Johnson says international peacekeeping force could monitor the proposed ceasefire World leaders seeking an enduring ceasefire in Libya have agreed at a summit to impose sanctions on those breaking an arms embargo and are considering whether to send a multinational force to the country. The conference in Berlin of 11 countries is aimed at bringing an end to the fighting between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli and led by its prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and the Libyan National Army
2020-01-19 22:01 | Libya | Guardian
WASHINGTON — Advocates for and against President Donald Trump gave no ground Sunday on his Senate impeachment trial, digging in on whether a crime is required for his conviction and removal and whether witnesses will be called.
But even as Trump’s defense team and the House prosecutors pressed their case on the television talk shows, mystery still surrounded the ground rules for the impeachment trial , only the third in American history, when it resumes Tuesday. Senate
2020-01-19 21:01 | clinton impeachment, defense, house prosecutors | TruthDig
Foreign powers agreed at a conference in Berlin on Sunday to bolster a tentative ceasefire and better enforce an existing arms embargo in Libya, where a 10-month offensive on the capital of Tripoli has left more than 150,000 people displaced.
Khalifa Haftar, the head of the self-styled Libyan National Army, and Fayez al-Serraj, the head of the UN-backed Government of National Accord, both attended the conference, alongside leading state figures from the United States, France, Italy, the
2020-01-19 21:01 | Politics, Libya, Libyan conflict | MadaMasr
YUMA, Ariz. — Adolfo Cardenas smiles faintly at the memory of traveling with his 14-year-old son from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border in only nine days, riding buses and paying a smuggler $6,000 to ensure passage through highway checkpoints. Father and son walked about 10 minutes in Arizona’s stifling June heat before surrendering to border agents. Instead of being released with paperwork to appear in immigration court in Dallas, where Cardenas hopes to live with a cousin, they were bused
2020-01-19 21:01 | asylum-seekers, donald trump, guatemala | TruthDig
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The National Archives said Saturday it made a mistake when it blurred images of anti-Trump signs used in an exhibit on women’s suffrage.
The independent agency is charged with preserving government and historical records and said it has always been committed to preserving its holdings “without alteration.”
But the archives said in a statement Saturday “we made a mistake.” The archives’ statement came one day after The Washington Post published an online report
2020-01-19 20:01 | 19th amendment, 2017 women's march, aclu | TruthDig
LONDON — The doctors are worried about the climate emergency. In recent days the UK’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has announced it’s halting investments in climate-changing fossil fuel and mining companies.
The RCP, the British doctors’ professional body dedicated to improving the practice of medicine, which has funds in global stock markets amounting to nearly £50 million (US$65m), says it will start divesting immediately from the worst-polluting oil and gas companies, which are mainly in the US.
2020-01-19 19:01 | black rock, climate change, divestment | TruthDig
Jon Queally, staff writer Not raving Marxists clamoring for state-run economy, evidence shows four in 10 Americans overall would rather live in country that provides "universal health care, tuition-free education, and a decent day's wage for a decent day's work."
2020-01-19 18:01 | News | CommonDreams
Highlighting a major contrast between the current top two candidates in the Democratic primary field in terms of how they have addressed the issue over their long legislative careers, the Bernie Sanders campaign hit back against a claim made by Joe Biden earlier in the day in which the former vice president said there was “doctored video” being circulated by the Sanders campaign that showed him agreeing with former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about the need to
2020-01-19 18:01 | bernie sanders, campaign ads, democratic primary | TruthDig
Pop Goes Homosexual: It’s a Queer Hand Stoking the Campfire
April 7, 1966
Last August there appeared on the cover of the magazine One a photograph of a young man dressed as an ancient Roman warrior in a toga and thonged sandal-shoes; on the floor beside his chair there stand a sword, a helmet, a shield. His hair curls downward on his forehead, his eyes are dreamy and promising, his lips pout suggestively. He looks as
2020-01-19 18:01 | Art, From The Archives, The Culture | VillageVoice
The first casualty: Edgar Deems (Sunshine Parker). [credit: Universal Pictures ]
It has been 30 years since the release of Tremors , an unabashed love letter to the B-movie creature features of the 1950s that remains as fresh today as it was three decades ago. The film is sheer perfection and ranks among my personal favorite films of all time. As Ars' own Nathan Matisse wrote last year , "If B-movie
2020-01-19 18:01 | Gaming & Culture, entertainment, film | ArsTechnica
First the Amazon was on fire. Then the Arctic. Now Australia. In the UK, as elsewhere, 2019 was the year that climate exploded onto the agenda, following the IPCC’s dire 12-year warning and the emergence of a new climate movement, from Extinction Rebellion to young climate strikers.
Over the course of last year, much of the radical left coalesced around an answer: a green new deal (GND). Buoyed by an upstart campaign within the Labour
2020-01-19 18:01 | Articles, climate change, climate politics | NovaraMedia
Martin Luther King on Anti-Semitism
September 28, 1967
Mr. Morris B. Abram, President
American Jewish Committee
165 East 56th Street
New York, New York
Dear Mr. Abram:
I am in receipt of your letter making inquiry of SCLC’s position on anti-Semitism. First, let me apologize for being rather tardy in my reply. Absence from the city and the accumulation of a huge volume of mail account for the delay.
Serious distortions by the press have
2020-01-19 18:01 | Equality, From The Archives, The Front | VillageVoice
Blacks and Jews: The Tragedy of Jackson, the Logic of Coalition
March 20, 1984
What Jesse Jackson said is a tragedy: for him, for black-Jewish relations, for champions of compromise in the Middle East, and for the noble concept for a rainbow coalition of the rejected. What Jesse Jackson said will profit and please all the little demagogues who feed off fear and hate.
All we can do now is try to convert this calamity into something
2020-01-19 18:01 | Equality, From The Archives, The Front | VillageVoice
From her first investment in a beach bar, Dos Santos has built a $2bn empire. But her wealth is the subject of mounting scrutiny From the terrace of the Miami Beach club, the sand stretches down to the Atlantic ocean. Waves lap the long shoreline of the Ilha de Luanda. On weekends, the bar-restaurant is full of wealthy drinkers and dancers who have driven over from Luanda, the Angolan capital, a few kilometres away. The Miami Beach club has
2020-01-19 18:01 | Angola | Guardian
Inquiry into Isabel dos Santos’s management of Sonangol turns on a series of events before her sacking The diamond deal that rocked Angola Revealed: how Angolan ruler’s daughter built $2bn empire The transfers began on 16 November 2017, with $38m wired (then £32.3m) to a bank account in Dubai. A little later another sum, this time $15m, exited, followed by a third for $4m. At the start of the day, the bank account of
2020-01-19 18:01 | Angola | Guardian
Leaks show how Isabel dos Santos became Africa’s richest woman at expense of Angolan state Profile: Isabel dos Santos The diamond deal that rocked Angola The complex financial schemes that helped Africa’s richest woman amass a fortune at vast cost to the Angolan state can be revealed for the first time after a huge leak of confidential documents from her business empire. Isabel dos Santos, who is known as “the princess” in Angola,
2020-01-19 18:01 | Angola | Guardian
For Sindika Dokolo and Isabel dos Santos, a stake in De Grisogono was a status symbol. But Angola claims it has been left to foot a $200m bill The jeweller De Grisogono may not be a household name, but it has cachet among the stars. Its annual party at the Cannes film festival is a sparkling occasion, and not just for the A-listers who get to wear the diamond necklaces the company produces. This is a glamorous world –
2020-01-19 18:01 | Luxury goods sector | Guardian
Former Angolan president’s daughter and her husband deny corruption accusations Revealed: how Angolan ruler’s daughter built $2bn empire Responding to the Luanda leaks investigation, Isabel dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, denied all allegations of wrongdoing. In an interview with BBC Africa and a letter from her lawyers, Dos Santos denied the suggestion that she owed her business success to nepotistic support from her father, a former president of Angola, and said corruption accusations were
2020-01-19 18:01 | World news | Guardian
“Death to Fascism: Louis Adamic’s Fight for Democracy” Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar
Louis Adamic, a popular nonfiction writer of the 1920s-40s, never escaped—perhaps never wished to escape—his status as an enigma. He was a talented journalist whose work appeared in a variety of magazines, as well as the author of well-received works of fiction and nonfiction. He was also a Slovene immigrant, from that sliver of land once part of Yugoslavia and now an
2020-01-19 17:01 | Book Review, anti-fascism, biography | TruthDig
Enlarge / The Falcon 9 during the launch of the abort test.
Today, SpaceX attempted a critical test of its ability to launch humans to orbit: the ability to get them away from the rocket if things go wrong. Shortly after liftoff, the company shut down the main engines of its Falcon 9 rocket, and fired off the system that's meant to return the crewed capsule safely to Earth.
2020-01-19 16:01 | Science, dragon, falcon | ArsTechnica
Jewish settlers carried out overnight attacks on Palestinian homes in the occupied city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) , local media reported.
Dozens of settlers from the illegal Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba threw rocks and glass bottles at Palestinian homes in the Hebron neighborhood of Jaber, according to Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA.
A horde of armed Israeli settlers attacked under military protection #Palestinian homes in Jaber neighborhood in al-Khalil
2020-01-19 16:01 | Blog, News, Al-Khalil | PalestineChronicle
Iran said on Sunday it was trying to analyse the black boxes of a Ukrainian airliner that its military shot down this month, denying a report that a decision had been taken to send the voice and flight data recorders to Ukraine, reported Reuters .
Canada, which had 57 citizens on the January 8 flight in which all 176 aboard were killed, said on Sunday there were still no firm plans for downloading the recorders. Ottawa
2020-01-19 15:01 | Big Slide, Europe & Russia, Iran | MiddleEastMonitor
Huge reaction from audience for simple pledges from deputy leader candidates Labour deputy leader hopefuls Dawn Butler and Richard Burgon stood out from their rivals – and from the leadership candidates – at yesterday’s hustings in Liverpool with their thoughtful and impassioned responses on a number of topics. And on the issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party, they brought the house down by their measured answers. After the other candidates had made rote responses on
2020-01-19 15:01 | Analysis, comment, antisemitism | Skwawkbox
Countries struggled at an international peace summit for Libya struggled on Sunday to draw eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar back into diplomacy, days after he quit talks and more than half of Libya’s oil output was shut in areas he controls, reported Reuters .
Haftar, whose forces are bearing down on the capital Tripoli with the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Russian mercenaries and African troops, was expected to attend the one-day summit despite having abandoned talks
2020-01-19 15:01 | Africa, EU, Europe & Russia | MiddleEastMonitor
Israeli forces raided today a school and terrorized its students in the village Deir Nizam, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, according to local sources.
Israeli Soldiers raided the school and ransacked classrooms, causing horror and fear among students as they threatened to detain some of them.
IOF break into school in Ramallah
#Watch| Israeli soldiers on Sunday morning broke into a school in
2020-01-19 15:01 | Blog, News, Slider | PalestineChronicle
China reported 17 new cases of the mysterious SARS-like virus on Sunday, including three people in serious condition, heightening fears ahead of China’s Lunar New Year holiday when hundreds of millions of people move around the country.
The new coronavirus strain has caused alarm because of its connection to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
Medical staff members carry a patient into the Jinyintan hospital, where patients infected
2020-01-19 15:01 | Environment & Health, SinoBeat, SARS | HKFP
On Monday, January 20, the city of Richmond, Virginia will be host to a massive gathering of militias and individual gun owners, protesting against a series of proposed bills in the state legislature. This event started as the annual “Lobby Day” rally for the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) but has quickly gotten out of control.
Earlier this week , the FBI arrested several members of Neo-Nazi organization “The Base” who were planning to
2020-01-19 15:01 | Americas, News, 4chan | BellingCat
Around 27,000 civilians have fled their homes falling inside the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria over the last three days due to attacks of regime and its allies.
The attacks of Bashar al-Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed terrorist groups in residential areas east and south of Aleppo province continue to displace thousands of Syrians.
According to Syria’s Response Coordination Group, the displaced civilians headed to areas near the Turkish border due to the attacks which violate the cease-fire agreement between Turkey and
2020-01-19 15:01 | Europe & Russia, Middle East, News | MiddleEastMonitor
Police fired tear gas and brought an approved anti-communist rally to a premature halt in Central on Sunday, as thousands remained gathered around Chater Garden. Photo: Tom Grundy/HKFP.
Several plainclothes officers were beaten as they negotiated with organisers shortly after 4pm. Masked protesters beat them with umbrellas, leaving at least two with bloody head wounds, according to AFP.
“I cannot see any police brutality.” Photo: Tom Grundy.
Rallygoers fled into the
2020-01-19 15:01 | Hong Kong, Law & Crime, Politics & Protest | HKFP
All of Anadolu Agency staffers, who were detained by Egyptian police earlier this week, were released, said the agency head on Sunday. “All our staff members, detained in Egypt on January 14 have been released,” Anadolu Agency Director General Senol Kazanci said.
On Tuesday evening, Egyptian police raided the Cairo office of Anadolu Agency and detained four employees .
Hilmi Balci, one of four detained in Egypt, was released last Thursday and he came
2020-01-19 15:01 | Africa, Egypt, Europe & Russia | MiddleEastMonitor
Inviting Libyan renegade General Khalifa Haftar to Greece and stressing the Greek agenda in the Mediterranean are both “futile efforts” to derail the push for peace in Libya, said Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday. “The Greek-Greek Cypriot duo extorts the rights of neighboring countries with their maximalist claims in the Eastern Mediterranean,” said a statement by Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“Trying to legitimise these claims by taking advantage of the EU harms peace and stability in the region,” he added.
Haftar
2020-01-19 15:01 | Africa, Europe & Russia, Greece | MiddleEastMonitor
Israel’s military announced on Sunday the start of construction of an underground network of sensors along the Lebanese frontier to detect any cross-border tunnel building, reported Reuters .
The project is getting under way a year after the Israeli military said it had destroyed a series of infiltration tunnels dug by the Lebanese Hezbollah group.
“All the drilling is being done on the Israeli side of the blue line,” military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, referring to the border demarcation with Lebanon, said in a
2020-01-19 15:01 | Israel, Lebanon, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
The bodies of the 11 Ukrainian citizens who died when a passenger plane was accidentally shot down by Iran this month were brought back to Ukraine on Sunday in a solemn ceremony at Kiev airport, reported Reuters .
All 176 on board the Ukraine International Airlines flight from Tehran to Kiev were killed when the Boeing 737-800 was shot down on January 8 , at a time when Iran was on high alert for a US attack.
2020-01-19 15:01 | Europe & Russia, Iran, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
US soldiers present in regions under YPG group’s control in Syria, on Saturday stopped Russian soldiers who wanted to reach oil fields, according to a report by Anadolu Agency .
Dispute between the US and Russia about the Rumeylan oil field in northeast Hasakah is ongoing.
According to information Anadolu Agency obtained from reliable local sources, US soldiers blocked a Russian military patrols en route to the oil field.
Tension occurred between the two groups,
2020-01-19 15:01 | Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
Enlarge / When Apple TV+ landed on November 1, it did not include all of these original series, thanks to its "soft launch." (credit: Apple )
When Apple TV+ launched in November 2019, it was the first of four major video-streaming services that would launch between then and May of the next year. It was also one of the riskiest of the set, coming from a company
2020-01-19 15:01 | Gaming & Culture, Apple TV Plus, disney plus | ArsTechnica
Yemen’s president told the military on Sunday it needs to be on high alert and ready for battle following an attack on Saturday by Iran-aligned Houthis on a military training camp in the city of Marib. The attack “confirms without doubt that the Houthis have no desire for peace”, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi said in a statement on Yemen’s state news agency SABA, reported Reuters .
The Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for Saturday’s attack.
2020-01-19 14:01 | Middle East, News, Yemen | MiddleEastMonitor
Iran will review its cooperation with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog should it face “unjust” measures, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said, after EU powers last week triggered a dispute mechanism under Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, reported Reuters .
The move by France, Britain and Germany amounts to formally accusing Iran of violating the terms of the deal and could lead eventually to reimposing UN sanctions that were lifted under the pact.
“We state openly that
2020-01-19 14:01 | IAEA, Iran, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
A group that has previously shut down Libya’s largest oilfield is threatening to do so again as international powers gather in Berlin for a summit on Libya , potentially taking nearly all the country’s oil output offline.
According to a Reuters report, the group Fezzan Anger, named for Libya’s southwestern Fezzan desert region, was preparing to shut down the El Sharara and El Feel fields to push economic and security demands, its leader Bashir al-Sheikh said.
“We are
2020-01-19 14:01 | Africa, Libya, News | MiddleEastMonitor
Lebanese rescuers treated more than 300 people for injuries during hours of clashes between security forces and protesters that rocked central Beirut on Saturday night, reported Reuters .
It was the highest toll in some of the most intense violence since largely peaceful protests erupted across the country in October. As Lebanon sinks deeper into its worst economic crisis in decades, anger has boiled over at a ruling elite dominating the country since the 1975-1990 civil war.
2020-01-19 14:01 | Lebanon, Middle East, News | MiddleEastMonitor
Qatar Airways, Emirates and several other Gulf airlines still fly in Iraqi and Iranian airspace and to cities in both countries, even as other international carriers have rerouted planes since the United States and Iran traded military strikes, reports Reuters .
Executives and analysts said carriers in the Gulf, a major transit stop between European and Asian destinations, have few alternative routes to choose from in an area where much of the airspace is kept clear of civilian aircraft for military use.
2020-01-19 14:01 | Iran, Iraq, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
Enlarge / Because Mediterranean smooth clams live up to their name, their shells produce a cleaner cutting edge than others. (credit: Villa et al. 2020 )
There may be a little more evidence to suggest that Neanderthals waded, swam, and even dove to gather resources along the shores of the Mediterranean. A new study claims Neanderthals at a coastal cave in Italy waded or dove to get clamshells straight
2020-01-19 14:01 | Science, ancient hominins, ancient people did stuff | ArsTechnica
The United Nations envoy to Libya said on Saturday he hoped but “could not predict” whether eastern oil ports shut ahead of a Berlin summit aimed at reaching a truce in Libya would be reopened soon, reported Reuters .
Oil export terminals across eastern and central Libya were shut on Friday by tribesmen allied to commander Khalifa Haftar, whose Libya National Army (LNA) has been locked in a nine-month war with government forces over control of the capital, Tripoli.
Diplomats see the
2020-01-19 13:01 | Africa, Libya, News | MiddleEastMonitor
The death toll Sunday reached 70 after Houthi rebels launched an air strike on a government-held military camp in Yemen’s Marib city, according to military sources. An armed unmanned aerial vehicle was used in the attack, according to military sources from the government. The assault left a large number of soldiers injured.
Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi said in a first statement after Saturday’s attack that the Houthi militias’ assault targeting the mosque of the military camp in Marib
2020-01-19 13:01 | Middle East, News, Yemen | MiddleEastMonitor
Dubai-based online freight marketplace Lorryz has raised $1.4 million in a seed round, it told MENAbytes today. The investment came from Emirates Investment and Development Center and i-Cell Telecom Group. Founded last year by Adnan Ahmad, Lorryz connects cargo owners with truckers (both individuals and companies), allowing them to book trucks to move their cargo […] The post Dubai’s Lorryz raises $1.4 million seed for its online freight marketplace appeared first on MENAbytes .
2020-01-19 13:01 | Investments, News, Startups | menabytes
As seven University of Puerto Rico students prepare to face trial in February for participating in a nonviolent protest more than two years ago, documents released to their defense attorneys reveal that Facebook granted the island’s Justice Department access to a trove of private information from student news publications. The department’s sweeping search warrant was part of a hunt for crimes committed by members of the youth anti-austerity movement, and it has raised fears among civil liberties advocates of
2020-01-19 12:01 | Justice, Technology | TheIntercept
Iran is sending to Ukraine the black boxes of the Ukrainian passenger plane that its military accidentally shot down this month, Iran’s Tasnim news agency and Reuters reported on Saturday.
The Iranian authorities are also prepared for experts from France, Canada and the United States to examine the data from the boxes, reported Tasnim .
All 176 people aboard the plane were killed when the Ukrainian International Airlines flight was shot down on
2020-01-19 12:01 | Europe & Russia, Iran, Middle East | MiddleEastMonitor
Noon has quietly killed its free shipping service with no minimum purchase requirement in the United Arab Emirates. The ecommerce company had introduced the service without any fanfare in June last year, a week after Amazon launched its premium membership (subscription) service Amazon Prime in the UAE. The company obviously did not share any details about […] The post Noon quietly kills free shipping with no minimum order requirement service in UAE appeared first on MENAbytes .
2020-01-19 12:01 | Ecommerce, News, Dubai | menabytes
Somali insurgents linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a car bombing on Saturday that wounded at least 15 people in Afgoye, northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Police said the injured included Turkish contractors as well as Somali nationals.
Anadolu Agency reported at least four Turkish employees of a construction firm were wounded and are being treated in hospital, citing information from the Turkish embassy in Mogadishu.
“A speeding suicide car bomb rammed into a place
2020-01-19 11:01 | Africa, Europe & Russia, News | MiddleEastMonitor