A French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Gulf waters that will be operational soon, France’s defense minister said on Sunday.

France is the main proponent of a plan to build a European-led maritime force to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after tanker attacks earlier this year that Washington blamed on Iran.

Tehran has denied being behind the attacks on tankers and other vessels in major global shipping lanes off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in May and which increased tensions between the United States, Iran and Gulf Arab states.

“This morning we formalized that the command post will be based on Emirati territory,” Defense Minister Florence Parly told reporters at a French naval base in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

The command center will host around a dozen officials representing the countries involved, she said. In a speech to French military personnel, she said the next time she visited the base she hoped the mission would be operational and thanked the UAE for supporting it.

The UAE has tempered its reaction to the attacks and has called for de-escalation and dialogue with Iran.
On Saturday, Parly said the initiative could start early next year and around 10 European and non-European governments would join, pending parliamentary approval.

First announced in July, the plan is independent of a U.S-led maritime initiative which some European countries feared would make U.S.-Iranian tensions worse.

Parly said the two missions would coordinate in order to ensure safety of navigation in an already tense area.

“We hope … to contribute to a navigation that is as safe as possible in a zone which we know is disputed and where there has already been a certain number of serious incidents,” she said. She also condemned Iran’s latest violations of a 2015 nuclear deal.

On Saturday, Parly said Paris was sending Saudi Arabia defense equipment to confront low-altitude attacks after Riyadh requested help following a September assault on the kingdom’s oil facilities which Washington and Riyadh have also blamed on Iran. Tehran has denied involvement.

“We have not had an equivalent request from the UAE,” she said on Sunday.
 

…

Security forces opened fire on protesters in southern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding dozens others, police and medical sources said, as weeks of unrest in Baghdad and some southern cities continue.

Protesters had gathered overnight on three bridges in the city, and security forces used live ammunition and tear gas canisters to disperse them, killing three, police and hospital sources said.

More than 50 others were wounded, mainly by live bullets and tear gas canisters, in clashes in the city, they added.

Two more people were killed and over 70 wounded on Sunday after  security forces used live fire to disperse protesters near the  country’s main Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, police and medical sources said.

Hospital sources said the cause of death was live fire, adding that some of the wounded are in critical condition.

The protesters had gathered to demand security forces open roads around the port town blocked by government forces in an attempt to prevent protesters from reaching the port’s entrance.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces dispersed by force protesters who had been blocking the entrance to the port and reopened it, port officials said.

Umm Qasr is Iraq’s largest commodities port and it receives imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar shipments that feed a country largely dependent on imported food.

At least 330 people have been killed since the start of mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Protesters are demanding the overthrow of a political class seen as corrupt and serving foreign powers while many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, healthcare or education.

The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

Medical authorities evacuated infants and children from a hospital in central Nassiriya overnight after tear gas spread inside hospital courtyards, two hospital sources said.

Protests continued in Nassiriya on Sunday, with some government offices set on fire, sources said.

Elsewhere in southern Iraq, hundreds of protesters burned tyres and blocked some roads on Sunday in Basra, preventing government employees from reaching offices, police said.

Iraqi security forces also wounded at least 24 people in the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala overnight after opening fire on demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the local government headquarters, medical and security sources said.

 

…

Twenty-two people have died from measles in Samoa.

All the deaths, except one, were of children younger than five years old, according to Reuters.

The South Pacific island has declared a state of emergency, with nearly 2,000 cases of measles reported.

The government has initiated a mass mandatory vaccination program.  

Samoa said Saturday that 153 cases had been reported in the last 24 hours.  

One mother who lost her two-year-old son to the disease told an Australian Broadcasting Company crew that her three oldest sons had been inoculated against the disease, but she was too poor to afford to have her two year old inoculated.

 

…

An advocacy group says internet connectivity is rapidly being restored in Iran after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown in response to widespread protests.

The group NetBlocks said Saturday that connectivity had suddenly reached 60% Saturday afternoon.

It said on Twitter: “Internet access is being restored in (hash)Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests.”

Confirmed: Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests; real-time network data show national connectivity now up to 64% of normal levels as of shutdown hour 163 📈📵#IranProtests#Internet4Iran

📰https://t.co/XQmiaOlRL7pic.twitter.com/eimWEIEmrI

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 23, 2019

There were reports that internet service remained spotty in the capital, Tehran, though others around the country began reporting they could again access it.

The order comes a week after the Nov. 15 gasoline price hike, which sparked demonstrations that rapidly turned violent, seeing gas stations, banks and stores burned to the ground.

Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”

 

…

When he left the house last week, Joseph, a 19-year-old Hong Kong college student, told his parents he was going to hang out with friends. That was only partly true.

In reality, Joseph was headed for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he and a group of hundreds of other young people barricaded themselves on campus, blocked a major highway, and stockpiled homemade weapons in preparation to battle police.

Night after night last week, the urban campus become a battlefield, as police rained tear gas and rubber bullets on students, who responded with Molotov cocktails, bricks, and whatever else they could find.

Though Hong Kong has seen five months of protests, this kind of violence is new. The pro-democracy movement that had been marked by massive street rallies now risks being overtaken by a smaller group of hardcore students who have shown they are willing to go beyond peaceful demonstrations and engage in prolonged battles with police in their push for democratic reforms.

“I would definitely admit that we’re using a certain level of violence,” says Joseph, who spoke via an encrypted messaging app. “But in order to protect the innocent protesters and create pressure on the government, a certain level of violence and power to fight back is necessary.”

In the minds of frontline protesters like Joseph, the violence is a last-ditch effort to preserve what is left of Hong Kong’s freedoms before the semi-autonomous territory is fully taken over by China in 2047. Hong Kong authorities accuse the protesters of engaging in violence that is incompatible with democracy.

VOA spoke with about 10 young protesters, all of whom were at Polytechnic University over the past week. Though the standoff is largely over, a couple dozen holdouts remain on campus. Most have either surrendered to police or escaped. Some of the protesters face possible riot-related charges that could land them in jail for 10 years. VOA has used pseudonyms to protect their identity.

‘We tried peaceful demonstrations’

“We tried peaceful demonstrations, but the government didn’t listen,” says Crystal, a Polytechnic student protester who has been on the run since leaving campus. She says she hasn’t been able to sleep a full night in more than a week.

“I’m scared, really scared,” she says.

Crystal wants to someday be an elementary school teacher, but for now she considers herself a revolutionary.

“Radical, I think, is a positive word for me, for us,” she says. “And most revolutions have violence.”

At this point, she’s unsure of whether to stay in Hong Kong and fight, or seek political asylum in another country.

“This is my place. This is my home. I need to protect it,” she says. “And I know that in 2047, I will become an old woman. But what about the next generation? And the next generation? What they will become? Brainwashed? Everything fake, like China?”

Outmatched

Most of the frontline students that fought at Polytechnic are in their teens or twenties. Some are new protesters. Others are veterans of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a student-led protest that unsuccessfully pushed for universal suffrage.

When it comes to brute strength, the students are outmatched, not only by the weapons of the Hong Kong police, but even more so by those of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest military. The PLA has thousands of troops in Hong Kong and many more just across the border, though they have not yet left their barracks to confront the protesters.

“We deeply understand we are not able to win in hand to hand fighting,” says Joseph. “But still, we shouldn’t be silent in the face of injustices.”

That is a common sentiment among frontline protesters, many of whom resent local and mainland Chinese media that accuse them of being naive children who are being pushed to the frontline by irresponsible adults. In reality, many of the more extreme protesters seem frequently self-aware, expressing a potentially dangerous mix of fatalism and determination.

In other words: they know they’ll likely lose, but they’re willing to fight anyway.

“We both know that it’s impossible to win, but only persistence can bring hope. If we never try, we know how this ends. We can’t just say no no, impossible. Why not just try?” says Crystal.

Another student on campus, who carried a bow and arrow, and donned a military-style camouflage helmet, acknowledged that his weapons are no match for the forces he is up against.

“All the protesters are scared—because maybe we will die,” he said, speaking in front of a pile of mangled classroom desks that had been stacked up to form a barricade against police. “But we think if we don’t stand up this day, [then] all the freedom in Hong Kong will lose. There is no way for us to go back now.”

“All of us here know what we are doing,” said another frontline protester at Polytechnic, who spoke through a black gas mask that distorted his voice. “Because our demands are not being addressed, that’s why we are having to escalate and upgrade our actions so as to get the results from the government,” he said.

Five demands

The latest round of protests erupted in June in opposition to an extradition bill. The proposal could have seen Hong Kongers tried in mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party and reports of torture and forced confessions are common.

Though authorities eventually abandoned the extradition bill, by then the protests had morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to the expanding influence of Beijing.

The protesters have adopted a list of five demands, including an investigation into police brutality, amnesty for arrested protesters, and direct elections for both the legislature and top executive.

But besides scrapping the extradition bill, Hong Kong authorities have refused to make concessions. Instead, as they have from the beginning, authorities dismiss the protests as riots.

“The rioters’ actions have far exceeded the call for democracy. They are now the enemy of the people,” Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly Chief Executive Carrie Lam said earlier this month.

‘Off the rails’

Though the protesters appear to still have the support of a large segment of the Hong Kong public, some are worried about the direction of the protests.

“This movement has come off the rails and is really out of control,” says Steve Vickers, the former head of the Royal Hong Kong Police Criminal Intelligence Bureau. “The violent element, the sharp end of it, is really destroying the message that the rest of them had established through large demonstrations, which were peaceful.”

Vickers points to instances where protesters have vandalized public infrastructure, such as subway stations and highway toll booths. In other cases, pro-Beijing individuals or businesses have been attacked or set on fire.

“Demanding five things or we will burn down your railway stations on a regular basis is not going to end happily anywhere in the world,” says Vickers, who heads the SVA Risk Consultancy.

In recent weeks, there have also been several attacks on pro-democracy figures, including one politician who had his ear partially bitten off by a knife-wielding man outside a shopping mall.

Election a referendum?

Sunday’s local elections could serve as a de facto referendum on the protest movement. Authorities had considered postponing the vote because of the violence, but they decided to move ahead, with a large police presence expected at polling stations.

“If the democrats really score a landslide victory, that will show very clearly that the public is in support of the movement, despite recent violence,” says Ma Ngok, a political scientist with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This will, I think … [create] much more pressure for the Hong Kong government to respond to the demands of the protesters.”

Polls suggest a generational divide between younger Hong Kongers, who are resentful of increasing Chinese influence, and older Hong Kongers, who prefer stability even if it means a lesser degree of freedom.

For frontline protester Joseph, whose father is pro-Beijing, that means sneaking out of the house to attend violent protests.

“We’ve had a few strong arguments, but I’m pretty sure there are many families struggling with that,” he says.

Although Joseph says he has no plans to stop protesting, he doesn’t expect the violence to get much worse, for now.

“Keeping pressure on the government,” he says. “That is our first priority at the moment.”

 

…

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, dubbed by critics “Putin on the Nile,” is set to boost his burgeoning relationship with Russia by dispatching his son, Mahmoud, to Moscow as a military attache, independent regional media outlets are reporting.

Russian officials say they welcome the prospect of Mahmoud el-Sissi being based in Moscow.  

The reassignment would coincide with an open rupture between Cairo and Washington over Egyptian plans to buy advanced Russian warplanes.

In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official Thursday threatened the Cairo government with sanctions if Egypt goes ahead with a $2 billion agreement to purchase more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets, a deal the relocated Mahmoud el-Sissi would likely oversee as military attache.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the Trump administration  was still discussing how to address its defense needs with Egypt adding that U.S. officials “have also been very transparent with them in that if they are to acquire a significant Russian platform like the Sukhoi-35 or the Su-35, that puts them at risk towards sanctions.”

The United States has provided billions of dollars in economic and military aid to Egypt, a longtime ally, whose military has been operating the U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter. Moving his son to Moscow is seen by Western diplomats here as a signal to Washington by el-Sissi of his intent to go ahead with buying the Su-35s.

“He’s playing hardball with Washington,” said a Western diplomat based here, who asked not to identified for this article.

According to independent media, Mahmoud el-Sissi’s reassignment, planned for next year, has the added benefit for Egypt’s president of moving his son out of the spotlight in Cairo. His role as a top official in the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Service, has prompted turmoil within that agency, as well as growing public criticism of his father for not curbing his son, who has also been drawing allegations of corruption.

General Intelligence Service sources told Mada Masr, an Egyptian online newspaper, the reassignment to Moscow is “based on the perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud el-Sissi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been intensifying his engagement with Middle Eastern and North African leaders, and seeking to rebuild Russian influence in the region, clout that was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to analysts. Some analysts see the re-engagement as an effort to safeguard established strategic interests.  They cite as an example Russian intervention in Syria, where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base and needed to prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad if it wanted to ensure its continuance.

Others say Russia’s renewed assertiveness is being overblown.

“Putin’s apparent victories in spreading Russian influence are mirages, some of which have come at a great cost,” according to Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. “Putin’s gambit in Syria had more to do with safeguarding a long-standing strategic investment that appeared imperiled than with outmaneuvering the United States,” he said in a Foreign Policy magazine commentary.

Nonetheless the dispatch of Mahmoud el-Sissi to Moscow is coming at a time of heightened disagreement between Washington and Cairo. Washington has told Cairo that buying the Russian warplanes would place U.S. and NATO military cooperation at risk. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote jointly to the Egyptian leader urging him to reverse the decision to buy Russian jets.

Ties between el-Sissi and Putin began warming in 2014, when the Obama administration curtailed military aid to Egypt after the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Cairo’s generals, smarting at Washington’s criticism of the coup that brought el-Sissi to power, talked openly of forging a “strategic realignment” with the Kremlin, evoking Egypt’s Nasser-era alliance with the Soviets.

Putin was quick to endorse el-Sissi as Egypt’s president, telling him during a 2014 visit to Moscow, “I wish you luck both from myself personally and from the Russian people.”

Putin also gave el-Sissi a black jacket with a red star on it, which el-Sissi wore during the Russian trip. Both men have much in common, coming from modest backgrounds and having gravitated toward the most powerful institutions in their closed societies, the KGB and the Egyptian army. They each rose cautiously up the bureaucratic ladder.

Last month, el-Sissi and Putin co-hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, held at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.  It was the third meeting between the two presidents this year. In October the Egyptian air force’s tactical training center near Cairo hosted joint Russian-Egyptian military exercises dubbed Arrow of Friendship-1. The two countries have held several joint naval and airborne counterterrorism exercises since 2015.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a visit to Cairo this month, “When we are in Egypt we always feel like at home.” The Russian military, he said, “is ready to assist in strengthening Egyptian military forces and defense capabilities.”

Shoigu’s delegation included top officials from Russia’s trade ministry, Rosoboronexport, Russia’s arms exporter, and the deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, prompting speculation among military analysts that Moscow and Cairo may be discussing arms deals other than the Su-35s and weapons systems co-production arrangements.

 

 

…

Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government, prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing the outage.

The #Iran internet shutdown is now in its 144th hour, keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians⏱

Subscribe to our network monitor channel to track national connectivity in real-time #IranProtests#Internet4Iran

📡https://t.co/71lkPvV2e2pic.twitter.com/EHpyZflNSE

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 22, 2019

In a tweet late Friday, London-based internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the shutdown had lasted a full six days and was “keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians.” A livestream of Iran’s internet connectivity rate on the group’s YouTube channel  showed a slight improvement to 20%, after having risen to 15% from 5% on Thursday.

Some Iranian officials have said they expect internet access to be gradually restored in the coming days. But there was no government announcement of a date for an end to the shutdown, which began in the evening of November 16 as authorities tried to stop Iranians from sharing images of nationwide anti-government protests that had erupted the previous day.

A news agency of Iran’s Islamic Azad University, a private national university network, said in a Thursday article  that seven other major universities in the country had their internet access restored. But it cited a public relations director for one of them, Sharif University, as saying the renewed access was “very slow.”

Iranian officials sparked the protests when they raised the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% on Nov. 15. The hike further strains the finances of many Iranians facing hardship in an economy already weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.

In its first punitive response to the internet shutdown, the Trump administration sanctioned Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Friday.

The Treasury Department said Azari Jahromi’s ministry has been responsible for restricting the Iranian people’s access to the internet, including popular messaging apps used by tens of millions of Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. It added Azari Jahromi to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, freezing his assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting Americans from any dealings involving those assets.

British rights group Amnesty International has said it documented the killings of 106 protesters in the crackdown by security forces during the period Nov. 15-19.

Tehran has rejected Amnesty’s death toll as speculative but has declined to issue its own tally of protester fatalities. Authorities said several security personnel also were killed in violence by “thugs” who attacked stores and burned buildings in cities around the country.

Iranian leaders have said they succeeded in crushing the unrest after several days, while blaming the protests on incitement by foreign “enemies” and exiled opposition groups. The internet shutdown made it difficult to verify whether the demonstrations have ended.

“The United States stands with the people of Iran in their struggle against an oppressive regime that silences them while arresting and murdering protesters,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Friday statement. “No country or company should enable the regime’s censorship or human rights abuses. The United States will expose these human rights abusers and record their shameful acts for history.”

A day earlier, Pompeo took the unusual step of tweeting an appeal, in Farsi and English, for Iranians to send “videos, photos and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protesters.” He said people could do so via the @RFJ_Farsi_Bot Telegram channel. It was not clear when the State Department would reveal any content that it has received.

Azari Jahromi, who has 168,000 followers on his verified Twitter account, tweeted late Friday for the first time since the protests began, issuing a defiant response to being sanctioned by Washington.

I’m not the only member of club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB children were there.
I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development.#EconomicTerrorism

— MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) November 22, 2019

“I’m not the only member of [the] club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, [there were] Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB [skin disease] children,” Jahromi wrote.

Iran has said U.S. sanctions targeting its oil, banks and other major industries represent a campaign of “economic terrorism” against the Iranian people. Washington has said humanitarian trade with Iran is exempt from its sanctions, whose aim is to deny resources to the Iranian government for malign activity.

“I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development,” Azari Jahromi added.

A U.S. Treasury statement identified the 38-year-old as a former Iranian intelligence officer involved in surveillance operations that enabled the government to arrest protesters involved in peaceful opposition demonstrations in 2009. The Treasury said Azari Jahromi has been accused of personally interrogating multiple activists during that period.

In a VOA Persian interview, analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Azari Jahromi has been a key figure in Iran’s censorship apparatus.

“Targeting him is both symbolic and effective, but should not be the end of the stick. It should be a first step toward the U.S. going after Iran’s entire telecommunications infrastructure, and that could include its satellites,” Taleblu said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. Katherine Ahn contributed to this report.

…

About 250 Islamic State fighters have surrendered to Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province, a traditional IS stronghold. Dozens of women and children have surrendered as well. Officials told VOA they would work toward deradicalizing those of Afghan origin and eventually would unite them with their families. The Kabul government has yet to determine the fate of the non-Afghan detainees. VOA’s Zabihullah Ghazi reports.

…

China and Pakistan urged the United States on Friday “to sift fact from fiction” before questioning their bilateral infrastructure development program, which Beijing is funding under its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The reaction came a day after a senior American diplomat spoke critically of the multibillion-dollar collaboration, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and warned it would eventually worsen Islamabad’s economic troubles and benefit only Beijing.

Speaking to an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Thursday, Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said the U.S. offered a better model that would improve the fundamentals of Pakistan’s troubled economy. She also raised questions about the transparency and fairness of CPEC projects as well as related Chinese loans Islamabad has received.

Her remarks drew a strong response from Chinese and Pakistani officials on Thursday.

Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, Yao Jing, said Wells lacked “accurate” knowledge and relied primarily on Western media “propaganda” to level the accusations.

“I would like to remind my American colleague that if you are really making this kind of allegation, please be careful, show your evidence, give me evidence; we will take action,” Yao said while addressing reporters.

He said China and Pakistan are determined to ensure the infrastructure project is free of corruption.

The Chinese diplomat said CPEC is open to investment from anywhere in the world and China would happily welcome U.S. investment in it. Yao described Wells’ remarks as astonishing, saying he had personally briefed her twice on the program during her recent visits to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain described the allegations by Wells as disappointing. He noted that CPEC has ensured energy security for Pakistan and set the stage for an “industrial revolution” in the next stage of the massive project, which is already in progress.

“CPEC is central to Pakistan’s future and it’s a pivot of our strategic relationship with China and for which Pakistan has benefited already. We feel she had got her facts mixed up because of unfounded media reports. So, I think it is important to sift fact from fiction,” Hussain said.

Beijing has invested around $20 billion in Pakistan over the past five years to help upgrade and build ports, roads and power plants, effectively ending nationwide crippling electricity outages.

Most of the money has come as direct foreign investment, while some has been in the form of soft loans and grants. The overall investment of CPEC is estimated to grow to around $60 billion by 2030.

Critics in the U.S. and elsewhere see China’s BRI program as a “debt trap” for countries like Pakistan, which have struggling economies that would make it difficult for them to make Chinese loan repayments. Islamabad’s repayments are due in the next few years and analysts say that process will bring the country’s depleting foreign exchange reserves under pressure.

Ambassador Yao dismissed those concerns, saying unlike Washington and West-governed lenders like the International Monetary Fund, Beijing does not offer or suspend financial loans for “political” reasons.

“China will never ever ask for these loan repayments as long as you are in need of this money. If Pakistan needs it, we keep it here,” he told the audience.

Yao took issue with the U.S. for questioning Chinese aid or loans he said were meant only to help partner nations to improve and stabilize their economies.

“The United States is the biggest loan taker from the world, and even China gave them in credit about $3 trillion,” said the Chinese envoy.

Wells noted, however, that even if loan payments are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan’s economic development potential to hamper Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reform agenda.

She said CPEC relies primarily on Chinese workers and supplies, noting that local industry does not benefit from the initiative and that CPEC is not addressing the issue of rising unemployment in Pakistan.

Yao rejected the assertions, saying CPEC has provided more than 75,000 direct jobs to Pakistani workers and is expected to create as many as 2.3 million jobs by 2030.

The Chinese envoy said the project will have built several special economic free zones by then, enabling Pakistan to improve the quantity and quality of its exports to bring home much-needed dollars to boost its foreign exchange reserves.

Yao criticized Wells for using reported estimated costs of certain projects in her speech. He said those projects were still under discussion and their final cost had not been determined.

…

Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion.

The pope was on his last full day of a visit to Thailand, where the dominant culture is closely tied to Buddhism, although the Catholic minority of fewer than 1% were generally treated well in modern times.

On Friday, Francis traveled to Wat Roman, a mostly Catholic area on the outskirts of the bustling capital of Bangkok.

World War II era priest

The pope visited a modern sanctuary built in honor of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, a Thai priest who died in 1944. The son of Christian converts from Buddhism, he was arrested for ringing a church bell during a period dominated by an anti-Western government suspicious of foreign influences, such as the French colonial powers in neighboring countries.

The priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison and died of tuberculosis in a hospital where he was treated badly and denied proper care because he was Catholic.

In a talk to priests and nuns gathered in the church, Francis expressed his gratitude to those he said had offered the “silent martyrdom of fidelity and daily commitment” in the past.

In 1940, seven Catholics, including three teenage girls, were killed by Thai police in the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom. Pope John Paul II later declared them martyrs.

The World War II period and other spells of persecution are considered aberrations and today relations between Buddhists and Catholics are generally very good.

During the reign of Thailand’s King Narai 350 years ago, the Vatican formally established its “Mission de Siam.”

Although missionaries failed to achieve mass conversions, they were largely tolerated by the Buddhist majority and particularly the royal court.

Thai face of Catholicism

Since the start of his pontificate in 2013, Francis has preached that the Church should grow by attraction and not by proselytizing, or conversion campaigns.

This has provoked criticism from some conservatives who favor an aggressive approach and largely oppose what is known as “inculturation,” or adapting Church teachings to local culture.

Francis urged priests and nuns to find more ways to talk about their religion in local terms, saying he had learned “with some pain, that for many people, Christianity is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners.”

He added, “Let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”

Meeting Thai bishops in the same shrine complex later, Francis once again talked about issues such as human trafficking and exploitation.

On Thursday he condemned the exploitation of women and children for prostitution in Thailand, which is notorious for its sex tourism, saying the violence, abuse and enslavement they suffer are evils to be uprooted.

Francis was scheduled to meet leaders of other religions and celebrate a Mass in Bangkok’s Assumption Cathedral on Friday afternoon, before leaving on Saturday for Japan.

…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle.

The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday.

The pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 and up, will have an estimated battery range of more than 500 miles.

With the launch, Tesla is edging into the most profitable corner of the U.S. auto market, where buyers tend to have fierce brand loyalty.

Brand-loyal buyers

Many pickup buyers stick with the same brand for life, choosing a truck based on what their mom or dad drove or what they decided was the toughest model, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

“They’re very much creatures of habit,” Gordon said. Getting a loyal Ford F-150 buyer to consider switching to another brand such as a Chevy Silverado, “it’s like asking him to leave his family,” he said.

Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers.

“The needs-based truck buyer, the haulers, the towers at the worksites of the world, that’s going to be a much tougher sell,” said Akshay Anand, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

However, it will help Musk fill out his portfolio and offer a broader range of electric vehicles.

“Elon Musk is trying to not be one-dimensional when it comes to automotive,” said Alyssa Altman, transportation lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. “He doesn’t want to look like he only has a small selection. He wants to build a brand with a diverse offering and in doing that he wants to see where he could enter in the market.”

Electric truck competition

Musk stands to face competition when his truck hits the market. Ford, which has long dominated the pickup landscape, plans to launch an all-electric F-150 pickup. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that its battery-electric pickup will come out by the fall of 2021.

Rivian, a startup based near Detroit, plans to begin production in the second half of 2020 on an electric pickup that starts at $69,000 and has a battery range of 400-plus miles (643.7-kilometers). The Rivian truck will be able to tow 11,000 pounds (4,989.5 kilograms), go from zero to 60 mph (96.6 kph) in three seconds and wade into 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water, the company said. Ford said in April it would invest $500 million in Rivian.

Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets.

“We have yet to see Tesla really make good on some of the very tight deadlines they imposed on themselves, and this has the added challenge of having architecture that is going to be challenging because we haven’t seen an EV pickup before,” said Jeremy Acevedo, manager of industry analysis at Edmunds.

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The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at an event at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, McCarthy said he ordered the assessment after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s use of the popular video app for recruiting American teenagers.

“National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy.

Schumer said he was especially concerned about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has previously emphasized its independence from China but has failed to assuage congressional concerns about the security of the personal data of U.S. citizens who use the platform and whether content on the platform is subject to any censorship from Beijing.

In a Nov. 5 blog post, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas, said that the company’s data centers “are located entirely outside of China.” She said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore.

ByteDance is one of China’s fastest-growing startups. About 60% of TikTok’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said this year.

Earlier this year, Schumer also called on the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a national security and privacy investigation into FaceApp, a face-editing photo app developed in Russia.

The potential for the sharing of army information through the use of apps was highlighted after researchers found in 2018 that fitness-tracking app Strava was inadvertently exposing military posts and other sensitive sites.

In 2017, the Army ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.

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