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Israel’s military says it has conducted a joint exercise with U.S. Special Forces simulating the retaking of a hijacked ship.
The drill, held last Wednesday, comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the Persian Gulf and efforts by the Trump administration to set up a naval security mission to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
The military said Tuesday that the two militaries “exercised regaining control of a hijacked ship and extracting forces from enemy territory.” The army said the drill had no connection to recent events and was planned as part of its annual training plan.
Israeli media this month quoted Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz as telling a parliamentary committee that Israel was taking part in the U.S.-led coalition.
A Guatemalan court on Monday acquitted a son and a brother of outgoing President Jimmy Morales, after a corruption case that battered his popularity and sparked the leader’s feud with a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission.
Samuel “Sammy” Morales, the president’s older brother and political adviser, had been on trial on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, while Jose Manuel Morales, the president’s eldest son, was facing fraud charges.
In January 2017, the Attorney General’s office and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) accused both men of defrauding the land registry of $12,000 in 2013, using false invoices, before Morales was elected.
Samuel “Sammy” Morales, brother and political adviser of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, shakes hands with a person after being acquitted by a Guatemalan court on corruption charges, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Aug. 19, 2019.
The case centered on invoices submitted by the mother of Jose Manuel’s then-girlfriend after she agreed to supply Christmas hampers to officials at the registry.
The woman sent the registry a bill made out in the name of a local restaurant for 564 breakfasts, not Christmas hampers, but witnesses said the breakfasts were never delivered.
Sammy Morales, who had faced up to 11 years in prison, said he helped obtain the invoice from the restaurant as a favor to his nephew, but denied it was fraudulent. Jose Manuel had faced a jail term of up to 8 years over the scandal.
The probe soured the commission’s relations with the president, and later in 2017, the CICIG tried to impeach Jimmy Morales, 50, for alleged campaign finance irregularities.
Unlike his imprisoned predecessor, Otto Perez, who was brought down by a separate CICIG corruption probe in 2015, the president survived a vote in Congress to strip him of immunity.
Morales, whose term in office will end in January, went on to accuse the CICIG of abuse of power, and vowed to expel the commission from the country. Morales succeeded in terminating the CICIG’s mandate, which will end in September.
The country’s top reproductive services group, Planned Parenthood, is pulling out of a federal family planning program to avoid abiding by new Trump administration rules on abortion.
The new rule under the Title X program bans grant recipients from referring patients for abortion.
“We will not be bullied into withholding abortion information from our patients,” Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said. “Our patients deserve to make their own health care decisions, not to be forced to have Donald Trump or Mike Pence make those decisions for them.”
Planned Parenthood says its clinics will stay open, but they will have to scramble to make up the loss of federal grants.
Along with providing abortions, Planned Parenthood also provides patients access to birth control, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, cancer screening, infertility treatment, and other services. Many of its patients are low-income and minority women. McGill Johnson says they will be the ones to suffer most.
But a Health and Human Services statement says it is Planned Parenthood that is “abandoning their obligations” to their patients by choosing to reject the regulations for accepting grants.
A federal appeals court is considering whether to overturn the restrictions on abortion referrals.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Monday announced a new leadership team at the federal Bureau of Prisons in a shake-up of the agency in the wake of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide inside a federal jail in New York City.
Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, a veteran of the Bureau of Prisons, will return to the agency to serve as its director, Barr said.
He named another former agency official, Thomas Kane, to serve as her deputy.
The Bureau of Prisons has about 37,000 employees and oversees 122 facilities, which house about 180,000 inmates.
Hugh Hurwitz, who has been serving as the bureau’s acting director – including when Epstein was found unresponsive over a week ago in a Manhattan jail cell – has been reassigned to his prior position within the agency.
Epstein had been arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to federal charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14.
An autopsy report released on Friday concluded he committed suicide by hanging.
His death at the age of 66 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan triggered multiple investigations and had prompted Barr to criticize “serious irregularities” at the facility.
FILE – The Manhattan Correctional Center is seen in New York, July 1, 2019.
“During this critical juncture, I am confident Dr. Hawk Sawyer and Dr. Kane will lead BOP with the competence, skill, and resourcefulness they have embodied throughout their government careers,” Barr said in the statement.
Barr had previously ordered the reassignment of the warden at the MCC. Two corrections officers assigned to Epstein’s unit were placed on administrative leave pending investigations.
Lawyers for Epstein did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
His lawyers had said in a statement last week that they were “not satisfied” with the medical examiner’s conclusions and planned to carry out their own investigation, seeking prison videos taken around the time of his death.
FILE – This March 28, 2017, file photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. Newly released court documents show that Epstein repeatedly declined to answer questions about sex abuse as part of a lawsuit. A…
Epstein had been on suicide watch at the jail but was taken off prior to his death, a source who was not authorized to speak on the matter previously told Reuters. Two jail guards are required to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed, the source added.
Epstein, a registered sex offender who once socialized with U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of unlawfully paying a teenage girl for sex and was sentenced to 13 months in a county jail, a deal widely criticized as too lenient.
Senator Ben Sasse, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee, has urged Barr to void the agreement and said “heads must roll” after Epstein’s death.
“This is a good start, but it’s not the end,” Sasse said of Barr’s announcement on Tuesday. “Jeffrey Epstein should still be in a padded cell and under constant surveillance, but the justice system has failed Epstein’s victims at every turn.”
The Open Arms charity says it is willing to defy Italian authorities and dock their migrant ship at Lampedusa.
The boat with about 100 migrants is stationed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Italian island, demanding permission to dock after 18 days at sea.
“We have exhausted physically, morally and technically the few resources that this organization has in this moment,” Open Arms founder Oscar Camps told Reuters on Monday.
Open Arms founder Oscar Camps is photographed as he is interviewed by reporters on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, Aug. 19, 2019.
Many of the migrants on board are sick, suicidal and close to mental breakdowns, the charity said.
The group has rejected offers from Spain to sail to one of its ports. France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania have offered to give the migrants refuge.
Under international law, a distressed ship is supposed to head to the first safe port. Open Arms says the ship and migrants could not withstand the journey to a Spanish port.
“While our boat is 800 meters off the coast of Lampedusa, European states are asking a small NGO like ours to face three days of sailing in harsh weather conditions,” the organization said.
While some onboard the rescue ship have been allowed to enter Lampedusa, Italy’s hard-line anti-immigrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is refusing to let the boat dock there.
He said Italy has done enough in accepting African migrants and is demanding other EU nations do more to help. He also called private charity migrant ships “taxis” for human traffickers.
Some of migrant minors allowed to disembark the Open Arms vessel, anchored off the Sicilian vacation and fishing island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, wait to be taken to the Sicilian port of Porto Empedocle from Lampedusa, Aug. 19, 2019.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said what Salvini is doing is “a disgrace to humanity as a whole … putting human lives at risk for electoral reasons.”
A second ship, the Ocean Viking — operated by French charities Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranean — is also at sea with 356 mainly Sudanese migrants looking for a safe port.
Lampedusa is the closest EU port from Libyan shores, where thousands of migrants looking to escape war and poverty try crossing the Mediterranean in search of safety, often aboard rickety vessels and flimsy rafts.
Those not rescued by charity ships are left to drown. Migrants picked up by the Libyan coast guard are returned to Libya and housed in migrant detention centers near Tripoli.
Some of those centers are caught in the fighting between rival Libyan governments.
Two missiles slammed into one detention center last month, killing 53.
Thousands of protesters in Indonesia’s West Papua province have set fire to a local parliament building.
Vice Gov. of West Papua province Mohammad Lakotani said Monday’s demonstration was sparked by accusations that security forces arrested and insulted dozens of Papuan students in the East Java province cities of Surabaya and Malang on Sunday.He said an angered mob set fire to tires and twigs in Manokwari, the provincial capital. Television footage showed orange flames and gray smoke billowing from the burning parliament building.
Several thousand protesters also staged rallies in Jayapura, the capital city of the neighboring province of Papua, where an insurgency has simmered for decades. Many in the crowd wore headbands of a separatist flag.
At least eight K-pop stars from China and even one from Taiwan and one from Hong Kong are publicly stating their support for Beijing’s one-China policy, eliciting a mixture of disappointment and understanding from fans.
Many of the statements came after protesters opposed to Beijing’s growing influence over semi-autonomous Hong Kong removed a Chinese flag and tossed it into Victoria Harbor earlier this month.
Lay Zhang, Jackson Wang, Lai Kuan-lin and Victoria Song were among the K-pop singers who recently uploaded a Chinese flag and declared themselves as “one of 1.4 billion guardians of the Chinese flag” on their official Weibo social media accounts. Wang is from Hong Kong and Lai is from Taiwan.
Some see the public pronouncements as the latest examples of how celebrities and companies feel pressured to toe the line politically in the important Chinese market. Yet they also coincide with a surge in patriotism among young Chinese raised on a steady diet of pro-Communist Party messaging.
Song and Zhang, a member of popular group EXO, have shown their Chinese pride on Instagram, in Song’s case uploading an image of the Chinese flag last week with the caption “Hong Kong is part of China forever.” Such posts would only be seen by their international fans because Instagram, like most Western social media sites, is blocked by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s censors.
K-pop fans reacted swiftly to the avowals of allegiance to China. Some called it shameful, while others were more understanding.
Erika Ng, a 26-year-old Hong Kong fan of Jackson Wang, was not surprised by his statement. She said he “values the China market more than the Hong Kong market” because of his large presence in the mainland.
Wang, a member of the group Got7, used to carry a Hong Kong flag and wear a hat with the city’s symbol, a bauhinia flower. Lately, he has been carrying a Chinese flag on his concert tour and was wearing a China flag hoodie in his music video.
In this Jan. 14, 2019, file photo, singer Hong Kong singer Jackson Wang performs at the end of the Fendi men’s Fall-Winter 2019-20 collection, that was presented in Milan, Italy.
Ellyn Bukvich, a 26-year-old American who has been an EXO fan for five years, said many young fans will probably support Zhang and his message because of his status as a K-pop idol.
“It’s spreading propaganda and it’s very effective,” Bukvich said.
The one-China policy maintains that there is only one Chinese government, and it is a key diplomatic point accepted by most nations in the world, including the U.S. It is mostly aimed at the democratic island of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary.
In the case of Hong Kong, a former British colony handed back to Chinese control in 1997, Beijing maintains a one country, two systems policy in which the city is guaranteed greater freedoms than those on the mainland until 2047.
China’s government and entirely state-controlled media have consistently portrayed the Hong Kong protest movement as an effort by criminals trying to split the territory from China, backed by hostile foreigners.
International brands – from fashion companies to airlines – have in the past been compelled to make public apologies for perceived breaches of that policy, such as listing Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries on their websites or T-shirts.
Zhang terminated his partnership with Samsung Electronics last week, accusing the South Korean mobile giant of damaging China’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The statement in a Weibo post was prompted by Samsung having separate language options for users in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan on their global website. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified ones used in mainland China, and Hong Kong also has English as an official languages. Samsung declined to comment on whether it will continue to provide different language options for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
It can be difficult to know whether loyalty vows to Beijing are heartfelt or for commercial reasons. The past is littered with examples of celebrities, both Chinese and foreign, who saw their business in China destroyed after the party objected to a statement or an action.
In 2016, Taiwanese K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu made a public apology for waving the Taiwanese flag while appearing on a South Korean television show. A Chinese vilification campaign against her led to a backlash among some Taiwanese, who at the time were amid a presidential election eventually won by Tsai Ing-wen, who is despised by Beijing for her pro-independence stance.
Public support for Beijing hasn’t been limited to pop stars.
Liu Yifei, the Chinese-born star of Disney’s upcoming live-action version of the film “Mulan,” weighed in on the situation in Hong Kong, where protesters have accused police of abuses.
“I support the Hong Kong police,” she wrote on her Weibo account. “You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong.”
Some questioned her motives, wondering if the post was calculated to ensure her film is released widely in China – the world’s largest film market. Among Hong Kong protesters, there were swift calls for a boycott of the film when it is released next year.
Imagine listening to a violin concert in one of New York City’s majestic cathedrals or in the National Arboretum, surrounded by blooming magnolias. Now anyone can experience this exquisite scene with the use of VR glasses. A team of researchers from the University of Maryland at College Park came up with new immersive technologies that allow people from all over the world to experience performing arts in a breathtakingly beautiful setting without getting up from their couch. Nastassia Jaumen has the story.
Every day, cutting-edge research is being performed in government and university labs across the country. Tech transfer is the process of taking that research out of the lab and transforming it into a business. One company jump-starts the process by introducing entrepreneurs to that research. Tina Trinh explains.
Seeking to end a humanitarian crisis, Spain says a Spanish rescue boat with 107 migrants in the southern Mediterranean can sail to Spain and disembark its passengers in Algeciras.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Sunday told the Open Arms ship to leave Italian waters and go to Spain. Salvini contends that Open Arms is anchored off the southern island of Lampedusa “just to provoke me and Italy.”
The boat’s crew says conditions on the ship are “miserable” 17 days since it rescued people off Libya. Six EU countries say they’ll take the migrants in, but Salvini hasn’t let the ship dock.
The Open Arms didn’t immediately say if would go to Spain, several days’ sailing away. The group says Salvini is using the 107 migrants for “xenophobic and racist propaganda.”
A study by the U.N. Children’s Fund finds more than half a million Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar are not learning the life skills they need to prepare them for the future or to protect them from present-day abuse and exploitation.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children have been languishing in squalid, overcrowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar for two years — ever since a mass exodus of 745,000 refugees fleeing persecution and violence in Myanmar began.
The U.N. Children’s Fund reports more than a quarter million children up to age 14 are receiving a non-formal education, while more than 25,000 others are receiving none.
Author of the UNICEF report, Simon Ingram, said adolescents are most disadvantaged.
He said 97 percent of children aged 15 to 18 years are not attending any type of educational facility, putting them at particular risk.
“When you meet teenagers in the camps, they speak readily of the dangers they face, especially at night, when drug dealers operate, and gang fights are reported to be a regular occurrence,” he said. “Cases of trafficking are also being reported, although they are hard to quantify. The camps can be especially hazardous for girls and women.”
UNICEF and partners have provided learning to more than 190,000 Rohingya children in more than 2,000 centers. These agencies are calling on the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh to allow the use of their national educational resources to provide more structured learning for Rohingya children.
FILE – A Rohingya refugee girl sells vegetables in Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh, Aug. 28, 2018.
Ingram told VOA that UNICEF is appealing to Myanmar authorities to provide education to the children in the refugee camps. Until now, he said, the children have been taught in the Burmese language by volunteer teachers from the refugee population.
“And, with the best will in the world, that is not the same as having a properly trained teacher, someone who has experience of delivering the Myanmar government’s own curriculum. So, that is really what we are looking for and those are the conversations that are now ongoing with the government in Myanmar and we hope that we will receive a positive response to that,” said Ingram.
Ingram said it is critical for refugee children to be taught in Burmese as that is the language they will need if and when they return back to Myanmar. Unfortunately, he notes Rohingya adolescents will continue to live in limbo until it is safe for them to go home. He acknowledged that going home does not appear to be a realistic possibility for the foreseeable future.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Sunday in rain-drenched Hong Kong for another anti-government rally.
This is the eleventh weekend in a row that protesters have turned out to voice their dismay.
The demonstrations began as peaceful protests to stop an extradition bill that would allow criminal suspects to face trial in mainland China’s opaque legal system. Since then the protests have evolved into a movement for democratic reforms.
The protests are generally peaceful, but activists have sometimes clashed with police.
“We hope that there will not be any chaotic situations today,” organizer Bonnie Leung told the Associated Press.
The extradition bill has been suspended, but the protests continue as Hong Kong residents worry about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” mandate that has been in place since the territory’s return from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
China’s paramilitary troops have been training in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, causing concern that China is ready to send in the troops to suppress the protests.
Hong Kong’s police have insisted they are able to handle the demonstrators.
Demonstrations last weekend at Hong Kong Airport spilled over into the work week, crippling one of the world’s busiest air hubs for several days and sparking clashes between demonstrators and riot police.
