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The Trump administration is under renewed fire from environmentalists following its move earlier this week to weaken the Endangered Species Act. At the same time, more than two dozen states and cities as well as a coalition of health and environmental groups are suing the administration over its rollback of the Clean Power Plan, one of President Barack Obama’s signature regulations to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
From: MeNeedIt
America’s top representative in Taiwan said Thursday that Washington expects the island to continue increasing its defense spending as Chinese security threats to the U.S. ally continue to grow.
W. Brent Christensen said the U.S. had “not only observed Taiwan’s enthusiasm to pursue necessary platforms to ensure its self-defense, but also its evolving tenacity to develop its own indigenous defense industry.”
That was a nod to President Tsai Ing-wen’s drive to develop domestic training jets, submarines and other weapons technology, supplementing arms bought from the U.S.
“These investments by Taiwan are commendable, as is Taiwan’s ongoing commitment to increase the defense budget annually to ensure that Taiwan’s spending is sufficient to provide for its own self-defense needs,” Christensen said in a speech. “And we anticipate that these figures will continue to grow commensurate with the threats Taiwan faces.”
Christensen is the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, which has served as the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taiwan since formal diplomatic relations were cut in 1979.
While China and Taiwan split during a civil war in 1949, Beijing still considers Taiwan Chinese territory and has increased its threats to annex the self-governing democracy by force if necessary.
Despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, U.S. law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.
Since 2008, U.S. administrations have notified Congress of more than $24 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan, including in the past two months the sale of 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, valued at $2.2 billion dollars, Christensen said.
The Trump administration alone has notified Congress of $4.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, he said.
China has responded furiously to all such sales and recently announced it would impose sanctions on any U.S. enterprises involved in such deals, saying they undermine China’s sovereignty and national security.
Tsai has adamantly rejected Chinese pressure to reunite Taiwan and China under the “one-country, two-systems” framework that governs Hong Kong. She and many Taiwanese have said that the people of the island stand with the young people of Hong Kong who are fighting for democratic freedoms in ongoing protests.
Tsai, who says she will seek a second four-year term next year, has said Taiwan was also stepping-up training as it prepared to transition to an all-volunteer force and has raised the defense budget for three consecutive years.
China’s spending on the People’s Liberation Army rose to 1.2 trillion yuan ($178 billion) this year, making it the second-largest defense budget behind the United States.
Beijing has cut contacts with Tsai’s government over Tsai’s refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan is a part of China and sought to increase its international isolation by reducing its number of diplomatic allies to just 17.
It has also stepped up efforts at military intimidation, holding military exercises across the Taiwan Strait and circling the island with bombers and fighters in what are officially termed training missions.
From: MeNeedIt
French President Emmanuel Macron is celebrating U.S. and African veterans as well as French resistance fighters who took part in crucial but often-overlooked World War II landings on the Riviera.
At a ceremony Thursday in the southern town of Saint-Raphael marking 75 years since the operation to wrest southern France from Nazi control, Macron said, “your commitment is our heritage against darkness and ignorance.”
He urged French mayors to name streets after African soldiers from then-French colonies brought in to fight. Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and Guinea President Alpha Conde also took part in the ceremony.
Starting Aug. 15, 1944, some 350,000 U.S. and French troops landed on the Mediterranean coast for Operation Dragoon, which was intended to coincide with the D-Day invasion in Normandy in June but was delayed due to a lack of resources.
From: MeNeedIt
Syrian forces gained more ground from insurgents in the country’s northwest on Thursday, edging closer to a major rebel-held town a day after militants shot down a government warplane in the area.
The government offensive, which intensified last week, has displaced nearly 100,000 people over the past four days, according to the Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group active in northwestern Syria.
Syrian troops have been on the offensive in Idlib and its surroundings, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, since April 30. The region is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced in other battles around the war-torn country.
The fighting over the past days has been concentrated on two fronts as government forces march toward the town of Khan Sheikhoun from the east and west. The latest offensive also aims to besiege rebel-held towns and villages in northern parts of Hama province, according to opposition activists.
The town of Khan Sheikhoun is a stronghold of al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful group in the rebel-held areas. The town was the scene of a chemical attack on April 4, 2017 that killed 89 people.
At the time, the United States, Britain and France pointed a finger at the Syrian government, saying their experts had found that nerve agents were used in the attack. Days later, the U.S. fired 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in central Syria, saying the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was launched from the base.
The Syrian government and its Russian allies denied there was a chemical attack.
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said Thursday that pro-government fighters captured three small villages, just west of Khan Sheikhoun.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, said the villages fell in the morning hours and that the town of Khan Sheikhoun is being bombarded relentlessly.
Syrian state media confirmed insurgents had downed the government plane on Wednesday. An al-Qaida-linked group has released a video of the pilot in which the handcuffed man identified himself as a lieutenant colonel in the Syrian air force.
In the video, the pilot says his fighter jet was shot down when he was carrying out a mission near Khan Sheikhoun.
From: MeNeedIt
Uganda’s Communication Commission announced, Aug. 8, 2019, that all commercial online publishers must register with the government. The commission says the publishers have to be watched to ensure they are posting appropriate content. Ugandan social media influencers and news organizations see the requirement as a step toward limiting freedom of speech and the press. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.
From: MeNeedIt
A court in Sweden has found American rapper A$AP Rocky guilty of assault but he will not serve any more jail time.
The court on Wednesday gave the rapper a suspended sentence.
A$AP Rocky, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested with three members of his team after a fight that took place in Stockholm June 30.
Prosecutors alleged that Mayers and two members of his entourage repeatedly punched and kicked the victim during an attack that lasted several minutes. Prosecutors also accuse the rapper of hitting the victim with a glass bottle.
The rapper, who said he was acting in self defense, spent nearly five weeks in detention but was released earlier this month, pending the verdict in his trial.
President Donald Trump attempted to intervene in the case and had urged the release of A$AP Rocky.
“We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem! #FreeRocky,” Trump said in a series of tweets about the matter.
From: MeNeedIt
India issued a fresh flood alert Wednesday for parts of the southern state of Kerala, as the nationwide death toll from the annual monsoon deluge rose to at least 244.
Authorities warned Kerala locals of heavy rainfall over the next 24-48 hours in some of the worst affected regions of the state popular with tourists.
Heavy rain in parts of four Indian states — Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat – has forced more than 1.2 million people to leave their homes, mostly for government-run relief camps.
Kerala was hit by its worst floods in almost a century last year, when 450 people died, and the state is still recovering from the damage to public infrastructure including highways, railways and roads.
The state’s death toll this monsoon season increased to 95 overnight, with at least 59 people missing, Kerala police told AFP on Wednesday.
At least 58 people have also lost their lives in neighbouring Karnataka state, where authorities have rescued around 677,000 people from flooded regions.
The situation is now improving in Karnataka, however, as waters start to recede, a government official told AFP.
In the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra the death toll reached 91, with hundreds of thousands rescued from inundated regions.
“Our teams have recovered 49 bodies so far from different regions including Sangli, Kolhapur, Satara and Pune, and most deaths were caused due to drowning and wall collapses,” Deepak Mhaisekar, divisional commissioner of Pune told AFP.
“The situation is under control now,” he added, though the casualty count may increase slightly.
India has deployed the army, navy and air force to work with the local emergency personnel for search, rescue and relief operations.
The monsoon rains are crucial to replenishing water supplies in drought-stricken India, but they kill hundreds of people across the country every year.
From: MeNeedIt
The U.N. refugee agency warns that time is running out for more than 500 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea as storm clouds gather and their rescue vessels are denied a safe port of entry in Europe.
Italy and Malta continue to refuse docking rights to two rescue vessels. This despite the deteriorating conditions for 356 refugees and migrants rescued August 9 by the Ocean Viking, a vessel run by the charity Doctors Without Borders, and another 151 people who have been on board the Spanish NGO Open Arms for nearly two weeks.
U.N. refugee agency spokesman Charlie Yaxley says the passengers are in urgent need of disembarkation. He tells VOA storms are coming, so time is running out for a solution to be found.
“The rough seas are expected to intensify during the course of today and into tomorrow. Really, this is a question of how much we are willing to turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who have fled war and violence,” he said.
Yaxley says many of the people aboard the rescue vessels come from Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and other unstable countries. While many others have fled economic hardship rather than conflict, he says they too have suffered appalling abuse–many during their perilous journeys toward Europe and many more in Libya.
He says conditions for refugees and migrants are so abysmal that those rescued at sea should not be returned to Libya, which is not safe.
“People do not choose to risk their lives on these dangerous journeys unless they feel the desperation that their lives are in better hands on the water than on remaining on the land,” he said. “The intensifying fighting, the widespread reports of abuses including arbitrary detention means it cannot be considered to have a safe port. Nobody should be returned there.”
Yaxley says the UNHCR supports a system whereby European nations share the responsibility of hosting the refugees and migrants with the countries that provide a safe haven to those rescued at sea.
However, anti-immigrant governments in Italy and Malta accuse Europe of leaving them to deal with the refugee crisis on their own. To deter rescues at sea, Italy recently passed a law imposing fines of more than one million dollars on boats conducting these missions entering its waters.
From: MeNeedIt
China’s recent squeeze on the Taiwan economy and its international profile is expected to backfire by making Taiwanese ever angrier and endearing them to leaders who oppose Beijing.
Taiwanese will like China less for cutting off self-guided tourism and blocking its citizens from entering a Taipei-based regional film award, analysts and a government official said this week. People upset with China generally vote for anti-China leaders at home, frustrating Beijing’s goal of unifying someday with their self-ruled island.
“In the past, the impact of this sort of attitude [in China] has been very poor,” said You Ying-lung, chairman of the survey research body Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation. “The targets of its criticism would be elected president.”
Taiwan’s incumbent president, an irritant to China, is running for a second four-year term against a candidate seen as friendlier to the Communist leadership.
Accumulation of pressure
In the latest cases, China’s culture ministry starting August 1 will cut off permits for mainland Chinese people to visit Taiwan as independent travelers. About 82,000 of those travelers normally visit Taiwan every month. Their absence will erode business for inns, eateries and local taxi services.
Last week the Chinese government-controlled China Film News blog said domestic actors and films could no longer compete in the Taiwan-based Golden Horse Awards, an annual Oscars-like event for films from Chinese-speaking Asia. The awards in their 56th year have helped boost the fame of stars such as Jackie Chan.
“The authorities in mainland China must take full responsibility for causing this step backward in people-to-people exchanges,” said Chiu Chui-cheng, spokesman for the Taiwan government’s Mainland Affairs Council. “This incident will make Taiwanese citizens recognize again all the more that China is exerting political pressure on the essence of normal exchanges.”
China-Taiwan ties have weakened since 2016, when President Tsai Ing-wen took office in Taipei. Her government won’t negotiate on Beijing’s condition that both sides belong to a single China. China regards self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, to be unified by force someday if needed. Most Taiwanese prefer autonomy, a Taiwan government survey found in January.
Also during Tsai’s term, officials in Taipei say, China has sent military aircraft near Taiwan and persuaded five Taiwanese diplomatic allies to switch allegiance to Beijing.
Common Taiwanese are talking about the film awards and tourism suspension flaps, ruling party lawmaker Lee Chun-yi said. People are getting more upset with China, he added. “The more they push the Taiwanese, the further away they’ll get,” he said.
Cycle of anger
Actions in Beijing that are aimed at warning Taiwan by squeezing its economy or international reputation sometimes have an opposite effect, You said.
Beijing tested missiles in the Taiwan Strait from late 1995 until just before the 1996 Taiwan election, for example. Lee Teng-hui, who advocated keeping a political distance from China, won the election.
The Chinese government said ahead of Taiwan’s 2000 presidential that it would use force if the island’s leaders declined to discuss unification. Chen Shui-bian, another anti-China firebrand, won that race.
By taking action aimed at Taiwan now rather than later, China may avoid influencing the island’s January presidential and parliamentary elections, said Joanna Lei, CEO of the Chunghua 21st Century Think Tank in Taiwan. The campaign is likely to crest in November and December.
“This has got to be carefully weighted,” Lei said. “So even if people are unhappy, by the time November comes, there will be other things and they’re just trying to minimize the potential negative impacts to the extent possible.”
Tsai should get 45% of the presidential election vote, leading her closest rival by nearly five percentage points, the survey research foundation discovered in a July 22 survey.
From: MeNeedIt
Kamala Harris is on the move.
During the course of a five-day sprint across Iowa that included 17 stops across 11 counties, the Democratic presidential candidate ordered tacos from a tacqueria in Storm Lake, sampled a pork chop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, called bingo at a senior center in Muscatine and toured the Coyote Run farm in Lacona.
The Associated Press interviewed Harris on her bus, which blared her name in bold, vibrant colors as she traveled through a state that she repeatedly said has “made me a better candidate.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What have you learned from the people you have met on this trip so far?
A: I’ve heard from everyone from farmers to teachers, to people who have been laid off, to seniors who are worried about their Medicare coverage and their prescription drug costs, to students really worried about student loan debt. A lot of people worried about climate change, and there’s an intersection between some of those. What I’ve enjoyed about it is, you know, given the travel schedules we all have, to be in for me, with all of the states that we have to cover. Being in one state for five to six straight days, doing it on the bus in a way that we’re not just going to the places where there are airports and kind of … but instead can get out to places where there are no airports but where people live. How many people came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for coming,’ because they’re not necessarily used to seeing with any frequency at all presidential candidates. I’ve been saying from the beginning, and I’m still in that phase, that it’s really important for me to listen as much as I’m talking.
Q: Why was it so important to be in Iowa for so long?
A: There are some practical reasons, to be sure. The Senate’s not in session so I could actually do five straight days. Five straight days, it’s a luxury of sorts. To be able to do that, to do it and to stay, and, really, we’ve been all over the state. It’s almost like being embedded when you as a journalist do that, right? Which is being able to really just dive in and not to have split attention to really just be here. Like this, looking out the window and seeing the flooding and seeing … one of the things I am very focused on in Iowa is the water issue, both in terms of issues of rain and flooding but also clean water is just a big issue in the state. I was just in Michigan. It’s a big issue there. When you talk to a mother in Flint or in Detroit, and you talk to a mother here, they’re having the same conversation, which is that there is poison in the water that their babies are drinking. That’s real. And they’re saying, What is my government doing about it? And they’re saying, “I don’t have any other source of water, and sometimes I have to drink that water that I know has chemicals in it that my child shouldn’t be drinking.” That’s real. For me, that’s the thing about these kinds of trips, which is very affirming. It’s about proving my hypothesis, if you will, which is that we have more in common than what separates us.
Q: How do you think about balancing telling people why you want to be their president and responding to things that President Donald Trump says?
A: I feel the need to speak about what he says when it is so clearly destructive, hateful or not reflective of the words of a leader, which is often. But I just think that this is a moment that is challenging leaders to have the courage to speak and say that is not effective of a leader, much less the leader of our nation and the so-called free world. People gotta speak up. There’s a speech that I give about hate, and it was actually part of my stump for a long time. Which is about the importance of speaking truth even when it makes people uncomfortable and speaking the truth about racism, anti-Semitism on and on. … We must agree that whoever is the subject of that and is being attacked should never be made to fight alone. That’s what is going on in my head when I hear certain statements that he makes. It’s about all of us collectively saying we’re not going to stand by and witness an attempt to beat people down without standing up, collectively, and saying we’re all in this together.
Q: Your campaign’s headquarters are in Baltimore. What did you think of the president’s comments about the city and its residents?
A: Our headquarters are in Baltimore, very purposely chosen. I remember spending time in Baltimore when I was at Howard. Baltimore is a great American city. It’s got a profound history, it’s got a profound culture. And yeah, it has challenges, but it also has made incredible contributions. I put his attack on Baltimore in the same lane of all of the other attacks, right? He is disrespectful. He clearly is not a student of history in terms of understanding the historical significance of certain moments in time or certain places, and the fact that he spoke the word he did about Elijah Cummings … it’s just continually further evidence of a person who does not understand the significance of the words of the president of the United States. Those words should be used in a way that is about lifting people up, not beating them down. The people of Baltimore are the people he represents. To speak of them like the other is just vivid evidence of the fact that the guy does not understand his job and therefore should not be in that job. Most other people, if they keep showing they don’t understand what the job requires, get fired. He needs to get fired. That’s why I’m running against him. Dude gotta go!
Q: How did you come up with that line?
A: It was a Saturday night in Las Vegas. It was one of our last events and I’m going on. I’m making the point about how our campaign is so much bigger than about getting rid of Donald Trump, it’s about the future of America and making the transition. As a point of emphasis, and also because I got very casual in my conversation because it was just late … So I said, just as a basic point, ‘We all know dude gotta go.’ At which point people — because it was Las Vegas on a Saturday night — people started chanting, ‘Dude gotta go, Dude gotta go.’ I don’t know how many times, the whole place. I did it again, I think, last night, and people kind of liked it. But it makes the point. At some point the conversation about what is not right … At some point, these things are just really self-evident, and so for me, the issue that our campaign is about is not only that kind of obvious point, but what are we going to build. That’s why I talk about the fact that people want a problem-solving president, somebody who can be transformative in a way that is about transforming lives, that is about building up our country in a way that is about strengthening us.
From: MeNeedIt
A senior U.S. diplomat says Washington is consulting with its allies as it proceeds with plans to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Asia, a move China says it will respond to with countermeasures.
Washington has said it plans to place such weapons in the Asia-Pacific following the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The U.S. accused the other treaty signatory, Russia, of cheating by developing weapons systems banned under the treaty. However, many analysts say Washington has long sought to deploy intermediate-range missiles to counter China’s growing arsenal.
In a conference call Tuesday, State Department Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Andrea Thompson said governments would decide whether or not to host such missiles.
“That’s a sovereign decision to be made by the leaders of those governments,” Thompson said. “Any decision made in the region will be done in consultation with our allies — this is not a U.S. unilateral decision.”
U.S. mutual defense treaty allies Japan, South Korea and Australia are considered the prime missile base candidates, although Beijing has warned that any nation that accepts such an arrangement will face retribution, likely in the form of an economic boycott or similar sanctions. Although China maintains a large stock of intermediate-range missiles, it says those are unable to reach the U.S. homeland, while missiles deployed by the U.S. in Asia would be within striking distance of mainland China.
While the U.S. decision to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has placed the future of arms control agreements in doubt, Thompson said the move had brought a “positive response from partners and allies globally, not only tied to the Indo-Pacific but our NATO partners as well.”
She also said Washington hopes Beijing will join in discussions with the U.S. and Russia on a nuclear arms limitation pact after the current agreement, known as New START, expires in 2021. China has said it has no intention of entering into any such trilateral negotiations.
“Part of being a responsible actor … you need to have transparency and responsibility. So we encourage China to come to the table as well,” Thompson said. “The world demands it. That’s what responsible nations do.”
From: MeNeedIt