American pop singer Pink says she is donating $500,000 to help fight the deadly wildfires that have devastated parts of Australia.
“I am totally devastated watching what is happening in Australia right now with the horrific bushfires,” Pink tweeted Saturday to her 32.2 million Twitter followers. “I am pledging a donation of $500,000 directly to the local fire services that are battling so hard on the frontlines. My heart goes out to our friends and family in Oz.”
The death toll in the wildfire crisis is now up to 23 people. The fires are expected to be particularly fierce throughout the weekend.
The wildfires, which have been raging since September, have already burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land and destroyed more than 1,500 homes.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new coalition to secure evangelical voter support for his re-election, delivering a rally-style speech in front of thousands of cheering Christians in a Miami megachurch on Friday.
“We have God on our side,” Trump said at the King Jesus International Ministry, a predominantly Latino church that also goes by its Spanish name Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús.
The ministry is one of the largest Hispanic churches in the United States. Trump’s rally there acknowledged the power of evangelical and Latino voting blocs as his campaign tries to shore up support ahead of the November presidential election. Evangelical voters made up a substantial part of Trump’s base in 2016 and could pave the way toward securing the president’s re-election in 2020.
The president hit familiar campaign themes, boasting about policies that further the evangelical agenda, including restricting abortions, appointing conservative judges and his recent executive order to extend Title VI protections to Jews. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in institutions receiving federal funding, including colleges and universities.
Trump also announced that he will soon be taking action to “safeguard students and teachers’ First Amendment rights to pray in our schools.”
Evangelicals for Trump
Politically, evangelicals are relatively homogeneous and unified as they consistently champion four causes: pro-life policies, confirmation of conservative judges to the federal judiciary, religious freedom mainly for Christians and pro-Israel policies, said Professor Quardricos Driskell, an adjunct professor of religion and politics at the George Washington University.
“These four single issues make this group the most active supporters of not only Trump but most conservative Republican voters,” Driskell added.
Yet, like any group, evangelicals are not monolithic. Driskell said that a distinction has to be made between evangelicals and white evangelicals – with a tendency for more “comprehensive group-think” among white evangelicals who overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 vs. black or Latino evangelicals.
There are also evangelicals uneasy with both the president’s demeanor and policies. After online publication the Christian Post recently issued an editorial supporting Trump, editor Napp Nazworth resigned in protest.
“There is a large contingent of evangelicals who agree that our faith shouldn’t be associated with a president who separates immigrant children from their families, betrays our allies in Syria, inspires racists, and pays hush money to porn stars,” Nazworth said.
Into the fold
Trump has put effort into bringing evangelicals into the fold, including by appointing Paula White, a televangelist from Florida whom he calls a longtime friend and personal pastor, as head of the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. White introduced Trump at the rally as “a man of God” and lead a prayer session for him.
The “Evangelicals for Trump” coalition launch is yet another effort to solidify backing for the president, even when there are signs of erosion of support, including the explosive December 19 Christianity Today editorial that argued for Trump to be removed from office.
“By branding all evangelicals as Trump supporters, the campaign is trying to force those in that demographic who do not fully agree with the president’s policies to be pulled along because it is better to vote for President Trump than a Democrat,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien who teaches presidential politics at the University of Texas at Austin.
There was no shortage of Trump lines hitting on opposition Democrats, whom he accused of waging war on the faithful.
“Every Democratic candidate running for president is trying to punish religious believers and silence our churches,” Trump said to applause from the crowd, many of them sporting MAGA red caps and Trump campaign attire. “This election is about the survival of our nation,” he said.
Trump also singled out Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, describing them as anti-Semitic. “These people hate Israel. They hate Jewish people,” Trump said.
Critics accuse Trump of weaponizing religion. “Faith and belief are highly personal things that should never be utilized as a partisan tool for electoral advantage,” O’Brien said.
Ahead of the president’s remarks, Florida Democrats issued a letter signed by 12 Christian leaders from five Florida counties that appealed to the president: “We cannot stand idly by while you attempt to co-opt our religion for your political gain and claim support from our community.”
US President Donald Trump said he ordered the Friday’s airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander in Iraq at Baghdad’s airport to prevent imminent attacks against Americans in the region. US analysts discuss the move and its impact on Iran, and US policies in the Middle East region. VOA’s Steve Hirsch has more from Washington
Chad has ended a months-long mission fighting Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria and withdrawn its 1,200-strong force across their common border, an army spokesman told AFP on Saturday.
“It’s our troops who went to aid Nigerian soldiers months ago returning home. They have finished their mission,” spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa told AFP. “None of our soldiers remains in Nigeria,” he added, without specifying whether they might be replaced following Friday’s pullout.
“Those who have come back will return to their sector at Lake Chad,” Bermandoa said.
However, Chad’s general chief of staff General Tahir Erda Tahiro said that if countries in the region which have contributed to a multinational anti-jihadist force were in agreement, more troops will likely be sent in.
“If the states around Lake Chad agree on a new mission there will surely be another contingent redeployed on the ground,” Tahiro told AFP.
Boko Haram began the insurrection in Nigeria a decade ago, leading to at least 35,000 deaths with violence spilling over into Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
A Boko Haram faction aligned with Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) jihadists is highly active around Lake Chad where the group has training bases on the Niger border and regularly carries out raids on military bases and regional security forces.
Last month saw 14 people killed with 13 more listed as missing after an attack on a fishing village in western Chad.
Countries in the region have banded together to fight Boko Haram and ISWAP with support from civilian defense committees leading to Chad contributing 1,200 troops.
Those troops have now pulled back across the border to be “deployed in the Lake Chad region to strengthen security along the border,” a senior local official told AFP.
Cameroon says it is battling an upsurge in Boko Haram attacks and, according to an Amnesty International report published last month 275 people, including 225 civilians, were killed there last year.
Fourteen civilians, including many schoolchildren, died Saturday when a roadside bomb blew up their bus in northwestern Burkina Faso, a security source told AFP.
Four people were seriously hurt in the blast in Sourou province near the Mali border, the source added, as children returned to school after holidays.
“The vehicle hit a homemade bomb on the Toeni-Tougan road,” a second security source said. “Most of the dead are schoolchildren.”
Meanwhile, the army reported an attack against gendarmes at Inata in the north on Friday, saying “a dozen terrorists were neutralized”.
Since 2015, increasingly deadly Islamist attacks in Burkina have killed more than 750 people according to an AFP count, and forced 560,000 people from their homes according to UN figures.
The entire Sahel region, especially Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, is fighting jihadist insurgency with help from Western countries, but has not managed to stem the bloodshed.
Highlighting his record on religious liberty, President Donald Trump on Friday worked to energize a group of evangelical supporters who make up an influential piece of his political base that could prove vital in battleground states.
Trump spoke to more than 5,000 Christians, including a large group of Latinos, at a Miami megachurch, just days after he was the subject of a scathing editorial in Christianity Today magazine that called for his removal from office. Thousands of the faithful lifted their hands and prayed over Trump as he began speaking and portrayed himself as a defender of faith.
“We’re defending religion itself. A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith can not endure,“ said Trump, who also tried to paint his Democratic rivals for the 2020 election as threats to religious liberty. “We can’t let one of our radical left friends come in here because everything we’ve done will be gone in short order.”
“The day I was sworn in, the federal government war’s on religion came to an abrupt end,” Trump declared. He later added: “We can smile because we’re winning by so much.”
Points of emphasis
Although some of his address resembled his standard campaign speech, Trump cited his support for Israel, installation of federal judges, prison reform and a push to put prayer in public school. Those are issues his Republican re-election campaign believes could further jolt evangelical turnout that could help them secure wins in states like Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
Friday’s kickoff of “Evangelicals for Trump” will be followed in the weeks ahead by the launches of “Catholics for Trump” and “Jewish Voices for Trump.“ It also came days after Trump and his wife went to an evangelical Christmas Eve service in West Palm Beach rather than the liberal Episcopalian church in which they were married and often attend holiday services.
Advisers believe that emphasizing religious issues may also provide inroads with Latino voters, who have largely steered clear of supporting the president over issues like immigration. Deep into his speech, Trump touched on the issue by praising his border wall. His aides believe even a slight uptick with faith-focused Latinos could help Trump carry Florida again and provide some needed breathing room in states like Texas.
The president made no mention of the editorial, which ran in a magazine founded by the late Reverend Billy Graham.
People pray together during the “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry as they await the arrival of President Donald Trump, Jan. 3, 2020 in Miami.
‘Remember who you are’
“Remember who you are and whom you serve,” the editorial states. “Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency.”
Campaign officials said the Miami event was in the works well before the op-ed, and they trotted out several high-profile evangelical pastors to defend the president.
“I think his record in the past three years is rock-solid in things that the faith community cares about him,“ said Jentezen Franklin, a pastor to a megachurch in Georgia. “We used to see politicians once every four years, but this one is totally different in constantly reaching out to the faith community, and we even get a chance to tell him when we disagree.“
The event came on the heels of a new poll showing that white evangelical Protestants stand noticeably apart from other religious people on how the government should act on two of the most politically divisive issues at play in the 2020 presidential election.
Asked about significant restrictions on abortion — making it illegal except in cases of rape, incest or to threats to a mother’s life — 37% of all Americans responded in support, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Those abortion limits drew 39% support from white mainline Protestants, 33% support from nonwhite Protestants and 45% support from Catholics, but 67% support from white evangelical Protestants.
LGBTQ protections
A similar divide emerged over whether the government should bar discrimination against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in workplaces, housing or schools. About 6 in 10 Catholics, white mainline Protestants and nonwhite Protestants supported those protections, compared with about a third of white evangelical Protestants.
White evangelicals were also more likely than members of other faiths to say religion should have at least some influence on policymaking.
But Democrats have shown strong interest in connecting with voters of faith, even evangelicals whom Trump is often assumed to have locked down. And some religious leaders believe people of faith may be turned off by Trump’s personal conduct or record.
“Friday’s rally is Trump’s desperate response to the realization that he is losing his primary voting bloc — faith voters. He knows he needs every last vote if he wants a shot at reelection, as losing just 5% of the faith voters ends his chances,” said the Reverend Doug Pagitt, the executive director of Vote Common Good. “In addition, he is trying to use this part of his base to give cover for his broken promises and immoral policies.”
The IRGC was founded in 1979, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. The core task of its estimated 150,000 ground forces, navy and air units is to protect Iran’s Islamic system and revolutionary values.
After Friday’s targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, newsrooms struggled with the question: Had the United States just carried out an assassination? And should news stories about the killing use that term?
The AP Stylebook, considered a news industry bible, defines assassination as “the murder of a politically important or prominent individual by surprise attack.”
Although the United States and Iran have long been adversaries and engaged in a shadow war in the Middle East and elsewhere, the U.S. has never declared formal war on Iran. So the targeted killing of a high Iranian state and military official by a surprise attack was “clearly an assassination,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, an expert in international law and the laws of war at the University of Notre Dame School of Law.
Just as clearly, the Trump administration doesn’t agree.
Burning debris is seen on a road near Baghdad International Airport, which according to Iraqi paramilitary groups was caused by three rockets, Jan. 3, 2020. (Social Media/Reuters)
Self-defense or not?
Though a statement issued by the Pentagon said the attack was specifically intended to kill Soleimani and that it was ordered “at the direction of the President,” it also characterized the killing as defensive, to protect U.S. military forces abroad, and stated that Soleimani was actively developing plans “to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” Subsequent statements by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump also characterized the killing as punishment of Soleimani for past blood on his hands.
O’Connell’s counter argument: Whether the killing is framed as part of an armed conflict between two states or as a police action intended to deter terrorism, it cannot be characterized as an act of self-defense because there was never a full-fledged and direct attack on the United States by Iran. The United States’ legal reason for being in Iraq is to deter the Islamic State group, not to fight against Iran, she noted, and the attacks against the U.S. by Iranian-backed militias in recent months have been intermittent and relatively limited.
‘‘Assassination is prohibited both in peacetime law as well as on the battlefield,” she said.
“We have really moved to a nearly lawless state,” she said. If the justification for a military response is self-defense, the response should be “necessary and proportionate.” But that would not justify individual targeted killings, she said.
Prohibited by law
The premeditated killing of a specific individual commander for what they have done on the battlefield or what they may do has been prohibited by the law of armed conflict dating from the Hague Conventions of 1907, and by a protocol of the Geneva Convention in 1949 saying “it is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by perfidy,” she added.
International war law aside, there also has been a U.S. executive order in place since 1976 forbidding the U.S. from carrying out political assassinations. The order came into being after revelations that the CIA had organized or sanctioned assassination attempts against foreign leaders including Fidel Castro.
The current version of the executive order states: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”
It does not however define what constitutes an assassination, and has been generally interpreted to mean an unlawful killing of a political leader in peacetime. For instance, during the “war on terror” since 9/11, the United States is believed to have conducted a number of secret drone strikes targeting individuals, such as the attack against al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in 2011 in Yemen.
Military leader
Soleimani, however, was a military leader. If he was leading forces against the United States, under the international laws of war as enunciated in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, he and his forces could be considered legitimate battle targets during any actual war or armed conflict, declared or undeclared.
The AP has mostly refrained from describing Soleimani’s death as an assassination, both because it would require that the news service decide that the act was a murder, and because the term is politically freighted.
Duke University Professor of Law Madeleine Morris, an expert on international criminal law, said the law is not terribly clear in this area.
She said that under the United Nations Charter, there is a clear right of self-defense in response to armed attacks. She noted that some might argue that the attacks the U.S. has experienced in this case do not meet at a threshold of gravity to justify this sort of targeted killing, while others would argue to the contrary that there is no explicit threshold — that if attacked a country has an absolute right to respond militarily.
“There is no obligation to kill a lot of people rather than a single person,” she said.
The question then would be whether the act of war was legal, allowed as self-defense, or would it be considered an illegal act of aggression? That would depend on the intelligence evidence offered by the United States and the imminence of any planned attack.
“The problem is that governments have good reason to make very little public in this situation, which makes it very difficult to evaluate the situation politically or legally,” she said.
Bundled against the cold, dozens of asylum seekers pushed back into Mexico by the United States tried Friday to get their bearings, still unsure of how they would travel some 350 miles to their court dates, subsist for months in this unfamiliar border city or return to their distant homelands.
On Thursday, the U.S. government expanded its so-called “Remain in Mexico” program to the border between this city and its sister Nogales, Arizona. A group of about 30 mostly Central American migrants were returned that day and another approximately 45 were sent Friday.
The migrants said no one had figured out how to round up money to leave Nogales yet.
The U.S. had sent some 56,000 asylum seekers back to await their cases in Mexico through November, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Making asylum seekers wait in Mexican border cities, many of which suffer from rampant crime, aims to discourage migrants. Previously many of them were released with monitoring bracelets to await their cases inside the U.S.
Nogales is the seventh border crossing to participate in the program and perhaps the most onerous yet for asylum seekers.
Central Americans who returned Thursday had court dates scheduled for late March in El Paso, Texas, hundreds of miles east. Other border points have courts just across the frontier or at least a significantly shorter distance away.
Lorenzo Gonzalez, a Guatemalan farmworker traveling with his wife and three children between the ages of 1 and 12, said he didn’t see how they could wait three months. He was ready to throw in the towel, but also didn’t know how they’d be able to return to Guatemala.
“We don’t understand why they didn’t send us to Guatemala to fight our case from there and not wait here,’ he said at a soup kitchen where his family had eaten Friday. “We’re worried here because we don’t know anyone, we don’t have any place to go. They gave us a shelter, but not more than three nights.”
The U.S. border fence separates Nogales, Mexico, right, from sister city Nogales, Arizona, left, Jan. 3, 2020.
The family spent Thursday night at a shelter nearly 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the border. In the morning, migrants there paid a nominal fee for a lift to the soup kitchen, which sits a short walk from the border crossing. In the afternoon, Mexico’s immigration agency shuttles them back to the shelter from the border. But workers at the independently run shelter said they can stay for only three nights.
“I want to go back (to Guatemala), but we don’t have money,” he said. He also didn’t have the 1,200 pesos ($63) for a bus ticket to Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, where his court date was scheduled for March 25. “I don’t know what to do.”
Even with money, the journey to Ciudad Juarez is far from secure. It entails crossing from territory controlled by the Sinaloa cartel to that of the rival Juarez cartel. Three women and six children, all dual nationals, were killed by Juarez cartel gunmen in November where those territories meet.
“We’re very worried by this situation,” said the Rev. Sean Carroll, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, which provides the free meals to migrants. He said the returnees are at risk of assault, abuse, kidnapping and rape. “They’re vulnerable here. They’re going to be vulnerable en route. They’re going to be vulnerable in Ciudad Juarez.”
A report by the independent Human Rights First group, released in December, documented at least 636 public reports of violence against asylum-seekers returned to Mexico including rape, kidnapping and torture. The group said that was a steep increase over October, when it had identified 343 attacks, and noted the latest figure is surely an under-count because most crime victims don’t report.
Heberto Ramirez, another Guatemalan farmworker traveling with his 16-year-old son, said he had been in touch with his family since being sent back to Mexico and they asked him how he’d get home because there was no more money. Still, he didn’t see how they could wait more than three months at the border either. He had just a towel draped over a shirt to buffer against the cold that hovered just below freezing early Friday morning.
“We wanted to do something, maybe earn something that we don’t have, but it turns out we couldn’t,” Ramirez said. “Better we go back, continue living poorly.”
In a statement Thursday, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the Migrant Protection Protocols program has been “an extremely effective tool.”
“I am confident in the program’s continued success in adjudicating meritorious cases quickly and preventing fraudulent claims,“ Wolf wrote.
Gonzalez, wearing a hooded sweatshirt with nothing underneath, expressed concern for his family’s safety on the Mexican side of the border. His wife appeared nervous. They had been separated during five days in detention in Tucson and then loaded onto a bus Thursday with no information about what was happening, he said.
“They didn’t tell us where they were going to send us,” he said. “They simply put us on a bus and came to leave us here at the Nogales border.”
Mexico’s former top security official pleaded not guilty Friday to charges he accepted a fortune in drug-money bribes from kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s notorious Sinaloa cartel to let it operate with impunity.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, was indicted in New York on three counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and a false statements charge.
During his brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom, Garcia Luna shook his head “no” as prosecutors outlined the charges against him.
A judge ordered him detained after Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Reid argued that he would pose an “unacceptable risk of flight” if released. Garcia Luna’s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, said he would ask the court later for his client to be granted bail.
Former drug war point man
Garcia Luna was viewed as the point man in then-President Felipe Calderon’s 2006-2012 war on drugs. As public safety secretary, he was one of the most feared members of Calderon’s government, but for years was dogged by allegations about his ties to drug traffickers.
Calderon’s government was criticized for not going after the Sinaloa cartel with the same energy as the cartel’s rivals. Calderon always rebuffed that criticism.
Briefcases of cash
U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing this month that Garcia Luna had accepted “tens of millions of dollars” in bribes — often briefcases full of cash — to protect the cartel.
“Because of the defendant’s corrupt assistance, the Sinaloa Cartel conducted its criminal activity in Mexico without significant interference from Mexican law enforcement and imported multiton quantities of cocaine and other drugs into the United States,” prosecutors wrote.
They added that Garcia Luna “prioritized his personal greed over his sworn duties as a public servant and assured the continued success and safety of one of the world’s most notorious trafficking organizations.”
De Castro declined to comment on the charges.
During Guzman’s 2018 New York trial, jurors heard former cartel member Jesus Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to Garcia Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
It’s alleged that during the time Garcia Luna protected the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for bribes, the cartel, at the direction of Chapo Guzman, Mayo Zambada and other leaders, sent multiton drug loads to New York and other American cities, including the federal district covering Brooklyn and Queens, according to court documents.
Garcia Luna lived in Miami, Florida, before his arrest last month in Texas. From 2001 to 2005, he led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency and from 2006 to 2012 served as Mexico’s secretary of public security before relocating to the U.S., authorities said.
