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Brazil deployed police to a remote Amazon village on Sunday after reports it had been overrun by armed miners following the murder of an indigenous leader, officials and tribal chiefs said.
 
The violence in an area of the northern Amapa state controlled by the Waiapi tribe comes as Brazil’s indigenous people face growing pressures from miners, ranchers and loggers under pro-business President Jair Bolsonaro, who on Saturday called for the “first world” to help exploit the “absurd quantity of minerals” in the Amazon rainforest.
 
Last Monday, a Waiapi indigenous leader was killed and his body found the following day in a river, the Amapa attorney general’s office (AGO) said in a statement.
 
While none of the Waiapi witnessed the “violent” killing, a council of village chiefs said on Facebook a search of the area found “trails and other signs that the death was caused by non-indigenous people.”
 
On Friday, a group of “armed non-indigenous” overran the nearby village of Yvytoto, prompting residents to flee, the council said. Local media called them “garimpeiros,” a term for armed miners active in the Amazon, and said they numbered 50.
 
After reports of the attacks emerged Saturday, members of the federal police and a military police special forces unit were dispatched, the AGO said, arriving in the village some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the state capital Macapa on Sunday.
 
The indigenous affairs agency FUNAI said its officers were also on the ground monitoring the police investigation.
 
“Law enforcement officials have reported that no hypothesis for the murder has been ruled out, nor can they can say at this time who carried out the crime,” the AGO said, as it announced the establishment of a crisis management group to oversee the investigation.
 
“The alleged presence of garimpeiros and other groups in the region is being investigated.”
 
‘Environmental psychosis’
 
Rich in gold, manganese, iron and copper, the Waiapi’s territory is deep inside the Amazon, making communication difficult, police said.
 
The Waiapi council said some of the tribe’s fighters had stationed themselves near the village occupied by the miners.
 
“The situation is urgent,” said Randolfe Rodrigues, an opposition senator from Amapa, on his official Facebook page.
 
The Brazilian Bar Association issued a statement calling on the government to protect the Waiapi’s land and ensure perpetrators of criminal offenses were “punished.”
 
The tribe’s territory is one of hundreds Brazil’s government demarcated in the 1980s for the exclusive use of its 800,000 indigenous inhabitants. Access by outsiders is strictly regulated.
 
Since taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon and indigenous tribes in order to benefit his supporters in the logging, mining and farming industries.
 
“We are experiencing a real environmental psychosis,” Bolsonaro said recently.
 
He’s also pledged to crackdown on what he’s called radical environmental activism, and also questioned the latest official figures showing deforestation increasing by 88 percent in June compared with the same period last year.

…

The remaining signatories to the Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Sunday to try again to find a way of saving the accord after the U.S. pulled out, amid mounting tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran will take part in the meeting, which comes a month after a similar gathering failed to achieve a breakthrough.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have escalated since last year when U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the accord that was aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, and imposed punishing sanctions.

In retaliation, Iran said in May it would disregard certain limits the deal set on its nuclear program and threatened to take further measures if remaining parties to the deal, especially European nations, did not help it circumvent the U.S. sanctions.

Tension in Middle East

Pressure has continued to mount in the region with a string of incidents involving tankers and drones.

The U.S. has said it brought down one and possibly two Iranian drones last week, and blamed Tehran for a series of mysterious attacks on tanker ships in strategic Gulf waters.

Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. aircraft in June, after which Trump announced that he had called off retaliatory air strikes at the last minute because the resulting death toll would have been too high.

The U.S. and Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of being behind multiple attacks on tankers in the Gulf in June, which Iran denies.

On July 19, a British-flagged tanker was impounded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards with its 23 crew aboard in the Strait of Hormuz.

The seizure was seen by London as a tit-for-tat move for British authorities detaining an Iranian tanker off the U.K. overseas territory of Gibraltar in early July.

Efforts to save deal falter 

Efforts by European powers, notably France’s President Emmanuel Macron, to salvage the nuclear deal have so far come to nothing.

The remaining signatories, however, have pledged to work toward a breakthrough at a future ministerial meeting, for which no date has yet been fixed.

Referring to the need for a “preparatory meeting before the ministerial level meeting that will be necessary,” one European diplomat told AFP it was “imperative to talk to the Iranians after the proven violations of their commitments.”

The European Union said earlier this week the extraordinary meeting would be chaired by the secretary general of the European External Action Service, Helga Schmid.

It said the talks were requested by Britain, France, Germany and Iran and would examine issues linked to the implementation of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which the 2015 deal is implemented. 
 

…

Protesters and police prepared Sunday for a likely showdown in central Hong Kong, one day after clashes led to 11 arrests and left at least two dozen injured in an outlying district toward the border with mainland China.

A midafternoon rally has been called at Chater Garden, an urban park in the financial district and about 500 meters (yards) west of the city’s government headquarters and legislature.

Police have denied a request from protest organizers to march about 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) west to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park, but at least some of the demonstrators may still try to push forward.

Seven weeks of protests

Hong Kong has been wracked by protests for seven weeks, as opposition to an extradition bill has morphed into demands for the resignation of the city’s leader and an investigation into whether police have used excessive force in quelling the protests.

Underlying the movement is a broader push for full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The city’s leader is chosen by a committee dominated by a pro-Beijing establishment, rather than by direct elections.

In denying the march, police cited escalating violence in clashes with protesters that have broken out after past marches and rallies.

“The police must prevent aggressive protesters from exploiting a peaceful procession to cause troubles and violent clashes,” said Superintendent Louis Lau of the police public relations branch.

The police had denied permission for Saturday’s march in Yuen Long, where a mob apparently targeting demonstrators had beat people brutally in a train station the previous weekend.

Protests into the night

Protesters and police faced off in the streets well into the night, as they’ve done repeatedly during the summer’s pro-democracy protests.

Police said that protesters removed fences from roads to make their own roadblocks and charged police lines with metal poles. One group surrounded and vandalized a police vehicle, causing danger to officers on board, a police news release said.

Officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators threw bricks and other objects and ducked behind makeshift shields.v Later, police wearing helmets charged into the train station where a few hundred protesters had taken refuge from the tear gas. Some officers swung their batons at demonstrators, while others appeared to be urging their colleagues to hang back. For the second week in a row, blood was splattered on the station floor.

Police said in a statement they arrested 11 men, between the ages of 18 and 68, for offenses including unlawful assembly, possession of offensive weapon and assault. At least four officers were injured.

The Hospital Authority said 24 people were taken to five hospitals. As of Sunday morning, eight remained hospitalized, two in serious condition.

Police criticized

Amnesty International, the human rights group, called the police response heavy-handed and unacceptable.

“While police must be able to defend themselves, there were repeated instances today where police officers were the aggressors,” Man-kei Tam, the director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, said in a news release.

Police said they had to use what they termed “appropriate force” because of the bricks and other objects thrown at them, including glass bottles with a suspected corrosive fluid inside.

…

When Ugnius Zilinskas came to Kenyon College in Ohio to play on the basketball team, he was welcomed with open arms.

“They kind of take you as a family member,” said the student from Kedainiai, Lithuania.

Zilinskas, a junior, is one of roughly 27,000 foreign students who play on U.S. college sports teams, out of more than 1 million foreign students who attend school in the U.S. Stars like basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon of Nigeria and soccer player Christine Sinclair of Canada began as international students at American colleges before competing professionally in the United States.

Zilinskas was welcomed by Kenyon College, a Division III National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school in Gambier, Ohio. He has played basketball since he was a child in his home country and understood the ladder of college sports. But if a student comes to study in the U.S. with no knowledge of college sports, the system can seem complicated.

Here’s a breakdown.

The basics

The NCAA is one of three major associations that govern college and university athletics:

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA)
National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA)

These nonprofit organizations determine student eligibility, establish sport guidelines, and oversee competition among schools across North America. For instance, the NCAA issues rules that define a foul in basketball, as well as prohibiting NCAA student athletes from endorsing commercial products.

The NCAA generates billions of dollars through media rights, ticket sales, merchandise and membership fees. The revenue goes to athletic scholarships, NCAA employee salaries, and to run competitions like March Madness, a wildly popular tournament broadcast across the country.

NCAA college athletes are banned from being paid to play while enrolled in schools to ensure amateur competition in college. Critics say the big sports associations use favors, trips, free meals and gear to compensate players in other ways. Not everyone considers these actions amateur, while others say the players deserve to be paid outright for their talent and skills.

Schools are sorted into divisions: Division I schools, such as the University of Virginia and University of Michigan, generally have large student populations and many teams. The University of Virginia, for example, has more than 16,000 undergraduate students. Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, a Division II school, has a little more than 6,000 undergraduate students. Kenyon College, a Division III school, has nearly 2,000 students.

Division I and Division II institutions are highly competitive with robust athletic programs and may have athletic budgets of millions of dollars to pay for athletic scholarships, coaches, sport facilities, athletes’ medical needs and transportation.

Division I provides the largest athletic scholarships. Athletes who receive athletic scholarships in soccer or basketball, for example, may get some or all tuition waved in addition to some room and board. Division III focuses on academics and offers merit scholarships or financial aid, not athletic scholarships.

Zilinskas said a benefit of competing in college sports was playing basketball while fully engaging in his studies.

The National Junior College Administration (NJCAA) operates differently and only at two-year colleges, organizing its member institutions into three divisions. Division I members, such Bismarck State College’s basketball team in North Dakota, offer larger athletic scholarships than Division II. Member institutions decide the division in which it wants to compete.

For similar reasons as the NCAA and NAIA, NJCAA Division III members do not provide athletic scholarships to their students.

Getting ready to compete

How do students get eligibility to play at U.S. schools?

Student athletes register through the NCAA Eligibility Center online. The $150 fee can be waived for students with financial needs. School transcripts, SAT or ACT scores and country-specific documents are required in English and according to the American grading system. (The NCAA offers country-specific information on its website.)

Students must also prove their amateur status.

Once eligibility is established and a U.S. college or university offers a student athlete a scholarship, they sign a National Letter of Intent to attend and compete for one academic year.

The application process to an NCAA Division III institution is less formal. A student does not need to register officially through the NCAA. Instead, grade and credit regulations are set by each school. Students should contact the team’s coach for school-specific requirements. Again, NCAA III does not offer student sports scholarships.

The process for international student athletes interested in competing on an NAIA or NJCAA Division I or Division II are similar.

While Zilinskas had hoped to play basketball at a Division I school, that dream seemed impossible after he suffered an injury.

“No one takes a player that cannot run and sits on the bench the whole year,” Zilinskas said. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m packing my stuff, I’m going home.’ But then Kenyon gave me good financial aid. And I’m still here.”

“I would say that international students, if they’re really into athletics or doing some sports they should definitely try to do something with sports. … School is not everything, so there is a lot of different paths to go,” he said. “You can find a lot of different groups of people and academic sides and sports sides, music whatever. Meeting new people — that’s really big.”

More information about competing through the NCAA, NAIA or NJCAA can be found on the associations’ websites.
 

…

The head of a Sudanese investigative committee said on Saturday that 87 people were killed and 168 wounded on June 3 when a sit-in protest was violently broken up by security forces.

Fath al-Rahman Saeed, the head of the committee, said 17 of those killed were in the square occupied by protesters and 48 of the wounded were hit by bullets.

More Deaths Reported in Sudan Protests

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Sunday in the capital Khartoum and other areas demanding a return to civilian rule

Saeed said some security forces fired at protesters and that three officers violated orders by moving forces into the sit-in.

He also said an order was issued to whip protesters.

…

Georgia allowed its election system to grow “way too old and archaic” and now has a deep hole to dig out of to ensure that the constitutional right to vote is protected, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said Friday.

Now Totenberg is in the difficult position of having to decide whether the state, which plans to implement a new voting system statewide next year, must immediately abandon its outdated voting machines in favor of an interim solution for special and municipal elections to be held this fall.

Election integrity advocates and individual voters sued Georgia in 2017 alleging that the touchscreen voting machines the state has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. They’ve asked Totenberg to order the state to immediately switch to hand-marked paper ballots.

But lawyers for Fulton County, the state’s most populous county that includes most of Atlanta, and for state election officials argued that the state is in the process of implementing a new system, and it would be too costly, burdensome and chaotic to use an interim system for elections this fall and then switch to the new permanent system next year.

A law passed this year and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp provides specifications for a new system in which voters make their selections on electronic machines that print out a paper record that is read and tallied by scanners. State officials have said it will be in place for the 2020 presidential election.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued Friday that the current system is so unsecure and vulnerable to manipulation that it cannot be relied upon, jeopardizing voters’ constitutional rights.

“We can’t sacrifice people’s right to vote just because Georgia has left this system in place for 20 years and it’s so far behind,” said lawyer Bruce Brown, who represents the Coalition for Good Governance and a group of voters.

Addressing concerns about an interim system being burdensome to implement, plaintiffs’ lawyers countered that the state put itself in this situation by neglecting the system for so long and ignoring warnings. Lawyer David Cross, who represents another group of voters, urged the judge to force the state to take responsibility.

“You are the last resort,” he said.

Georgia’s voting system drew national scrutiny during the closely watched contest for governor last November in which Kemp, a Republican who was the state’s top election official at the time, narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams.

The plaintiffs had asked Totenberg in August to force Georgia to use hand-marked paper ballots for that election. While Totenberg expressed grave concerns about vulnerabilities in the voting system and scolded state officials for being slow to respond to evidence of those problems, she said a switch to paper ballots so close to the midterm election would be too chaotic. She warned state officials that further delay would be unacceptable.

But she seemed conflicted Friday at the conclusion of a two-day hearing.

“These are very difficult issues,” she said. “I’m going to wrestle with them the best that I can, but these are not simple issues.”

She recognized that the state had taken concrete steps since her warning last year, with lawmakers providing specifications for a new system, appropriating funds and beginning the procurement process. But she also said she wished the state had not let the situation become so dire and wondered what would happen if the state can’t meet its aggressive schedule for implementing the new system.

The request for proposals specifies that vendors must be able to distribute all voting machine equipment before March 31, which is a week after the state’s presidential primary election is set to be held on March 24. Bryan Tyson, a lawyer representing state election officials, told the judge the state plans to announce the new system it’s selected in “a matter of days.”

Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor, testified Friday that the state election system’s vulnerabilities and that the safest, most secure system would be hand-marked paper ballots with optical scanners at each precinct.

Four county election officials, three of whom will oversee elections this fall, testified that it would be difficult to switch to hand-marked paper ballots in time for those elections. They cited difficulties getting enough new equipment, as well as challenges training poll workers and educating voters. They also said they’d have trouble paying for the switch unless the state helps.

The two groups of plaintiffs agree that the whole system is flawed and has to go. They also believe the ballot-marking devices the state plans to implement have many of the same problems, and they plan to challenge those once the state announces which vendor has won the contract. But they disagree about what the interim solution should be.

The plaintiffs represented by Brown are asking the state to use hand-marked paper ballots along with its existing election management system and to use the ballot scanners it currently uses for paper absentee and provisional ballots for all ballots.

The plaintiffs represented by Cross want the state to implement its new election management system in time for the fall elections and to use ballot scanners along with paper ballots.

Totenberg did not say when she would rule.

…

Bahrain has executed two men convicted of terrorism offenses.

The executions were carried out despite objections from international human rights groups.

The French news agency AFP reports that the two men were killed by firing squad Saturday.

Rights groups have identified the men as Ahmad al-Malali and Ali al-Arab.

Human Rights Watch says both men were Bahraini citizens who were convicted on the terrorism charges last year “in a mass trial marred by allegations of torture and serious due process violations.”

A third man was also reported to have been killed by firing squad Saturday. His conviction, however, was not connected to the al-Malali and al-Arab cases.

…

Two-month-old Lahya Kathembo became an orphan in a day. Her mother succumbed to Ebola on a Saturday morning. By sunset her father was dead, too. 
 
They had been sick for more than a week before health workers finally persuaded them to seek treatment, neighbors said. They believed their illness was the work of people jealous about their newborn daughter, a community organizer said, and sought the guidance of a traditional spiritual healer.

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is ravaging Beni, a sprawling city of some 600,000, in large part because so many of the sick are choosing to stay at home. In doing so, they unknowingly infect caregivers and those who mourn them.

“People are waiting until the last minute to bring their family members and when they do it’s complicated for us,” says Mathieu Kanyama, head of health promotion at the Ebola treatment center in Beni run by the Alliance for International Medical Action, or ALIMA. “Here there are doctors, not magicians.”

Nearly one year into the outbreak which has killed more than 1,700 and was declared a global health emergency this month, a rise in community deaths is fueling a resurgence of Ebola in Beni. During a two-week period in July alone, 30 people died at home. 
 
Health teams are now going door-to-door with megaphones trying to get the message out.

“Behind every person who has died there is someone developing a fever,” Dr. Gaston Tshapenda, who heads the Ebola response in Beni for Congo’s health ministry, told his teams.

Fear of treatment centers

Many people still don’t believe Ebola is real, health experts say, which stymies efforts to control the disease’s spread.

Ebola symptoms are also similar to common killers like malaria and typhoid, so those afraid of going to a treatment center often try to self-medicate at home with paracetamol to reduce fever. 
 
But Ebola, unlike those other illnesses, requires the patient to be kept in isolation and away from the comfort of family.

Dr. Maurice Kakule, who became one of this outbreak’s first Ebola patients after he treated a sick woman at his clinic, is now trying to make it easier for those who are ill to get help in and around Beni, near the border with Uganda. 
 
He and other survivors, who are now immune to the disease, run a motorcycle taxi ambulance. After receiving a phone call for help they go to homes, reassure the sick and take them for medical care without infecting others.

People’s most common fear is that they will only leave an Ebola treatment center in a body bag, Kakule says.

“Some have heard of the problem of Ebola but there have been no survivors in their family,” he said. “Since they had relatives die at a treatment center, they think people are killed there and that’s why they categorically refuse to go.”

Humanizing care

They fear, too, that they will die alone, surrounded only by health care personnel covered in protective gear from head to toe.

To try to humanize the care of patients in isolation, ALIMA’s Ebola treatment center in Beni places some patients in their own transparent room called a “CUBE,” where they can see visitors from their beds. Others share a room with one other patient and a glass window where loved ones can gather. 
 
While there is no licensed treatment for Ebola, patients in eastern Congo are able to take part in clinical trials. That’s a welcome change from the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa when many patients entered Ebola centers never to come out alive again. More than 11,000 people died.

Still, the measures needed to keep Ebola from spreading remain difficult for many people to accept.

“We cannot be oblivious to the fact that when you’re sick with Ebola you’re put somewhere away from your family, with a 50% chance of dying alone from your loved ones,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, which is helping to fight the outbreak. “I don’t blame people for not finding this attractive, despite the fact that we have a clinical trial going on.”

The day after the deaths of baby Lahya’s parents, a morgue team in protective clothing carried their carefully encased bodies to a truck for a funeral procession to a Muslim cemetery on the edge of town. 
 
In the background was the sound of workers hammering away as they built more space at the nearby treatment center to accommodate the growing caseload.

Lahya developed a fever but has tested negative for Ebola. The infant with round cheeks and gold earrings is in an orphanage for now, while her 3-year-old sister is being cared for by neighbors who hope to raise them both.

But the sisters will have to wait a bit longer to be reunited — their adoptive father and former nanny both have tested positive for Ebola and are being treated.

‘I lost my entire family’

The fateful decision to avoid treatment centers haunts survivors like Asifiwe Kavira, 24, who fell ill with Ebola along with eight of her relatives.

Health teams came to the house in Butembo, trying to persuade them to seek treatment. Most of the family, though, said they wanted to treat their fevers at home. After three days of negotiations, Kavira finally agreed to seek help, believing she was on the brink of death.

She would be the only one to survive. 
 
Her mother, grandmother, brother and four other relatives all died at home. An older sister joined her at the treatment center, but medical care came too late.

“I tell people now that Ebola exists,” Kavira says, “because that is how I lost my entire family.”

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The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it is approving T-Mobile US Inc’s $26 billion takeover of rival Sprint Corp, clearing a major hurdle to a deal that would merge the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless carriers.

The companies have agreed to divest Sprint’s prepaid businesses including Boost Mobile to Dish Network Corp in order to move ahead with the merger, which was announced in
April 2018.

But the deal still faces a significant challenge. A group of U.S. state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York to block the merger on antitrust grounds,
arguing that the proposed deal would cost consumers more than $4.5 billion annually.

T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere, who will be the CEO of the combined company, said it would deliver a 5G network with lower prices, better quality and thousands of jobs, while unlocking $43 billion in synergies.

“We are pleased that our previously announced target synergies, profitability and long-term cash generation have not changed,” Legere said.

On Friday, the Justice Department and five state attorneys general said they were filing suit to enforce the settlement conditions that also include selling Virgin Mobile and Sprint prepaid and providing Dish with access to 20,000 cell sites and hundreds of retail locations.

Dish has agreed to acquire spectrum in a deal valued at $3.6 billion from the merged firm and pay $1.4 billion for Sprint’s prepaid business that serves about 9.3 million customers. Dish will get access to the combined firm’s network for seven years while it builds out its own 5G network.

Shares of T-Mobile, which is about 63 percent owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, were up 3.7% at $82.90. Shares of Sprint, which is about 84 percent owned by Softbank Group
Corp, were up 6.5% at $7.92.

Prepaid wireless phones are generally sought by lower-income people who cannot pass a credit check.

T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier with about 80 million customers, pursued the deal in order to seek scale to compete with bigger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. Sprint has about 55 million customers.

T-Mobile US on Thursday beat analysts’ estimates for second-quarter net new phone subscribers who pay a monthly bill, boosted by the U.S. mobile carrier’s wireless plans aimed at fending off its bigger rivals. The mobile carrier said it added a net 710,000 phone subscribers in the three months ended June 30.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has given his blessing to the merger in principle and said in a statement on Friday he would soon circulate a formal order.

The FCC is expected to give Dish more time to use spectrum it previously acquired but also impose strict penalties if it fails to create a consumer wireless network within a set
timeframe.

…

A top Sudanese editor who heads the main journalists’ union has been detained, the union said Thursday, calling on Sudan’s military rulers to free him or put him on trial.

The detention of Sadiq al-Rizaigi came as the military said it had arrested a top general, several security officers and Islamist leaders over a failed coup attempt announced earlier this month.

The Sudanese Journalists’ Union called on the ruling Transitional Military Council to “immediately release” its head Rizaigi, a prominent Islamist and editor of Al-Sayha newspaper, or that he be put on trial.

A senior journalist with Rizaigi’s newspaper told AFP that security forces had taken him away from outside the newspaper’s premises.

“We do not know where he is being held or the reasons for his detention,” said Awad Jad Al-Sayid, news editor of Al-Sahya.

On Wednesday, the military announced several arrests in connection with a failed coup attempt.

It said it had arrested General Hashim Abdel Mottalib, the head of the joint chiefs of staff, and a number of officers from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) along with leaders of the Islamic Movement and the National Congress Party.

On July 11, the military announced it had foiled a coup attempt without specifying when it took place.

Sudanese media also reported that among those arrested was General Bakri Hassan Saleh, a former first vice president and prime minister and a prominent figure in the 1989 coup that brought now ousted president Omar al-Bashir to power.

Also arrested was Ali Karty, a former foreign minister and Zubair Ahmed Hassan, an ex-finance minister, according to the reports.

During Bashir’s three-decade rule, the press was severely curtailed, according to media activists.

NISS agents cracked down regularly on journalists or confiscated entire print-runs of newspapers for publishing articles deemed critical of Bashir’s policies.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recorded at least 100 cases of journalists being arrested during the months of protests that finally led to Bashir’s ouster in April.

RSF ranks Sudan 175th out of 180 countries in its 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

…

British Airways, part of International Airlines Group, will resume flights to Cairo following a week-long suspension over security concerns, the airline said Friday.

“Following a thorough assessment of the security arrangements, we are pleased that our service to and from Cairo will resume from Friday July 26,” a British Airways spokeswoman said in an email.

No details were given about the airline’s security review.

British Airways had suspended flights to Cairo on Saturday for seven days “as a security precaution” as it reviewed security at the Cairo airport.

An executive of Egypt’s state-owned EgyptAir said earlier this week that British Airways’ decision was “without a logical reason” while Egypt’s aviation minister, Younis Al-Masry, also expressed “displeasure” at the decision.

Egypt’s aviation ministry said on Sunday that British Airways took the move without consulting Egyptian authorities.

Germany’s Deutsche Lufthansa AG also suspended flights to Cairo on Saturday but resumed them a day later.

Other airlines continued to operate flights to Cairo.

…

In nearly six months as a Democratic presidential candidate, Cory Booker has billed himself as many things: He’s both an optimist leading with “radical love” and a fighter against political machines. He’s both a supporter of “Medicare for All” and an advocate for more incremental health care policies that preserve the private insurance industry.

As the New Jersey senator prepares for a pivotal turn in the spotlight at next week’s debate, he’s trying on a new role: Joe Biden’s chief antagonist.

Ahead of an expected showdown in Detroit, Booker is blasting the former vice president as “an architect of mass incarceration.” Speaking to the National Urban League on Thursday, he assailed rivals whom he portrayed as latecomers to the fight against “structural inequality and institutional racism” — implying, without mentioning Biden’s name, that his opponent had embraced criminal justice reform to further his presidential candidacy. 

One of two black major candidates in the Democratic contest, Booker is homing in on racial justice as he struggles to emerge from the bottom tier of most national polls. He has yet to meet the donor qualifications to participate in this fall’s Democratic debate, when tougher rules are expected to winnow the crowded field. Democrats say Booker’s new approach to Biden could provide a moment to lift his campaign — or sack it with more baggage. 
 
“There’s a path that still exists for Booker, but he needs a galvanizing moment that not only boosts his hopes but also eliminates one of the opponents in front of him,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “It’s possible, but it’s a tough path ahead.”

Booker’s aides see him as on track to qualify for the September debate regardless of what may take place in Detroit. His campaign remains focused on an early state strategy that takes him to Iowa on Friday for the seventh time since entering the race.

“Cory’s performance serves as a validation for the folks who have committed their early support to his campaign” in the Hawkeye State, said Mike Frosolone, Booker’s Iowa state director. 
 
Booker’s organization is particularly strong in Iowa, where he counts nearly 50 staff members and has won a long list of potent local endorsements. Still, the campaign spent more money than it raised during the second quarter of the year, and Booker’s efforts are likely to mean little until he can get what Des Moines lawyer Grant Woodard called “his moment in the sun.”

“Something has to happen for him in the national narrative, I think, and he can really start to flex his muscle here,” said Woodard, a former Democratic operative in the state. 

Looming hurdles
 
Booker faces several hurdles at this critical juncture. Biden’s camp has responded quickly to his potshots, suggesting the former vice president is more prepared to be hit next week than he was during the first presidential debate when he stammered in answering Kamala Harris.

And, unlike the first debate, he’ll have to share the stage with Harris, whose campaign gained ground after she took aim at Biden’s recent comments about working with segregationists and his past opposition to school busing. Her broadside was so successful in part because Harris is not known for sharing personal stories.  
 
Booker, in contrast, has built a brand on a personal, uplifting approach to politics. Trying to replicate Harris could make him seem insincere.

Yvette Simpson, chief executive of the progressive group Democracy for America, urged Booker to “speak from a place that’s real to him,” warning that he has verged on “a stage where it’s more platitudes and less authentic.” On issues beyond criminal justice, she added, the debates could exert pressure on Booker to be more than “the guy in the middle” who neither directly courts the left nor actively alienates it.

‘Verbal punches’

Indeed, Booker has at times edged away from a full-bore liberal approach in his campaign’s first months. He has proposed an ambitious, progressive immigration agenda, decrying President Donald Trump as “worse than a racist,” but clarified last week that he would not use the term “concentration camps” to describe immigration detention facilities, as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has.

Booker also hasn’t fully endorsed a push by activists on the left to eliminate the Senate filibuster to help a future Democratic president accomplish his or her agenda. And on health care, Booker has joined Harris in supporting Medicare for All legislation but edged away from it on the campaign trail as Biden runs as a sharp critic of single-payer health insurance. 
 
No matter how he’s drawn into a clash with Biden on the debate stage, Booker appears firmly on track for one. And he’s taking a more pugnacious tone with Trump as well, telling NBC talk show host Seth Meyers this week that he sometimes has to resist the temptation to punch the “elderly, out-of-shape” president.

Penny Rosfjord, a member of the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee, said that combativeness among candidates “can get dangerous” but suggested that Booker has more room to get sharper given the love-first tone that he started his campaign on.

“I personally think it’s the right tone, but he will at times have to get a bit more aggressive with people,” Rosfjord said. “He might have to throw some verbal punches here and there.”

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American cities including Atlanta, Miami and New Orleans that set goals to slash planet-warming greenhouse emissions are lacking the data to measure their progress, scientists said in a new report.

Some 40% of U.S. cities that committed to cutting emissions are unable to assess their programs because costly tallies of their emissions are inadequate, said the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a nonprofit organization.

“City resources are always tight,” said David Ribeiro, the report’s lead author and a senior research manager at ACEEE.

The lack of data could also be due to emission-cutting goals having only recently been adopted, or to insufficient political will, Ribeiro said.

Of the 75 cities surveyed, just over 20% had pledged to cut emissions and were able to measure advances with recently produced evidence.

Cities account for two-thirds of the world’s energy demand and 70% of energy-related emissions, the report said, citing cited International Energy Agency data.

Plans to cut emissions have grown increasingly ambitious in the United States since President Donald Trump vowed in 2017 to leave the landmark Paris climate accord, said Katie Walsh of CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit that supports collection of environmental data.

The report said Los Angeles pledged to reduce its greenhouse gases by 100 percent by 2050, thus virtually eliminating them, compared to 2016, with municipal data projecting it would meet that goal.

But in another 21 cities, authorities had not collected enough emission data to track their progress, it said on Wednesday.

With about 870,000 residents, Indianapolis, Indiana, was among the largest cities lacking data to assess its progress toward becoming carbon neutral – producing no more climate-changing emissions than can be offset by other means – by 2050.

Other large cities hampered by insufficient data include Nashville, Tennessee, Detroit, Michigan, and Louisville, Kentucky, the report said.

Lucy Hutyra, a Boston University associate professor of earth and environment, said pledging to reduce greenhouse gasses was a good “aspirational first step.”

But, she added, “Without a clear plan for monitoring the efficacy of emissions reduction policies, it is all aspiration.”

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As part of sweeping reforms, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed Meaza Ashenafi to be the first woman to lead the country’s Supreme Court. This charismatic lawyer has built a career advocating for women. VOA’S Salem Solomon has this profile.

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Electric power is slowly returning in Venezuela after a devastating blackout that ground activity to a virtual halt in a country beleaguered by a protracted political power struggle. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports that the Trump administration is renewing calls for the departure of embattled socialist ruler Nicolas Maduro, who remains defiant, insisting that conditions in Venezuela will improve.

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Britain’s new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party leader, began assembling his political team as soon as he took office Wednesday. New Cabinet members include the country’s first ethnic minority person to head the Treasury and several women. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Johnson’s first day on the job was marked by demonstrations by his supporters, as well as his opponents.

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Both Russia and China are denying their military aircraft violated South Korea’s territorial airspace during a joint air patrol Tuesday.

The alleged violation happened near a disputed group of islands claimed by both South Korea, which calls it Dokdo, and Japan, which calls it Takeshima.  

South Korea’s Defense Ministry says it scrambled multiple fighter jets after a Russian warplane ventured into its airspace over the East Sea.  

The ministry says after the South Korean jets fired warning shots, the Russian plane left South Korean territory. However, it returned a short time later, prompting the South Korean jets to fire more warning shots.

Russia’s Defense Ministry denied Seoul’s depiction of the incident, and accused the South Korean fighter jets of “unprofessional maneuvers.”  A spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry told reporters in Beijing that the patrol did not “target any third party” and flew along established air routes.  

South Korea’s Defense Ministry summoned officials from the Chinese and Russian embassies to lodge an official protest. Seoul says this is the first time that a Russian plane has violated its territorial skies.  

The flight by two Russian and two Chinese bombers, plus early warning planes from both nations, marks a notable ramping-up of military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.  

Japan also lodged its own formal protest with Seoul and Moscow over the incident.  Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo that South Korea’s actions were “totally unacceptable and extremely regrettable” in light of Japan’s claim over the islands.

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Officials in Afghanistan say a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed vehicle into a NATO military convoy in Kabul Wednesday, killing one Croatian soldier and wounding two others.

The early morning attack occurred near a military base on the northern outskirts of the Afghan capital.

Croatian officials initially said three soldiers were wounded but later said one of them died after suffering serious head injuries.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Meanwhile, the insurgent group captured Keran Wa Manjan district in northeastern Badakhshan province bordering Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.

A provincial government spokesman, Nek Mohammad Nazari, told VOA the Taliban overran the district after week-long fighting. The insurgent group claimed about 40 Afghan security personnel surrendered the Taliban during the course of fighting.

The Taliban continues to inflict hundreds of casualties on pro-government forces and has captured new territory during the current fighting season amid ongoing negotiations with the United States for a political settlement to the 18-year-old war.

U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad has arrived in the region for a new round of talks with insurgent interlocutors in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. The two adversaries are said to have come closer to signing an agreement in the nearly year-long dialogue.

The deal, if approved, would require Washington to announce a timetable for American troops to leave Afghanistan in exchange for assurances the Taliban will not allow transnational terrorists to use insurgent-controlled areas for international terrorism. The insurgents, under the deal, will immediately engage in intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss a permanent cease-fire and an inclusive governing system.

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The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it was opening a broad investigation of major digital technology firms into whether they engage in anticompetitive practices, the strongest sign the Trump administration is stepping up its scrutiny of Big Tech.

The review will look into “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not identify specific companies but said the review would consider concerns raised about “search, social media, and some retail services online” — an apparent reference to Alphabet, Amazon.com and Facebook, and potentially Apple.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to provide a list of companies that would be scrutinized.

Google and Apple declined to comment, referring to prior statements by executives, while Facebook and Amazon did not immediately comment.

Facebook fell 1.7% in after-hours trading, while Alphabet fell 1%, Amazon was down 1.2% and Apple was 0.4% lower.

The announcement comes a day before the Federal Trade Commission is set to announce a $5 billion penalty to Facebook for failing to properly protect user privacy.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said the Justice Department “must now be bold and fearless in stopping Big Tech’s misuse of its monopolistic power. Too long absent and apathetic, enforcers now must prevent privacy abuse, anticompetitive tactics, innovation roadblocks, and other hallmarks of excessive market power.”

In June, Reuters reported the Trump administration was gearing up to investigate whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google misuse their massive market power, setting up what could be an unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies.

A person briefed on the matter said the Justice review may also include some state attorneys general.

The Justice Department said the review “is to assess the competitive conditions in the online marketplace in an objective and fair-minded manner and to ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.”

Reuters reported on May 31 that the Justice Department was preparing an investigation of Google to determine whether the tech giant broke antitrust law.

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill alike are expressing growing concerns about the size of the largest tech firms and their market power. Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has called for breaking up companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook and unwinding prior acquisitions.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel pressed executives from the four firms about their competitive practices and noted that Google, Facebook, Amazon had a rising share of key markets.

Congress held a series of hearings last year looking at the dominance of major tech companies and their role in displacing or swallowing up existing businesses.

It is rare for the government to seek to undo a consummated deal. The most famous case in recent memory is the government’s effort to break up Microsoft Corp. The Justice Department won a preliminary victory in 2000 but was reversed on appeal. The case settled with Microsoft intact.

“There is growing consensus among venture capitalists and startups that there is a kill zone around Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple that prevents new startups from entering the market with innovative products and services to challenge these incumbents,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat who heads the subcommittee.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CBS News last month that scrutiny was fair but “if you look at any kind of measure about is Apple a monopoly or not, I don’t think anybody reasonable is going to come to the conclusion that Apple’s a monopoly. Our share is much more modest. We don’t have a dominant position in any market.”

Google’s Adam Cohen told the House Judiciary subcommittee last week that the company had “created new competition in many sectors, and new competitive pressures often lead to concerns from rivals.”

Technology companies face a backlash in the United States and across the world, fueled by concerns among competitors, lawmakers and consumer groups that they have too much power and are harming users and business rivals.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for closer scrutiny of social media companies and Google, accusing them of suppressing conservative voices online, without presenting any evidence.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, praised the investigation and said a Senate tech task force she chairs would be looking at how to “foster free markets and competition.”

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Russian boxer Maxim Dadashev has died from injuries sustained in a fight in Maryland, the Russian boxing federation announced Tuesday. 

“Maxim Dadashev has died in the United States following injuries sustained during his fight with Subriel Matias,” the federation said in a statement.

The 28-year-old underwent emergency brain surgery in Washington after his super-lightweight bout with Puerto Rican Matias on Friday was stopped in the 11th round by his cornerman James “Buddy” McGirt.

Dadashev, known as “Mad Max,” was unable to walk to the dressing room and was immediately hospitalized.

Doctors operated to relieve pressure from swelling on his brain.

“Right now, he’s in critical condition, but the doctor told me that he’s stable,” Dadashev’s strength and conditioning coach, Donatas Janusevicius, had told ESPN after the operation.

McGirt said after the fight he “couldn’t convince” his fighter to stop, but opted to throw in the towel when he saw him “getting hit with more and more clean shots as the fight went on.”

“One punch can change a whole guy’s life,” McGirt said.

Russian boxing chief Umar Kremlev told Russian media that Dadashev’s body would be repatriated home and that his family would receive financial aid.

Dadashev took an unbeaten 13-0 record into the 140-pound non-title fight.

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