* Iran has massively increased ability to produce fuel-grade uranium, experts say * This means it could quickly exceed the stockpile limit set under the nuclear deal * Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for the deal to be rescued after America backed out, otherwise it will stop complying * Tensions have been building between US and Tehran amid fears of all-out war
Nuclear officials have revealed that Iran quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity amid tensions with the US over Tehran's atomic programme.
The announcement came after US president Donald Trump and Iran's foreign minister traded threats and taunts on Twitter.
Iranian officials stressed that the uranium would be enriched only to the 3.67% limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers – making it usable for a power plant, but far below what is needed for an atomic weapon.
Iran-aligned Houthi rebels say they have flown a bomb-laden drone into an airport with a military base in Saudi Arabia. This comes amid a recent spike in tensions between the regional rivals.
Houthi-run Masirah TV said on Tuesday that the Yemeni rebel group had launched a drone attack on Najran airport in Saudi Arabia which caused a fire to break out at the facility.
The airport is located in the city of Najran on the Saudi-Yemen border, an area that has repeatedly been targeted by Houthi rebels.
Saudi government spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki said the Houthis "had tried to target" a civilian site in Najran and there would be a "strong deterrent" to such attacks.
President Donald Trump may pardon multiple former U.S. service members accused or convicted of war crimes during the upcoming Memorial Day weekend celebrations, according to anonymous officials who spoke with the New York Times this weekend.
Among the individuals being considered for the pardons is Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who faces trial in coming weeks on charges he stabbed an injured teenage military to death in 2017 in Iraq. The case has grabbed headlines in recent days after a Navy prosecutor sent an email with a secret digital tracking device to a Navy Times editor, raising separate legal questions.
The New York Times reported that other individuals being vetted for some form of clemency include Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010, and a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2011.
Department of Justice officials have not commented on the reports.
WNU Editor: I can see the group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan being pardoned. The others I am not sure.
A U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier conducts an aerial refuel during exercise Bayou Thunder off the coast of Louisiana, Jan. 29, 2019. The purpose of the exercise is to enhance Marine attack Squadron (VMA) 231's air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities while also strengthening service interoperability with joint services. The aircraft is assigned to VMA-231, Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. US Marine Corps photo
A Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier crashed in North Carolina, and the pilot is being treated at a local hospital after safely ejecting from the plane, according to the Marine Corps.
The service announced that a Harrier based out of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point crashed near Havelock, the town just behind the air station. Marines assisted the local sheriff's office in responding to the crash site.
The Marine Corps has received no reports of civilian casualties or property damage on the ground, and the pilot is being treated at the Carolina East Medical Center in nearby New Bern.
No details were available regarding the potential cause of the crash.
* 43% of Americans say socialism would be a good thing for the country * 51% believe socialism would be a bad thing for the country * Americans split on viewing economy as free market or government controlled
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans today are more closely divided than they were earlier in the last century when asked whether some form of socialism would be a good or bad thing for the country. While 51% of U.S. adults say socialism would be a bad thing for the country, 43% believe it would be a good thing. Those results contrast with a 1942 Roper/Fortune survey that found 40% describing socialism as a bad thing, 25% a good thing and 34% not having an opinion.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage gestures after being hit with a milkshake while arriving for a Brexit Party campaign event in Newcastle, Britain. REUTERS/Scott Heppell
WNU Editor: The above picture is from this photo-gallery .... Editor's Choice Pictures (Reuters).
From over East Hartford, Hartford's skyline is visible under "That's All, Brother," one of five C-47s that flew in formation over Connecticut on May 15. The six planes departed from Oxford, flew over Pratt and Whitney, landed at Bradley Field and returned after a reception at the New England Air Museum. These war planes, along with six others from the United States will fly to Europe and join 15 more to drop an estimated 1,000 D-Day paratroopers in a reenactment over Normandy. (Johnathon Henninger / Special to the Courant)
Seventy-five years after dropping airborne troops into Nazi-occupied France, vintage warplanes bearing the black and white invasion stripes of Operation Overlord are set to take off from Connecticut on Sunday for a return flight to Europe.
Placid Lassie, D-Day Doll, That's All, Brother and other planes of the D-Day Squadron are to depart from Waterbury-Oxford Airport and leapfrog across the Atlantic to take part in Daks Over Normandy. The international gathering of volunteer pilots, crews and historic planes is to culminate on June 5 with a jump by about 250 paratroopers into the same drop zones used in the June 6, 1944 invasion.
John Walker Lindh, the Marin County man convicted of fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be freed from a federal prison Thursday.
Federal Bureau of Prison records show Lindh, dubbed the "American Taliban," will be released Thursday from the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2002 after pleading guilty to supplying services to the Taliban and carrying explosives.
Europe is finally coming to its senses five years after the coup in Kiev started what is now the new Cold War between Russia and the West.
The first part of Russia's win comes from Italian leader Matteo Salvini. Speaking for the under-represented in European politics, Salvini declared this week, "I continue to believe that we don't need sanctions. The issue of their removal unites all decent people."
Salvini is tackling, head-on, the European political establishment in this week's European parliamentary elections. And his raising the issue of lifting sanctions on Russia imposed over the reunification with Crimea is a massive attack on them.
It means that Salvini is looking at using the extension of sanctions as a bargaining chip this summer. He is threatening to veto any extension with words this strong on the eve of an election.
WNU Editor: European sanctions against Russia are weakening. The pressure right now is on the new Ukrainian President to reach a deal with Ukraine's rebels in the east, and with Moscow that supports them. After that .... the Europeans will have the excuse that they need to eliminate most (if not all) of their sanctions against Moscow. My timetable for this to happen is two to three years.
US FORCES would need at least one million soldiers to defeat and occupy Iran in what could be another Iraq War-style quagmire, a top Brit admiral has warned.
Iran and the US have been at loggerheads in recent weeks as Washington dispatched warships and warplanes to the region citing "credible threats'" from Tehran.
Admiral Lord West – the former First Sea Lord of the Royal navy – gave a dire assessment of the potential conflict as tempers flare int he Middle East.
He told Daily Star Online the US would need at least one million troops to successfully pacify Iran, and a half-baked attack could throw the region further into chaos.
The 50-year Royal Navy veteran warned "idiots" in both the US and Iran are dangerously hyping tensions.
WNU Editor: The problem is not the invasion. The U.S. military is very good at destroying the enemy. The problem will be the occupation, and that is where you will need one million soldiers.
Lawmakers know less about nuclear threats than ever before. A former congressman runs a dinner series to educate them in hopes of averting global annihilation.
On an evening two years ago, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) walked out of a closed-door dinner on Capitol Hill without a campaign check or valuable contact, but something else: sobering new knowledge about nuclear weapons.
In a recent interview, the congressman recalled the dinner, where he sat alongside Democratic and Republican lawmakers, listening to top experts explain the finer points of nuclear weapons policy and urge them to pay close attention to an issue that has fallen on Congress' backburner.
WNU Editor: Growing up the fear of nuclear war was always on our minds. Today's generation .... the complete opposite. Its good to know that at least some in Washington are paying attention to this issue.
Varanasi, India (CNN)Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on course to win a second term after polling in the world's biggest election came to a close on Sunday, initial exit polls suggest.
Most major exit polls, conducted by local media, put the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Modi, and its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition as winning a clear majority when results are announced on May 23.
Modi's BJP has been fighting it out for the votes of 900 million people against the main opposition Congress Party, led by political scion Rahul Gandhi, and other big regional players, over the course of six weeks of polling.
A party needs to win 272 seats out of 543 in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament to form a government.
Three prison guards and 29 inmates have been killed after a riot broke out at a high-security prison in Tajikistan. It is the second deadly prison disturbance in the country in the space of six months.
Convicted "Islamic State" (IS) militants detained in a high-security prison in the Tajik city of Vahdat killed three guards and five fellow prisoners, the country's justice ministry said on Monday.
The incident occurred late on Sunday after the militants, armed with knives, started a riot in the facility, which houses 1,500 inmates, including people convicted of religious extremism.
The prisoners first stabbed to death three guards, and then five other inmates "in order to intimidate" the others, the ministry said. Security forces killed 24 militants and restored order in the prison, which is located on the outskirts of the capital, Dushanbe.
* Some 500 undocumented immigrants occupied Charles de Gaulle's Terminal 2 * They called on Air France to stop playing any part in the deportation of migrants * The group also asked to meet with the French Prime Minister over asylum policy * The protest was organised by the migrant support group La Chapelle Debout
Hundreds of undocumented migrants occupied a terminal at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris yesterday to protest against Air France carrying out deportations and demanding they be given permanent residency.
Footage uploaded to Twitter shows some 500 members of the migrant support group La Chapelle Debout gathered in Terminal 2 of France's largest airport.
The protesters called on Air France to 'stop any financial, logistical or political participation in deportations' and demanded a meeting with its leaders, as well as French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales launched his campaign for a fourth term on Saturday in a remote coca-growing valley without addressing the biggest controversy in his bid - the fact that he is running at all.
Morales, who became the country's first indigenous president in 2006, is defying constitutional term limits. In 2016, voters rejected his proposal to amend the constitution to let him seek another five-year term this year. He later won a court ruling allowing him to run on the grounds that barring him would violate human rights.
Speaking before tens of thousands of people in the province of Chapare - where he first entered politics as a leader of coca farmers - Morales promised on Saturday to bring factories to rural areas and tap the country's potential as a major lithium producer.
"We're better than before, sisters and brothers," Morales told the cheering crowd in a televised speech.
WNU Editor: Bolivian President Evo Morales counters those who say he is violating the constitution by saying that the court gave him permission to run. Of course he does not say that he stacked the court with his supporters that gave him this ruling. Bolivian President Evo Morales is an authoritarian like Venezuela's Maduro or Nicaragua's Ortega. They enjoy their positions of power, and they are not going to give it up, constitution or not.
* Former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, won a landslide victory last month * He fought election on an anti-establishment platform, calling lawmakers 'crooks' * At his inauguration on Monday Zelensky said he would dissolve the country's legislature for early parliamentary elections that were scheduled for October * He wants to end war with Moscow-backed separatists in which 13,000 have died
Ukraine's new President Volodymyr Zelensky used his inaugural speech on Monday to announce a snap election, before promising to end the country's five-year conflict with Russia.
A month after scoring a landslide victory against incumbent Petro Poroshenko amid widespread public discontent with the political establishment, the 41-year-old comedian has become Ukraine's youngest post-Soviet president.
Zelensky said he would dissolve the country's legislature in order to call early parliamentary elections, which had originally been scheduled for October.
WNU Editor: Ukraine President Zelensky had to dissolve parliament quickly, and to call early elections.If not, the old Parliament backed by nationalists and Poroshenko supporters would have block everything that he had promised during the election. My prediction is that these parliamentary elections will be held in July, and almost all of these parliamentarians will be kicked out of office. To open a dialogue with rebel forces in the east, the new parliament will need to reverse the law that President Poroshenko signed last week that bans the use of Russian in schools and government services, and to also reverse discriminatory laws against Russian-Ukrainians when it comes to public service jobs and positions. President Zelensky will also need to compromise in giving powers to the regions on the issue of cultural/language, as well as more financial powers. These were promises that President Zelensky made during the election, and it was one of the main reasons why he was elected in a landslide. Failure to do this will only guarantee a continuation of the war, and heighten tensions within Ukraine itself from Russian Ukrainians and those Ukrainians who want real reforms.
More News On Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Taking Office
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, learns about the production process and operation of the JL MAG Rare-Earth Co. Ltd. as well as the development of the rare earth industry in the city of Ganzhou in east China's Jiangxi Province on May 20, 2019. Xi Jinping visited Jiangxi Province Monday on an inspection tour. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)
President Xi Jinping's visit to a rare earths facility fueled speculation that the strategic materials could be weaponized in China's tit-for-tat with the U.S. on trade.
Shares in JL MAG Rare-Earth Co. surged by their daily limit Monday after state news agency Xinhua said the Chinese president had stopped by the company in Jiangxi. Official news outlets give regular updates on the whereabouts of top leaders, sometimes leading to share spikes on the belief that companies have been handed official backing.
But the visits may also flag policy priorities, and rare earths have featured in the escalating trade spat between the U.S. and China. The Asian country raised tariffs to 25% from 10% on American imports, while the U.S. excluded rare earths from its own list of prospective tariffs on roughly $300 billion worth of Chinese goods to be targeted in the next wave of measures.
GENEVA — A senior United Nations official warns the alarming escalation of hostilities in northern Syria's Idlib province could spiral out of control with disastrous consequences for its three million civilian inhabitants.
The recent uptick in violence in Syria's northern Idlib province is causing alarm among U.N. and international observers. Over the past two weeks, at least 100 civilians reportedly have been killed or injured in clashes between Russian-backed Syrian forces and al-Qaida associated rebels.
Dozens of medical and health facilities, as well as schools have been hit by airstrikes and more than 180,000 people reportedly have fled their homes toward supposedly safer areas.
CBS News is getting an exclusive look at the National Security Agency's secretive outpost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. NSA Hawaii is on the front lines of American intelligence gathering, intercepting communications and monitoring a region that includes China and North Korea.
The NSA is the largest of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, and this outpost in Hawaii is particularly busy these days as the U.S. shifts its focus from fighting terrorism to a competition between nations for critical information.
WNU Editor: I am surprised that this NSA outpost is in Hawaii and not closer .... like on the island of Guam. I guess (bottom line) a lot of communications go through Hawaii.
AN EGYPTIAN mystery over the real reason behind the inclusion of false doors on tombs may have been answered thanks to the work of an investigative filmmaker and Egyptologist.
DONALD TRUMP deepened the bitter tension with Iran after claiming the US would respond with "great force" if Tehran attempted anything against Washington's interest in the Middle East.
An Indonesian court sentenced a French citizen to death for smuggling drugs on Monday in a surprisingly draconian verdict that outstripped the prosecutors’ requests for a long prison sentence.
Felix Dorfin, 35, was arrested in September at an airport in the tourist island of Lombok with methylenedioxy methamphetamine worth $220,600 and 22 ecstasy pills in his suitcase, according to the Associated Press.
Despite Dorfin’s eligibility for capital punishment, prosecutors had asked for a 20-year jail term plus another year unless he paid a fine of about $700,000, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The strict sentence came as a surprise.
“Dorfin was shocked,” the defendant’s lawyer, Deny Nur Indra, told AFP. “He didn’t expect this at all because prosecutors only asked for 20 years.” His lawyer said he would appeal the verdict.
Indonesia has some of the world’s strictest anti-drug laws, and foreigners implicated in drug smuggling cases have been executed before.
The judge, Isnurul Syamsul Arif, cited Dorfin’s involvement in an international drug smuggling ring and the large quantity of drugs he carried as aggravating factors, according to AFP.
“The defendant’s actions could potentially do damage to the younger generation,” Arif added, reports AFP.
The Frenchman, who said he did not know the contents of his suitcase, made headlines earlier this year when he escaped from jail, according to AFP. He was re-captured two weeks later.
AFP reports that the French foreign ministry issued a statement condemning Indonesia’s decision to use of the death penalty.
Indonesia sentenced at least 48 people to death in 2018, 39 for drug-related offenses, according to Amnesty International. However, last year was the second year in which the country did not commit any executions.
(WELLINGTON, New Zealand) — New Zealand police on Tuesday filed a terrorism charge against the man accused of killing 51 people at two Christchurch mosques.
Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, was already facing murder and attempted murder charges from the March 15 shootings.
The new charge comes with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment upon conviction and will be a test case for New Zealand’s terrorism laws, which came onto the books in 2002 following the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
The New Zealand law defines terrorism as including acts that are carried out to advance an ideological, political, or religious cause with the intention of inducing terror in a civilian population.
Just before the attacks, Tarrant emailed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and others a manifesto outlining his white supremacist beliefs and his detailed plans for the shootings.
From the outset, Ardern has described the attacks as terrorism.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush said in a statement they wouldn’t be commenting on the new charges as the case was before the courts.
A judge last month ordered that Tarrant undergo mental health assessments to determine if he’s fit to stand trial.
His next court hearing has been scheduled for June 14, and the mental health findings could determine whether he is required to enter a plea at that point.
Police also said Tuesday they had charged Tarrant with an additional count of murder, bringing the total number of murder charges against him to 51. That came after a Turkish man who was wounded in the attack died earlier this month in Christchurch Hospital.
Police also increased the number of attempted murder charges against Tarrant from 39 to 40.
Aside from those who died, at least 47 other people were treated at hospitals for gunshot wounds. Some had minor injuries and were discharged within hours.
Police told family members and attack survivors of the new charges at a private meeting attended by more than 200 people.
During the attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and two died later in hospitals.
Perhaps nothing captures the growing anti-U.S. sentiment in China better than a song about the trade war that is going viral in Beijing: “If the perpetrator wants to fight, we will beat him out of his wits.”
This privately-produced song has more than 100,000 views on WeChat and is just one of many signs of brewing anti-American sentiment on Chinese social media as trade talks falter.
State media has carried commentaries urging unified resistance to foreign pressure, including an editorial from the nationalist Global Times calling the trade dispute a “ people’s war” and a threat to all of China.
Even seafood hasn’t escaped sharper rhetoric. Guangdong province’s Communist Party Youth League issued a WeChat post calling for China to eat more tilapia – a farmed fish now subject to higher U.S. tariffs.
‘Trade war’
The song, simply called “Trade War,” is set to the tune of an anti-Japanese song from the 1960s film “Tunnel War” – in which a Chinese town defends itself from invasion.
It begins with a male chorus singing “Trade war! Trade War! Not afraid of the outrageous challenge! Not afraid of the outrageous challenge! A trade war is happening over the Pacific Ocean!”
“I chose ‘Tunnel War’ because that is reminiscent of the similar situation that China is facing today,” the song’s producer and lyricist Zhao Liangtian told Bloomberg News on Monday. “Since the trade war broke out, I felt the urge to do something.”
On Tuesday, Chinese state media continued the belligerent rhetoric against the U.S.
“Facing the U.S. which is going against the trend of the times, China resolutely showed the sword,” said an analysis from state-owned Xinhua News Agency that was republished widely in domestic media. “We are forced to take necessary measures and are prepared for a protracted war.”
A commentary in the People’s Daily warned that attempts to deprive the nearly 1.4 billion Chinese people of their right to development and impede the historical process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation would be like “a mantis trying to stop a car with its arms.”
Silver screen
China’s official entertainment industry is also caught in the crossfire.
The state-run China Central Television’s movie channel changed its May 16 prime-time schedule from live-streaming the red carpet of Asian Movie Week to a old propaganda film called ‘‘Heroic Sons and Daughters,’’ about the China-U.S. conflict during the Korean War. It’s played a Korean War movie each night during prime time every night since.
A television series called “Over The Sea I Come to You,” about a father who accompanies his son to study in the U.S., was pulled off-air and replaced at the last minute. The show was set to premiere on Zhejiang Television and elsewhere May 19, according to a station announcement from earlier this once.
However – at least so far – U.S. cultural products are still available. The worldwide blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame” is still in theaters and is the third-highest grossing film in Chinese box office history.
Rallying patriotism
Starting Monday, Chinese radio and television stations will be required to play the country’s national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” at 7 a.m. each morning through the end of the year, according to an official notice.
That order is only one small part of a national patriotic education plan, co-published by the party’s Central Committee and State Council, celebrating the coming 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic Of China.
The plan also aims to “encourage and mobilize the whole party, army and people of all ethnic groups to rally more closely around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core,” a reference to China’s leader.
Other plans include displaying the Chinese flag around National Day on October 1 and organizing teenagers to participate in themed summer camps that will lead them to “experience revolutionary feelings and inherit red genes.”
Waxing poetic
Zhao, the ‘‘Trade War’’ lyricist, is a retired official in Yanting county, in China’s southwest Sichuan province. He’s also an accredited member of the Poetry Institute of China, which is affiliated with the Communist Party’s propaganda department.
Zhao wrote the song’s lyrics last year and circulated them online, but said they had gone largely unnoticed until the negotiations went awry. He said some of his anti-U.S. poems had been censored by authorities in the past.
After President Donald Trump threatened fresh tariffs earlier this month, Zhao sensed China’s government had changed its attitude. He paid 1600 Yuan ($232) – a third of his monthly paycheck – to finally produce his song. Other retirees sang the chorus.
In the current climate, the payoff has been immediate. “I have received many phone calls in the past days from people to show support for my work,” Zhao said.
(JAKARTA, Indonesia) — The official count from last month’s Indonesian presidential election shows President Joko Widodo won 55.5% of the vote, the Election Commission said Tuesday, securing him a second term.
The formal result from the April 17 election was almost the same as the preliminary “quick count” results drawn from a sample of polling stations on election day.
Widodo’s challenger for a second time, former general Prabowo Subianto, has refused to accept defeat and declared himself the winner last month.
Thousands of police and soldiers are on high alert in the capital Jakarta, anticipating protests from Subianto’s supporters.
Subianto has alleged massive election fraud in the world’s third-largest democracy but hasn’t provided any credible evidence. Votes are counted publicly and the commission posts the tabulation form from each polling station on its website, allowing for independent verification.
Counting was completed just before midnight and the Election Commission announced the results early Tuesday before official witnesses from both campaigns.
“We reject the results of the presidential election,” said Azis Subekti, one of the witnesses for Subianto. “This refusal is a moral responsibility for us to not give up the fight against injustice, fraud, arbitrariness, lies, and any actions that will harm democracy.”
Under Indonesia’s election law, Subianto can dispute the results at the Constitutional Court.
He and members of his campaign team have said they will mobilize “people power” for days of street protests rather than appeal to the court because they don’t believe it will provide justice.
In a video released after results were announced, Subianto again refused to concede defeat but called on supporters to refrain from violence.
Police this month have arrested 31 Islamic militants they say planned to set off bombs during expected street protests against the election result.
(WASHINGTON) — Two former CIA contractors who designed the harsh interrogation program used after the Sept. 11 attacks are being summoned to testify before the military tribunal at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were among a dozen approved witnesses listed in a letter sent Monday by prosecutors to defense lawyers for five men charged in the 2001 attacks.
Defense lawyers in the long-running Sept. 11 military tribunal want to question Mitchell and Jessen as part of an effort to exclude statements the defendants made to the FBI at Guantanamo after being subjected to brutal treatment in clandestine CIA detention facilities.
The defense lawyers are also seeking to compel testimony from dozens of current and former CIA officers who were involved with what the government called the “enhanced” interrogation program.
Mitchell and Jessen gave depositions in a civil lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three former U.S. prisoners, including one who died in custody. That case was settled for undisclosed terms in August 2017 and the two former contractors did not testify in court.
“This will be the first time Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen will have to testify in a criminal proceeding about the torture program they implemented,” said James Connell, a lawyer for Ammar al Baluchi, one of the five Guantanamo prisoners facing trial by military commission for their alleged roles in the attack.
Mitchell and Jessen helped design an interrogation program that included such abusive techniques as prolonged sleep deprivation, confinement in small, enclosed spaces and waterboarding. The former contractors have defended their work, arguing it was legal and necessary.
A Senate investigation in 2014 found that Mitchell and Jessen’s techniques were not effective.
At the earliest, the two former contractors would testify at a pretrial hearing scheduled for July, though it could be later. The proceedings have faced repeated delays, largely because of legal issues related to the treatment of the five defendants while in CIA custody.
The defendants include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who has portrayed himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking plot. He and his co-defendants were arraigned in May 2012 on charges that include terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder in violation of the law of war. They could get the death penalty if convicted by the commission, which combines elements of military and civilian law.
(VIENNA) — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Monday he is seeking the removal of the country’s interior minister over a video scandal that has rocked the Alpine nation in recent days.
The move, which must be approved by Austria’s president, is expected to trigger a walk-out of Interior Minister Herbert Kickl’s far-right Freedom Party from the coalition government.
Kurz, who became chancellor with help from the Freedom Party in 2017, said Austrians want clarity on the apparent influence-peddling scandal involving Kickl’s party and a purported Russian investor.
“I’m firmly convinced that what’s necessary now is total transparency and a completely and unbiased investigation,” he told reporters in Vienna.
Pledging to ensure stability over the coming months, Kurz said that if the Freedom Party leaves his government — as it has threatened to do — vacant positions would be filled with civil servants and technocrats until the next national elections, which are expected in September.
Kickl’s imminent removal follows the resignation on Saturday of Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who was also Austria’s vice chancellor, after two German newspapers published a damning video showing him pandering to a woman claiming to be a Russian tycoon’s niece at a boozy gathering in Ibiza two years ago.
In the video, Strache and party colleague Johann Gudenus are heard telling the woman that she can expect lucrative construction contracts if she buys an Austrian newspaper and supports the Freedom Party. Gudenus has quit as leader of the party’s parliamentary group and is leaving the party.
Kurz noted that at the time the video was shot, Kickl was general-secretary of the Freedom Party and therefore responsible for its financial conduct.
Kurz added that in conversations with Kickl and other Freedom Party officials following the video’s release, he “didn’t really have the feeling (they had) an awareness of the dimension of the whole issue.”
Strache’s resignation represents a setback for populist and nationalist forces as Europe heads into the final days of campaigning for the European Parliament elections, which run from Thursday through Sunday.
Kurz has endorsed a hard line on migration and public finances, and chose to ally with the Freedom Party after winning the 2017 election.
The 32-year-old, who is personally popular, said Saturday that “enough is enough” — a reference to a string of smaller scandals involving the Freedom Party that had plagued his government. In recent months, those have included a poem in a party newsletter comparing migrants to rats and questions over links to extreme-right groups.
Kickl, a longtime campaign mastermind of the Freedom Party, has drawn criticism over matters including a raid last year on Austria’s BVT spy agency, which opposition parties claimed was an attempt by the new government to purge domestic political enemies.
His party said he had done nothing wrong.
The Russian government, meanwhile, said it couldn’t comment on the video “because it has nothing to do with the Russian Federation, its president or the government.”
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said of the woman in the Strache video that set off the crisis: “We don’t know who that woman is and whether she’s Russian or not.”
(PARIS) — The Eiffel Tower was evacuated and closed down Monday after a man scaled nearly to the top of the Paris monument and refused to come down for several hours.
Members of a special firefighter climbing unit and police negotiators eventually persuaded the man to surrender, a Paris police official said. The official said the man was “under control and out of danger” Monday night.
Managers said the tower would reopen Tuesday morning as usual and promised to reimburse people with reserved tickets whose visits were thwarted.
Security agents spotted the man climbing up from the second floor in the early afternoon, triggering an operation to evacuate the 2,500 visitors on the monument, the tower management company said in a statement. That included people dining on the second level.
The man eventually stopped his climb just below the third level, which is the highest level of the 324-meter (1,063-foot) tower, and stayed there. His motives remained unclear, and authorities declined to give details about his identity.
Hours into the sky-high incident, the man could be seen standing in the ironworks of Gustave Eiffel’s 19th century monument. A rescuer dressed in red was nestled nearby, interacting with him.
Authorities wouldn’t say how the trespasser managed to get past the Eiffel Tower’s stringent security system. The management company, called SETE, insisted that such intrusions remain “very rare.”
It’s not the first time someone has attempted to climb up the tourist attraction. In 2015, British “freerunner” James Kingston climbed the edifice without safety ropes and without permission, dodging security cameras as he went.
However, as time passed Monday it became increasingly unlikely that the incident was a prank or a challenge. The tower has seen occasional suicide attempts in the past.
The tower, the tallest structure in Paris, is about the same height as an 81-story building.
Reenactments of the Khmer Rouge genocide are annual events in Cambodia. On the grounds of the famous killing fields of Choeung Ek, outside the capital of Phnom Penh, a troupe of young performers will take their positions on an open field. The loudspeakers will blare haunting music and words of hate. Actors carrying wooden machine guns will simulate the mass murder of civilians. Children aren’t spared and neither are the elderly. It is May 20, the National Day of Remembrance.
The annual observance marks the day in 1975 when the communist regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge began the mass killings of the Cambodian genocide. Such national days of remembrance are often a key part of confronting and acknowledging a troubling past; Germany’s decision to create a day to remember the Holocaust, for example, has been seen as an important step forward. But Cambodia’s version is complicated by the purpose the day has served for the governments that followed the Khmer Rouge — and the questions it raises are profound: What does it mean when a government decrees that the past must be remembered in a certain way? And how do you memorialize something you can’t forget?
Pol Pot — the nom de guerre of a man named Saloth Sar — had rapidly climbed the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s “red communists,” in the 1960s, and became the leader of the guerrilla fighters who orchestrated the systematic take-over of the country in the 1970s. Starting in the northern provinces, the regime worked its way to Phnom Penh. In April of 1975, they seized the city and forced residents to evacuate. By late afternoon the wide boulevards of the city were emptied of cars and filled with a procession of soldiers and trucks loaded with concertina wire and weapons. Families fanned out from the city on foot, not knowing where they were meant to go. Many, falsely told they could return in a few days, left with only the clothing they wore.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesLong lines of refugees on the move some 17 kilometers from the capital in Cambodia in 1975
By that point, Cambodia had already been devastated by wars from within and without: the First Indochina War, the Vietnam War and their own civil war. A flood of refugees spilled into Thailand while others from the countryside came to Phnom Penh. Rice fields were decimated, livelihoods were lost and people went hungry. The Khmer Rouge stepped into the breach, espousing a vision of a communist utopia. The struggling rural farmer would get the same food, shelter and life as the city-dwelling doctor. It was an easy sell with horrific consequences.
The mass killings began about a month after Phnom Penh fell. Pol Pot convinced a destroyed nation to join an agrarian revolution turned genocide; an estimated 1.7 to 2 million people were killed including ethnic minorities, Buddhists and Cham Muslims died under his regime.
The official remembrance of those events began to take shape almost immediately after Cambodia was liberated from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, as the new government looked for ways to legitimize itself. The newly formed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) began distancing itself from the regime — at least outwardly, as many of its own leaders had been officers in the Khmer Rouge too. The Day of Remembrance, first staged in 1984, was originally known as The National Day of Hatred Against the Genocidal Pol Pot-Ieng Sary-Khieu Samphan clique and the Sihanouk-Son Sann Reactionary Groups.
Anthropologist Alex Hinton has written that the Day of Hate was a way for the PRK to keep anger toward the Khmer Rouge active so that they could put it to use for their own political purposes if needed. In his book Voices from S-21, historian David Chandler writes the PRK “worked hard to focus people’s anger onto the ‘genocidal clique’ that had governed Cambodia,” as the “new government based its legitimacy on the fact that it had come to power by toppling the Khmer Rouge [though] it was in no position to condemn the entire movement, since so many prominent PRK figures had been Khmer Rouge themselves.”
In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Day of Hate was staged on a massive scale. Paper effigies of Pol Pot were burned and survivors told the true horror stories of their lives under the Khmer Rouge. These events were critical to the PRK leadership reinventing itself, eventually becoming the Cambodia People’s Party of today, the party of Prime Minster Hun Sen. While attendance wasn’t compulsory at the original days of anger, it was strongly encouraged and with the help of local authorities’ mass turnout was assured. After years of war and the Khmer Rouge, the people were left starving in a land littered with landmines and mass graves. The day of hate fell into place easily on this backdrop.
But in 2018, Prime Minister Hun Sen decreed that May 20 was no longer the day of hate. Instead, it would be the National Day of Remembrance. Hun Sen not only changed the official name of the holiday, he told reporters it was now set aside to “respect and pray for the victims who passed away from Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime.”
His decree, timed during an election year, also created a time to praise the Cambodian People’s Party for all its “achievements” since the DK was overthrown — and to cast Hun Sen as protecting citizens from the not-so-distant terror. Hun Sen “has a particular knack for playing on fears of a return to the dark days of massacres and civil war,” writes Sebastian Strangio, an independent journalist and author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia.
However, a 2016 Open Society Justice Initiative Report on Cambodia’s war-crimes tribunalfound that at least two court cases stemming from the genocide fell apart because they could “embarrass” the CPP and Hun Sen by revealing ties to former Khmer Rouge members.
But, with or without an official day to remember the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, memories of the atrocities are woven through the daily lives of those who survived the regime and their descendants.
Nowhere is that fact clearer than at the secret prison known as Tuol Sleng, or S-21, where Pol Pot sent officers and officials to be tortured. Today, it’s the site of a genocide museum. When the Vietnamese liberated the city, they found piles of bodies at S-21; some estimates say 18,000 people were killed there alone. The museum is designed to be tourist-friendly. Visitors are given headphones and guided through the complex via audio tour. Photos of S-21 victims paper the walls but the brutality of the Khmer Rouge is hard to see behind Plexiglas.
Chheng Samin, one of the employees there, was born in a pagoda three months after the evacuation of Phnom Penh; she says soldiers forced her mother to return to work the morning after Samin was born. She now has two children of her own, and says she is grateful her children have happy childhood memories far different than her own.
“My grandmother died during the Khmer Rouge and I remember thinking ‘don’t put my grandma in that boat and take her away,’” Samin told me, laughing at her 3-year-old self, a girl who thought a casket was a ship.
Photographer: Andy KopsaChheng Samin was born under a pagoda shortly after the fall of Phnom Penh. She holds a picture of her mother, Chheng Samit, who survived the Khmer Rouge but died young. She now works at Tuol Sleng.
Not far from Tuol Sleng is a one of the twenty thousand or so killing fields of the genocide. Choeung Ek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh is perhaps the most well know. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge it was a collection of abandoned buildings and a field of bodies.
Now it is a tourist destination too. An ornate stupa surrounds a stories high scaffold, each level lined with human skulls. Walking the grounds visitors are guided through buildings and alongside unexcavated fields; a shirt or dress held by the gnarled roots of a banyan tree like an insect preserved in amber.
There, on May 20, tourists will again join scores of saffron-robed monks and local residents to watch the performers act out Khmer Rouge atrocities with appropriate horror.
But for people like Samin, memories of the Khmer Rouge are more personal, and perpetually close to the surface. I asked her if working at the museum as a survivor of the genocide was difficult. For the most part, it isn’t, she tells me — but one thing does get to her. In the main hall, an iconic photo is displayed, of a mother holding her baby, cataloging their arrival at S-21. That’s hard for her to see some days. “That,” she said, “could have been my mom and me.”
(LONDON) — British politician Nigel Farage was hit with a milkshake while campaigning in the European Parliament election on Monday — the latest in a spate of attacks on politicians with the sticky beverages.
Farage was left with milkshake dripping down his lapels during a walkabout in Newcastle, northeast England. Police said a 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault.
Paul Crowther, who was detained in handcuffs at the scene, said he threw the banana-and-salted caramel Five Guys shake to protest Farage’s “bile and racism.”
He said he had been looking forward to the milkshake, “but I think it went on a better purpose.”
Farage blamed the attack on those who wanted to remain in the EU. He tweeted that “Sadly some remainers have become radicalised, to the extent that normal campaigning is becoming impossible.”
Farage’s Brexit Party is leading opinion polls in the contest for 73 U.K. seats in the 751-seat European Parliament.
Milkshakes have become an unlikely political weapon in Britain. Other right-wing candidates including far-right activist Tommy Robinson have also been pelted with milkshakes during the election campaign.
Last week a McDonald’s in Edinburgh, Scotland said it had been told by police not to sell milkshakes during a Brexit Party rally. In response, Burger King tweeted: “Dear people of Scotland. We’re selling milkshakes all weekend. Have fun. Love BK.”
(BEIJING) — Google said Monday its basic services on Huawei smartphones still will function following U.S. sales curbs, but the Chinese tech giant faces the possible loss of other features and support.
The announcement highlighted the growing damage to Huawei from Washington’s order. The company has said until now U.S. accusations it is a security threat have had little impact on sales outside the United States.
Huawei Technologies Ltd., which uses Google’s Android operating system in its smartphones, said it would continue to provide security updates and service. It gave no indication which map, photo or other services they might lose.
The Trump administration’s order targets China’s first global tech brand and ratchets up disputes with Beijing over technology, trade and cyber-security.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., said it is complying with and “reviewing the implications” of the requirement for export licenses for technology sales to Huawei, which took effect Thursday.
“We assure you while we are complying with all US gov’t requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device,” said Google on Twitter.
Google allows smartphone manufacturers to use Android and its basic services for free. But transfer of hardware, software or services to Huawei or technical interaction would be restricted by the U.S. order.
That would strip Huawei phones of Google maps and other services that require direct support. That might hurt Huawei where consumers can pick other brands that carry the full suite of Google features.
Those who follow the industry closely say that it is unclear what damage, if any, will be suffered by Huawei.
Ben Wood, Chief of Research at CCS Insight, said it’s unclear what Google told Huawei, but any disruption in getting updates to software would have “considerable implications” for its consumer device business.
“Google has publicly stated that its App Store, Google Play, and security updates from Google Play Protect will continue working on existing Huawei devices,” Wood said Monday. “However, until we have a clear understanding of what exact measures Google has decided to take it is impossible to second guess the impact on future devices.”
The U.S. government says Chinese suppliers including Huawei and its smaller rival, ZTE Corp., pose an espionage threat because they are beholden to China’s ruling Communist Party. But American officials have presented no evidence of any Huawei equipment serving as intentional conduits for espionage by Beijing.
Huawei, headquartered in the southern city of Shenzhen near Hong Kong, reported earlier its global sales rose 19.5% last year over 2017 to 721.2 billion ($105.2 billion). Profit rose 25.1% to 59.3 billion yuan ($8.6 billion).
Huawei smartphone shipments rose 50 percent over a year earlier in the first three months of 2019 to 59.1 million, while the global industry’s total fell 6.6 percent, according to IDC. Shipments by industry leader Samsung and No. 3 Apple declined.
Huawei defended itself Monday as “one of Android’s key global partners.” The company said it helped to develop a system that “benefited both users and the industry.”
“We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally,” said a company statement.
A foreign ministry spokesman said China will “monitor the development of the situation” but gave no indication how Beijing might respond.
The government said it would take steps to protect the rights of Chinese companies abroad following last week’s announcement but has given no indication what it might do.
“China supports Chinese companies to take up legal weapons to defend their legitimate rights,” said the spokesman, Lu Kang.
The U.S. order took effect Thursday and requires government approval for all purchases of American microchips, software and other components globally by Huawei and 68 affiliated businesses. Huawei says that amounted to $11 billion in goods last year.
That could certainly create some collateral damage for U.S. companies.
The California chipmaker Xilinx Inc. tumbled 5 percent before the opening bell Monday.
“We think that the US government action against Huawei creates risk for chip companies that might have high exposure to Huawei,” wrote David Wong, an analyst with Nomura. “To our knowledge, Xilinx has never identified Huawei by name as a major customer that is driving its recent wireless strength. Nevertheless, Xilinx has undoubtedly been benefiting recently from strength in demand for chips used in 5G wireless base stations, and we think that action against a major maker of communications infrastructure equipment like Huawei likely poses risk for Xilinx.”
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A vacation bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra and M R Shah said it was not inclined to entertain the petition as polling is already over.
According to JD(S) sources, the chief minister was to take part in the meeting of opposition leaders over the EVM issue.
