Hurricane Dorian is expected to strengthen into “a major hurricane later today,” the National Hurricane Center said Friday. 

“Dorian is likely to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane while it moves near the northwestern Bahamas and approaches the Florida peninsula through the weekend,” the center said. 

The Bahamian government has issued a hurricane watch for the northwestern Bahamas, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for the entire state.

Rainfall from Dorian could produce life-threatening flash floods, the hurricane center says.  

Dorian is moving with maximum sustained winds of 165 kilometers per hour. 

Forecasters predict that Dorian could slam into southeastern Florida early Monday as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of at least 209 kilometers per hour.

Category 4 storms are capable of what experts describe as catastrophic damage — destroying homes and stores, ripping up roads, and knocking down trees and power lines.

U.S. President Donald Trump has canceled a planned trip to Poland to “ensure that all resources of the federal government are focused on the arriving storm … it’s something very important for me to be here,” he said Thursday. 

Residents along Florida’s Atlantic Coast have been told to stand by for possible evacuation. They are filling their gas tanks and stocking up on food, water, and emergency supplies.

Dorian largely spared Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, causing some floods and power outages but no major damage. 

…

Thousands of people in Pakistan took to the streets Friday in mass demonstrations protesting India’s recent decision to revoke the special status of Indian-controlled Kashmir. 

Traffic around the country stopped for several minutes as the anthems of Pakistan and Kashmir were played on state media at noon. 

Prime Minister Imran Khan told the assembled crowd in Islamabad, the capital: “The message that goes out of here today is that as long as Kashmiris don’t get freedom, we will stand with them.” 

The Indian action to cancel the special status for the country’s only Muslim-majority state was accompanied by a wide-ranging curfew and communications blackout, cutting off millions of Kashmiris from the rest of the world. Indian media reports say nearly 4,000 political leaders, activists and civil society representatives have been arrested. 

The Indian government defends its actions in Kashmir as important for the region’s development and said they will benefit all.

India’s Kashmir-related moves have prompted Khan to repeatedly describe the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as fascist and supremacist. Khan has also compared the Modi government with Nazi Germany and has alleged that Modi’s actions pose a threat to both Pakistan and religious minorities in India. 

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two wars over the region, while skirmishes across the de facto Kashmir border, known as the Line of Control, have become an almost daily routine. 

…

Outgoing prime minister Giuseppe Conte has accepted a fresh mandate from Italy’s head of state to form a new coalition government backed by the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democrats party. Markets reacted positively the end to the 3-week political crisis, which could have triggered a snap election. But many in Italy are wondering how long such an alliance will last.

Conte appears determined and convinced he will be capable of establishing a government backed by a new coalition made up of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Left party. Although the two political groups have been past enemies, they have agreed to unite and work together.

The political crisis was caused by the League leader, Matteo Salvini, who announced three weeks ago he was no longer prepared to work with the Five Star Movement. 

The decision by the Left Democrats to work with the 5SM stems not only from the desire to enter parliament but also from wanting to avoid a snap general election, which at this time would likely be won by Salvini’s League party.

Coming out of his talks with the Italian president, Conte made clear the new government would not be one “against,” but “for the good of citizens.” 

He added that he would create a government that will represent a “novelty.”

Conte also said Italy is undergoing a very delicate phase and must emerge from this political crisis as quickly as possible.

He sais “we must get down to work immediately, to draw up a budget to avert the VAT hike that will protect savers and offer solid prospects for economic growth and social development.”

The prime minister already has began to hold meetings to reach an agreement on policies and about how to divide the ministerial positions between the two parties, which will make up the new coalition government.

Conte said he expects to go back to the Italian president with a full list in approximately a week. Once the new government is sworn in, it has 10 days to win a no-confidence vote in parliament.

The new alliance and Conte’s good intentions in the name of political stability seem to have averted snap elections, for the time being, and markets reacted positively to the news. But Italians in the streets and political observers see it as an unlikely alliance and fear it is unlikely to last.

For the time being, League leader Salvini’s plans for an early poll may have been thwarted and his move certainly backfired as he now will be relegated to the opposition. But it remains to be seen whether the move will, in fact, further increase his already soaring popularity.

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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says his representatives could return to negotiations with the opposition in talks he abruptly halted earlier this month.

Maduro said in an interview released Thursday that “good news” could come in the next few days about settlement talks hosted by Norway. He’s under pressure to leave power from opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has backing from the United States and more than 50 other nations.

“Contacts with Venezuelan opposition delegates have resumed,” Maduro said in an interview with the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency. “The next few days will bring good news about the dialogue.”

Maduro ended the talks this month when the Trump administration hit his government with a new round of punishing economic sanctions. The measures froze all Venezuela’s U.S. assets and blocks companies and individuals from doing business with Maduro’s government.

The socialist Maduro said in the interview that his representatives are in contact with the opposition as well as Norwegian officials who have overseen the talks held on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

Maduro, who often calls Guaidó a puppet of the U.S. capitalist empire, remains in power with backing from the Venezuelan military and international allies including Cuba, Russia, China and Turkey.

Venezuela’s opposition hasn’t commented, but Guaidó has said that he expected Maduro’s representatives to return to the talks because they have no other options.

The possibility of resumed dialogue comes amid a historic economic and political crisis in Venezuela that has driven more than 4 million people to flee the country in recent years.

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Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders returns to South Carolina Thursday for a conversation on climate change in a popular tourist destination along the coast of the critical early-voting state.

The gathering is being held in Myrtle Beach, a focal point of South Carolina’s $20 billion tourism industry. It comes on the heels of the Vermont senator’s release last week of a $16.3 trillion climate change plan that calls for the United States to move to renewable energy across the economy by 2050 and declare climate change a national emergency.

How climate changes affect coastal communities is a major concern along the 190 miles of Atlantic coastline in South Carolina, which holds the first 2020 voting in the South. In the historic city of Charleston, even a moderate amount of rainfall has become enough to flood streets and make parts of the urban peninsula impassable.

According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, by 2045, chronic flooding could inundate more than 16,000 homes along the state’s coast and low-lying areas, with about 15,000 of those in the areas surrounding Myrtle Beach. The region’s subtropical climate and extensive beaches attract more than 19 million visitors each year.

Earlier this week, Sanders told voters in coal-producing Kentucky that it’s possible to be a friend of coal miners and a believer in climate change as he pushed for cleaner energy sources to combat global warming. Sanders also vowed to help communities tied to coal and other fossil fuel industries in the transition toward renewable energy production such as solar and wind power.

Sanders says his 10-year “nationwide mobilization” would create 20 million jobs. His proposals include sourcing 100% of the country’s electricity from renewable and zero-carbon emission power and committing more than $2 trillion in grants for low- and middle-income families to weatherize and retrofit their homes and businesses, with the goal of reducing residential energy consumption.

Sanders has teamed up with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on climate legislation and endorsed the Green New Deal, a sweeping proposal that’s becoming a rallying point both for Democratic presidential hopefuls and liberals in the party’s base. Republicans have argued that the plan is too radical and would drive the economy off a cliff and lead to a huge tax increase.

The climate change discussion kicks off two days of campaign events for Sanders in South Carolina. On Friday, he has scheduled a town hall meeting in Florence on “Medicare for All,” the government-run single-payer approach to health care.

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Israel on Thursday accused Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah of stepping up attempts to build missile-production facilities in Lebanon, warning that these efforts are putting Lebanon and its civilian population in danger.

The Israeli threats ratcheted up an already tense standoff that has pushed the bitter enemies closer toward open, armed conflict in recent weeks.
 
“Iran is endangering Lebanon,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said in a briefing with reporters. He accused Iran of using Lebanese civilians as “human shields.”

Hezbollah denies harboring missile factories. While the group’s leader boasts about having highly accurate missiles, he denies that the group produces them.
 
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy and has identified Hezbollah as the most potent military threat on its borders. The military estimates that Hezbollah, which battled Israel to a stalemate in a monthlong war in 2006, now has a vast arsenal of some 130,000 rockets and missiles.

But Israel believes that most of these weapons are relatively primitive unguided rockets and considers the acquisition of precision guided missiles by Hezbollah to be a major game changer. Israeli media have reported that early this week, Israeli drones targeted a Beirut facility housing a “planetary mixer,” a large industrial machine that is critical to making missiles.

Hezbollah officials in Beirut said they had no comment on the Israeli accusations. Lebanese officials, including the prime minister, have accused Israel of carrying out a “dangerous aggression” and suggested the Israeli accusations were a pretext for further attacks against Lebanon.

Conricus said since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the army has been successful in thwarting attempts by Iran to smuggle guided missiles to Hezbollah through Syria, and a later effort to convert existing Hezbollah rockets into guided missiles. More recently, he said Israel has identified efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to establish a missile-production industry inside Lebanon.

“Over the last month, not only has Iran not relinquished their attempts to establish these capabilities in Lebanon, but they have intensified them,” he said. He described “more efforts, more money, more operatives and more pressure from Iran.”

The army identified three Iranian commanders and a top Hezbollah operative as the masterminds of the program. It said the overall commander was Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi, a brigadier general who reports directly to Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force, while the Hezbollah official was identified as Fuad Shukr, described as a top commander who is wanted by the U.S. on terrorism charges.

“Today we uncovered part of Iran and Hezbollah’s precision missile project. We know a few other things,’”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “We are determined to eliminate this dangerous project. The aim of the publication today is to convey a message that we will not sit by and allow our enemies to arm themselves with deadly weapons directed at us.”

Israel has acknowledged carrying out scores of airstrikes in Syria in recent years aimed primarily at preventing the transfers of sophisticated weapons, including guided missiles, to Hezbollah. This quiet war has expanded in recent weeks, raising the risk of a larger conflict that all sides say they want to avoid. Some critics have suggested that Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political survival in Sept. 17 elections, is motivated by domestic politics.

Last weekend, an Israeli airstrike thwarted what Israel said was a plot by Iran to launch a series of explosives-laden attack drones meant to crash into targets in Israel. Iran denied the claims. U.S. officials have also said that Israel last month struck an Iranian target in Iraq, the first Israeli strike in that country since 1981. Then on Sunday came the alleged drone strike in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.

Israel has gone increasingly public with its efforts in an attempt to press Lebanon, and the international community, into action against Iran.

Under the U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war, Hezbollah is blocked from operating or possessing arms in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border. But the group, the most powerful actor in Lebanon’s fragmented political system, is widely believed to have violated the resolution.

While Israel considers Hezbollah its strategic enemy, Conricus accused Lebanon of being “complicit” by failing to stop the group’s armament efforts.

Netanyahu first accused Hezbollah of setting up secret rocket factories last year, claiming in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly that the group had them near Beirut airport, hiding them among civilians.
 
The Lebanese government denounced his statements at the time and the Lebanese foreign minister took dozens of ambassadors and diplomats on a tour of locations near the airport to dispel the allegations.

…

After several days of intermittent clashes, Yemen’s southern separatist forces appear to have recaptured strategic positions in the interim southern capital of Aden from forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The separatists’ latest defeat of Hadi’s forces came amid accusations by his deputy foreign minister that Saudi-coalition partner the United Arab Emirates launched airstrikes against Hadi’s forces on the ground, causing a number of casualties. 

Arab media are reporting that fighters loyal to Yemen’s southern separatist movement regained control Thursday of Aden after government forces temporarily recaptured strategic positions inside the city a day earlier.

Amateur video showed forces loyal to the government of internationally-recognized Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi battling the separatists inside Aden Wednesday, amid reports that they had temporarily taken control of the airport and the presidential palace, which the separatists seized several weeks ago.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hadhramy said in a tweet Thursday that fighter jets from Saudi-coalition partner the United Arab Emirates had bombed forces loyal to Hadi in several places, causing a number of casualties. VOA could not independently confirm the accusation.

Aidarous al-Zubeidi, leader of the southern separatists and one-time governor of Aden under President Hadi, said in a televised address Wednesday that his side had acted in good faith by attending talks in the Saudi port city of Jeddah to iron out differences with President Hadi. He went on to say his men would regain control of strategic southern positions after a brief setback.

Yemeni Government Forces Push into Port City of Aden

Entrance into Aden comes after government troops seize another provincial capital from separatists

He says that President Hadi moved a large number of men into the south to try to retake Aden and appeared to be more interested in controlling the south of the country than in recapturing (the capital city of) Sana’a from the Houthi militia group.

The struggle to gain control of southern Yemen came amid news that the United States was now prepared to negotiate with the Houthis. Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled Ben Salman met with U.S. officials in Washington amid the apparent change in U.S. policy.

U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths told Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV that he thought that the U.S. decision to talk to the Houthis would have a “positive effect” in trying to resolve the Yemeni conflict.

Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, tells VOA that he fears that “forces to break (Yemen) apart are far greater than forces trying to keep it together as one country. Yemen is a textbook case of political and social entropy,” he says. “(After) decades… of splits and breaks, it could completely shatter into numerous sharp pieces that could spread harm throughout the region…”

“If Yemen shatters,” he adds, “and there is a section run by any Iran-backed groups… especially near a port, (Tehran) could have an almost permanent outpost to help with its hegemonic activities,” creating a “constant low-grade threat” to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

Washington-based Gulf analyst Theodore Karasik argues that the UAE has been supporting the southern separatists in order to “get rid of (militias belonging to) the Muslim Brotherhood from the Islah Party, associated with the Hadi government.” Karasik agrees with Sullivan that the UAE’s strategy of supporting the separatists moves Yemen “further down a path to possible partition.”

…

CNN has apologized for a misleading headline that appeared on its website during its coverage Sunday of the Hong Kong riots.

At one point, a headline reading “Police Use Petrol Bombs and Water Cannons Against Hong Kong Protesters” flashed on the screen.

According to Hong Kong police, officers shot water cannons at barricades, not people, and it was the demonstrators who threw the gasoline bombs.

CNN’s Hong Kong bureau chief Roger Clark admitted in a letter to police that the headline was “erroneous.”

Clark said CNN is “working hard to ensure that reporting of the Hong Kong protests is fair and balanced at all times.”

…

Teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday after crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a zero-emissions sailboat to attend a conference on global warming. 
 
The 16-year-old Swede set sail from Plymouth, England, on Aug. 14. At 4 a.m., she tweeted:

Land!! The lights of Long Island and New York City ahead. pic.twitter.com/OtDyQOWtF5

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 28, 2019

Thunberg came to the U.S. for the U.N. climate summit and chose to sail rather than fly to avoid the greenhouse gas emissions that come with commercial jet travel. 
 
Thunberg said she first learned about climate change when she was 8 years old and became very concerned about the future of humanity.  
 
A few years later, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism.  “That basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary,” she told the audience at a TED Talk last year. “Now is one of those moments.” 
 
In August 2018, Thunberg stopped attending school on Fridays and took to protesting alone outside the Swedish parliament. She called it a strike intended to draw attention to climate change.  
 
Thousands of students have since taken up her cause around the world, staying out of school on Fridays and demanding adults do something about climate change. 
 

The boat carrying Thunberg, the Malizia II, has the hashtag #FridaysForFuture under “UNITE BEHIND THE SCIENCE” inscribed on the sails.  
 
The sailboat’s onboard electronics are powered by solar panels and underwater turbines. It has no toilet or fixed shower aboard, no windows below deck and only a small gas cooker to heat up freeze-dried food. 

Thunberg’s boat was greeted by a flotilla of 17 sailboats representing each of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals on their sails.
 
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Thunberg on Twitter: 

Welcome to New York, @gretathunberg!

The determination and perseverance shown during your journey should embolden all of us taking part in next month’s #ClimateAction Summit.

We must deliver on the demands of people around the world and address the global climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/dGUZr9fFQM

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 28, 2019

Thunberg will speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit next month and then attend a climate summit in Chile in December. She is taking a year off from school to pursue her activism.  

…

Beto O’Rourke’s campaign says it ejected a Breitbart News reporter from an event at a South Carolina college because it wanted to ensure that students felt “comfortable and safe.”

Joel Pollak, the conservative web site’s senior editor-at-large, said a Benedict College campus police officer asked him to leave the site of a speech Tuesday by the Democratic presidential candidate. Pollak wrote on Breitbart that a campaign staff member told him he was being ejected because he’d been disruptive at past events.

O’Rourke spokeswoman Aleigha Cavalier on Wednesday said Breitbart walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech.

She said given Pollak’s “previous hateful reporting” and the sensitivity of the topics being discussed with black students, the campaign asked him to leave.
 

…

Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is dropping out of the presidential race as a campaign that once looked poised to ride strong #MeToo credentials to formidability was instead plagued by low polling and major fundraising struggles.  
  
The 52-year-old New York senator said Wednesday that she was suspending her campaign. That came after failing to meet minimum thresholds for required numbers of donors and polling to qualify for the September Democratic debate in Houston.  
  
“I know this isn’t the result that we wanted. We wanted to win this race,” she said in an online video. “But it’s important to know when it’s not your time.” 
 
Gillibrand topped an incumbent Republican in a conservative part of upstate New York to get to the U.S. House in 2007, and was appointed to the Senate two years later, filling the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, who was tapped to be U.S. secretary of state. Gillibrand later easily retained the seat during a 2010 special election, as well as in 2012 and 2018.    

Vocal in the Senate on curbing sexual harassment and promoting equal pay for women and family leave, Gillibrand made those and her staunch defense of abortion rights the core of her presidential bid. She stood out in the crowded field by becoming the first Democratic presidential hopeful to declare that she’d select only Supreme Court nominees who consider the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide to be settled law, though most of her competitors quickly followed suit.  
  
After forming an exploratory committee in January and formally entering the race by calling President Donald Trump a “coward” in a March speech delivered near the New York City skyscraper bearing his name, Gillibrand began with more than $10.5 million left over from her 2018 Senate campaign in her presidential campaign account.  

Franken resignation
  
That seemed like more than enough resources for the long haul. But Gillibrand was the first Senate Democrat in December 2017 to call for Minnesota Senator Al Franken’s resignation amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, and she has said for months that that alienated donors and some voters in his neighboring state of Iowa, where the presidential nominating contests begin. 

Many of her Senate colleagues seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — followed her lead in calling for Franken to step down before he quit in January 2018. But Gillibrand has continually faced more questions than others about being too quick to condemn him.  
  

Speaking in Manhattan in July, Gillibrand said she didn’t regret urging Franken’s resignation but argued that female senators were being blamed more than their male colleagues for a decision that Franken himself ultimately made.  
  
“Women are asked to hold accountable their colleagues. The men are not,” Gillibrand said. “It’s outrageous. It’s absurd.”  

Stance on abortion
  
A record 100-plus women were elected to Congress in 2018, and #MeToo seemed to provide a clear lane for 2020 success. Gillibrand failed to catch fire, though, despite embracing feminist issues. This month, she visited St. Louis, home of Missouri’s lone remaining abortion clinic, to decry efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures around the country to restrict abortion — after previously visiting Georgia’s state capital for the same purpose.  
  
During a Fox News town hall in June, Gillibrand said, “We want women to have a seat at the table,” and when moderator Chris Wallace responded, “What about men?” Gillibrand shot back with one of the most memorable lines of her campaign: “They’re already there — do you not know?” 

…

President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy says details of the U.S. peace plan will not be revealed until after next month’s Israeli election.

“We have decided that we will not be releasing the peace vision, or parts of it, prior to the Israeli election,” Jason Greenblatt tweeted Wednesday.

Trump said Monday parts of the political portion of the peace deal could be made public before the election. 

Israel’s Parliament voted to dissolve and hold another election after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a tightly contested April vote, but failed to put together a governing coalition. 

Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner announced the economic portion of his peace plan earlier this year. It would include $50 billion in international investment to help the Palestinian people.

Trump has called his administration’s peace plan “the deal of the century.” 

Palestinian leaders have already rejected the economic plan before all the details are known. They say it makes no mention of a two-state solution and say it is humiliating to believe Palestinians can be bought off. They also accuse the Trump administration of being openly and blatantly pro-Israel.

There have been no formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks since 2014. 

…