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Tag: Politics

  • Women winning election to more top offices in Massachusetts

    For all its liberal pretensions, Massachusetts hasn’t always been the most progressive of states when it comes to electing women to positions of political power.

    BOSTON (AP) – For all its liberal pretensions, Massachusetts hasn’t always been the most progressive of states when it comes to electing women to positions of political power.

    That’s changing.

    On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters elected four women to the state’s 11-member congressional delegation – the most ever. At the same time, voters elected twice as many women as men to statewide office on Beacon Hill.

    It wasn’t that long ago when women in high political office were still a relative rarity in Massachusetts

    Just a decade ago, in 2008, the only woman holding statewide office was then-Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat. And the only woman on the state’s then 10-member congressional delegation was Democratic U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas.

    The hard-fought shift didn’t go unnoticed Tuesday, when the election of women in Massachusetts and other states became a familiar theme.

    The highest-profile woman on the Massachusetts ballot – Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren – credited women with leading the fight against the Trump administration during her victory speech after winning a second, six-year term.

    “We’ve seen white women learning from black women how to organize and mobilize. Older women partnering with younger women to take to the streets. Married, single, straight, lesbian and transwomen, rich and poor women, building alliances with each other and, yes, building alliances with the men who also want to make real change in this country,” said Warren, who has promised to take “a hard look” at running for president in 2020.

    Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley – who defeated longtime incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary – ran unopposed Tuesday to become the first black woman elected to the U.S. House from Massachusetts. She will represent the 7th Congressional District.

    Pressley said black women face an added challenge running for office.

    “When it comes to women of color candidates, folks don’t just talk about a glass ceiling. What they describe is a concrete one,” Pressley said in her victory speech. “But you know what breaks through concrete? Seismic shifts.”

    In the state’s 3rd Congressional District, Lori Trahan emerged the winner. During her victory speech Trahan, who grew up in Lowell, gave a shout-out to Tsongas, whose decision not to seek re-election led to a mad scramble to replace her.

    Katherine Clark, who first won election to the U.S. House in 2012 to represent the 5th Congressional District, also pointed to the gains made by women seeking office in Massachusetts, saying she was thrilled to welcome Pressley and Trahan to the delegation.

    “For the first time in our history we will have a record number of women representing the commonwealth in Washington,” Clark said in a statement after winning re-election.

    At the Statehouse, voters re-elected Attorney General Maura Healey, Treasurer Deb Goldberg and Auditor Suzanne Bump – all Democrats – and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, a Republican. They also re-elected two men – Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Democratic state Secretary William Galvin.

    The victories for women candidates weren’t limited to statewide and congressional races.

    In the Massachusetts House, Democrat Tram Nguyen defeated incumbent Republican state Rep. Jim Lyons from a district that includes Andover, while fellow first-time Democratic candidate Becca Rausch from Needham Heights defeated another Republican incumbent – state Sen. Richard Ross.

    And in Boston, Rachael Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, won election to become the city’s first female district attorney and the first woman of color to hold such a job anywhere in Massachusetts. Rollins ran on the promise to help curb mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system while building trust between communities and law enforcement.

    In another sign of the growing political clout wielded by women on Beacon Hill, 2018 marked the first time in state history when an incumbent female Senate president (Harriette Chandler) passed the gavel to an incoming female Senate president (Karen Spilka).

  • U.S. reimposes Iran sanctions in ‘maximum pressure’ campaign

     

    The Trump administration on Monday reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, targeting its financial sector and oil industry to pressure the Islamic regime to cease nuclear weapon development and sponsori

    The Trump administration on Monday reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, targeting its financial sector and oil industry to pressure the Islamic regime to cease nuclear weapon development and sponsoring terrorism.

    The rollout was the largest ever single-day action targeting the Iranian regime and a crucial ste in President Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal that was announced in May.

    “Treasury’s imposition of unprecedented financial pressure on Iran should make clear to the Iranian regime that they will face mounting financial isolation and economic stagnation until they fundamentally change their destabilizing behavior,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said.

    SEE ALSO: Iran’s president warns of ‘war situation’ as sanctions resume

    He called on Iran’s leaders to immediately give up support for terrorism, stop proliferating ballistic missiles, end destructive regional meddling and abandon their nuclear ambitions in order to escape the crushing sanctions.

    “The maximum pressure exerted by the United States is only going to mount from here. We are intent on making sure the Iranian regime stops siphoning its hard currency reserves into corrupt investments and the hands of terrorists,” Mr. Mnuchin said.

    Iran remained defiant, greeting the renewed U.S. sanctions with air defense drills and a warning from President Hassan Rouhani that the nation faces a “war situation.”

    “We are in the economic war situation. We are confronting a bullying enemy. We have to stand to win,” Mr. Rouhani said in a statement.

    He also vowed to keep selling the oil that is the country’s economic lifeblood.

    The sanctions end all economic benefits the United States had granted Tehran for its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, though Iran for now continues to abide by the accord that saw it limit its enrichment of uranium.

    The restored sanctions hit list includes:

    • 50 Iranian banks and their foreign and domestic subsidiaries.

    • More than 400 targets, including over 200 persons and vessels in Iran’s shipping and energy sectors.

    • Iran Air and more than 65 of the airline’s aircraft.

    • Nearly 250 persons and associated property returned to the list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.

    Mr. Trump called the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran the “worst ever” agreement stuck by the U.S. But the other parties to the deal — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — stuck with it.

    The European Union, France, Germany and Britain said they regretted the renewed U.S. sanctions and would try to protect their companies doing legitimate business with Tehran.

    Iran is already in the grip of an economic crisis. Its national currency, the rial, now trades at 150,000 to one U.S. dollar, down from when it traded around 40,500 to $1 a year ago. The economic chaos sparked mass anti-government protests at the end of last year which resulted in nearly 5,000 reported arrests and at least 25 people being killed. Sporadic demonstrations still continue.

    Mr. Trump stressed that the sanctions target the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people. He said the goal is curbing the government’s bad behavior, not regime change.

    “I don’t want to totally destroy their country. I don’t want to do that,” Mr. Trump said last week in an interview with The Washington Times.

    The Treasury said its Office of Foreign Assets Control will continue to maintain humanitarian authorizations and exceptions that allow for the sale of agricultural commodities, food, medicine, and medical devices to Iran.

    The administration also granted eight countries a six-month exemption from penalties for buying Iranian crude. Exempted countries are top Iranian oil importers China, India, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Japan, as well as occasional oil customer Taiwan.

    Asked about the eight exempted countries, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. was exerting intense pressure on Iran.

    “We are going to make sure we are putting it where it hurts in these financial sectors and the oil industry. This is where they feel it, and it’s exactly why the sanctions have been targeted in those places,” she told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”

    • This article was based in part on wire service reports.

  • ISIS insurgency, sleeper cells to take years to defeat

    Fully defeating the Islamic State and rooting out sleeper cells that have spread across the Middle East and Africa could take years, the Defense Department’s inspector general said

    The Islamic State may have lost the vast majority of physical territory it once held in Syria and Iraq, but fully defeating the terrorist group and rooting out sleeper cells that have spread across the Middle East and Africa could take years, the Defense Department’s inspector general said in a sweeping and at times critical review Monday that suggests final victory remains distant.

    The report said that a “reduced, covert version” of the Islamic State — also known as ISIS — maintains a presence not just in Iraq and Syria but also in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Islamic State, the report concluded, has evolved “from a land-holding terrorist entity to an insurgency” that operates numerous clandestine cells around the world.

    At a time when the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about the commitment of U.S. troops to the fights, “clearing terrorists from remote and largely ungoverned terrain is a low and difficult process, and eliminating ISIS from rural Iraq and Syria could take years,” the report says.

    The Pentagon in recent months has put forward two separate narratives in describing the fight against Islamic State, which began in 2014 under President Obama. When the U.S.-led international operation began, Islamic State held vast swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria, controlled a “capital city” in Raqqa, Syria, and boasted a sizable fighting force.

    Defense Department officials say Islamic State now has been “territorially defeated” and has lost nearly all of the land it once used as a base of operations.

    But officials also have said that the transformation of the Islamic State into an underground terrorist group presents challenges of its own. The inspector general described the recapture of Islamic State-held territory — the result of a relentless U.S.-led bombing campaign and ground operations inside Iraq and Syria — as just one phase of the mission.

    “There are significant challenges to developing capable and self-sufficient security forces in Iraq and Syria, and questions remain about the length of time it will take to train forces capable of preventing an ISIS resurgence,” the report says. “There are also significant challenges to U.S. efforts to address non-military issues, such as the promotion of democratic governance and civil society and the stabilization of liberated areas. These issues can also affect the ability of security forces to defeat Islamic State. Ongoing political uncertainty in Iraq and civil war in Syria also complicate efforts to confront an ISIS insurgency.”

    In Iraq specifically, deep-rooted issues with the Iraqi Security Forces make it difficult to eradicate the pockets of Islamic State fighters that remain across the country, and will likely require a long-term Pentagon commitment. Islamic State fighters driven from Syria are increasingly finding sanctuary across the border in Iraq, the inspector general’s report said.

    “The ISF continues to suffer from poor management of intelligence; corruption and … overlapping command arrangements with conflicting chains of command; micromanagement; and inefficient and inadequate systems for planning and transmitting orders,” the report said.

    Islamic State still has an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 fighters, both foreign and local, scattered across the region. Even before the release of Monday’s report, top U.S. military officials stressed that it was far too early to declare the group dead and buried.

    “Despite recent successes against ISIS and positive trends, we know there’s actually much work to be done,” Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month. “ISIS is far from defeated and has a presence in countries from West Africa to Southeast Asia. Its ideology continues to inspire homegrown violent extremists in many of our countries.”

  • Iran revives black-market oil exports after US sanctions renewed

     

    With President Trump finally pulling the trigger on tough economic and financial sanctions, Iran is gearing up to revive a black-market oil export operation.

    With President Trump finally pulling the trigger on tough economic and financial sanctions, Iran is gearing up to revive a black-market oil export operation that kept the regime afloat the last time Washington engineered an international embargo on Iranian crude.

    The battle of wills could determine a critical piece of the Trump foreign policy as the U.S. seeks to impose its will on Iran and on its leading international partners to force a major change of behavior in Tehran. Iranian leaders said Monday that the pressure campaign won’t work.

    “We have to make the Americans understand that they must not use the language of force, pressure and threats to speak to the great Iranian nation — they must be punished once and for all,” President Hassan Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting in the Iranian capital.

    While the sanctions on Iran’s oil, shipping and banking sectors mark the most aggressive move Mr. Trump has made against the Islamic republic since pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, regional analysts warn that the sanctions may take a smaller bite than the administration predicts.

    Iran, they say, has been subjected to energy-sector sanctions so often over the past three decades that it has developed highly refined techniques to sell bootleg oil and launder the profits — despite Western efforts to stop such activities.

    “They have endured so many years and types of sanctions that they have better coping mechanisms than other countries,” said Ahmad Majidyar, who heads the Washington-based Middle East Institute’s Iran Observed project.

    “While sanctions could hurt them down the road, they do not see this is as an existential threat that will topple the regime,” Mr. Majidyar said in an interview Monday. “They are hoping the Trump administration is a one-term presidency and they can survive this out.”

    Without vigilant global enforcement, including potential ship interdictions on the high seas, the sanctions will fall short of stripping the Iranian regime of its cash.

    “The U.S. now has the legal and economic architecture in place to properly execute its maximum pressure campaign,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a sanctions analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But as is the case with all coercive policies, follow-through matters, especially when the Iranians are bragging that they will ‘proudly’ bust sanctions,” he said in an analysis Monday.

    With Russia, China and key European allies all saying they remain committed to the 2015 nuclear deal, it remains to be seen whether the U.S. penalties force them to comply or drive their companies away from Iran. Some, including France and Germany, have gone so far as to establish a “special payment vehicle” to finance deals with Iran while bypassing the American financial system.

    Iranian officials, meanwhile, will continue scrambling to prop up a national economy hit badly by an earlier round of U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. Treasury Department’s terrorism and illicit finance enforcement teams will hunt Tehran’s efforts to trick them.

    Dodgy ways to dodge sanctions

    There is already evidence that Iranian oil sector operatives are implementing tried-and-true evasion tactics that allowed some of the country’s oil to move on the global market prior to the Obama-era easing of sanctions under the nuclear deal three years ago.

    One major challenge for the U.S. is the size of the market that must be policed. Worldwide, 4,500 oil tankers carry 2 billion barrels of crude per year over almost 140 million square miles of ocean, according to industry and intelligence agency estimates.

    Monitoring such vast quantities of oil, ships and area is impossible, analysts say, allowing for a wide range of smuggling endeavors, including blending Iranian oil with other liquid exports that are not sanctioned. Tankers are also painted and regularly change their flags.

    Most notoriously, “ghost tankers” turn off their geotransponders and disappear from the world’s satellite tanker tracking matrix, essentially vanishing into the millions of miles of open ocean.

    Ellen R. Wald, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank’s Global Energy Center, noted reports of ghost ships “turning off [their tracking devices] for longer periods” and paving the way for ship-to-ship oil transfers and cash sales on the high seas without international detection.

    Also easing Iran’s burden were eight waivers the Trump administration issued to Iran’s major oil companies Monday, allowing them to temporarily continue reduced oil deals with Iran to ease the shock to global oil markets. U.S. officials said they expect the exempted companies to eventually cut all Iranian deals, but the waivers offer another avenue for Tehran to fight the sanctions.

    Burgeoning black market

    Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has boasted of Iran’s plans to circumvent sanctions by selling oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, but European financiers acknowledge having difficulty sidestepping the American-dominated banking system.

    That leaves the black market, analysts say, with questions over exactly how much money Tehran could make. The answer is murky and depends on multiple factors, including the global price of oil.

    With the price of crude hovering around $80 per barrel, most energy market analysts agree that the total global market value is somewhere in the $3 trillion range. The catch is that some 5 percent is already being siphoned off to the black market. Although the percentage is small, it represents nearly $150 billion worth of illegal sales.

    There is also the matter of the quantity of oil being bootlegged.

    Ms. Wald noted that legal sales of Iranian crude dipped in October to roughly 1.6 million barrels per day, down from just more than 2 million a month earlier.

    Analysts have debated whether the dip was driven by decreased demand on the global market or whether Iran was exporting roughly the same total volume of crude but moving some 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day to the black market — shifting a massive infusion of cash to its coffers.

    Smugglers’ haven

    One country that U.S. sanctions officials could watch closely is the United Arab Emirates, which occupies a patch of geography vital to Iran’s ability to move oil legally or illegally out of the Persian Gulf. Analysts say the UAE is buying about 100,000 barrels per day from Tehran.

    While the Emirati government so far appears poised to go along with the Trump administration, U.S. officials know that the regional geography makes it a sought-after haven for smugglers seeking to evade Washington’s sanctions.

    That was evident when the Obama administration attempted to hold up a global embargo on Iranian crude prior to the nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

    In 2013, U.S. officials broke up one of their highest-profile sanctions evasions by targeting Sambouk Shipping FZC, a UAE-based company that Washington accused of having ties to a Greek businessman under sanction on suspicions that he operated a clandestine shipping network for Tehran.

    Sambouk Shipping, according to the Treasury Department, was running eight vessels on behalf of the National Iranian Tanker Co. to execute ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil in the Persian Gulf intended to obscure the origin of the oil.

  • Saudis press Yemen campaign despite U.S. warnings

    The Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen is showing no sign of scaling back its brutal campaign to defeat Iranian-backed Houthi separatists from the war-torn nation, despite explicit and public demands f

    The Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen is showing no sign of scaling back its brutal campaign to defeat Iranian-backed Houthi separatists from the war-torn nation, despite explicit and public demands from top Trump administration officials in recent days to end the three-year conflict amid a massive and growing humanitarian crisis.

    On Monday, Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabian and Emirati air power launched a multipronged offensive as part of a campaign to retake the strategically important port city of Hodeidah, in Houthi-held southeast Yemen. Government troops and members of the Shia separatist group have engaged in intense fighting in and around the port city for the last four days, according to local reports.

    Saudi, Yemeni and Emirati forces in June tried and failed to seize the critical port city, despite Riyadh launching the largest offensive of the war against the Iranian-backed separatists. The June offensive and the current effort in Hodeidah signal a new escalation of the conflict by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

    The new wave of attacks comes less than a week after Defense Secretary James Mattis, quickly echoed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanded all parties participate in U.N.-led peace talks scheduled for next month. There has been mounting congressional criticism of U.S. backing for the Saudi war in Yemen, including logistical and intelligence support for Saudi forces.

    “We want to see everybody around a peace table based on a cease-fire [in Yemen], based on a pullback from the border, and then based on ceasing dropping of bombs,” Mr. Mattis told the Washington-based U.S. Institute for Peace last week. ” … We need to be doing this in the next 30 days” to end the war.

    Mr. Pompeo said Riyadh and its allies should play a meaningful role in U.N. peace talks led by Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths in Sweden.

    Officials in Sanaa and Riyadh told Agence France-Presse that the new Hodeidah offensive is geared toward encircling several major Houthi strongholds inside the city, in an attempt to cut those rebel redoubts off from resupply by Iranian military advisers. Fighting in and above the embattled city has been fierce, according to eyewitnesses. Humanitarian groups warn that Hodeidah is also a critical supply port for aid in what is already the region’s poorest country.

    “Hodeidah has become a ghost city, people stay indoors and the streets are deserted,” Isaac Ooko, Hodeidah area manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the Reuters news agency.

    Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, head of the Houthi revolutionary council, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the Arab coalition’s renewed attacks on Hodeidah “a strenuous attempt to block talks aimed at ending the war and finding peace.”

    At the Pentagon, department officials declined to comment on the new Saudi-led offensive and whether it represented a direct rebuke to the Trump administration.

    “We continue to strongly support the efforts of Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to bring all sides of the conflict to the negotiating table,” Pentagon spokesperson Navy Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich said in a statement.

    Riyadh’s heavy-handed strategy to defeat the Houthis, which has reportedly included the use of cluster bombs banned under the international rules of war, has failed to dislodge the Houthis, while reportedly slaughtered thousands of civilians and initiating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

    There has been some talk the Hodeidah offensive is a last-ditch bid to seize territory before a peace accord is signed, in order to shape the postwar settlement in Yemen.

    “The Hodeidah operation is fraught with risk for the [Saudi] coalition,” the Middle East Institute’s Gerald M. Feierstein, ambassador to Yemen under President Obama, wrote on Monday, especially in the wake of the global outrage over the apparent killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi government agents in Turkey last month.

    “Frustration with the conflict in Yemen continues to mount,” Mr. Feierstein said, adding, “Any mass-casualty event in Hodeidah could effectively end Western cooperation with the coalition.”

  • Russian lawmakers included in international delegation to monitor U.S. midterm elections

    A leading international delegation now in the U.S. to monitor the midterm elections includes two Russian members of parliament, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

    A leading international delegation now in the U.S. to monitor the midterm elections includes two Russian members of parliament, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

    Artyom Turov is with President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, and Alexei Korniyenko is a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

    They are among more than 100 official Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers deployed across the United States to monitor election day issues, including voter ID disputes.

    The mission includes additional Russians, but Mr. Turov and Mr. Korniyenko, who are expected to visit roughly 10 polling stations, are said to be the only members of parliament in the group.

    “We will be working in Washington and the bordering state of Maryland,” Mr. Korniyenko told TASS.

    OSCE election monitoring teams are routine and respected around the world.

    But this year’s U.S. mission has an increased urgency as it unfolds against continued concerns that Russia could somehow try and influence the midterm results — given the evidence U.S. officials have collected documenting a major Kremlin campaign to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

    “Our job as international observers is to bring a critical but fair eye to this process,” OSCE delegation heads George Tsereteli and Isabel Santos wrote in an op-ed published by The Hill. “In one sense, the mission is routine for us, having observed elections in the U.S. a half-dozen times since 2004.”

    “But we are also keenly aware,” they added, “that this election is taking place in a context of deep polarization, concerns over election security, and an ongoing investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 presidential contest.”

    The Kremlin has firmly denied meddling in 2016 despite special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the issue, charging 26 Russian nationals and three Russian companies with election interference and additional related crimes.

  • Justin Trudeau: Canada won’t threaten NAFTA 2.0 to end tariffs

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country won’t use the new NAFTA as leverage to break President Trump’s tariffs.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country won’t use the new NAFTA as leverage to break President Trump’s tariffs.

    “We would much rather have genuine free trade with the United States, so we’re going to continue to work to lift those tariffs,” Mr. Trudeau said in an interview clip CNN aired on Tuesday, “But we’re not at the point of saying we wouldn’t sign [the trade agreement] if it wasn’t lifted, although we are trying to make that case.”

    When pressed by CNN host Poppy Harlow, Mr. Trudeau stressed, “I don’t negotiate in public.”

    However, the prime minister told CNN that the tariffs were not the reason Canada came to the NAFTA negotiation and that they were always willing to talk trade with the U.S.

    Canada agreed to Mr. Trump’s USMCA (the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) in early October, but the deal is still unsigned.

    The agreement came after tough negotiations and bitter trade tensions over tariffs, during which Mr. Trump accused the U.S.’ long-time ally of taking advantage.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says US tariffs weren’t the reason he was willing to agree to a new trade deal earlier this year — dismissing President Donald Trump’s argument that the duties on Canadian goods forced his hand. @PoppyHarlowCNN has the exclusive interview. pic.twitter.com/4iwscIwQa0

    — New Day (@NewDay) November 6, 2018

  • 6 detained in suspected plot to attack French president

    A French judicial official says six people have been arrested on preliminary terrorism charges, suspected of plotting to attack French President Emmanuel Macron.

    PARIS (AP) — A French judicial official says six people have been arrested on preliminary terrorism charges, suspected of plotting to attack French President Emmanuel Macron.

    The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the allegations, said intelligence agents detained the six in three widely scattered regions, including the Alps, Brittany and near the Belgian border. He said the plan appeared to be vague and unfinalized but violent.

    Macron is in Verdun on Tuesday as part of World War I commemorations and hosts U.S. President Donald Trump this weekend.

  • Angela Merkel: Arms sales to Saudis are on hold

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday her country is not ready to export arms to Saudi Arabia until the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is properly investigated.

    ISTANBUL (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday her country is not ready to export arms to Saudi Arabia until the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is properly investigated.

    Speaking in Prague through a translator after meeting her Czech counterpart Andrej Babis, Merkel said it’s necessary to clarify the background of the crime that took place in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

    She said Germany has made it clear that until then, “we won’t deliver any arms to Saudi Arabia.”

    Merkel also again said that Saudi Arabia has to ensure access for humanitarian aid to get into Yemen, which has been ravaged by a 3½-year war between the Saudi-led alliance and Shite rebels.

  • U.K. opens all military jobs, including elite SAS, to women

    U.K. officials cheered a military milestone this week: all armed forces roles are open to women.

    U.K. officials cheered a military milestone this week: all armed forces roles are now open to women.

    The elite Special Air Service (SAS) and the Royal Marines are looking to fill their ranks with women who are ready, willing and able.

    Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson made the announcement on Thursday.

    SEE ALSO: British SAS battle requires hand-to-hand combat; ISIS fighter drowned in puddle

    “Women have led the way with exemplary service in the armed forces for over 100 years, working in a variety of specialist and vital roles,” he said in a press release, Military Times reported. “So I am delighted that from today, for the first time in its history, our armed forces will be determined by ability alone and not gender.”

    The move fulfills an integration process that began in 2016 when combat field jobs were first made available to women.

    “We recognize people for their ability, not their gender, so any person with the right skills to be a Commando is welcome in the Royal Marines,” Maj. Gen. Charlie Stickland, commandant general Royal Marines, added in a press release.

    New recruits can apply for the positions in December. Existing personnel may immediately seek out a new military occupational specialty.