, reading from a statement after a two-hour meeting with Anastasiades.
Police spokesman Andreas Angelides said the police chief has ordered a second, separate investigation into the disappearances of three of the victims who vanished in September 2016 and December 2017. Angelides said both probes aim to uncover whether police followed proper procedures or whether mistakes were made that constitute “either disciplinary or criminal acts.” The findings will be sent to the attorney general.
Only one victim, 38-year-old Mary Rose Tiburcio from the Philippines, has been positively identified in the case so far. Her bound body was discovered April 14 down an abandoned mineshaft. Authorities are searching a reservoir for the body of Tiburcio’s six-year-old daughter Sierra.
A second body, who police believe is 28-year-old Arian Palanas Lozano, also from the Philippines, was found in the same mineshaft six days later.
On Sunday, divers pulled a suitcase containing the badly decomposed body of a woman out of the mining lake, which is tied to a disused copper mine. Crews are searching for two more suitcases there. The victims in the lake are believed to be Maricar Valtez Arquiola, 31, from the Philippines; Florentina Bunea, 36, from Romania; and Bunea’s 8-year-old daughter, Elena Natalia. Arquiola has been missing since December 2017.
The Church of Scientology’s cruise ship Freewinds with 300 passengers aboard has been quarantined in port by the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia for measles after a female crew member was diagnosed with the highly contagious, preventable disease.
MarineTraffic.com lists the vessel in port at St. Lucia as the Freewinds. A ship with that name is owned by a Panamanian company linked to the Church of Scientology. NBC News also reported that a St. Lucia coast guard official confirmed that the quarantined vessel belonged to the church.
The Church of Scientology did not respond to TIME’s requests for comment.
St. Lucia is providing the ship with 100 doses of measles vaccine at the request of the ship’s doctor, St. Lucia’s Department of Health and Wellness said in a statement. The ship’s doctor is currently monitoring the condition of the ship’s crew and passengers.
“Given the highly infectious nature of Measles, along with the possibility that other persons onboard the vessel may have been in contact with and are now possibly infectious due to this disease, a decision was made not to allow persons to disembark. This decision to [quarantine] the ship is in keeping with the health laws of St. Lucia,” the St. Lucia health department said.
Neither the passengers nor the ship’s crew are permitted to disembark, officials say. St. Lucia learned about the crew member’s condition from a International Health Regulation focal point official in the Dutch Caribbean and then verified the diagnosis through other health agencies, the St. Lucia health department said.
The ship is permitted to leave the port if it chooses to, Merlene Fredericks-James, St. Lucia’s chief medical officer, said in a statement.
Scientology does not have an official position on vaccines, Rev. John Carmichael, the president of the Church of Scientology in New York, said in an interview with Beliefnet. However, the church emphasizes the “harmful effects of drugs, toxins and other chemicals that lodge in the body and create a biochemical barrier to spiritual well-being,” according to its website. Some prominent opponents of mandatory vaccinations, including Kirstie Alley and Jenna Elfman, are also Scientologists.
The Freewinds plays an important spiritual role for Scientologists, according to the church. Passengers receive training and the spiritual practice of “auditing.” The ship is staffed by members of the Sea Organization (Sea Org), an order of Scientologists who have agreed to “work long hours” and “live communally” for the church for life, in exchange for housing and other benefits, including an “allowance to purchase personal items.”
“To a Scientologist, boarding the Freewinds for New OT VIII is the pinnacle of a deeply spiritual journey. Years of training and auditing have brought him to this ultimate point. It is the most significant spiritual accomplishment of his lifetime and brings with it the full realization of his immortality,” the church’s website says.
St. Lucia, which became independent from the United Kingdom in the 1970s, can decide to either detain the ship or let the vessel go says John Paul Jones, a professor emeritus law at the University of Richmond School of Law who has taught maritime law. If the country asks the ship to leave, the vessel would then return to the nearest international port of the country where it is registered.
The vessel’s home port is Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island, but it sails under a Panamanian flag, according to MarineVessels.com.
“They’re subject to the sovereignty of St. Lucia,” Jones says of the ship. “To the extent that St. Lucia has the ordinary range of public health laws that everyone else in the Caribbean has, I’m sure that there is national legal authority for [quarantine] and no international objection to it.”
Although measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, there have been a number of outbreaks in recent years in part because growing numbers of children have not been vaccinated. This year has already broken infection records. As of April 26, 704 people have contracted measles in 22 states – the greatest number of measles cases reported in the U.S. since 1994.
Arthur Caplan, the head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine, told TIME that in a high-risk situation like a quarantine, officials can be be “more aggressive and compulsory” with vaccination.
“Measles is not only highly contagious, but people are asymptomatic for a few days and can still spread it,” Caplan says. “That’s what makes it so troubling in terms of trying to be aggressive once you have an outbreak. It’s partly due to this stealth factor. That weighs into the moral equation.”
Experts say that the anti-vaccination movement, which has often spread information that defies scientific consensus, has eroded public trust in vaccinating children. Anti-vaccination advocates have particularly campaigned against the MMR vaccine, which inoculates children against measles, mumps and rubella, arguing that the vaccine causes autism. Scientists have found no evidence that the vaccine causes autism.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate has failed to overturn President Donald Trump’s veto of legislation that would have ended U.S. military assistance for the Saudi-led war in Yemen against Iran-backed rebels. Congress has grown uneasy with Trump’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia as he seeks to further isolate Iran. But the Senate’s 53-45 vote to override the veto fell short of the required two-thirds.
The U.S. is providing logistical support and intelligence-sharing for a war that’s killed thousands of civilians and left millions more on the brink of famine.
When explaining the veto, the White House said that support doesn’t constitute engaging in hostilities.
Opposition to the war gained strength in Congress last year after Saudi agents killed Jamal Khashoggi, a commentator who’d lived in the U.S. and written critically about the kingdom.
(COLOMBO, Sri Lanka) — Sri Lanka’s Catholic cardinal says that he has received “foreign information” that attempts would be made this week to attack a church and another Catholic institution. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith made the declaration in a letter dated Thursday that was sent to church officials.
Church spokesman Rev. Edmund Thilakaratne in an interview confirmed the authenticity of the letter to The Associated Press. He declined to disclose further details, including the source of the foreign information.
In the letter that appeared on social media Thursday, Ranjith said he was closing churches and Catholic schools throughout Sri Lanka and canceling Mass “until further notice.”
Muslims last week were told to stay home for Friday prayers, and all of Sri Lanka’s Catholic churches were closed. Instead of the usual Sunday Mass, Ranjith delivered a homily before clergy and national leaders at his residence that was broadcast on television. Sri Lanka’s Muslim leaders, however, hav been encouraging believers to return to mosques for Friday prayers, according to N.M. Ameen, president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka.
An Islamic State-linked group carried out Easter suicide bombings in Sri Lanka that killed 257 people.
When the Anti-Defamation League announced on Tuesday that anti-Semitic assaults had doubled in the U.S. from 2017 to 2018, the news was shocking but, sadly, not entirely surprising: a shooting left one dead at a California synagogue last Sunday, just days before Thursday’s observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
One effect of that sobering shift is being felt in New York City at a museum located a 10-minute walk from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Its full name declares it “The Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust” and it was built with six sides to represent the six million Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. Even so, when it opened in 1997, its founders decided to put an emphasis on Jewish heritage in order to differentiate it from the recently opened the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. But in the last year, the museum’s board has considered modifying its name, in order to give the Holocaust more prominent placement.
While the museum hasn’t officially changed its name yet, its new emphasis is already clear: starting May 8, it will host the largest-ever traveling exhibit on Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s biggest killing center. The exhibitionAuschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away opens on the anniversary of the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II. It features more than 600 original objects, including major loans from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum that had never been seen outside of Poland before the exhibition firm Musealia first produced the show in Madrid from December 2017 to February 2019.
“Auschwitz has become the focus of the history of the Holocaust,” says the exhibit’s chief curator, Robert Jan van Pelt, an architectural historian who is considered by many as the preeminent scholar of Auschwitz.
One key to its role in Holocaust education is that from 1942 to 1944, Auschwitz became the largest of those killing centers. Of the approximately 1.3 million people who were deported to Auschwitz, 1.1 million of those were Jewish people, and of those 1.1 million Jewish people, 1 million were murdered or died there.
But, crucially, enough of those who were sent there survived to speak of what they had seen — and in the years since, that has made all the difference. “It’s the only extermination camp with modern crematoria equipped with gas chambers, which created an efficient factory of death,” says van Pelt, “but it also encompassed a slave labor camp, from which there were actually enough survivors to give a substantial body of testimony after the war.”
About 200,000 Auschwitz prisoners left the camp, including survivors sent to other camps as well as those liberated from Auschwitz when the Soviet Army rescued an estimated 7,000 prisoners on Jan. 27, 1945.
The experience in Auschwitz inspired survivors’ writings, from Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, published right after the war in 1946 (in English in 1967), to Italian chemist Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, first published in Italian in 1947 (in English in 1959), based on his time at the IG Farben laboratory on the Auschwitz complex. Elie Wiesel’s 1956 Night, (published in English in 1960), was inspired by his time as a prisoner Auschwitz. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night,” Wiesel wrote. “Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.” He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, for being “one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression and racism continue to characterize the world.”
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials from 1963 to 1965 brought further attention to the camp, as they brought the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.
Later, due in large part to the awareness created earlier, Hollywood would pick up the same thread, centering Auschwitz in films from Holocaust, the 1978 four part TV mini-series, to Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning movie Schindler’s List in 1993, which is credited with inspiring Holocaust survivors to open up about their experience.
And after the fall of communism, as countries that had been a part of the Eastern bloc opened up, discussions of the history of the Holocaust in those regions became more open too, says Piotr M. A. Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. This allowed more tourists to visit Auschwitz, which was by then the Holocaust site with which many were most familiar; in 2018, a record 2.15 million people visited the museum there.
“I think more and more, people are coming to reflect on the present,” he says, “People are looking more on the past, in order to imagine the future. We don’t know where we are going.” The story of the Holocaust, the story of Auschwitz, as he puts it, is “never-ending.”
The more these stories were out there, the more other Auschwitz survivors started to open up about their experiences with their loved ones, telling their stories in order to preserve family history and pass along life lessons. Cywiński argues that Auschwitz survivors “came back to this history when their grandchildren are born, and can speak more easily or more naturally to their grandchildren than their own children.”
But today, as the number of these survivors dwindles, education about Auschwitz will have to enter a new phase. Museums are thus playing an important role in making sure these stories still get told through artifacts like personal belongings, video testimonies and even as holograms.
“In a world of ‘fake news,’ people believe museums. They don’t always believe a lot of other things they read online, but museums have an authenticity to them,” argues Bruce C. Ratner, Chairman of The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial, who had relatives who died in Auschwitz. “We all hoped that after 1945, we would not hear about mass murders and immigration and refugee issues again, and yet they’re top headlines today.”
More Jews were killed in anti-Semitic violence around the world in 2018 than during any other year in decades, according to a report released Wednesday by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University. The result has been a “sense of emergency” among Jews in many countries, resulting from concerns over both their security and their “place” in society, said Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, during an address Wednesday.
“Anti-Semitism has progressed to the point of calling into question the very continuation of Jewish life in Europe,” he said.
The report noted that most of the dramatic increase in deaths was the result of a single event: October’s mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, which left 11 worshipers dead.
The countries included in the report with the highest number of cases of anti-Semitic violence include the U.S. (with over 100 cases), the United Kingdom (68 cases) and France and Germany (35 cases each.) The situation is at its worst in Western European countries — particularly in Germany, where the the Kantor Center recorded a 70% increase in violent anti-Semitism. In France, nine out of 10 Jewish students said they experienced anti-Semitism at least once during their studies. In the U.K., physical assaults were down by 17%, but there were a total of 1,652 documented anti-Semitic incidents, a 16% rise from 2017.
The Kantor Center refers to a recent report by the European Union (E.U.) Fundamental Rights Agency showing that 38% of Jews in the E.U. said they have considered leaving Europe because they fear for their safety. Anti-Semitism was considered the biggest social or political problem by 85% of respondents in their E.U. countries.
Anti-Semitism in the U.S.
The report found that college campuses in America are becoming “increasingly hostile for Jewish students who support Israel.” It cites a 2018 survey that revealed 238 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault targeting Jewish students on 118 campuses across the U.S. In New York, city police noted a 22% rise in violent anti-Semitic attacks, according to the report.
A different report released in 2018 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded a total of 1,879 attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions across the U.S. That marked a 5% decrease from the 1,986 incidents reported in 2017, but was the third-highest number on record since the ADL started tracking such data in the 1970s.
The situation is “particularly volatile” in the U.S., Michael Berkowitz, professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London, tells TIME. “The combination of a gun culture and conspiracy theories, the extreme right-wing and white supremacy, has created a dangerous situation for Jews,” says Berkowitz, who was not involved in creating either report.
In the wake of the shootings in Pittsburgh and a more recent fatal attack in California, American Jews are now grappling with how to respond. “The American Jewish community will need greater protection — our synagogues need more security,” Raya Kalenova, executive vice president of the European Jewish Congress, tells TIME.
Anti-Semitism threatens to go mainstream
According to the Kantor Center report, anti-Semitism is no longer “confined to the activity of the far-left, far-right and radical Islamists triangle” but has become mainstream, seen in “public forums, debates and discussions is manifested in all media channels, most notably the social networks.” It cites a 2018 report from the French interior ministry that states that “not one day [passes] without an anti-Semitic act” in France. “It feels like almost every taboo relating to Jews, Judaism and Jewish life has been broken,” Kantor, the European Jewish Congress leader, said.
Social media and online networks have made it easier for anti-Semitism to grow, experts say. “What a person wouldn’t shout on the street, they can say online. In some ways, it’s never been easier for anti-Semitism to spread,” says Berkowitz.
The Kantor Center reported “a surge in online calls for the killing of Jews, for the extermination of Jews worldwide, and images of Jews being killed.” Many of these incitements have occurred on Gab, a Twitter-like platform that the report called a “haven for extremists and racists,” adding that other more popular social media platforms host pages that “denigrate and demonize Jews.” The alleged gunman in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting posted on Gab before the rampage.
The “same anti-Semitic conspiracies” and “wild exaggerations” seen in the past have not gone away, says Berkowitz. He cites George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire, as an example. Soros, an 88-year-old liberal political activist and donor, has become a major target for right-wing groups and conspiracy theorists around the world. Berkowitz says Soros is being used as a “political device” to “spread anti-Semitism and to divide people.”
It’s not just about Jews, says Kalenova. “It’s about the strength of our democratic values. Anyone can become a victim.”
Stopping anti-Semitism is the job for a society that needs to “educate itself,” Kalenova adds. “Teachers, journalists, police––anyone who can reach people––must take it into their hands to understand what discrimination, and inciting hatred looks like, and to help others identify it,” she says.
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BRITONS travelling to popular tourist destination Costa Del Sol are being advised to take precautions after cases of severe insect bites dramatically increase.
TED BUNDY was convicted of only three murders, however the notorious serial killer confessed to 30 slayings – and the real number may be much higher as investigators still pursue cold case leads.
A EUROSCEPTIC French MEP has recorded the moment he scaled a provincial building and replaced its European Union flag with that of the classic French tricolore.
EUROPEAN Commission candidate Violeta Tomic expressed her support for creating a "European nationality", suggesting a European Union-wide policy on nationhood could lead to citizens being more independent.
MEMBERS of France's eurosceptic Popular Republican Union party took to the streets of Paris on Wednesday to denounce European "tyranny" and call for President Emmanuel Macron to be removed from power.
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has invited Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, to Washington in a bid to strengthen ties with central Europe, amid Russia and China's rising influence over the region.
JUSTIN TRUDEAU has been accused of betraying those who voted for him in 2015 in a series of TV advertisements by the Federal Conservatives ahead of Canada's 2019 election.
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