A nonprofit foundation set up by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that relies on health care world partnerships to speed a cure for cancer has suspended its operations.
The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded two years ago by Biden and his wife, Jill, as a tribute to his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015. The nonprofit promoted nearly 60 partnerships with drug companies, health care firms, charities and other organizations that pledged more than $400 million to improve cancer treatment.
Biden and his wife left the group’s board in April as an ethics precaution before joining the presidential race. The nonprofit had trouble maintaining momentum without their involvement. And the roles played by Biden allies and corporate interests continued to raise questions about their interests if Biden wins the presidency.
Codebreaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing has been chosen as the face of Britain’s new 50 pound note, the Bank of England announced Monday.
Governor Mark Carney said Turing, who did ground-breaking work on computers and artificial intelligence, was “a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
During World War II Turing worked at the secret Bletchley Park code-breaking center, where he helped crack Nazi Germany’s secret codes by creating the Turing bombe,'' a forerunner of modern computers. He also developed theTuring Test” to measure artificial intelligence.
After the war he was prosecuted for homosexuality, which was then illegal, and forcibly treated with female hormones. He died at age 41 in 1954 after eating an apple laced with cyanide.
Turing received a posthumous apology from the British government in 2009, and a royal pardon in 2013.
The U.K’s highest-denomination note is the last to be redesigned and switched from paper to more secure and durable polymer. The redesigned 10 pound and 20 pound notes feature author Jane Austen and artist J.M.W. Turner.
The Turing banknote will enter circulation in 2021. It includes a photo of the scientist, mathematical formulae and technical drawings, and a quote from Turing: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
Former lawmaker John Leech, who led the campaign for a pardon, said he was “absolutely delighted” by the choice.
“I hope it will go some way to acknowledging his unprecedented contribution to society and science,” he said.
“But more importantly I hope it will serve as a stark and rightfully painful reminder of what we lost in Turing, and what we risk when we allow that kind of hateful ideology to win.”
In a series of Sunday morning tweets quickly deemed racist and xenophobic by critics, U.S. President Donald Trump has provoked fresh controversy with taunts at several new members of Congress.
Trump on Twitter, targeted Progressive Democratic Congresswomen, telling them to “go back” and help fix the “crime infested” countries from which they came.
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
Of the four apparently targeted, only one — Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a native of Somalia — is foreign born. The other three are native Americans: Ayana Pressley (who is a representative from Massachusetts) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a native New Yorker (and represents the eastern part of the Bronx and a portion of north-central Queens), and Rashid Tlaib, of Michigan, was born in Detroit.
The White House has not responded to a request from VOA on whether the president was aware prior to sending the tweets that three of the four are citizens by birth.
The progressives have been squabbling with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over immigration policy and other issues.
The dispute has attracted Trump’s attention in recent days, even prompting him to utter rare public support for Pelosi – at least when it comes to her attempt to rein in the newly elected foursome.
Trump’s tweets about the minority novice female members of Congress, known as ‘the squad,’ came about 20 minutes after a segment about them on the Fox News Channel. The president frequently reacts quickly on social media to what he sees on Fox.
FILE – Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., speaks at the 2019 Essence Festival at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, July 6, 2019.
Omar, in particular, has been a frequent topic of critical coverage on the cable television channel, in part due to her frequent criticism of Israel and comments perceived as anti-Semitic.
Omar and Tlaib are the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress.
In a Twitter response to Trump on Sunday, Omar reminded him that the United States is the only country to which members of Congress swear an oath.
“Which is why we are fighting to protect it from the worst, most corrupt and inept president we have ever seen,” added the Minnesotan.
Mr. President,
As Members of Congress, the only country we swear an oath to is the United States.
Which is why we are fighting to protect it from the worst, most corrupt and inept president we have ever seen. https://t.co/FBygHa2QTt
Many on social media are condemning Trump’s tweet — which even by his provocative norms are viewed as crossing a new line.
Among the most prominent is Pelosi, who terms Trump’s remark xenophobic, “meant to divide our nation” and “reaffirm his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making American white again.”
When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making America white again.
Trump made the series of tweets prior to emerging from the North Portico of the White House clad in dark pants, a white short-sleeved shirt and a red “Make America Great Again” ball cap.
U.S. President Donald Trump, in golf attire, departs the White House for the drive to his Trump National Gold Club in Sterling, Virginia, in Washington, July 14, 2019.
As his motorcade traveled to one of his private golf courses in northern Virginia, Trump took to Twitter again to refute what reporters described who had accompanied Vice President Mike Pence during a visit to two detention centers for migrants in Texas.
“Great Reviews!” declared Trump of the tour by politicians and media to the facility for children. He characterized the pen holding adult men as “clean but crowded.”
Friday’s tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children’s detention centers are. Great reviews! Failing @nytimes story was FAKE! The adult single men areas were clean but crowded – also loaded up with a big percentage of criminals……
The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, who filed the collective print report from the scene, described a guarded area where nearly 400 men were crammed behind caged fences with not enough room for all of them to lie down on the concrete floor.
“A stench from body odor hung stale in the air,” wrote Dawsey, who said some of the men screamed they had been held for more than 40 days.
At the location, Pence had commented “this is tough stuff” as a group of detainees shouted, “no showers.”
Trump has repeatedly warned that if he is unseated by a Democrat in next year’s presidential campaign that the opposition party would turn the United States into a socialist country and open its borders to dangerous immigrants.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey of voters released on Sunday shows Trump trailing the top four Democratic Party contenders in a hypothetical matchup.
Trump defied the polls in 2016 to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
Flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall have killed at least 50 people in Nepal in the past few days, with more deaths reported across the border in India and Bangladesh, officials said Sunday.
At least 30 other people were missing in Nepal, either swept away by swollen rivers or buried by mudslides since monsoon rains began pounding the region on Friday, Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center said.
The center said nine key highways remained blocked by floods and mudslides, and attempts were underway to open them up for traffic. Among them is the East-West Highway, which connects Nepal’s southern districts.
Other roads were being cleared by thousands of police and soldiers. Continuing bad weather has grounded helicopter rescue flights. Workers were also repairing fallen communication towers to restore phone lines.
Thirty people have been treated for injuries and more than 1,100 others rescued from flooded areas. More than 10,000 are estimated to have been displaced.
Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology warned of more troubles ahead for the southern region near the main rivers, urging people to keep watch on rising water levels and move to higher ground when needed.
Rain-triggered floods, mudslides and lightning have left a trail of destruction in other parts of South Asia.
In Bangladesh, at least a dozen people, mostly farmers in rural areas, have been killed by lightning since Saturday as monsoon rains continue to batter parts of the low-lying country, according to officials and news reports.
Water Development Board official Rabiul Islam said about 40,000 people have been affected, mostly due to their homes being submerged underwater.
Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 160 million people with more than 130 rivers, is prone to monsoon floods because of overflowing rivers and the heavy onrush of water from upstream India.
Officials in northeastern India said at least 14 people were killed and over a million affected by flooding, state official Kumar Sanjay Krishna said. Six deaths were reported in neighboring Arunachal state.
Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the endangered one-horn rhinoceros, has been flooded.
Floods and mudslides have also hit some other northeast Indian states, including Meghalaya, Sikkim and Mizoram. In Mizoram, floods have submerged about 400 homes in the small town of Tlabung, police said.
Militants targeted a gas pipeline in government-controlled central Syria, putting it out of order Sunday, according to state media.
The SANA news agency didn’t name the attackers. The area in the central Homs province is close to where remnants of the Islamic State group are still holed up after losing all the territory they once held in the country.
SANA said technical teams are working to fix the pipeline, which links the Shaer fields to the Ebla processing plant. It did not elaborate on the extent of the damage or the nature of the attack.
The agency said the pipeline carries about 2.5 million cubic meters of gas to the processing plant and onward to power stations.
Islamic State militants briefly seized the Shaer fields in 2014 and 2016 before pro-government forces recaptured them in heavy fighting. Today much of Syria’s oil fields and infrastructure are held by U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led forces in the east.
In recent weeks, IS militants have increased their attacks against government troops, putting up checkpoints and ambushing convoys. While the government now controls over 60 percent of Syria, there is still a rebel stronghold in the northwest, where the government is waging a limited but stalled offensive. Smaller armed groups in northern, central and eastern Syria have vowed to target government and Kurdish-controlled facilities.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are set to launch nationwide raids Sunday aimed at arresting immigrants in the country who are facing deportation, so they can be sent back to their homelands.
The campaign, confirmed Friday by President Donald Trump, is expected to focus on hundreds of families in nine major cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
“People are coming into this country illegally, we are taking them out legally,” Trump said.
ICE agents will target mostly immigrants who are considered dangerous. Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence said the immigrants being sought are on an “accelerated docket” of immigration court cases.
Trump’s immigration raids are expected to be well received by voters who voted for him on his repeated promises to crack down on migrants illegally in the U.S. Opposition Democrats have denounced the operation, declaring it is inhumane to target families, many of them from Central America, looking for a better life in the United States.
Trump claimed that a “big percentage of criminals” are already being held at detention centers in Texas, near the southern U.S. border with Mexico, where Vice President Mike Pence visited on Friday.
“Sorry, can’t let them into our Country,” Trump said on Twitter. “If too crowded, tell them not to come to USA, and tell the Dems to fix the Loopholes – Problem Solved!”
…..Sorry, can’t let them into our Country. If too crowded, tell them not to come to USA, and tell the Dems to fix the Loopholes – Problem Solved!
He said the Friday tour “showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children’s detention centers are. Great reviews!”
Friday’s tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children’s detention centers are. Great reviews! Failing @nytimes story was FAKE! The adult single men areas were clean but crowded – also loaded up with a big percentage of criminals……
Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump-appointed acting director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services office, rejected the suggestion that the raids are a political stunt. He told CNN, “While lots of people in this government were saying it is a manufactured crisis… those people are now coming to the border and realizing we do have a real crisis.”
Sunday’s raids are also set to occur in Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, Houston, Miami and San Francisco.
In the days leading up to the raids, the mostly Democratic mayors who run the cities have reiterated their policies of not cooperating with ICE officials on deportations and also have publicized telephone helplines immigrants can call to understand their rights.
Additionally, Democratic lawmakers and others have been informing immigrants of their rights and advising them not to open their doors for ICE unless the agents show a court-ordered warrant, and not to speak or sign anything without first talking with a lawyer.
Trump has said on Twitter his agents intend to arrest millions of immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally, while administration officials have said about 2,000 people would be targeted.
Albence said ICE agents will go after entire families who have been ordered to leave the country, but that some families may be separated if some members, but not others, are in the country without the proper documentation.
Trump made the unusual move of announcing the raids ahead of time and said Friday he was not concerned the early notice could help some of the targeted immigrants evade arrest.
Trump’s confirmation of the raids came amid widespread criticism of the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions detained immigrants are allegedly residing in at facilities along the southwestern U.S. border. There also is considerable criticism that border officials are separating children from their parents.
Members of a feared Sudanese paramilitary force shot dead a civilian Sunday in a town southeast of the capital as angry residents protested against the paramilitaries, witnesses and doctors said.
The incident occurred in El-Souk in the state of Sinnar when residents of the town rallied demanding that members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leave the town, witnesses told AFP.
“Residents of the town had gathered outside the office of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) to complain about the RSF,” a witness said.
“RSF members deployed and initially started shooting in the air but later they opened fire at residents, killing a man and wounding several other people,” said the witness, who declined to be named for security reasons.
A committee of doctors linked to the country’s umbrella protest movement, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, confirmed the incident.
The resident “was killed by gunshot in his head fired by Rapid Support Forces militia,” it said in a statement, adding that several other people were wounded.
Witnesses said El-Souk residents had gone to the NISS office to complain after the RSF raided a youth club on Saturday during a rally held to mourn the deaths of demonstrators killed in a Khartoum sit-in on June 3.
“During that rally the RSF raided a youth club and beat the youths there,” one witness said.
On Saturday, protesters held rallies in several cities and towns across the country, including in Khartoum, to mourn those killed in a raid on a protest camp on June 3 in the capital.
Protesters and rights groups allege that the raid on the sit-in outside the army headquarters in central Khartoum was carried out by members of the RSF.
More than 100 demonstrators were killed in the raid on that day when armed men in military fatigues cracked down on protesters who had been camping out there for weeks, doctors close to the protesters have said.
RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is the deputy chief of Sudan’s ruling military council that seized power after the army’s ouster of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in April following nationwide protests against his rule.
Dagalo has dismissed claims that the RSF was responsible for the deadly June crackdown, saying it was an attempt to distort the image of his force.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO — A Canadian citizen has been detained in Yantai, China, Canada’s government said Saturday, a step that comes amid tense relations between the countries.
Global Affairs Canada did not provide details about the identity of the detainee, nor the reason for the detention.
Earlier this week, 16 foreign teachers and students and three Chinese were arrested on drug allegations in Xuzhou, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) southwest of the coastal city of Yantai. Global Affairs would not say whether the Canadian’s detention was related to those arrests.
Relations between China and Canada chilled in December when Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei, was arrested in Vancouver on a U.S. warrant, stemming from an alleged breach of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Meng, who is also the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is under house arrest in her Vancouver mansion.
Two Canadians detained
After Meng’s arrest, China detained two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, for alleged spying. Their detentions are believed to have been retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng.
China also sentenced another Canadian to death for drug smuggling and suspended imports of Canadian meat products.
On Friday, the British Embassy said it was providing consular assistance to four British citizens who were among the teachers and students arrested in Xuzhou.
Police did not say where the teachers worked, but the Education First language school expressed regret for a drug-related incident. The school said it could not confirm the nationalities of those facing alleged drug offenses.
The number of bodies recovered by Tunisia after a ship packed with migrants sank off its coast last week has risen to 82, in one of the worst disasters in recent years, the Tunisian Red Crescent said Saturday.
The boat capsized after setting off for Europe from neighboring Libya. Survivors told the Tunisian coast guard last week that it had been carrying 86 people.
Tunisian fishermen rescued four people but one later died in hospital, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said last week.
“After a week of searches, all the 82 bodies who were in the boat that sank last week were recovered,” Mongi Slim, an official of the Tunisian Red Crescent, told Reuters.
Libya’s west coast is a main departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe, though numbers have dropped because of an Italian-led effort to disrupt smuggling networks and support Libya’s coast guard.
Sixty-five migrants heading for Europe from Libya drowned in May when their boat capsized off Tunisia.
Barry rolled into the Louisiana coast Saturday, flooding highways, forcing people to scramble to rooftops and dumping heavy rain that officials had feared could test the levees and pumps that were bolstered after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.
After briefly becoming a Category 1 hurricane, the system weakened to a tropical storm as it made landfall near Intracoastal City, about 160 miles (257km) west of New Orleans, with its winds falling to 70 mph (112km), the National Hurricane Center said.
By early evening, New Orleans had been spared the worst effects, receiving only light showers and gusty winds. But officials warned that Barry could still cause disastrous flooding across a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast and drop up to 20 inches (50 cm) of rain through Sunday across a part of Louisiana that includes New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
“This is just the beginning,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “It’s going to be a long several days for our state.”
Logan Courvlle walks in front of a flooded business after Hurricane Barry in Mandeville, La., July 13, 2019.
Levees overtopped south of New Orleans
The Coast Guard rescued a dozen people from flooded areas of Terrebonne Parish, south of New Orleans, some of them from rooftops, a spokeswoman said. The people included a 77-year-old man who called for help because he had about 4 feet of water in his home.
None of the main levees on the Mississippi River failed or were breached, Edwards said. But a levee in Terrebonne Parish was overtopped by water, officials said. And video showed water getting over a second levee in Plaquemines Parish, where fingers of land extend deep into the Gulf of Mexico. Terrebonne Parish ordered an evacuation affecting an estimated 400 people.
Nearly all businesses in Morgan City, about 85 miles west of New Orleans, were shuttered with the exception of Meche’s Donuts Shop. Owner Todd Hoffpauir did a brisk business despite the pounding winds and pulsating rain.
While making doughnuts, Hoffpauir said he heard an explosion and a ripping sound and later saw that the wind had peeled off layers of the roof at an adjacent apartment complex.
The sky is cloudy over Lake Pontchartrain on Lakeshore Drive as little flooding is reported in New Orleans, ahead of Tropical Storm Barry making landfall, July 13, 2019.
Still filling sandbags
In some places, residents continued to build defenses against rising water. At the edge of the town of Jean Lafitte just outside New Orleans, volunteers helped several town employees sandbag a 600-foot stretch of the two-lane state highway. The street was already lined with one-ton sandbags, and 30-pound bags were being used to strengthen them.
“I’m here for my family, trying to save their stuff,” volunteer Vinnie Tortorich said. “My cousin’s house is already under.”
In Lafayette, Willie Allen and his 11-year-old grandson, Gavin Coleman, shoveled sand into 20 green bags, joining a group of more than 20 other people doing the same thing during a break in the rain. Wearing a mud-streaked T-shirt and shorts, Allen loaded the bags onto the back of his pickup.
“Everybody is preparing,” he said. “Our biggest concern is the flood.”
Many businesses were also shut down or closed early in Baton Rouge, and winds were strong enough to rock large pickups. Whitecaps were visible on the Mississippi River.
Oil and gas operators evacuated hundreds of platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 70% of Gulf oil production and 56% of gas production were turned off Saturday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which compiles the numbers from industry reports.
Vehicles sit in high water after heavy rain in New Orleans, July 10, 2019, in this image obtained from social media.
Barry preceded by deluge
Barry developed from a disturbance in the Gulf that surprised New Orleans during the Wednesday morning rush with a sudden deluge that flooded streets, homes and businesses. For several days, officials braced for more flooding. But as sunset approached, the city saw only intermittent rain and wind, with occasional glimpses of sunshine.
Elsewhere, more than 120,000 customers in Louisiana and another nearly 6,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama were without power Saturday, according to poweroutage.us.
During a storm update through Facebook Live, National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham pointed to a computer screen showing a huge, swirling mess of airborne water.
“That is just an amazing amount of moisture,” he said. “That is off the chart.”
A man walks through rain in the French Quarter caused by Hurricane Barry in New Orleans, July 13, 2019.
Weekend of heavy rain
Barry was moving so slowly that heavy rain was expected to continue all weekend. Forecasts showed the storm on a path toward Chicago that would swell the Mississippi River basin with water that must eventually flow south again.
For a few hours, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph), just above the 74 mph (120 kph) threshold to be a hurricane. Barry was expected to continue weakening and become a tropical depression Sunday.
Downpours also lashed coastal Alabama and Mississippi. Parts of Dauphin Island, a barrier island in Alabama, were flooded both by rain and surging water from the Gulf, said Mayor Jeff Collier, who drove around in a Humvee to survey damage. He said wind damage was minimal.
Flooding closed some roads in low-lying areas of Mobile County in Alabama, and heavy rains contributed to accidents, said John Kilcullen, director of plans and operations for Mobile County Emergency Management Agency.
A flood gate is closed as Tropical Storm Barry approaches land in New Orleans, July 13, 2019.
Governors declared emergencies in Louisiana and Mississippi, and authorities closed floodgates and raised water barriers around New Orleans. It was the first time since Katrina that all floodgates in the New Orleans area had been sealed.
Still, Edwards said he did not expect the Mississippi to spill over the levees despite water levels already running high from spring rains and melting snow upstream. The barriers range in height from about 20 feet to 25 feet (6 meters to 7.5 meters).
Authorities told at least 10,000 people in exposed, low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast to leave, but no evacuations were ordered in New Orleans, where officials urged residents to “shelter in place.”
Despite the apparent calm in her city, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell cautioned that the storm continued to pose a threat.
“The slow pace pushed the timing of expected impacts further into today, tonight and Sunday,” Cantrell said. “This means that New Orleans residents are not out of the woods with this system.”
NEW YORK — Authorities said a widespread power shortage in Manhattan on Saturday evening left businesses without electricity, elevators stuck and subway cars stalled.
Power reportedly went out at much of Rockefeller Center, and the outage reached the city’s Upper West Side. The full extent of the outage, however, wasn’t clear.
A diner on Broadway at West 69th Street lost its lights, as did other surrounding businesses.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority tweeted that there were outages at various underground stations. The MTA was working with Con Edison to determine the cause.
Con Edison did not immediately respond to phone messages.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s education minister voiced support Saturday for so-called gay “conversion therapy,” drawing a disavowal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government’s religious-rightist tilt has worried liberals at home and backers abroad.
Conversion therapy, an attempt to alter sexual orientation or gender identity through psychological, spiritual and, in extreme cases, physical means, has been widely discredited in the West and condemned by professional health associations such as the American Medical Association as potentially harmful.
Rafael Peretz, an Orthodox rabbi and head of the ultranationalist United Right party who assumed the education portfolio in the Netanyahu-led coalition last month, said in a television interview he believed conversion therapy can work.
“I have a very deep familiarity with the issue of education, and I have also done this,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 TV.
‘Let’s think’
Giving an example of a gay person he said he had tended to, Peretz said: “First of all, I embraced him. I said very warm things to him. I told him, ‘Let’s think. Let’s study. And let’s contemplate.’ The objective is first of all for him to know himself well … and then he will decide.”
The remarks sparked furor in Israel’s center-left opposition, which ahead of a September election has sought to cast Netanyahu as enabling Orthodox indoctrination in a country whose majority Jews mostly identify as secular or of less stringent religious observance.
Israel’s LGBT Task Force, an advocacy group, demanded Peretz be fired, saying in a statement his views were “benighted.”
Shortly after the interview aired at the end of the Jewish Sabbath, Netanyahu said he spoke to Peretz for “clarification.”
“The education minister’s remarks regarding the pride community are unacceptable to me and do not reflect the position of the government that I head,” the premier said in a statement.
Earlier furor
It was the second flap Peretz had caused in less than a week. Israeli media reported that he had told fellow Cabinet members on Tuesday that the intermarriage of Jews and gentiles in the diaspora amounted to a “second Holocaust.”
The comparison stirred up anger among U.S. Jews, who are mostly non-Orthodox, and drew a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, which said such statements cheapened the Holocaust.
Speaking to Channel 12, Peretz described himself as striving to balance respect for others, no matter their sexual orientation, with his duties as a religious leader.
“I honor everyone as people. I admit that I, personally — I am a rabbi of Israel. Our Torah tells us other things. But that does not mean that I look about now and give them grades,” he said.
Somalia’s security forces Saturday ended an overnight attack by the al Shabab Islamist militant group on a hotel in the southern port city of Kismayu that killed at least 13, a police officer said.
“The operation is over,” police officer Major Mohamed Abdi told Reuters by telephone from Kismayu. “So far we know 13 people died. Many people have been rescued. The four attackers were shot dead.”
Members of the al-Qaida-linked group stormed the hotel after targeting it with a car bomb Friday while local elders and lawmakers were meeting to discuss approaching regional elections.
A second witness put the death toll at 14.
“The operation was concluded at 7 a.m. We know at least 14 people died including journalists and (local election) candidates. These are the prominent people. The death toll is sure to rise,” local elder Ahmed Abdulle told Reuters.
A journalists’ group had confirmed Friday that two journalists were among the dead; Somali-Canadian journalist Hodan Naleyah, the founder of Integration TV, and Mohamed Sahal Omar, reporter of SBC TV in Kismayu.
Separately, Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu, general secretary of the Federation of Somali Journalists, said in a statement: “We are saddened and outraged by this loss of life, and condemn in the strongest possible terms this appalling massacre.”
Al Shabab was ejected from Mogadishu in 2011 and has since been driven from most of its other strongholds.
It was driven out of Kismayu in 2012. The city’s port had been a major source of revenue for the group from taxes, charcoal exports and levies on arms and other illegal imports.
Kismayu is the commercial capital of Jubbaland, a region of southern Somalia still partly controlled by al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab remains a major security threat, with fighters frequently carrying out bombings in Somalia and neighboring Kenya, whose troops form part of the African Union-mandated peacekeeping force that helps defend the Somali government.
As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters vow to keep up their fight, churches remain on the front lines. Christian groups hold regular public gatherings and sing hymns at demonstrations, both as a way to protest and to de-escalate clashes between police and more aggressive protesters. As VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, many churches in Hong Kong fear a crackdown on religion as China expands its influence.
As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic mission to land humans on the surface of the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh presents this reflection of the monumental achievement through the eyes of the NASA astronauts themselves. In exclusive interviews Farabaugh gathered, the men of the Apollo program reflect on the path to the moon, and what lies beyond.
Congressional Democrats are pushing for new protections for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They unveiled legislation this week that reflects the lawmakers’ increasing anger and concern over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But Republicans accuse Democrats of refusing to acknowledge an immigration crisis exists and making the problem worse. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
The latest vegetarian meat alternatives that taste and cook like real beef are all the rage in the U.S. But there’s also a market for lab grown meat, which provides all the protein without the cruelty and the carbon footprint. But it’s proving a tougher sell than plant-based alternatives. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
China is criticizing a short visit by Taiwan’s president to the United States, saying it violates the “one-China” principle.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged the U.S. on Friday to cease official exchanges with Taiwan and not allow stopovers by President Tsai Ing-wen.
Tsai is already in New York on a two-night stay en route to an official visit to four Caribbean nations. She was scheduled to deliver a speech to a U.S.-Taiwan business summit on Friday and attend a dinner with members of the Taiwanese-American community.
The United States recognizes Beijing as the government of China, but provides military and other support to Taiwan. The self-governing island split from China during a civil war in 1949.
