Author: Ohart

The French prime minister informed the unions behind a crippling railway strike over pension reform Saturday that he is open to backing down on one of the most controversial proposals: raising the full pension eligibility age to 64.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe wrote to unions one day after the French government and labor representatives engaged in talks that had seemed to end in a stalemate after more than a month of strikes and protests.

Philippe’s letter said that the plan to raise the full pension eligibility age from 62 to 64 – the unions’ major sticking point – was open to negotiation. It was the first time the French government overtly indicated room for movement on the retirement age issue. The overture could signal hope for ending the France’s longest transport strikes in decades.

However, Philippe said any compromise was contingent on first finding a way of paying for the pensions system in a country where a record number of people are over age 90.

On Saturday, protesters in Paris marched through the streets to denounce the French government’s plans.

In scenes that have become all too familiar to Parisians, demonstrators set fire to a kiosk near the Bastille square in the center of the French capital as a minority of demonstrators in the march got rowdy..

Police fired tear gas briefly as minor scuffles broke out.

Two days earlier, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets nationwide to denounce the government’s pension proposals. The unions planned further actions for next week to keep up the pressure on the government.

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Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said died on Friday evening, state media said early on Saturday, and a three-day period of national mourning was declared.

Western-backed Qaboos, 79, had ruled the Gulf Arab state since he took over in a bloodless coup in 1970 with the help of Oman’s former colonial power Britain.

Qaboos had no children and had not publicly appointed a successor. A 1996 statute says the ruling family will choose a successor within three days of the throne becoming vacant.

If they fail to agree, a council of military and security officials, supreme court chiefs and heads of the two consultative assemblies will put in power the person whose name has been secretly written by the sultan in a sealed letter.

A three-day period of official mourning for the public and private sectors has been declared, state media said.

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Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

Blocked at the northern border
During a weekend of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, U.S. border agents delayed dozens of American concert-goers, most of Iranian descent, as they returned from Canada. Civil rights groups quickly sounded the alarm on social media, raising their concerns over why lawful residents were detained for questioning for hours.

Lower numbers at the southern border
A steady decrease in border apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico line has brought the monthly totals in line with historical averages, after a spike in family arrivals from 2018 to 2019 prompted a series of policy reactions from the Trump administration.

Refugees welcome in most states
About 4 in 5 U.S. states say they will welcome refugees. A relatively new Trump administration policy required governors to consent to allow formerly displaced people to resettle in a state, and most Republicans and Democrats responded affirmatively. 

From the Feds:
* U.S. security officials continue travel to Central America, working out details of asylum agreements announced in 2019.

* An Indian man pleaded guilty to running a call-center scam and making millions of dollars by threatening U.S. victims with arrest or deportation if they did not pay back money owed to the government.

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The United States is hitting Iranian companies and eight senior officials with new sanctions, in response to Iranian missile attacks against bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq. Pressed for the rationale behind killing a top Iranian general last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted General Qassem Soleimani was plotting attacks on U.S. facilities. Pompeo is front and center in the current Middle East crisis, as President Donald Trump’s most powerful and influential national security adviser. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.

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The U.S. has responded to a call by South Korean President Moon Jae-in for renewed inter-Korean cooperation by stressing that Seoul must continue to implement all sanctions on North Korea.

“All U.N. Member States are required to implement U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions, and we expect them all to continue doing so,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email message sent to VOA’s Korean Service Wednesday.

“The United States and South Korea coordinate closely on our efforts related to the DPRK, and we mutually work to ensure that U.N. sanctions are fully implemented,” the spokesperson continued.

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official English name of North Korea.

New Year’s speech

In his New Year’s speech delivered Tuesday, Moon urged his government to work toward resuming joint projects at the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mount Kumgang resort, and reviving frayed inter-Korean ties.

Moon also invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to visit Seoul.

On Thursday, a South Korean Unification Ministry official addressed the possible resumption of Mount Kumgang tourism by saying, “We are still discussing the issue, but there has been no progress in the talks, with the two sides still remaining far apart,” according to the Yonhap News Agency in Seoul.

North Korea has berated South Korea for not resuming cooperation on the inter-Korean projects. But Seoul has been slow to restart the joint efforts, wary of violating the sanctions the U.N. placed on North Korea in 2016. The sanctions, which are aimed at curbing Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons development program, ban setting up joint enterprises with North Korea. The closing of both projects deprived North Korea of a flow of much needed hard currency.

On Wednesday, Seoul said it will push ahead to restart the joint projects with North Korea. 

“As the party directly involved in the Korean Peninsula issue, South Korea will expand room for maneuvers and move forward things that can be carried out independently as much as possible,” Unification Ministry spokesperson Lee Sang-min said.

Lee’s remarks came after U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris said Tuesday during an interview with South Korean broadcaster KBS that inter-Korean relations should move in tandem with denuclearization efforts.   

Warming relations between Seoul and Pyongyang began to chill after President Donald Trump denied Kim’s request for sanctions relief in exchange for partial denuclearization at the failed Hanoi Summit in February.

Denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been deadlocked since their working-level talks in Stockholm broke down in October.

Moon and Kim had agreed to reopen the shuttered factory complex in Kaesong and tours on Mount Kumgang when they met at their third summit held in Pyongyang in September 2018. At the time, the two leaders were hoping that thawing relations between Washington and Pyongyang would lead to a relaxation of U.S.-led sanctions placed on North Korea.

The two projects were at the heart of Seoul’s rapprochement with Pyongyang in the late 1990s.

Tours of the scenic Mount Kumgang began in 1998, but were ended by Seoul after a North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist in 2008. South Korea began its joint industrial project with Pyongyang at the factory park in Kaesong in 2004 but shut it after North Korea conducted a long-range missile test in early 2016.

Last week Kim said his country will focus on economic self-sufficiency, adding the present situation with the U.S. requires North Korea “to live under the sanctions by the hostile forces.”

Christy Lee contributed to this story, which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.

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The U.S. killing last week of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has sparked a fierce debate about the legality of the strike — and a subsequent Iranian counterstrike on two military bases in Iraq — under international law.

In an ironic twist to the crisis triggered by Soleimani’s death, Jan. 3, both Washington and Tehran have invoked the same international legal principle enshrined in the United Nations Charter: a country’s right of self-defense.

In separate letters to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft and Iranian envoy Majid Takht-Ravanchi described the tit-for-tat attacks as exercises in self-defense in accordance with the U.N. Charter.

But engaging in such rhetoric doesn’t necessarily justify a state’s use of force, said Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer who is now a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

“What both the United States and Iran were required to do under international law is make a reasonable assessment based on all the information they had available, not that they had just been the victim of a prior attack but that those prior attacks coupled with all the other intelligence indicated that they were about to become the victim of a subsequent unlawful, armed attack,” Corn said.

Whether the United States and Iran were justified in carrying out the strikes remains the subject of controversy even as tensions between the two countries have diminished.

While U.S. officials such as National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien insist they have “strong evidence” of Iranian plans for attacking U.S. forces, critics say the administration has yet to make a compelling case for killing Soleimani.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the Soleimani strike as “provocative and disproportionate” ahead of a vote Thursday on a resolution directing Trump not to use the military to engage in hostilities with Iran.

What does international law say about the strikes?

The pertinent international law here is the United Nations Charter. Under Article 51 of the charter, member states have the right of self-defense in the event of “an armed attack.” That language has been widely interpreted to encompass taking action in order to prevent an imminent armed attack. The operative word here is imminent. Once the threat has passed, use of force can’t be justified. There are two other requirements: that the use of force be necessary and that the scope of the force be proportionate to reduce the threat, Corn said.

There is an important difference between self-defense and retaliation under international law. While self-defense – or acting in response to an imminent attack – is lawful, retaliation is not. “Self-defense never authorizes you to take measures in retribution or revenge or reprisal,” Corn said.

What is the U.S. justification?

In seeking to justify President Trump’s order to kill Soleimani with a drone strike near Baghdad airport, U.S. officials have cited a series of recent Iranian hostile acts against U.S. interests, including an attack on an Iraqi military base that killed a U.S. military interpreter last month. But officials have been careful to cast the strike as a defensive measure against future Iranian attacks.

Just how imminent the threat was remains unclear.

The Pentagon initially avoided the word imminent in describing the Iranian threat, saying the strike was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attacks.” As Democratic lawmakers and other critics pressed the administration for a justification, Trump and top administration officials subsequently took to describing the Iranian threat as imminent, suggesting administration legal advisers required policymakers to make a judgment about its imminence.

What authority does the U.S. president have to use military force?

While the U.S. invoked the right of self-defense in killing Soleimani, some scholars believe the president has the legal authority to carry out such an action without relying on international law.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. But as commander-in-chief, the president enjoys broad constitutional authority to use military force overseas in order to protect American interests. This authority has long been recognized. Even the War Powers Resolution approved Thursday by the House of Representatives, 224-194, recognizes the president’s power to use force during “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

What about Iranian justification?

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, described the Iranian missile strikes against two Iraqi bases housing American troops as “proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter.”

“We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression,” he tweeted Wednesday.

Ravanchi, the Iranian ambassador to the U.N., wrote in his letter to the Security Council that Iran “exercised its right of self-defense” by taking a “measured and proportionate military response targeting an American air base in Iraq.”

The sober legal language stands in stark contrast to the more incendiary rhetoric of Iranian leaders who have by turns described the Iranian strike as “fierce revenge” and “forceful revenge,” which would be illegal under international law.

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Eastern Libyan forces led by Khalifa Haftar are rejecting Turkey and Russia’s call for a cease-fire starting Sunday.

Haftar’s Libyan National Army issued a statement Thursday, saying it appreciates their effort to “seek peace and stability,” but it will continue the war against “terrorist groups,” meaning the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.

That Tripoli-based government, led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, said it welcomes the truce along with “the resumption of the political process and the elimination of the specter of war.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a joint statement earlier this week that “seeking a military solution to the ongoing conflict in Libya only causes further suffering and deepens the divisions among Libyans. The worsening situation in Libya is undermining the security and stability of Libya’s wider neighborhood, the entire Mediterranean region, as well as the African continent.”

Rival governments led by Haftar and Sarraj are battling for control of Libya. Haftar’s forces seized the key Mediterranean port city of Sirte earlier this week, but the fight for the capital, Tripoli, has been stalled since April with hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the middle.

Russia supports Haftar’s forces while Turkey has begun deploying troops to Libya to back Sarraj.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is warning all sides against letting Libya become a “second Syria,” as he called for an arms embargo and a political settlement.

…

Norway says it will take 600 asylum-seekers recently evacuated to Rwanda from Libyan detention centers as the Scandinavian country wants to stop the sometimes deadly smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

“For me it is important to send a signal that we will not back smuggling routes and cynical backers, but instead bring in people with protection needs in organized form,” Justice and Immigration Minister Joaran Kallmyr said in a statement emailed Thursday to The Associated Press.

“Therefore, the government has decided to collect 600 quota refugees from Libya, out of 800 in total, from the transit reception in Rwanda in 2020,” he added. Many of the asylum-seekers are from Horn of Africa nations.

Since the 2015 massive influx of migrants to Europe authorities, especially the European Union, have been trying to stop refugees and other migrants from crossing the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe. Thousands of people have died at sea. Many set off from Libya’s coast.

As part of an agreement signed between Rwanda, the African Union and the United Nations refugee agency in September, the East African country hosts a camp for people who have been evacuated from often chaotic, overcrowded detention centers in Libya. 

About 800 are currently staying at an emergency transit center in Rwanda’s Bugesera district.

So far Norway and Sweden have offered to take some of them, according to Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, who said Wednesday that Sweden has taken in seven.

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China’s economy czar will visit Washington next week for the signing of an interim trade deal, the government said Thursday.

Vice Premier Liu He, Beijing’s chief envoy in talks with Washington over their tariff war, had been expected to attend the signing but the Commerce Ministry’s statement was the first official confirmation.

Washington postponed planned tariff increases following the announcement of the “Phase 1” deal in October. But earlier punitive duties imposed by both sides on billions of dollars of each other’s goods stayed in place, dampening global trade and threatening to chill economic growth.

Liu will lead a delegation to Washington, Monday through Wednesday, said ministry spokesman Gao Feng.

Under the “Phase 1” deal, Beijing agreed to buy more American farm goods and Washington’s chief negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, said it would make changes to respond to complaints about its industrial policies. Details have yet to be announced, and Chinese officials have yet to confirm any regulatory changes or the size of purchases of American soybeans and other exports.

Both sides have soothed financial market jitters by announcing conciliatory steps, including postponing planned tariff hikes. Beijing also has resumed purchases of soybeans, the biggest American export to China, and pork.

Washington, Europe, Japan and other trading partners complain Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. Washington is pressing China to roll back plans for state-led creation of global competitors in robotics and other industries that its trading partners say violate its market-opening commitments.

President Donald Trump announced last month he would sign the “Phase 1” agreement Jan. 15 and travel to Beijing after that to start the second stage of talks.

Trump hailed the interim agreement as a step toward ending the tariff war, but Beijing has been more measured in its public statements.

Economists say concluding a final settlement could take years. Potential hurdles include Chinese insistence that U.S. tariff hikes be canceled once an agreement takes effect. The Trump administration says some must remain in place to ensure Beijing carries out any promises it makes.

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The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to approve a resolution Thursday directing President Donald Trump to not use the military to engage in hostilities with Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the vote in a statement that criticized the Trump administration for conducting the airstrike last week that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani without consulting Congress.

She called the airstrike a “provocative and disproportionate” action that endangered U.S. troops and diplomats.

WATCH: Iran Tensions Easing as Democrats Plan Trump War Powers Vote

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The resolution calls for the president to halt the use of U.S. forces against Iran unless Congress has declared war or given statutory approval, or unless such military action is necessary to defend against an imminent attack against the United States, its territories or armed forces.

“The administration must work with the Congress to advance an immediate, effective de-escalatory strategy that prevents further violence,” Pelosi said. “America and the world cannot afford war.”

With Democrats in control of the House, the measure is expected to easily pass. Its fate in the Republican-controlled Senate is less clear.

Administration briefing

Top administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel, went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to brief members of both the House and Senate about the decision to carry out the airstrike against Soleimani.

Many Democrats criticized the session as lacking specific justifications for the strike. Republicans, with a few exceptions, emerged supportive of the administration’s actions.

“I’m convinced that had decisive action not been taken, we could very well be standing here today talking about the death of dozens, if not hundreds of Americans at the hands of Shia militias working as proxies for the Iranian regime,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said that based on the officials’ presentation, “It does not meet what I consider to be an imminent threat.”

Republican Senator Jim Risch said that after hearing the information available to Trump, “it would have been negligent, it would have been reckless and it would have been an intentional disregard for the safety of Americans for the president not to act and not to take out Soleimani.”

Two Republicans back debate

Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul, both Republicans, said after the briefing they would support a resolution under the War Powers Act.

“The debate is a 70-year-long debate that began in 1950 with Korea and Truman. This is a debate and many have written that Congress has abdicated their duty today,” Paul said. “This is Senator Lee and I stepping up and saying we are not abdicating our duty. Our duty under the Constitution is for us to debate when we go to war. And we, for one, are not going to abdicate that duty.”

The House resolution text labels Iran a state sponsor of terrorism that engages in destabilizing activities across the Middle East, with Soleimani as the lead architect of many of those actions.

It says the United States has an inherent right to self-defense against imminent attacks, but that in those cases the executive branch should tell Congress why military action is necessary, why it needs to happen within a certain period of time, and what the harm would be in missing that window. It also says the administration should explain why taking military action would likely prevent future attacks.

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A historically diverse Virginia General Assembly convened Wednesday, led for the first time in more than two decades by Democrats who promised to enact a litany of changes.

The House quickly elected Eileen Filler-Corn at the new speaker, the first woman to serve in that role. She is also the first Jewish speaker.

“A new torch is being passed today, one that ushers in a modern era representing all Virginians,” Filler-Corn said on the House floor.

Many Democratic lawmakers wore blue Wednesday, a nod to the November blue wave that helped them take full control of the General Assembly for the first time in a generation. Democrats have made strong gains in Virginia since President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, significantly changing the makeup of the General Assembly. Women, people of color and millennials have all made gains.

African American lawmakers are set to have most power at the legislature in Virginia’s 400-year history, including leading several powerful legislative committees.

“It is our time,” Sen. Jennifer McClellan, vice chairwoman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said Wednesday morning. She said the black caucus was committed to eliminate the “last vestiges of racism and white supremacy in Virginia law.”

Ghazala Hashmi, a first-time candidate who unseated a Republican incumbent to help Democrats flip the Virginia Senate, became that chamber’s first Muslim female member.

In the weeks since Democrats won majorities in  the state House and Senate, they have laid out an ambitious agenda. It includes high-profile issues Republicans thwarted for years, including gun control measures and criminal justice reforms. They also have pledged to ease restrictions on abortion access, raise the minimum wage, prohibit discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community and make Virginia the next state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Lawmakers also will be tasked with passing a two-year state budget and deciding whether to legalize casinos.

Gun issues figure to be the most high profile area of debate. Some of the new restrictions Gov. Ralph Northam and Democratic lawmakers want include universal background checks, banning assault weapons and passing a red flag law to allow the temporary removal of guns from someone who is deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others.

Republicans and gun-rights groups have pledged stiff resistance. Gun owners are descending on local government offices to demand that officials establish sanctuaries for gun rights. More than 100 counties, cities and towns have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and vowed to oppose any new “unconstitutional restrictions” on guns.

Democrats indicated early Wednesday that they were not going to pass a set of rules organizing how the House will operate, as is traditional on its first day. The delay allows Democrats to put off a contentious floor debate on whether to ban guns from the Capitol, which likely would have overshadowed much of Wednesday’s events.

The Equal Rights Amendment was expected to be another top issue. Democrats say their caucus unanimously supports ratifying the gender equality measure and have pledged to do so quickly.

Hundreds of advocates for what could become the next amendment to the U.S. Constitution staged a lively rally outside an entrance to the Capitol, where they cheered as Democratic lawmakers walked in and chanted “E-R-A” as several Republicans followed.

Opponents held a press conference Wednesday morning where they warned ratification would lead to the rollback of abortion restrictions as well as a host of negative consequences for women. Critics of the measure say the ERA is not lawfully before the states for ratification, in part because of a congressional deadline that passed decades ago.

ERA advocates’ efforts in Virginia “will be nothing more than political commentary. The time to ratify the ERA expired more than 40 years ago,” said Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president of the U.S. Legal Division and Communications for Alliance Defending Freedom.

Later Wednesday night, Northam, who has largely rebounded from a blackface scandal that almost drove him from office a year ago, is set to address lawmakers.

Wednesday also marks the return of Joe Morrissey, a former Virginia lawmaker who used to spend his days at the General Assembly and his nights in jail after being accused of having sex with his teenage secretary. Morrissey defeated a Democratic incumbent in a primary to win a Richmond-area senate seat.

Republicans have cast Democrats’ agenda as extreme, saying it would bring Virginia in line with liberal California or New York. They’ve promised to look for ways to hold the majority accountable, keep Virginia business friendly and exercise fiscal restraint.

“We think that very quickly, the voters of Virginia will begin to get buyer’s remorse about what they’ve done here,” incoming House Minority Leader Del. Todd Gilbert said.

 

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When the nation’s largest electric utility preemptively shut off power last fall to prevent wildfires in California, customers lost more than just their lights — some lost their phones, too.

Data from the Federal Communications Commission shows 874 cellphone towers were offline during an Oct. 27 power shutoff that affected millions of people. That included more than half of the cell towers in Marin County alone.

The outages mean people who depend solely on cellphones couldn’t call 911 or receive emergency notifications, compounding the dangers associated with an unprecedented power outage in an era dominated by wireless communication.

On Wednesday, some Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would require telecommunication companies to have at least 72 hours of back-up power for all cell phone towers in high-risk fire areas. Telecom companies would have to pay for it.

Sen. Mike McGuire said he wrote the bill after meeting with telecom company officials last summer, where he said they assured him they had plans to prevent widespread outages during a power shutoff.

“As we all know, this wasn’t true. They were wrong. And, candidly, lives were put at risk,” McGuire said.

The federal government has tried to mandate backup power for cell phone towers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the industry successfully fought it.

“Do I believe we are in for a fight? Hell yes,” McGuire said, adding: “This is no longer a discussion about cost.”

McGuire announced his bill on the same day representatives from AT&T and Verizon were scheduled to testify before state lawmakers about the outages and ways to prevent them.  It’s the second time lawmakers will have hauled in private companies to account for the effects surrounding the widespread blackouts in the fall, the largest planned power outages in state history.

In November, lawmakers questioned executives from the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, including the leadership of troubled Pacific Gas & Electric, whose equipment has been blamed for sparking the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed roughly 19,000 buildings. The company filed for bankruptcy last year.

Telecommunications outages have worsened as wildfires have become more common and more destructive. A report from the California Public Utilities Commission found 85,000 wireless customers and 160,000 wired customers lost service during the 2017 North Bay Fires.

Most recently, the FCC says up to 27% of Sonoma County’s wireless cell sites were offline during a fire in October.

 In advance comments to the legislative committee, California’s four largest wireless companies — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — say they generally make sure their major telecommunication hubs have at least between 48 hours and 72 hours of on-site backup power. They use mobile generators at other sites, but said the generators don’t work at every cell tower.

Also, the companies said the electric company warns them about blackouts just two hours ahead of time, making it hard for them to get their mobile generators in place and to keep them fueled.

AT&T spokesman Steven Maviglio said the company is experienced in managing large-scale outages, but noted “the power companies’ decision to shut off power to millions of Californians in October was the largest event our state had ever seen.”

 “Today, we are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in our network resiliency to address these new challenges and will continue to work to ensure our customers have the connectivity they need,” Maviglio said.

Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring telecommunications companies to report large outages to the Office of Emergency Services within one hour of discovering them. Officials are still developing regulations for that law.

 

 

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When a man spewed anti-Semitic slurs and spat on her face, Shoshana Blum remembered her ancestors who survived the Holocaust, and instead of looking down — she defiantly stared at him eye to eye.

The 20-year-old junior at City College of New York left the subway in tears. But months after the attack, she continues to wear proudly the same Star of David necklace she wore that day, and on Sunday, she joined thousands of people in a solidarity march against a rise in anti-Semitism and acts of hate.

“It’s important to stand strong in my Judaism,” she said. “If this is what’s happening when we’re out being proud Jewish people, what’s it going to be like if we’re afraid and in hiding?”

Many young Jewish people in the United States say their generation never experienced this level of threat and are searching for ways to cope with an alarming string of recent anti-Semitic attacks across the country.

The “No Hate, No Fear” march on Sunday organized by New York’s Jewish community came as a response to anti-Semitic violence, including the targeting of a kosher grocery in Jersey City, New Jersey, and a knife attack that injured five people at a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City.

“It’s terrifying. We thought that anti-Semitism was a thing of the past. We learned about it but never thought we would live in it,” said Rabbi Jon Leener, 31, who runs Base BKLYN, a home-based ministry that aims to reach out to millennials and Jews of all backgrounds. He attended Sunday’s solidarity march and published a photo with his three-year-old son on his shoulders. They held a banner that read: “I love being Jewish because I love Shabbat.”

“The idea that someone wants to hurt you, your family, your community just because you’re Jewish is still hard to fully comprehend,” he said.

In the past five years, Leener and his wife, Faith, have welcomed thousands of people into their home-based ministry rooted in openness. Minutes before a class or a Shabbat dinner, he always walked to the front door and unlocked it because the couple believes in a Judaism where no door is shut or locked, both literally and metaphorically.

“This is all changing now. After Pittsburgh, after Poway, after Halle (Germany), after Jersey City, after Monsey we no longer keep the door unlock(ed),” he recently said on Facebook.

Visitors now must buzz in and Leener installed a security camera for the front door.

“I’m angry that this is our new reality. I hate that anti-Semitism is changing how I practice and share my Judaism to the world,” he said.

Rise in attacks

Anti-Semitic attacks rose worldwide by 13% in 2018 compared to the previous year, according to a report by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary Jewry. The report recorded nearly 400 cases worldwide, with more than a quarter of the major violent cases taking place in the U.S.

The surge of fatal attacks on the Jewish community, including shooting rampages at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, and at a synagogue in Poway, California, in April, have caused consternation nationwide.

“After the stabbing in Monsey, I told my mom, ‘This is crazy. He was arrested less than a mile from here, while we were at Shul (synagogue) and celebrating Hanukkah,'” said Blum, who was raised in Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement. “Jews are getting attacked. It’s not far; it’s not in Europe.”

The first time that Blum witnessed hate against Jews she was seven. The victim was her father, Rabbi Yonah Blum, who was the head of Columbia University’s Chabad House for 23 years. While they were walking hand-in hand from synagogue near the campus, a man came up behind him yelling anti-Semitic slurs and slapped his black fedora and his skullcap off his head.

“I think Jews, we’re very separated people when it comes to different topics, and different nationalities, but something that has been coming up since the (Monsey) attack, is that we all stand together,” she said on a recent Friday as she prepared dinner and later lit the candles and recited a blessing in Hebrew to mark the start of the Jewish Sabbath.

Since the Dec. 10 fatal shootings at a Jewish grocery store in Jersey City, there have been 33 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S., including 26 in New York and New Jersey alone, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Tracker of Anti-Semitic Incidents. The tracker compiles recent cases of anti-Jewish vandalism, harassment and assault reported to or detected by the group.

‘Scared of being Jewish’

During a recent trip to a conference of young Jewish leaders in New York City, Hezzy Segal’s mother advised him against wearing the yarmulke while riding the subway. The 16-year-old from Minnetonka, Minnesota, said that he still wore the Jewish skullcap that symbolizes his devotion to God. But in some areas of the city, he tucked it under his purple Minnesota Vikings snow hat.

“I’ve never been scared of being Jewish, but with the rise in anti-Semitism, I was more aware of it,” he said. “It’s sad, it’s scary for all Jews.”

Forty-five percent of teenagers feel that anti-Semitism is a problem for today’s teens, according to the largest study of Jewish teens conducted in North America. The Jewish Education Project’s GenZ Now Research Report included 18,000 respondents and was published in March 2019.

“I’ve already been on my guard a lot,” said Thando Mlauzi, 25, a UCLA junior, who is majoring in English.

“One of my hopes and dreams is that we live in a world, in a society, where it doesn’t matter that I’m black and Jewish,” said Mlauzi, who converted to Judaism in 2018.

On a recent Friday, Alexandra Cohen, 29, chopped tomatoes before guests arrived for a Shabbat dinner in her studio apartment decorated with menorahs and flags of Israel, as well as sepia photos of her grandparents next to a colorful painting of the beach in Tel Aviv.

Cohen said that her connection to Judaism grew stronger after someone put an anti-Semitic message on the door of her dorm at Johns Hopkins University, and later when she traveled to Israel and joined advocacy organizations. She said she is combating the negative environment by exposing the positive side of Jewish life and contemporary Jewish society.

The Anti-Defamation League has worked on initiatives, including its “No Place for Hate” anti-bias, anti-bullying initiative, which is in place in schools. Another includes working with juvenile offenders who are involved in some of the incidents to understand what they did and why.

Countering hate

Reformed neo-Nazi Shannon Foley Martinez is part of a U.S. movement that helps people quit hate organizations. She feels she must spread the message that people can change their lives. She hopes her story is a warning to parents.

“People have preconceived notions of who they think violent white supremacists are,” said Martinez, who at 15 became a skinhead who spouted white supremacist rhetoric, gave stiff-armed Nazi salutes and tagged walls with swastikas.

“I grew up in a family with two middle-class parents who have been married for 51 years, I was one of the smartest kids in my class, I was a championship athlete at one point of my life. I don’t fit what people’s ideas are of who is vulnerable to radicalize into these ideas,” she said.

“My story is important because of that. We have to look at ourselves and our children and think: ‘This could be my child. Am I actively and intentionally taking steps to not find resonance and find resistance to hate?'”
 

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The nation’s largest consumer electronics show on Tuesday hosts Ivanka Trump as a keynote speaker — a choice that drew scorn from many women in technology.

The annual CES tech gathering in Las Vegas has long taken criticism over diversity issues. In recent years, the show’s organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, has invited more women to speak and sought to curb some of the show’s more sexist aspects, such as scantily clad “booth babes” hired to draw attention of the mostly male attendees.

But for critics and activists who have long pushed for broader recognition of the less-heralded women, the inclusion of President Donald Trump’s daughter, who is also a White House adviser, sends exactly the wrong message.

“Ivanka is not a woman in tech,” tweeted Brianna Wu, a video game developer who is running for Congress in Massachusetts. “She’s not a CEO. She has no background. It’s a lazy attempt to emulate diversity — but like all emulation it’s not quite the real thing.”

Ivanka Trump will appear in a question-and-answer session with CTA President Gary Shapiro. She is expected to discuss company strategies to retrain workers and develop math and science education programs. In the administration, she has worked on skills-training initiatives. Companies including Google have said they will train people for technology jobs as part of a White House initiative.

‘Focus on jobs’

Shapiro told The Associated Press that Ivanka Trump is fighting for workers at a time when robots are filling warehouses and factories and self-driving vehicles are worrying truck drivers.

“We’ve had politicians speak before, cabinet secretaries and others who’ve come in,” Shapiro said. “So, I think wait until you hear what she has to say and listen to it because the fact is that there is a focus on jobs.”

Ivanka Trump said job training and workforce development are key parts of the administration’s economic agenda. “I’m excited to discuss how the Trump administration is championing these shared goals,” she said in a statement emailed Tuesday.

Many people who tweeted the hashtag #BoycottCES on Tuesday in protest of Trump’s appearance also took issue with the administration’s border detention policies and various actions of the president himself.

The technology industry has especially important issues pending with the U.S. government, including antitrust investigations into Facebook and Google, the trade war with China, immigration, election security and misinformation on social media.

Government officials have long made regular appearances at CES. This year, for instance, the speaker roster includes both Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao and Secretary of Energy Dan Bouillette. Other female speakers at the conference include Meg Whitman of video streaming startup Quibi and Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal.

Vocal critics

Ivanka Trump is “taking this slot at this conference where women have been saying for so long, ‘Hey, we are being overlooked,'” said Rachel Sklar, a tech commentator and founder of a professional network for women. “The whole category of women being overlooked are still being overlooked.”

“Clearly they are not putting much effort into finding women in tech who can speak,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies, who is at CES.

Last year, CES caused an uproar when it revoked an innovation award presented to a female-led sex device company. CES reversed its decision, and has allowed sex tech into the show for a one-year trial. Conference organizers also brought in an official “equality partner,” The Female Quotient, to help ensure gender diversity.

“Was there nobody else available? Seriously?” asked Ti Chang, co-founder of the wearable vibrator company Crave. Chang said Trump’s experience running a clothing brand is a bad fit for CES and its focus on innovation and technology.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I would love to know what their rationale was.”
 

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Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden described President Donald Trump as “dangerously incompetent” Tuesday for the targeted killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.  Biden and his Democratic rivals have been heavily critical of the president’s decision and have warned about the consequences.  More from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.

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The Iranian general who was killed last week in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, along with several Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leaders, was instrumental in expanding Iran’s influence and reach beyond its borders through various proxy groups in the region.

Soleimani’s unique skills crafting Iran’s regional policy were rewarded in 1998 by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, when he appointed him commander of the elite Quds Force, the external arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terror organization.   

Soleimani’s new job put him in direct contact with Tehran’s proxy forces across the Middle East. In addition to strengthening Iran’s alliance with powerful Shi’ite armed forces in the region such as Hezbollah, Soleimani helped forge new alliances in other countries.

To that end, the Arab Spring and the subsequent rise of Islamic State in 2014 in Iraq and Syria offered a new opportunity for Iran to push forward with its agenda in the region by forming and managing sectarian armed forces in both countries and beyond.

“For Soleimani, he had to go out there and pick the people who would be militarily most loyal and more effective,” said Phillip Smyth, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Networks

Smyth, who authored the Shi’ite Militia Mapping Project in 2019, told VOA that Soleimani relied on formal and informal relations to build his network of pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias that would answer directly to the IRGC.

In an attempt to increase Iranian military activity in the region following Soleimani’s death, Khamenei on Tuesday approved legislation to add more than $200 million to the Quds Force’s defense budget.

Hezbollah

The Shi’ite Lebanese militant group is considered the most powerful Iranian proxy in the Middle East. Founded in early 1980s, the group has built a significant armed wing, which has been responsible for many attacks against American and Israeli targets in the region.  

During the Syrian civil war which started in 2011, Hezbollah played a key role in recapturing major cities and towns from Syrian rebels, including Homs and Aleppo. The group is reportedly in control of many parts of the Syria-Lebanon border.

Under the command of the Quds Force, Hezbollah has managed smaller Iranian-backed militia groups that have been active in Syria.

Experts say that over the years, Hezbollah has become so reliable for Iran that it has been assigned to carry out strategic tasks throughout the region.

“Hezbollah has always been used as an interlocutor when it comes to (pro-Iranian) groups, particularly in Iraq and Bahrain,” Smyth said. “It was (Hezbollah chief) Hassan Nasrallah who fleshed out a possible Iranian response to the killing of Soleimani. He also set other new narratives that are being used by the group almost immediately.”

In a speech Sunday, Nasrallah threatened to target U.S. military personnel in the Middle East in retaliation.

PMF

As the war on IS intensified, Iran, together with its loyal allies, including Shi’ite religious authorities in Iraq, began to form new Shi’ite militias that eventually came together under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd Shaabi.

While dozens of Shi’ite Iraqi armed groups operate under PMF’s command, several have been prominent in their direct links to Tehran.   

Kataeb Hezbollah, a Shi’ite group led by Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis who was killed with Soleimani in the airstrike, has received direct support from Iran and considers Khamenei its spiritual leader.

Members of Kataeb Hezbollah were among hundreds of people who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in response to airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. State Department designated the group a terrorist organization in 2009.

Asaeb Ahl al-Haq

Asaeb Ahl al-Haq (AHH) is another Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia that is largely active in Iraq, with some of its units fighting under the IRGC command in Syria.

Founded in 2006, the group has waged many attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. Hours after Soleimani was killed, the State Department listed the AHH as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The Badr Organization, founded in 1983, is considered Iran’s oldest proxy in Iraq, and perhaps the most powerful Shi’ite armed group in Iraq.

Reports say that since the onset of the war on IS in 2014, the Badr Organization has recruited more than 7,000 new fighters.

Afghan and Pakistani militias

To further strengthen Iran’s grip on the region, some experts charge that the country also had to expand its ties with traditional allies. IRGC through Soleimani established Shi’ite brigades comprised of Afghan refugees and Pakistani Shi’ite to help tilt the ongoing Syrian civil war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“As head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, (Soleimani) was in charge of recruitment among Shi’ite populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Farzin Nadimi, a Washington-based analyst specializing in Iran’s security and defense.

Since 2011, Iran has sent thousands of Shi’ite Afghan refugees to Syria to fight alongside Syrian government forces, as well as other Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.

The Afghan fighters are part of the Fatimiyoun Brigade, the second-largest group of foreigners fighting for Assad’s regime in Syria. At the peak of the war, media reports estimated they numbered between 10,000 and 12,000 fighters.

Additionally, Iran has deployed thousands of Shi’ite Pakistani fighters to Syria. The Zaynabiyoun Brigade entered the Syrian conflict with the pretext of defending the Zainab bint Ali shrine.

It is unclear how many Pakistani fighters have joined the group, but experts say the group includes hundreds of Pakistani Shi’ites based in Iran.

In January 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department designated both groups terrorist organizations.

Experts say the presence of Iranian-backed Afghan and Pakistani militias in Syria exemplifies the core mission of the IRGC for dominance in the Middle East.

“With the Fatimiyoun and Zaynabiyoun in Afghanistan and Pakistan, (Iran) was largely successful as the numbers are truly (in the) thousands,” said Alex Vatakna, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

In both cases, he told VOA, the playbook was simple: “Bring onboard people that you can ideologically indoctrinate.”

Shi’ites groups in Syria

With the Syrian military largely depleted, it sought more support from its Iranian and Russian allies. Iran’s IRGC was quick to respond by forming dozens of small Shi’ite militias made up largely of Iraqi and Syrian nationals.  

Some of these groups include the Imam al-Baqir Brigade, which mostly operates in central and eastern Syria; Liwa Abu Fadl al-Abbas, which has been operating in Damascus; and the Syrian Hezbollah, which is primarily made up of Shi’ite Syrians active in northwestern Syria, including Aleppo and Idlib.  

Experts say these groups are paid by Iran and managed directly through its Quds Force.

Syrian government forces have relied on these fighters to maintain control over areas recently recaptured from Syrian rebel groups and IS militants.

Houthis in Yemen

Before the civil war in Yemen erupted in 2015, Iran was providing financial and military support to Houthi rebels who have been fighting forces loyal to Yemen President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government.

Iranian support has reportedly helped Houthis capture large territories in Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Despite an ongoing Saudi-led military coalition in the war-torn country, Houthis have maintained their control of strategic parts of Yemen.

This is largely due to continued Iranian support, which would not be hindered by Soleimani’s death, experts say.   

“The support for Houthis will not be decreased significantly, even though Soleimani had his touch on each specific proxy group,” said Matthew Levitt, director on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“The network is in place, and certain people are in charge. The point person who provides financial and military (aid) for Houthis is the senior IRGC commander, Reza Shahlai, who (has been) listed recently in Rewards for Justice by the United States government,” he told VOA.

VOA’s Sirwan Kajjo, Niala Mohammad, Mehdi Jedinia, Ezel Sahinkaya, Nisan Ahmado and Nawid Orokzai contributed to this story from Washington.
 

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The leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened on Tuesday to “set ablaze” places supported by the United States over the killing of a top Iranian general in a U.S. airstrike last week, sparking cries from the crowd of supporters of “Death to Israel!’’

Hossein Salami made the pledge before a crowd of thousands gathered in a central square in Kerman, the hometown of the slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani. His vow mirrored the demands of top Iranian officials – from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to others – as well as supporters across the Islamic Republic, demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that’s drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

Mourners in Kerman dressed in black carried posters bearing the image of Soleimani, a man whose slaying prompted Iran’s supreme leader to weep over his casket on Monday as a crowd said by police to be in the millions filled Tehran streets. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran taken Monday.

Authorities later brought Soleimani’s remains and those of the others killed in the airstrike to Iran’s holy city of Qom, where another massive crowd turned out.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike near Baghdad’s airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war, and he also served as the point man for Iranian proxies in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimani’s remains and those of the others killed in the airstrike were brought to a central square in Kerman, a desert city surrounded by mountains that dates back to the days of the Silk Road where he will be buried later on Tuesday.

Salami praised Soleimani’s exploits and said as a martyr, he represented an even greater threat to Iran’s enemies.

“We will take revenge. We will set ablaze where they like,” Salami said, drawing the cries of “Death to Israel!’’

Israel is a longtime regional foe of Iran.

Iran’s parliament, meanwhile, passed an urgent bill declaring the U.S. military’s command at the Pentagon in Washington and those acting on its behalf “terrorists,” subject to Iranian sanctions. The measure appears to mirror a decision by President Donald Trump in April to declare the Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization.’’

The U.S. Defense Department used the Guard’s designation as a terror organization in the U.S. to support the strike that killed Soleimani. The decision by Iran’s parliament, done by a special procedure to speed the bill to law, comes as officials across the country threaten to retaliate for Soleimani’s killing.

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The U.S. is standing firmly with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, as both he and a rival lawmaker, Luis Parra, claim to be the country’s parliamentary speaker after two separate votes.  The constitutional crisis in Venezuela has deepened after security forces loyal to socialist leader Nicolas Maduro blocked Guaido from entering the National Assembly chamber on Sunday ahead of a leadership vote. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.

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American political analysts do not expect the U.S. tensions with Iran will turn into a full-fledged war. Iranians are mourning the death of General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed on Friday by a U.S. drone strike. Democrats in U.S. Congress want to curb the presidential war powers, which the Republican lawmakers reject. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports many Americans expressed their opposition to a war with Iran in street protests on Saturday and Sunday.

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The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions between Iran and the United States.

The Brent contract for oil touched a high of $70.74 a barrel, the highest since mid-September, when it briefly spiked over an attack on Saudi crude processing facilities. Stock markets were down as well amid fears of how Iran would fulfill a vow of “harsh retaliation.”

“The market is concerned about the potential for retaliation, and specifically on energy and oil infrastructure in the region,” said Antoine Halff, a Columbia University researcher and former chief oil analyst for the International Energy Agency. “If Iran chose to incapacitate a major facility in the region, it has the technical capacity to do so.”

The U.S. killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on Friday. Early Sunday, as Iran threatened to retaliate, President Donald Trump tweeted the U.S. was prepared to strike 52 sites in the Islamic Republic if any Americans are harmed.

Fears that Iran could strike back at oil and gas facilities important to the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies stem from earlier attacks widely attributed to Iran.

The U.S. has blamed Iran for a wave of provocative attacks in the region, including the sabotage of oil tankers and an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure in September that temporarily halved its production. Iran has denied involvement in those attacks.

“Targeting oil infrastructure could raise prices and bring worldwide economic pain and put Iran on the front burner,” which might be exactly the kind of message its leaders are looking to send, said Jim Krane, an energy and geopolitics researcher at Rice University.

Compared to other methods of attack, targeting energy sites also “doesn’t kill a lot of people,” Krane said. “It’s capital-intensive, it’s not people-intensive. It’s a safer option in terms of the virulence of reprisal.”

It would still wreak havoc on the global economy, he said, because of the way that oil markets affect other energy-intensive industries such as airlines, shipping and petro-chemicals.

Global stock markets have been sliding since Friday. European indexes were down over 1% on Monday after Asia closed lower. Wall Street was expected to slide again on the open, with futures down 0.6%.

Brent crude was up $1.07 at $69.67 a barrel, putting it up almost 6% since before the Iranian general’s killing.

At the same time, some experts say the effect of a Middle Eastern geopolitical crisis on oil prices may not be as great as it once was. The U.S. energy industry, for instance, can ramp up shale oil production in places such as Texas.

“We’re in this new territory where the world oil markets are more dynamic and can tolerate this disruption more than they used to,” said Michael Webber, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have steadily intensified since Trump’s decision to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear deal and restore crippling sanctions.

But after the attack on Saudi Arabia’s crucial Abqaiq oil processing facility in September, Halff said the “market was able to dismiss it pretty quickly, partly because there was a perception that shale oil was pretty abundant.”

After that incident, the price of oil surged over 14% in a day, but lost those gains over the next two weeks.

Halff said the killing of Iran’s top general is different.

“This is not something that can be repaired,” he said. “You can repair a facility. You can’t bring somebody back to life. There’s no turning back.”

       

 

 

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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over prayers Monday for Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of people assembled in Tehran to mourn the top Iranian general.

Days after a U.S. airstrike killed Soleimani while he was traveling in a convoy in neighboring Iraq, the supreme leader was joined by President Hassan Rouhani and other top Iranian officials as they paid homage in the ceremony broadcast on state television.

Monday’s huge procession followed a similar one Sunday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz where black-clad marcher chanted and beat their chests in homage to Soleimani.

Iran is observing three days of mourning before Soleimani’s burial in his hometown of Kerman on Tuesday.

As head of the Quds Force, the 62-year-old Soleimani helped orchestrate Tehran’s overseas clandestine and military operations.

The Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

He was killed in a U.S. airstrike, most likely by a drone, as he traveled in a convoy of Iran-backed militia members after leaving the Baghdad airport in the early morning hours of January 3 — a strike that substantially raised tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a deputy commander of the Iran-backed Hashd Shaabi militia in Iraq, was also killed in the attack.

Mourners marched earlier in Baghdad for Soleimani and others killed in the raid, while many anti-Iranian protesters celebrated the deaths at other sites in Iraq.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he ordered the strike on Soleimani, saying the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and that he was planning further terror actions.

Iran has promised “harsh revenge” for the U.S. attack on Soleimani, one of the most powerful military men in Iran.

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Hollywood’s biggest party, the Golden Globes, kicks off the showbiz awards season Sunday, with streaming giant Netflix expected to be popping champagne corks through the night.

Stars will don couture gowns and extravagant jewels before they hit the red carpet at the luxury Beverly Hills hotel where the calendar’s second-most important — but rowdiest — prize-giving gala takes place.

Victory at the Globes ensures key momentum for the Oscars, which are a little more than a month away.

Netflix and its expensively assembled roster of A-listers are far ahead of the traditional studios with 17 Globe film nominations.

The streaming giant secured an equal number of nods in the often-overlooked television categories, where it also leads the pack, ahead of HBO at 15.

Netflix has two frontrunners to scoop the night’s most prestigious film prize, best drama — Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic “The Irishman” and heart-wrenching divorce saga “Marriage Story.”

“Certainly Netflix is pouring everything they can into this and has a good shot in the drama category,” said Deadline’s awards columnist Pete Hammond.

“That would be a big deal for Netflix, definitely.”

Vatican drama “The Two Popes” is also in contention for the streamer, while Warner Bros. dark comic tale “Joker” and Universal war epic “1917” round out the category.

Netflix only began producing original movies in 2015, but has spent billions to lure the industry’s top filmmaking talent — and to fund lavish awards season campaigns.

It also has Eddie Murphy’s comeback vehicle “Dolemite Is My Name” in the best comedy or musical race — unlike the Oscars, Globes organizers split films into two categories.

But “Dolemite” is expected to face stiff competition from frontrunner “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”

Quentin Tarantino’s homage to 1960s Tinseltown has resonated with the 90-odd veteran entertainment reporters of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which doles out the prizes.

In 2019, they correctly picked the Oscar winner in every film category except for best musical score.

“Last year, they had by far the best track record of any other show,” said Hammond.

Oscar nominations voting is already under way, but does not close until Tuesday, meaning Academy members may be tempted to wait for the Globes to conclude before casting their ballots.

“Momentum is ready to be built out of this,” added Hammond.

Firing line

British comedian Ricky Gervais returns for a record fifth time as Globes host.

His provocative barbs have both riled and delighted Hollywood stars in previous years.

This time, he has promised to “go after the general community” rather than individuals, telling the Hollywood Reporter that “pretension and hypocrisy” will be in his firing line.

The starry list of award presenters include nominees Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio (both from “Once Upon a Time…”) and Jennifer Lopez (“Hustlers”).

In the drama acting categories, Joaquin Phoenix is leading a crowded field for his radical portrayal of the villainous anti-hero in “Joker.”

But Adam Driver’s intense turn in “Marriage Story” has generated significant buzz, while the ever-popular Antonio Banderas has been hailed for a career-best performance in “Pain and Glory.”

“I’m very happy to be a nominee and to be with all of these wonderful actors in a pack, and we’ll see what happens,” Banderas told AFP at a pre-Globes event in Beverly Hills.

Renee Zellweger looks in a formidable position to pick up the best actress gong with Judy Garland biopic “Judy.”

Newcomer Apple will be hoping to make waves in the television categories, where its #MeToo drama “The Morning Show” has multiple nominations.

But it must fend off Netflix’s flagship “The Crown,” boasting a new cast led by Oscar winner Olivia Colman.

Hollywood heavyweights

And early signs suggest a breakthrough year for Asian filmmaking.

Asian-American actress Awkwafina is favorite to collect best comedy actress for “The Farewell,” while South Korean black comedy “Parasite” is expected to bag the award for best foreign language film.

Bong Joon-ho, the filmmaker behind “Parasite,” goes head-to-head with Hollywood heavyweights Tarantino and Scorsese in the best director category.

But the HFPA drew stinging criticism for its failure to nominate any female directors.

HFPA president Lorenzo Soria defended the all-male list, insisting that members of his organization “don’t vote by gender” but “by film and accomplishment.”

Sam Mendes (“1917”) and Todd Phillips (“Joker”) round out the category.

 

 

 

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No one knows where Iran may strike to avenge the killing Friday of its top general in a U.S. drone strike, but few believe Tehran won’t retaliate, and it has plenty of possible targets to pick proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen to carry out reprisals, warn analysts.

U.S. allies – some of whom complain they weren’t forewarned of the plan to eliminate Gen. Qassem Soleimani — are drafting contingency plans to cope with the fallout. President Donald Trump has warned the U.S. will strike Iran “very fast and very hard,” if it takes retaliatory action, saying the Pentagon has identified 52 Iranian targets, including some “very high level” cultural sites.  

British military chiefs are counseling Downing Street to consider dispatching more soldiers to bolster security for the 400 servicemen the country already has in Iraq, and the more than 1,000 stationed across the Gulf.   

That advice so far has been rejected with Prime Minister Boris Johnson instead ordering British troops in Iraq to be given heavier weaponry and for their mission to be switched from training local forces to guarding British diplomats from revenge strikes by Iran after the assassination of Soleimani, who was seen in Washington and London as a terror chief.  London fears that Iranian proxies could storm the British embassy compound in Baghdad to kill or abduct British citizens.  

Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, ordered Sunday two Royal Navy warships in the Gulf to begin “close escort” of oil tankers amid fears that Iran could seize or sink western ships. “We have a plan A and a plan B and a break the glass’ plan, if it all kicks off. Our forces in the region have been told to reorientate towards force protection,” a senior British official said.  

France and the Netherlands have followed the U.S. example and ordered its citizens to leave Iraq, where on Saturday rockets landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. At various levels Washington’s European allies have expressed frustration with the strike against Soleimani, while acknowledging, too, that he was directly involved in terrorist activity. U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said Saturday that Britain and other European allies were not “as helpful as I would wish,” adding, “the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did saved lives in Europe as well.”  

Israeli military chiefs are tightening their defenses and are bracing for Hezbollah to respond to the killing of Soleimani, Iran’s master-fixer in the region and head of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

Threats from Hezbollah

A Lebanese Hezbollah official, like other Iranian clients in a chorus of angry threats, said Saturday the response of the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” would be decisive. His threats echoed the words of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who says Tehran will react with “harsh revenge” to the killing of Soleimani, a personal friend and a man he once dubbed a “living martyr.”  

Most analysts suspect Iran will take a leaf out of Soleimani’s own playbook and aim to target Americans across the Middle East and Afghanistan, where Iran has been observing a marriage of convenience with the Taliban. Soleimani was a master-manipulator of Iranian-backed forces in the region and strove to drive up the death toll of U.S. troops in  the Mideast in a bid to drain the American resolve to fight.   

Gen. Gholamali Abuhamzeh, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Soleimani’s native province of Kerman, in southern Iran, raised the prospect Saturday of a possible renewal of an offensive against oil ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz.    

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there,” he told an Iranian broadcaster. But like Iran’s para-military proxies in the region, who appear to be lining up to exact revenge, he painted the a grim picture of reprisals across the region. “Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since a long time ago … some 35 U.S. targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach,” he said.  

Immediate retaliation

The most immediate arena will likely be in Iraq, where Tehran and its Iraqi Shi’ite proxies have already made clear they want to force U.S. troops to abandon the country.   

That effort was underway before the drone assassination of Soleimani with Shi’ite militias launching a dozen attacks on U.S. troops since October. Those attacks — including an assault no the U.S. embassy in Baghdad — was the trigger for Friday’s assassination of Soleimani, according to U.S. officials. Qais al-Khazali, a powerful pro-Iranian Iraqi militia leader, has ordered his fighters to be on high alert, saying on Iranian television the price for the drone strike must be “the complete end to American military presence in Iraq.”

“Retaliation, in the first instance, is likely to be focused on Iraq,” said Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. But Western troops stationed in Syria’s Kurdish regions in the north are also vulnerable to attacks from Iran-commanded Shi’ite militias, fear Western officials.   

But outside Iraq and Syria, the target list is worryingly long and military and intelligence officials on both sides of the Atlantic are scrambling to assess when and where Tehran will most likely strike amid the heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran,. Western companies are operating in the Gulf are restricting their employees travel in the region, say security consultants.  

Unnamed U.S. officials told the broadcaster CNN Saturday that they’re seeing signs of Iran stepping up readiness to launch short and medium-range ballistic missiles.   

Other analysts predict Iran will want to lash out, too, at U.S. allies in the region, to make their backing of Washington as costly and disruptive as possible.   

Qatar dispatched Saturday its foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to Tehran, seemingly in a bid to mollify Iran. The Reaper drone that fired a Hellfire missile killing Soleimani flew from a U.S. military base in Qatar. “No such similar action was taken in the past, which is why we are very uncomfortable and worried,” Al Thani told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani according to official reports.   

Rouhani in statement after the meeting said Tehran expects neighboring countries explicitly condemn this murder by the U.S.   America’s Gulf allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, privately have welcomed Soleimani’s death, say Western diplomats. They have long condemned him role in the region, and see his slaying a blow to Iran. But diplomats based in the region say their official reaction is reserved as trey are nervous about Iran’s response. Washington and Riyadh blamed Iran for missile and drone attacks in September on Saudi oil facilities.  

Iranian targets

Qatar is unlikely to be on an Iranian target list as Doha has been supportive of various Iranian diplomatic initiatives in the region, say Western officials and analysts. But both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, sworn enemies of Iran’s Shi’ite regime, are braced for attacks.    

“Beyond the immediate environment [of Iraq], Israel may reap serious security repercussions and U.S. allies in the Gulf, particularly Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi, could all fall victim to Iranian retaliatory measures,” says Charles Lister, an analyst the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank.   

Any reprisals on Saudi Arabia and UAE would likely come from Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia have been engaged in a long-running proxy war.

European intelligence officials are also fearful of Iranian cyber-attacks. In 2017 Iran was suspected of being behind a cyber-attack on the British parliament’s computer system, which compromised the email accounts of British ministers.   

At this stage the European ally likely to be singled is Britain, a British intelligence official told VOA. “I don’t think Tehran will want to hit out at other European states — Iran is more interested in widening transatlantic rifts between Washington and the Europeans,” he said.  

 

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Jeff Seldin and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday staunchly defended the drone attack that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, but refused to publicly offer any evidence supporting the American claim that he posed an imminent threat to U.S. forces and officials in the Mideast.

Pompeo, in one of a string of interviews on news talk shows, told ABC that senior U.S. leaders who had access to all of the intelligence before the attack on Soleimani had “no skepticism” about the necessity of killing him.

“The intelligence assessment made clear that no action allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and planning, his terror campaign, created more risk than the action that we took last week,” the top U.S. diplomat said. “We reduced risk.”

But Pompeo several times declined to reveal evidence of the threat the U.S. believed that Soleimani posed.

“There are simply things we cannot make public,” Pompeo told Fox News. “You’ve got to protect the sources providing the intelligence.”

On CNN, Pompeo said U.S. officials would continue to disclose information about the drone attack, but only “consistent with protecting our sources and methods and importantly our capacity to continue to understand what’s going on in presenting threats. You don’t want to risk that intelligence.”

The war of threats between Washington and Tehran in the aftermath of Soleimani’s killing was unabated.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that the U.S. has identified 52 sites in Iran, including “some at a very high level & important … to the Iranian culture,” that the U.S. would strike “very fast and very hard” should Iran attack any U.S. personnel or assets in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. The number 52 represents the 52 American hostages taken by Iran in 1979 and held for 444 days.

Under the Geneva Conventions laying out the legal constraints of war, attacking another country’s cultural sites is a war crime. But Pompeo, while not rebuking Trump’s Twitter comment, told ABC, “We’ll behave lawfully. We’ll behave inside the system. Every target that we strike will be a lawful target and it will be designed at the singular mission of protecting the American people.”

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed “severe revenge” against the killing of Soleimani. His top military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN, “The response for sure will be military and against military sites.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a televised news conference, “Iran is not seeking a war but is ready for any situation.” He said the final decision in response to Soleimani’s killing would be made by “the system’s leadership.”

He said Iran would try to “devise a response in a way that would both make the enemy regret” Soleimani’s killing and “not bring the Iranian nation to a war.”

Tehran said a million people poured into the streets of Mashhad, the country’s second city, to mourn Soleimani’s death. Because of the ongoing program there, authorities canceled a planned event in Tehran, instead urging Iranians to attend a ceremony honoring Soleimani at Tehran University on Monday.
 
 In the U.S., Republican lawmakers voiced support for Trump’s order to kill Soleimani. But opposition Democrats said that while they believed that Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. forces in the Mideast, Trump’s action increased the threat of a U.S.-Iran war and complained that a military intervention like that against Soleimani required congressional approval.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Fox, “We’re now headed very close to the precipice of war.”  He said that “you just can’t go around and kill” world figures the U.S. opposes. “The president is not entitled to take us to war” without congressional authorization.”

Larry Pfeiffer, the director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University and a former senior director of the White House Situation Room, rebuked Trump’s threats  against Iranian cultural sites. He told VOA, “This is not how America should behave and would likely violate international conventions and norms.” Pfeiffer said Trump’s threats “sound like something that would be issued by an autocratic regime like North Korea.”   

“When the U.S. president makes it open season on cultural sites, he offers false justification to adversaries to do the same,” Pfeiffer said.

Trump said Friday that Soleimani’s killing was long overdue.     

“We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “However, the Iranian regime’s aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now.”

Trump claimed Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime Iranian general “made the death of innocent people his sick passion” while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Analysts say any retaliatory actions against the U.S. by Iran would likely come after the three days of mourning that were declared Friday.

On Saturday, the White House formally notified Congress of Friday’s drone strike. Under the War Powers Act, the notification is required within 48 hours of introducing U.S. forces into an armed conflict that could lead to war.

The classified document was sent to congressional leadership, officials said. It would likely describe the Trump administration’s justifications for the strike against Soleimani, as well as intelligence information behind the decision and the expected scope of the military involvement. It is not known if the information will be released to the public.

Soleimani’s body is being moved late Sunday to Tehran, before he is buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

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A father and son who were battling flames for two days became the latest victims of the worst wildfire season in Australian history, and the path of destruction widened in at least three states Saturday because of strong winds and high temperatures. 
 
The death toll in the wildfire crisis rose to 23, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said after calling up about 3,000 reservists to battle the escalating fires, which were expected to be particularly fierce throughout the weekend. 
 
“We are facing another extremely difficult next 24 hours,” Morrison said at a televised news conference. “In recent times, particularly over the course of the balance of this week, we have seen this disaster escalate to an entirely new level.” 
 
Dick Lang, 78, an acclaimed bush pilot and outback safari operator, and his son Clayton, 43, were identified by Australian authorities after their bodies were found Saturday on a highway on Kangaroo Island. Their family said the losses left them “heartbroken and reeling from this double tragedy.” 
 
Lang, known as “Desert Dick,” led tours for travelers throughout Australia and other countries. “He loved the bush, he loved adventure and he loved Kangaroo Island,” his family said. 
 
Clayton Lang, one of Dick’s four sons, was a renowned plastic surgeon who specialized in hand surgery. 

The fire danger increased as temperatures rose Saturday to record levels across Australia, surpassing 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in Canberra, the capital, and reaching a record-high 48.9 C (120 F) in Penrith, in Sydney’s western suburbs. 
 
Video and images shared on social media showed blood red skies taking over Mallacoota, a coastal town in Victoria where as many as 4,000 residents and tourists were forced to shelter on beaches as the navy tried to evacuate as many people as possible. 

‘It’s not safe to move’
 
By Saturday evening, 3,600 firefighters were battling blazes across New South Wales state. Power was lost in some areas as fires downed transmission lines, and residents were warned that the worst might be yet to come. 
 
“We are now in a position where we are saying to people it’s not safe to move, it’s not safe to leave these areas,” state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. “We are in for a long night and I make no bones about that. We are still yet to hit the worst of it.” 
 
Morrison said the governor general had signed off on the calling up of reserves “to search and bring every possible capability to bear by deploying army brigades to fire-affected communities.” 
 
Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said it was the first time that reservists had been called up “in this way in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation’s history.” 

The deadly wildfires, which have been raging since September, have already burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) and destroyed more than 1,500 homes. 
 
The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has also been catastrophic for the country’s wildlife, likely killing nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals in New South Wales alone, Sydney University ecologist Chris Dickman told the Sydney Morning Herald. Frogs, bats and insects are excluded from his estimate, making the toll on creatures much greater. 

Climate change effects
 
Experts say climate change has exacerbated the unprecedented wildfires around the world. Morrison has been criticized for his repeated refusal to say climate change has been affecting the fires, instead deeming them a natural disaster. 
 
Some residents yelled at the prime minister earlier in the week during his visit to New South Wales, where people were upset with the lack of fire equipment their towns had. After fielding criticism for taking a family vacation in Hawaii as the wildfire crisis unfolded in December, Morrison announced he was postponing visits to India and Japan that were scheduled for this month. 
 
The government has committed 20 million Australian dollars ($14 million) to lease four firefighting aircraft for the duration of the crisis, and the helicopter-equipped HMAS Adelaide was deployed to assist evacuations from fire-ravaged areas. 

The deadly fire on Kangaroo Island broke containment lines Friday and was described as “virtually unstoppable” as it destroyed buildings and burned through more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of Flinders Chase National Park. While the warning level for the fire was reduced Saturday, the Country Fire Service said it was still a risk to lives and property. 
 
Rob Rogers, New South Wales Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner, warned that the fires could move “frighteningly quick.” Embers carried by the wind had the potential to spark new fires or enlarge existing blazes. 
 
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fizsimmons said the 264,000-hectare (652,000-acre) Green Wattle Creek fire in a national park west of Sydney could spread into Sydney’s western suburbs. He said crews had been doing “extraordinary work” by setting controlled fires and using aircraft and machinery to try to keep the flames away. 
 
More than 130 fires were burning in New South Wales, with at least half of them out of control. 
 
Firefighters were battling a total of 53 fires across Victoria state, and conditions were expected to worsen with a southerly wind change. About 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of bushland has already been burned through. 

Something positive
 
In a rare piece of good news, the number of people listed as missing or unaccounted for in Victoria was reduced from 28 to six. 
 
“We still have those dynamic and dangerous conditions — the low humidity, the strong winds and, what underpins that, the state is tinder dry,” Victoria Emergency Services Commissioner Andrew Crisp said. 
 
Thousands have already fled fire-threatened areas in Victoria, and local police reported heavy traffic flows on major roads. 
 
“If you might be thinking about whether you get out on a particular road close to you, well, there’s every chance that a fire could hit that particular road and you can’t get out,” Crisp said. 

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Ride-share company Uber and on-demand meal delivery service Postmates have sued to block a broad new California law aimed at giving wage and benefit protections to people who work as independent contractors. 
 
The lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles argues that the law set to take effect Wednesday violates federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process. 
 
Uber said it would try to link the lawsuit to another legal challenge filed in mid-December by associations representing freelance writers and photographers. 
 
The California Trucking Association filed the first challenge to the law in November on behalf of independent truckers. 
 
The law creates the nation’s strictest test by which workers must be considered employees and it could set a precedent for other states. 

Worker statements

The latest challenge includes two independent workers who wrote about their concerns with the new law. 
 
“This has thrown my life and the lives of more than a hundred thousand drivers into uncertainty,” ride-share driver Lydia Olson wrote in a Facebook post cited by Uber. 
 
Postmates driver Miguel Perez called on-demand work “a blessing” in a letter distributed by Uber. He said he used to drive a truck for 14 hours at a time, often overnight. 
 
“Sometimes, when I was behind the wheel, with an endless shift stretching out ahead of me like the open road, I daydreamed about a different kind of job — a job where I could choose when, where and how much I worked and still make enough money to feed my family,” he wrote. 
 
The lawsuit contends that the law exempts some industries but includes ride-share and delivery companies without a rational basis for distinguishing between them. It alleges that the law also infringes on workers’ rights to choose how they make a living and could void their existing contracts. 
 
Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego countered that she wrote the law to extend employee rights to more than a million California workers who lack benefits, including a minimum wage, mileage reimbursements, paid sick leave, medical coverage and disability pay for on-the-job injuries. 

Previous Uber efforts
 
She noted that Uber had previously sought an exemption when lawmakers were crafting the law, then said it would defend its existing labor model from legal challenges. It joined Lyft and DoorDash in a vow to each spend $30 million to overturn the law at the ballot box in 2020 if they didn’t win concessions from lawmakers next year. 
 
“The one clear thing we know about Uber is they will do anything to try to exempt themselves from state regulations that make us all safer and their driver employees self-sufficient,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “In the meantime, Uber chief executives will continue to become billionaires while too many of their drivers are forced to sleep in their cars.” 
 
The new law was a response to a legal ruling last year by the California Supreme Court regarding workers at the delivery company Dynamex. 

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