A new BBC report details gruesome allegations from civilians living in Kashmiri villages known to be hubs of anti-India militant groups.
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The governor of lllinois said Friday he's erased the drug conviction of an Army veteran who was deported to Mexico in 2018, a step that the man's supporters hope will help him return to the U.S. "I recognize this pardon is not a perfect solution, but it is the most just action to take to allow a U.S. veteran the opportunity to be treated fairly by the country he served," Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. Miguel Perez Jr., 41, who was born in Mexico, doesn't have U.S. citizenship but had a green card as a permanent U.S. resident.
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Barack Obama thinks about his brand and his legacy a lot, and he dreads what Joe Biden might do to it. This month alone, Biden mistook New Hampshire for Vermont even though the sole reason he was in that part of the country was the first-in-the-nation primary, which is famously not held in Vermont. He said RFK was assassinated in the 1970s. He said he couldn’t remember the name of the British prime minister in the midst of bragging about his foreign-policy chops. And he speculated about what it might have been like if Obama had been assassinated.This last, ghastly gaffe might be too much for Obama to take. Obama believes his brand is cool, technocratic, tightly controlled, a bit wonkish and professorial, inspirational, buttoned-down, Ivy League, definitely forward-looking. Biden is warm, free-wheeling, intellectually ungifted, frank and unguarded to the point of outright sloppiness, so old he served in the Senate alongside segregationist Democrats, and so out of touch he actually touts his friendship with these guys. Obama thought back in 2008 Biden was so old that he would never again run for president, his team strongly discouraged Biden from entering the race in the fall of 2015, and Biden’s jaw-dropping string of verbal blunders indicates a strong possibility of incipient cognitive decline.As Barack Obama surveys the Democratic contenders for 2020, he must be thinking: 1) None of these people has half my political skills but 2) Elizabeth Warren is my kind of gal. Warren is also cool, wonky, and professorial, also a Harvard product. Though she is 70, she looks younger and hasn’t displayed any signs of cognitive decline. Like Obama, she would be labeled a “historic” president. If she reached the Oval Office, he wouldn’t have to cringe every time she opened her mouth. He wouldn’t have to worry that her back-slapping tendencies would allow her to get rolled by Mitch McConnell. He trusts her so much that he let her guide one of his signature achievements, setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.One poll released in late August gave Warren a one-point lead over Biden. Two other polls released in the second half of August show her within three points of Biden. True, most others give him a double-digit lead, and some have her in third place, albeit narrowly, behind Bernie Sanders. Yet she’s close enough that Obama must be wondering if his endorsement could vault her into the lead position.What then? Like everyone else on earth, Obama notices that Biden looks like a much stronger candidate than Warren in a matchup against Trump. Warren might well be Hillary 2.0: She’s off-putting. She’s smug. She’s . . . a she. Polls show Democrats are extremely worried that the American people won’t accept a woman president. The more she uses words like “My Daddy” and ostentatiously drinks beer, the less relatable she is. It’s hard to imagine the American people are thinking, “Yes, this is the voice I want to listen to every day for the next four years.”So there would be risk involved in backing Warren. But from Obama’s perspective, there’s also risk involved in Biden’s becoming president and embarrassing him every day. Maybe even, in his dotage, Biden might let what’s left of the Obama legacy slip away. If Obama thinks like most Democrats, he probably believes that nonsensical hullabaloo about email servers, not Hillary Clinton’s deficiencies as a candidate or sexism, was what cost her the presidency.Obama proved to be a failure at almost everything except getting Obama elected to office, but he is not a man notable for a modest view of his own skills. He must be thinking his star power could restore black turnout to levels approaching where it was when he was on the ballot. He must be thinking that with a push from him, and a little help from his turnout wizards, Elizabeth Warren could avoid Hillary Clinton’s errors and enter the White House.If Obama were to endorse Warren, the 2020 Democratic primaries would be upended, and Obama would be praised for lighting a path to a genuinely progressive presidency. And if Biden won the nomination anyway, no biggie: Obama could simply campaign for him in the general election and settle for a less-than-ideal Democratic presidency. I’m guessing Obama comes out strong for Warren.
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A large wooden sculpture that strongly resembles Donald Trump was erected this week in Slovenia, home country of Trump's wife Melania, though its designer insists it is meant to represent a "statue of liberty", not the U.S. president. Tom Schlegl's 8-metre (26 foot) statue in the village of Sela, north of the capital Ljubljana, depicts a man with blond hair and an angry expression, wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie. "I designed the statue because people have forgotten what the Statue of Liberty stands for.
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US police fired pepper spray Saturday after counter-demonstrators accused them of protecting "Straight Pride" advocates who support President Donald Trump, and refused to let officers re-open a road. The unrest came after the counter-protesters and "Straight Pride" group -- considered homophobic extremists by their opponents -- staged dueling rallies in Boston. Officers fired pepper spray and made several arrests.
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Donald Trump has said the decision on whether to evacuate residents of Florida to protect them from Hurricane Dorian, would be made on Sunday after meeting with officials.As he left the White House for the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland, he said members of the federal emergency management agency (FEMA) would be joining him to monitor events.
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Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong and another core member of a pro-democracy group were granted bail after being charged with inciting people to join a protest in June, while authorities denied permission for a major march Saturday as they took what appears to be a harder line on this summer's protests. The organizers of the march on the fifth anniversary of a decision by China against allowing fully democratic elections for the leader of Hong Kong said they were calling it off after an appeals board denied permission. The police commander of Hong Kong island, Kwok Pak Chung, appealed to people to stay away from any unauthorized rallies, warning that those caught could face a five-year jail term.
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Iran has gone further in breaching its nuclear deal with world powers, increasing its stock of enriched uranium and refining it to a greater purity than allowed, the U.N. atomic agency report said on Friday. The quarterly report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is policing the 2015 deal, confirms Iran is progressively backing out of the deal in retaliation for Washington's withdrawal form the accord and renewal of sanctions that have hit Iranian oil sales. Iran has said it will breach the deal's limits on its nuclear activities one by one, ratcheting up pressure on parties who still hope to save it.
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A woman tossed a lit Molotov cocktail into the lobby of a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Oakland Park, Florida. No one was reported injured, according to a report of the incident sent to Trump administration officials and viewed by The Associated Press. Law enforcement officials believe the woman intended to cause harm but the incident wasn't related to other ones where Homeland Security agencies were targeted.
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Britain has long been proud of its historically progressive attitude to slavery, frequently pointing to the fact that this country abolished the trade across its territories as early as 1833. But beneath the waters of Liverpool Bay lies something that should dent our complacency about this country’s role in the ending of human bondage. The wreck of the paddle steamer Leila, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1865, sheds new light on the actions of some British businessmen in supporting the southern slave states of the Confederacy during the US Civil War. Now the wreck - described by historians as “one of the most historically-significant in the north west” - is to be granted protected status on the advice of Historic England. The 19th century paddle steamer was on its maiden voyage from Liverpool to Bermuda loaded with guns and supplies for Confederate forces when it foundered on 14th January 1865 during stormy weather in Liverpool Bay, with the loss of 47 lives. The wreck on the Leila on the seabed in Liverpool Bay Credit: Historic England Leila was secretly built in Liverpool on behalf of the Confederate Government late in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 as a purpose-built vessel to run the blockade imposed on the southern states by the Union forces of Abraham Lincoln. She was technically advanced for her day and was designed to evade the northern Union ships enforcing the blockade. Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England said: “The Lelia is one of a small group of British ships involved in British complicity in running guns and munitions to the Confederates. “Though the UK remained officially neutral throughout the American Civil War, the Leila comprises evidence of the British financing of blockade runners that sent munitions and luxuries to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco. As such it is very significant as historical evidence.” Although the British Government’s position on the blockade was officially neutral, opinion in Britain over the issue of the Civil War was split. Many Lancashire cotton workers supported the blockade and the Union’s fight against the slave states, even though it resulted in a downturn in the weaving industry and severe hardship for their families. Such was their support for the abolitionist cause that a statue of Lincoln was erected in their honour in 1919, with a plaque reproducing his letter of 19th January 1863 to the Manchester cotton workers thanking them for their support. Statue of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Square, Manchester, inscribed with his letter of thanks to the city's cotton weavers Credit: Phil Portus / Alamy Stock Photo But there were those in Britain willing to take advantage of the war and help supply the slave states with goods and materials. At the start of the Civil War, the Confederacy lacked the manufacturing capacity to compete with the more industrialised northern states and so relied on importing war supplies, including guns and ammunition, to sustain its war effort. It acquired fast steamships, mainly paddle steamers, from British and other shipbuilders, intended to breach the naval blockade of its main ports imposed by the Union in 1861 in an attempt to strangle the southern war effort. They hoped a combination of speed and stealth would help them to break the blockade, enabling them to carry cotton and tobacco to Europe and war supplies back to the Confederacy. The Lelia was built in Millers shipyard in Toxteth, Liverpool, where shipbuilders had been experimenting with the early use of steel, which, being lighter than iron, allowed for larger cargo space and greater speed - perfect for blockade runners. The paddle steamer was only identified in 1997 after a bell marked ‘Lelia 1864’ was recovered from close to the wreck beneath Liverpool Bay by a local diver. An infra-red photograph of the wreck of the Leila Credit: Historic England The partially-buried remains of the Leila include one of the paddle wheels, the engine and boiler rooms, less well-preserved cargo areas and a steam winch. The deck and all structures that were on it have not survived, but as much as 1.9m of its hull remains buried in the seabed, raising the prospect that its cargo of British-manufactured munitions and machinery may have been partially preserved . The Leila is one of three blockade busters to have been discovered in British waters. The other is the paddle steamer Iona II, which sank in 1864 in foggy conditions close to the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel on her first trans-Atlantic voyage. The Iona II’s sister ship Iona I, also a paddle steamer believed to be involved in gun-running, was lost in 1862 in the inner Clyde Estuary, near Greenock, in Scotland. Rebecca Pow, Heritage Minister at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said: “Protecting sites like the wreck of the Lelia helps us to preserve an important story about Britain’s role in the American Civil War. “Although the conflict happened over a hundred years ago, it is right that we ensure the protection of this site so we can learn more about one of the most significant shipwrecks off the coast of North West England and broaden our knowledge about our nation's seafaring history." A print depicting the upsetting of the Liverpool lifeboat during its ill fated attempt to rescue the crew of the Leila Credit: Historic England
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President Donald Trump's decision to tweet out a photo of an Iranian launch pad that he got from a classified intelligence briefing this week has astonished ...
Authorities arrested 35 people and seized enough fentanyl to kill roughly 14 million people in a three-state drug bust announced on Thursday by the US Justice ...
View full coverage on Google NewsA half-brother of the late rock superstar Prince has died, leaving five Prince siblings to share in the musician's fortune. An attorney for Alfred Jackson, Asa ...
View full coverage on Google NewsNorth Korea accused the United Kingdom, France and Germany on Thursday of meddling in its "self-defensive measures for arms modernization," saying the West will make "no greater mistake" than thinking Pyongyang will give up its right to have weapons that it says are needed to ensure peace. The North's official Korean Central News Agency circulated a statement from Kim Son Gyong, an adviser at the Korea-Europe Association, in response to a joint statement Tuesday from the three important U.S. allies condemning Pyongyang's "repeated provocative launches" of ballistic missiles.
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(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong police said they banned a Saturday protest by the organizer of previous historic mass marches, citing public safety concerns, a move that could anger demonstrators ahead of a planned 13th straight weekend of pro-democracy rallies.Police said approving the Civil Human Rights Front’s march was too risky as some people might use it to “carry out large scale destruction and disrupt public order,” Kwok Pak-chung, the force’s regional commander for Hong Kong Island, said at a Thursday briefing. The South China Morning Post first reported the ban.“Based on our intelligence, we believe certain protesters will commit acts of violence during the gathering,” Kwok said. “There’s a high chance that certain violent protesters will hijack this event.” He added that officials “have made a decision that we didn’t like to make.”Bonnie Leung, CHRF’s vice-convener, told Bloomberg News earlier in the day that the group was planning to appeal. Some previous rallies have been approved at the last minute after negotiations with police.The ban could trigger further outcry as the rally was planned for the fifth anniversary of China’s introduction of an electoral reform package that would have restricted democratic freedoms and was later rejected by Hong Kong. It could also fuel turnout at a two-day general strike called to begin Monday if the government doesn’t concede to protesters’ major demands by Saturday, the SCMP said.Timeline: How Months of Protests Have Unfolded in Hong KongThe march had been planned to start at centrally located Chater Garden and continue on to China’s liaison office in the city, where Hong Kong’s police and Beijing have drawn their sharpest line after a previous demonstration saw protesters deface the national emblem. Hong Kong’s former leader Leung Chun-ying is promoting a website offering crowd-funded cash bounties to identify protesters who have perpetrated vandalism, including HK$1 million ($127,000) for the person who splashed black paint on the emblem.The CHRF has organized three record-breaking peaceful marches over weeks of protests, including the June 9 rally against legislation easing extraditions to China that sparked what’s morphed into a broader movement against Beijing’s tightening grip over the city. The group said each march brought more than 1 million people onto the streets, while police estimates are lower, in the hundreds of thousands.Its latest march would come after a weekend that began with the formation of a peaceful human chain across the city and culminated two days later with police firing a weapon and using water cannons for the first time. Police said 86 people were arrested over the weekend for alleged offenses including unlawful assembly, possession of weapons and assaulting officers.CHRF convener Jimmy Sham said separately Thursday that he had been attacked by two armed masked men inside a restaurant in the city’s Kowloon, but that he hadn’t been hurt because his friend shielded him. Sham said he would head to the police station in Tsim Sha Tsui to give a statement.(Updates throughout with police confirmation.)To contact the reporters on this story: Sheryl Tian Tong Lee in Hong Kong at slee1905@bloomberg.net;Fion Li in Hong Kong at fli59@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Karen Leigh, Jon HerskovitzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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A married couple wanted for murder have escaped from custody after overpowering guards who were transporting them through Utah in the United States.Blane Barksdale, 56, and Susan Barksdale, 59, broke free from two guards on Monday evening.
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An abandoned oil tanker anchored off war-torn Yemen that is degrading along with its cargo could explode and cause an environmental disaster, experts said Wednesday as UN inspectors prepared to visit. The ship "Safer", used as a floating storage platform, is laden with some 1.1 million barrels of crude oil and has been stranded with no maintenance since early 2015, leaving it to deteriorate and potentially allowing explosive gases to build up. United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday that a technical assessment team was waiting in nearby Djibouti preparing to board the Safer for a first-hand evaluation.
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Power outages and flooding were reported in the Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican islands, but no damagesHurricane Dorian caused only limited damage in Puerto Rico late Wednesday. Photograph: Ramón Espinosa/APHurricane Dorian caused limited damage in the northern Caribbean as it left the region and gathered strength late Wednesday, setting its sights on the US mainland as it threatened to grow into a Category 3 storm.Puerto Rico, which had braced for the worst, seemed to be spared any heavy wind and rain, a huge relief to many on an island where blue tarps still cover some 30,000 homes nearly two years after Hurricane Maria. The island’s 3.2 million inhabitants also depend on an unstable power grid that remains prone to outages since it was destroyed by Maria.Power outages and flooding were reported across the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra after Dorian hit St Thomas as a Category 1 storm.“We’re happy because there are no damages to report,” Culebra’s mayor, William Solis, told the Associated Press, noting that only one community lost power.Donald Trump began the day by insulting and taunting Puerto Rico and its residents, who are US citizens, on Twitter. “Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on earth,” the president wrote in part. “Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt. And by the way, I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!”Florida officials said Wednesday that they are preparing for the hurricane to make landfall somewhere along the state’s eastern shore. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, declared a state of emergency and urged residents to take precautions in anticipation of a possible Labor Day strike.Dennis Feltgen, a Hurricane Center meteorologist in Miami, said Dorian may grow in size and could land anywhere from south Florida to South Carolina on Sunday or Monday. “This will be a large storm approaching the south-east,” he said.County governments along Florida’s east-central coast are distributing sandbags and many residents are rushing to warehouse retailers to load up on water, canned food and emergency supplies.Trump declared an emergency on Tuesday night and ordered federal assistance for local authorities in Puerto Rico. But in a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump, a climate crisis denier, seemed to complain about Puerto Rico’s exposure to storms, and escalated a long-running feud with Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital.The two established a combative relationship after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria almost two years ago, when US aid was slow to arrive and Trump offended many during a visit. > We are tracking closely tropical storm Dorian as it heads, as usual, to Puerto Rico. FEMA and all others are ready, and will do a great job. When they do, let them know it, and give them a big Thank You - Not like last time. That includes from the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019On Tuesday night, Cruz said that Trump should “get out of the way”.“Three thousand Puerto Ricans did not open their eyes this morning because this racist man did not have it within him to do his job,” Cruz said on CNN. “So get out of the way, President Trump.”Cruz was referring to the death toll from Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. An official report criticized the Trump administration’s slow response to the devastation from the storm, which destroyed the island’s power grid and decimated its agriculture and tourism industries.On Tuesday morning, Trump had tweeted about Dorian, and seemed to complain about the cost of hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, which have fallen far short of restoring the island.“Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico,” Trump wrote. “Will it ever end? Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for ‘anywhere’.”Trump’s tweet contained multiple falsehoods. While Congress has allocated $42.5bn for disaster relief for Puerto Rico, the island had received less than $14bn through May, according to federal data. And in any case Trump’s headline amount of $92bn would not qualify the Maria relief package as “an all-time record” for the costliest tropical cyclones, according to the federal government’s own figures. Spending on recovery for Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana in the same storm season as Maria, has so far cost $125bn.Since Maria, Puerto Rico has struggled with political turbulence leading to the recent departure of the governor, Ricardo Rosselló. Earlier this month, the territory’s supreme court overturned the swearing-in of Rosselló’s successor, Pedro Pierluisi, and the former justice secretary, Wanda Vázquez, became governor.
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Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday "mistakes were made" when he sent a fundraising mailer that called on supporters to "defend Texas" from illegal immigration, which was dated a day before a gunman targeting Mexicans killed 22 people in El Paso. The letter was condemned as racist and anti-Latino by the Texas Democratic Party after it surfaced last week. Taken together, the mailer and tweet have put a spotlight on Abbott's hardline rhetoric at a time when he has urged unity in the aftermath of another mass shooting in Texas.
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A district attorney in Tennessee could face suspension after saying he does not prosecute domestic violence cases between same-sex partners.Coffee County district attorney Craig Northcott came under fire in June after a video emerged of him saying he would not prosecute anyone with domestic violence charges if they are in a gay marriage because he does not accept their legal status.
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MIKE THEILERNearly a month after an accused shooter reportedly said he deliberately targeted “Mexicans” while killing more than 20 people in El Paso, Fox News personalities are still echoing the same talking points from the gunman’s racist manifesto, in which he complained about a “Hispanic invasion” of America.Appearing on Fox Nation’s The Todd Starnes Show on Thursday, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was asked by Starnes—who recently likened migrants to a “rampaging horde” of Nazis—if Democrats and liberals hate President Donald Trump and his supporters.Pirro, who is currently promoting a book that Trump has already endorsed, took the opportunity to push a version of the “Great Replacement theory”—the same racist lie that was cited by the El Paso gunman and other recent domestic terrorist attackers.“They hate Donald Trump—he’s the one they want to get rid of,” she said, in a segment first spotted by Media Matters. “Their plot to remake America is to bring in the illegals, change the way the voting occurs in this country, give them licenses. They get to vote—maybe once, maybe twice, maybe three times.”After decrying same-day voter registration and grousing about voter rolls not being purged, Pirro—who was suspended by Fox earlier this year for questioning Ilhan Omar’s loyalty to America—went right back to the far-right well.“Think about it,” Pirro exclaimed. “It is a plot to remake America—to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats.”Pirro’s comments come just days after the National Association of Hispanic Journalists cut ties with Fox News over the network’s use of “invasion” rhetoric to describe immigration, with the NAHJ saying Starnes’ remark about immigrants was the final straw.In the wake of the El Paso slayings, Fox News has been the focus of widespread criticism for the extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric of many of its opinion hosts. Tucker Carlson, for instance, has seen a further erosion of his advertiser base after he called white supremacy a “hoax” just days after the shooting.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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An abandoned oil tanker anchored off war-torn Yemen that is degrading along with its cargo could explode and cause an environmental disaster, experts said Wednesday as UN inspectors prepared to visit. The ship "Safer", used as a floating storage platform, is laden with some 1.1 million barrels of crude oil and has been stranded with no maintenance since early 2015, leaving it to deteriorate and potentially allowing explosive gases to build up. United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday that a technical assessment team was waiting in nearby Djibouti preparing to board the Safer for a first-hand evaluation.
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Blane Barksdale, 56, and Susan Barksdale, 59, broke free on Monday evening from two guards in Blanding, a rural town in southeast Utah, the Tucson Police Department said in a statement. The couple later obtained a GMC Sierra pickup truck and drove off, Tucson police spokesman Pete Dugan said. "Investigators have information that they are possibly traveling through Arizona," Tucson police said in a statement.
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On Thursday, August 22, members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force took a drone to an area near the Golan Heights, seeking to attack Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) monitored the men, took video of them walking through a field, and struck back two nights later. The air strikes targeted a villa in southern Syria that Jerusalem says was being used by the IRGC and Shiite militias. This includes Hezbollah, a Lebanese ally of Iran that has played a major role in Syria in recent years.The air strike is part of an increasingly firm stand Israel is taking against Iran’s regional ambitions in the Middle East. This includes several recent air strikes in Iraq that Iranian-linked paramilitaries have blamed on Israel. It also includes near-daily reports in media from Lebanon to Kuwait asserting that Israel is targeting Iran’s network of proxies and their bases in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Jerusalem is no longer secretive about this widespread campaign. In January former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot said Israel had carried out thousands of air strikes on Iranian targets.Now IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani has warned Israel that these strikes will be Israel’s last. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has threatened retaliation. This is part of a rising Iranian-backed chorus against Jerusalem, which includes real threats such as continuing rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza. It also includes threats by Iranian proxies such as Iraqi-based Kata’ib Hezbollah against U.S. forces in Iraq.What is Israel’s strategy in all this? The goal is to draw Iran and its allies out of the shadows. Over the past decade, inflamed by the 2015 Iran deal, Tehran has increased its weapons transfers to Hezbollah, sent thousands of advisers to support the Syrian regime, and helped mobilize a network of militias in Iraq. Some of this was used to fight ISIS, or enemies of Bashar al-Assad. But with the ISIS war and Syrian conflict winding down, these groups are turning their threats toward Iran’s adversaries. Tehran is obsessed with destroying Israel, as can be seen in its frequent statements and militaristic parades. It has launched drones from Syria into Israel in February 2018, rockets in May 2018, and a rocket in January 2019. Hezbollah threatens that its 150,000 rockets can strike all of Israel.Air strikes on Iran’s network of proxies force the network out of the shadows. It can’t hide in villas in southern Syria, or launch drones at night, or stockpile ballistic missiles in Iraq if it is looking over its shoulder and increasingly making mistakes through its aggressive and open threats. Iran is used to playing a double game of moderates and hard-liners, sending its smiling foreign minister to the recent G7 while boasting of its allies’ drone technology striking Saudi Arabia.The Israeli air strikes couple well with the Washington-led campaign of “maximum pressure.” Iran now faces two fronts, the sanctions and strikes, that together are designed to blow the lid on its regional strategy. Tehran will be tempted to make a misstep in its otherwise calculated reactions. Iran has a playbook: If a Western power seizes its tanker, as the U.K. did in July, Iran seizes a tanker. It downed a sophisticated U.S. drone in June but hasn’t harmed anyone in six sabotage operations on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. More than anything, Iran wants to preserve its regional power, based in proxies and allies that are often Shiite coreligionists. Its long-term goal is to get Hezbollah and its Shiite paramilitary allies in Iraq into more government positions and build up their parallel-state structures of armed fighters and bases. A war with the U.S. or Israel, or a direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia, as opposed to using proxies such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, is not in Tehran’s interest. This is the strategic calculation that underpins Israel’s actions, but it can go only so far. A game of whack-a-mole against Iran’s drones and missiles is just a setback for Tehran. If Tehran doesn’t gamble on a major conflict with Israel, it will continue its creeping annexation of neighboring states.
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The Chicago Board of Education approved a $7.7 billion fiscal 2020 budget on Wednesday, rejecting a call to delay a vote on the spending plan by the district's teachers union, which is eyeing a possible strike next month. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which is in contract talks with the nation's third-largest public school system, claimed the new spending plan fails to address "dire" shortages of social workers, nurses and other staff. School officials said the budget funds 95 additional positions that were part of a commitment by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for more than 450 new jobs over five years.
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