YCLOAK

More than 600,000 vacationers who booked through tour operator Thomas Cook were on edge Sunday, wondering if they will be able to get home, as one of the world’s oldest and biggest travel companies teetered on the edge of collapse.
 
The debt-laden company, which confirmed Friday it was seeking 200 million pounds ($250 million) in funding to avoid going bust, was in talks with shareholders and creditors to stave off failure.
 
A collapse could leave around 150,000 travelers from Britain stranded, along with hundreds of thousands from other countries. The company has sought to reassure customers that flights were continuing to operate as normal.
 
Most of Thomas Cook’s British customers are protected by the government-run travel insurance program, which makes sure vacationers can get home if a British-based tour operator goes under while they are abroad.
 
Thomas Cook’s financial difficulties also raised questions about the jobs of the 22,000 people employed by the company around the world, including 9,000 in Britain.
 
Unions and Britain’s opposition Labour Party urged the government to intervene financially to save jobs if the company fails to raise the necessary financing from the private sector.
 
If the company collapsed, Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority would probably be ordered by the government to launch a major operation to fly stranded vacationers home, much as it did when Monarch Airlines went bust nearly two years ago.
 
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab gave assurances that British vacationers will not be left stranded.
 
 “I don’t want to give all the details of it because it depends on the nature of how people are out there,” he told the BBC. “But I can reassure people that, in the worst-case scenario, the contingency planning is there to avoid people being stranded.”
 
Rebecca Long Bailey, Labour’s business spokesperson, said the government “faces a simple choice between a 200 million-pound government cash injection to save the company now versus a 600 million-pound bill to repatriate U.K. holidaymakers.”
 
Thomas Cook, which began in 1841 with a one-day train excursion in England and now operates in 16 countries, has been struggling over the past few years. It only recently raised 900 million pounds ($1.12 billion), including from leading Chinese shareholder Fosun.
 
In May, the company reported a debt burden of 1.25 billion pounds and cautioned that political uncertainty related to Britain’s departure from the European Union had hurt demand for summer holiday travel. Heat waves over the past couple of summers in Europe have also led many people to stay at home, while higher fuel and hotel costs have weighed on the travel business.
 
The company’s troubles appear to be already affecting those traveling under the Thomas Cook banner.
 
A British vacationer told BBC radio on Sunday that the Les Orangers beach resort in the Tunisian town of Hammamet, near Tunis, demanded that guests who were about to leave pay extra money for fear it wouldn’t be paid what it is owed by Thomas Cook.
 
Ryan Farmer, of Leicestershire, said many tourists refused the demand, since they had already paid Thomas Cook, so security guards shut the hotel’s gates and “were not allowing anyone to leave.”
 
It was like “being held hostage,” said Farmer, who is due to leave Tuesday. He said he would also refuse to pay if the hotel asked him.
 
 The Associated Press called the hotel, as well as the British Embassy in Tunis, but no officials or managers were available for comment.

…

The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed a bomb blast that killed 12 people near the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Karbala the previous day.

The blast aboard a bus at a checkpoint north of Karbala also wounded five people, according to the city’s health authorities.

Security forces said Saturday that they had arrested a man suspected of placing the explosives on the bus before it disembarked.

Iraq declared victory against IS in late 2017 after three years of a brutal fight against the extremist Sunni group, which had specifically targeted Shiite gatherings.

Jihadist sleeper cells have continued to carry out hit-and-run attacks against government positions across the country, particularly at checkpoints, but attacks targeting Shiite religious gatherings had been rare in recent years.

The deadliest incident this year was a stampede earlier this month in Karbala that left more than 30 pilgrims dead and dozens injured.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and as far away as India had been gathering in the southern city this month to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashura.

Iraq is expecting millions more Shiite pilgrims to arrive at the end of October for the annual Arbaeen commemoration, which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein by the forces of the Caliph Yazid.

…

Greek police said Saturday they have arrested a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a flight from Athens that became a multiday ordeal and included the slaying of an American.

Police said a 65-year-old suspect in the hijacking was arrested Thursday on the island of Mykonos in response to a warrant from Germany.

Lt. Col. Theodoros Chronopoulos, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press that the hijacking case involved TWA Flight 847. The flight was commandeered by hijackers shortly after taking off from Athens on June 14, 1985. It originated in Cairo and had San Diego as a final destination, with stops scheduled in Athens, Rome, Boston and Los Angeles.

The hijackers shot and killed U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23, after beating him unconscious. They released the other 146 passengers and crew members on the plane during an ordeal that included stops in Beirut and Algiers. The last hostage was freed after 17 days.

Suspect from Lebanon

The suspect was in custody Saturday on the Greek island of Syros but was set to be transferred to the Korydallos high security prison in Athens for extradition proceedings, a police spokeswoman told The Associated Press. She said the suspect was a Lebanese citizen. The spokeswoman spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Police refused to release the suspect’s name.

In Beirut, the Foreign Ministry said the man detained in Greece is a Lebanese journalist called Mohammed Saleh, and that a Lebanese embassy official planned to try to visit him Sunday.

However, several Greek media outlets identified the detainee as Mohammed Ali Hammadi, who was arrested in Frankfurt in 1987 and convicted in Germany for the plane hijacking and Stethem’s slaying. Hammadi, an alleged Hezbollah member, was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled in 2005 and returned to Lebanon.

Germany had resisted pressure to extradite him to the United States after Hezbollah abducted two German citizens in Beirut and threatened to kill them.

Hammadi, along with fellow hijacker Hasan Izz-Al-Din and accomplice Ali Atwa, remains on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. The FBI offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to each man’s capture.

News agency dpa reported Saturday that Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on news reports about the case.
 

…

The widespread damage brought to the Houston area by one of the wettest tropical cyclones in U.S. history came into broader view Saturday, as floodwaters receded to reveal the exhausting cleanup effort that lies ahead for many communities and homeowners.

Hundreds of homes and other buildings in the region, extending eastward from Houston and across the Louisiana border, were damaged by Imelda, as the one-time tropical storm slowly churned across the region, dumping more than 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain in some spots and being blamed for at least five deaths.

Officials in Harris County, which is home to Houston, were trying to determine if millions of dollars in uninsured losses were enough to trigger a federal disaster declaration, Francisco Sanchez, a spokesman for the county’s Office of Emergency Management, said Saturday.

Authorities raised the storm’s death toll to five, saying it was believed to have killed a 52-year-old Florida man who was found dead Thursday in his stranded pickup truck along Interstate 10 near Beaumont, which is near Texas’ border with Louisiana. Jefferson County spokeswoman Allison Getz said that although floodwaters seeped into Mark Dukaj’s truck, investigators didn’t think he drowned, though they did think his death was storm-related. An autopsy will determine the cause.

A section of the highway just east of Houston remained closed Saturday after at least two runaway barges struck two bridges carrying eastbound and westbound traffic. Nearly 123,000 vehicles normally cross the bridges each day, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. The Coast Guard has said that witnesses reported early Friday that nine barges had broken away from their moorings at a shipyard along the fast-moving San Jacinto River.

Two barges stuck

Two barges remained lodged against the bridges, said Emily Black, a spokeswoman for the state Transportation Department.

“The current is really very strong right now, so it’s kind of pushed them up against the columns,” she said.

Inspectors hope that the water will recede and the current will slow down enough for the barges to be removed this weekend so that a better assessment of the damage to the bridges can be made.

Several schools in the Beaumont area were damaged by floodwaters and two are closed indefinitely as officials evaluate the extent of the damage, the Beaumont Enterprise reported. The closure of schools in two separate school districts could affect more than 3,000 students.

Counties in the region, meanwhile, imposed curfews to ensure motorists stayed off roadways that still have standing water.

Elsewhere, in Galveston County, officials said people along a Gulf Coast peninsula could be without fresh water service for a month because a water treatment plant was knocked out of operation by flooding, The Galveston County Daily News reported.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump announced new sanctions Friday on Iran’s central bank, calling them the most severe sanctions ever imposed on a country. But it appears that he wants to avoid military action against Tehran, in response to recent cruise missile and drone strikes against Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story.
 

…

Francis Rooney is a Republican congressman from a conservative Florida district who opposes federal funding for abortions and supports President Donald Trump’s plans for construction of a wall along the Mexican border.

But he also recently co-sponsored a carbon pricing bill and is one of a handful of lawmakers from his side of the aisle who have bucked orthodoxy and acknowledged human beings are responsible for global warming.

The modern Republican Party is one of the few political forces in the world whose leadership denies manmade climate change, but there are now small yet perceptible signs of changes within its ranks, driven by an increase in extreme weather events and shifting public opinion.

“Seventy-one percent of the people in my district say that climate change is real. We’re scared of sea-level rise and we want the government to do something about it,” Rooney, citing recent polling, said at a talk this week organized by the World Resources Institute.

In late July, he along with Democrat Dan Lipinksi of Illinois introduced a new bill aimed at setting a price on carbon emissions, one of several similar proposed laws currently before the House of Representatives.

Extreme weather

For now, the legislation has no hope of passing: fellow Republicans are highly unlikely to take it up in the Senate, and even if it did clear the upper house, Trump would almost certainly exercise his veto. 

But the bills “indicate that Republicans and Democrats are beginning to agree that a price on carbon is the most efficient way to reduce America’s emissions,” the Citizens’ Climate Lobby wrote in a blog post on the subject.

“Republicans are getting very nervous about their lack of any serious policy on climate change, because climate change is beginning to have huge costs to average everyday Americans,” Paul Bledsoe, a former staffer for ex-president Bill Clinton and lecturer at American University, told AFP.  

There is a broad scientific consensus that warmer oceans are supercharging hurricanes, making Category 4 and 5 storms more common. 

New research suggests that warming may also be affecting global atmospheric currents, thus increasing the frequency of ultra slow-crawling hurricanes like last month’s Dorian and 2017’s Harvey.

Rooney and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who also supports a carbon tax, are the two most outspoken Republican lawmakers on climate change, but in recent months others have begun talking about the need to reduce emissions.

These include Senator John Barasso from deep red Wyoming, who earlier this year introduced a bill to expand nuclear power, in part citing the need to address climate change, and a handful of others including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and John Cornyn of Texas who have made similar calls to expand renewables.

But if the majority of the party of Lincoln remains ostensibly skeptical of the science surrounding climate change, it was not ever thus.

Rightward lurch

Karolyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute told AFP that when Americans first became conscious of it in the late 1960s, environmentalism was a non-partisan cause — indeed, it was under President Richard Nixon that the Environmental Protection Agency was created. 

The practice of imposing taxes to reduce emissions was later used to great effect by former president George H.W. Bush, who in 1990 signed an amendment to the Clean Air Act that placed a price on sulfur dioxide to address the then-serious problem of acid rain, a wildly successful policy.

But Republicans then assumed a harder tack driven by lobbying from special interest groups funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, along with the emergence of an anti-taxation wing under the Republican Congress of the 1990s and the Tea Party movement of the late 2000s.

The question of what happens next is up for debate. 

A Trump victory in 2020 would put to rest any chance of a serious climate policy becoming law in the U.S., according to Bledsoe, even if younger Republicans are starting to care more about the issue.

But David Karol, the author of “Red, Green and Blue: The Partisan Divide on Environmental Issues,” said the emergence in Congress of the bipartisan “Climate Solutions Caucus” in 2016 was an interesting development, even if some environmentalists have deemed it a way for Republican legislators to “check a box and claim to care.”

“Even if that’s true, the fact that the GOP politicians felt a need to do this says something about where they think public opinion is,” Karol said.
 

…

The United States said it is deeply disappointed in Kiribati’s decision to abandon its diplomatic ties with Taiwan, in favor of China.

Several Republican and Democratic lawmakers voiced grave concerns. A Senate panel plans to move forward with a congressional proposal that could “impose consequences on nations downgrading ties with Taiwan.”

In a stern statement on Friday, a State Department spokesperson said “countries that establish closer ties to China primarily out of the hope or expectation that such a step will stimulate economic growth and infrastructure development often find themselves worse off in the long run.”

The spokesperson said the U.S. supports the status quo in cross-Strait relations, which includes Taiwan’s diplomatic ties and international space, as important to maintaining peace and stability in the region.

“China’s active campaign to alter the cross-Strait status quo, including by enticing countries to discontinue diplomatic ties with Taiwan, are harmful and undermine regional stability. They undermine the framework that has enabled peace, stability, and development for decades,” the spokesperson told VOA.

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan on Friday, becoming the second country to do so this week and bolstering China’s hand.

This comes as another blow to Taiwan, as its three decades’ diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands ended on Monday after the Pacific island state’s cabinet voted in favor of switching ties to China.

“In the last couple weeks, the Solomon Islands and now Kiribati have cut formal ties with Taiwan under pressure from Beijing. Unless this behavior is confronted, Beijing will stop at nothing to isolate Taiwan internationally,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said.

In the last couple weeks, the Solomon Islands and now Kiribati have cut formal ties with Taiwan under pressure from Beijing. Unless this behavior is confronted, Beijing will stop at nothing to isolate Taiwan internationally. https://t.co/dVS8h1uLgm

— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) September 20, 2019

The U.S. sees Taiwan as part of a network of Asian democracies, calling Taiwan “a democratic success story and a force for good in the world.”  Informal Taiwan-U.S. ties have improved under U.S. President Donald Trump.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who is also ranking member of Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, also weighed in on Twitter.

China’s predatory campaign to isolate #Taiwan from the rest of the international community is seriously alarming & unacceptable. Taiwan is, and always will be, one of our most important partners in the region. We must continue to stand for democracy. https://t.co/B0XUjcMve3

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) September 20, 2019

Next week, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will consider the so-called TAIPEI Act, the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, said Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner in a tweet.

“Kiribati ending diplomatic ties with Taiwan demonstrates a need for urgent action,” said Gardner, who is the chairman of Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and international cybersecurity policy.

The proposed bill will allow the secretary of state to consider “the expansion, termination, or reduction” of U.S. foreign assistance to countries that downgrade ties with Taiwan.

China’s ‘problematic behavior’

As China’s influence in the region has grown, American officials frequently point out what they see as “a range of increasingly problematic behavior” that includes China’s ongoing militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea, and “predatory” economic activities and investments seen to undermine good governance and promote corruption and human rights abuses.

“This should concern all countries,” a State Department official told VOA.

Funds were promised by China in return for Kiribati’s recognition, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

“According to information obtained by Taiwan, the Chinese government has already promised to provide full funds for the procurement of several airplanes and commercial ferries, thus luring Kiribati into switching diplomatic relations,” Wu said.

One China principle

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Kiribati’s decision “fully testifies to the fact that the One China principle meets the shared aspiration of the people.” 

Geng added, “There is but one China in the world and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China.” 

The two sides split after the 1949 civil war when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists and sought refuge on Taiwan. But Beijing considers the self-ruled island part of its territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, but U.S. presidents are bound by law to supply it with arms and come to its defense.

The nuance between Washington’s “One China policy” and China’s “One China principle” is that the U.S. stance leaves open the possibility that a future resolution could be determined peacefully by both China and Taiwan.
 

…

The Zimbabwean doctor whose disappearance sparked off a wave of doctors’ protests across the country, has reappeared, alive.

Speaking Thursday on VOA Zimbabwe Service’s Livetalk program, a disoriented-sounding Dr. Peter Magombeyi, the president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’ Association, confirmed he was the one on the other end of the phone.

“I honestly don’t know how to truly identify myself, but I am Dr. Peter Magombeyi, I work at Harare Hospital,” he said.

The doctor, who had been spearheading calls for an increase of doctors’ salaries when he disappeared on September 15, said he could not remember exactly what happened to him or how he ended up where he was — an area called Nyabira, about 33 kilometers from Harare.

“That part I’m just so vague about, I need time to recall,” he said.

Dr. Magombeyi said his last recollection before being taken by unnamed people was the memory of being electrocuted.

“I remember being in a basement of some sort, being electrocuted at some point, that is what I vividly remember. I, I just don’t remember,” Dr. Magombeyi said, struggling to speak.

Zimbabwe’s government and police have denied involvement in Magombeyi’s disappearance, but said they were doing all they could to find the doctor.  

Officials also suggested a third party could be involved in the disappearance to taint the government’s image.

Responding to the police allegation, and also Twitter posts alluding to the same accusations, Magombeyi said he had no answers.  

“I need time to think about it, I don’t know,” he said.

…

Sound checks echoed from a distant main stage while Daniel Martinez whirled and danced at dusty makeshift festival grounds just after sunset in Rachel, the Nevada town closest to the once-secret Area 51 military base.

Martinez’s muse was the thumping beat from a satellite set-up pumping a techno tune into the chilly desert night Thursday.

Warm beneath a wolf “spirit hood” and matching faux fur jacket, the 31-year-old Pokemon collectible cards dealer said people, not the military base, drew him drive more than six hours from Pomona, California, alone.

“Here’s a big open space for people to be,” he said. “One person starts something and it infects everybody with positivity. Anything can happen if you give people a place to be.”

Minutes later, the music group Wily Savage started, and campers began migrating toward main stage light near the Little A’Le’Inn.

The music kicked off weekend events — inspired by an internet hoax to “see them aliens” — that Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said had drawn perhaps 1,500 people to two tiny desert towns.

Lee said late Thursday that more than 150 people also made the rugged trip on washboard dirt roads to get within selfie distance of two gates to the Area 51 U.S. Air Force installation that has long fueled speculation about government studies of space aliens and UFOs.

The Air Force has issued stern warnings for people not to try to enter the Nevada Test and Training Range, where Area 51 is located.

Lee said no arrests were made.

“It’s public land,” the sheriff said. “They’re allowed to go to the gate, as long as they don’t cross the boundary.”

Authorities reported no serious incidents related to festivals scheduled until Sunday in Rachel and Hiko, the two towns closest to Area 51. They’re about a 45-minute drive apart on a state road dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway, and a two-hour drive from Las Vegas.

Earlier, as Wily Savage band members helped erect the wooden frame for a stage shade in Rachel, guitarist Alon Burton said he saw a chance to perform for people who, like Martinez, were looking for a scene in which to be seen.

“It started as a joke, but it’s not a joke for us,” he said. “We know people will come out. We just don’t know how many.”

Michael Ian Borer, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sociologist who researches pop culture and paranormal activity, called the festivities sparked by the internet joke “a perfect blend of interest in aliens and the supernatural, government conspiracies, and the desire to know what we don’t know.”

The result, Borer said, was “hope and fear” for events that include the “Area 51 Basecamp” featuring music, speakers and movies in Hiko, and festivals in Rachel and Las Vegas competing for the name “Alienstock.”

“People desire to be part of something, to be ahead of the curve,” Borer said. “Area 51 is a place where normal, ordinary citizens can’t go. When you tell people they can’t do something, they just want to do it more.”

Eric Holt, the Lincoln County emergency manager overseeing preparations, said he believed authorities could handle 30,000 visitors at the two events in Rachel and Hiko.

Still, neighbors braced for trouble after millions of people responded to the “Storm Area 51” Facebook post weeks ago.

“Those that know what to expect camping in the desert are going to have a good time,” said Joerg Arnu, a Rachel resident who can see the festival grounds from his home.

Those who show up in shorts and flip-flops will find no protection against “critters, snakes and scorpions.”

“It will get cold at night. They’re not going to find what they’re looking for, and they are going to get angry,” Arnu said.

Some cellphones didn’t work Thursday in Rachel, and officials expect what service there was to eventually be overwhelmed.

The Federal Aviation Administration closed nearby airspace, although Air Force jets could be heard in the sun-drenched skies, along with an occasional sonic boom.

George Harris, owner of the Alien Research Center souvenir store in Hiko, said Friday and Saturday’s “Area 51 Basecamp” will focus on music, movies and talks about extraterrestrial lore.

Electronic dance music DJ and recording artist Paul Oakenfold is Friday’s headliner in Hiko.

The event also promises food trucks and vendors, trash and electric service, and a robust security and medical staff.

Harris said he was prepared for as many as 15,000 people and expected they would appreciate taking selfies with a replica of the Area 51 back gate without having to travel several miles to the real thing.

Sharon Wehrly, sheriff in adjacent Nye County, home to a conspicuously green establishment called the Area 51 Alien Center, said messages discouraging Earthlings from trying to find extraterrestrials in Amargosa Valley appeared to work.

She reported no arrests or incidents Thursday.

Her deputies last week arrested two Dutch tourists attracted by “Storm Area 51.” The men pleaded guilty to trespassing at a secure U.S. site nowhere near Area 51 and were sentenced to three days in jail after promising to pay nearly $2,300 each in fines.
 

…

More than 1,000 United Nations employees have called for the global body to reduce its carbon footprint, including through curbs on their own diplomatic perks like business-class flights and travel handouts, a letter obtained by Reuters showed.

The United Nations calls climate change the “defining issue of our time” and is hosting a New York summit on it next week.

But reformers within say in the letter addressed to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that it needs more radical change to get its own house in order.

“Our commitments need to be more ambitious and at least as concrete as those of the UN Member States and non-party stakeholders attending the UN Climate Action Summit,” said the letter, signed by more than 1,000 employees. It was organized by a group called Young UN, an internal network committed to ensuring the organization embodies the principles it stands for.

“As Greta Thunberg just sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and young people across the world continue to strike every Friday, let us look at our own impact and take bold steps to address the climate emergency,” the letter said, referring to the Swedish teenager who has inspired global climate strikes.

The United Nations, a 75-year-old institution employing 44,000 people in more than 60 countries, emitted 1.86 million tones of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2017, its own data show.

That equates to a carbon footprint larger than several of its member states, including Malta and Liberia, according to statistics from the Global Carbon Atlas for the same period.

Among 10 issues identified by Young UN are travel allowances, which the letter said needed to be cut or scrapped “in order to disincentivize travel by UN employees and UN meeting participants motivated by financial gain”.

Allowances, or per diem as they are known internally, are intended to cover travel costs including food and accommodation, and can exceed $400 a day for some locations such as New York, according to the International Civil Service Commission website.

The letter also suggested that staff should be rewarded for downgrading from business class, where a spacious seat generates several times the emissions of an economy class ticket.

Travel accounts for nearly half the United Nations’ emissions, its data show. Last year, under pressure from member states, the head of the U.N. Environment Program, Erik Solheim, stepped down amid criticism of his travels. Other reforms recommended in the letter include a complete divestment of the more than $60 billion U.N. pension fund from fossil fuels and creating offices run entirely on renewable energy. Young UN did not respond to requests for comment.

‘UN needs to lead’

Guterres is seeking to combat climate change from within in order to boost sustainability. A spokesman for his office was not immediately available for comment.

The letter welcomed Guterres’ internal strategy but said it “misses the urgency of the crisis we are facing” The United Nations has also launched a “Greening the Blue” initiative which measures the U.N. system’s greenhouse gas emissions, waste disposal, fresh-water use, and environmental management. According to its latest report, 43 of its entities or just over a third were carbon-neutral in 2017.

But the letter raises doubts about U.N. offset mechanisms, a method that works through purchases of U.N.-certified carbon credits from approved green projects and is widely used by organizations and businesses to tout their green credentials.

This echoes criticism from NGOs about the contribution of offsets to sustainable development.

Isabella Marras, Sustainable UN Coordinator, whose team produces the Greening the Blue report and was a signatory to the letter, said she saw scope for the United Nations to give even greater attention to environmental considerations.

“What we are missing is the aggressive integration of environmental issues into our programs like the UN has done for women,” she told Reuters. But she stressed some of the pragmatic challenges in regions where environmental standards are less strong than in Western countries.

Marie-Claire Graf, a 23-year-old Swiss climate activist visiting the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, said the number of U.N. vehicles in vast car parks overlooking the lake and mountains was surprising.

“The UN is doing some amazing things on environment but I am shocked by so many SUVs and the amount of travel,” said Graf, who was selected along with 100 young climate leaders to attend the U.N. Youth Climate Summit on 21 September.

“The UN needs to lead on this transformation.”

…

A team of French diggers has restored three Sudanese artifacts, including a 3,500-year-old wall relief, and it handed them to the African country’s national museum Thursday, a French archaeologist said. 
 
The three artifacts were discovered at separate archaeological sites in recent years in Sudan and were restored by a French team of experts. 
 
The items are a wall painting of an ancient Kandaka Nubian queen, a Meroite stela and a wall relief inscription believed to be almost 3,500 years old. 

“The idea is to give back to the museum the most important archaeological pieces discovered and restored,” said Marc Maillot, director of the French archaeological unit deployed in Sudan. 
 
The wall painting was found at El-Hassa site, the stela at Sedeinga and the relief at the temple of Soleb, where French diggers along with Sudanese counterparts have conducted extensive archaeological work for several years. 
 
On Thursday, the three artifacts were handed over to the Sudan National Museum to mark the completion of 50 years of French archaeologists’ presence in the country. 
 
For decades, international archaeologists have worked extensively in Sudan, proving that the northeast African nation has its own extensive wealth of ancient relics and was not merely a satellite of neighboring Egypt. 
 
Archaeologists are convinced that many kingdoms still lie buried, waiting to be discovered. 

…

Any attack on Iran by the U.S. or Saudi Arabia will spark an “all-out war,” Tehran’s top diplomat warned Thursday, raising the stakes as Washington and Riyadh weigh a response to a drone-and-missile strike on the kingdom’s oil industry that shook global energy markets.

The comments by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif represented the starkest warning yet by Iran in a long summer of mysterious attacks and incidents following the collapse of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the accord.

They appeared to be aimed directly at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who while on a trip to the region earlier referred to Saturday’s attack in Saudi Arabia as an “act of war.”

Pompeo Visits Saudi Arabia, Meets With Crown Prince in Wake of Oil Facility Attacks

‘Iran is behind the attacks and not Yemen’s Houthis,’ US secretary of state says

Along with the sharp language, however, there also were signals from both sides of wanting to avoid a confrontation.

In his comments, Zarif sought to expose current strains between the Americans and the Saudis under Trump, who long has criticized U.S. wars in the Middle East.

Trump’s close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been challenged by opponents following the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and the kingdom’s long, bloody war in Yemen. That country’s Houthi rebels claimed the oil field attack Saturday in Saudi Arabia, although the U.S. alleges Iran carried it out.

“I think it is important for the Saudi government to understand what they’re what they’re trying to achieve. Do they want to fight Iran until the last American soldier? Is that their aim?” Zarif asked in a CNN interview. “They can be assured that this won’t be the case … because Iran will defend itself.”

Pompeo: ‘Important Information’ for Trump After Mideast Talks on Saudi Oil Field Attacks

US top diplomat says ‘enormous consensus’ that Iran launched last weekend’s missile and drone attacks

Asked by the broadcaster what would be the consequence of a U.S. or Saudi strike, Zarif bluntly said: “An all-out war.”

“I’m making a very serious statement that we don’t want war. We don’t want to engage in a military confrontation,” he said. “We believe that a military confrontation based on deception is awful.”

Zarif added: “We’ll have a lot of casualties, but we won’t blink to defend our territory.”

Pompeo, who was in the United Arab Emirates, dismissed Zarif’s remarks, saying: “I was here (doing) active diplomacy while the foreign minister of Iran is threatening all-out war to fight to the last American.”

Pompeo said he hoped Iran would choose a path toward peace, but he remained doubtful. He described “an enormous consensus in the region” that Iran carried out the attack.

“There are still those today who think, ‘Boy, if we just give Iran just a little bit more money they’ll become a peaceful nation,’” he said. “We can see that that does not work.”

Pompeo met Abu Dhabi’s powerful crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The UAE is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and joined the kingdom in its war with the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The 4-year-old war has killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed much of the country, with millions more driven from their homes and thrown into near starvation.

Saudi King Calls for International Response to Oil Facility Attacks

King Salman speaks of need to ‘clearly confront’ perpetrators of attack that knocked out half of the kingdom’s oil production

On Wednesday, Pompeo met with the Saudi crown prince in Jiddah about the attack on the kingdom’s crucial oil processing facility and oil field, which cut its oil production in half.

While Pompeo struck a hard line, Trump has been noncommittal on whether he would order U.S. military retaliation. He said separately Wednesday that he is moving to increase financial sanctions on Tehran over the attack, without elaborating. Iran already is subject to a crushing American sanctions program targeting its crucial oil industry.

The UAE said it had joined a U.S.-led coalition to protect waterways across the Middle East after the attack in Saudi Arabia.

The state-run WAM news agency quoted Salem al-Zaabi of the Emirati Foreign Ministry as saying the UAE joined the coalition to “ensure global energy security and the continued flow of energy supplies to the global economy.”

Saudi Arabia joined the coalition on Wednesday. Australia, Bahrain and the United Kingdom also are taking part.

The U.S. formed the coalition after attacks on oil tankers that Washington blamed on Tehran, as well as Iran’s seizure of tankers in the region. Iran denies being behind the tanker explosions, although the attacks came after Tehran threatened to stop oil exports from the Persian Gulf.

Iraq said it would not join the coalition. The government in Baghdad, which is allied with both Iran and the U.S., has tried to keep a neutral stance amid the tensions.

At a news conference Wednesday, the Saudis displayed broken and burned drones and pieces of a cruise missile that military spokesman Col. Turki Al-Malki identified as Iranian weapons collected after the attack. He also played surveillance video that he said showed a drone coming in from the north. Yemen is to the south of Saudi Arabia.

Eighteen drones and seven cruise missiles were launched in the assault, Al-Malki said, with three missiles failing to hit their targets. He said the cruise missiles had a range of 700 kilometers (435 miles), meaning they could not have been fired from inside Yemen. That opinion was shared by weapons experts who spoke to The Associated Press .

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian similarly was skeptical of the Houthi claim of responsibility.

“This is not very credible, relatively speaking,” he told CNews television. “But we sent our experts to have our own vision of things.”

Separately, a U.N. panel of experts on Yemen arrived in Saudi Arabia to investigate the attack, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

…

Chinese tech giant Huawei launched its latest high-end smartphone in Munich on Thursday, the first of its mobile devices not to carry popular Google apps because of U.S. sanctions.

“Today because of the U.S. ban … we cannot pre-install” Google’s applications, said Richard Yu, who heads Huawei’s consumer business group, as he unveiled the group’s latest Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro models.

But heading off fears that a phone without popular apps like Whatsapp, YouTube or Google Maps could not succeed, he stressed that the equivalent platform by the Chinese giant offered a choice of 45,000 apps through the Huawei App Gallery.

Yu added that the Chinese giant was investing US$1 billion (900,000 euros) into its Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) core software ecosystem, as he urged app developers to bring their creations to the system.

Huawei, targeted directly by the United States as part of a broader trade conflict with Beijing, was added to a “blacklist” in Washington in May.

Since then, it has been illegal for American firms to do business with the Chinese firm, suspected of espionage by President Donald Trump and his administration.

As a result, the new Mate will run on a freely available version of Android, the world’s most-used phone operating system that is owned by the search engine heavyweight.

OS wars

While Mate 30 owners will experience little difference in the use of the operating system, the lack of Google’s Play Store — which provides access to hundreds of thousands of third-party apps and games as well as films, books and music — could be unsettling.

Household-name services like WhatsApp, Instagram and Google Maps will be unavailable.

The tech press reports that this yawning gap in functionality has left some sellers reluctant to stock the new phones, fearing a wave of rapid-fire returns from dissatisfied customers.

With the trade conflict with the U.S. unlikely to be resolved imminently, Huawei has little choice but to ramp up the development of its own “ecosystem” of devices, apps and services that would bind users more closely to it.

The world’s second-largest smartphone maker after Samsung, Huawei earlier this month presented its proprietary operating system HarmonyOS, a potential replacement for Android.

The Mate 30 will not yet have HarmonyOS installed.

But it could make for a new round in the decades-old “OS wars” between Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS, then Android versus Apple’s iOS.

European role

Meanwhile, Eric Xu, current holder of Huawei’s rotating chief executive chair, has urged Europe to foster an alternative to Google and Apple.

That could provide an opening for Huawei to build up Europe’s market of 500 million well-off consumers as a stronghold against American rivals.

“If Europe had its own ecosystem for smart devices, Huawei would use it … that would resolve the problem of European digital dependency” on the United States, Xu told German business daily Handelsblatt.

He added that his company would be prepared to invest in developing such joint European-Chinese projects.

…

The border wall literally became President Donald Trump’s signature project Wednesday.

Trump used a permanent marker to sign a new portion of the rust-colored metal barrier, reinforced with concrete and rebar, rising as high as 9 meters at Otay Mesa, a suburb of San Diego that separates California from Tijuana, Mexico.

“It is really virtually impenetrable,” Trump declared.

“There are thousands of people over there that were trying to get in” before this portion of the barricade went up, said Trump, who described the work he inspected Wednesday afternoon as “pretty amazing.”

“The wall does not answer the crisis at the border today,” said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the New York office of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “The situation at the border today is not people sneaking in. The crisis at the border today is asylum-seekers showing up and voluntarily turning themselves in to the Border Patrol.”

Limiting arrivals

Chishti told VOA that the near-total ban on asylum implemented via administrative regulation, along with the “Migrant Protection Protocol” and metering of asylum claims at ports of entry, will have far more to do with limiting arrivals than will the wall.

The president told reporters that up to 800 kilometers of border wall, about 1 meter thick, was under construction, but that it was premature to end the national emergency he declared in response to attempts by migrants to illegally cross the border from Mexico.

“I think really the success is going to be when the wall’s built, when human traffickers can’t come through,” Trump said. “This is certainly a tremendous national emergency.”

U.S. Army troops stationed at the border would eventually be drawn down and replaced with Border Patrol agents as the wall goes up, the president said.

Trump, asked about his repeated vow that Mexico would pay for the wall, said Wednesday at Otay Mesa that “they’re paying for 27,000 soldiers, as you know,” on the Mexican side, thwarting border-crossing.

“If I took 5% tariff for six months, that pays for the wall,” Trump said of products from Mexico, quickly adding he did not want to do that because of the current cooperation from the Mexican government.

“Now they’re doing yeoman’s work,” Trump said of Mexico.

Effectiveness

During much of his time inspecting a section of new wall, Trump touted its strength, claiming “20 mountain climbers” had tried to scale it to test its effectiveness.

“This is the one that was hardest to climb,” he said of the current type being built in the San Diego sector. “This wall can’t be climbed.”

“You can fry an egg on that wall,” he added, noting how it is designed to absorb heat, making it even more difficult to scale.

The border barrier being built is meant to deter even the most well-equipped smuggling operations, according to the president.

“If you think you’re going cut it with a blowtorch, that doesn’t work because you hit concrete,” Trump said, adding that cutting through concrete won’t work because it is reinforced with rebar.

When the president attempted to get an Army general to discuss high-technology security measures that are part of the wall, the officer demurred, saying it would be better not to mention those features.

Trump told reporters that three other countries were studying the new type of wall in hopes of building one of their own. He said he would disclose the names of those countries if he got their approval.

Trump also said the U.S. government would be stopping next week the “catch and release” of undocumented people trying to enter the country, something his administration has opposed from the beginning.

“To the extent they have released people who have been caught, it’s only been because of resource constraints either in the immigration court system or in the detention system,” MPI’s Chishti said. “There is no reason to believe that either of those factors has been addressed in the recent past, so while the administration can announce the end of catch and release, without an effective infrastructure to support it, it’s hard to see how it will be a different day on immigration enforcement.”

Praise for Mexico

Trump noted Tijuana is close by, saying “there are thousands of people over there that were trying to get in.” He then praised Mexico for its efforts that have significantly stemmed the flow of migrants at the border.

Analysts say the reductions in arrivals at the border are a combination of increased Mexican enforcement; the throttling of asylum avenues by the Trump administration with the creation of the Remain in Mexico plan and limits on who can apply for asylum; and seasonal declines in migration at this time of the year.

“This is the wall the agents asked for,” a Border Patrol agent told the president at the border Wednesday.

Trump, however, is not getting one wall option he desired, at least for now: a black coat of paint.

“We can paint it at a later date,” said the president, noting the cost savings can be applied to build even more wall.

…

Relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks who are suing Saudi Arabia for compensation obtained a coveted piece of information last week that they hope will strengthen their case.

The FBI disclosed the name of a Saudi official who is believed to have helped two of the 19 hijackers who carried out the terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

The name, included in a 2012 FBI report on suspected Saudi ties to the terrorists, was released to lawyers representing the families of nearly 3,000 victims of the worst act of terrorism on American soil.

The mystery man allegedly tasked two other Saudis living in the Los Angeles area before the 9/11 attacks — Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy — to aid Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Al-Bayoumi allegedly did such things as finding the two terrorists an apartment, co-signing their lease and paying their first month’s rent.

Fourteen other hijackers forced two other airliners to crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and a third into a field in Pennsylvania.

“This has been a very important name to our case because it will now tie the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and their officials in an official capacity directing the actions of 9/11,” said Terry Strada, national chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, whose husband died in the attack on the North Tower.

Most hijackers were Saudis

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, which has raised persistent suspicion about Saudi involvement. But Saudi Arabia has long denied any connection, and over the years it has waged a vociferous campaign to forestall the litigation and disclosure of damaging information.

Neither the FBI nor the CIA could conclusively say after the attacks that the Saudi government was responsible.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers for the families declined to discuss the name, but they said the disclosure connected the dots between al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy and the hijackers.

“Our mission here is to uncover facts about what Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy did and who they were working with,” said Sean Carter, co-chair of the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the case.

Turning point

The disclosure marks a turning point in the case, as the Justice Department acquiesced to demands for disclosure, despite the Trump administration’s close relations with Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

The litigation grew out of hundreds of lawsuits filed against Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The lawsuits have since been consolidated into one massive case. It seeks billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia for supporting al-Qaida and facilitating the 9/11 attacks.

For nearly 13 years, the case languished in the courts, hampered by a 1976 law that largely protects foreign governments from being sued in U.S. courts.

Then came the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, the 2016 law that allows U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments over terrorist acts carried out on American soil.

That pumped fresh blood into the case. Last year, a federal judge in New York rejected Saudi Arabia’s latest motion to dismiss the lawsuit and ruled that the case could move forward. Attorneys for the 9/11 families were allowed to collect information from Saudi Arabia, the U.S. government and other parties about Saudi support for the hijackers, including the activities of al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy.

FBI report

Their names were mentioned in the 2012 FBI report, which referenced an unnamed third person who tasked them to help the two hijackers.

The FBI released the report in late 2016 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by a news site, but kept the name of the third person redacted. The 9/11 families’ lawyers pressed for its release, and Attorney General William Barr consented, while invoking “state secrets” privileges over much of the rest of the report.

The FBI investigated al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy after 9/11 but released them without bringing any charges. The men are believed to be living in Saudi Arabia.

The families’ lawyers say they want to talk to them.

“We intend to depose all witnesses whose attendance we can compel, whether by U.S. rules, treaties or international law and norms,” Carter said.

…

South Sudan had a vibrant print media when it separated from Sudan in 2011, with 34 newspapers and six magazines in circulation. 
 
Today, there are only five newspapers left. Most publishers trying to establish a foothold do not last long enough to celebrate their first anniversary. 
 
Several newspaper owners blame the country’s economic crisis for their downfall. Charles Rehan, founder of the defunct Juba Post, told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus that his paper failed to survive more than two years because of a lack of materials needed to publish the paper. 
 
“We printed newspapers in Khartoum, and when South Sudan separated from Khartoum, we went to print in Uganda. When you bring newspapers from Uganda, the newspaper will come late,” and that affected the paper’s ability to grow, Rehan said. 
 
Future of print 
 
A lack of newspapers could hurt South Sudan’s future, Rehad said. Journalists serve an important function, he said, when they ask questions, investigate wrongdoing and force government officials to address the problems facing the country. 
 
“If there is something going wrong, the journalists will say, ‘This is wrong, this is the right direction.’ But without newspapers, the country cannot develop at all,” he said. 
 
Thomas Manase, CEO of Brisker magazine, said South Sudan has a poor reading culture that limits the growth of print media. 
 
“In South Sudan, young people don’t like to pick up stuff to read and be informed,” Manase told VOA. In addition, he said, businesses don’t value advertising. “This has really affected our sales.” 
 
Brisker stopped printing after publishing just four issues. It can now be found online.  

Irene Ayaa, media development officer at the Association for Media Development in South Sudan (AMDISS), said many reporters and editors have abandoned journalism for better-paying careers with nongovernmental organizations. 
 
“The salaries that they are getting are not motivating them to the standard that they have in terms of training,” Ayaa told South Sudan in Focus. 
 
A survey conducted by AMDISS found that the highest-paid journalists in South Sudan’s print media earned roughly 40,000 South Sudanese pounds a month, the equivalent of $250, while the lowest-paid journalists received about 10,000 South Sudanese pounds a month, or $60. 
 
She said since the pay is so low, it’s not uncommon for journalists to accept money for transportation or lunch, which she believes can affect a journalist’s objectivity. 
 
Threats against media 
 
She also said that threats, harassment and intimidation of the media by security operatives have forced some journalists to leave their work and seek safety in neighboring countries. 
 
But overall, it’s South Sudan’s ailing, post-civil war economy that’s the culprit. Alison Ismail, chief executive officer of the Star Tribune, said the hard economic times in South Sudan forced him to close his newspaper last year. 
 
“Nothing will make me to jeopardize or put myself at risk of doing business when I am going to lose every day,” Ismail declared, saying he would reopen his paper only after the economy picked up. 
 
Oliver Modi, head of the Union of Journalists in South Sudan, said he thought many print media operators in South Sudan failed because of bad management. 
 
He said most newspaper owners don’t do market research before launching their operations. “They don’t have a strategic plan and proper budget to sustain their newspapers,” Modi said. 
 
A handful of newspapers have stayed alive. Anna Nimiriano, editor in chief of the Juba Monitor, said her paper was surviving, but just barely. 
 
“What is helping us is advertisement and sales,” Nimiriano told South Sudan in Focus.  

“If we follow the footsteps of others, there will be no print media in South Sudan,” she added. 
 
Still, Nimiriano is hopeful. “If there is peace, everything will be stable,” she told VOA. 

…

Nigeria’s frenetic commercial capital, Lagos, is plunged into darkness several times a day.

Then its generators roar, and the lights flood back on.

Nigeria is one of the world’s largest economies where businesses rely so heavily on diesel-powered generators.

More than 70% of its firms own or share the units, while government data shows generators provide at least 14 gigawatts of power annually, dwarfing the 4 gigawatts supplied on average by the country’s electricity grid.

The machines guzzle cash and spew pollution, but they are reliable in a nation where nearly 80 million people – some 40% of the population – have no access to grid power. Now diesel costs could spike globally, and many businesses are not prepared.

Diesel prices are expected to surge as United Nations rules aimed at cleaning up international shipping come into effect on Jan. 1, with many ships expected to burn distillates instead of dirtier fuel oil.

Slowing economic growth and nascent trade wars could blunt a price spike, and as the shipping industry adapts to the rules, vessels will likely consume less diesel. But in the short term their impact could be profound.

Estimates vary widely, but observers warn that prices could surge by nearly 20%.

Higher costs for operating generators that power the machinery, computer servers and mobile phone towers that run Nigeria’s economy could impair growth in gross domestic product, already limping along at 1.92% at a time inflation is at 11%.

With the population growing at 2.6% each year, people are getting poorer.

“In an environment like this, where discretionary spending is very limited, this could have a big impact,” said Temi Popoola, West Africa chief executive for investment bank Renaissance Capital.

A 20% price rise could shave 0.2% off GDP growth, he said.

Generators Everywhere

Nigeria and German engineering group Siemens agreed in July to nearly triple the country’s “reliable” power supply to 11,000 megawatts by 2023. But previous such plans have failed.

While many Nigerian household and small business generators are powered by price-capped gasoline, the big generators for larger firms, apartment complexes and more substantial homes can only run on diesel.

“Businesses may struggle to survive, or in the best case scenario, would at least downsize,” said Tunde Leye, a Lagos-based analyst with SBM Intelligence. Diesel is the second or third biggest cost for many Nigerian firms, he said.

The oil industry, the Nigerian economy’s biggest driver, would not take a big hit as it does not rely on Nigerian consumers being willing to absorb extra costs it has to pass on.

As fuel producers in their own right, its firms can also recoup costs more easily.

But other heavyweight industries would feel pain. Bank branches rely on generators, with diesel often accounting for 20-30% of banks’ operating expenses, according to Popoola.

Telecommunications companies need them to run their mobile phone towers across the country. Telecoms giant MTN told local media in 2015 that it spends 8 billion naira ($26 million) annually on diesel.

Even bakeries need diesel. At Rehoboth Chops & Confectioneries Ltd., a bakery in the Ogba district of Lagos, giant diesel-powered ovens bake hundreds of loaves of bread. The factory runs 24 hours a day, six-and-a-half days a week.

The lights, mixers and fans that clear the heat are powered by two large diesel generators outside. The ovens run directly on diesel, so they never cut out.

Chief operating officer Abayomi Awe said they use cheaper grid power when they can but rely on generators for around 20 hours per day. Grid power can be down for days.

“It becomes difficult for us to expand if the price of diesel goes up,” he said as bakers scrambled to pull finished loaves from steaming ovens. “It might result in some companies, some bakeries like ours, shutting down.”

In Crisis, An Opportunity

Many businesses are already searching for solutions. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce wants electricity prices revised upwards so the grid can attract investment – a politically risky move domestically.

It has also lobbied the government to remove tariffs and taxes on imported solar panels, which stand at 10%.

Unity Bank and the Bank of Agriculture have already signed deals with solar firm Daystar Power, while mobile phone tower firm IHS Towers is trying to power more sites using solar panels.

Solar power provider Starsight Power Utility Ltd said it is working with 70% of Nigerian banks, but that cheap diesel has been one of the biggest hurdles for the development of solar.

“I think an increase in the diesel price would be most welcome for our business,” chief executive Tony Carr said.

“There is no market penetration because diesel is so cheap.”

($1 = 305.9000 naira)

…

A judge cleared the way Tuesday for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to stay in business while it pursues bankruptcy protection and settlement of more than 2,600 lawsuits filed against it in a reckoning over the opioid crisis.

At the first court hearing since the Chapter 11 filing late Sunday, Purdue lawyers secured permission for the multibillion-dollar company based in Stamford, Connecticut, to maintain business as usual — paying employees and vendors, supplying pills to distributors, and keeping current on taxes and insurance.

The continued viability of Purdue is a key component of the company’s settlement offer, which could be worth up to $12 billion over time.

Under the proposal, backed by about half the states, the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, would turn the company, its assets and more than $1 billion in cash reserves over to a trust controlled by the very entities suing it.

The Sacklers have also agreed to pay a minimum of $3 billion of their own money to the settlement over seven years, as well as up to $1.5 billion more in proceeds from the planned sale of their non-U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

“This is a highly unusual case in that the debtors have pledged to turn over their business to the claimants,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said. “All of the claimants, in essence, have the same interest in maximizing the value of the business and avoiding immediate and irreparable harm.”

Joe Rice, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, estimated it could be more than a year before the bankruptcy and settlement are finalized.

“This is not a sprint. We’ve got a little bit of a marathon here,” he said after the three-hour hearing in New York City’s northern suburbs.

Purdue’s bankruptcy filing has effectively frozen all litigation against the company, which its lawyers said has been spending more than $250 million a year on legal and professional fees, but it has not stopped lawsuits against the Sacklers from moving forward.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing the Sacklers and opposes the proposed settlement, said last week that her office found that members of the family used Swiss and other accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves.

Purdue lawyer Marshall Huebner said he hoped states that are opposed to the proposed settlement could be persuaded to change their positions.

“In essence, America itself that stands to benefit or lose from the success or failure of these reorganization proceedings,” Huebner said.

None of the Sacklers attended the hearing, but the family name did come up several times as Purdue lawyers declared that they wouldn’t benefit from any steps taken Tuesday to keep the company in business.

As the bankruptcy unfolds, Purdue will continue to pay its approximately 700 employees under preexisting salary structures.

No member of the Sackler family is an employee and none will receive payments, Purdue lawyer Eli Vonnegut said.

Because of commitments Purdue made before the bankruptcy filing, the company will pay sign-on bonuses to five employees and retention bonuses to about 100 employees. The company agreed to hold off on seeking to continue other bonus plans, such as incentive bonuses.

Drain, the judge, also allowed the company to continue covering legal fees for current and former employees, which Vonnegut estimated wouldn’t exceed $1.5 million per month. The company stopped covering legal fees for members of the family on March 1, he said.

“We swear up and down that no payments will go to the Sacklers,” Vonnegut said.

Purdue lawyers argued that the sign-on and retention bonuses were vital to attracting and keeping top talent in a tumultuous time for the company. Covering employee legal fees is important to morale and sends a strong signal that the company backs the people who work for it, the lawyers said.

Bankruptcy trustee Paul Schwartzberg objected, saying the bonuses went “way beyond” normal compensation and were padding the pockets of employees who already make upward of $300,000 a year.

…

International Criminal Court judges said Tuesday that the court’s prosecutor can appeal against the rejection of her request to open an investigation into crimes linked to the long-running conflict in Afghanistan.

In April, a panel of judges rejected the proposed investigation, saying it would not be in the interests of justice because an investigation and prosecution were unlikely to be successful as those targeted — including the United States, Afghan authorities and the Taliban — are not expected to cooperate.

Seeking leave to appeal, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that reasoning ran contrary to the court’s goal of prosecuting grave crimes when national authorities are unwilling or unable to do so.

Bensouda must now file a detailed appeal that will be considered by judges, a process likely to take months.

Her November 2017 request to open an investigation angered Washington because as well as alleging that crimes were committed by the Taliban and Afghan security forces, Bensouda said she had information that members of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies were involved in crimes.

Her request said they allegedly “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-2004 period.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would revoke or deny visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Bensouda said that the Taliban and other insurgents killed more than 17,000 civilians since 2009.

…

The recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s crude oil hub at the Abqaiq and Khurais production facilities reveal that even a nation with a sophisticated military and a massive defense budget is still vulnerable to drone strikes.

The United States says satellite images and intelligence information show Iranian weapons were used in the aerial attacks that have shut down half of the kingdom’s oil production. Security experts say this latest incident sparks growing concern over the rapid evolution of technologies expanding drones’ offensive capabilities.  

Unidentified U.S. officials have been telling Western media that more than a dozen attacks targeted the installations from a west-northwest direction and not from the southwest as claimed by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who said they carried out the coordinated assault.   

In July, the Houthis, who are fighting a Saudi-led coalition war in Yemen, showed off their Iranian-made weapons long-range cruise missiles, dubbed “Al-Quds”, and explosives-laden “Sammad 3” drones that reportedly can hit targets as far as 1,500 kilometers away.

No previous attack, since the Yemen conflict began four years ago, however, has interrupted oil supplies. But the assaults have taken 5.7 million barrels of oil a day off the world’s markets.  They have also exposed the vulnerability of the pumping heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.

Defense analysts say the attacks have exposed structural problems in the kingdom’s defenses. They say the systems – albeit sophisticated – are designed to defend against traditional-style attacks – and not asymmetrical ones from the air by drones.

‘Unprecedented’

Middle East analyst Theodore Karasik at Gulf State Analytics told VOA the incident’s security and military implications are huge.

“The gravity is really off the charts. This is literally the oil industry’s 9/11. The targeting of these two facilities was 100-percent successful in delivery of a swarm of cruise missiles and drones. This is the ultimate scenario for taking out energy infrastructure by use of this type of weaponry. The significance of the event itself and the damage done is unprecedented. We are dealing with a rapid escalation in terms of what the responses and counter responses will be,” he said.

Saudi authorities say their initial investigation shows Iranian devices were used in the attacks, but the location origin of the attacks was not clear and they were “working to determine the launch point.” Washington has urged Saudi Arabia to decide what the appropriate response to the attacks should be. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry has called for an international investigation into the incident.

“Maybe the Saudis want to buy some time here before they respond in any kind of way,” said analyst Karasik. “It puts the Saudis in a tough spot about what they want to do next. But clearly there has to be a response from the West or else Iran will continue to run roughshod over everybody else.  The issue here is that Iran has shown all of its cards when it comes to missiles and drones. So, now in the response, if there is a military response it will target command and control nodes and the oil industry.  The thinking here is that any attack on Iran must set back Iran’s military ability 10 to 15 years.”

‘Game-changer’

Jeffrey Price, a security consultant and an aviation management professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, told VOA the drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia are a “game-changer,” and he sees the drone strike as the “next front of a new war.”

“That’s the challenge. When you have so much territory to protect and protect it all evenly and equally it’s very difficult to defend, particularly with missiles and drones. They move much faster, particularly the missiles can move much faster than the manned aircraft can. Both of them have a much lower radar signature than a standard aircraft would, so it’s really about stepping up all of those defenses to detect these new threats,” he said.

It used to be that only governments had air forces, but drones have democratized violence from the sky,” says another analyst, Bernard Hudson, a fellow on Persian Gulf security issues at Harvard University, quoted in the Washington Post newspaper.

He says the Houthis, with Iran’s help and advice, have perfected the practice to a level no one else has done.  Jeffrey Price expects a change in how insurgents invest in weapons.

“What drones have done is really handed everybody the capability of a standoff strike autonomously and anonymously without any sort of accountability.  It’s going to be much harder to find out who is operating these,” Price said.

Price and others worry the current offensive capability of drones is many times ahead of the defensive capabilities that governments are now trying to develop.

…

It may be possible to help tackle climate change while still munching on the occasional bacon sandwich or slurping a few oysters, a new study suggested on Tuesday.

Scientists found that diets in which meat, fish or dairy products were consumed only once a day would leave less of a footprint on climate change and water supplies than a vegetarian diet including milk and eggs, in 95% of countries they analysed.

That is partly because raising dairy cows for milk, butter and cheese requires large amounts of energy and land, as well as fertilisers and pesticides to grow fodder, emitting greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet, the study said.

Diets that contain insects, small fish and molluscs, meanwhile, have as similarly small an environmental impact as plant-based vegan diets but are generally more nutritious, said researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

They calculated greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater use for nine different diets – ranging from one meatless day a week and no red meat, to pescatarian and vegan – in 140 countries.

Many climate activists and scientists have called for a shift to plant-based diets to keep climate change in check and reduce deforestation, since producing red meat requires a lot of land for grazing and growing feed.

Agriculture, forestry and other land use activities accounted for nearly a quarter of man-made greenhouse gas emissions from 2007-2016, the U.N. climate science panel said in a flagship report last month.

But there is no one-size-fits-all solution, said Keeve Nachman, assistant professor at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led the study on diets.

US Experts Reviewing Low-Carb, Other Diets for Guidelines

Some followers of low-carb eating are hoping for a nod of approval in the upcoming U.S. dietary guidelines that advise Americans on what to eat.

It may seem minor, but backers say low-carb’s inclusion could influence nutrition advice that doctors give and help shape government food programs like school lunches.
 
Current guidelines cite the Mediterranean, vegetarian and other diets as examples of healthy eating.
 
U.S.

In low- and middle-income countries such as Indonesia, citizens on average need to eat more animal protein for adequate nutrition, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

That means diet-related heat-trapping emissions and water use in poorer countries would need to rise to reduce hunger and malnutrition, while high-income countries should reduce their consumption of meat, dairy and eggs, the study said.

On average, producing a serving of beef emits 316 times more greenhouse gases – including methane – than pulses, 115 times more than nuts, and 40 times more than soy, it added.

According to the World Resources Institute, a U.S.-based think-tank, diners in North and South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union make up only a quarter of the global population but ate more than half of the world’s meat from ruminants – such as cattle, sheep and goats – in 2010.

The latest study also found that producing a pound of beef in Paraguay contributes nearly 17 times more greenhouse gases than in Denmark, partly because in Latin America, it often involves cutting down forests to clear land for cattle grazing.

A typical diet in Niger has the highest water footprint, researchers noted, mainly due to millet production and crop residues that cannot be consumed.

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Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani escaped an attack on his campaign rally in Parwan province that killed 24 people and wounded more than 30 others Tuesday.

The president was about to address the rally when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his explosives near the military facility where the gathering was held. Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Interior, tweeted that no one inside the building was harmed and the rally continued after the incident.

Qasim Sangeen, the head of Parwan provincial hospital told VOA bodies of the dead and wounded had been taken to a provincial hospital.

This is the first security incident since July 28, the official beginning of the election campaign in Afghanistan.  

The Afghan Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack, warning people to stay away from rallies and election related gatherings, promising to carry out further attacks on election activity.

“If despite the warnings they go to such meetings and get harmed, it is their responsibility,” a message from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.

Afghans are expecting a higher level of violence in the run up to the September 28 election due to a breakdown in peace talks between the United States and Taliban earlier this month.

The insurgent group has intensified its regional outreach, taking a trip first to Moscow and more recently to Iran.

“The main purpose was to explain our position on the recent developments in the peace process and the agreement that has already been completed,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, referring to an agreement between the insurgents and a U.S. team led by Special Representative on Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.

Khalilzad had indicated that the two sides had agreed “in principle” to a deal and that he was waiting for his boss, President Donald Trump, to approve it. As both sides waited for a date to be announced for the formalization of the agreement, President Trump unexpectedly tweeted that the talks were over because of a Taliban attack that had killed a U.S. soldier.

The peace talks had continued after previous U.S. solider deaths in Afghanistan.

Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman, said the group had little idea why the U.S. backed out, saying that they contacted Khalilzad’s team after the Tweet.

“We wanted them to tell us why they finalized everything and agreed to sign it within a week, and quite unexpectedly backed out,” he said, adding that they did not receive an answer.

Still, he added that his side was willing to sign the already negotiated deal if the U.S. changed its mind but would continue to fight if the U.S. wanted to continue the war.  

He also confirmed that they were in touch with other countries as well, like China and European and Central Asian countries, and would visit them if invited

“Regional countries want to know what happened, and why?” he said.

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The nation’s worst measles epidemic in 27 years could be in its final stages as a week went by with no new reported cases.

“To get to zero is tremendously encouraging,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University expert on vaccination policy.

The current epidemic emerged about a year ago and took off earlier this year, with most of the cases reported in Orthodox Jewish communities in and around New York City. It started with travelers who had become infected overseas but spread quickly among unvaccinated people.

In the spring, 70 or more new cases were being reported every week. Not long ago, the nation that saw that many measles cases in a whole year.

So far this year, 1,241 cases have been confirmed — a number that didn’t rise last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday. The last time the CDC reported no new measles cases was 11 months ago.

New York Declares End of Worst Measles Outbreak in Three Decades

About 654 people, many in areas with large Orthodox Jewish communities, were infected since October last year but there have been no new cases since mid-July, the city government said

New York officials responded to the explosion of measles cases with a wave of measures, including education campaigns to counter misinformation about vaccine safety and fines for people who didn’t get vaccinated.

The epidemic has threatened the Unites States’ nearly 2-decade-old status as a nation that has eliminated measles. The status could come to an end if the disease spreads among Americans for a year or more. Other countries, including Greece and the United Kingdom, recently lost their elimination status amid a global surge in the disease.

Measles outbreaks are typically declared over when 42 days pass without a new infection. If no new cases crop up, the national outbreak would likely end on or about Sept. 30 — just before officials might have to decide on the U.S. elimination status.

The loss of elimination status in the U.S. could take the steam out of measles vaccination campaigns in other countries, said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert.

Health ministers around the world might say, “Why should we strive for elimination? We’ll just do the best we can to control measles, but we won’t go the extra several miles to get to zero,” Schaffner said.

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World leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday in New York, must make nuclear arms control a priority, according to a group of over 100 political, military and diplomatic figures. They have issued a statement warning that the risks of nuclear accident, misjudgment or miscalculation have not been higher since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.

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