Category: World

Civilians seek food, water as siege on Philippines continues (Photo Gallery)

Jim Gomez
Associated Press

MARAWI, Philippines — At an evacuation center outside the besieged Philippine city of Marawi on Wednesday, the results of a week of misery — a week of violence, uncertainty, long nights and promises of better tomorrows — were evident in the faces and hearts of the displaced.

About 130 people were killed in the violent attacks on Marawi, which erupted last Tuesday after soldiers launched a raid to capture militant leader Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the Islamic State group in Southeast Asia.

In the skirmish, the operation went awry and Hapilon got away. 

The unrest has boosted fears that the Islamic State group’s violent ideology is gaining a foothold in the country’s restive southern islands, where a Muslim separatist rebellion has raged for decades.

Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla said Hapilon is believed to still be in Marawi.

As the two sides battle it out, civilians have been caught in the crossfire.

Bilal Sulaiman, a 47-year-old carpenter, said his wife and three children evacuated to safety early in the conflict but he stayed behind to watch their house near the scene of the battle.

He said when the fighting became too fierce, with bombs exploding two blocks away from his house, he ran for his life to a nearby mountain, where he waited without food and water until he found safety in an army-controlled area.

“We did not eat for days,” Sulaiman told the AP at an evacuation center, where some people wept as rescue workers handed out biscuits and water. “It was really scary. There were explosions just two blocks from my house, but I couldn’t leave our house because somebody might burn it. I later left when the fighting got too intense.”

Frightened civilians crowded into schools, basketball courts and sports centers where villagers slept on floors and in grandstands. The villagers relied on government food and water rations as well as donations.

Amid the squalor and lack of privacy, Naima Dimangadap, a single mother of five, wept.

“Our homes got burned because of the bombings,” Dimangadap said. “We failed to save anything, including our cooking pots. It’s so difficult to live in this evacuation camp.”

On Wednesday, Philippine authorities said troops had cleared almost 90 percent of Marawi city.

Padilla said 960 civilians had been rescued and an estimated 1,000 residents remained trapped in the city. The dead include 89 militants, 19 civilians and 21 government forces.

Eight other militants surrendered and provided “very, very valuable intelligence” during questioning, Padilla said.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who declared martial law on Mindanao island, has approved the creation of a “peace corridor” to hasten the rescue of civilians and delivery of humanitarian aid for displaced people. Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said the corridor will be implemented by the government and the main separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has signed a peace agreement in exchange for Muslim autonomy in Mindanao, the southern third of the Philippines.

[aesop_gallery id=”5292″ revealfx=”off”]

New North Korean nukes upset “balance of terror”

ERIC TALMADGE
Associated Press

PYONGYANG, North Korea ­— Early one winter morning, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stood at an observation post overlooking a valley of rice paddies near the Chinese border. Minutes later, four projectiles plunged into the sea off the Japanese coast.

North Korea had just run its first simulation of a nuclear attack on a U.S. military base.

North Korea, which is testing ballistic missiles faster than ever, is rapidly becoming a better equipped and more formidable adversary. Some experts believe the country might be able to build missiles advanced enough to reach the United States in two to three years.

And that poses a game-changing problem for the U.S., which is also escalating. It successfully shot down a target ICBM launched from a Pacific island with a California-based interceptor missile on Tuesday, in a simulation a North Korean attack.

If North Korea launches a preemptive nuclear strike on an American military base in Asia, would the U.S. recoil and retreat? Would it strike back and risk losing Washington in a second wave of attacks?

In the March launch, North Korea sent four Scuds into the ocean 185 to 220 miles off Japan’s coast. State media called it a drill of troops who will “strike the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan in a contingency.” They said Kim was accompanied at the launch by nuclear weapons specialists.

Analyst Jeffrey Lewis and his colleagues at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, quickly realized the Scuds were on a trajectory that, with a southerly tweak, would have sent them raining onto Marine Corps Air Station, Iwakuni, on the southern tip of Japan’s main island.

Before the simulation, U.S. and South Korean forces were conducting joint military drills involving F-35 fighters based at Iwakuni, home to some 10,000 U.S. and Japanese personnel. The F-35s had reportedly trained for a “decapitation strike” on Kim Jong Un and his top lieutenants.

Kim, apparently, was practicing how to take them out first.

A submarine-launched “Pukguksong” missile is displayed in Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on April 15, 2017.

The Cold War concept of “mutually assured destruction” works when each side is convinced neither would survive. The North isn’t likely to reach that stalemate level. But if it succeeds in building nuclear-tipped ICBMs that can reach the U.S. mainland, the dynamic could be much more volatile.

On April 15, Kim Jong Un watched military units from his million-man armed forces march by and then applauded at the most varied array of missiles and transport vehicles the country has ever displayed.

The message of this year’s military parade was clear. North Korea is, or is nearly, able to strike preemptively against a regional target. It is preparing to withstand a retaliatory attack if it does, and it is building the arsenal it needs to then launch a second wave of strikes, this time at the U.S. mainland.

Its vision of a new “balance of terror” reached a crescendo as six submarine-launched missiles and their land-based cousin rumbled through the square.

Submarines are the ultimate stealth weapon, mobile and hard to find, and the land-launched missile version is also all about stealth. It uses solid fuel, which means it can be stored, hidden and moved to rough terrain for a quick launch. Kim Jong Un has ordered it be mass produced.

The big reveal of the parade came next: the unveiling of the “Hwasong 12.”

A month after the parade, it was sent about 1,240 miles in altitude and remained airborne for 30 minutes. The North’s media said it can carry a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead.”

Kim claimed it shows he has an “all-powerful means for retaliatory strike.”

That’s bravado. The missile’s estimated striking range is 2,800 miles, give or take.

But, put another way, it’s halfway to Chicago.

Trump wavers on global climate deal (Timeline)

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark global climate agreement. A White House official said Wednesday Trump and aides were looking for “caveats in the language” related to the exit and had not yet made a final decision.

Leaving the deal would fulfill a central campaign pledge but would anger international allies who spent years in difficult negotiations that produced an accord to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump faced considerable pressure to hold to the deal during visits with European leaders and Pope Francis on his recent trip abroad. The official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the decision before the official announcement, said the president and his aides were finalizing the details of a pullout.

Trump himself tweeted that that an announcement is forthcoming.

 

While Trump currently favors an exit, he has been known to change his thinking on major decisions and tends to seek counsel from a range of inside and outside advisers, many with differing agendas, until the last minute.

A second White House official, who was not authorized to discuss private conversations and also insisted on anonymity, said Trump had not made a final decision on how to proceed.
Trump’s top aides have been divided on the accord.

He was to meet later Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has favored remaining in the agreement. Chief strategist Steve Bannon supports an exit, as does Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. Senior adviser Jared Kushner generally thinks the deal is bad but would like to find a way to see if U.S. emissions targets can be changed.

Trump’s influential daughter Ivanka Trump’s preference is to stay, but she made it a priority to establish a review process so her father heard from all sides, said one of the officials.

A global pact

Nearly 200 nations, including the United States under President Barack Obama’s administration, agreed in 2015 to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world’s industrialized economies.

[timeline src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b0NMqKih5pB-FsjdDyyxcSIA494_wJGURR4NixAKuGM/pubhtml” width=”100%” height=”650″ font=”Default” lang=”en” version=”timeline3″ ]

A senior European Union official said the EU and China would reaffirm their commitment to the pact regardless of what Trump did, and would spell out, during talks Friday in Brussels, how they would meet their obligations. The official, who is involved in preparing the meeting between EU officials and China’s premier, was not authorized to speak publicly and discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because the meeting statement was not finalized.

News of Trump’s expected decision drew swift reaction from the United Nations. The organization’s main Twitter page quoted Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying, “Climate change is undeniable. Climate change is unstoppable. Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable.”

The Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune, called the expected move a “historic mistake [that] our grandchildren will look back on with stunned dismay at how a world leader could be so divorced from reality and morality.”

The House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, referred to it as “a stunning abdication of American leadership and a grave threat to our planet’s future.”

Trump claimed before taking office that climate change was a “hoax” created by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy, an assertion that stands in defiance of broad scientific consensus.

But Trump’s chief White House economic adviser, Gary Cohn, told reporters during the trip abroad that Trump’s views on climate change were “evolving” following the president’s discussions with European leaders.

Still, he said that the carbon levels agreed to by the prior administration “would be highly crippling to the U.S. economic growth,” and said that, if the president had to choose between limiting carbon and economic growth, “growing our economy is going to win.” Supporters of the deal say it’s not an either-or choice.

The green economy

Economists say the agreement would likely help create about as many jobs in renewable energy as it might cost in polluting industries. Should the United States pull out of the pact and seek to protect old-school jobs in coal and oil, it would risk losing the chance to lead the world in developing environmentally friendly technology — and generate the jobs that come with it. What’s more, over the haul, climate change itself threatens to impose huge costs on the economy.

“Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is hardly going to create jobs in the U.S.,” says Cary Coglianese, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and editor of the book “Does Regulation Kill Jobs?” ‘’While specific environmental regulations can sometimes lead to job losses, they also can and do lead to job gains — with the result being roughly a wash.”

The Paris agreement has drawn surprising support from major companies, from oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell to other corporate giants like Walmart and Apple.

“We need a framework like that to address the challenge of climate change, the risk of climate change,” Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon Mobil, said Wednesday.

Economists say that leaving the Paris deal and easing efforts to control emissions would hardly deliver a big payoff in jobs. A 2001 study by Eli Berman and Linda Bui, both then at Boston University, found “no evidence that local air quality regulation substantially reduced employment” when Los Angeles imposed stricter environmental restrictions.

“There’s no doubt that regulations have costs, but they are not the primary driver of employment,” says Michael Greenstone, an economist at the University of Chicago.

Polluting industries such as oil and coal are highly automated and are unlikely to embark on a major hiring spree even if the United States dropped out of the Paris agreement, experts say.

“The potential number of jobs you can create in fossil fuels is limited, while the potential number of jobs in green technologies —  in principle the sky is the limit,” says Bart van Ark, chief economist at the Conference Board, a business research group.

Already, the United States employs more people in solar energy (nearly 374,000) than in coal (a little over 160,000), according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Economists also warn that climate change could inflict a devastating impact on the global economy. Drought and water shortages could sap growth. Rising sea levels could swamp low-lying cities and farmland. A 2015 report by Stanford University’s Marshall Burke and the University of California, Berkeley’s Sol Hsiang and Ted Miguel found the climate change could slash 20 percent from global economic output by 2100 — more than five times previous estimates.

“Global climate change is a threat to the economy,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Anything that we do that works to curtail global warming is an economic plus.” Anything that delays the fight against climate change is “an economic negative.

The dealbreaker?

Word of Trump’s expected decision came a day after the president met with Pruitt. Like his boss, the EPA head has questioned the consensus of climate scientists that the Earth is warming and that man-made emissions are to blame.

Once in power, Trump and Pruitt have moved to delay or roll back federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions while pledging to revive long-struggling U.S. coal mines.

What is not yet clear is whether Trump plans to initiate a formal withdrawal from the Paris accord, which under the terms of the agreement could take three years, or exit the underlying U.N. climate change treaty on which the accord was based.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and 21 other Republican senators sent Trump a letter last week urging him to follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the climate accord. Most of the signatories are from states that depend on the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.

In Congress, 40 Democratic senators sent Trump a letter saying withdrawal would hurt America’s credibility and influence on the world stage.

Scientists say that the earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming even sooner if the U.S. retreats from its pledge because America contributes so much to rising temperatures.

The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon, following only China. Beijing, however, has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting its targets under the Paris accord, recently canceling construction of about 100 coal-fired power plants and investing billions in massive wind and solar projects.

As Russia investigation casts shadow, Trump looks to shake up his comms team

JILL COLVIN and CATHERINE LUCEY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A top communications aide is exiting the White House as embattled President Donald Trump considers a broader shake-up amid rising anxiety over investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russia.

Fresh off Trump’s first official trip abroad, White House communications director Michael Dubke announced his resignation Tuesday.

A wider overhaul is expected, aimed at more aggressively responding to allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and revelations of possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

Top aide resigns amid Trump criticism of comms effort

White House Communications Director Mike Dubke has resigned as President Donald Trump considers a major staff overhaul.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Dubke offered his resignation before the president’s recent foreign trip, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told The Associated Press, but offered to stay on during the trip. His last day has not yet been determined.

Trump aides had been hoping to get through the trip before making staffing decisions.

Dubke said in a statement it had been an honor to serve Trump and “my distinct pleasure to work side by side, day by day with the staff of the communications and press departments.”

However, Trump has privately and publicly pinned much of the blame for his administration’s woes on the communications effort.

“In terms of messaging, I would give myself a C or a C plus,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Channel early in his term. “In terms of achievement, I think I’d give myself an A. Because I think I’ve done great things, but I don’t think I have — I and my people, I don’t think we’ve explained it well enough to the American public.”

Who is Michael Dubke? 
Dubke is an entrepreneur and lobbyist who founded “the premier Republican media services firm” Crossroads Media and co-founded the PR firm Black Rock. In the past, he has worked to help elect Republican candidates like Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. He had only been in post as White House communications director since March.

Trump has long believed that he is his most effective spokesperson and has groused about supporters and aides not defending him vigorously enough. At the same time, he often undermines his staffers, contradicting their public statements and derailing their efforts to stay on topic with inflammatory tweets.

Press sec. denies broader reshuffle

White House press secretary Sean Spicer discussed ongoing possible connections to Jared Kushner and Russians as well as the president’s international trip Tuesday. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

White House spokesman Sean Spicer pushed back Tuesday on the idea that a broader reorganization was imminent, but he acknowledged the president is frustrated with news stories “that are absolutely false, that are not based in fact. That is troubling.”

Spicer said he thinks the president “is very pleased with his team,” but he added, “Ultimately the best messenger is the president himself. He’s always proven that.”

Talk of impending shake-ups has come and gone in the Trump White House before. Rumors have swirled for a few weeks that Spicer himself could be the next head on the Trump chopping block. 

Even if Spicer survives, numerous people close to the president and his team are expecting further changes this time.

[timeline src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nxRXo3Q65M7owjZEO3dGetw5RH2CkjJhxKt4EIR2e7Y/pubhtml” width=”100%” height=”650″ font=”Default” lang=”en” version=”timeline3″ ]

For example, Trump has entertained bringing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, more formally back into the fold. Both Lewandowski and Bossie visited the White House Monday night, according to two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private get-together.

But it remains unclear whether the president might envision them working inside the White House or in outside roles.

Bossie told “Fox & Friends” that the administration has reached out to him but hasn’t offered him a job.

“They have talked to many people, including me,” Bossie said. He later added: “It’s an ongoing conversation, and that’s a fair way to put it.”

Another person whose name has been raised as a possible addition to the president’s team is David Urban, a prominent Republican lobbyist, who also spent time advising Trump’s campaign and has remained a trusted adviser.

Kushner revelations pile on the pressure

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump watch during a visit by President Donald Trump to Yad Vashem to honor the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem earlier this month. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

While overseas, Trump’s longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, joined a still-forming legal team to help the president shoulder the intensifying investigations into Russian interference in the election and Trump associates’ potential involvement. More attorneys with deep experience in Washington investigations are expected to be added in the weeks ahead.

The latest revelations to emerge last week involved Trump’s son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner. Shortly after the election, Kushner is reported to have discussed setting up a secret communications channel with the Russian government to facilitate sensitive discussions about the conflict in Syria.

The intent was to connect Trump’s chief national security adviser at the time, Michael Flynn, with Russian military leaders, a person familiar with the discussions told the AP. The person wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss private policy deliberations and insisted on anonymity.

Flynn handed in his resignation in February, ousted on grounds that he had misled top White House officials about his contacts with Russian officials.

A senior administration official said Kushner was keeping his head down and focusing on work after the foreign trip. The official said Kushner was eager to share what he knows with Congress and other investigators. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss private thinking and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Associated Press writers Vivian Salama, Ken Thomas and Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report.

Bombings kill nearly 40 people across Baghdad

MURTADA FARAJ and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press

BAGHDAD — A massive bombing by the Islamic State group outside a popular ice cream parlor in central Baghdad and a rush-hour car bomb in another downtown area killed at least 31 people Tuesday, Iraqi officials said. Later in the day, bombings in and around the Iraqi capital killed seven more people.

The attacks come as IS militants are steadily losing territory to U.S.-backed Iraqi forces in the battle for Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. The Sunni extremists are increasingly turning to insurgency-style terror attacks to distract attention from their losses.

The nighttime attack outside the ice cream parlor in the bustling Karrada neighborhood killed 17 people and wounded 32, police and health officials said.

A closed-circuit camera captured the moment of the explosion, the video showing a busy downtown avenue with cars driving down the street when the blast strikes. A huge fireball engulfs a building, causing cars to scramble to get away. Other videos of the attack posted on social media show wounded and bloodied people crying for help on the sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor.

In the second attack, an explosives-laden car went off during rush hour near the state-run Public Pension Office in Baghdad’s busy Shawaka area, killing 14, a police officer said. At least 37 people were wounded in that attack, he added.

In separate online statements, IS claimed responsibility for the two attacks, saying its suicide bombers targeted gatherings of Shiites. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statements but they were posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists.

Later Tuesday, seven people died and 19 were wounded in four separate bombings in and around Baghdad, officials said. The attacks targeted commercial areas and a patrol of Sunni anti-IS tribal fighters, they said. No group immediately claimed those attacks.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The attacks came just days into the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast during daylight hours. After sundown, families break their fast and Baghdad’s restaurants and cafes quickly fill up with people staying up long into the night.

Reliving 60s-era East Germany helps dementia patients

KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Associated Press

BERLIN — Every weekday morning, white-haired women patiently line up before a door at a Dresden retirement home, step inside, and quickly step back nearly six decades into their past in Communist East Germany.

Most of the women‚ the youngest in their late 70s, are suffering from severe dementia, but the reminders from bygone days trigger memories and skills once thought lost, and produce surprising levels of happiness and comfort.

They park their walkers next to a Kaufhalle sign from the former East German grocery chain, put on their colorfully-patterned nylon aprons and start the day just like they did some 50 years ago. They chop up bell peppers, tomatoes and sausages for a popular Hungarian salad of their youth, wash dishes in an original 1960s metal sink and iron their laundry with old-fashioned pressing irons while happily humming along to schmaltzy East German tunes coming from a record player.

It’s hard to imagine that many were‚ not so long ago‚ bedridden and unable to eat or use the bathroom on their own, said Gunter Wolfram, the director of the Alexa Seniors’ Residence in the former East German city of Dresden.

“From the first day on, this room has been a big success story,” Wolfram said. “The people are very happy to recognize things from the old times. They immediately feel comfortable.”

The 49-year-old, who grew up in East Germany himself, said it was sheer coincidence that he found out that Communist kitsch and other memorabilia brought comfort to some of his 130 residents. The revelation came two years ago when he decided to decorate the home’s movie theater with a vintage flashy Troll scooter that was once very popular in East Germany.

“Instead of paying attention to the movie, these people got so excited about the motorcycle. They could all of a sudden remember how to start the ignition, and chatted with bright eyes about outings to the Baltic Sea on their own Trolls a long time ago. It was amazing,” Wolfram said.

Inspired by this, he set out to create an entire room in 1960s East German style.

He scoured the region’s flea markets and soon had an impressive collection of well-known Ossi‚ slang for anything and anybody from East Germany.

He gathered Spee and Fewa laundry detergents, yellowed magazines and the plastic pepper-and-salt shakers almost every family in East Germany owned. He also found a wooden wall unit that only the well-to-do could afford at the time. Together with his colleagues, he set up the 1960s room‚ and the home’s residents were so eager to spend time in a place that felt like home they started coming in droves.

Because of the room’s success, the waiting list for future residents is full, and directors from other retirement homes have called Wolfram, asking for advice.

Soon the demand for the daily trip back into the past had become so popular that Wolfram added a second room, this one designed in East German 1970s style‚ including psychedelic patterned curtains, tasseled floor lamps and a bright-orange rotary dial phone.

In West Germany, capitalism ruled and U.S.-style consumerism flourished only a few years after the end of World War II, but materialism was frowned upon in the Communist East and consumer goods were scarce. Since only a few brands were sold in the country’s Kaufhalle supermarkets, they have very high recognition value among former East Germans.

Some of the items also feature prominently in the 2003 Golden Globe-nominated German movie “Good-bye Lenin!” in which the son of a woman, who had slipped into a coma before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, desperately tries to re-create the old East Germany after she finally wakes up in a reunited Germany. The boy stacks the home with the famous Spreewald pickles and other products from the DDR‚ as the German Democratic Republic was called in German‚ trying to obliterate all signs of capitalism.

Herlind Megges, a gerontologist from Berlin’s Charite university hospital who has not been involved in the Alexa home project, said such memory therapy can help improve the capabilities and well-being of dementia patients.

“Memory therapy is often used because it activates exactly what’s still there and still working well,” Megges said. “It’s important for these people, who don’t feel well in this world because it doesn’t match their current memory, that there’s an environment where they feel comfortable.”

Objects from earlier phases of a patient’s life that are connected to comfortable feelings can lead to physical and cognitive improvement, Megges said. Often patients can still retrieve memories from their childhood and early adulthood even when their short-term memory fails.

Millions of elderly people around the world suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in which they lose the ability to respond to their environment. While there’s no cure yet, research institutions worldwide are trying to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset and improve the quality of life for dementia patients.

“We’re treating the symptoms, we currently cannot treat the causes of the disease,” Megges said.

For Gerda Noack, a 92-year-old retired hat maker born and raised in Dresden, the yesteryear room has been a blessing.

The elegant Noack, who always wears a carefully-knotted silk scarf around her neck, used to roam the hallways of the retirement home all day, Wolfram said. She was restless and frustrated, always looking for something she thought she had lost‚ until she started visiting the 1960s DDR room.

While standing in the room’s kitchen last week, she peacefully stirred the chopped-up peppers in an old frying pan, and later cleaned up dishes with an expression of contentment. Asked if she was happy, she nodded cheerfully, waiting for the nurses to dish up the Hungarian salad she helped to prepare.

“These old, routine activities in the company of other women in a familiar environment really make our residents much more at ease with themselves,” Wolfram said. “It’s almost become like a job for them, where they spend the entire week here with a whole new sense of purpose.”

[aesop_gallery id=”5163″ revealfx=”off”]

International Briefs: Mount Everest, Italy forges ahead on climate, Kenyan refugee camp, Goldman Sachs

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mount Everest climber recovery poses additional risks

KATHMANDU, Nepal — A Indian man wept as a helicopter landed in Kathmandu carrying the body of his brother, one of hundreds of climbers who have died while climbing Mount Everest.

The body had been left on the mountain for a year until last week, when a team of Sherpa climbers managed to recover it along with two others. But the high-risk expedition, financed with about $92,000 from the Indian state of West Bengal, has sparked heated debate in the mountaineering community about the morality of risking more lives to retrieve bodies from one of the most unforgiving places on Earth.

Many in the mountaineering community said that peace of mind came with unacceptable risk. Climbers who attempt to scale the world’s tallest mountain know they could die from any number of challenges, including low oxygen, frigid temperatures, strong winds and steep falls. Asking others to carry down the bodies‚ often much heavier because they are frozen and covered in ice‚ puts more people in danger, they said.

About 300 climbers have died since Everest was first conquered in 1953, and at least 100‚ maybe 200‚ corpses remain on the mountain. Most are hidden in deep crevasses or covered by snow and ice, but some are visible and have become macabre landmarks, earning nicknames for their plastic climbing boots, colorful parkas or final resting poses.

It is often Sherpas who are hired for retrieval expeditions. Climbers from the ethnic group that has lived for centuries around Everest have become an integral part of the Himalayan mountaineering world, and rely on the pay they can earn during the three-month climbing season to carry their families through the year.

Gentiloni backs Merkel: Europe must forge its own future

MILAN ­— Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni says he shares German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s sentiment that Europeans must take their future into their own hands.

During a press conference Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Gentiloni affirmed the importance of ties with the United States, but said: “We have fundamentally different goals which we cannot renounce, such as climate.”

Gentiloni was responding to a question about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s weekend remark that “we Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands.”

The comments underline the shift in the relationship between the United States and Europe following a NATO meeting in Brussels and Group of Seven summit in Sicily with President Donald Trump.

Trudeau is in Italy to promote trade and cultural ties.

UN refugee agency cites 5 for fraud, threats at Kenya camp

GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency says it has turned to Kenyan police for possible criminal prosecution of three staffers for allegedly carrying out threats, intimidation and fraud against refugees and other personnel at a camp in northwest Kenya.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Babar Baloch says the move follows an internal investigation launched after allegations of wrongdoing involving those three and two more staffers at the Kakuma refugee camp emerged between April 2016 and January 2017.

Baloch says staff members allegedly sought payments of $500 to $2,500 from refugees for various services that should be free, threatened other workers and intimidated camp occupants.

As the allegations emerged, UNHCR said Tuesday it suspended normal resettlements from Kakuma, a 25-year-old camp now housing 172,000 refugees, mostly from South Sudan.

Goldman under fire for buying Venezuela “hunger bonds”

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela opposition leaders are decrying Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s purchase of bonds from the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, who has been targeted by almost two months of protests.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the bank bought $2.8 billion in bonds from the state-run oil company PDVSA at a steeply discounted price.

Opposition leaders accused the bank of getting in bed with a deeply unpopular administration. Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led Congress, said Goldman Sachs is propping up a dictatorship and argued that the bond purchase violated the bank’s own code of conduct.

In a statement, Goldman Sachs acknowledged its purchase, but said the bonds were bought in the secondary market and not directly from the Venezuelan government.

“We are invested in PDVSA bonds because, like many in the asset management industry, we believe the situation in the country must improve over time,” the statement said.

Goldman Sachs did not say in its statement how much it paid for the bonds. The Journal, citing unidentified sources, said the bank paid $865 million for the $2.8 billion in bonds, roughly 31 cents on the dollar.

Obituary: former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega dead at 83

JUAN ZAMORANO and KATHIA MARTINEZ
Associated Press

PANAMA CITY — The former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a onetime U.S. ally who was ousted by an American invasion in 1989, died late Monday at age 83.

Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela said on Twitter that “the death of Manuel A. Noriega closes a chapter in our history.”

“His daughters and his relatives deserve to mourn in peace,” he added.

Noriega ruled with an iron fist, ordering the deaths of those who opposed him and maintaining a relationship with the United States which was, by turns, murky, close and conflictive.

After his downfall, Noriega served a 17-year drug sentence in the United States, then was sent to face charges in France. He spent all but the last few months of his final years in a Panamanian prison for the murder of political opponents by his regime in the 1980s.

He accused Washington of a conspiracy to keep him behind bars and attributed his legal troubles to his refusal to cooperate with a U.S. plan to topple Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s.

Ezra Angel, a lawyer for Noriega, said Tuesday there was no official word on what caused his death.

“We are asking for the family to be given space to say goodbye to their father in peace and tranquility,” Angel told The Associated Press.

In recent years Noriega suffered various ailments including high blood pressure and bronchitis.

In 2016, doctors detected the rapid growth of a benign brain tumor that had first been spotted four years earlier, and in January a court granted him house arrest to prepare for surgery on the tumor.

He is survived by his wife Felicidad and daughters Lorena, Thays and Sandra.

Following Noriega’s ouster Panama underwent huge changes, taking the Panama Canal from U.S. control in 1999, vastly expanding the waterway and enjoying a boom in tourism and real estate.

Today the Central American nation has little in common with the bombed-out neighborhoods where Noriega hid during the 1989 invasion, before being famously smoked out of his refuge at the Vatican Embassy by incessant, loud rock music blared by U.S. troops.

Known mockingly as “Pineapple Face” for his pockmarked complexion, Manuel Antonio Noriega was born poor in Panama City on Feb. 11, 1934, and was raised by foster parents.

He joined Panama’s Defense Forces in 1962 and steadily rose through the ranks, mainly through loyalty to his mentor, Gen. Omar Torrijos, who became Panama’s de facto leader after a 1968 coup.

As Torrijos’ intelligence chief, Noriega monitored political opponents and developed close ties with U.S. intelligence agencies guarding against possible threats to the canal. Two years after Torrijos died in a mysterious plane crash in 1981, Noriega became the head of the armed forces and Panama’s de facto ruler.

Noriega was considered a valued CIA asset and was paid millions of dollars for assistance to the U.S. throughout Latin America, including acting as a liaison to Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Noriega also helped the U.S. seize drugs at sea and track money laundering in Panama’s banks, and reported on guerrilla and terrorist activities.

Washington ultimately soured on him, especially after a top political opponent was killed in 1985 and Noriega appeared to join forces with Latin American drug traffickers. Foes in the Panamanian military attempted several coups but failed, and their leaders were summarily executed by firing squad.

The beginning of his downfall came in 1988 when federal grand juries in the Florida cities of Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega on drug-trafficking charges.

Initially he reacted with defiance at U.S. economic sanctions designed to drive him from power. He famously waved a machete at a rally while vowing not to leave, and in 1989 he nullified elections that observers say were handily won by the opposition.

U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion in December 1989, and Noriega was captured and taken to Miami. During the operation, 23 U.S. military personnel died and 320 were wounded, and the Pentagon estimated 200 Panamanian civilians and 314 soldiers were killed.

Prosecutors accused Noriega of helping Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel ship “tons and tons of a deadly white powder” to the United States.

The defense cited court documents describing him as the “CIA’s man in Panama” and argued that the indictment “smells all the way from here to Washington.”

Jurors convicted Noriega in April 1992 of eight of 10 charges. Under the judge’s instructions, they were told not to consider the political side of the case‚ including whether the U.S. had the right to invade Panama and bring Noriega to trial in the first place.

During his years at a minimum-security federal prison outside Miami, Noriega got special prisoner of war treatment and was allowed to wear his Panamanian military uniform and insignia when in court.

He lived in a bungalow apart from other inmates and had his own television and exercise equipment. He was said to be a TV news junkie and a voracious reader about politics and current events.

After completing his 17-year sentence in 2007, Noriega was extradited to France and received a seven-year sentence for money laundering.

But Panama wanted Noriega to return to face in-absentia convictions and two prison terms of 20 years for embezzlement, corruption and murder of opponents, including military commander Moises Giroldi, who led a failed rebellion on Oct. 3, 1989, and Hugo Spadafora, whose decapitated body was found in a mailbag on the Costa Rican border in 1985.

In mid-2011, France approved his extradition to Panama.

Despite amassing great wealth, Noriega worked hard to cultivate an image of a man of the people. He lived in a modest, two-story home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Panama City that stood in stark contrast with the opulent mansions customary among Latin American dictators.

“He would only say ‘hello’ very respectfully,” said German Sanchez, who lived next door for 16 years. “You may think what you like of Noriega, but we can’t say he was anything but respectful toward his neighbors.”

“The humble, the poor, the blacks, they are the utmost authority,” Noriega said in one speech.

While some resentment lingers over the U.S. invasion, Noriega has so few supporters in modern-day Panama that attempts to auction off his old home attracted no bidders, and the government decided to demolish the decaying building.

“He is not a figure with political possibilities,” University of Panama sociologist Raul Leis said in 2008. “Even though there’s a small sector that yearns for the Noriega era, it is not a representative figure in the country.”

Noriega broke a long silence in June 2015 when he made a statement from prison on Panamanian television to ask forgiveness of those harmed by his regime.

“I feel like as Christians we all have to forgive,” he said, reading from a handwritten statement. “The Panamanian people have already overcome this period of dictatorship.”

But for the most part Noriega stayed mum about elite military and civilian associates who thrived on the corruption that he helped instill — and which still plagues the Central American nation, a favored transshipment point for drugs and a haven for money laundering.

“He kept his mouth shut and died for the sins of others,” R.M. Koster, an American novelist and the biographer of Noriega, said in a 2014 interview. “Nobody else ever went to prison.”

Meanwhile, families of more than 100 who were killed or disappeared during his rule are still seeking justice.

Faced with North Korea threat, Pentagon prepares to test missile interceptor

ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press

WASHINGTON  — Hit or miss, the Pentagon’s attempt Tuesday to shoot down a mock warhead over the Pacific Ocean marks an important milestone for an oft-criticized defense program that could be what stands between an incoming North Korean strike and the United States.

The $244 million test will not confirm that the U.S. is capable of defending itself against an intercontinental ballistic missile fired by North Korea, even if it is successful.

Pyongyang also is understood to be moving closer to the capability of putting a nuclear warhead on such a missile and could have developed decoys sophisticated enough to trick an interceptor into missing the real warhead.

The most recent U.S. missile intercept test, in June 2014, was successful, but the longer track record is spotty. Since the system was declared ready for potential combat use in 2004, only four of nine intercept attempts have been successful.

“This is part of a continuous learning curve,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesperson.

“We improve and learn from each test, regardless of the outcome,” he said. “We look forward to understanding the results so we can continue to mature the system and stay ahead of the threat.”

The Pentagon is still incorporating engineering upgrades to its missile interceptor, which has yet to be fully tested in realistic conditions. A test failure Tuesday would raise new questions about the defensive system but would be unlikely to compel the Pentagon to abandon plans to expand it.

North Korea says its nuclear and missile programs are a defense against perceived U.S. military threats. Its accelerating missile development has complicated Pentagon calculations, most recently by incorporating solid-fuel technology into its rockets. The step would mean even less launch warning time for the U.S. Liquid fuel is less stable and rockets using it have to be fueled in the field, a process that takes longer and can be detected by satellites.

North Korea’s latest act Monday involved firing a short-range ballistic missile that landed in Japan’s maritime economic zone.

In Tuesday’s scheduled test, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency plans to launch an interceptor rocket from an underground silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The interceptor’s target would be an intercontinental ballistic missile fired from a test range on Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.

If all goes as planned, a 5-foot-long “kill vehicle” released from atop the interceptor will zero in on the ICBM-like target’s mock warhead outside Earth’s atmosphere and obliterate it by sheer force of impact. The “kill vehicle” carries no explosives, either in testing or in actual combat.

The planned target is a custom-made missile meant to simulate an ICBM, meaning it will fly faster than missiles used in previous intercept tests, according to Christopher Johnson, the Missile Defense Agency’s spokesperson. The target is not a mock-up of an actual North Korean ICBM, and details of its exact capabilities have not been made public.

The Pentagon likens the defensive tactic, officially known as the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, to hitting a bullet with a bullet. With congressional support, the Pentagon is increasing by the end of this year the number of deployed interceptors, based in California and Alaska, to 44 from the current total of 36.

While Tuesday’s test wasn’t designed with the expectation of an imminent North Korean missile threat, the military will closely look for progress toward the stated goal of being able to reliably shoot down a small number of ICBMs targeting the United States. The Pentagon is thirsting for a success story amid growing fears about North Korea’s escalating capability.

Laura Grego, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has criticized the missile defense program, calls the interceptor an “advanced prototype,” meaning it is not fully matured technologically even if it has been deployed and theoretically available for combat since 2004. A successful test Tuesday, she said, may demonstrate the Pentagon is on the right track with its latest technical fixes.

“Overall,” she wrote in an analysis prior to the test, the military “is not even close to demonstrating that the system works in a real-world setting.”

The interceptors are, in essence, the last line of U.S. defense against an attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The Pentagon has other elements of missile defense proven to be more reliable, although they are designed to work against medium-range or shorter-range ballistic missiles. These include the Patriot missile, which numerous countries have purchased from the U.S., and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, which the U.S. deployed this year to South Korea to defend against medium-range missiles from North Korea.
 

British election puts Brexit on the back burner

JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON — This was supposed to be the Brexit election.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union put the country’s prime minister, Theresa May, in office and is the reason the Conservative leader has called a national election after less than a year at the head of government.

But the divisive issue hasn’t dominated the campaign as many in Britain expected. Even before a bomb ripped through a concert arena in Manchester on May 22‚ halting the campaign for several days and bringing security issues to the fore, voters were showing a strong desire to move on.

“It’s not mentioned as much as I’d thought,” said Keir Starmer, Brexit spokesperson for the main opposition Labour Party, as he campaigned for re-election in a north London neighborhood. “This is much more about what sort of Britain do you want to live in, rather than Brexit.”

May became prime minister after the June 2016 vote for Britain to leave the EU toppled her predecessor, David Cameron. She called a snap parliamentary election for June 8‚ three years ahead of schedule‚ arguing that a bigger majority for her Conservative Party will strengthen Britain’s hand in Brexit negotiations with the other 27 EU nations.

May started the campaign buoyed by polls that gave her a double-digit lead over the Labour Party. But the gap has narrowed as voters’ focus has moved away from Brexit to domestic issues such as education, health care and the impact of government spending cuts.

Brexit slipped onto the back burner partly because of the Manchester tragedy, which killed 22 people, wounded nearly 120 and sent grief rippling across the country. But is also the result of Conservative missteps on social policies, including a platform launch that managed to alienate older voters‚ usually among the party’s staunchest supporters.

The Conservatives proposed changing the way retirees pay for long-term care‚ a policy the opposition quickly labeled the “dementia tax.” May was forced to make an embarrassing partial reversal, and continued to flounder when pressed about the issue Monday during a live TV interview.

May is determined to put Brexit center stage as the campaign enters its final week. She says she’s the only political leader tough enough to face the EU in divorce talks, depicting Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a die-hard socialist who lacks the backbone to stand up for Britain.

“I am clear about the instruction I have been given, clear about what needs to be done and ready to get on with the job on day one,” May said.

In contrast, she said Corbyn was unprepared and “will find himself alone and naked in the negotiating chamber of the European Union.”

The problem is, neither May nor her opponents can spell out what delivering Brexit really means.

Will there be free trade between Britain and the bloc? Will Britons continue to be able to live in the EU, and Europeans in the U.K.?  All this and more will have to be hammered out between Britain and the other EU nations in negotiations starting June 19.

“There really is only a limited amount you can say about Brexit,” said Victoria Honeyman, a lecturer in politics at the University of Leeds. “It’s a vague term. We don’t really have any meat on the bones. It’s simply a slogan at the moment.”

Analysts also point to voters’ Brexit fatigue. While almost half of voters — 48 percent — backed the “remain” side in last year’s referendum, many have since become resigned to leaving the EU.

“Fewer than a quarter of people actually think we should overturn the decision,” said Joe Twyman, head of political and social research at pollster YouGov.

That could explain the staunchly pro-EU Liberal Democrats’ failure to break through with voters, despite being the only party to call for a new Brexit referendum that could reverse the decision to leave. They have just nine seats in the 650-seat House of Commons but hope to win many more by scooping up support from pro-EU voters. So far there are few signs that that’s likely to happen.

Meanwhile, the euroskeptic U.K. Independence Party, which was instrumental in pushing Britain toward the EU exit, is in a meltdown. The party’s sole lawmaker, Douglas Carswell, quit and now serves as an independent. In local elections this month, UKIP lost 145 seats on local councils and won just one, as voters who supported Brexit returned to larger parties.

“We are the victims of our own success,” UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said.

That’s one reason May is so keen to keep Brexit at the forefront of voters’ minds.

But for many, the EU divorce is a nagging worry rather than a decisive factor in the 2017 election.

“It’s not a big issue, but according to a lot of people, Brexit is going to affect businesses,” said Jubel Ahmed, a Labour supporter in London. “Nothing has started yet and a lot of people are very concerned what’s going to happen in the future.”

Men investigating Ivanka Trump brand in China arrested, missing

ERIKA KINETZ
Associated Press

SHANGHAI — A man investigating working conditions at a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-brand shoes has been arrested and two others are missing, the arrested man’s wife and an advocacy group said Tuesday.

Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, said he lost contact with the arrested man, Hua Haifeng, and the other two men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, over the weekend. By Tuesday, after dozens of unanswered calls, he had concluded: “They must be held either by the factory or the police to be unreachable.”

China Labor Watch was planning to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and the possible misuse of student interns. It is unclear whether the undercover investigative methods used by the advocacy group are legal in China.

For 17 years, China Labor Watch has investigated working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China’s state security apparatus.

“Our plan was to investigate the factory to improve the labor situation,” Li said. “But now it has become more political.”Walt Disney Co. stopped working with a toy maker in Shenzhen last year after the group exposed labor violations.”

In the past, the worst thing Li feared was having investigators kicked out of a factory or face a short police detention.

That has changed.

The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China’s ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch.

Another difference is the target of China Labor Watch’s investigation: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.

White House spokesperson Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump’s brand, which declined to comment for this story.

Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter took on a White House role as presidential adviser, has said that the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to “comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions.”

AP has the full story.

Coldplay, Bieber to join Ariana Grande at Manchester charity show

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Justin Bieber, Coldplay and Katy Perry will join Ariana Grande at a charity concert in Manchester, England, Sunday.

Grande announced Tuesday that the “One Love Manchester” show will be held at Manchester’s Old Trafford cricket ground — just under two weeks after a bomber killed 22 people at her concert in the city.

Other performers will include Pharrell Williams, Miley Cyrus, Usher, ex-One Direction star Niall Horan and Take That. Concert proceeds will go to an emergency fund set up by the City of Manchester and the British Red Cross.

“We will not quit or operate in fear. We won’t let this divide us. We won’t let hate win,” Grande said in a statement. “Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder and to live more kindly and generously than we did before.”

“One Love Manchester” tickets go on sale Thursday.