A man carrying a knife was arrested outside the White House after he told a U.S. Secret Service officer that he was there to kill the president, police said.

Roger Hedgpeth, 25, was arrested Saturday afternoon on a charge of making threats to do bodily harm, the Metropolitan Police Department said.

Hedgpeth approached a Secret Service officer who was patrolling outside the White House and said he was there to “assassinate” President Donald Trump and “I have a knife to do it with,” according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press.

Police found a 3 1/2-inch knife in a sheath on his left hip, and Hedgpeth also had an empty pistol holster on his right hip, authorities said.

Hedgpeth was taken into custody and brought to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, police said. Officers also impounded his vehicle.

A telephone number listed for Hedgpeth in public records rang unanswered on Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear where he lives or whether he had an lawyer who could comment on his behalf.

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From: MeNeedIt

Libya’s warring parties will continue talks this month to try to reach a lasting cease-fire in a war for control of the capital, Tripoli, the United Nations said Saturday, after a first round in Geneva recently failed to yield an agreement. 

The U.N. hosted indirect talks between five officers from the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Khalifa Haftar, which has been trying to take Tripoli since April, and the same number from forces of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli. 

Fighting has calmed down since last month, although skirmishes with artillery have continued in southern Tripoli, which the LNA has been unable to breach in its campaign. 

Both sides had agreed to continue the dialogue, with the U.N. proposing a follow-up meeting on February 18 in Geneva, the U.N. mission to Libya (UNSMIL) said in a statement. 

It said the two sides wanted people displaced by the war to return but had been unable to agree on how to achieve this, without elaborating. 

There was no immediate comment from either side in the conflict. 

Blockade

UNSMIL gave no update on efforts to end a blockade of major oil ports and oilfields by forces and tribesmen loyal to the LNA. 

On Thursday, U.N. Libya envoy Ghassan Salame said he had talked to tribesmen behind the blockade and was awaiting their demands. 

He also said the blockade would be at the top of the agenda at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday between representatives from eastern, western and southern Libya seeking to overcome economic divisions in a country with two governments. 

Diplomats said the Cairo meeting would be mainly attended by technical experts to prepare a wider dialogue to be followed in coming months. 

In a sign that a reopening of ports might not be imminent, tribes and communities in oil-rich areas in eastern Libya held by the LNA said in a statement that they opposed resuming oil exports unless Tripoli was freed of militias, a demand of the LNA. 

Withdrawal of Syrians 

They also demanded the withdrawal of Syrian fighters sent by Turkey to help defend Tripoli against the LNA, which enjoys the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Russian mercenaries. 

Furthermore, they called for what they described as a fair distribution of oil revenues, another demand of the LNA and people in the east, where many complain of neglect going back to Moammar Gadhafi, toppled in a 2011 uprising that plunged Libya into chaos. 

State oil firm NOC, which is based in Tripoli and serves the whole country, sends oil revenues to the central bank, which mainly works with the Tripoli government although it also pays some civil servants in the east. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Israel has begun to draw up maps of land in the occupied West Bank that will be annexed in accordance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday. 

“We are already at the height of the process of mapping the area that, according to the Trump plan, will become part of the state of Israel. It won’t take too long,” Netanyahu said at an election campaign rally in the Maale Adumim settlement. 

Netanyahu said the area would include all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley — territory that Israel has kept under military occupation since its capture in the 1967 Middle East war but that Palestinians want in a future state. 

“The only map that can be accepted as the map of Palestine is the map of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital,” said Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. 

Prospects for annexations, which have already been widely condemned, are unclear. 

Election in March

Israel will hold a national election on March 2 and Netanyahu, who is facing criminal corruption charges, is hoping to win a fifth term in office. He presently heads a caretaker government, whose legal authority to annex territory is still undecided by judicial authorities. 

Settlers make up part of Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base and many members of his coalition cabinet view the West Bank as the biblical heartland of the Jewish people. 

Most countries consider Israeli settlements on land captured in war to be a violation of international law. Trump has changed U.S. policy to withdraw such objections. 

Palestinians say the settlements make a future state nonviable. Israel cites security needs as well as biblical and historical ties to the land on which they are built. 

Two-state plan, with conditions

Trump’s plan envisages a two-state solution with Israel and a future Palestinian state living alongside each other, but it includes strict conditions that Palestinians reject. 

The blueprint gives Israel much of what it has long sought, including U.S. recognition of settlements and Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. 

A redrawn, demilitarized Palestinian state would be subject to Israeli control over its security and would receive tracts of desert in return for arable land settled by Israelis. 

Right after Trump presented the plan on January 28, Netanyahu said his government would begin extending Israeli sovereignty to the settlements and the Jordan Valley within days. 

But Washington then appeared to put the brakes on that and Netanyahu has since faced pressure from settler leaders to annex territory despite any U.S. objections. 

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From: MeNeedIt

A smoking ban in all Malaysian eateries is sparking controversy particularly now that it’s being enforced. The ban officially began a year ago, but violators started being penalized only recently. Dave Grunebaum has the story.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Suicides in the active-duty Air Force surged last year to the highest total in at least three decades, even as the other military services saw their numbers stabilize or decline, according to officials and unpublished preliminary data.

The reasons for the Air Force increase are not fully understood, coming after years of effort by all of the military services to counter a problem that seems to defy solution and that parallels increases in suicide in the U.S. civilian population.

84 Air Force suicides

According to preliminary figures, the Air Force had 84 suicides among active-duty members last year, up from 60 the year before. The jump followed five years of relative stability, with the service’s yearly totals fluctuating between 60 and 64. Official figures won’t be published until later this year and could vary slightly from preliminary data.

Air Force officials, who confirmed the 2019 total, said they knew of no higher number in recent years. Data and studies previously published by the Pentagon and Air Force show that 64 suicides in 2015 had been the highest total for the Air Force in this century. A 2009 Air Force study said suicides between 1990 and 2004 averaged 42 a year and never exceeded 62.

“Suicide is a difficult national problem without easily identifiable solutions that has the full attention of leadership,” Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, said in a statement. He said the Air Force is focused on immediate, midterm and long-range solutions to a problem faced throughout the military.

Suicide risk factors are often thought to include stress related to deployment to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2013 concluded, based on an assessment of current and former military personnel over a seven-year period, that combat experience and other deployment-related factors were not associated with increased risk of suicide. Instead the study’s results pointed to numerous other factors, including being male, engaging in heavy or binge drinking, and bipolar disorder.

Suicides across the services

Although only the Air Force saw a major increase last year, all the services have struggled with higher suicides since about 2005-2006, which coincided with a cycle of exceptionally stressful deployments to Iraq for the Army and Marine Corps. The Pentagon encourages service members and veterans in need of help to contact the Military Crisis Line.

The Navy last year saw its active-duty suicides rise by four, to 72, and the Marine Corps total dropped by 10, to 47. All the 2019 numbers include confirmed and suspected suicides and are subject to revision based on further medical review. It is not uncommon for a service’s total to get adjusted up or down after further review, but any changes are slight.

The Army declined to reveal its 2019 preliminary total, but The Associated Press determined it was little changed from the previous year’s 139. The Army’s figure is typically the highest in the military because it is by far the biggest service, with about 480,000 soldiers on active duty this year, compared with about 332,000 in the Air Force.

The Air Force in the mid-1990s pioneered a suicide prevention program that was seen as effective, and at various times since the U.S. became entangled in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan the other services have seen troubling increases in their suicide numbers. The Marine Corps, for example, saw its numbers jump from 37 to 57 between 2016 and 2018.

Progress sought

Maj. Craig W. Thomas, a Marine Corps spokesman, said the Marines want further progress after recording 10 fewer active-duty suicides last year. He said unit leaders are encouraged to speak openly with their Marines about stress, mental wellness and suicide.

“When leaders and mental health programs and resources acknowledge that ‘everybody struggles with life, trauma, shame, guilt and uncertainty,’ it helps make asking for assistance more acceptable,” Thomas said.

Last year, the Air Force went public with its concerns as it saw its suicide numbers rising. Last summer, Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, ordered a “resilience tactical pause” across the force to foster open discussion within the service about suicide prevention. In a July 31 letter, he wrote: “Hopeful to hopeless. What is going on? It is our job to find out.”

Answers are elusive, but the Air Force says the Goldfein “pause” jump-started an effort to promote “connectedness” among airmen.

The military, whose population is generally younger and more fit than America as a whole, is quick to note that suicide is a problem throughout society. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 1999 through 2017, the nation’s suicide rates increased for both men and women, with bigger percentage increases occurring after 2006.

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From: MeNeedIt

In just one day, the number of confirmed Coronavirus cases in China grew by almost 4,000 and the death toll climbed by nearly 75.  As the virus continued to spread Thursday, the World Health Organization said it’s still too early to tell if the virus outbreak has peaked, even though on Wednesday the overall number of new cases dropped for the first time.  VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo has more

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From: MeNeedIt

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday advocated a more coordinated European Union defense strategy in which France, the bloc’s only post-Brexit nuclear power, and its arsenal would hold a central role.
    
Addressing military officers graduating in Paris, Macron set out his country’s nuclear strategy in a bid to show leadership one week after nuclear-armed Britain officially exited the EU.
    
Macron highlighted how France sees its nuclear weapons as a deterrent against attacks from belligerent foes, though he conceded France’s nuclear might is diminished after its military scaled down its arsenal to under 300 nuclear weapons.
    
But the speech aimed to project strength, as Macron refused to sign any treaty at this stage to further reduce the French arsenal, announced an increase in military spending and positioned himself as the driving force for a united EU, using France’s military clout to make his point. Macron also touted the French military’s role in spots such as Africa’s Sahel, where he has just pledged an additional 600 troops to fight extremists.
    
The central idea in the keynote speech, however, was that of a boosted Europe-wide role for the French nuclear arsenal in a more coordinated European defense policy.
    
Macron said it the strategy would prevent Europe “confining itself to a spectator role” in an environment dominated by Russia, the United States and China.
    
“Europeans must collectively realize that, in the absence of a legal framework, they could quickly find themselves exposed to the resumption of a conventional, even nuclear, arms race on their soil,” Macron warned.
    
His remarks come at a time when NATO allies, who would ordinarily look to the United States for help  in a nuclear standoff, worry about Washington’s retreat from the multilateral stage. This could create new tensions within NATO, where Macron ruffled feathers last year by saying the lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of the military alliance.
    
Last year, Russia and the US pulled out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, dating  from the era of the Soviet Union, and each blamed the other for its failure. Evoking the tearing-up of the INF treaty, Macron said he wanted the Europeans to propose their own “international arms control agenda together.”
    
Friday’s speech was  part of Macron’s long-running push for a stronger European defense, as U.S. President Donald Trump has pulled away from European allies and admonished them to pay more for their own protection.
    
Macron explained his vision as “an offer of dialogue” and “service” to Europeans to assert their autonomy “in defense and arms control.”

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From: MeNeedIt

JAMMU, INDIA — Indian authorities have arrested two former top elected officials of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir under a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without trial, officials said Friday.

Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah were arrested as their 6-month-old detention ended Thursday, a top civil administrator and top police officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Mufti and Abdullah were among thousands of people detained when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of semi-autonomy and statehood, downgrading them into two federal territories last August.

Since, they had been held under house arrest under a preventive custody law that allows authorities to detain people who might commit offenses for up to six months.

Past statements cited

On Thursday, Modi gave an indication of their arrest when he said in Parliament that the two leaders had in the past made statements that could incite unrest in the region.

Modi cited Mehbooba Mufti accusing India of cheating Kashmir last summer. He said Omar Abdullah had remarked that ending Kashmir’s autonomy would cause an earthquake that would separate Kashmir from India, though there is no indication Abdullah made any such statement.

“Some people here complain some leaders have been incarcerated. Mehbooba Mufti said, ‘Kashmir made a mistake by joining India.’ Are you justifying such kind of speech?” Modi said in Parliament.

Pro-India politicians

Omar Abdullah’s father, Farooq Abdullah, was the first pro-India politician arrested under the Public Safety Act, under which rights activists say more than 20,000 Kashmiris have been detained in the last two decades. They are considered pro-India as they never supported Muslim-majority Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with Pakistan.

They are the top leaders of the National Conference, the party that has governed the Indian-controlled Kashmir for decades since India and Pakistan won independence from British colonialists in 1947 and soon began fighting over control over Kashmir, a Himalayan region spread over both countries. Farooq Abdullah, also a former top elected official of Jammu and Kashmir, is an 82-year-old member of India’s Parliament.

Mufti, 60, heads the People’s Democratic Party, which was a coalition partner of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the region for nearly two years after the 2016 state elections. Mufti headed the coalition government.

Two former state lawmakers and party leaders, Ali Mohammed Sagar of the NC and Sartaj Madani of the PDP, also were detained under the controversial Public Security Act on Wednesday.

‘Lawless law’

Amnesty International has called the Public Safety Act a “lawless law,” and rights groups say India has used it to stifle dissent and circumvent the criminal justice system, undermining accountability, transparency and respect for human rights.

On Friday, the main opposition Congress party slammed the government’s decision.

“Shocked and devastated by the cruel invocation of the Public Safety Act against Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and others,” said P. Chidambaram, a top party leader.

“Detention without charges is the worst abomination in a democracy. When unjust laws are passed or unjust laws are invoked, what option do the people have than to protest peacefully?” Chidambaram tweeted.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Women are slowly moving into Afghanistan’s male-dominated restaurant industry. And one entirely women-run restaurant in central Afghanistan’s Bamyan province is attracting food lovers from the region. VOA’s Zafar Bamyani gives us a taste of the restaurant in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard

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From: MeNeedIt

Germs are everywhere. How can you reduce the risk of viral infection? Here are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself.

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From: MeNeedIt

Human rights groups have strongly criticized Italy for extending a deal with Libya that facilitates the return of migrants to detention centers, where these migrants say torture and rape are commonplace. The European Union has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Libya to boost its coastguard capabilities and clamp down on human smuggling – but critics say the money is ending up with criminal gangs. More from Henry Ridgwell

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From: MeNeedIt

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani laid foundation stone Thursday for building a key transmission line linking Central Asia and South Asia under a four-nation electricity generation project, known as CASA-1000.

The $1.2 billion plan aims to bring some 300 megawatts (MW) annually of much-needed electricity to Afghanistan and 1,000 MW to Pakistan from surplus generation in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The project is being financed by multilateral development banks, the United States and other countries.

Afghan officials said diplomats from the participating nations also were present at the groundbreaking site, east of the capital, Kabul.  

Ghani was quoted as saying the CASA-1000 project would go a long way toward promoting connectivity, energy cooperation and prosperity in all of the countries involved.  

Thursday’s landmark development comes as relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to suffer from mutual suspicions and a trust deficit. The tensions stem from allegations Islamabad provides support to the Afghan Taliban and Kabul harbors anti-Pakistan militants.

Speaking to VOA after the ceremony, Pakistani ambassador to Kabul, Zahid Nasrullah Khan, said despite mutual tensions and disagreements, his government is determined to work closely with Afghanistan on projects like the CASA-1000 to promote regional connectivity.“

We are neighbors. Our destinies are tied and we have to work together to take our countries forward, and our opportunities are also interlinked. So, we will continue to push the relationship on the positive track,” Khan stressed.  

The ambassador also underlined efforts Pakistan is making in facilitating a U.S.-led Afghan peace and political reconciliation process aimed at ending the 18-year-old war in the neighboring country.  “

There is no other choice but peace. This is the only way forward. I am sure that all parties and all important regional countries, including Pakistan, are very much committed to taking this process forward,” Khan said.

When completed, CASA-1000 would doubly benefit war-ravaged Afghanistan as a consumer and as a transit country generating revenue.   

Under the long-planned project, a transmission line more than 1,200 kilometers long connecting the four countries would be used to export of electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan during the summer months when Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have extra capacity. The two Central Asian nations have more power generation than they can use as melting ice swells rivers that flow through their hydroelectric generators.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has overcome its energy crisis as billions of dollars in Chinese investment over the past five years have led to the construction of nine new coal-based power plants in the country. Several more also are under construction, adding thousands of megawatts of new electricity to the national grid.

Islamabad recently has asked Tajikistan to revise certain clauses in the agreement under CASA-1000 project so surplus Pakistani electricity could be exported through the same transmission line, bringing much needed energy to people in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan during the harsh winters when they typically have an energy deficit.

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From: MeNeedIt