The White House has said that it will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry being conducted by House Democrats. President Donald Trump went one step further by calling the House committees investigating him a “kangaroo court.” What exactly is a kangaroo court? VOA explains.
The United States says diplomatic efforts are on “high gear” to press for a cease-fire after Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria, as Washington tries to get the situation under control, according to a senior State Department official.
“Goal number one is to carry out diplomacy to try to find a cease fire. Get the situation under control. It’s very, very confusing. It’s dangerous for our troops. It’s placing the fight against ISIS at risk. It’s placing at risk the safe imprisonment of almost 10,000 detainees,” the official said, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group.
The official noted that there has not been “any major successful breakout so far of detainees,” referring to imprisoned IS fighters and their families. Syrian Kurdish officials have said hundreds of suspected IS prisoners have escaped.
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced sanctions against Turkish officials over the military operation and he plans to send a delegation led by Vice President Mike Pence to Ankara for talks to resolve the situation.
“I can just tell you that it’s (Pence’s trip) going to be launched very quickly,” the State Department official told reporters Tuesday. “And again our first goal is to basically have a heart to heart talk with the Turks.”
President Trump has faced harsh criticism in the week since the White House announced Turkey was going forward with its long-held plans to try to carve out a buffer zone along its border with Syria free from the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters it accuses of being terrorists linked to separatist Kurds in Turkey. The U.S. military has long said its Kurdish allies have been instrumental in the fight against IS, and the elimination of IS’s caliphate.
“We’re very concerned about their [Turkey’s] actions and the threat that they presented to peace, security, stability, and territorial integrity of Syria, of our overall political plans, and the risk of humanitarian disaster, and human rights violations, some of which we’ve seen not by Turkish troops, but by what we call the TSO-Turkish supported Syrian opposition elements, armed opposition elements, who are responsible for those horrible pictures you saw,” the U.S. official said Tuesday.
Turkey’s incursion pushed the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces to reach an agreement with the Syrian government that has brought Syrian troops back into the northeastern part of the country for the first time in years, including on Monday reaching the town of Manbij.
A U.S. military spokesman said Tuesday American troops left the town of Manbij as part of their withdrawal from the area.
Trump spoke Monday with both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and General Mazloum Kobani, the head of the mostly Kurdish SDF that the United States has relied on to battle Islamic State militants in Syria.
In addition to the call to halt the military operation, the United States raised steel tariffs and halted negotiations on a $100-billion trade deal with Turkey.
U.S. Democrats and Republicans have faulted the Trump administration for what is unfolding, saying the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the area cleared the way for the U.S. ally SDF to be put in danger as well as the potential for Islamic State militants under SDF detention to break free and stage a resurgence.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Trump’s “erratic decision-making is threatening lives, risking regional security and undermining America’s credibility in the world.”
She said both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate will proceed this week with “action to oppose this irresponsible decision.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that while Turkey does have legitimate security concerns linked to the Syrian conflict, the operation against the U.S.-backed Kurds jeopardizes the progress won against IS.
“Abandoning this fight now and withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy and invite the resurgence of ISIS,” McConnell said. “And such a withdrawal would also create a broader power vacuum in Syria that will be exploited by Iran and Russia, a catastrophic outcome for the United States’ strategic interests.”
A senior administration official rejected criticisms against Trump in the call with reporters Monday, saying only Erdogan’s actions are to blame.
The official said Turkish President Erdogan “took a very, very rash, ill-calculated action that has had what, for him, were unintended consequences.”
Earlier Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Erdogan “bears full responsibility” for what happens.
He called the Turkish offensive “unnecessary and impulsive,” and said it has undermined what he called the successful multinational mission to defeat Islamic State in Syria.
Esper said he plans to go to Brussels next week to press other NATO allies to apply sanctions on Turkey.
Nike Ching contributed to this report.
Dutch authorities were Tuesday trying to piece together the story of a family found living isolated from the outside world in the rural east of the Netherlands.
Mayor Roger de Groot said that the six-member family is believed to have lived for nine years on a farm in Ruinerwold, 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Amsterdam.
Drone images of the farm showed a cluster of buildings with a large vegetable garden on one side. The small property appeared to be ringed by a fence and largely obscured by trees.
Dutch media reported that the family was made up of five adult siblings and their father.
De Groot told reporters the siblings were aged from 18-25. He said their mother is believed to have died “a number of years ago.”
Local police said in a tweet that officers visited the farm after being alerted by somebody “concerned about the living conditions” of its residents.
Police said they arrested a 58-year-old man who rented the property, but it wasn’t immediately clear why or what his relationship was to the family. Police said he wasn’t the father.
Police investigating the farm found “a number of improvised rooms where a family lived a withdrawn life,” De Groot said in a statement.
Local bar owner Chris Westerbeek told broadcaster RTV Drenthe that he called police after a man “with a confused look in his eyes,” with unkempt hair, a long beard and old clothes walked in to his bar and ordered five beers for himself.
“He said where he came from, that he’d run away and that he needed help urgently,” Westerbeek said.
De Groot said the police investigation is looking into “all possible scenarios,” but didn’t elaborate.
He said the family was now “in a safe place receiving appropriate care and attention.”
Dodging waves at low tide, a barefooted, shirtless Mixtec man is carefully walking along the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. He navigates his way through the gray rocks on a quest to catch a particular kind of snail, Purpura pansa. When he catches one, he presses just the right part of the snail’s foot to encourage it to secrete a neurotoxin directly onto a skein of cotton yarn. The milky liquid stains the yarn in a greenish color. As it oxidizes, the color turns blue and finally becomes a brilliant reddish-purple hue.
Extracting colors from snails is an ancient dyeing method that the Mixtec people have been practicing for around 1,500 years. Like their ancestors, Mixtec dyers do not hurt the snails. They carefully return them to their habitat. They give them time to recover and recharge. They also stay away from the snails during the mating season.
This group of Mixtec dyers is among more than two dozen artisans whom author Keith Recker profiled in his book, True Colors — World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments.
Recker is interested in natural dyes because he finds them fascinating.
“There is usually more than one thing happening in the union between the natural coloring substance and fiber,” he says. “I think the eye is much more entertained by this complexity than it is by chemical simplicity where you only have one weave length, one vibe coming to your eye from the fiber.”
To explore traditional techniques and personal approaches to natural dyeing, Recker embarked on a journey and met with artisans from all over the world, from West Africa to Bangladesh to China to Northern California to Mexico to Uzbekistan.
“Before 1856, when the first synthetic dye was invented in England by a chemist who made a beautiful purple color out of tar, all colors were natural. They were made in some vividly amazing ways,” Recker notes. “Dyes were mostly extracted from plants, but in some cases from animals.”
Most of these artisans not only keep their ancestors’ handmade natural dyeing techniques alive, they pass them to younger generations as they train other artisans in their communities.
Colorful journey
Artisans come from different artistic and cultural backgrounds, however, their work is similar in many ways.
Audrey Louise Reynolds, for instance, is an artisan living in Upstate New York. She extracts beautiful colors from turmeric, while Rupa Trivedi in Mumbai, India, creates a range of colors from marigold, hibiscus and rose flowers and coconut husks. With much trial and error and online research, the self-taught artist understood the principles of natural dyes and started her business 15 years ago.
Maria Elena Pompo, who moved from Venezuela to the United States and from engineering to fashion design, also developed her natural dyeing technique through experimentation.
“She colors her clothing with recycled avocado pits,” Recker says. “She goes around Brooklyn, collecting avocado pits from Mexican restaurants and uses them in a very precise way to create a whole range of blushes and yellowy apricots and pink browns. It is very low impact because they’re things that would otherwise go to trash.”
Red is one of basic colors artisans use in dyeing fabrics, but they extract it from different resources.
In southwestern Mexico, the Gutierrez Contreras family members who are weaving textiles using old Zapotec traditions are famous for working with cochineal.
“Cochineal is a red color that comes from dried beetles,” Recker explains. “That sounds terrible, but the body of these dried beetles is made of carminic acid, which is still the safest red colorant we’ve known of.”
Carpetmakers Fatillo Kendjeav and his family, in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, extract a variety of red shades from madder roots. They use other natural ingredients to deepen the authenticity of their carpets, such as walnut hulls to create deep browns, and pomegranate skins to create a beautiful bronze green. They also use onion skins, apple, grape and mulberry leaves to create different shades of yellow.
Recker notes that these artisans tend to use such natural plants not only as colorants, but also as food and medicine.
True color advocates
As many people have become more conscious about natural foods and healthy eating habits, some see wearing naturally dyed fabrics as another step toward a healthier lifestyle. These dyeing techniques also have a lower impact on the environment as they encourage recycling and reusing practices, says Recker.
“If you learn how to use natural ingredients available around you, you can easily refresh an old, tired T-shirt, or a scarf, or a sheet and give it a new life instead of throwing them away,” adds the author.
Even if he does not inspire readers to do it themselves, Recker hopes raising awareness about natural colors will press the fashion industry worldwide to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
The remains of 28 of the 32 Kenyans killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March have arrived in Nairobi.
Hearses lined up at the VIP section of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport early Monday morning as family members streamed in. A somber mood engulfed the airport as victims’ families, most dressed in black, waited to receive their loved ones.
Kenya’s Cabinet secretary for foreign affairs, Monica Juma, was among the top government officials greeting the families.
“We have had a chance to meet with the families,” Juma said. “We have had a chance to give them a final service, interdenominational service, so that they can bring closure to seven months of grieving, of sorrow, of sadness.”
She said all the bodies of Kenyans killed in the crash have been accounted for; the four bodies not returned Monday were either cremated or interred privately by their families.
After prayers Monday at the airport, the victims’ remains were turned over to family members.
Three hours later, a funeral was held for 34-year-old Abdulahi Ibrahim at his home in the Kibera section of Nairobi. Ibrahim had worked for a dairy company in Saudi Arabia and was on his way home for vacation when he died in the plane crash.
His friends carried his casket to a Muslim cemetery, as they marched the same streets where they had played football as children.
His father, Ibrahim Mohammed, said that now, he could probably start to heal.
“For this 7 months, I have been traumatized,” he said. “When they handed over my son’s body, I was thankful and felt some relief because that’s my son and I have buried him now, so I feel relieved and I believe now my health will start to improve.”
Imam Ahmed Idriss led the prayers at Ibrahim’s send off, saying, “We thank God that Ibrahim’s remains are home and he is now buried next to his grandparents and great great grandparents. … Now the parents can finally have peace because their son is buried here next to his family and according what the Muslim religion dictates.”
A total of 157 people died when the Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashed March 10 in the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia.
Last month, Boeing announced it had set up a $50 million fund to compensate victims of the crash and another involving a 737 Max in Indonesia last year.
All 737 Max planes remain grounded while the company investigates reports that faulty sensors were to blame for both tragedies.
Police in northern Nigeria rescued nearly 70 men and boys from a second purported Islamic school where they were shackled and subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatments.”
The raid in Katsina, the northwestern home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, came less a month after about 300 men and boys were freed from another supposed Islamic school in neighboring Kaduna state where they were allegedly tortured and sexually abused.
“In the course of investigation, sixty-seven persons from the ages of 7 to 40 years were found shackled with chains,” Katsina police spokesman Sanusi Buba said in a statement.
“Victims were also found to have been subjected to various inhuman and degrading treatments.”
The raid occurred on Oct. 12 in Sabon Garin in the Daura local government area of Katsina state. Police issued a statement Monday and said they were working to reunite the victims with their families.
Police arrested one man, 78-year-old Mallam Bello Abdullahi Umar, for running what they called an “illegal detention/remand home.”
Lawai Musa, a trader who lived near the center, told Reuters by phone that families sent unruly men and boys there believing it was an Islamic teaching facility that would straighten them out and teach them Islamic beliefs.
“The way he is treating the children is un-Islamic” he said. “We are not happy, they were treated illegally.”
Islamic schools
Islamic schools, known as Almajiris, are common across the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a local organization, estimates about 10 million children attend them.
In June, President Buhari, himself a Muslim, said the government planned to ban the schools, but would not do so immediately. After the incident in Kaduna, the president issued a statement calling on traditional authorities to work with government to expose “unwanted cultural practices that amount to the abuse of children.”
Buhari’s office declined to immediately comment on the Katsina raid, saying it would issue a statement after a full briefing from police.
“The command enjoins parents to desist from taking their children/wards to illegal, unauthorized or unapproved remand/rehabilitation centers,” the police statement said.
California’s top utility regulator blasted Pacific Gas and Electric on Monday for what she called “failures in execution” during the largest planned power outage in state history to avoid wildfires that she said “created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated.”
The agency ordered a series of corrective actions, including a goal of restoring power within 12 hours, not the utility’s current 48-hour goal.
“The scope, scale, complexity, and overall impact to people’s lives, businesses, and the economy of this action cannot be understated,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer wrote in a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson.
PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians. The company said it did it because of dangerous wind forecasts but acknowledged that its execution was poor.
Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not receive enough warning that the power was going out.
“We were not adequately prepared,” Johnson said at a press conference last week.
PG&E spokespeople did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the sanctions.
In addition to restoring power faster, the PUC said the utility must work harder to avoid such large-scale outages, develop better ways to communicate with the public and local officials, get a better system for distributing outage maps, and work with emergency personnel to ensure PG&E staff are sufficiently trained.
She ordered the utility to perform an audit of its performance during the outages that began Wednesday, saying the utility clearly did not adopt many of the recommendations state officials have made since utilities was granted the authority to begin pre-emptive power shutoffs last year. The review is due by Thursday, and she ordered several PG&E executives to appear at an emergency PUC hearing Friday.
Governor’s criticism
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also criticized PG&E for its performance during the outage, blaming what he called decades of mismanagement, underinvestment and lousy communication with the public. On Monday the Democratic governor urged the utility to compensate affected customers with a bill credit or rebate worth $100 for residential customers or $250 for small businesses.
Newsom said the shutoffs affected too many customers for too long, and it is clear PG&E implemented them “with astounding neglect and lack of preparation.”
Batjer’s letter also said that PG&E’s service territory, design of its transmission lines and distribution network and “lack of granularity of its forecasting ability” mean it can’t do pre-emptive power shut-offs as strategically as some other utilities, but she said it must work harder to reduce the number of customers affected by future outages.