The Iranian government has been holding a second French researcher in custody for the past four months, according to his colleagues.
Roland Marchal, a sub-Saharan Africa specialist at Paris university Sciences Po, was arrested in June when he traveled to Iran to visit his partner, Fariba Adelkhah, according to Sciences Po professor Richard Banegas.
Iranian authorities disclosed in July that they had arrested Adelkhah, a prominent anthropologist who holds dual French-Iranian nationality, on charges that have not been made public.
There was no immediate acknowledgement of Marchal’s arrest in Iranian state media.
It’s unclear exactly what charges Marchal faces, but Banegas told The Associated Press that he and his colleagues consider him “an academic prisoner.”
The French Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Russians officials urged Turkey to limit the duration and scale of its cross-border military incursion into northeast Syria, stressing Turkish troops must at all costs avoid clashing with Syrian government forces, which have moved north and are racing to take over Kurdish border towns ahead of the Turks.
The Kremlin’s special envoy to Syria Tuesday appeared to toughen Russia’s language about the offensive, dubbing it for the first time as “unacceptable.” Previously the Kremlin appeared to endorse the incursion, with top aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying Russia would go along with Turkey as it acknowledged Ankara had legitimate border security concerns.
But Russian officials had from the start detailed red lines — including that the offensive wouldn’t lead to any permanent Turkish occupation.
FILE – A checkpoint, abandoned by Syrian Democratic Forces after Turkish military operations began, pictured on Oct. 11, 2019, outside Ras al-Ayn, Syria. (A. Lourie/VOA)
In return for the acceptance of the incursion, which Ankara says is aimed at clearing a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia allied with secessionist Turkish Kurds from the border lands, Russian officials made little pretense of their expectation that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would later acquiesce with Moscow’s plans for Syria’s future, one that will see President Bashar al-Assad, Russia’s ally, reassert control across the whole of Syria.
Speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi during an official visit by Putin to the Gulf emirate, Russian envoy Alexander Lavrentiev indicated Moscow expects Ankara to wrap up its offensive quickly. He said Turkish troops had the right under an agreement struck between Damascus and Ankara in 1998, the Adana pact, to temporarily push up to a maximum of 10 kilometers into Syria to conduct counter-terrorism operations.
“But it doesn’t give them the right to remain on Syrian territory permanently and we are opposed to Turkish troops staying on Syrian territory permanently,” he emphasized. “We don’t approve of their actions,” he added.
Shortly after Lavrentiev briefed reporters, Russian officials said President Putin and his Turkish counterpart spoke on the phone. According to them, Putin told Erdogan that the situation risked becoming unstable, noting that several hundred Islamic State captives being held by Syrian Kurds had exploited the chaos and escaped. Putin invited Erdogan to visit Russia in the next few days for urgent talks, a proposal Ankara had accepted, Kremlin officials say.
FILE – Turkish tanks and troops are stationed near Syrian town of Manbij, Syria, Oct. 15, 2019.
The sharper language may suggest, say analysts, that Ankara has overreached, as far as the Kremlin is concerned and has surprised Moscow by going deeper into Syrian territory than Russian officials had expected. That has prompted Russian worries about Erdogan’s longer term aims and concern that he may intend to prolong the Turkish military presence in Syria, using it as leverage in talks brokered by Moscow about Syria’s political future.
“Maybe Erdogan is proving to be a more difficult partner than the Kremlin had anticipated,” quipped a Western diplomat based in the Russian capital. But he added it was unlikely Erdogan will want to fall out with Putin and disrupt Ankara’s warming ties with Moscow, especially as he comes under pressure from erstwhile NATO allies to withdraw.
On Tuesday, President Erdogan rejected a U.S. call for an immediate ceasefire in northern Syria. Erdogan’s comments come ahead of a visit to Turkey by the U.S. vice-president and U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. “They say ‘declare a ceasefire’. We will never declare a ceasefire, Erdogan told reporters.
Critics of the Trump administration say the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria effectively gave Turkey a “green light” for the cross-border offensive. Trump officials deny this and on Monday Washington announced sanctions on Turkish ministries and senior government officials as punishment for the incursion. Several of America’s European allies have announced they will stop arms exports to Turkey.
The raft of U.S. sanctions on Turkey include scrapping a proposed $100 billion trade deal and tariffs on Turkish steel up to 50 per cent. In a statement President Donald Trump accused Turkey of creating “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” by “undermining” the campaign against the Islamic State, as well as endangering civilians.
As Western powers sought to gain some traction on Ankara, Russia appears to have been quick to try to fill the vacuum left by the U.S. troop withdrawal and to confirm a role it has earmarked for itself as the regional powerbroker. Local Kurdish sources told VOA over Skype that Russian troops had started to patrol to keep Turkish and Syrian government forces apart.
FILE – Russian and Syrian national flags flutter on military vehicles near Manbij, Syria, Oct. 15, 2019.
Russian envoy Lavrentiev confirmed the on-the-ground activity saying that Moscow had brokered the deal between the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and the Assad government. He said it was in “no one’s interests” for Assad forces and Turkish troops to clash. “Russia will not allow it,” he said. There have been some reports of scattered clashes between Turkish-backed forces and both Assad troops and the SDF, with at least one Turkish soldier killed.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces has been greeted gleefully by pro-Kremlin media outlets with state-owned RT television giving viewers a guided tour of a former U.S. military base near the town of Manbij. “Good morning, everybody, from Manbij,” the journalist, Oleg Blokhin, said in the report. “I’m at the American base where they still were yesterday, and this morning it’s already ours.”
But even the tub-thumping RT questioned whether Moscow has bitten off more than it can chew by setting itself up as the region’s power broker, pondering in one opinion article whether Putin can please everyone in the Middle East.
The United States says diplomatic efforts are on “high gear” to press for a cease-fire after Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria, as Washington tries to get the situation under control, according to a senior State Department official.
“Goal number one is to carry out diplomacy to try to find a cease fire. Get the situation under control. It’s very, very confusing. It’s dangerous for our troops. It’s placing the fight against ISIS at risk. It’s placing at risk the safe imprisonment of almost 10,000 detainees,” the official said, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group.
The official noted that there has not been “any major successful breakout so far of detainees,” referring to imprisoned IS fighters and their families. Syrian Kurdish officials have said hundreds of suspected IS prisoners have escaped.
Vice President Mike Pence speaks to reporters outside the West Wing of the White House, Oct. 14, 2019, in Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced sanctions against Turkish officials over the military operation and he plans to send a delegation led by Vice President Mike Pence to Ankara for talks to resolve the situation.
“I can just tell you that it’s (Pence’s trip) going to be launched very quickly,” the State Department official told reporters Tuesday. “And again our first goal is to basically have a heart to heart talk with the Turks.”
President Donald Trump speaks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, Oct. 12, 2019.
President Trump has faced harsh criticism in the week since the White House announced Turkey was going forward with its long-held plans to try to carve out a buffer zone along its border with Syria free from the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters it accuses of being terrorists linked to separatist Kurds in Turkey. The U.S. military has long said its Kurdish allies have been instrumental in the fight against IS, and the elimination of IS’s caliphate.
“We’re very concerned about their [Turkey’s] actions and the threat that they presented to peace, security, stability, and territorial integrity of Syria, of our overall political plans, and the risk of humanitarian disaster, and human rights violations, some of which we’ve seen not by Turkish troops, but by what we call the TSO-Turkish supported Syrian opposition elements, armed opposition elements, who are responsible for those horrible pictures you saw,” the U.S. official said Tuesday.
Turkey’s incursion pushed the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces to reach an agreement with the Syrian government that has brought Syrian troops back into the northeastern part of the country for the first time in years, including on Monday reaching the town of Manbij.
A U.S. military spokesman said Tuesday American troops left the town of Manbij as part of their withdrawal from the area.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to his ruling party officials, in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 10, 2019.
Trump spoke Monday with both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and General Mazloum Kobani, the head of the mostly Kurdish SDF that the United States has relied on to battle Islamic State militants in Syria.
In addition to the call to halt the military operation, the United States raised steel tariffs and halted negotiations on a $100-billion trade deal with Turkey.
U.S. Democrats and Republicans have faulted the Trump administration for what is unfolding, saying the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the area cleared the way for the U.S. ally SDF to be put in danger as well as the potential for Islamic State militants under SDF detention to break free and stage a resurgence.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., reads a statement announcing a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 24, 2019.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Trump’s “erratic decision-making is threatening lives, risking regional security and undermining America’s credibility in the world.”
She said both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate will proceed this week with “action to oppose this irresponsible decision.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that while Turkey does have legitimate security concerns linked to the Syrian conflict, the operation against the U.S.-backed Kurds jeopardizes the progress won against IS.
“Abandoning this fight now and withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy and invite the resurgence of ISIS,” McConnell said. “And such a withdrawal would also create a broader power vacuum in Syria that will be exploited by Iran and Russia, a catastrophic outcome for the United States’ strategic interests.”
A senior administration official rejected criticisms against Trump in the call with reporters Monday, saying only Erdogan’s actions are to blame.
The official said Turkish President Erdogan “took a very, very rash, ill-calculated action that has had what, for him, were unintended consequences.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper addresses reporters during a media briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 11, 2019.
Earlier Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Erdogan “bears full responsibility” for what happens.
He called the Turkish offensive “unnecessary and impulsive,” and said it has undermined what he called the successful multinational mission to defeat Islamic State in Syria.
Esper said he plans to go to Brussels next week to press other NATO allies to apply sanctions on Turkey.
Dutch authorities were Tuesday trying to piece together the story of a family found living isolated from the outside world in the rural east of the Netherlands.
Mayor Roger de Groot said that the six-member family is believed to have lived for nine years on a farm in Ruinerwold, 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Amsterdam.
Drone images of the farm showed a cluster of buildings with a large vegetable garden on one side. The small property appeared to be ringed by a fence and largely obscured by trees.
Dutch media reported that the family was made up of five adult siblings and their father.
De Groot told reporters the siblings were aged from 18-25. He said their mother is believed to have died “a number of years ago.”
Local police said in a tweet that officers visited the farm after being alerted by somebody “concerned about the living conditions” of its residents.
Police said they arrested a 58-year-old man who rented the property, but it wasn’t immediately clear why or what his relationship was to the family. Police said he wasn’t the father.
Police investigating the farm found “a number of improvised rooms where a family lived a withdrawn life,” De Groot said in a statement.
Local bar owner Chris Westerbeek told broadcaster RTV Drenthe that he called police after a man “with a confused look in his eyes,” with unkempt hair, a long beard and old clothes walked in to his bar and ordered five beers for himself.
“He said where he came from, that he’d run away and that he needed help urgently,” Westerbeek said.
De Groot said the police investigation is looking into “all possible scenarios,” but didn’t elaborate.
He said the family was now “in a safe place receiving appropriate care and attention.”
Dodging waves at low tide, a barefooted, shirtless Mixtec man is carefully walking along the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. He navigates his way through the gray rocks on a quest to catch a particular kind of snail, Purpura pansa. When he catches one, he presses just the right part of the snail’s foot to encourage it to secrete a neurotoxin directly onto a skein of cotton yarn. The milky liquid stains the yarn in a greenish color. As it oxidizes, the color turns blue and finally becomes a brilliant reddish-purple hue.
FILE – A laborer collects thread that has been dyed and left to dry in the sun, in Calcutta, India, June 1, 2005.
Extracting colors from snails is an ancient dyeing method that the Mixtec people have been practicing for around 1,500 years. Like their ancestors, Mixtec dyers do not hurt the snails. They carefully return them to their habitat. They give them time to recover and recharge. They also stay away from the snails during the mating season.
This group of Mixtec dyers is among more than two dozen artisans whom author Keith Recker profiled in his book, True Colors — World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments.
FILE – Vendors sell marigold flower garlands in Allahabad, India, Oct. 19, 2017.
Recker is interested in natural dyes because he finds them fascinating.
“There is usually more than one thing happening in the union between the natural coloring substance and fiber,” he says. “I think the eye is much more entertained by this complexity than it is by chemical simplicity where you only have one weave length, one vibe coming to your eye from the fiber.”
To explore traditional techniques and personal approaches to natural dyeing, Recker embarked on a journey and met with artisans from all over the world, from West Africa to Bangladesh to China to Northern California to Mexico to Uzbekistan.
“Before 1856, when the first synthetic dye was invented in England by a chemist who made a beautiful purple color out of tar, all colors were natural. They were made in some vividly amazing ways,” Recker notes. “Dyes were mostly extracted from plants, but in some cases from animals.”
Most of these artisans not only keep their ancestors’ handmade natural dyeing techniques alive, they pass them to younger generations as they train other artisans in their communities.
Colorful journey
Artisans come from different artistic and cultural backgrounds, however, their work is similar in many ways.
FILE – Pigment extracted from the cochineal insects are displayed at a Cochineal Campaign lab in Nopaltepec, state of Mexico, Sept. 30, 2014.
Audrey Louise Reynolds, for instance, is an artisan living in Upstate New York. She extracts beautiful colors from turmeric, while Rupa Trivedi in Mumbai, India, creates a range of colors from marigold, hibiscus and rose flowers and coconut husks. With much trial and error and online research, the self-taught artist understood the principles of natural dyes and started her business 15 years ago.
Maria Elena Pompo, who moved from Venezuela to the United States and from engineering to fashion design, also developed her natural dyeing technique through experimentation.
“She colors her clothing with recycled avocado pits,” Recker says. “She goes around Brooklyn, collecting avocado pits from Mexican restaurants and uses them in a very precise way to create a whole range of blushes and yellowy apricots and pink browns. It is very low impact because they’re things that would otherwise go to trash.”
FILE – A man crushes a cochineal insect to show its red color in Huejotzingo, Mexican state of Puebla, Sept. 25, 2014.
Red is one of basic colors artisans use in dyeing fabrics, but they extract it from different resources.
In southwestern Mexico, the Gutierrez Contreras family members who are weaving textiles using old Zapotec traditions are famous for working with cochineal.
“Cochineal is a red color that comes from dried beetles,” Recker explains. “That sounds terrible, but the body of these dried beetles is made of carminic acid, which is still the safest red colorant we’ve known of.”
Carpetmakers Fatillo Kendjeav and his family, in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, extract a variety of red shades from madder roots. They use other natural ingredients to deepen the authenticity of their carpets, such as walnut hulls to create deep browns, and pomegranate skins to create a beautiful bronze green. They also use onion skins, apple, grape and mulberry leaves to create different shades of yellow.
Recker notes that these artisans tend to use such natural plants not only as colorants, but also as food and medicine.
True color advocates
As many people have become more conscious about natural foods and healthy eating habits, some see wearing naturally dyed fabrics as another step toward a healthier lifestyle. These dyeing techniques also have a lower impact on the environment as they encourage recycling and reusing practices, says Recker.
“If you learn how to use natural ingredients available around you, you can easily refresh an old, tired T-shirt, or a scarf, or a sheet and give it a new life instead of throwing them away,” adds the author.
Even if he does not inspire readers to do it themselves, Recker hopes raising awareness about natural colors will press the fashion industry worldwide to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Police in northern Nigeria rescued nearly 70 men and boys from a second purported Islamic school where they were shackled and subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatments.”
The raid in Katsina, the northwestern home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, came less a month after about 300 men and boys were freed from another supposed Islamic school in neighboring Kaduna state where they were allegedly tortured and sexually abused.
“In the course of investigation, sixty-seven persons from the ages of 7 to 40 years were found shackled with chains,” Katsina police spokesman Sanusi Buba said in a statement.
Men and boys are pictured after being rescued by police in Sabon Garin, in Daura local government area of Katsina state, Nigeria, Oct. 14, 2019.
“Victims were also found to have been subjected to various inhuman and degrading treatments.”
The raid occurred on Oct. 12 in Sabon Garin in the Daura local government area of Katsina state. Police issued a statement Monday and said they were working to reunite the victims with their families.
Police arrested one man, 78-year-old Mallam Bello Abdullahi Umar, for running what they called an “illegal detention/remand home.”
Lawai Musa, a trader who lived near the center, told Reuters by phone that families sent unruly men and boys there believing it was an Islamic teaching facility that would straighten them out and teach them Islamic beliefs.
“The way he is treating the children is un-Islamic” he said. “We are not happy, they were treated illegally.”
Islamic schools
Islamic schools, known as Almajiris, are common across the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a local organization, estimates about 10 million children attend them.
In June, President Buhari, himself a Muslim, said the government planned to ban the schools, but would not do so immediately. After the incident in Kaduna, the president issued a statement calling on traditional authorities to work with government to expose “unwanted cultural practices that amount to the abuse of children.”
Buhari’s office declined to immediately comment on the Katsina raid, saying it would issue a statement after a full briefing from police.
“The command enjoins parents to desist from taking their children/wards to illegal, unauthorized or unapproved remand/rehabilitation centers,” the police statement said.
California’s top utility regulator blasted Pacific Gas and Electric on Monday for what she called “failures in execution” during the largest planned power outage in state history to avoid wildfires that she said “created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated.”
The agency ordered a series of corrective actions, including a goal of restoring power within 12 hours, not the utility’s current 48-hour goal.
“The scope, scale, complexity, and overall impact to people’s lives, businesses, and the economy of this action cannot be understated,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer wrote in a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson.
FILE – Pacific Gas and Electric employees work in the PG&E Emergency Operations Center in San Francisco, Oct. 10, 2019.
PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians. The company said it did it because of dangerous wind forecasts but acknowledged that its execution was poor.
Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not receive enough warning that the power was going out.
“We were not adequately prepared,” Johnson said at a press conference last week.
PG&E spokespeople did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the sanctions.
In addition to restoring power faster, the PUC said the utility must work harder to avoid such large-scale outages, develop better ways to communicate with the public and local officials, get a better system for distributing outage maps, and work with emergency personnel to ensure PG&E staff are sufficiently trained.
She ordered the utility to perform an audit of its performance during the outages that began Wednesday, saying the utility clearly did not adopt many of the recommendations state officials have made since utilities was granted the authority to begin pre-emptive power shutoffs last year. The review is due by Thursday, and she ordered several PG&E executives to appear at an emergency PUC hearing Friday.
Governor’s criticism
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also criticized PG&E for its performance during the outage, blaming what he called decades of mismanagement, underinvestment and lousy communication with the public. On Monday the Democratic governor urged the utility to compensate affected customers with a bill credit or rebate worth $100 for residential customers or $250 for small businesses.
Newsom said the shutoffs affected too many customers for too long, and it is clear PG&E implemented them “with astounding neglect and lack of preparation.”
Batjer’s letter also said that PG&E’s service territory, design of its transmission lines and distribution network and “lack of granularity of its forecasting ability” mean it can’t do pre-emptive power shut-offs as strategically as some other utilities, but she said it must work harder to reduce the number of customers affected by future outages.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “bears full responsibility” for the resurgence of Islamic State, a growing humanitarian crisis, and possible war crimes.
This was the Pentagon’s strongest condemnation so far of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
Esper calls Turkey’s attacks on the Kurds “unnecessary and impulsive.” He says it has undermined what he calls the “successful” multinational mission to defeat Islamic State in Syria by allowing “many dangerous ISIS detainees” to flee detention camps that had been guarded by the Kurds.
FILE – U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper addresses reporters during a media briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 11, 2019.
Esper says U.S. relations with Turkey have been damaged. He says he plans to go to Brussels next week to press other NATO allies to slap sanctions on Turkey.
Turkish forces entered into northern Syria last week after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the pull out of the approximately 1,000 U.S. forces in the area. They will be redeployed elsewhere in the Middle East to “monitor the situation,” according to Trump.
The U.S. had been fighting side-by-side with the Kurds in Syria to defeat Islamic State. The extremists were just one rebel faction trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
Turkey regards the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.
Vice President Mike Pence says Trump is sending him to the Middle East in an apparent attempt to push Turkey and the Kurds to the negotiating table.
Pence says Trump spoke to Erdogan on Monday, calling for an immediate end to the military operation.
The U.S. is “simply not going to tolerate Turkey’s invasion of Syria any longer,” Pence said.
‘Irresponsible’ actions
Syrian Kurds say they feel forsaken by the United States. They also believe much of the Arab world and the U.N. Security Council are ignoring them.
FILE – Members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) prepare to join the front against Turkish forces, near the northern Syrian town of Hasakeh, Oct. 10, 2019.
But Esper says Turkey’s “irresponsible” actions have created an unacceptable risk to U.S. forces in northern Syria, including the possibility of the U.S. getting “engulfed in a broader conflict.”
Trump continued Monday to defend his decision to order the U.S. out of the area against strong criticism from both parties and European allies.
“Do people really think we should go to war with NATO Member Turkey?” Trump tweeted. “Never ending wars will end! The same people who got us into the Middle East mess are the people who most want to stay there!”
Trump said he is raising tariffs on Turkish steel imports and is stopping trade talks with Turkey while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced sanctions on the Turkish defense, interior, and energy ministers and their departments.
“I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path,” he said.
‘Gravely concerned’
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called on the entire House to pass a resolution condemning Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. But she also agrees that Turkey must be condemned for its actions.
FILE – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks to reporters during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 17, 2019.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is “gravely concerned” about the Turkish offensive, contending it will jeopardize “years of hard-won progress” in destroying Islamic State.
But the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, says the sanctions Trump and Mnuchin announced “do not go far enough to punish Turkey for its egregious offenses in Syria.”
In Syria, government forces entered a town near the Turkish border Monday, a day after reaching an agreement with Syrian Kurds to move into the region in an attempt to counter the Turkish onslaught.
Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported Monday’s troop movement in Tal Tamr, about 20 kilometers from the border, saying it was done to “confront the Turkish aggression” and was welcomed by the people there.
The fighting since the Turkish operation began nearly a week ago has killed dozens of civilians, observers say.
The U.S. State Department has condemned reports of pro-Turkish fighters executing civilians.
American Simone Biles became the most decorated gymnast in world championship history on Sunday when she won the beam and floor finals to take her career tally to 25 medals.
Soon after securing a convincing victory on the beam in Stuttgart to overtake Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo’s record tally of 23 world medals, the 22-year-old Biles successfully defended her floor title to win medal number 25.
The four-time Olympic champion is now the owner of 19 gold medals across four championships against 12 for Scherbo, who competed in five world events between 1991 and 1996.
Making her final appearance of the week in front of a raucous crowd, Biles wasted no time as she landed a superb triple-twisting double back flip — known as the Biles II – on her first pass.
Biles’s double layout with a half turn — another skill named after her — put her out of bounds for a 0.1 penalty but she did enough to post a winning score of 15.133.
“Honestly, I just couldn’t move. I was so tired,” Biles said of her final pose on the stage.
“This is really the best worlds performance I have ever put out.”
The Americans took a one-two finish as Sunisa Lee finished with 14.133 for the silver medal, while Russian Angelina Melnikova came third.
Earlier, Biles delivered a polished routine on the beam before a full twisting double tuck dismount for an impressive 15.066.
Although Biles had twice before won the world beam title, in 2014 and 2015, it has not always been plain sailing for her on the apparatus.
Her slip on the landing of a front tucked somersault at the 2016 Rio Olympics meant she had to settle for a bronze in the event. Last year again, she dropped off the beam during the women’s all-around final at the world championships.
But she has regained her swagger this week, under the watchful eyes of balance beam coach Cecile Landi, and posted top scores in all four attempts — qualifying, the team and all-around finals and Sunday’s apparatus final.
“It meant a lot because Cecile has really been working on bringing my confidence back up to where it used to be on the beam,” Biles said.
“To go out there and nail the routine, just like I do in practice, it felt really good and I knew she was really proud.”
As another title-winning score was announced in the arena, Biles punched the air in jubilation before joining celebrations with the U.S. team.
“I was really excited,” she added. “I thought it was going to be at least 14.8, 14.9, but to see 15, I was like well that’s pretty crazy, so I was very proud.”
Last year’s winner Liu Tingting of China took silver with 14.433, while team mate Li Shijia won the bronze.
Biles finished her campaign in Stuttgart with five gold medals from six events to mark ideal preparations for next year’s Tokyo Olympics.
Her barnstorming run included a record fifth all-around gold, an individual vault title, as well as helping the U.S. to a fifth straight world team title.
Parents of the British teen killed when his motorcycle collided with car allegedly driven by an American diplomat’s wife are on their way to the U.S. hoping to seek justice.
Harry Dunn, 19, died in August in near the Croughton Royal Air Force base in Northhamptonshire, which is used by the U.S. Air Force as a communications center.
Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, told the BBC the family hopes to meet with the suspected driver, identified by British police and Prime Minister Boris Johnson as Anne Sacoolas, wife of an American intelligence officer based at Croughton.
Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and returned to the United States while the case was still being investigated. She has since written a letter of apology to Dunn’s family.
But Charles said Sunday, “It’s nearly seven weeks now since we lost our boy, sorry just doesn’t cut it.
“That’s not really quite enough,” she told Sky News. “But I’m still really open to meeting her, as are the rest of us. I can’t promise what I would or wouldn’t say, but I certainly wouldn’t be aggressive.”
Charles also said the family was thankful to receive a letter Saturday from the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab that said since Sacoolas had left Britain, “immunity is no longer pertinent”.
The family is hoping Sacoolas will return to Britain. They have even called on U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene on their behalf.
But Trump told a news conference Wednesday that Sacoolas would not return. Harry Dunn’s death was a “terrible accident,” the president said but he noted that driving on the worn side of the road “happens”.
California has become the first U.S. state to ban all production and sale of animal fur products.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill that will make it illegal to make, sell and even donate any new item made using animal fur starting in 2023.
The bill excludes used items, taxidemy products, fur taken with a hunting license and fur used by Native American tribes for religious purposes.
Violators of the ban will face fines of up to $500, or even $1,000 for repeat offenses.
“The signing of AB44 underscores the point that today’s consumers simply don’t want wild animals to suffer extreme pain and fear for the sake of fashion,” Kitty Block, the head of the Humane Society of the United States said in a statement.
But the Fur Information Council of America condemned the ban as being part of a “radical vegan agenda” and has threatened a court challenge.
Along with the fur ban, Newsom also approved a ban on the use of most animals in circuses. Exceptions will be made for dogs and horses.
“California is a leader when it comes to animal welfare, and today that leadership includes banning the sale of fur,” Newsom said in a statement. “But we are doing more than that. We are making a statement to the world that beautiful wild animals like bears and tigers have no place on trapeze wires or jumping through flames.”
Indian police and intelligence agencies detained a freelancer for the Voice of America’s Tibetan service as he arrived in Chennai Friday (October 11) to cover the informal summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A freelancer for Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan service was also detained. Both VOA and RFA are part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Cyaltsen Choedak for VOA and Pema Ngudup for RFA, were held for more than 40 hours, first at the Chennai railway station, then at a police station and finally at two guesthouses before they were released.
One of Australia’s most senior government ministers has accused the Chinese Communist Party of behaving in ways that are “inconsistent” with his country’s values. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned Canberra would work to counter foreign interference in Australian universities, as well as cyber espionage.
Peter Dutton’s comments are some of the most uncompromising language yet from an Australian government minister on the perceived threat posed by China.
Tensions between Canberra and Beijing have risen in recent times because of allegations of cyber attacks by China, and that it has meddled in Australia’s domestic politics. There’s also been friction over the detention of a Chinese-Australian writer in Beijing, and differences over Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Australia also has concerns about Chinese interference in its universities, including allegations that students who have supported democracy protests in Hong Kong have been harassed or monitored by Chinese agents on campus.
Peter Dutton said Australia must be wary of China’s ambitions.
“My issue is with the Communist Party of China and their policies to the extent that they are inconsistent with our own values, and in a democracy like ours we encourage freedom of speech, freedom of the expression of thought, and if that is being impinged, if people are operating outside of the law then whether they are from China or from any other country we are right to call that out,” he said.
The comments prompted a stinging response from the Chinese government.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told a press conference that he hoped “Australia will reject the Cold War mentality and bias, and work to advance bilateral relations and mutual trust.”
The Chinese Embassy in Canberra said it rejected “Mr Dutton’s irrational accusations … which are shocking and baseless.”
Australia is a liberal, middle-ranking world power. China is its biggest trading partner by some distance, and three of the main pillars of the Australian economy, mining, tourism and education, rely heavily on demand from China.
The challenge for Australia, which has a close military alliance with the United States, is to be able to criticize and challenge China while maintaining a key trade relationship that has underpinned its recent prosperity.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin travels to Saudi Arabia, a traditional U.S. ally, Monday, offering to act as a peacemaker between Riyadh and Tehran in a diplomatic offensive aimed at balancing Moscow’s relations across the Middle East.
His second aim, say analysts, is to needle Washington. While courting Iran, Russia’s ally in Syria, the Kremlin has also been wooing Tehran’s top foes, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as other major powers in the region like Turkey, a member of the U.S.-led NATO Western military alliance.
Putin’s visit coincides with a Pentagon announcement that it is dispatching 3000 additional troops and two squadrons of fighter jets to the Gulf kingdom in an effort, U.S. officials say, to deter Iranian aggression following the drone and Cruise missile attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities last month, which rattled global energy markets and added to war tensions in the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia and the U.S., as well as other Western powers, blame Iran for the attack.
In recent months, Russia’s president has been assiduously courting Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a move which has been compared by some analysts to trolling the U.S. in the Gulf. The Crown Prince hasn’t discouraged the attention — as much a warning, some analysts say, to Western powers and as a rebuff of their criticism for his human rights record.
FILE – Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a G-20 session with other heads of state, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nov. 30, 2018.
At the G-20 summit last year in Buenos Aires, just weeks after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Putin was pictured laughing heartily with the Saudi ruler over a shared joke and giving him a high-five. The bonhomie between the pair stood in marked contrast with the shunning by other World leaders and dignitaries of the Crown Prince, who’s widely blamed, despite his denials, for the macabre killing of the journalist, a U.S. resident, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
“The Russian government declined to criticize the Saudi authorities over the killing [of Khashoggi], and over the last year has made steady progress in offering itself as a new, reliable friend,” says Brian Dooley of Human Rights First, an independent advocacy organization based in the U.S..
Saudi and Russian officials are scheduled to announce more than two billion dollars-worth of Saudi investment in Russia during Putin’s visit, his first to the kingdom since 2007. The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, said Moscow and Riyadh will sign ten major agreements covering agriculture, transport, railways, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and industrial intelligence.
The RDIF opened an office in Saudi Arabia four days ago, its first ever foreign office. The move is being seen by some as a maneuver by the Kremlin to make up for the reduction in Western foreign investment in the wake of sanctions imposed initially on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
“I am convinced that the Russia-Saudi summit will give further strong impetus to our multifaceted partnership, contribute to its qualitative growth and strengthen mutual understanding between the two peoples,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week.
Speaking to broadcasters Saturday ahead of his trip, Putin decried attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, no matter who was behind them. He also urged Iran’s neighbors to “respect” the interests of Iran, a country that has “existed on its territory for thousands of years.” But at the same time he praised increasing cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an interview with Al-Arabiya, Sky News Arabia and RT Arabic ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia, in Sochi, Russia, in this undated picture released on Oct. 13, 2019. (Sputnik/M. Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters)…
During the interview the Russian leader offered, once again, to sell the Saudis advanced Russian-made air defense systems, either the S-300 which Turkey has purchased, or the S-400, bought by Iran. Last month, during a press conference in Ankara alongside Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin tauntingly suggested Riyadh should do the same and buy from Russia.
“We are ready to help Saudi Arabia to protect their people,” Putin said. “And they need to make one clever decision as Iran did, buying our S-300, and as Mr. Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400 Triumph air defense systems from Russia. These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack,” he added.
His remarks prompted chortles from the Iranian delegation.
U.S. defense experts say it would be against Saudi Arabia’s defense and diplomatic interests to be lured by Putin into buying a Russian system. If Saudi Arabia did decide to purchase the S-400 or S-300, it would likely be denied access to the best U.S. defense technologies and military training and the purchase would also prompt a likely withdrawal of all U.S. military aircraft based in the Gulf kingdom, leaving Saudi Arabia reliant on Russia for its defense.
Pentagon officials say intelligence-collection capabilities of the S-400 would endanger U.S. planes operating in the vicinity.
FILE – First parts of a Russian S-400 missile defense system are unloaded from a Russian plane near Ankara, Turkey, July 12, 2019.
When Turkey acquired the S-400, the White House immediately canceled plans to supply the NATO ally U.S. F-35 strike fighters. They also say the S-400 would be a poison pill for Saudi Arabia — the system would likely rely on Russian operatives and codes to identify unfriendly warplanes and as Iran has the most advanced Russian system, it would know its weaknesses and ways to trick the technology.
Despite Putin’s offers of a surface-to-air missile system, the Russians appear to be marketing harder their new anti-drone system, the Pantsir, an anti-UAV system Rosoboronexport, the export agency, is scheduled to put on display at the Dubai Airshow in November.
“Recent events in the world have shown that the effective fight against reconnaissance and strike UAVs, as well as other air attack weapons, is becoming increasingly important to ensure the protection of high-priority facilities,” Rosoboronexport said in a press release issued days after the Saudi attacks.
FILE – A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense.
However, the Russian UAV system is likely to be redundant with the U.S. dispatching more air-defense capabilities to Saudi Arabia. On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced the dispatch to the Gulf kingdom of “additional Patriot and THAAD [terminal high altitude area defense] air and missile defense batteries.”
“In response to Iranian provocation since May, the U.S. has deployed an array of additional capabilities to the region, including airborne early warning aircraft squadrons, maritime patrol aircraft squadrons, Patriot air and missile defense batteries, B-52 bombers, a carrier strike group, amphibious transport dock, unmanned aircraft, and engineering and support personnel,” he said.
Defense purchases aside, Putin’s trip is an historic one, which the Kremlin has been keen to play up at a time Washington is embroiled in domestic political wars and its focus on the Gulf diminished.
Human rights organizations say they are preparing for a long-lasting displacement of civilians in northeastern Syria as a result of a military operation by Turkey and its aligned Syrian militants against the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces.
The new Turkish offensive into Syria on Wednesday started after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision Sunday to withdraw U.S. troops from the region.
As the Turkish government on Thursday said its military pushed deeper into the region in its operation, humanitarian agency Care International told VOA that approximately 90,000 people have become internally displaced since its beginning on Wednesday.
“Following the launch of a new military operation in the area, civilians in northeast Syria are at high risk,” said Fatima Azzeh, the senior regional communications manager for the Syria crisis at Care International.
“Reports from responders on the ground say civilians are already on the move and some vital services, such as medical facilities and water supplies, have been interrupted,” Azzeh said, adding that thousands more civilians are expected to leave the area in coming days.
Syrian refugees and relatives of nine-month-old baby, Mohammed Omar, killed in a mortar attack a day earlier in Akcakale near northern Syria, leaves after funeral ceremony in Akcakale on October 11, 2019.
The new wave of violence has forced several aid agencies to ask their staffs to evacuate the area with their families.
“This would cause further vulnerability and increased reliance on humanitarian aid, which the international community is not in a position to provide,” she said.
Turkish officials say their military operation, code named Operation Peace Spring, is to pursue a Kurdish armed group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units or the YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization — alleging that the group is linked to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, known as the PKK.
The United States, however, considers the YPG a key ally, and it became the main local ground force to remove Islamic State (IS) from a wide range of Syrian territory, including the self-proclaimed IS capital, Raqqa.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that in addition to pursuing YPG fighters, his government in northern Syria will take charge of nearly 10,000 IS fighters who are currently held in Kurdish prisons and establish a safe zone to return millions of Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Warning to Europe
Responding to a demand by the European Union to cease the offensive, Erdogan on Thursday threatened to open Turkey’s door to allow the Syrian refugees to flood Europe.
“Hey, European Union, pull yourself together. If you try to label this operation as an occupation, it is very simple: we will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” Erdogan said in a speech to ruling party officials in Ankara.
Kurds consider Turkey’s refugee transfer plan an attempt to change the demographic balance of the region by moving large numbers of Sunni Arab Syrians into a traditionally Kurdish heartland.
The conflict in Syria broke out in 2011 following a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. The United Nations estimates nearly half of Syria’s population has been displaced, with an estimated 6.6 million refugees fleeing the country.
An armored vehicle escorts a Turkish military convoy in the border town of Akcakale in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, October 12, 2019. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Demographic shifts, displacements
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, in a statement Thursday, said Turkey’s scale-up of the operation in northeast Syria also could cause mass displacement of vulnerable populations that already have been displaced multiple times by conflict and live in camps. It warned that the campaign could lead to insecurity and chaos, which could create circumstances for the resurgence of IS.
“The last thing Syrians need now is a new wave of violence,” the commission said.
Amnesty International told VOA that roughly 700,000 people within the region have fled war from other Syrian areas and depend on U.N. aid and assistance from other humanitarian organizations for their basic needs. Another million local residents could be gravely affected by the conflict.
“When [Islamic State] took over large swaths of Syria and sent many religious minority communities from other parts of Syria, and in addition to tens of thousands of just regular civilians who were terrified of living under ISIS, they fled into this part of Syria feeling like it was a safe area for them to be in,” said Philippe Nassif, the human rights group’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“So, what’s happening is with the Turkish incursion you’ve got a very large population of internally displaced people and civilians that were already living in this part of Syria, many of them Kurdish, who are now beginning to flee the currently ongoing Turkish intervention,” Nassif told VOA.
Even after Turkey’s operation, Nassif charged that a second phase of humanitarian crisis likely will unfold as the Turkish government tries to implement its so-called safe zone. “You’re going to eventually see this idea of Turkey sending a whole bunch of Syrian refugees from Turkey and resettling them into these newly captured areas.”
“Assuming that happens, they’re going to need humanitarian support and assistance as well. So, you have a second crisis in the future that will result from the current crisis that we’re experiencing right now,” he added.
Arab League foreign ministers condemned Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria. The League’s secretary general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said the group is calling on the U.N. Security Council to take action against Turkey.
At a meeting Saturday in Cairo, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called Turkey’s military action an “invasion” and an “aggression” against an Arab state.
He said the Arab League “condemns the invasion and that the world must not accept it, either, since it contradicts international norms and international law, no matter what pretext the invader uses.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim, who presided over the session, said the Turkish “invasion” would cause a further deterioration of the situation in Syria and a worsening of terrorism both in Syria and neighboring states, like Iraq.
He said Turkey’s action represents a dangerous escalation that will worsen the humanitarian situation and increase the suffering of the Syrian people, in addition to allowing terrorists to regroup and weakening international efforts to fight terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State terror group, which threatens both the region and world.
An explosion is seen over the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, as seen from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, Sanliurfa province, Turkey, Oct. 12, 2019.
The United Arab Emirate’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Ghargash, also blasted what he called “Turkey’s blatant aggression” against Syria and urged the international community to condemn it.
Ghargash said the Arab League is meeting at a time when the entire Arab nation is facing unprecedented threats and the region is facing a period of extreme danger, which requires a carefully thought out response, as some regional parties are behaving compulsively without consideration for the unity or sovereignty of a fraternal Arab state.
“Turkey’s naked military aggression on northeast Syria,” he said,”represents a threat to the sovereignty of all Arab states and exploits chaos in the country to flout all international norms and destabilize the region.”
Egyptian state TV didn’t broadcast the statement of Qatar’s foreign minister, but Arab media reported that Qatar refused to endorse the Arab League decision to condemn the Turkish military operation. Qatar and Turkey have kept close ties since Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain imposed an economic boycott against Doha in June of 2018, for what they say is its support for terrorism.
Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA the Arab League should have taken “stronger steps like economic sanctions” to punish Turkey for its aggression. “Turkey is an imperialist regional power with a long history of massacres in the area.”
Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, agrees with Sadek, saying, “The Turkish invasion has been condemned by most Arab states, [but] that condemnation needs to be followed up by actions to prevent bad things from happening,” such as the “release of ISIS prisoners” and “ethnic cleansing in northern Syria. Operation ‘peace spring’ is not peace,” he says, “and it will not bring springtime to Syria.”
Theodore Karasik, a Washington-based Mideast analyst, insisted that we are “witnessing a shift in the landscape in the Arab world regarding this [Turkish] military action. Arab opinion,” he argues, “is steeped in the ills of the Ottoman Empire and how Erdogan’s actions fit the description.”
The United States has hailed FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, for slapping a five-year ban on a former senior official of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) for failing to act on sexual abuse allegations brought by the country’s female players.
“Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable,” Alice Wells, acting U.S. assistant secretary for south and central Asia, tweeted Saturday.
We welcome @FIFAcom’s Ethics Committee’s suspension of an official who failed to act on allegations brought by the @AfghanistanWNT. Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable. AGW
FIFA announced a day earlier its ongoing investigation into complaints, lodged by several female Afghan football players, has found Sayed Aghazada, the former AFF general secretary, guilty of breaching the world body’s code of ethics.
The complainants accused the former AFF president, Keramuudin Karim, of “repeated” sexual abuse between 2013 and 2018 when Aghazada was the general secretary. The players went public with the allegations last year, prompting FIFA to investigate and ban Karim for life in June. It also imposed a $1 million penalty on the former AFF president.
FIFA said Friday that Aghazada was aware of the abuse and had the duty to report and prevent it. Consequently, he has been banned from all football-related activity at both national and international level for five years. A financial penalty of about $10,000 was also imposed on him.
Aghazada was also serving as a member of the FIFA standing committee and as Asian Football Confederation (AFC) executive committee.
The United States is finding itself bogged down in northeastern Syria, caught in the middle of an increasingly dangerous fight between two key allies — Turkey and the Syrian Kurds — with neither side giving any sign it will back down.
Further complicating matters, U.S. military and intelligence officials say they see indications that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or Daesh, is finding ways to take advantage of the chaos.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday became the latest senior U.S. official to voice his disapproval, decrying Turkey’s military incursion during a hastily scheduled news conference at the Pentagon.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper addresses reporters at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 11, 2019.
“We oppose and are greatly disappointed by Turkey’s decision to launch a unilateral military incursion into northern Syria,” he said, describing the decision as “impulsive.”
“This operation puts our SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces] partners in harm’s way,” he said. “It risks the security of ISIS prison camps and will further destabilize the region.”
Turkish operation
U.S. military officials said the Turkish incursion, named Operation Peace Spring by Ankara, has so far encompassed a 125-kilometer stretch along the Turkish-Syrian border, from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, both Syrian cities.
“It’s been relatively limited in terms of ground forces,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Friday, noting the Turkish military has been relying on several commando units and fighters with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army.
U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley addresses reporters at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 11, 2019.
Officials with the mainly Kurdish SDF said Turkey was also pounding their positions with artillery, warplanes and armed drones, adding there were no signs Turkish forces would ease off anytime soon, a view shared by the Pentagon.
“I have no indication that they are willing to stop,” Esper said, noting he had emphasized to his Turkish counterpart “the damage this is doing.”
Turkish officials said their goal was to create a 30-kilometer-wide zone along the border to protect Turkey from the Kurdish forces, which they say have long-standing ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Both Turkey and the U.S. see the PKK as a terror group, though U.S. and Western officials say the Kurdish militias in Syria have been an effective and steadfast partner in the fight against Islamic State.
“We are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces,” Esper said.
The U.S. announced Friday that it was drafting “very significant” new sanctions to pressure Turkey to ratchet down its operations.
“We can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned.
Staying the course
Turkey seemed intent on staying the course, however.
The Turkish operation “will not stop … no matter what anyone says,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Separately, the Turkish ambassador to the U.S., Serdar Kılıç, said Friday, “The path forward is clear.”
FILE – Turkish Ambassador to the United States Serdar Kilic speaks to the Conference on U.S.-Turkey Relations in Washington, May 22, 2017.
“We are going to clear YPG-PYD elements from that region,” he said, using acronyms for the Kurdish militias. “We gave unreserved support to the United States in its fight against terrorism. We do not expect less.”
Kılıç also promised Turkey would “pay utmost attention in order to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties.”
Senior U.S. officials said that despite such guarantees, U.S. President Donald Trump had ordered them to negotiate a settlement between Turkey, a NATO ally, and the Kurds. But Turkish officials seemed to dismiss such moves Friday, emphasizing the government does not negotiate with those they see as terrorists.
Speaking by phone through an interpreter, from near the front lines, the top Kurdish military commander described the situation as frustrating and disappointing.
“We are now preparing ourselves for a long military operation that might take more than a year,” SDF General Mazloum Abdi said Friday.
“They want to attack all the Kurdish towns. … They want to destroy all of our area,” he said, adding that in addition to meeting with top U.S military officials earlier in the week, he was taking his case directly to the White House with a letter to Trump.
“I ask him to mediate between us and Turkey, not through war but through dialogue and discussion,” Abdi said.
“We want them [the Americans] just to impose a no-fly zone,” Abdi added. “President Trump is capable of doing this.”
US, SDF forces
For now, U.S. military officials said U.S. forces in northeast Syria remained “co-located” with the SDF, with the exception of “two small outposts” in the area from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, as part of the fight against Islamic State.
A U.S. commander on the ground, 30 kilometers south of Tal Abyad, also told VOA’s Kurdish service U.S. forces were staying in the area to make sure Turkey’s incursion did not go too far.
“We are still conducting operations,” Milley said at the Pentagon. “Obviously, this incursion that was initiated by the Turks has had some effect.”
Turkish operations inside Syria also appeared to be the cause of a close call for U.S. troops in the town of Kobani, where artillery landed near their position, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Navy Captain Brook DeWalt, director of Defense Press Operations, said in a statement that the explosion occurred “in an area known by the Turks to have U.S. forces present.”
Turkey denied intentionally firing on the U.S. forces, and a U.S. official told VOA that no one was hurt in the explosion.
“There are no indications this was intentional,” the official added without saying who was responsible.
DeWalt said, “U.S. forces have not withdrawn from Kobani.”
Only SDF officials raised additional concerns, accusing Turkey of bombing the abandoned American outposts in Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn.
SDF-run prisons
More worrisome, they said, is Turkey’s willingness to target SDF-run prisons, which are home to 9,000 to 12,500 IS fighters captured by Kurdish troops during the U.S.-led campaign to roll back the terror group’s self-declared caliphate.
The SDF said Friday that at least two such prisons had been targeted by Turkish artillery and that the attack on a prison in the city of Qamishli allowed five prisoners to escape.
The SDF’s Abdi said none of the escapees had been recaptured, and that because of Turkey’s actions, the SDF could no longer make the prisons a top priority.
“If they [Turkey] don’t stop the war, our soldiers are going to have to leave,” Abdi said of the troops he had assigned to guard the prisons. He added that some of those troops had already been pulled to fight on the front lines.
“All of these people are going to go to protect their villages, their towns, their families,” he added.
Separately, IS claimed responsibility Friday for a deadly car bomb in Qamishli.
Top U.S. officials, including Trump, have said Turkey would be responsible for any IS prisoners in areas Turkish troops entered.
But there have been no discussions about how such a transfer of control would take place. And the SDF was refusing to cooperate.
“We will never, ever give these terrorists to Turkey,” Abdi said, adding the SDF would take its chances by releasing the IS prisoners if necessary.
“Everybody is attacking us,” he said. “They can attack us, as well.”
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s financial records must be turned over to the House of Representatives.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that lawmakers should get the documents they have subpoenaed from Mazars USA. The firm has provided accounting services to Trump.
Trump went to court to prevent Mazars from turning over the records. He could appeal to the Supreme Court.
Tax returns not included
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed records from Mazars in April. They include documents from 2011 to 2018 that the House wants for investigation into the president’s reporting of his finances and potential conflicts of interest. The list of documents makes no mention of Trump’s tax returns, which are the subject of separate legal disputes.
In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court batted away Trump’s legal claims.
“Contrary to the President’s arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply,” Judge David Tatel wrote, joined by Judge Patricia Millett. Tatel was appointed by President Bill Clinton. Millett is an appointee of President Barack Obama.
Trump appointee Neomi Rao wrote in dissent that the committee should have asked for the records under the House’s impeachment power, not its legislative authority.
“The Constitution and our historical practice draw a consistent line between the legislative and judicial powers of Congress. The majority crosses this boundary for the first time by upholding this subpoena investigating the illegal conduct of the President under the legislative power,” Rao wrote.
Several records fights
The case is one of several working its way through courts in which Trump is fighting with Congress over records. The House Ways and Means Committee has sued the Trump administration over access to the president’s tax returns. In New York, Trump sued to prevent Deutsche Bank and Capital One from complying with House subpoenas for banking and financial records. A judge ruled against him, and Trump appealed. Trump also is in court trying to stop the Manhattan District Attorney from obtaining his tax returns.
Trump had argued that Oversight committee seeking the records from Mazars is out to get him and lacks a legitimate “legislative purpose” for its request. His lawyers have argued that congressional investigations are valid only if there is legislation that might result from them.
The committee, for its part, has said it is seeking the Trump financial statements, accounting records and other documents as part of its investigation into whether the president has undisclosed conflicts of interests, whether he has accurately reported his finances and whether he may have engaged in illegal conduct before and during his time in office.
The committee says the House is considering legislation related to government conflicts of interest and presidential financial disclosures, among other things.
Arthur Jean Pierre contributed to this report in Port-au-Prince.
Thousands of protesters were in the streets of Haiti’s capital Friday, marching toward the affluent suburb of Petionville where they say they will wait for the President Jovenel Moise’s letter of resignation.
“Jovenel can’t remain in the country, he has to go!” a protester yelled as he made his way up the mountain from the Champ de Mars neighborhood, not far from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince.
Demonstrators march during a protest to demand the resignation of Haitian president Jovenel Moise, in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct. 11, 2019.
“We don’t have a problem with the man — we don’t know him — we have a problem with the system (of government). We’re fighting for a new society and a better life,” a protester marching in the downtown area of Carrefour Aeroport said. “We have to rid ourselves of this economic morass.”
The opposition and anti-corruption groups called for citizens nationwide to fill the streets to continue pressuring the president to resign. They blame him for failed leadership, a fuel shortage, high inflation and rampant corruption.
“The police know where we’re heading,” opposition Senator Nenel Cassy told VOA Creole as he marched uptown. “We have protesters coming from different areas of the capital and we will merge at Place St. Pierre (in Petionville). And if they (the president) don’t bring us his resignation letter, we will head up to Pelerin.”
Cassy said the opposition has sent word to protesters coming down the mountain from Kenscoff, an agricultural town, to stop when they get to Pelerin 9, and wait there for a signal to continue down the mountain to the president’s home.
A week ago, when protesters tried to make it to Petionville, they were dispersed by security forces firing tear gas.
Asked by VOA Creole what they plan to do if they are allowed to reach Moise’s home, opposition leader Andre Michel skirted the question.
“I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” Michel said. When pressed, however, about whether they planned to resort to violence, he said, “Listen, we are a Republican opposition, we are a Democratic opposition, functioning within the confines of the Constitution of the Republic. Everything we do, we always invite the police (to come along).”
When VOA Creole arrived in Petionville around midday, two armored police trucks were blocking the main road leading to the president’s neighborhood. A large crowd was gathering in the middle of the street.
#Haiti security forces have blocked the road leading up to President @moisejovenel’s neighborhood, Pelerin, an affluent suburb of the capital. Meanwhile, some protesters have reached #Petionville, another affluent suburb. Video by @VOAKreyol Matiado Vilme pic.twitter.com/zNGbiDes4m
“We’re at the edge of the abyss,” a protester told VOA Creole, likening the current political climate to that which existed in the 1960s under dictator Papa Doc (President Francois Duvalier) whose Tonton Macoute henchmen terrorized the nation.
“When the government reaches this stage, it means it’s reached the end. This is an uprising, not a protest,” the protester said.
Haiti has been plagued for months by an increase in violence, a fuel shortage, high inflation, double-digit unemployment and food insecurity.
Weekly protests have negatively impacted businesses, schools and tourism.
Moise has taken steps toward resolving the crisis. Last week, he named several new Cabinet ministers and formed a special commission tasked with facilitating a national dialogue to negotiate an end to the crisis — an idea backed by the international community.
“This is a situation that requires political wisdom,” former Prime Minister Evans Paul, a member of the commission, told VOA Creole. Describing the current political climate as “extremely serious,” he said the root cause of corruption dates back to long before Moise took power in 2017.
“We’re all part of the problem, so let’s put our heads together to be part of the solution,” Paul said.
But the opposition and their supporters refuse to back down and say they will accept nothing less than the president’s resignation.
