Iran asked U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday to push back against the United States after it imposed sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, describing the move as a “dangerous precedent.”
In a letter to Guterres, Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi accused the United States of a “brazen violation of the fundamental principles of international law” and urged the international community to condemn the U.S. behavior.
“Coercing nations into complying with the United States’ illegal demands threatens multilateralism, as the foundation of international relations, and sets a dangerous precedent, paving the way for those who aspire to rather divide, not unite, nations,” he wrote.
FILE – Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi speaks to the media outside Security Council chambers at the U.N. headquarters in New York, June 24, 2019.
Ravanchi asked Guterres to “play your active role in preserving the integrity of the United Nations in line with your responsibility to counter the current dangerous trend.” However, it is not clear what Guterres could do in response to the Iranians.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric declined to comment on the letter. When asked about the U.S. sanctioning of Zarif, Guterres told reporters on Thursday: “When I ask for maximum restraint, I ask for maximum restraint at all levels.”
The U.S. sanctions imposed on Zarif last week would block any property or interests he has in the United States, but the foreign minister said he had none.
“The illegal imposition of sanctions on the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran also violates the principle of sovereign equality of States,” Ravanchi said.
Increasing tensions
Longtime U.S.-Iran strains have worsened since U.S. President Donald Trump last year quit a 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. Zarif was a critical figure in the nuclear deal.
The United States also imposed unusually tight travel restrictions on Zarif when he visited New York last month to speak at a U.N. meeting. He was only able to travel between the United Nations, the Iranian U.N. mission, the Iranian U.N. ambassador’s residence and John F. Kennedy airport.
The sanctions on Zarif were imposed two weeks after he visited New York. Zarif posted on Twitter on Monday that he believed the United States was not interested in talks with Tehran and instead wanted Iran’s submission.
The last time Samuel Botros stepped into the Lebanese monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya was in 1978. He was 24, newly married, and the country was in the grip of an all-out war. Like many of his generation, he left. It took him 41 years to return.
The 1975-90 civil war may be over in Lebanon, but conflicts in nearby countries like Iraq and Syria have devastated entire communities where Christians once lived alongside Muslims. That has triggered an exodus among people of both faiths, especially among minority sects — like Botros’ Syriac Orthodox community whose roots are in early Christianity.
The monastery, which is nestled in a remote valley in the northern Lebanese mountains and dates from the fourth century, is a meeting place for Christians who have fled conflict.
FILE – The Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya is nestled in the heart of the Qadisha valley, in Zgharta district, Lebanon, April 26, 2007.
“It is the war that did this to us. It is the wars that continue to leave behind destruction and force people to leave,” said Botros, visiting the monastery as part of a gathering of his community’s scout group — their first in the region since the 1950s.
The scout group’s roughly 150 members include people living in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and further afield. Lebanon was the only country where they could all meet easily and safely, Botros said.
In Iraq, years of conflict, most recently with Islamic State, erased much of the Christian heritage in ancient cities like Mosul and Sinjar in the north. In Syria’s civil war, some of the oldest churches in Aleppo, Homs and other cities were damaged.
Botros, now 65, is about to retire in Sweden where he made his home years ago. He is father and grandfather to children who know Lebanon only through photos.
“I would like them to visit so that when I pass, there is something to pull them back,” he said.
Ancient sanctuary
On Sundays and public holidays, the monastery’s small church, with the bell tower and facade, etched into the cliffs is full of people huddled in the pews or standing at the back of the vaulted interior.
FILE – A nun looks on as people visit the Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in the heart of the Qadisha valley, in Zgharta district, Lebanon, June 23, 2019.
Its patron is Saint Anthony, a monk who is believed to have lived in rural Egypt in the fourth or fifth century.
“This place has always been a shrine … we don’t even know when it started. Even when there was no development … people still came,” said Father Fadi Imad, the priest who gives sermons.
Qozhaya lies within a valley known as the Valley of Saints, or Qannoubine in ancient Syriac, part of a wider valley network called Qadisha that has a long history as a refuge for monks. At one time, Qadisha was home to hundreds of hermitages, churches, caves and monasteries. The monastery of Saint Anthony is the last surviving one.
It was an early home for Lebanon’s Christian Maronites, the first followers of the Roman Catholic church in the East.
The Maronites and sometimes the Druze, a Muslim sect, sought the sanctuary of the mountains away from the political and religious dynasties of the times with whom they did not always agree, Father Imad said.
“The inhabitants of this mountain … and they were not only Christians, came here because they were persecuted and weak,” he said.
“Qozhaya holds in its heart 1,600 years of history and it doesn’t belong to anyone, church or faith, … it belongs to the homeland,” he said.
‘I will never forget’
The monastery is surrounded by forests of pine and cedar and orchards that can only be reached via a narrow, winding road.
Its grounds include a cave where visitors light candles, a museum housing the Middle East’s oldest printing press in ancient Syriac and halls for resident priests.
FILE – The Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya sits in the heart of the Qadisha valley, in Zgharta district, Lebanon, June 23, 2019.
Visitors nowadays include foreign and Arab tourists and local residents including Muslims who sometimes come to ask for a blessing.
Father Imad said the monastery was the safest it had been in its history despite being surrounded by countries at war or suffering its aftermath.
“No one is telling us that they are coming to kill us anymore … at least in Lebanon,” he said.
Before he left, Botros and his fellows stood for a final photo outside the building with the valley behind. With their flags and scarves around their necks, they smiled and cheered as the bells rang.
“What I have seen today I will never forget for as long as I live,” Botros said. “No matter how long it takes, the son always returns to the mother.”
The National Basketball Association on Tuesday said that Amazon.com’s Twitch would be its exclusive digital partner for streaming USA Basketball games globally through 2020.
Twitch — best known as a platform for video game players to interact and stream their own competitions — will also exclusively stream up to 76 boys and girls youth basketball games during the Jr. NBA Global Championship, which begins Tuesday, the league said.
USA Basketball is the governing body of American basketball and fields men’s and women’s teams for international competitions, including this year’s International Basketball Federation (FIBA) World Cup in China starting Aug. 31 and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. NBA handles media and marketing partnerships for the organization.
The deals will add to the growing library of live sporting content on Twitch, which streams the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, as does Amazon Prime.
They will also allow the NBA to keep experimenting with digital partnerships as more fans dump traditional cable subscriptions.
Some purely digital media subscription services — like Amazon Prime and London-based newcomer DAZN — have drawn viewers, as have ESPN and other networks that have started their own direct-to-consumer products.
Leagues themselves now also stream some games on their own websites, in this case on NBA.com.
Extra content
Even so, leagues still view linear television networks as valuable partners because of their high production capabilities and the huge audiences they continue to capture for big events.
The NBA’s main media rights are tied up with Walt Disney Co’s ESPN and ABC, as well as TNT, a unit of AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia, through the 2025 season.
That has left the league carving out other rights in order to try out new kinds of content and partnerships.
As part of Tuesday’s deals, Twitch and USA Basketball will develop extra content around each event, including the USA Men’s National Team, certain 3×3 events and USA Women’s National team friendly games, training camps and the 2020 Nike Hoop Summit, the NBA said.
Twitch has already been streaming matches from the NBA’s minor league organization, the G League, as well as its NBA 2K videogame matches. Financial terms of Tuesday’s agreements were not disclosed.
Soaring temperatures in Japan have killed at least 57 people since late July, authorities said on Tuesday, highlighting the health threat to athletes and fans that Olympics organizers must tackle before next year’s Tokyo games.
Temperatures have been stuck above 31 Celsius (88 Fahrenheit) in and around Tokyo since July 24, the date the Summer Games will open next year in Japan’s capital and run for 17 days.
The sweltering heat killed 57 people across Japan in the week from July 29 to Aug. 4, the Disaster Management Agency said on Tuesday. More than 1,800 were taken to hospitals in Tokyo.
Last summer temperatures hit a record 41.1 C just north of Tokyo, which first hosted the Olympics in 1964 when the games were held in October to avoid the heat. Four years later, the Mexico City Games were also moved to October.
Since 1976 most summer games have been held in the Northern Hemisphere summer due to international broadcasting and sports schedules — forcing Tokyo organizers to find ways to keep athletes and tens of thousands of fans cool and hydrated.
“Weather conditions were often organizers’ challenges in past Olympic and Paralympic Games. We also understand that top-tier competitions can sometimes be observed in cities with even tougher weather patterns than in Tokyo,” said Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya.
People walk at Ueno Park during a scorching afternoon in Tokyo, Aug. 6, 2019.
The 2004 Athens Games and 2008 Beijing Games were also held in cities known for their summer heat.
“In this respect, input and expertise from the IOC and the sports federation from their past experiences are extremely valuable,” he said, referring to the International Olympic Committee.
Tokyo organizers are evaluating heat-fighting measures from mist sprays and ice packs to shaded rest areas and tents at security checkpoints.
“We will keep working closely together with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the national government and relevant stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of the Games,” Takaya said.
Hot and hotter
Japanese summers are hot and getting hotter.
Though there have been scorching hot days in the past — temperatures hit 32.6 C on July 24 in 1964 — Japan is seeing more of them and nights no longer cool down as much, Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) data shows.
It coined a new word — “Ferociously Hot Days” — in 2007 because of more days with temperatures above 35 C.
Tomoyuki Kitamura, a JMA scientific officer, said Tokyo suffers from a “heat island effect” where concentrated heat in cities prevents them from cooling off at night.
“But the bigger impact is from global warming. There’s no doubt about this at all,” he said.
In the past two decades, Tokyo has had an average high of 32 C in the last 10 days of July and first 10 days of August, according to JMA data.
The heat is made worse by a relative lack of shade in the concrete jungle home to 9.2 million people.
Japan is also among a handful of major economies that shun daylight savings time. As a result, the sun is up — and baking the city — before 5 a.m. for most of the summer.
With that in mind, the Olympic marathons will start at 6 a.m. local time, an hour earlier than scheduled. The women’s event will be on Aug. 2 and men’s on Aug. 9, the last day of competition.
The 26.2-mile (42-km) marathon course and other major roads will be paved with more than 100 km of a resin-based surface that reflects infrared rays and lowers the pavement temperature by as much as 8 degrees C, organizers said.
Other heat countermeasures are being tested this summer.
Last month’s beach volleyball event — where two people needed medical treatment as temperatures hit 35 C — tested shaded or air-conditioned rest areas and water vapour sprays for fans. Organizers also handed out water and ice packs to athletes and spectators.
Given that Japan’s heat and humidity can persist through the end of September, the Rugby World Cup — which starts in under 50 days — could also be affected.
After Tokyo 2020, Paris could face similar challenges. The host of the 2024 summer games saw a record 40.6 C on July 25, in a month that was the hottest recorded on earth.
On a recent Tokyo afternoon, residents said the heat would also be a challenge for 2020 volunteers, especially those working at outdoor events.
“The (marathon) athletes can finish in two hours but the volunteer staff will be there longer than that,” said 69-year-old Yuki Ooka, who runs every day.
“So they have a lot of ice packs with them — and I hope the government has a better strategy,” she added.
Vicheika Kann and Reaksmey Hul in Phnom Penh, and Chenda Hong in Washington contributed to this report.
In his most recent photos, Nuon Chea looks like somebody’s grandfather, wearing big dark glasses that suggest a sensitivity to light possibly tied to other medical problems.
Not that long ago, he’d gone from tottering as he walked to using a wheelchair. There were whispers of liver problems and kidney troubles and whatever else happens as a human body passes through its ninth decade.
That longevity eluded some 1.7 million Cambodians who died between 1975 to 1979, as the Khmer Rouge tried, and failed, to turn Cambodia into a self-sufficient agrarian utopia. Nuon Chea, known as Brother No. 2, is widely believed to have been the mastermind behind the development of a Maoist society without money, religion or intellectuals envisioned by the regime’s founder, Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
Nuon Chea was appealing his Nov. 16, 2018, conviction for genocide when he died on Sunday in Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh. He had been in care since July 2. At age 93, he was serving a life sentence for a 2014 conviction for crimes against humanity.
“He died easier than the people he killed,” said Sun Sitha, 58, a resident of Siem Reap who lost her father and three siblings to the Khmer Rouge. “He separated people from their families, and hurt them. He deserved to die.”
FILE: Khmer Rouge ‘Brother Number Two’ Nuon Chea attends a public hearing at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, October 19, 2011.
Silent as to actions
If Nuon Chea was the mastermind behind Cambodia’s genocide, the details died with him. He never spoke in court of how the Khmer Rouge executed their plan to achieve a new regime. He never admitted guilt. He maintained that the Khmer Rouge were nationalists, fighting Viet Nam, and the United States, which engaged “secret” bombings of Cambodia as it tracked the communist Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge fighter who has been in power since 1985. Hun Sen, the increasingly authoritarian leader of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, has spoken out against reopening investigations into that era.
Liv Sovanna, one of Noun Chea’s lawyers, said at a Sunday press conference in Phnom Penh after Nuon Chea’s death that his client was innocent because “when the defendant dies, the lawsuit is dissolved.” Thus, the verdict issued by the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC), the tribunal that tried Nuon Chea and other Khmer Rouge leaders, “has no effect any longer because, based on the presumption of innocence, Nuon Chea is innocent.”
The controversial ECCC convicted Khmer Rouge torture center chief, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch in 2010 and found guilty Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan in 2014. In 2018, just as with Nuon Chea, they were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity and genocide. Two other top suspects — Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith — died before their cases could be concluded.
Cambodia is a young country. Only about 10% of the population are, like Sun Sitha, in their 50s or older. Half its 16.5 million people are under the age of 22. If their parents survived the Khmer Rouge, they rarely speak of their experiences because many Cambodians believe that would transmit the suffering to their children.
That means most Cambodians have no direct experience of the Khmer Rouge, who were known to execute teachers, doctors, ethnic Vietnamese, with pickaxes rather than spend money on bullets.
Cambodian former Khmer Rouge survivors, Soum Rithy, left, and Chum Mey, right, embrace each other after the verdicts were announced at the U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014.
Knows history
Yuth Kunthea, a 25-year-old resident of Siem Reap, does know about Noun Chea and the Khmer Rouge.
“I’m not sorry that he died because he caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, he hurt people, and separated them from their family members,” she said, adding she learned about the regime in school. “We lost a lot of good Khmer people.”
The Khmer Rouge buried the bodies in mass graves, dubbed “killing fields,” like the one near Trung Bat, in northern Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge maintained a prison and a crematorium.
Many of the remains were ground down to make fertilizer in an effort to meet quotas for the rice crop. Others, like those found by soil excavators in 2012, were buried intact with arms bound behind them or weighed down by rocks, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM).
“No one can forget him,” said Lat Lon, a 73-year-old monk from Teputhyvong Temple, the site of a mass grave, in Siem Reap province. “We have no peace of mind. They tortured people, so he deserved to die. People should have peace of mind.”
According to Buddhist beliefs, even though Noun Chea and other Khmer Rouge leaders are dead, the souls of their victims and those who survived still do not have a peaceful mind.
“How can they have peace of mind?” Lat Lon asked. “According to the Dharma, dead people still miss their family members.”
‘He died with sin’
Youk Chhang, the DC-CAM executive director in Phnom Penh and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, told VOA Khmer by phone that Nuon Chea cannot escape his deeds in death despite the law’s presumption of innocence.
“He was born like all of us but he committed sins and he died with sin,” he said.
Nuon Chea died without the dignity that comes with age, said Youk Chhang, and his death is drawing mixed reactions.
“Some I asked immediately [after Nuon Chea died] said they are not happy because when he was alive, he was defiant about what he had done,” Youk Chhang said. “He did not … give a value of the history to the next generation.” Even after the verdict, “he was still defiant for what he did and he was responsible.”
Documentary filmmaker Thet Sambath interviewed Nuon Chea extensively in the late 1990s, and then co-produced the 2009 award-winning documentary “Enemies of the People,” about the Khmer Rouge leadership. Just after Nuon Chea’s death, Thet Sambath, who lives in Massachusetts, told VOA Khmer by phone that he was grateful to Nuon Chea for “giving me historical documents and secret stories about the Khmer Rouge,” he said. “It’s very lucky for Cambodian people” to have this information, he added.
China says it will take “countermeasures” if the United States deploys ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.
Fu Cong, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s arms control division, told reporters Tuesday that Beijing “will not stand idly by” if Washington follows through on a pledge made last weekend by new Defense Secretary Mark Esper to deploy the missiles in the region “sooner rather than later,” preferably within months.
He urged China’s neighbors, specifically Japan, South Korea and Australia, to “exercise prudence” by refusing to deploy the U.S. missiles, adding that it would serve those countries national security interests.
Fu did not specify what countermeasures China would take, but said “everything is on the table.”
Secretary Esper’s stated goal to deploy ground-based missiles in the region came after the Trump administration formally pulled the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty last week. The pact, reached with the former Soviet Union, bans ground-based nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles with a range between 500-5,000 kilometers. Washington said it withdrew from the INF because of continued violations by Moscow.
Fu said China had no interest in taking part in trilateral talks with the United States and Russia due to the “huge gap” in the size of China’s nuclear arsenal compared to the other two nations.
Chinese companies have stopped buying U.S. agricultural products, China’s Commerce Ministry said on Tuesday, a blow to U.S. farmers who have already seen their exports slashed by the more than year-old trade war.
China may impose additional tariffs on U.S. farm products bought shortly before the purchase ban took effect, China’s Commerce Ministry said. China also let the yuan weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level on Monday for the first time in more than a decade.
Before the trade war started, China bought $19.5 billion worth of farm goods in 2017, mainly soybeans, dairy, sorghum and pork. The trade war reduced those sales to $9.1 billion in 2018, according to the American Farm Bureau.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement it hoped the United States would keep its promises and create the “necessary conditions” for bilateral cooperation.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Beijing had not fulfilled a promise to buy large volumes of U.S. farm products and vowed to impose new tariffs on around $300 billion of Chinese goods, abruptly ending a truce in the Sino-U.S. trade war.
Earlier, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported an official from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as saying Trump’s accusations were “groundless.”
China is the world’s top buyer of soybeans, the most valuable U.S. export crop. The Trump administration has announced plans to spend up to $28 billion compensating U.S. farmers, a key Trump constituency, for lost income from trade disputes.
American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall called the announcement “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”
In this June 25, 2019, photo, farmer Matthew Keller walks through one of his pig barns near Kenyon, Minn. When the Trump administration announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers struggling under the financial strain of his trade.
The National Pork Producers Council said in an email it was important to end the trade war so pork producers could “more fully participate in a historic sales opportunity.”
Farmers can start applying for the next round of trade aid this month, but trade uncertainty makes long-term planning difficult.
“We’ve been thankful for the aid payments. They have helped but we’d rather have open markets because it creates stability in our financial sectors,” said Derek Sawyer, 39, a corn, soybean, wheat and cattle farm from McPherson, Kansas. “There’s just so much volatility right now because nobody knows the rules of the game and nobody knows how to look at things going forward.”
China is buying more soybeans from Brazil. Its overall need for soybeans used to feed livestock has fallen as African Swine Fever kills millions of pigs. U.S. meat exporters had hoped to take advantage of the disease to export more pork to China but 62% retaliatory tariffs have limited exports.
Overall, China has purchased about 14.3 million tons of last season’s soybean crop, the least in 11 years, and some 3.7 million tons still need to be shipped, according to U.S. data.
China bought 32.9 million tons of U.S. soybeans in 2017, before the trade war.
China applied a 25% tariff on soybeans in July of last year in response to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
China is honoring agreements signed earlier to import U.S. soybeans, according to Cong Liang, secretary general of China’s NDRC, CCTV reported. The report said that 2.27 million tons of U.S. soybeans had been loaded and shipped to China in July, since Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka at the G20 summit at the end of June.
FILE – A grain salesman shows locally grown soybeans in Ohio, April 5, 2018.
China bought 130,000 tons of soybeans, 120,000 tons of sorghum, 60,000 tons of wheat, 40,000 tons of pork and products, and 25,000 tons of cotton from the United States between July 19 and Aug. 2, Cong said according to the report.
Weekly U.S. data on Aug. 1 confirmed the first new U.S. soybean sale to China since June, of 68,000 tons from the crop that will be harvested this fall. Additional sales through Aug. 1 could be recorded in the next U.S. government export sales report on Thursday.
Two million tons of U.S. soybeans destined for China will be loaded in August, followed by another 300,000 tons in September, Cong said.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday less than 600,000 tons of soybeans were inspected for export to China the week ended Aug. 1, fewer than the previous week.
The escalating trade tensions between the United States and China that sent U.S. stock prices plunging Monday continued to reverberate around the globe as Asian stock prices opened sharply lower at the start of Tuesday’s trading session.
Both Japan’s benchmark Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng indexes both opened less than two percent at the opening bell, while China’s benchmark Shanghai index dropped more than 1.5 percent at the start. Australia and South Korea also posted sharp losses in their early morning trading.
Tuesday’s sell-offs in Asia came hours after Wall Street posted its worst losses of the year, with the S&P 500 index losing three percent on Monday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.5 percent and Dow Jones losing nearly three percent. The selloff was triggered by Beijing’s decision to allow its currency to fall to weaken to its lowest point in 11 years, triggering an angry response by U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter, accusing China of manipulating its currency.
China’s move to devalue its currency gives its exporters a price edge in world markets.
Hours later, the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated China a currency manipulator.
The months-long trade war between the world’s two biggest economies worsened last week when President Trump announced plans to impose a 10 percent increase of tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. worth $300 billion. China has retaliated by ending all new purchases of agricultural products from the United States.
Then, another company cut off its new internet host.
In less than 24 hours, 8chan, the online forum that the suspect in the El Paso mass shooting allegedly used to post some of his extremist thoughts, was struggling to keep its lights on.
8chan’s situation highlights how the technology industry, long touting itself as proponents of free speech, has been reevaluating its approach to extremist content published by users.
There are few laws in the U.S. curtailing digital hate speech or incitement to violence online. Social media firms like Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Twitter now routinely revamp their rules and boost new efforts at moderating the content on their sites. Just last month, Twitter said it would use human moderators to evaluate if a post “dehumanizes others on the basis of religion.”
What happened to 8chan in the 24 hours after the El Paso shooting shows how smaller, lesser-known companies that control the pipes of the internet — what sites get seen, whether online traffic is routed correctly and how websites are protected from cyberattacks — are being pressured to set new limits, even though they do not interact directly with people posting content.
A woman sits next to a sign with a message that reads: ¨No More Guns! Make Love¨, in Juarez, Mexico, Aug. 3, 2019, where people are gathering for a vigil for the 3 Mexican nationals who were killed in an El Paso shopping-complex shooting.
Typically, these infrastructure firms stand apart from the fray. If asked to do something about one of their customers, they often say they will respond to law enforcement and court orders. Short of that, it’s not their job to monitor what their customers do, they say.
But that is changing.
Changing views of responsibility
The 8chan example is about how tech companies are changing their views about their responsibility when it comes to extreme content, said Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“For a long time, people said it’s the responsibility of the poster,” Raicu said. “We have become more sophisticated about the roles that other players have.”
Still, the decision to shut down 8chan raises questions about what are the rules and the process for doing so.
“It shows the enormous power technical intermediaries have over who has a platform to speak and where can people access information,” says Emma Llansó, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
This isn’t the first time that Cloudflare, which provides internet infrastructure security to many sites, has been under pressure about one of its customers. In 2017, it cut off the Daily Stormer, a popular white supremacist website that came to prominence after the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Daily Stormer found another cybersecurity firm.
Police officers use pepper spray towards counter-demonstrators during a white nationalist-led rally marking the one year anniversary of the 2017 Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ protests, in Washington, U.S., August 12, 2018.
Two other mass shooter suspects allegedly posted their own manifestos on 8chan prior to attacks. After news broke that the suspect in the El Paso shooting allegedly posted an anti-immigrant manifesto on 8chan, Cloudflare first said it wouldn’t cut off the site.
And then it did.
“We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design,” Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and chief executive, said. “8chan has crossed that line. It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services.”
Cloudflare’s decision led 8chan to find another service provider. But that company was then cut off by Voxility, which provides network hardware and services.
Censorship concerns
Even though some applauded Cloudflare’s decision, it’s unclear what standards the company used when it cut off 8chan, Llansó said.
“It opens up a large can of worms,” she added. “Ad hoc systems are most vulnerable to abuse. These types of decisions are too easy to make in a crisis moment.”
It’s a concern echoed by Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization, about internet infrastructure companies.
“Because these services may determine whether one can use the internet at all, those companies providing them must use their power on only very rare occasions, if at all,” Cohn said. “And if they do, they must do so only after careful consideration, applying predetermined and clear standards, that are free from governmental influence or coercion. Otherwise, we will be establishing a powerful tool for censorship that will inevitably be exploited by repressive governments and other powerful actors.”
Cloudflare declined to comment for this story.
In the weeks ahead, it remains to be seen if 8chan will find another internet security firm and be back online.
Climate change will hit many African countries more severely than previously thought, according to a new report. Researchers warn that rapid population growth means more and more people will be hit by extreme weather events across the continent in the coming years. Henry Ridgwell reports.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday negotiations have begun with three Pacific island nations to renew a national security agreement that would help Washington counter growing Chinese influence in the region.
Under the terms of the deal, known as the Compact of Free Association, the U.S. military have exclusive access to airspace and territorial waters of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. In exchange, the small islands receive financial assistance.
“Today, I am here to confirm the United States will help you protect your sovereignty, your security, your right to live in freedom and peace,” Pompeo told reporters in Pohnpei State, one of four members of the Federated States of Micronesia.
“I’m pleased to announce the United States has begun negotiations on extending our compacts…. they sustain democracy in the face of Chinese efforts to redraw the Pacific.”
Pompeo, who is the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Micronesia, spoke after meeting the leaders of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.
The three tiny Pacific nations have gained greater strategic significance in recent years due a push by China into the region. During a visit to Sydney on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper described China’s actions as both “aggressive” and “destabilizing”.
Laying the foundations for negotiations, U.S. President Donald Trump in May hosted the leaders of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau – a rare state visit for such small countries.
The agreement is due to expire in 2024, and any lapse could have created a potential opening for China.
“Federated States of Micronesia form part of the second island chain that China sees as a way of containing their strategic ambitions,” said Jonathan Pryke, director of the Pacific Islands program at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank.
“The relationship is a critical one, but China is increasing its pursuit of the region.”
China has become the region’s biggest bilateral lender during the past decade, although U.S. allies including Japan, Australia and New Zealand have retained “and in some instances recently increased” their already significant aid programs to Pacific island economies.
Reuters analysis of budget documents shows that most of China’s concessionary loans have flowed to those Pacific island economies with which it has strong diplomatic ties, including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.
Countries that have retained ties to Taiwan – like Palau, Kiribati and Solomon Islands – have limited Chinese investment.
High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault.
The accounts by two former classmates emerged after police said there was nothing in the background of 24-year-old Connor Betts that would have prevented him from purchasing the .223-caliber rifle with extended ammunition magazines that he used to open fire outside a crowded bar. Police on patrol in the entertainment district fatally shot him less than a minute later.
Both former classmates told The Associated Press that Betts was suspended during their junior year at suburban Bellbrook High School after a hit list was found scrawled in a school bathroom. That followed an earlier suspension after Betts came to school with a list of female students he wanted to sexually assault, according to the two classmates, a man and a woman who are both now 24 and spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern they might face harassment.
“There was a kill list and a rape list, and my name was on the rape list,” said the female classmate.
This undated photo provided Dayton Police shows Connor Betts. In mask and body armor, the 24-year-old opened fire early Sunday, Aug. 4, 2019, in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing several people, including his sister, officials said.
A former cheerleader, the woman said she didn’t really know Betts and was surprised when a police officer called her cellphone during her freshman year to tell her that her name was included on a list of potential targets.
“The officer said he wouldn’t be at school for a while,” she said. “But after some time passed he was back, walking the halls. They didn’t give us any warning that he was returning to school.”
Bellbrook-Sugarcreek Schools officials declined to comment on those accounts, only confirming that Betts attended schools in the district.
The discovery of the hit list early in 2012 sparked a police investigation, and roughly one-third of Bellbrook students skipped school out of fear, according to an article in the Dayton Daily News.
It’s not clear what became of that investigation. Chief Michael Brown in Sugarcreek Township, which has jurisdiction over the Bellbrook school, did not return calls Sunday about whether his agency investigated the hit list.
Though Betts, who was 17 at the time, was not named publicly by authorities at the time as the author of the list, the former classmates said it was common knowledge within the school he was the one suspended over the incident.
Drew Gainey was among those who went on social media Sunday to say red flags were raised about Betts’ behavior years ago.
“There was an incident in high school with this shooter that should have prevented him from ever getting his hands on a weapon. This was a tragedy that was 100% avoidable,” he wrote on in a Twitter post on Sunday.
Gainey did not respond to messages from AP seeking further comment, but the name on his account matches that of a former Bellbrook student who was on the track team with Betts.
Former Bellbrook Principal Chris Baker said he “would not dispute that information” when the Daily News asked him Sunday about the hit list suspension. He declined to comment further to the newspaper and the AP was unable to reach him.
Betts had no apparent criminal record as an adult, though if he had been charged as a juvenile that would typically be sealed under state law.
“There’s nothing in this individual’s record that would have precluded him from getting these weapons,” Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said Sunday.
Not everyone who went to school with Betts had bad things to say. Brad Howard told reporters in Bellbrook on Sunday that he was friends with Betts from preschool through their high school graduation.
“Connor Betts that I knew was a nice kid. The Connor Betts that I talked to, I always got along with well,” Howard said.
Mike Kern, a customer at the gas station where Betts used to work in Bellbrook, said he hasn’t seen Betts in about a year.
“He was the nicest kid you could imagine,” always friendly, Kern said. “I never heard him talk about violence, say a racist word, or anything like that.”
He said they sometimes played trivia at a bar near the gas station, and Betts often knew the answers on questions about current events and pop culture.
“He was real smart,” Kern said. “He knew all the answers.”
China allowed its yuan to fall below the politically sensitive level of seven to the U.S. dollar on Monday for the first time in 11 years, prompting concern Beijing might use devaluation as a weapon in a tariff war with Washington.
The central bank blamed the exchange rate’s decline on “trade protectionism.” That followed President Donald Trump’s threat last week of more tariff hikes on Chinese goods in a bruising fight over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology policies.
The currency weakened to 7.0391 to the dollar by late afternoon, making one yuan worth 14.2 cents, its lowest level since February 2008.
“The thought of a currency war is crossing more than a few traders’ minds,” Stephen Innes of VM Markets said in a report.
The weakness of the yuan, also known as the renminbi, or “people’s money,” is among U.S. grievances against Beijing. American officials complain it makes Chinese export prices unfairly low, hurting foreign competitors and swelling Beijing’s trade surplus.
China’s central bank sets the exchange rate each morning and allows the yuan to fluctuate by 2% against the dollar during the day. The central bank can buy or sell currency or order commercial banks to do so to dampen price movements.
It appears “the currency is now also considered part of the arsenal to be drawn upon,” Robert Carnell of ING said in a report. He said Monday’s move might be part of “a concerted series of steps aimed at pushing back at the latest U.S. tariffs.”
The level of seven yuan to the dollar has no economic significance, but could revive U.S. attention to the exchange rate.
Until now, economists said the potential jolt to financial markets of falling beyond that level was big enough that the People’s Bank of China would step in to put a floor under the currency.
A central bank statement Monday blamed “unilateralism and trade protectionism measures,” a reference to Trump’s tariff hikes. But it tried to play down the significance of “breaking seven.”
“It is normal to rise and fall,” the statement said. It promised to “maintain stable operation of the foreign exchange market.”
Chinese leaders have promised to avoid “competitive devaluation” to boost exports by making them less expensive abroad _ a pledge the central bank governor, Yi Gang, affirmed in March. But regulators are trying to make the state-controlled exchange rate more responsive to market forces, which are pushing the yuan lower.
Trump’s tariff hikes have put downward pressure on the yuan by fueling fears economic growth might weaken.
The U.S. Treasury Department declined in May to label China a currency manipulator but said it was closely watching Beijing.
The yuan has lost 5% since hitting a high in February of 6.6862 to the dollar.
That helps exporters cope with tariffs of up to 25% imposed by Trump on billions of dollars of Chinese goods. But it raises the risk of inflaming American complaints.
Trump rattled financial markets Thursday by announcing plans for 10% tariffs on an additional $300 billion of Chinese goods, effective Sept. 1. That would extend penalty duties to almost all U.S. imports from China.
The Treasury report in May urged Beijing to take steps “to avoid a persistently weak currency.”
A weaker yuan also might disrupt Chinese efforts to shore up cooling economic growth. It would raise borrowing costs by encouraging an outflow of capital from the world’s second-largest economy.
Globally, a weaker yuan might lead to more volatility in currency markets and pressure for the dollar to strengthen, Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said in a report. That would be “unwelcome in Washington,” where Trump has threatened to weaken the dollar to boost exports.
A weaker dollar “would be bad news” for Europe and Japan, hurting demand for their exports at a time of cooling economic growth, Kuijs said.
The Chinese central bank tried to discourage speculation last August by imposing a requirement that traders post deposits for contracts to buy or sell yuan. That allows trading to continue but raises the cost.
Beijing imposed similar controls in October 2015 after a change in the exchange rate mechanism prompted markets to bet the yuan would fall. The currency temporarily steadied but fell the following year.
South Korea’s president on Monday described the country’s escalating trade war with Japan as a wake-up call to revamp its economy and issued a nationalistic call for economic cooperation with North Korea, which he said would allow the Koreas to erase Japan’s economic superiority in “one burst.”
President Moon Jae-in’s comments were made during a meeting with senior aides to discuss Japan’s imposing of trade curbs on South Korea. They came as a surprise as North Korea has raised tensions in recent weeks with tests of new short-range weapons that experts say pose a serious threat to the South Korea’s security.
“The advantage Japan’s economy has over us is the size of its [overall] economy and domestic market. If the South and North could create a peace economy through economic cooperation, we can catch up with Japan’s superiority in one burst,” Moon said during the meeting at Seoul’s presidential Blue House.
“Japan absolutely cannot prevent our economy from taking a leap. Rather, [Japan] will serve as a stimulant that strengthens our determination to become an economic power,” he said.
Some analysts say Moon is getting desperate to find any leverage against Japan, which for decades has maintained a huge trade surplus with South Korea, and they question whether there could be any possible way for Seoul to use inter-Korean relations to boost its position against Tokyo.
Even if inter-Korean economic cooperation is fully resumed after quick progress in nuclear diplomacy — a possibility that looks increasingly unlikely — rebuilding the North’s dismal economy following decades of isolation and policy blunders could be a long and excruciating process.
Moon has described Japan’s moves to downgrade South Korea’s trade status and tighten controls on exports to South Korean manufacturers as a deliberate attempt to damage his country’s export-dependent economy. He has accused Tokyo of weaponizing trade to retaliate over political disputes surrounding the countries’ bitter wartime history.
Tokyo says its measures are based on national security concerns and, without providing specific evidence, has questioned the credibility of South Korea’s export controls on sensitive products. Japanese officials have also claimed that South Korea could not be trusted to faithfully implement sanctions against North Korea and suggested that the South may have allowed sensitive materials to reach the North.
North Korea and Japan didn’t immediately respond to Moon’s comments. The North has been demanding that Seoul turn away from Washington and restart inter-Korean economic projects held back by U.S.-led sanctions against the North. The U.S. has said the sanctions should stay in place until the North takes concrete steps to relinquish its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
The North has significantly reduced its diplomatic activity with the South amid a stalemate in the larger nuclear negotiations with the U.S. It has been ramping up its weapons tests, including two test firings of what it described as a new rocket artillery system last week, while expressing frustration over the slow pace of diplomacy and the continuance of U.S.-South Korea military drills that it sees as an invasion rehearsal.
Choi Kang, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said Moon’s comments Monday could create friction with Washington and also send a wrong message to North Korea, which may think that its brinkmanship is working and push further to increase pressure on Seoul.
He said Moon’s comments are “a confession that Seoul doesn’t have many cards in its hands.”
He said it was unclear whether Moon’s suggestion that he could create a breakthrough in the trade row with Japan through inter-Korean relations was be realistic.
Choi also said Moon’s words would strengthen views that the trade dispute between South Korea and Japan may signal a larger geopolitical divergence between the U.S. allies over North Korea and other security issues. He said that may complicate Washington’s efforts to maintain cooperation to deal with the North’s nuclear threat and counter the regional influence of China.
Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times last year and the leaders agreed to resume economic cooperation when possible, voicing optimism that international sanctions could end to allow such activity. But the inter-Korean peace process has halted since the collapse of a nuclear summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in February over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament.
Earlier on Monday, South Korea said it plans to spend 7.8 trillion won ($6.5 billion) over the next seven years to develop technologies for industrial materials and parts as it moves to reduce its dependence on imports. The government will also financially support South Korean companies in mergers and acquisitions of foreign companies and expand tax benefits to lure more international investment, while easing labor and environmental regulations so that local companies could boost their production, the country’s trade ministry said.
South Korea’s plans are aimed at stabilizing the supply of 100 key materials and parts in semiconductors, display screens, automobiles and other major export sectors, where its companies have heavily relied on Japanese imports to produce finished products.
On Friday, Japan’s Cabinet approved the removal of South Korea from a list of countries with preferential trade status, which would require Japanese companies to apply for case-by-case approvals for exports to South Korea of hundreds of items deemed sensitive.
The decision followed a July measure to strengthen controls on certain technology exports to South Korean companies that rely on Japanese materials to produce computer chips and displays used in smartphones and TVs, which are key South Korean export products.
South Korean officials have vowed retaliation, including taking Japan off its own “whitelist” of nations receiving preferential treatment in trade. Moon’s office said it will also consider ending its military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan as part of its countermeasures, saying it could be difficult to share sensitive information considering the deterioration of trust between the countries.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has slammed China’s “destabilizing” actions in the Indo-Pacific region during his first trip to the region.
Speaking to reporters in Sydney with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their Australian counterparts, Esper said the United States is “firmly against a disturbing pattern of aggressive behavior, destabilizing behavior from China.”
Esper and Pompeo pointed to Beijing’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea and accused it of promoting the state-sponsored theft of other nation’s intellectual property, and “predatory economics.”
The last was an apparent reference to so-called “debt traps” like a 2017 arrangement that gave China control of a port in Sri Lanka. After failing to keep up with its debt payments to China, Sri Lanka handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land to the Chinese government for 99 years.
China has arguably undertaken the largest transfer of intellectual property in human history, according to Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Bowman told VOA that intellectual property stolen by Beijing has been used to modernize Chinese weapons which, in the event of a future military conflict, would be used to kill Americans and their allies.
“The United States will not stand by idly while any one nation attempts to reshape the region to its favor at the expense of others,” Esper said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, listens as Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne makes a point during a press conference following annual bilateral talks in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 4, 2019.
Pompeo said Sunday the United States was not asking nations to “choose” between the U.S. and China.
However, allies in the region have grown increasingly worried amid increasing economic and military tensions between China and the United States.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne praised the strong “mateship” between the United States and Australia, but added that China is also a vitally important partner for her country.
“It’s in no one’s interest for the Indo-Pacific to become more competitive or adversarial in character,” she said.
Southeast Asian nations grappled with the prospect of choosing sides in June during the annual Shangri-la Dialogue defense forum in Singapore. The question loomed so large that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned of smaller countries being “forced” to take sides.
In 13 hours of carnage in the United States, two shooters in separate incidents killed 29 people and injured dozens, leaving authorities searching for motives behind the mayhem.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday ordered flags at all government buildings to be flown at half-staff for the next five days, “as a mark of solemn respect for the victims of the terrible acts of violence” in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
“Our nation mourns with those whose loved ones were murdered in the tragic shootings….and we share in the pain and suffering of all those who were injured in these two senseless attacks,” he said.
Shoes are piled in the rear of Ned Peppers Bar at the scene after a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.
A gunman wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines of ammunition was shot to death by police less than a minute after he opened fire early Sunday in a popular nightlife area in the Midwest city of Dayton. The man killed nine people including his own sister and injured at least 27, four of them seriously.
Police said they believe there was only one shooter in the incident, 24-year-old Connor Betts, who said on social media that he was a psychology student at a community college in the Dayton area. But police have yet to suggest a motive.
Mourners gather at a vigil following a nearby mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 4, 2019.
They said Betts was white, as were three of his victims, including his sister, Megan Betts, 22, and six others were African-Americans.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said the quick response by police “saved literally hundreds of lives” in the crowded Oregon district of the city filled with bars, restaurants and theaters.
She said the gunman was carrying a .223-caliber semi-automatic weapon, the same-sized weapon a gunman employed in the one of the most horrific mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years, the assault in which 20 school children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley speaks during a news conference regarding a mass shooting earlier in the morning, Aug. 4, 2019, in Dayton, Ohio.
The Ohio bloodshed occurred about 13 hours after police in the U.S.-Mexican border city of El Paso, Texas, say a gunman opened fired at a Walmart store, killing at least 20 people and wounding 26 — an attack authorities say they are investigating as a possible hate crime targeting Hispanics.
The El Paso and Dayton incidents are the nation’s 21st and 22nd mass killing incidents this year, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The archive defines a mass killing as four or more people shot dead, excluding the gunman, at one location. A separate database counts more than 250 incidents this year in which four or more people have been killed or wounded.
Relatives of victims of the Walmart mass shooting wait for information from authorities at the reunification center in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 4, 2019.
The latest incidents occurred a week after a gunman killed three at a food festival in California and followed the killing of 58 at a country music festival in 2017 in California, 49 at an Orlando, Fla., night club in 2016 and 25 at a Texas church in 2017.
U.S. authorities occasionally try to figure out ways to stop the slaughter of innocents in a country where gun ownership is enshrined as a constitutional right. Some lawmakers have attempted to curb gun ownership or stiffen the regulations surrounding gun sales, but have generally been rebuffed by other lawmakers opposed to new restrictions.
A man leaves flowers near the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex, Aug. 4, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.
After the Dayton attack, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said he was angered that state and national lawmakers won’t approve more gun controls, saying politicians’ “thoughts and prayers are not enough” of a response to mass killings.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday on Twitter, “The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!”
The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!
“God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio,” he implored.
Several Democratic presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke — blamed Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric for fostering a climate of hate leading to the El Paso shooting.
“Donald Trump is responsible for this,” Booker told CNN. “He is responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry.”
But acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney rejected any attempt to blame Trump.
“I blame the people who are sick,” Mulvaney told NBC’s Meet the Press interview show. “People are going to hear what they want to hear,” but added: “This was a political motive by a crazy person.”
In El Paso, police chief Greg Allen said police are seeking to confirm that the 21-year-old white male suspect now in custody was the author of an online posting predicting a shooting spree intended to target Hispanics.
Sgt. Robert Gomez of the El Paso, Texas, police briefs reporters on a shooting that occurred at a Walmart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Aug. 3, 2019.
The suspect was identified by police as Patrick Crusius, who lived in the Dallas area, hundreds of kilometers away from El Paso.
The post appeared online about an hour before the shooting and included language that complained about the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The author of the manifesto wrote that he expected to be killed during the attack.
The writer of the manifesto denied that he was a white supremacist, but decried “race mixing” in the United States, calling instead for territorial enclaves separated by race. The first sentence of the document expressed support for the man accused of killing 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March, after he had posted his own conspiracy theory that non-white migrants were replacing whites.
Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said in a statement that in El Paso, “This vile act of terrorism against Hispanic Americans was inspired by divisive racial and ethnic rhetoric and enabled by weapons of war. The language in the shooter’s manifesto is consistent with President Donald Trump’s description of Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.'”
Police officers walk by shopping carts at the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex, Aug. 4, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.
Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said, “Today’s shooting is a stark reminder of the dangers of such rhetoric.”
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were killed in the shooting and six Mexicans were wounded.
Trump said Saturday that he and first lady Melania Trump “send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the great people of Texas.”
He also tweeted: “Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.”
Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people….
Police began receiving calls about 10:39 a.m. local time with multiple reports of a shooting at Walmart and the nearby Cielo Vista Mall complex on the east side of the city.
Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesman with the El Paso Police Department, said most of the shootings occurred at the Walmart, where there were more than 1,000 shoppers and 100 employees. Many families were taking advantage of a sales-tax holiday to shop for back-to-school supplies, officials said.
“This is unprecedented in El Paso,” Gomez said of the mass shooting.
Gomez said an assault-style rifle was used in the shooting.
El Paso, a city of about 680,000 people in western Texas, shares the border with Juarez, Mexico.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is crisscrossing the Asia-Pacific region on his first international trip as head of the Defense Department. The trip began as the U.S. withdrew from a decades-old arms control pact with Russia, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The withdrawal means Washington and Moscow are free to develop ground-based missiles with a range of 500-5,500km. And that could be bad news for a country that was never even part of the pact–China. Our VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb is traveling with Esper and explains why.
Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country’s U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal said. He was 93.
Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The group’s fanatical efforts to realize a utopian society led to the death of some 1.7 million people — more than a quarter of the country’s population at the time — from starvation, disease, overwork and executions.
Researchers believe Nuon Chea was responsible for the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge and was directly involved in its purges and executions.
He was serving life in prison after convictions by the U.N.-backed tribunal on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
But Nuon Chea never admitted his guilt.
At the long-awaited Khmer Rouge trials, he told a court that he and his comrades were not bad people,'' denying responsibility for any deaths.<br />
<br />
For decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Nuon Chea lived quietly with his family in a wooden house in Pailin, a former guerrilla stronghold near the border with Thailand.<br />
<br />
"I wasn't a war criminal," he said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press. "I admit that there was a mistake. But I had my ideology. I wanted to free my country. I wanted people to have well-being."<br />
<br />
He was arrested in 2007 to face trial along with other surviving but ailing top Khmer Rouge leaders, and charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture.<br />
<br />
Three decades after his accused crimes, Nuon Chea took the stand as an old man with white hair and sunken cheeks. Frail from a variety of health problems — including high blood pressure, heart problems and cataracts — he peered over eyeglasses as he defiantly defended the regime he served.<br />
<br />
"I don't want the next generation to misunderstand history. I don't want them to believe the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals," Nuon Chea testified in 2011 at the age of 85. "Nothing is true about that."<br />
<br />
During his testimony, he insisted that the regime was not responsible for any atrocities and reiterated long-standing Khmer Rouge claims that mass graves found after the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power held the bodies of people killed by Vietnamese troops.<br />
<br />
"These war crimes and crimes against humanity were not committed by the Cambodian people," Nuon Chea said. "It was the Vietnamese who killed Cambodians."<br />
<br />
Vietnam, a onetime communist ally of the Khmer Rouge, suffered several bloody attacks from them and finally struck back in late 1978, chasing the Khmer Rouge from power in early 1979 and installing a client regime of former members of the Khmer Rouge who had split with the group. One of them was Cambodia's current prime minister, Hun Sen.<br />
<br />
Nuon Chea's fellow defendants also denied any wrongdoing: Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, who also told the court he bore no responsibility for atrocities, and Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister. Ieng Sary died before the trials concluded, but Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were found guilty in the tribunal's final verdicts in November 2018.<br />
<br />
At one point before his arrest, Nuon Chea told journalists that he had become an adherent of Buddhism — an irony for the man who served a regime that abolished religion and turned Buddhist monasteries into sites for torture and execution.<br />
<br />
Nuon Chea was born on July 7, 1926, to a wealthy Sino-Cambodian family in Battambang province in northwestern Cambodia. He studied law at Thammasat University in Thailand.<br />
<br />
In an interview with government agents a year after his surrender in 1998, Nuon Chea said he joined the communist movement in Thailand in 1950. Other sources say he became a communist in 1948 and returned to Cambodia a year later.<br />
<br />
That was a time when communist and nationalist groups, struggling to oust French colonialists, were gaining strength in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Nuon Chea said in that interview that he and Saloth Sar, Pol Pot's real name, played key roles in building up a homegrown movement free from the dominance of Vietnam, which was to become the Khmer Rouge's arch-enemy.<br />
<br />
In its early stages, that movement was largely in disarray, facing constant threats from authorities and having neither a clear strategy nor adequate resources, according to Nuon Chea.<br />
<br />
Nuon Chea said he and Pol Pot worked together in mapping outa strategic path and tactics” that the party adopted at a clandestine congress at the Phnom Penh railway station in September 1960.
“Marxism-Leninism was the goal of the party, which had to be built from the countryside up. Rural areas were the basis for cities to rely on and ignite” the revolution, Nuon Chea said.
After coming to power in 1975 following a brutal war, the Khmer Rouge evicted people from cities and turned the country into a vast labor camp.
For a movement known for paranoia and secrecy, Nuon Chea was as shadowy as Pol Pot, or even more so, according to historians.
“Except for Nuon Chea, Pol Pot was the least accessible Cambodian leader since World War II,” David Chandler, an American scholar on Cambodia, wrote in “Brother Number One,” a biography of Pol Pot.
Researchers say he was the chief ideologue responsible for devising the Khmer Rouge’s most brutal policies, notably at Tuol Sleng — or S-21 — prison, which is now a genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Some 16,000 men, women and children passed through the prison’s gate before being tortured and executed.
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researches Khmer Rouge crimes, said strong evidence links Nuon Chea to the killings. He said the 800,000 documents about the country’s holocaust his center has gathered include many that incriminate Nuon Chea.
“He was born like all of us, but he was driven by power and he later committed crimes against his own people,” Youk Chhang said Sunday.
After being ousted from power in 1979, the Khmer Rouge waged guerrilla warfare for another two decades before disintegrating. Pol Pot died in the jungle in 1998, and on Christmas Eve that year, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan surrendered.
Prime Minister Hun Sen welcomed the duo at his home and gave them and family members a beach holiday, providing sports utility vehicles and security escorts.
When asked at the time who was to blame for the massacres under his regime, Nuon Chea told a news conference, “Let’s consider that an old issue.”
