| 75 years later, Japan war orphans tell of pain, recovery Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:21 PM PDT  For years, orphans in Japan were punished just for surviving the war. The stories told to The Associated Press ahead of Saturday's anniversary of the war's end underscore both the lingering pain of the now-grown children who lived through those tumultuous years and what activists describe as Japan's broader failure to face up to its past. Kisako Motoki was 10 when U.S. cluster bombs rained down on her downtown Tokyo neighborhood.
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| Harris bringing energy, dollars and more to Biden's campaign Posted: 13 Aug 2020 05:34 PM PDT  In her first two days as Joe Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris has fired off the campaign's sharpest criticism of President Donald Trump's shortcomings. With less than three months before the election, Harris is rapidly embracing her new role. Democratic operatives and Harris allies believe she'll energize what has been a relatively quiet campaign that has often preferred to keep the attention on the turbulence of Trump's White House.
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| Michael Cohen book claims Trump colluded with Russia and will 'never leave office peacefully' Posted: 13 Aug 2020 05:23 PM PDT  In an upcoming book, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former attorney, alleges that Trump worked with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Among many other accusations, Cohen alleges that Trump worked to get close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and "his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs," according to an excerpt released Thursday from the book, entitled "Disloyal, A Memoir." Cohen claims that Trump lied when he told the American public he had no dealings in Russia, because Cohen personally oversaw Trump's efforts to secure a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign.
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| Trump gives credence to false, racist Harris conspiracy Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:40 PM PDT  President Donald Trump on Thursday gave credence to a false and racist conspiracy about Kamala Harris' eligibility to be vice president, fueling an online misinformation campaign that parallels the one he used to power his rise into politics. Asked about the matter at the White House, Trump told reporters he had "heard" rumors that Harris, a Black woman and U.S.-born citizen whose parents were immigrants, does not meet the requirement to serve in the White House. Harris, who was tapped this week by Joe Biden to serve as his running mate on the Democratic ticket, was born in Oakland, California, and is eligible to be president under the constitutional requirements.
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| Madagascar president's herbal tonic fails to halt Covid-19 spike Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:31 PM PDT  Cases of Covid-19 in Madagascar quadrupled over a month despite the president pushing an unproven remedy.
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| UN chief hopes Israel-UAE deal can help two-state solution Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:28 PM PDT  United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday he hoped the Israel-UAE deal can help realize a two-state solution with the Palestinians for peace in the Middle East.
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| Africa's week in pictures: 7- 13 August 2020 Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:10 PM PDT  A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent and beyond.
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| Trump says could give UN speech even if other leaders stay away Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:04 PM PDT  US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to give his speech in person to the United Nations at its big annual gathering in September, even if many world leaders are expected to stay away due to the coronavirus.
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| RPT-U.S. seizes Iranian fuel cargoes for first time -WSJ Posted: 13 Aug 2020 03:58 PM PDT |
| U.S. seizes Iranian fuel cargoes for first time -WSJ Posted: 13 Aug 2020 03:12 PM PDT |
| UN is voting on US resolution to extend Iran arms embargo Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:55 PM PDT |
| Medical review upheld for Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:28 PM PDT  A federal judge has turned back an effort to delay an independent medical review for a Saudi citizen held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center who was so badly mistreated in American custody that he cannot be put on trial. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle late Wednesday rejected the U.S. government's bid to put a hold on a March order that called for an independent panel of doctors to examine prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani at the U.S. base in Cuba. The Department of Justice has said it intends to appeal the March decision, which was issued by a judge who has since retired.
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| Jared Kushner Is Working on More Middle East Pacts With Israel Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:00 PM PDT  With 89 days to go until the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that marks a significant step in establishing peace in the Middle East—a promise Trump made in his first 100 days in office.Speaking with reporters Thursday, Trump joked that he wanted the pact, an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations, "to be called the Donald J. Trump accord." National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien said it "wouldn't surprise him" if Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize because of his role in helping broker the deal.But for all the intentional focus by the White House on the president Thursday, senior administration officials say it was Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner who worked behind the scenes over the last several months to smooth out the agreement and convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) to agree to it publicly in the lead up to the 2020 election. Thursday's announcement is an extension of a years-long effort by Kushner to construct a working Middle East Peace Plan, an accord formally announced by President Trump in January, and officials say they expect the president's son-in-law to deliver similar agreements between Israel and other Arab nations in the next several weeks.Revealed at Last: Trump's Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal to End All PeaceTrump's announcement Thursday highlights the critical role Kushner could play in delivering foreign policy wins for the president in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. It also underscores the extent to which Kushner has cultivated his personal relationships with world leaders, including Netanyahu, to advance the Trump administration's interests. While some national security officials have previously chided Kushner for operating outside of the traditional interagency process, some senior officials now acknowledge the importance of the president's son-in-law continuing to use his connections to broker these deals and bolster Trump's chances at winning in November. "There's no way this would have gotten done without Jared," one senior official said. As Trump's foreign policy and national security teams work to bolster the president's foreign policy credentials in the lead up to the election, senior administration officials, including those in the national security apparatus, say the White House is increasingly focused on introducing additional agreements between Israel and other Arab nations. One official said Kushner and other senior officials were in talks with Bahrain about a similar pact.Other national security officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said that while they view the Israel-UAE agreement as a step forward in establishing peace in the region, they are concerned about the leeway it gives Netanyahu to backpedal on one of the deal's major points.Israel and the UAE have, among other things, signed on to establishing embassies, increasing trade, and partnering on the fight against the coronavirus. Under the agreement, Israel has also promised to temporarily suspend annexation of the West Bank. On that particular point, though, Netanyahu and MBZ on Thursday offered different statements. MBZ said on Twitter that an "agreement was reached to stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories." But Netanyahu said during a speech Thursday evening Jerusalem time that he was still "committed to annexing parts of the West Bank to Israel." Netanyahu was criticized Thursday for seemingly flipping on an issue he'd promised to carry out during his recent campaign.Those officials also said they were wary of any Israel-UAE agreement that dealt with annexation without the input of the Palestinians. "This could just be an agreement for an agreement's sake," said one senior administration official. "We have to see what actually comes out of this and if both sides follow through. I'm not going say this isn't a big deal. It is. But I'm not confident that this pact gets rolling anytime soon."Since June, Kushner has worked closely with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to iron out the details of the Israel-UAE deal, said two senior administration officials, particularly on the language around annexation. In Washington, Kushner also worked with the Near Eastern Affairs Desk at the State Department and with Brian Hook, the special adviser on Iran, officials said. Hook traveled to Israel in July and spoke with Netanyahu about the accord, one other senior official said.While O'Brien oversaw the U.S. outreach to the Israelis and Emiratis, the bulk of the negotiations took place between Kushner, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Otaiba and Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, officials said. Kushner is close with both ambassadors and has for years consulted with them in the drafting of his Middle East Peace Plan. Senior officials pointed to Otaiba's presence at the Middle East Peace Plan unveiling in Washington in January, where Trump announced the deal alongside Netanyahu, as the first public sign that the UAE was willing to work with Jerusalem. Since then, officials said, the administration has attempted to draw in the UAE on the idea of normalizing relations with Israel—a difficult task given the peace plan's focus on the lasting security of Israel and the Palestinians rejecting it from the beginning. Otaiba recently published an op-ed in a prominent Israeli newspaper in which he outlined the ways in which Israel and the UAE could cooperate on technology, climate change, and science. "Annex will be an unmistakable sign indicating whether Israel views matters the same way," he said.With the announcement Thursday, Otaiba seemed to indicate that the UAE would continue to pressure Israel to adhere to its plans to suspend annexation. "The UAE will continue to remain a strong supporter of the Palestinian people–for their dignity, their rights and their own sovereign state," Otaiba said in a statement Thursday. "They must benefit too in normalization. As we have for fifty years, we will forcefully advocate for these ends."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Feds say Yale discriminates against Asian, white applicants Posted: 13 Aug 2020 01:04 PM PDT  A Justice Department investigation has found Yale University is illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law, officials said Thursday. Yale denied the allegation, calling it "meritless" and "hasty." The findings detailed in a letter to the college's attorneys Thursday mark the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges.
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| Israel suspends formal annexation of the West Bank, but its controversial settlements continue Posted: 13 Aug 2020 12:50 PM PDT  Editor's note: In a historic agreement announced by President Trump on Aug. 13, Israel has suspended its plan to formally annex parts of the contested West Bank territory, in exchange for establishing full diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. However, Israel's existing settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians claim as their land, will continue to expand.Here, a professor of Israel studies and the author of a primer on the Israeli-Palestinian confict explains the history of the West Bank settlements – and why they're so controversial. 1\. Why is ownership of the West Bank so contested?In May 1967, not a single Israeli lived in the West Bank, a hilly region about the size of Delaware. It was home to roughly a million Palestinians, who had been living under contested Jordanian control for two decades. Israel conquered the West Bank during the Six-Day War in June 1967. Soon afterwards, Israeli civilians began moving to the region, initially to areas like Kfar Etzion that had been home to Jewish communities before Israel's founding in 1948.In 1968, a rabbi named Moshe Levinger and a small group of followers who embraced a messianic version of religious Zionism moved into the ancient city of Hebron, in the heartland of the West Bank. Hebron is a holy city for Jews because it is believed to be the burial place of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. The population of Israelis living in the West Bank has mushroomed over the years. An estimated 430,000 Israeli Jews now live in 132 officially recognized "settlements" and in 121 unofficial "outposts" that require, but haven't yet received, government approval. Constituting about 15% of the West Bank's total population, these "settlers" live in their own communities, separate from the area's approximately 3 million Palestinian residents. 2\. Why do Palestinians object to the Israeli settler movement?Though they are neighbors and sometimes co-workers, relations between Jews and Palestinians on the West Bank are seldom friendly. West Bank Palestinians, who are majority Muslim, see themselves as the area's indigenous inhabitants; many of their ancestors have lived and farmed in the West Bank for many centuries.Palestinians contend that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are built on stolen land and that the settlers' use of water – a scarce resource – is likewise illegal. Palestinians frequently experience harassment from extremist Israeli settlers, sometimes as Israeli soldiers look on. There are hundreds of reports of extremist settlers, many of them armed, violently attacking Palestinians, burning their fields and uprooting their olive trees. Additionally, Israel has appropriated West Bank land to build a network of roads connecting settlements to Israel and to each other. These roads are generally off-limits to Palestinian drivers, hampering their freedom of movement and making travel within the West Bank more difficult and time-consuming. The Israeli army security checkpoints that dot the West Bank, which are meant to protect Israelis from terror attacks, also restrict and complicate the ability of Palestinian people to move around. 3) Why do Israelis want to live in the West Bank?Israelis choose to live in the West Bank for many reasons. The popular stereotype of Jewish settlers as religious fanatics determined to reclaim the entire ancient homeland they believe was given to Jews by God is not quite accurate. It's estimated that only about a quarter of West Bank settlers live there out of ideological conviction. Still, these fervent settlers are a vocal and highly visible minority. They generally live in smaller settlements, located deep inside the West Bank. They see their presence as a means of ensuring permanent Jewish control over the area, which they call by the biblical names "Judea and Samaria." These settlers believe that by living in the West Bank they are serving God's will and helping to bring about the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.Most Jewish settlers in the West Bank, however, live there for economic reasons. Israeli government investment and incentives aimed at encouraging Jews to settle there have made the cost of living lower than inside Israel.Many Jews in the West Bank are secular, particularly those who emigrated from the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s. Others, like the growing number of ultra-Orthodox Jews living in the West Bank, may believe that God gave the West Bank to Israel – but they move there primarily because they can find affordable housing and a better quality of life. 4) Are Israel's West Bank settlements legal or not?Most legal experts and the United Nations agree that Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law. The 1949 Geneva Convention, which Israel signed, prohibits an occupying state from moving its own civilians into the territory it occupies. According to the International Court of Justice, the UN's main judicial body, the West Bank is considered occupied territory because it was not part of Israel before the Israeli army conquered it in 1967. Territorial conquest is also forbidden by international law.The Israeli government has previously said that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to the West Bank because it only refers to a state occupying another state's land. Israel considers the West Bank "disputed territory," not occupied territory.Further, Israel's government has argued, even if the Geneva Convention did apply, it would only prohibit forcible population transfers, like the mass deportations carried out by Nazi Germany – not the voluntarily movement of people into occupied territories.This story is an updated version of an article originally published Nov. 25, 2019.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Has Trump proposed a Middle East peace plan – or terms of surrender for the Palestinians? * Israel's West Bank settlements: 4 questions answeredDov Waxman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| Why the UAE Chose to Normalize Relations With Israel Posted: 13 Aug 2020 12:15 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- For President Donald Trump's critics and supporters of Palestinian nationalism, there will be a temptation to spin today's historic normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as a setback for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Following the announcement of Trump's Middle East peace plan earlier this year, Netanyahu began the process of annexing parts of the West Bank, a process he said the plan authorized. The White House urged him to reconsider. He pressed on.Now it is revealed that, as part of the agreement with the UAE, Israel has agreed to "suspend declaring sovereignty" over areas outlined in Trump's January plan. Netanyahu later said he remains "committed" to annexation, but the joint statement about today's agreement says that Israel will "focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world." In a sense, this is a concession to both the White House and to America's Arab allies, which saw annexation as Israel's way of setting the borders of a future Palestinian state and dooming a two-state solution. But in a more important sense, this "concession" is a fig leaf. For the Gulf States in particular, normalization of ties with Israel has historically been tied to the full withdrawal of forces to the pre-1967 lines and recognition of a Palestinian State. These principles were affirmed almost two decades ago through something known as the Arab Peace Initiative. The UAE had previously endorsed that initiative. Now the UAE and Israel have agreed to sign agreements to establish reciprocal embassies in their countries without any agreement for Israel to remove its forces from the West Bank. The UAE is not the first Arab country to formally recognize Israel. Egypt signed the Camp David Accords in 1979 in return for the Sinai, while Jordan signed its agreement in 1994 at the height of the Oslo Peace Process. It's notable that the UAE has signed its agreement with Israel when there are no peace negotiations whatsoever. And that is the most striking element of the normalization agreement. It reflects two realities of today's Middle East: First, Israel and most Gulf states have been quietly cooperating for the past 20 years. The Israelis and the Emiratis in particular have shared intelligence and private diplomatic initiatives to roll back Iranian influence in the region. The other important reality is that no one in the Middle East can say with a straight face that Israel is the source of the region's instability. Experience is a cruel teacher. Israel had nothing to do with the collapse of the U.N.-recognized government in Yemen — the Iranian-supported Houthis did. Israel had nothing to do with the collapse of Syria — that was the fault of the country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. And Israel had nothing to do with the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In all of these cases, the regimes and groups most vocally opposed to Israel also served as the region's chief arsonists. This is something Arab leaders in the region understand better than many advocates for Palestinian sovereignty in the West. As Osama bin Laden once observed, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." In assessing the region, the UAE's leaders have seen one state thrive as its neighbors burned. They have chosen the strong horse. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Bolivia's political crisis threatens hospitals and patients Posted: 13 Aug 2020 11:19 AM PDT  Hooked up to ventilators, 11 prematurely born infants struggled for survival Thursday in the intensive care ward of a Bolivian maternity hospital. The babies' supply of oxygen is in peril, doctors say, because of nationwide blockades by supporters of the party of former President Evo Morales who object to the recent postponement of elections. Bolivia's political crisis adds to the burden on its health care system, which was already grappling with the coronavirus as it continues to spread across one of Latin America's poorest countries.
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| Boris Johnson to stamp major Scottish projects funded by UK Government with Union flag Posted: 13 Aug 2020 11:04 AM PDT  Boris Johnson will stamp major schemes in Scotland that are paid for directly by the UK Government with a Union flag from next year, The Telegraph can reveal. The flag will replace the European Union symbol, which has been used to denote when a bridge or road has been directly funded by Brussels. The idea has been backed by the new Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, who said Tories north of the border needed to be "unashamed of our investment in Scotland". But it was greeted with dismay by senior SNP politicians, with one accusing Mr Johnson's Government of "posturing of the worst order" and "trying to force the union flag down people's throats". The Union flag will be used to highlight when UK central Government money has been spent in Scotland. It will not apply to Scottish government spending, even though a proportion of that derives from an annual block grant from London. Mr Ross said he wanted to show the "visual connection" between UK Government money and schemes in Scotland. In an interview with Friday's edition of Chopper's Politics, which you can listen to on the audio player above, he said: "We should be unashamed of our direct investment in communities across Scotland. "We will see that, through the shared prosperity fund, that is the money that the EU used to earmark for projects in Scotland and other parts of the UK. "If they could have an EU flag on it, why not have the United Kingdom flag on it to show that here is an example of our two governments in Scotland, working together, and the UK Government delivering for individual communities and projects the length and breadth of the country?" Mr Ross said UK support "has seen us through the Covid pandemic by supporting local economies... the VAT reduction to five per cent is as welcome to tourism and hospitality companies in Shetland as in south Cornwall". On Thursday night, Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary, said the plan had been signed off by both Mr Johnson and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and would start next year after the end of the Brexit transition period. Mr Jack told The Telegraph: "Where there is direct investment or joint investment between the two governments, you would expect to see the Union Jack sitting alongside the Saltire." However, he admitted that SNP supporters were likely to be put out by the appearance of union flags on bridges and roads in Scotland. "They never got upset about seeing a European Union flag sitting alongside the Saltire – it is the only the Union Jack that upsets them," he said. Tommy Sheppard, a senior SNP MP, described the plan as "foolish, and political tokenism and posturing of the worst order". He said: "It would probably be counterproductive because there is no point trying to force the union flag down people's throats in the hope that they would like it. If the Union is so great, they should not need constantly to use the flag to promote it." Listen to Chopper's Politics, The Telegraph's weekly political podcast, on the audio player above, or make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app.
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| Private prison industry backs Trump, prepares if Biden wins Posted: 13 Aug 2020 10:27 AM PDT  Executives at the nation's two largest private prison companies have been donating large sums to President Donald Trump and Republican candidates with an eye toward the November elections that one of the corporations believes will lead to a rebound in its stock price. The fortunes of private prison companies have become increasingly intertwined with the nation's politics in an era when the Trump administration has been detaining tens of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers at their facilities. Together, CoreCivic and GEO Group made about $1.3 billion last year in contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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| Global Cable Cars & Ropeways Industry Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:56 AM PDT |
| U.N chief welcomes 'any initiative' on Mideast peace, security - spokesman Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:42 AM PDT |
| Global Calcium Propionate Industry Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:36 AM PDT |
| UNESCO warns historic Beirut buildings at risk of collapse Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:31 AM PDT  The United Nations' cultural agency said Thursday it will lead the international campaign for the recovery and restoration of Beirut's heritage, citing local officials who said that around 60 historic buildings in the Lebanese capital were at risk of collapse following last week's devastating explosion at the Beirut port. On Aug. 4, some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut's port blew up, obliterating the city's main commercial hub and spreading death and wreckage for miles around. The blast, the most destructive in Lebanon's troubled history, killed more than 170 people, wounded more than 6,000 and caused damage worth between $10 and $15 billion.
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| Israel charges 5 border policemen with robbing Palestinians Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:21 AM PDT |
| The Latest: US envoy: UAE-Israel deal 'huge win' for Trump Posted: 13 Aug 2020 09:04 AM PDT  The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says she is celebrating the announcement of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, calling it "a huge win" for President Donald Trump and for the world. Kelly Craft said in an interview with The Associated Press that the diplomatic ties show "just how hungry for peace we all are in this world," and how Mideast countries are all understanding the need "to stand firm against a regime that is the number one state sponsor of terrorism" — Iran.
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| Brexit trade deal can be done by September, says UK chief negotiator Posted: 13 Aug 2020 08:50 AM PDT  The UK's chief Brexit negotiator said on Thursday that a free trade agreement with the European Union could be agreed in September, as Ireland's prime minister said a "landing zone" for the deal had emerged. British and EU officials meet in Brussels for the seventh round of trade talks next week after a fortnight break following five weeks of intensified negotiations. David Frost said: "Our assessment is that agreement can be reached in September, and we will work to achieve this if we can." Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, has set an end of October deadline for the trade deal to be finalised, which is supported by influential member states such as Germany. Ireland's Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, met Boris Johnson for talks on Thursday in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland (see video below). He said both sides knew that they needed to avoid the economic shock of a no trade deal Brexit after the coronavirus crisis. If a trade deal is not agreed by the end of the year, the EU and UK will trade on far less lucrative WTO terms. "Where there's a will, there's a way," he said. "It seems to me that there is a landing zone if that will is there on both sides, and I think it is."
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| Federal appeals court: Male-only draft is constitutional Posted: 13 Aug 2020 08:21 AM PDT  A federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld the constitutionality of the all-male military draft system Thursday, citing a 1981 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In a decision that overturned a 2019 ruling by a Texas-based federal judge, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said "only the Supreme Court may revise its precedent." The case was argued in March and was the result of a lawsuit by the National Coalition for Men and two men challenging the male-only draft.
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| Egyptian lawyer: Senior Brotherhood leader dies in prison Posted: 13 Aug 2020 08:16 AM PDT |
| VIRUS DIARY: Have toilet seat, will travel Posted: 13 Aug 2020 08:03 AM PDT  Others raised eyebrows in Zoom calls, silently judging our desire to spend a nonessential week at the beach in South Florida, the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Then I pointed out that we'd be traveling from Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp has steadfastly refused to order mask-wearing, just like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Only Kemp has gone further, saying most coronavirus infections are just like "a stomach bug or a flu or anything else," and forbidding mayors from doing more than he would to preserve public health.
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| Tropical Storm Josephine forms; no warnings in effect Posted: 13 Aug 2020 08:01 AM PDT |
| Trump admits he's blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:55 AM PDT  President Donald Trump frankly acknowledged Thursday that he's starving the U.S. Postal Service of money in order to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him the election. In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won't have the resources to handle a flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
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| UAE and Israel to establish full diplomatic ties Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:52 AM PDT  Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced Thursday they are establishing full diplomatic relations in a U.S.-brokered deal that required Israel to halt its contentious plan to annex occupied West Bank land sought by the Palestinians. The historic deal delivered a key foreign policy victory to President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election and reflected a changing Middle East in which shared concerns about archenemy Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians. A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the deal amounts to "treason," and should be reversed.
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| Distrust of authority fuels virus misinformation for Latinos Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:40 AM PDT  When Claudia Guzman suspected she had caught the coronavirus, her friends and family were full of advice: Don't quarantine. A homemade tea will help cure you. False claims and conspiracy theories, ranging from bogus cures to the idea that the virus is a hoax, have dogged efforts to control the pandemic from the beginning.
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| Represent: inside a timely film about the tough road women in politics face Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:37 AM PDT  A new film follows three women as they run for office, and the 'unglamorous bits of democracy' that make for a political movementThe decision to run for office arrived for Myya Jones in the winter of 2016. She was 22, a campus leader for the Black Student Union at Michigan State University, and determined to change her home town of Detroit for the better. For months, she researched the process of gentrification, which pushed black people out of the neighborhoods where she grew up and went to high school; for months, she waited for a name to support. Eventually, she thought, "You know what? I'm going to run for office myself because everybody else is scared," she told the Guardian.For Julie Cho, a 47-year-old married mother of two living in suburban Evanston, Illinois, a majority Democratic district, the decision was fueled by frustration with her state house speaker and the Republican party's lackluster efforts to campaign in her district. "If no one's going to do it, then I'm going to do it," she told the Guardian of her decision to run for state representative. In rural Granville, Ohio, 33-year-old Bryn Bird had long wondered: "If you weren't afraid, what's the one thing you would do?" The answer was run for county trustee, but it never seemed like the right time until 2017, when her mother's cancer turned terminal. "I wanted her to see me run for office," she told the Guardian. "I wasn't afraid of anything any more."Represent, a documentary on the tedium of running for local office as a woman in Trump-era America, follows the three women as they launch their nascent political careers in the midwest. The film begins with a clear invocation to opportunities won and lost: in 1974, second-wave feminist activism and the movement to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment launched the so-called Year of the Woman, in which an unprecedented number of women were elected for national office. Forty-four years later, enough had not changed – women still comprised only one in five congressional seats – for another round of "year of the woman" sloganeering. The midterms of 2018 were, indeed, a banner year for women on the national level: 476 House candidates and 53 Senate candidates, more than double the number of women who ran in 2016, largely Democrats spurred to action by the election of a president who once bragged that men should "grab 'em by the pussy".But while much attention and several stellar documentaries – Netflix's Knock Down the House on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive rookies in Congress, Hulu's Hillary on the presidential candidate herself – beamed on the national races, Represent seeks to explore the same phenomenon in less storied, pared-down quarters. "These are everyday women," director Hillary Bachelder told the Guardian, "the yous and mes of the world who are like, 'I can do this small thing for my community at this level.'"The local and state house races "should be the most accessible for women", Bachelder said. But the barriers for entry – the mental tax of microaggressions and snap judgments, especially for Jones as a black women and Cho as a Korean immigrant, and the lack of funding for new candidates from the party organizations – demonstrate "a lot of the same thing that's at the national level".Bachelder embedded with each candidate, following the distinctly unglamorous work of campaigning in their specific districts – the trips to knock on doors, shake hands at the town parade, to show up to sparsely attended municipal meetings, to flag people down in cars and explain your platform or, more often, who you are.While the three races present starkly different contexts, the touch-and-go, bespoke work of each campaign confront frustratingly similar doubts and dismissals. For Bird, running as the "new by, like, decades" trustee, as she says in the film, it was confronting an old boy's club that did not take her seriously, the "continual cycle of not being told about certain things, or being reminded that I can't go to certain events, or not invited to the men's drinking nights because I need to get home to my kids".Bachelder's camera captures the compounding toll of unnecessary discomfort – another candidate, for example, saying he'd make a joke but it wouldn't be "politically correct" enough for Bird's presence. At a Democratic meet-and-greet, one white woman touches Jones's hair without permission.For Cho, whose family escaped North Korea during the war in the 1950s, her allegiance to the Republican party is more complicated than the label would seem. She distrusts all governments, she says, but wants to do her part to help. She's attached to the Republican name under the Trump administration, which has worked to systematically curb voting rights, but her main platform is ending gerrymandered district lines in her corner of Illinois. Her campaign manager is a black man who has never worked for a Republican before. Occasionally, people in Evanston hear her out; more often, she's dismissed outright.She's frequently had people – all white liberals, she told the Guardian, demanding to know why she'd run as a Republican as an Asian immigrant. "It's white people telling me how I should think," she said. "What they should be asking is what is it about the Republican platform and policies that you support?"Jones, in particular, faces the most interlocking and insidious friction as a young black female candidate. In news interviews, she's asked why she thinks she has enough experience; canvassing the street, one constituent demands: "what are you going to do about the blight?!" In one scene, Jones attends a conference for aspiring candidates, but is only given 15 seconds to introduce herself publicly. Black women "do a lot of the groundwork, a lot of the legwork, we have a lot of ideas, but it's not until we're like 30+ that we are actually recognized as leaders," said Jones. "People don't perceive us as being just as knowledgable or as capable as them.""You're asking people to have to suit up, to have the thick skin and enter a space that you know wasn't built for you," said Bachelder of the challenges faced by all three women. "The added level of being reminded that you're an other in some kind of way is just going chip away." By film's end, after defeats in both the mayoral bid and a Democratic primary for state House, Jones, now 25 and studying for her MBA, was "tired of having to prove myself over and over again" and conflicted over the potential of running for office, especially without financial backing from the party."Just as much as you want black folks to vote for you, specifically black women," she said, "you have to be able to financially back our campaigns, too."Cho, who lost her race for state house, also remains on the fence about seeking elected office; she's spending time at home with her young children. In one of the film's most poignant scenes, Bird informs her mother that she's won the race, initiating a separate round of challenges: working 20 hours or more a week as a trustee for $10,000 a year with three little kids, a husband working full-time, and a family farm business whose customers she can't afford to alienate.The structural and cultural challenges remain, Bachelder said, but there's hope to be found in number and tenacity, especially on politics' bluntest and most specific level. After two years on the local campaign trail, the film "shines the light on the need for all of us to get engaged and involved", she said – a call to action for involvement in "the unglamorous bits of democracy that are still really necessary to bring the pieces together". * Represent is available to rent digitally in the US on 14 August and in the UK at a later date
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| Man guilty in terror plot to be released from prison Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:29 AM PDT  A Rhode Island man sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in a plot to behead a blogger on behalf of the Islamic State group will be released early because of the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge has ruled. The judge ordered Nicholas Rovinski's release this week after his lawyers argued that Rovinski's medical conditions, including cerebral palsy and hypertension, make the 29-year-old particularly vulnerable to serious illness from the virus. "The Court concludes that there exist extraordinary and compelling circumstances that warrant granting this motion for compassionate release," U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in his order.
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| Bavaria faces coronavirus debacle as 900 not told they are positive Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:17 AM PDT  One of the leading contenders to succeed Angela Merkel is facing an embarrassing debacle over his flagship coronavirus testing policy. Markus Söder, the regional prime minister of Bavaria, has seen his popularity soar over his handling of the crisis and is now openly talked of as the frontrunner to take over from Mrs Merkel. But on Thursday he was fighting to contain the fallout after it emerged that some 44,000 people had not received their results more than a week after taking part in a new Bavarian testing scheme. Even more damaging, it emerged than 900 of those who had not received their results had tested positive, raising fears they could have passed on the infection unknowingly. "This is very, very frustrating," Mr Söder said. "It needs to be fixed immediately and it must not happen again." The Bavarian leader was privately said to be livid after he was forced to cancel a planned trip to the German north coast in order to sort out the mess. The trip to Schleswig-Holstein, which would have included a walk across North Sea mudflats, was part of a bid to raise his national profile as he attempts to position himself as Mrs Merkel's successor in waiting.
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| Lithuania designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization Posted: 13 Aug 2020 07:10 AM PDT |
| Mocimboa da Praia: Mozambique battles for port seized by IS Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:23 AM PDT  It says Islamists who seized a city near lucrative gas reserves are using local people as human shields.
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| Rights group: Houthis, Saudis killed Ethiopian migrants Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:18 AM PDT |
| Why Putin Is Backing an Ungrateful Despot in Belarus Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:15 AM PDT |
| Bob Woodward’s New Book Lifts The Lid On Trump’s Personal Letters With Kim Jong Un Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:13 AM PDT  North Korea's dictator reportedly described his bond with Trump as something out of a "fantasy film," the famed Watergate journalist will reveal in "Rage."
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| UN: 8 children die within days in Syria camp for IS families Posted: 13 Aug 2020 06:12 AM PDT |
| AP PHOTOS: Across faiths, pandemic alters worship, rites Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:33 AM PDT  London and its environs are home to a notable diversity of faiths and flocks. "It posed an immediate and immense challenge," the Rev. Gordon said. In Neasden, a suburb northwest of London, a magnificent Hindu temple of carved stone constructed according to ancient Vedic architectural texts usually welcomes thousands of visitors a day.
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| Imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer begins hunger strike Posted: 13 Aug 2020 04:19 AM PDT  A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer has begun a hunger strike seeking better prison conditions and the release of political prisoners amid the pandemic, her husband said Thursday. Reza Khandan told The Associated Press his wife Nasrin Sotoudeh began the strike Tuesday and he feared it would exacerbate her chronic gastrointestinal and foot problems. Iran has the highest number of virus-related deaths in the region with 19,162 after 174 died since Wednesday.
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| UK chief negotiator says aiming for Brexit deal in September Posted: 13 Aug 2020 03:37 AM PDT |
| What if 17-year-old boys ran the government? 'Boy State' has answers Posted: 13 Aug 2020 03:00 AM PDT  In the summer of 2017, husband-and-wife documentary filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine read a news article that seized their attention. Boys State, a summer program sponsored by The American Legion, might be described as the political equivalent of Model U.N. or moot court. Every year, 1,100 teens in states across the country come together to build a mock state legislature, debate mock bills and hold mock elections, culminating in a gubernatorial contest.
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| The U.S. can't change China Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:55 AM PDT  It has not gotten wide attention thanks to the country falling to pieces, but the Trump administration has all but declared a new cold war against China. In a recent hardline speech at the Nixon Library, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that "today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else." He argued that economic development had made China more authoritarian, not less, and it had abused the international trade system to steal jobs, production, and intellectual property from the United States.However, it's not just Republicans. Democrats have also taken a much harder line on China of late — indeed, some Biden campaign ads attack Trump from the right. "Trump said he would get tough on China," says one. "He didn't get tough, he got played."It would be a great mistake for American politicians to bluster their way into a high-stakes international conflict. The United States' severe internal problems make a mockery of the idea of standing up to China in the name of freedom, and confrontation would surely lead to disaster. Meanwhile nothing short of the future of the planet is riding on successful diplomatic engagement.On first blush, the Trump administration's stance on China is utterly preposterous. Pompeo raises worries about China's authoritarianism, but he is part of an administration that is straight-up trying to steal the 2020 election. Trump is a classic budding tinpot dictator down to his ill-fitting suits, and the rest of the Republican Party (with a couple minor exceptions) would not object to setting up a Chinese Communist Party-style dictatorship in this country — so long as they were in charge and could prevent poor people from getting any welfare. Trump and the GOP are a million times' greater threat to American freedom than China ever could be. Similarly, Pompeo's complaints about human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims ring hollow given Trump's own Muslim ban and migrant concentration camps. So does his attempt to blame the coronavirus pandemic on CCP misrule, because Trump so obviously screwed up the U.S. response. Most of Western Europe has gotten it under control, just like China — only in America has it been allowed to rage basically unchecked.All that said, Pompeo is right that the last several decades of American diplomatic policy towards China did not work as expected. President Nixon engaged with China with the objective of trying to split off the CCP from the Soviet Union (which did work), and also to coax the CCP towards liberal democracy (which did not). Every following president up to Obama followed a similar path, particularly during the '90s, when credulous faith in neoliberal economics was at its height. China got permanent normal trade relations in 2000 partly on the knee-jerk faith that economic prosperity would lead to political freedom.What actually happened was that the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs plummeted by about 20 percent in just four years after 2000, as manufacturers shipped them to China, and starting about 2013 under President Xi Jinping, the CCP leadership consolidated more and more power at the top. It turns out it is perfectly possible to reconcile fast economic growth with brutal tyranny.Pompeo might be a hypocrite, but he is also not wrong about China's slide towards abject totalitarianism. The CCP really is committing an attempted cultural genocide of the Uighurs in Xinjiang. There are perhaps a million Uighurs in reeducation camps, many have been sent around the country as slave labor, and many Uighur women have been forced to take contraception, had their pregnancies aborted, or been sterilized. Their cities are subject to a staggering level of constant surveillance, and their cultural and religious practices are being stamped out.Across the rest of China, the CCP has developed perhaps the most advanced and intrusive form of Orwellian dragnet surveillance ever created — designed not to catch criminals or terrorists, but to create a nation of cringing, subservient sheep who will obey government demands instantly and turn in their fellow citizens for expressing political dissent.All rather alarming! But that raises the question of just what the United States could do about it, even supposing Joe Biden were to take office in 2020 and restore some semblance of functioning democratic government. The plain fact is that the American government has limited purchase on the internal politics of any large state — and there is none larger or more powerful than China. Its economy is already larger than the U.S. economy, and its state institutions frankly work much better than ours do (which isn't saying much, to be fair). An actual war is out of the question given China's nuclear capacity, and I would not be surprised if even a low-level conflict turned out very badly for the U.S. military, given how thoroughly the Pentagon is infested with corruption, and how U.S. military capacity is built around vulnerable aircraft carriers. In any case, the U.S. is 20 years deep into a spree of imperialist wars of aggression that ruined an entire region of the globe. America is in no position to tell anyone how to conduct their affairs.Indeed, it is fairly plausible to think that America has subtly enabled China's turn towards more sinister authoritarianism simply through its appallingly inept governance. If you were a CCP ideologue looking for evidence that Western democracy and liberal freedoms enable irresponsible, idiotic demagogues who cruise to office by whipping up mob hysteria and then proceed to bungle every single decision they make in office, the United States under George W. Bush and Donald Trump would be Exhibit A.The best thing America could do vis-à-vis China is reform itself, setting a good example while maintaining warm relations with other nations around the Pacific rim — particularly Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. If the U.S. were not such a shambling basket case and egregious hypocrite, the CCP might feel a bit more shame about its dysfunctional economy, moderately serious corruption, or murderous Islamophobia, and our allied nations would not be having second thoughts about depending on a superpower that is visibly pulsating with rot.However, the U.S. does have one major lever it can and should use to influence China — trade policy. As I have explained before, the Chinese income distribution is hugely unequal, which means that its workers cannot afford to consume all that they produce. America has enabled that inequality by running a huge trade deficit — allowing China to avoid a depression of underconsumption by sending its surplus to the U.S. A President Biden could use trade policy not to incoherently lash out, as Trump has done, but to get China to cut down its inequality and increase American imports. That would help workers in both countries.But as a general matter, the U.S. should abandon any expectation that it can change Chinese politics much from outside. At best America might push here or prod there, but ultimately the fate of China is in the hands of the Chinese people. That does not mean diplomatic engagement is unimportant — on the contrary, as Kate Aronoff argues at The New Republic, we simply cannot avoid negotiating over climate change, because China is by far the largest source of emissions today. It means that instead of conditioning diplomatic talks on trying to force China into undertaking some sweeping change, America should simply look for areas of mutual interest where a deal might be struck. Climate is certainly one of those areas, given how extremely vulnerable most of China is to sea level rise or other problems — the enormous Three Gorges Dam was recently under severe strain due to extreme rain and flooding.Tyrannies have historically not lasted all that long, but it's impossible to say how long the CCP might hold out given its unprecedented techno-dystopia. America has no choice but come to some kind of way to live peacefully with China, and soon. Because we can't live without international action on climate.More stories from theweek.com QAnon is suddenly everywhere — whether people realize it or not 5 funny cartoons about the promise and peril of Kamala Harris for vice president Senate adjourns until September with no coronavirus relief deal
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| Buses and trains disinfected as North Korea ramps up virus measures Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:48 AM PDT  Temperature checks, hand sanitisers, and face masks are being enforced across Pyongyang's public transport system as North Korea intensifies its fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Pyongyang had yet to confirm whether he tested positive, but such a source might be more diplomatically convenient for the North than if the virus arrived from China -- its key ally -- where it first emerged. Pictures Wednesday showed passengers -- all with face coverings -- lining up for hand sanitiser before boarding buses in Pyongyang.
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| Chinese diners told to order less and cut food waste Posted: 13 Aug 2020 02:40 AM PDT  Chinese diners are being told to order less food as part of a campaign by President Xi Jinping to tackle waste and embrace thrift. "Operation empty plate" aims to overturn the ingrained cultural habit of ordering extra food for group meals. Xi was quoted in state media this week as saying food waste is "shocking and distressing," adding it was "necessary to maintain crisis awareness regarding food security".
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