General Qassem Soleimani, the larger-than-life head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, had escaped death many times, but he couldn’t flee the U.S. drone-launched missile that struck his convoy shortly after he arrived in Baghdad from Lebanon. 

The repercussions from the targeted strike on a road adjacent to Baghdad International Airport in the middle of the night Friday will last much longer than the concussion of the blast. 

US Kills Commander of Iran’s Elite Quds Force

General Qassem Soleimani was among at least seven killed outside Baghdad International Airport

Soleimani was Iran’s most important military strategist and tactician in Tehran’s long-standing campaign to expand Shi’ite and Iranian influence throughout the Middle East. Dexter Filkins, a veteran chronicler of Middle East conflict, described him in a profile in the New Yorker magazine as “the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today.” 

That’s an assessment shared by current and former U.S. officials. 

“We have killed one of the most significant militant actors inside the Iranian government,” said Patrick Kimmitt, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. “It takes the whole issue of the United States and Iran, and the United States and Iraq to a whole new place. This is an inflection point that can’t be understated.”

Soleimani: A General Who Became Iran Icon by Targeting US

For Iranians, Qassem Soleimani widely represented the most prominent figure outside its Shiite theocracy of national resilience in the face of four decades of U.S. pressure

The 62-year-old Soleimani wasn’t a run-of-the-mill military commander. He was the second most powerful man in Iran, answerable only to the country’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei. And even more than that, he was at the nexus linking Iran’s various proxy forces in the region. 

“He was the major figure who ran Iran’s growing regional ‘Islamic Resistance’ network that has tens of thousands of fighters from Palestinian areas, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria,” tweeted Phillip Smyth, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a U.S.-based think tank. 

“The consequences of killing Soleimani are hard to grasp; this is the biggest news in the Middle East for years,” says Charles Lister, author the book “The Syrian Jihad.” He says his slaying “far eclipses the deaths of [al-Qaida leader Osama] Bin Laden or [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi in terms of strategic significance and implications. The U.S. and Iran have been engaged in a dangerous tit-for-tat for months now, but this is a massive walk-up the escalation ladder. Israel has repeatedly spurned the opportunity to kill Soleimani for fear of the consequences of taking out Iran’s most powerful operative in the world, someone who’s power is outshone only by Iran’s Supreme Leader. His death is a serious loss for Iran’s regional agenda.”

In Iran and among its Shi’ite allies across the Middle East, Soleimani had near-mythical status, and he was included in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, listed as a cross between “James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga.”

His celebrity status in the Middle East was a far cry from his humble start in the tiny village of Qanat-e Malek in southern Iran’s Kerman Province to an impoverished peasant family. As a teenager, he moved to the city of Kerman to get work as a construction worker, remitting most of his earnings back to his parents. He later became a water contractor. 

He was a fan of martial arts and a karate black belt. Aside from that, his other great passion was religion. He fell into the circle of a protege of of Ayatollah Khomeini, which allowed him to join and rise up the ranks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was set up after the 1979 revolution to protect the new Islamic regime. As a guardsman he participated in the suppression of a Kurdish uprising in West Azerbaijan Province. 

He later rose to fame as a daring field commander in the Iran-Iraq War. In his New Yorker profile of Soleimani, Dexter Filkins quotes the general saying: “I entered the war on a 15-day mission, and ended up staying until the end.” Soleimani added: “We were all young and wanted to serve the revolution.” He ended up as a divisional commander, often leading commando raids deep into Iraqi territory and was seriously injured in one attack.

In the 1990s, Soleimani was given command of the elite al-Quds force, a shadowy unit that undertakes missions outside Iranian borders, often working with its client in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militia Hezbollah, which al-Quds helped to establish. In that role Soleimani became the architect of Iran’s expansionist Mideast strategy, shaping a “Shia crescent” across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. 

In a broadcast interview in October, Soleimani disclosed he’d been in Lebanon in 2006 helping to direct Hezbollah’s battles with Israel. His irregular warfare background proved crucial for Iran in Iraq, say former U.S. intelligence and military officials. He was one of the tacticians behind Iraqi Shi’ite attacks on Western soldiers after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,

“We have been in a proxy war with Iran’s revolutionary guards for 10 years, longer than 10 years. Qassem Soleimani and his people were killing Americans in 2005 and 2006,” said former U.S. official Patrick Kimmitt. He says the Quds Force supplied Iraqi Shi’ites with the most deadly improvised explosive devices the Americans saw in Iraq. Scores of Americans were killed by them. 

War makes for strange bedfellows — American military commanders had little choice in 2014 but to coordinate airstrikes with Tehran-sponsored Shi’ite militias in Iraq against their common foe during the fightback against the Islamic State terror group. In the wake, though, of liberating Mosul and other Iraqi towns of IS, that temporary alliance of necessity fell apart. Soleimani had been a frequent visitor to Baghdad in recent weeks, say analysts, helping to direct Shi’ite attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and the protests aimed at expanding Iran’s influence on Iraq.  

Soleimani stepped out of the shadows in recent years, emerging as one of the masterminds of the military comeback in Syria by Iranian ally President Bashar al-Assad. He coordinated airstrikes with Russian generals, frequently traveling to Moscow, and analysts say he was key in smoothing out the battlefield efforts of Assad’s regular forces with Shi’ite militias, which Iran helped to raise from Afghanistan and Iraq. Soleimani appeared in press photographs and broadcasts visiting the front lines — and even appeared in a popular Iranian music video. 

Last year, Soleimani warned the U.S. president in a boastful video message: “I’m telling you Mr. Trump the gambler, I’m telling you, know that we are close to you in that place you don’t think we are. You will start the war but we will end it.” 

The threat was in keeping with his bragging in 2010 to U.S. General David Petraeus, who was then the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. The two were in communication and Petraeus disclosed that the Iranian general had told him in one message: “You should know that I, Qassem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan.”

Soleimani is likely to prove a challenging foe in death, too, according to analysts and current and former Western officials. Some are critical of the targeted killing of the Iranian, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump’s predecessors in the White House passed targeting Soleimani, fearing messy, violent repercussions. 

Analyst Charles Lister says in the wake of Soleimani’s death, the U.S. will face serious challenges in both Syria and Iraq — with Iran eager to retaliate. “The U.S. presence in Syria now looks very vulnerable, having already shrunk in size and weakened in terms of credibility and partner trust. A single attack on U.S. positions could feasibly catalyze a military withdrawal and second abandonment of the Kurds. In Iraq, U.S. diplomatic and military facilities are almost certain to come under some form of attack and covert intimidation,” he says.

But in Iraq, Lister notes, the reaction likely will be complex and could spur anti-Iranian Sunni activists. “Weeks of protests across Iraq have shown the popular tide swaying against Iran and these newly tense circumstances could feasibly provide an environment for Iranian proxies to be perceived as the source of more problems than solutions,” he says. 

Other analysts say the U.S. move will send a clear intimidating message to Tehran that no one in in the Iranian regime is safe. “For all the talk about a full upscale war between Iran and the U.S. over the killing of Tehran’s terror master Qassem Soleimani, the fact that Iran now realizes America is not a paper tiger anymore will resonate in the ears of Supreme Leader Khameini,” says counterterrorism analyst Olivier Guitta, who runs GlobalStrat, a London-based risk consultancy.

He adds: “Despite all the declarations of vengeance from the Iran regime and the likelihood of attacks abroad against U.S. and Israeli interests, the mullah’s regime would like more than anything to save their skins and can’t afford a full-blown conflict with the U.S.”

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Beth Jensen suffered a stroke when she was just eight years old, and though she survived, she was almost completely paralyzed and unable to talk as a result. Yet, Jensen has refused to let her condition stop her from living a life filled with activities, art and love. Iryna Matviichuk met with the artist. Anna Rice narrates her story

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Newly passed legislation will push the U.S. State Department to disclose how it polices the sale of cyber tools and services abroad.

The move followed a Reuters investigation  which revealed that American intelligence contractors clandestinely assisted a foreign spying operation in the United Arab Emirates, helping the monarchy to crack down on internal dissent.

The legislation directs the State Department to report to Congress within 90 days on how it controls the spread of cyber tools and to disclose any action it has taken to punish companies for violating its policies.

Under U.S. law, companies selling hacking products or services to foreign governments must first obtain permission from the State Department.

U.S. lawmakers and human rights advocates have grown increasingly concerned that hacking skills developed for U.S. spy services are being sold abroad with scant oversight.

“Just as we regulate the export of missiles and guns to   foreign countries, we need to properly supervise the sale of cyber capabilities,” said congressman Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, who drafted the legislation.

The provision was a result of a Reuters investigation, congressional staffers said, which showed U.S. defense contractors ran a hacking unit in the UAE called Project Raven and that the State Department granted permission to three companies to assist the Emirati government in surveillance.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment. The agency previously said human rights concerns are carefully weighed before such licenses are issued but declined to comment on the authorizations granted for Project Raven.

The UAE Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. In response to Reuters reporting, a senior Emirati official last year said the country possessed a “cyber capability” that it needed to protect itself.

The new reporting guideline was part of the State Department’s 2020 budget bill signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 20.

The UAE program used former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) operatives to target foreign rivals, human rights activists, and journalists, the Reuters reporting found. While the secret Emirati hacking unit was initially created to help the country fight terrorism, the Reuters investigation revealed that it quickly became a tool for the monarchy to crack down on internal dissent.

Reuters found the clandestine program helped local security forces track activists, who were sometimes later tortured.

Reuters reporting also showed how the State Department granted permission to three companies — U.S. consulting firm Good Harbor, cybersecurity company CyberPoint International, and defense contractor SRA International —  to assist the Emirati government in surveillance operations.

CyberPoint and Good Harbor did not immediately respond to requests for comment. General Dynamics, which now owns SRA, declined to comment.

Good Harbor and CyberPoint have previously told Reuters that their companies obtained proper permissions from the State Department and followed all U.S. laws.

“This report will help Congress ensure these sales are advancing our foreign policy goals, especially in light of recent reports alleging human rights abuses,” said Ruppersberger, whose district is home to the NSA.

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A motion sanctioning the deployment of armed forces to Libya easily passed the Turkish Parliament on Thursday, but the specter of Turkish forces entering the Libyan civil war is triggering alarm and condemnation.

Passing with a 325-184 vote, the motion gives Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a one-year mandate to send armed forces in support of Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord.
 
The GNA is currently besieged by Libyan General Khalif Haftar’s military forces, who now control eastern Libya.  
 
Turkish forces becoming involved in the Libya civil war is causing international concern. Following Parliament’s vote, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Erdogan by telephone.

“President Trump pointed out that foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya,” said Hogan Gidley, principal White House deputy press secretary.

“Egypt condemns in the strongest terms this step that violates United Nations resolutions,” said an Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement. “The Arab Republic of Egypt also warns of repercussions of any Turkish military intervention in Libya and confirms that this intervention will negatively affect stability in the Mediterranean Sea region.”
 
Cairo is backing Haftar’s military forces, and previously warned it was ready to deploy its own forces if Ankara went ahead with sending soldiers.

‘Not intervening in Libya’

Ankara dismissed concerns over any Libyan military deployment.

“Turkey’s agreement with the Libyan government is the best guarantee for security and stability in the Mediterranean. We will, of course, protect our rights and interests in the Mediterranean,” tweeted Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s director of communications.

“Some countries are trying to put their narrow interests above international peace and security in the Mediterranean. Any agreement struck with a group other than the legitimate government in Tripoli will drag the country further into chaos,” Altun added.

During debate over the motion, the Turkish government tried to allay international and domestic concerns.
 
“We’re not intervening in Libya. We are just meeting a request for help from the internationally recognized government there,” Emrullah Isler, Erdogan’s envoy to the fractured nation, told parliamentary deputies ahead of Thursday’s vote.

‘Disastrous call’

All of the parliamentary opposition parties opposed the motion.

“This motion does not speak of ‘national security,’ it speaks only of ‘national interest,’ ” Unal Cevikoz of the main opposition CHP Party said during the feisty debate. “It is a disastrous call by the presidential palace to send our citizens to the deserts of Libya.”

Opposition deputies also raised concerns over the broad nature of the motion with little information on the type of Libyan military deployment.

Ahead of the vote, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar suggested any military action would be confined to training and providing munitions and weapons. Last year, Ankara sent several armed drones in support of the GNA.  

 But while Haftar’s forces, backed by Russian mercenaries, are tightening their control around Tripoli, reports by local Turkish media suggest the GNA may be looking to Ankara to deploy a force of as many as 2,000 combat soldiers.

Strategic interests

According to observers, Erdogan expedited passage of the motion because of the imminent threat faced by the GNA. Erdogan argues that the GNA’s survival is key to Turkey’s strategic interests.

Last November, he signed two agreements with the Libyan government. One was a security agreement in which Ankara pledged military support. The second gave Turkey control of a large swath of the eastern Mediterranean between the two countries.  
 
The region is the center of an increasingly bitter rivalry among regional countries for the search of hydrocarbons. Ankara is alarmed at growing cooperation involving rivals Greece, Israel, Egypt and the Greek Cypriots in the search for and exploitation of the region’s energy.

“No plan in the region that excludes Turkey has any chance of success,” Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said Wednesday.  

Gas pipeline
 
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement in Athens committing his country, Greece and the Greek Cypriot government to building a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline.  
 
The pipeline seeks to exclude Turkey from lucrative transit fees in distributing vast gas reserves discovered off the Israeli coast to Europe. But the route of the planned pipeline passes through the Mediterranean Sea under Turkish control in its agreement with the GNA.

“These agreements with the GNA are of so much strategic importance for Turkey,” said energy expert and former Turkish Ambassador Mithat Rende. “The strategy of Turkey is to protect its legitimate rights in the eastern Mediterranean. The strategy is to have an equitable solution to the matter, because we have overlapping claims. Turkey made it clear after signing these agreements. Turkey is ready to speak with Greece and other authorities.”

Turkey’s strategy of coercing its regional rivals to negotiate is widely seen as increasingly dependent on the survival of the GNA. However, Ankara may yet hold off deploying soldiers to Libya.

“Passing the motion in Parliament has a strong political message,” Oktay said. “If they [Haftar’s forces] stop their attacks or withdraw, we may see this as appropriate. But if they keep continuing their attacks, the motion gives us a one-year mandate, so we may deploy our soldiers whenever necessary.”

Given that Libya is nearly 2,000 kilometers from Turkey, analysts warn any major military deployment into a combat zone carries considerable risk.

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As former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein goes to trial on rape charges next week in Manhattan, lawyers will need to keep an eye out for jurors who want to use the case to make a statement about sexual abuse following the rise of the #MeToo movement, legal experts said.

Once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting two women in New York, one in 2006 and the other in 2013.

In all, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct dating back decades.

Those accusations helped fuel the #MeToo movement, in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, politics, the news media and entertainment of sexual harassment or assault. Weinstein has denied the allegations and said any sexual encounters were consensual.

Jury selection is expected to begin Tuesday following a pretrial conference Monday, according to Danny Frost, spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.

Selecting impartial jurors to decide the fate of a celebrity whose alleged abuse fueled the #MeToo movement presents unique challenges, experts said, as potential jurors may try to mask their bias to advance a larger cause.

“They may think, ‘I want to be the one to make sure he goes to jail. I want to be the one to do justice,'” said Roy Futterman, a New York jury consultant.

On the other hand, Futterman said, people who believe that #MeToo has gone too far and ruined the lives of innocent men, may attempt to hide their bias so they can exonerate Weinstein. Weinstein faces up to life in prison if convicted on the top counts, predatory sexual assault.

Social media use

One of his lawyers, Donna Rotunno, said the defense team will be looking at potential jurors’ social media use and responses to jury selection questions, and said she is confident that will uncover biased candidates.

“Obviously this case has a lot more notoriety and press involved with it, but that’s a concern in any case,” Rotunno said in a phone interview. “Once 12 people are put on that bench and they realize the gravity of it, they really want to be fair.”

District Attorney Vance’s office, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment on the jury selection issue.

Weinstein in October lost a bid to move the trial to suburban Long Island or to Albany, New York state’s capital. He had said intense media scrutiny made it impossible for jurors to give him a fair trial in Manhattan.

“The question … will be not whether they’ve heard of the Weinstein case and the allegations against him, but whether that publicity has made it impossible for someone to be a fair and impartial juror,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a Northwestern University law professor and former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Jury selection is expected to last two weeks. Experts say both sides will likely question potential jurors about their knowledge and opinion of the case, their work history and whether they have been victims of sexual misconduct.

Legal teams in high-profile trials often spend hundreds of hours building databases of potential jurors’ activity on social media such as Facebook and Twitter that might reveal bias, said Jeffrey Frederick, director of Jury Research Services at the National Legal Research Group Inc in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“It’s almost legal malpractice not to do this,” he said. “You will find people in your jury pool where you will go, ‘Whoa, this is particularly good or particularly bad for me.'”

Eliminating jurors

Lawyers can excuse an unlimited number of potential jurors if they show bias for or against Weinstein. Each side can typically use “peremptory” challenges to eliminate up to three potential jurors they believe will be unsympathetic, without providing a reason.

The #MeToo movement has prompted more people who have experienced sexual assault or workplace harassment to come forward, which is likely to complicate the vetting process, Tuerkheimer said.

According to a 2018 Pew Research study, about 60% of women surveyed said they had been subjected to unwanted sexual advances or sexual harassment in their lifetime, and more than half of those reported being harassed in the workplace. Some, but not all, of those people might be biased, Tuerkheimer said.

Experts said the prosecution may seek to eliminate jurors who say they have been falsely accused of harassment, out of fear they might sympathize with Weinstein, while the defense might excuse people who appear to be activists or favor liberal causes.

Paul Callan, a former prosecutor, said lawyers also will want to avoid potential jurors seeking to cash in on the experience.

“If books are written after the trial, that could result in a reversal,” Callan said.
 

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An official with an Iran-backed paramilitary force said Friday that seven people were killed by a missile fired at Baghdad International Airport, blaming the United States.

The official with the group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces said the dead included its airport protocol officer, identifying him as Mohammed Reda.

A security official confirmed that seven people were killed in the attack on the airport, describing it as an airstrike. Earlier, Iraq’s Security Media Cell, which releases information regarding Iraqi security, said Katyusha rockets landed near the airport’s cargo hall, killing several people and setting two cars on fire.

It was not immediately clear who fired the missile or rockets or who was targeted. There was no immediate comment from the U.S.

The security official said the bodies of those killed in the airport attack Friday were burned and difficult to identify. The official added that Reda may have been at the airport to pick up a group of “high-level” visitors who had arrived from a neighboring country. He declined to provide more information.

The attack came amid tensions with the United States after a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The two-day embassy attack which ended Wednesday prompted President Donald Trump to order about 750 U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East.

The breach at the embassy followed U.S. airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. military said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia.

U.S. officials have suggested they were prepared to engage in further retaliatory attacks in Iraq.

“The game has changed,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shi’ite militias in Iraq — including the rocket attack on Dec. 27 that killed one American — will be met with U.S. military force.

Esper: US Prepared to Take ‘Preemptive’ Action on Iran

Pentagon says it continues to see indications that Iran and Iranian-backed militias may be planning more strikes on US forces in the Middle East

He said the Iraqi government has fallen short of its obligation to defend its American partner in the attack on the U.S. embassy.

The developments also represent a major downturn in Iraq-U.S. relations that could further undermine U.S. influence in the region and American troops in Iraq and weaken Washington’s hand in its pressure campaign against Iran.
 

…

The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on Cuba’s defense minister, accusing him of human rights violations and supporting socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

Washington blacklisted Leopoldo Cintra Frias, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR), and his children, Deborah Cintra Gonzalez and Leopoldo Cintra Gonzalez, in its latest action targeting Havana for its support of Maduro.

Pompeo said MINFAR had been involved in the torture of Venezuelans and subjected them to “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment for their anti-Maduro stances” alongside Maduro’s military and intelligence officers.

The designation bars Cintra, a career military officer who joined Fidel Castro’s rebel army in 1957, and his children from entering the United States.

The Cuban Embassy in Washington could not immediately be reached for comment.

“As Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, Cintra Frias bears responsibility for Cuba’s actions to prop up the former Maduro regime in Venezuela,” Pompeo said.

“Dismantling Venezuela’s democracy by terrifying Venezuelans into submission is the goal of MINFAR and the Cuban regime,” Pompeo added.

The United States and more than 50 other countries have recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president. Guaido invoked the constitution to assume a rival presidency last year, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was a sham.

But Maduro retains the support of the military, runs the government’s day-to-day operations and is backed by Russia, China and Cuba.

…

A factory caught fire and collapsed in the Indian capital Thursday, causing injuries to several people, including some fire officials.

A fire official said three people were rescued from the debris of the building in Peera Garhi area in western New Delhi. Thirty-five fire engines were at the site, and the rescue operation was continuing for some people feared trapped there. 

An eyewitness told New Delhi Television news channel he heard an explosion around 5 a.m. and the station reported the structure collapsed soon afterward.

The fire official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information. 

Poor safety standards are a frequent cause of fires in India. Last month, a fire believed to be caused by an electrical short circuit engulfed a building in New Delhi, killing at least 43 people.
 

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A magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook northeastern Iran Thursday, state television reported, adding that there were no immediate reports of damage.

The quake hit the town of Sangan at a shallow depth of 8 km (5 miles) it said. The town, which has a population of about 10,000, is located near the border with Afghanistan.

“We have not received any reports of casualties until this moment, but a large area has been affected, which our survey teams are investigating,” the head of the provincial emergency department, Hojjatali Shayanfar, told state TV.

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Former commissioner of the National Basketball Association David Stern, who oversaw the NBA turning from a struggling U.S. league into a global powerhouse, died in New York Wednesday. He was 77.

The NBA said Stern had been seriously ill since emergency surgery for a brain hemorrhage in early December.

Stern joined the NBA’s legal department in the 1960s and took over the league in 1984 when U.S. professional basketball was struggling to attract the same kind of fans base that followed other sports, such as baseball and American football.

Stern focused on marketing professional basketball overseas, including Europe and Asia, allowing fans who were barely aware of the sport to see superstars such as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Under Stern, the NBA expanded from the United States into Canada and was the first U.S. major league sport to play a regular season game outside North America, when the Phoenix Suns facing off against the Utah Jazz in Japan in 1990.

The NBA has grown into a $5 billion a year league with games broadcast in more than 200 countries in 40 languages. Stern retired from the NBA in 2014.

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Taiwan’s top military official was killed in an air force helicopter crash Thursday morning that killed seven other people, the defense ministry said.

Five people survived the crash in mountains outside the capital.

As chief of the general staff, Gen. Shen Yi-ming was responsible for overseeing the island’s defense against China, which threatens to use military force to annex what it considers its own territory.

The helicopter was flying from Taipei to the northeastern city of Ilan for a new year’s activity when it crashed. 
 

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Tens of thousands of holidaymakers raced to evacuate popular seaside towns on Australia’s east coast on Wednesday, fleeing ahead of advancing bushfires, as military ships and helicopters began rescuing thousands more trapped by the blazes.

Fueled by searing temperatures and high winds, more than 200 fires are now burning across the southeastern states of New South Wales and Victoria, threatening several towns.

Long lines formed outside supermarkets and gas stations near high-danger areas, and shelves were emptied of staples like bread and milk, as residents and tourists sought supplies to either bunker down or escape.

More than 50,000 people were without power and some towns had no access to drinking water, after catastrophic fires ripped through the region over the past few days, sending the sky blood red and destroying towns.

Mass exodus urged

Authorities urged a mass exodus from several towns on Australia’s southeast coast, an area hugely popular in the current summer peak holiday season, warning that extreme heat forecast for the weekend will further stoke raging fires.

“The priority today is fighting fires and evacuating, getting people to safety,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Sydney. “There are parts of both Victoria and New South Wales which have been completely devastated, with a loss of power and communications.”

Death toll rises, Navy arrives

• Eight people have been killed by wildfires in the eastern states of New South Wales and Victoria since Monday, and 18 are still missing, officials said Thursday.
• A naval ship arrived Thursday at the southeastern coastal town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 residents and visitors have been stranded on the beach since Monday night. Naval officials said they would open registration for evacuation Thursday afternoon, with the HMAS Choules able to carry up to 1,000 people on the first trip. The ship is expected to make two or three voyages over coming days, state authorities said.

‘It is hell on earth’

• “It is hell on earth. It is the worst anybody’s ever seen,” Michelle Roberts told Reuters by telephone from the Croajingolong Cafe she owns in Mallacoota. Roberts hoped to get her 18-year-old daughter out on the ship to get away from the spotfires and thick smoke that continue to engulf the town.
• Five military helicopters were en route to the south coast to back up firefighters and bring in supplies like water and diesel, the Australian Defense Force said Thursday. The aircraft will also be used to evacuate injured, elderly and young people.
• A contingent of 39 firefighters from North America landed in Melbourne on Friday, bringing the number of U.S. and Canadian experts who have flown in to help deal with the crisis to almost 100.
• Traffic on the main highway out of Batemans Bay on the NSW coast was bumper to bumper after authorities called for the town to be evacuated. Residents of the town reported was no fuel, power or phone service, while supermarket shelves were stripped bare of staples. “Everyone’s just on edge,” local resident Shane Flanagan told Reuters.
• The New South Wales state government declared a state of emergency, beginning Friday, giving authorities the power to forcibly evacuate people and take control of services. The state’s Kosciuszko National Park, home to the Snowy Mountains, was closed with visitors ordered to leave because of extreme fire danger.
• Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged those waiting for help and those stuck in traffic jams “to be patient … help will arrive.”
• Dairies in New South Wales that had lost power were being forced to dump milk. “That is the tragedy of what is occurring as a result of these disasters,” Morrison said.
• Temperatures are forecast to soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) along the south coast Saturday, bringing the prospect of renewed firefronts to add to the around 200 current blazes. “It is going to be a very dangerous day. It’s going to be a very difficult day,” NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.
• Morrison visited volunteer firefighters in the NSW town on Bega as they prepared to head out to the firefront Friday. The leader plans to tour stricken regions in Victoria next week.
• Morrison said the fires will burn for “many, many months … unlike a flood, where the water will recede, in a fire like this, it goes on and it will continue to go on … until we can get some decent rain.”
• Morrison, forced to defend his government’s limited action on climate change, blamed a three-year drought and lack of hazard reduction for the unprecedented extent and duration of this year’s bushfires.
• Bushfires so far this season have razed more than 4 million hectares (10 million acres) of bushland and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including 381 homes destroyed on the south coast just this week.

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