The U.S. airstrike that killed a prominent Iranian general in Baghdad raises tensions even higher between Tehran and Washington, after months of trading attacks and threats across the wider Middle East. 

How Iran will respond remains in question as well, though its supreme leader warned that a “harsh retaliation is waiting” for those who killed Revolutionary Guard Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani early Friday morning. That could include anything, from challenging U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, firing ballistic missiles or deploying the asymmetrical proxy forces Iran has cultivated to cover for its long-sanctioned conventional forces. 

Soleimani’s death is the latest in a series of escalating incidents traces back to President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. However, overall enmity between Iran and the U.S. date back to its 1979 Islamic Revolution, as well as a 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Tehran that cemented the power of its ruling shah over an elected prime minister. 

Here’s where things stand now:

THE GENERAL’S KILLING

A U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport killed Soleimani, 62, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and five others. The Defense Department said it killed Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week. Soleimani led the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Force.  That included overseeing forces fighting in Syria, as well as militias that targeted U.S. forces in Iraq with deadly bomb attacks after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. 

MONTHS OF ATTACKS

Citing an unspecified threat from Iran, the White House in May ordered a U.S. aircraft carrier to rush to the Persian Gulf. Soon after, explosions the U.S. blames on Iranian-laid mines targeting oil tankers near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all oil passes. Iran denied being involved, though it did seize oil tankers in response to one of its tankers being seized off Gibraltar. Iran also shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. Trump pulled back from retaliating for the attack. Meanwhile, attacks on Saudi Arabia’s energy industry escalated to a missile-and-drone strike in September temporarily halving its oil production. Israel meanwhile has repeatedly struck Iran-linked targets in Syria in recent years and has warned against any permanent Iranian presence on the frontier. The attacks culminated with American airstrikes hitting Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and those  militiamen attacking the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

IRAN’S FALTERING NUCLEAR DEAL

The attacks came after Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. The 2015 accord saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Trump re-imposed American sanctions and levied even harsher ones, crippling its crucial oil industry. Iran initially proposed a policy called “strategic patience,” hoping to wait Trump out. But as Europe largely hasn’t been able to offer Tehran  a way around American sanctions, Iran has begun taking steps away from the deal. That has included breaking enrichment, stockpile and centrifuge limitations, as well as restarting its program at an underground facility. Tehran appears poised to take a new step away from the deal beginning from Sunday.

IRAN’S MEANS OF RETALIATION

Iran’s conventional military force is limited. The backbone of its air power remains pre-revolution American F-4s, F-5s and F-14s, with a mix of other Soviet, French and aging aircraft. That fleet is outgunned by the modern U.S.-supplied fighter jets flown by Israel and the Gulf Arab states. To counter that, Iran has put much of its money toward developing a ballistic missile program operated by the Guard. Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch an attack, like Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The U.S. has blamed car bombs and kidnappings never claimed by Iran on Tehran as well. The Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well. 

AMERICA’S BROAD MIDEAST PRESENCE

The Persian Gulf hosts a series of major American military installations. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which oversees the region, is based in Bahrain, an island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia that is home to over 7,000 American troops. Kuwait hosts over 13,000 American troops and the U.S. Army’s Central forward headquarters. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is the largest port of call for the U.S. Navy outside of America. The UAE hosts 5,000 U.S. military personnel, many at Abu Dhabi’s Al-Dhafra Air Base, where American drones and advanced F-35 jetfighters are stationed. The forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command is at Qatar’s sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base, home to some 10,000 American troops. In Oman, the sultanate allows thousands of overflights and hundreds of landings a year, while also granting access to ports and its bases. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. 

A HISTORY OF ENMITY

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. trace back decades. For Iranians, they point to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh and cemented the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi served as a key U.S. ally for decades after, buying billions of dollars of weapons and allowing America to spy on the Soviet Union from his country. Over time, however, he eliminated all political opposition and seized all power in the country. By 1979, the fatally ill shah fled the country. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis soon followed, a history the two countries remain captive to until today.

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From: MeNeedIt

Protests over constant blackouts in southern Nigeria left a regional capital in darkness for a 10th day Thursday, after angry youths shut down the local electricity supplier.

Members of the Ijaw Youths Council occupied the offices of the main power firm in the city of Yenagoa in Bayelsa state last month to demonstrate against continual outages.

The protest forced the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company to shut down operations and saw power cut off to the city of some 400,000 people and surrounding areas.

Oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is plagued by widespread power outages that leave homes without electricity for long stretches and businesses unable to work.

The crippling power problems are seen as a major impediment to economic development in a country that has more people living in extreme poverty than anywhere else on the planet.

Queues snaked out of petrol stations in Yenagoa as local residents scrambled to buy fuel for generators.

The power company insisted it was struggling with a shortfall due to unpaid bills totaling some $45 million (40 million euros).

Nigeria has the potential to produce some 13,000 megawatts of power from its current infrastructure but on most days can only reach around 4,000 megawatts.

The central government has pledged to overhaul the electricity system and struck an agreement with German giant Siemens last year aimed at tripling reliable supplies by 2023.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

For three decades, paleontologists the world over have been split over a provocative finding: Did a dwarf species of Tyrannosaurus rex really once exist?

In 1988, paleontologist Robert Bakker and his colleagues at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Natural History reclassified a specimen first discovered in 1942 and displayed at the museum.

It was, they said, the first known member of a small new species they baptized as the Nanotyrannus.

Then, in 2001, another team discovered the nearly complete skeleton of a small Tyrannosaurus near the town of Ekalaka in Montana, in the rich and intensively studied fossil formation known as Hell Creek.

They named the creature — barely bigger than a draft horse — Jane and soon classified it as a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.

But a minority of specialists continued to insist that it was part of the newly classified Nanotyrannus species. They pointed to the morphology of its skull and bones, which they said differed from T-rex adults.

Answers in the bones

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers led by Holly Woodward of Oklahoma State University performed a microscopic analysis on samples from the interior of Jane’s tibia and femur bones, as well as from a less complete set of bones from an animal dubbed Petey.  

This technique, known as paleohistology, confirmed that the two were immature individuals — not adults, the scientists said.

By extension, the study’s authors said, the existence of the Nanotyrannus seems very unlikely.

“The really cool thing about fossil bones is that a whole bone fossilizes even down to the microscopic size,” Woodward told AFP.

“We can infer growth rate, age (and) maturity level.”

The researchers took extremely fine slices from the bone samples — so thin that light could pass through them — and then studied them under powerful microscopes.

The size of the blood vessel openings revealed that the two dinosaurs were still in a phase of rapid growth at the time of death. Had they been adults, this vascularization would have been less prominent.

Only a half-dozen specimens

The team was also able to count the growth rings in each animal’s bones, much as one can do to determine the age of a tree: 13 years for Jane, and 15 for Petey.

The study adds to scientists’ still limited knowledge of the 20-year period between a dinosaur’s hatching and its adulthood.

Jane, who weighed only one ton, died before reaching the phase of exponentially rapid growth that normally would have brought her to an adult weight of just under 10 tons.  

“Everyone loves T-rex, but we don’t really know much about how it grew up,” Woodward said. “It’s probably the most famous dinosaur in the world, and we mostly just have really large skeletons of it.”

That is partly due to the obsession of collectors and the public with finding and displaying the most enormous T-rex skeletons possible — unearthed sometimes to the detriment of smaller specimens.

Unfortunately, Woodward said, only five to seven fossils of young T-rex dinosaurs are known to exist in the world, and some of those are in private collections not accessible to researchers.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. health officials will ban most flavored e-cigarettes popular with underage teenagers, but with major exceptions that benefit vaping manufacturers, retailers and adults who use the nicotine-emitting devices.

The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will prohibit fruit, candy, mint and dessert flavors from small, cartridge-based e-cigarettes that are popular with high school students. But menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will be allowed to remain on the market.

The flavor ban will also entirely exempt large, tank-based vaping devices, which are primarily sold in vape shops that cater to adult smokers.

Together, the two exemptions represent a significant retreat from President Donald Trump’s original plan announced four months ago, which would have banned all vaping flavors, including menthol, from all types of e-cigarettes. The new policy will preserve a significant portion of the multibillion-dollar vaping market. And the changes are likely to please both the largest e-cigarette manufacturer, Juul Labs, and thousands of vape shop owners who sell the tank-based systems, which allow users to mix customized flavors.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that typically heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable aerosol. They have been pitched to adults as a less-harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes, but there is limited data on their ability to help smokers quit.

The Food and Drug Administration has struggled for years to find the appropriate approach to regulating vaping. Under current law, all e-cigarettes are supposed to undergo an FDA review beginning in May. Only those that can demonstrate a benefit for U.S. public health will be permitted to stay on the market.

“We have to protect our families,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, ahead of the announcement. “At the same time, it’s a big industry. We want to protect the industry.”

The flavor ban applies to e-cigarettes that use pre-filled nicotine cartridges mainly sold at gas stations and convenience stores. Juul is the biggest player in that market, but it previously pulled all of its flavors except menthol and tobacco after coming under intense political scrutiny. Many smaller manufacturers continue to sell sweet, fruity flavors like “grape slushie,” “strawberry cotton candy” and “sea salt blueberry.”

The flavor restrictions won’t affect the larger specialty devices sold at vape shops, which typically don’t admit customers under 21. These tank-based systems allow users to fill the device with the flavor of their choice. Sales of these devices represent an estimated 40% of the U.S. vaping business, with sales across some 15,000 to 19,000 shops.

Still, the new policy represents the federal government’s biggest step yet to combat a surge in teen vaping that officials fear is hooking a generation of young people on nicotine. In the latest government survey, more than 1 in 4 high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the previous month, despite federal law banning sales to those under 18. Late last month Trump signed a law raising the minimum age to purchase all tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21 nationwide.

“We will not stand idly by as this crisis among America’s youth grows and evolves, and we will continue monitoring the situation and take further actions as necessary,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. Companies that don’t stop making and distributing the restricted products within 30 days risk penalties by the FDA, including fines and seizures.

Incoming FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said the government’s approach attempts to balance the problem of underage vaping with “the potential role that e-cigarettes may play in helping adult smokers transition completely away” from regular cigarettes.

But the decision to permit menthol and exempt tank-based vapes was immediately condemned by anti-tobacco advocates who have lobbied the Trump administration to follow through on its initial pledge to ban all flavors except tobacco.

“Only the elimination of all flavored e-cigarettes can end the worsening youth e-cigarette epidemic and stop e-cigarette companies from luring and addicting kids with flavored products,” said Matthew Myers, of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in a statement.

Myers’ group and others have long opposed all flavors in tobacco products, including menthol in traditional cigarettes. They argue that teenagers who vape will simply shift to using menthol if it remains on the market.

When Trump officials first sketched out their plans at a White House event in September they specifically said menthol would be banned. But that effort stalled after vaping proponents and lobbyists pushed back and White House advisers told Trump that a total flavor ban could cost him votes.

Industry groups including the Vapor Technology Association launched an aggressive social media campaign — (hash)IVapeIVote — contending that the plan would force the closure of vaping shops, eliminating jobs and sending users of electronic cigarettes back to traditional smokes.

Trump’s initial announcement came amid an outbreak of unexplained lung illnesses tied to vaping. But since then health officials have tied the vast majority of the cases to a contaminating filler added to illicit THC vaping liquids. THC is the chemical in marijuana that makes users feel high. Makers of legal nicotine-based vaping products have tried to distance themselves from the problem.

Trump suggested ahead of the announcement that the flavor restrictions might be temporary.

“Hopefully, if everything’s safe, they’re going to be going very quickly back onto the market,” he told reporters at his Mar-a-

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From: MeNeedIt

Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday declined to weigh in on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can return to his post now that he has been indicted, postponing any ruling on his political future until after March elections.

A three-judge panel said the question of whether an indicted member of parliament can be tapped to form a government is important, but that it would be premature to decide the issue before the vote.

The court had been widely expected to delay any ruling. Judging Netanyahu ineligible would have triggered a major political crisis and exacerbated already strained ties between the government and the judiciary.

Netanyahu was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Israeli Cabinet members are required to resign if indicted, but the rule does not apply to the prime minister. He has continued serving as caretaker prime minister after failing to form a government after unprecedented back-to-back elections last year.

Netanyahu has dismissed the corruption cases against him as an “attempted coup” and warned against any judicial intervention, saying only the voters can choose the country’s leader.

There are no restrictions on Netanyahu running in the March 2 election, the third in less than a year. But the petition, filed by good government groups, contended that having a prime minister under indictment would constitute a conflict of interest. Others have argued that voters have the right to know before the election if Netanyahu is eligible to be prime minister.

The court said that the election campaign period is “a realm of uncertainty” and that it remains to be seen who the president will select to form a government after the March 2 vote. The judges said that in light of the “most sensitive and complicated period the state of Israel is in at this time,” it decided to “act with restraint and moderation” and dismiss the petition for the time being.

The court’s decision came the day after Netanyahu announced that he would seek immunity from prosecution, effectively delaying any trial until after a new government is formed.

Netanyahu hopes to win big in March and assemble a 61-seat majority in favor of immunity. But polls predict another split decision that would prolong the country’s political limbo.

September’s election left Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party in a virtual tie with the centrist Blue and White, led by former army chief of staff Benny Gantz. Neither was able to assemble a majority with its natural allies, and efforts to form a unity government collapsed in large part because of Netanyahu’s legal woes.

Netanyahu, who was re-elected leader of the ruling Likud party last week, has long accused judicial and law enforcement officials of trying to drive him from office. His allies have issued stern warnings against what they call an “activist” court overstepping its authority and a few dozen pro-Netanyahu protesters convened outside the court in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu has been in power for more than a decade and is Israel’s longest-serving leader. He is also Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was forced to resign a decade ago ahead of a corruption indictment that later sent him to prison for 16 months.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead a group of U.S. officials who will attend the World Economic Forum later this month in Davos, Switzerland, the White House said Wednesday.

Mnuchin will be joined by officials including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Also attending will be Keith Krach, a State Department undersecretary for growth, energy and the environment, and Christopher Liddell, a White House deputy chief of staff.

Reuters reported Dec. 17 that President Donald Trump planned to attend the annual Davos economic forum, citing a source familiar with the plan. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Trump is still expected to attend at this time.

In 2019, Trump had to cancel his plans to attend the annual gathering of global economic and world leaders because of a government shutdown. He attended the Davos forum in 2018.

The World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort town is scheduled to run Jan. 21-24.

Events in Congress could affect the Republican president’s attendance at the event.

Trump, who on Dec. 18 became the third American president to be impeached, faces a trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, sends the charges, called articles of impeachment, to the Republican-controlled Senate.

A dispute between Pelosi and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell over how the trial will be conducted arose after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump.

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From: MeNeedIt

Islamic State militants have increased their terror activity in recent weeks in Syria, carrying out deadly attacks against Syrian regime troops and U.S.-backed forces. 
 
Since early December, the terror group has conducted at least three major attacks on Syrian government forces and their allied militias in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, local sources said. 
 
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has reporters across the country, recent attacks claimed by IS against Syrian military forces have killed at least 30 soldiers and wounded more than 50 others. 
 
Last week, at least three fighters with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in what local military officials described as a suicide attack carried out by IS militants in the province of Raqqa, IS’s former de facto capital before it was freed in 2017 by the SDF and its U.S.-led allies.  

‘Threat to our forces’ 
 
IS “terrorists still pose a threat to our forces, especially in the eastern part of Syria,” an SDF commander told VOA. 
 
“They have been able to regroup and reorganize in some remote parts of Deir el-Zour, where there is a smaller presence of our forces or any other forces,” said the commander, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to journalists. 
 
He added that despite the declaration of the physical defeat of the terror group in March 2019, IS “still has hundreds of sleeper cells that have the capability to wage deadly attacks on civilians and combatants alike.” 
 
In the town of Tabqa, in western Raqqa, local news reports this week said a suspected IS sleeper cell assaulted a family, killing three of its members, including a child. The reports did not say why the family was attacked, but IS has in the past targeted people whom it suspected of having ties to or working for the government or U.S.-backed local forces. 
 
While most of the recent activity has been in areas IS once controlled as part of its so-called caliphate, the militant group has been particularly active in Syria’s vast desert region. 
 
The Syrian Observatory reported at least 10 IS-claimed attacks in December that originated from the mostly desert eastern part of Homs province in central Syria. 

Baghdadi’s death 

Despite the death of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in October in a U.S. operation in northwestern Syria, IS still represents a major threat in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, experts say. 
 
“As ISIS returns to its original decentralized structure, members of the group are trying to show ISIS still poses a threat, even after the defeat of its caliphate and the recent death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said Kaleigh Thomas, a Middle East researcher at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, using another acronym for IS. 
 
Sadradeen Kinno, a Syrian researcher who closely follows Islamist militancy, echoed Thomas’ views. 
 
“IS is now living a period of stability, so to speak. After the death of Baghdadi, their objective is clearer now. They try to stay focused on carrying out assassinations, ambushes and suicide attacks, and they have been successful at that,” he told VOA. 
 
Kinno said IS “really believes in a recurrent cycle of violence, so for them the territorial defeat they experienced this year is just a phase of their ongoing jihad.” 
 

US withdrawal 
 
U.S. President Donald Trump in October announced a withdrawal of troops from Syria, which was followed by a Turkish military offensive against U.S.-backed SDF fighters in northeast Syria. 
 
Some experts say the U.S. troop pullout allowed IS to regroup, and thus its terror attacks have increased. 
 
“The U.S. decision sent a signal to [IS] that the U.S. is not interested in a long-term presence in Syria,” said Azad Othman, a Syrian affairs analyst based in Irbil, Iraq. 
 
IS “now feels that its low-level insurgency in Syria could be even more effective as long as the Americans don’t have a significant military presence in the country,” he told VOA. 
 
The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report in November that “ISIS has exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to reconstitute its capabilities and resources both within Syria in the short term and globally in the longer term.” 
 
“The withdrawal and redeployment of U.S. troops has also affected the fight against ISIS, which remains a threat in the region and globally,” Glenn Fine, the principal deputy inspector general, said in the report. 
 
But the U.S. has decided to keep about 500 troops to secure oil fields in Syria to prevent IS militants and the Syrian regime forces from accessing them.  
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Brexit and EU enlargement will be priorities during Croatia’s six-month presidency of the  bloc, Foreign Minister Goran Grlic Radman said Wednesday.

Croatia, the youngest European Union member, has a “lot of work and an important task that we have to do in the best possible way in the interest of all EU members, first of all organization of the relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom,” Grlic Radman said.

Britain is due to leave the European Union on Jan. 31 but will remain in a transitional arrangement until the end of the year while negotiators try to thrash out future trade ties.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen recently expressed concern over whether the EU can conclude a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain by the end-2020 deadline.

Another challenge for the Croatia EU presidency will be Western Balkans countries wanting to join the bloc “as there have been different approaches when EU enlargement is concerned,” Grlic Radman told N1 television channel.

He spoke from Vienna where he marked the start of his country’s presidency in a ceremony at the embassy there.

Despite big expectations by the candidate countries “we will support what is realistic and possible,” he said.

“The process of joining EU does not happen in a day; we worked hard to meet all the criteria and standards,” he said.

Out of the Western Balkans countries only Serbia and Montenegro are in the process of negotiations while Albania and Northern Macedonia are yet to start  talks. Kosovo and Bosnia meanwhile are seriously lagging behind, the latter due to its complicated post-war political system that blocks reforms needed to become an EU candidate country.

Along with Slovenia, who joined in 2004, Croatia is the only country emerging from the former Yugoslavia to have become an EU member. It joined the bloc in 2013.

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From: MeNeedIt

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador closed out 2019 with a parting shot at his predecessors, saying imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo“ Guzman Loera had had the same power as the country’s president. 

In a video message from the southern city of Palenque on Wednesday, Lopez Obrador recounted his administration’s successes in its first year and highlighted its challenges — foremost, surging violence. He said that he had already done away with the high-level corruption that was rampant in previous governments, and that it was crucial to draw a bright line between criminal elements and authorities so that the two sides do not mingle as they had in the past. 

“There was a time when Guzman had the same power or had the influence that the then president had … because there had been a conspiracy, and that made it difficult to punish those who committed crimes. That has already become history, gone to the garbage dump of history,“ Lopez Obrador said. 

It appeared to be a reference to the indictment and arrest last month of Mexico’s former public safety secretary, Genaro Garcia Luna. Garcia Luna was public safety secretary in President Felipe Calderon’s Cabinet from 2006 to 2012. Before joining Calderon’s government, Garcia Luna led Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, the Federal Investigative Agency, under President Vicente Fox. 

He was charged in federal court in New York with three counts of trafficking cocaine and one count of making false statements. He had been living in Florida and was arrested in Texas. U.S. prosecutors allege he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel and in exchange allowed it to operate without interference. 

Guzman was convicted on drug conspiracy charges in New York. He was sentenced last year to life in prison. 

Lopez Obrador’s public safety secretary, Alfonso Durazo, on Wednesday echoed the president’s comments about rooting out corruption in the security forces. 

In a series of posts on Twitter, Durazo also said the government would recruit 21,170 people in 2020 to join the newly formed National Guard and continue to expand its presence in the country. Lopez Obrador has bet big that the new federal security force will be able to wrangle violence that generated a record-setting number of murders in 2019. 

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From: MeNeedIt

China confirmed its lead this year in Asia’s biggest maritime sovereignty dispute by sending nonmilitary ships to waters normally controlled by other countries, allowing it to flex muscle without conflicts or diplomatic losses.

Pushback from Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam kept Beijing from adding artificial islets or control over existing features in the resource-rich South China Sea in 2019, analysts say.

Citing dynastic-era maritime records, China claims 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer tropical waterway that stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo, while Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam claim waters that overlap China’s. They all value the sea for fisheries, fossil fuel reserves or both.

“Compared to the previous years, there was relatively less militarization by China,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization. “Still we see standoffs taking place, so there are still challenges.”

China was once more aggressive. Vietnam and China clashed in two deadly incidents in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2012, Chinese ships entered into a prolonged standoff with the Philippines at a shoal near Luzon Island and eventually took control of it. Two years later, Vietnamese and Chinese ships rammed each other over the location of an offshore Chinese oil rig.

Over the past decade, China has alarmed the other claimants by using landfill to create or expand three tiny islets, in the sea’s Spratly Islands and others in the Paracel chain. Some of those islets now support hangars and radar equipment.

“You had two, maybe three, cable-cutting incidents, you had over the years Chinese fishermen being rapacious with Vietnamese, boarding ships and seizing things,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia, recalling a more assertive China 10 years ago. “That seems to have died down,” he said.

Pressure without firefights

Chinese coast guard ships, survey vessels and informal fishing boat flotillas still appear in the sea tracts claimed by other governments. China used all three this year to assert existing claims but occupied no new islets and got into no firefights.

To avoid angering the other claimants, China worked with them economically, for example by financing infrastructure construction in the Philippines. That cooperation lowers odds that the other governments will grow cozier with the United States, which has the world’s strongest armed forces and resents Chinese maritime expansion, analysts have said.

China, however, positioned vessels this past year in the waters within 370 kilometers of Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, possibly to flex muscle. That distance normally gives coastal nations an exclusive economic zone.

Around Malaysia, “they’ve sailed ever more closely to our platforms, so that particular aspect has changed,” said Shahriman Lockman, senior foreign policy and security studies analyst with the research organization the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “They’ve not interrupted operations, they just sail closer, that’s all. It’s more a show of force rather than anything else.”

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Why China’s Coast Guard Spent 258 Days in Waters Claimed by Malaysia

China and Malaysia dispute waters rich in gas and oil exploration sites. China is trying for an upper hand

For much of the year, China’s coast guard made its presence felt in waters claimed by Malaysia, the most active explorer of undersea natural gas in the disputed region.

In January, China moved as many as 90 ships around the Manila-controlled Thitu Island to monitor construction of a beaching ramp. A Chinese fishing boat sank a Philippine vessel in June near the disputed sea’s Reed Bank, raising questions about whether the capsized boat was rammed.

Vietnam and China got into the most heated dispute of the year.

It started when a Chinese energy survey ship began patrolling in July near Vanguard Bank and a seabed tract about 352 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. The patrol circled an oil and gas block on the Vietnamese continental shelf, also within China’s claim. A standoff followed and ended in October when the survey ship left, apparently after completing a mission.

Diplomatic fixes

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has asked China to clarify its intent in the sea and this month his government submitted documentation to the United Nations suggesting it extend rights over a larger part of the continental shelf. China protested. Mahathir’s government also set aside a railway project funded by China, but it resumed in late 2019.

In the Philippines, legislators and military officials want President Rodrigo Duterte to step up resistance to China; however, his administration has agreed with Beijing to joint oil and gas development. The two sides started intergovernmental committee talks this year to oversee projects. They separately pledged to investigate the ship collision.

Vietnam contacted numerous Western nations about the Vanguard Bank standoff, Thayer said.

Much of Southeast Asia still expects the United States will keep China in check, as needed, by sending naval ships into the sea, Lockman said. Washington calls the events “freedom of navigation operations” and carried out several in 2019.

China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes four maritime claimants, often discuss the maritime disputes but made little headway this year. They are due to talk eventually about signing a code of conduct that would help avert mishaps.

“I wouldn’t say there’s been reconciliation,” said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s been a fluid situation and the jury is still out.”

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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the federal government will soon announce a new strategy to tackle underage vaping, promising, “We’re going to protect our families, we’re going to protect our children, and we’re going to protect the industry.”

Trump was vague about what the plan would entail, but suggested “certain flavors” in cartridge-based e-cigarettes would be taken off the market “for a period of time.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes, such as those sold by Juul and NJOY. E-cigarette pods formulated to taste like tobacco or menthol would still be allowed.

The Journal also reported that tank-based vaping systems, which are less popular among teenagers, would still allow users to custom-mix flavors. The Journal report cited anonymous “people familiar with the matter.”

Previous effort stalls

In September, Trump and his top health officials said they would soon sweep virtually all flavored e-cigarettes from the market because of their appeal to young children and teens. But that effort stalled after vaping lobbyists pushed back and White House advisers told Trump the ban could cost him votes with adults who vape.

On Tuesday, Trump suggested a ban of flavored e-cigarettes might be temporary.

“Hopefully, if everything’s safe, they’re going to be going very quickly back onto the market,” he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he was hosting a New Year’s Eve party.

“People have died from this, they died from vaping,” the president said. “We think we understand why. But we’re doing a very exhaustive examination and hopefully everything will be back on the market very, very shortly.”

FDA announcement

But the FDA had already announced that, starting in May, all e-cigarettes will need to undergo a review. And only those that can demonstrate a benefit for U.S. public health will be permitted to stay on the market.

In Florida, Trump added: “Look, vaping can be good from the standpoint — you look at the e-cigarettes, you stop smoking. If you can stop smoking, that’s a big advantage. So, we think we’re going to get it back on the market very, very quickly.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Australia deployed military ships and aircraft Wednesday to help communities ravaged by apocalyptic wildfires that destroyed homes and sent thousands of residents and holidaymakers fleeing to the shoreline.

Navy ships and military aircraft were bringing water, food and fuel to towns where supplies were depleted and roads were cut off by the fires. Since Monday, seven people have died as destructive wildfires tore through communities in New South Wales and Victoria states on Australia’s southeast coast.

On Tuesday morning, 4,000 people in the coastal town of Mallacoota fled to the shore as winds pushed a fire toward their homes under a sky darkened by smoke and turned blood-red by flames. Stranded residents and vacationers slept in their cars, and gas stations and surf clubs transformed into evacuation areas. Dozens of homes burned before winds changed direction late Tuesday, sparing the rest of the town.

Victoria Emergency Commissioner Andrew Crisp told reporters the Australian Defense Force was moving naval assets to Mallacoota on a supply mission that would last two weeks and helicopters would also fly in more firefighters since roads were inaccessible.

Conditions cooled Wednesday, but the fire danger remained very high across the state, where four people are missing.

“We have three months of hot weather to come. We do have a dynamic and a dangerous fire situation across the state,” Crisp said.

In the New South Wales town of Conjola Park, 50 properties were confirmed destroyed and cars were melted by Tuesday’s fires. More than 100 fires were still burning in the state Wednesday, though none were at an emergency level. Seven people have died this week, including a volunteer firefighter, a man found in a burned-out car and a father and son who died in their house. Two people in New South Wales are missing.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said firefighting crews would take advantage of easing conditions Wednesday to restore power to critical infrastructure and conduct some back burning.

Climate change debate

The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has led authorities to call this season the worst on record and reignited debate about whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative government has taken enough action on climate change. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, but Morrison rejected calls last month to downsize Australia’s lucrative coal industry.

Morrison won a surprise third term in May. Among his government’s pledges was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030, a modest figure compared to the center-left opposition Labor party’s pledge of 45%.

The leader of the minor Australian Greens party, Richard Di Natale, demanded a royal commission, the nation’s highest form of inquiry, on the wildfire crisis.

“If he (Morrison) refuses to do so, we will be moving for a parliamentary commission of inquiry with royal commissionlike powers as soon as parliament returns,” Di Natale said in a statement.

About 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land have burned nationwide over the past few months, with 15 people confirmed dead and more than 1,000 homes destroyed.

Fireworks go on

Some communities canceled New Year’s fireworks celebrations, but Sydney’s popular display over its iconic harbor controversially went ahead in front of more than a million revelers. The city was granted an exemption to a total fireworks ban in place there and elsewhere to prevent new wildfires.

Smoke from the wildfires meant Canberra, the nation’s capital, Wednesday had air quality more than 21 times the hazardous rating to be reportedly the worst in the world.

The smoke has also wafted across the Tasman Sea and into New Zealand.
 

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From: MeNeedIt