Month: August 2017

The daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. stood beside her father’s newly unveiled statue Monday, just a few blocks from where he grew up, handing out hugs and telling each well-wisher: “It’s about time.”

The statue paying tribute to King made its public debut Monday morning on the Georgia Capitol grounds in front of around 800 people including Gov. Nathan Deal, many other state political leaders and several members of the King family. The sculpture’s installation comes more than three years after Georgia lawmakers endorsed the project.

“Forty-nine years ago when my father was assassinated, he was the most hated man in America. Today, he is one of the most loved men in the world,” the Rev. Bernice King said of her father, who was slain in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

A replica of the nation’s Liberty Bell tolled three times before the 8-foot (2.4-meter) bronze statue was unveiled on the 54th anniversary of King’s “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. The statue depicts King in mid-stride, holding a jacket and grasping a batch of papers.

Bernice King said her father gave the nation a sense of hope in a time of turmoil, and his statue can serve a similar purpose today.

Bringing the statue into reality took multiple struggles. Officials had to negotiate with King’s family for the right to use his image. Then an artist was selected for the project, only to be killed in a motorcycle accident. After a lengthy screening, sculptor Martin Dawe was chosen to replace him.

Dawe said he knew other tributes to King had been criticized and he set one goal: Make the statue look like the man.

King’s statue was erected in his Southern hometown at a time when monuments honoring Civil War Confederates are coming down in many other places across the South.

“This tribute is important and a lasting statement about the value of inclusion, the strength of our diversity and the power of grace and how it changes hearts,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said. “This statue comes at a time when there are many conversations about historical monuments going on nationally and within the state. When the time comes, I’m confident in the city of Atlanta that we will walk it together as we have again, again and again.”

Reed said $40 million is being invested to redevelop the Martin Luther King Jr. drive corridor to improve mobility and safety. The mayor also said a $23 million MLK Recreation and Aquatic Center will be opened in Atlanta by the end of the year.

Morehouse College professor Timothy Miller kicked off the ceremony singing Ray Charles’ song, “Georgia on My Mind.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says President Donald Trump, who has faced criticism over his response to a recent white nationalist rally in Virginia, “speaks for himself” on his values.

Tillerson appeared on Fox News Sunday, and was asked by anchor Chris Wallace about a United Nations committee criticizing the Trump administration for its failure to condemn “racist violent events.”  

Tillerson said “we express America’s values from the State Department.  We represent the American people, we represent America’s values, our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment of people the world over and that message has never changed.”

In Trump’s reaction to the rally he denounced bigotry, but blamed “many sides” for violence that erupted in the city of Charlottesville.

Pressed by Wallace on whether he was separating himself from Trump on the matter Tillerson said, “I have spoken, I have made my own comments as to our values as well in a speech I gave to the State Department this past week.”  

In the August 18 speech Tillerson condemned racism, saying “hate is not an American value.”  He added, “We must pursue reconciliation, understanding and respect regardless of skin color, ethnicity or religious or political views.”

Last week, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an appeal to the United States to repudiate racially-motivated crimes and hate speech following the rally in Charlottesville and warned a failure to do so could spark more deadly violence.  

Tillerson’s comments on Fox News Sunday sparked a swift reaction on social media, including this Tweet from former State Department counselor and political scientist Eliot Cohen.  “I do believe that the Secretary of State just tossed the President of the United States under the bus. ”
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s new aid chief, Mark Green, kicked off an African tour in Sudan on Sunday, where he will assess whether Khartoum has done enough to get help into conflict areas to deserve eased sanctions.

It is Green’s first trip as administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a job he began two weeks ago amid talk of budget cuts and a wide-reaching reorganization of the agency by the Trump administration.

He is due to visit aid projects in drought-hit zones including neighboring Ethiopia, at a time when Washington is considering an estimated 30-percent cut in the budget of the State Department and USAID.

But his priorities will also include weighing whether Washington should reform one of its main diplomatic fronts in the region – a raft of sanctions imposed first over Khartoum’s perceived support of global terrorism, later its violent suppression of rebels in Darfur.

U.S. officials have said existing limited steps to ease sanctions are meant to recognize progress in Sudan, particularly moves to reduce internal conflict and increase cooperation with Washington in the war against terrorism.

Just before leaving office, former U.S. President Barack Obama temporarily eased penalties against Sudan, suspending a trade embargo, unfreezing assets and removing financial sanctions.

In July, the Trump administration postponed for three months a decision on whether to remove the restrictions full-time — giving it an Oct. 12 deadline to make up its mind.

Part of Green’s fact-finding mission, say the officials, will be to assess whether the Khartoum government is letting aid into Darfur and other rebellious border areas, one of several conditions that needs to be met.

Speaking to U.N. representatives and other donors hours after his arrival in Khartoum, Green said his visit showed the importance of improved humanitarian access.

“This review period is not the sole reason I am here, but it is one,” he said. “I’m here to listen, learn, and gather information to take back to Washington as the administration evaluates Sudan’s progress,” he said.

Green assured donors that the United States would not walk walk away from funding the humanitarian crisis, despite the proposed budget cuts.

“The United States will not walk away from our commitment to humanitarian assistance, and we will always stand with people everywhere when disaster strikes, for that is who we are is Americans,” said Green.

Any lifting of economic penalties would be a major turnaround for the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who once played host to Osama bin Laden and is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of orchestrating genocide in Darfur.

Washington has not weakened its condemnation of the tactics the Sudanese government used in Darfur — and Sudan remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, alongside Iran and Syria.

But the different signals on sanctions have come at a time of seismic changes in the region — U.S. security officials have praised Khartoum’s more recent help in fighting al Qaeda and dealing with the turmoil in northern neighbor Libya.

Diplomatic calculations have also changed since South Sudan collapsed into chaos after declaring independence from Sudan in 2011.

Green, a 57-year-old former four-term Republican congressman from Wisconsin, served as U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania under President George W. Bush, and helped craft key areas of Bush’s signature AIDS program, PEPFAR.

Earlier this month, he told Reuters he needed to do more with less as he faced the prospect of budget cuts, and had to prove to Trump that development assistance could further his “America First” agenda.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday the firing of three ballistic missiles by North Korea this week was a provocative act but that the United States will continue to seek a peaceful resolution.

“We do view it as a provocative act against the United States and our allies,” Tillerson said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to continue our peaceful pressure campaign as I have described it, working with allies, working with China as well to see if we can bring the regime in Pyongyang to the negotiating table.”
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President Donald Trump spared former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time in granting the first pardon of his turbulent tenure, wiping away the lawman’s recent federal conviction stemming from his immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.

The White House said 85-year-old Arpaio was a “worthy candidate” for the pardon, citing his “life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration.” Trump granted the pardon less than a month after a judge found Arpaio guilty of a misdemeanor contempt-of-court charge in a trial that was prosecuted by the president’s own Justice Department.

“I appreciate what the president did,” Arpaio told The Associated Press as he celebrated the news over an Italian restaurant meal and someone in his party ordered champagne. “I have to put it out there: Pardon, no pardon — I’ll be with him as long as he’s president.”

The pardon drew a swift and harsh denunciation from an array of Latinos and political leaders, who said it amounted to presidential approval of racism by eliminating the conviction of a law officer who the courts said had used immigration patrols to racially profile Latinos. And it overturned what critics saw as a long-awaited comeuppance for a lawman who long escaped accountability for his use of headline-grabbing tactics as sheriff in Phoenix.

“Pardoning Joe Arpaio is a slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County, especially the Latino community and those he victimized as he systematically and illegally violated their civil rights,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said.

The White House announced the pardon late Friday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane threatened Texas with severe flooding and on the same day Trump fleshed out the details of his ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, another move that will cheer his conservative base. The decision followed the uproar that ensued after Trump assigned blame to “both sides” participating in race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month.

Trump has been plagued by poor job approval ratings, currently at 34 percent, the lowest mark ever for a president in his first year.

His decision on the former sheriff may also serve to energize supporters dispirited by the president’s dismissal a week ago of chief strategist Steve Bannon, a favorite on the far right wing of the Republican Party.

GOP leaders were mixed in reacting to the pardon. Sen. John McCain criticized the move and said it undermines Trump’s “claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions.”

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said Arpaio should be given credit for his crime-fighting efforts and allowed to “move on” and enjoy his retirement.

Arpaio earned a national reputation by taking aggressive action to arrest immigrants in the country illegally. But years of legal issues and related costs took a toll on his political power at home, and he was handily defeated by a Democrat in the 2016 election.

The loss coincided with Trump’s election, based in large part on his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Arpaio campaigned for him around the country and spoke at the Republican National Convention.

Arpaio defied court orders that he stop the patrols and has been pardoned by a president who has shown a lack of respect for judges with whom he disagrees. Trump has had harsh words about judges overseeing the case against his now-defunct Trump University and his travel ban.

“So Sheriff Joe was convicted for doing his job?” Trump asked supporters at Tuesday’s rally. “I’ll make a prediction. I think he’s going to be just fine, OK.”

Trump issued the pardon seven months after taking office, though it is not unprecedented for a president to issue a pardon in their first year in office.

George H. W. Bush granted clemency after seven months in office, said Jeffrey Crouch, a professor of politics at American University who wrote a book on presidential pardons.

Asked whether Trump sought a recommendation from the Justice Department’s pardon attorney or the deputy attorney general, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday: “I would imagine they go through the thorough and standard process.”

It is not unheard of for a president to exercise his broad power to grant pardons without formal input from the Justice Department, particularly when it involves an associate or a friend. President Bill Clinton ignited a major controversy on his final day in office with a last-minute pardon for fugitive financier Marc Rich, the ex-husband of a major Democratic fundraiser.

Former President George W. Bush set off a political backlash over his decision to commute the prison sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on a perjury and obstruction of justice case that stemmed from a CIA leak. And Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal just days after taking over for his predecessor.

Critics say the Arpaio pardon removed the last opportunity to hold the lawman accountable for what they say is a long history of misconduct, including a 2013 civil verdict in which the sheriff’s officers were found to have racially profiled Latinos in his immigration patrols.

Arpaio was accused of prolonging the patrols for 17 months after a judge had ordered them stopped so that he could promote his immigration enforcement efforts in a bid to boost his successful 2012 re-election campaign.

Arpaio acknowledged extending the patrols, but insisted it wasn’t intentional. He blamed a former attorney for not properly explaining the importance of the court order and brushing off the conviction as a “petty crime.”

He accused then-President Barack Obama of trying to influence the 2016 sheriff’s race by announcing in court weeks before Election Day that it was willing to prosecute Arpaio. Prosecutors never filed criminal charges. They were instead recommended by the judge who presided over the profiling case, which began in the Bush administration. The judge in the profiling case was a Bush appointee as well.

Lawyers in Trump’s Justice Department prosecuted the case during a five-day trial this summer, and the judge handed down the conviction last month. Arpaio said he’ll discuss the case in more detail next week. He said he’ll remain involved in the political scene now that he’s no longer facing jail time.

“I don’t fish,” Arpaio said. “I’ll be very active.”
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Hurricane Harvey made landfall in southeast Texas, near the small town of Rockport not far from the city of Corpus Christi, slamming the state’s Gulf Coast with strong winds and heavy rain over hundreds of miles of coastline.

Harvey is the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade – with winds of 209 kilometers per hour at the time of landfall.

The storm made landfall as a very strong category 4 hurricane, but has gradually weakened.

As Harvey approached Friday, tens of thousands of Texas residents fled inland to avoid wind and flooding from the threatening storm.

The National Hurricane Center called Harvey a “life-threatening storm,” though no casualties have been confirmed. Officials noted, however, that emergency crews could not get to many places due to high winds.

Rockport Mayor Charles “C.J.” Wax, in an interview Saturday morning with the Weather Channel, said the hurricane hit his town “right on the nose” and warned of “widespread devastation.”

He said some schools, homes and businesses had been severely damaged – some were destroyed.

By Saturday morning, almost 300,000 residents were without power due to the storm. Emergency services in the communities where Harvey made landfall are also reporting a loss of cell phone service.

Trump’s response

As Harvey began to push onto the Texas coast Friday evening U.S. President Donald Trump said he had signed a federal disaster declaration for Texas.

On Saturday, Trump said he was monitoring the hurricane from Camp David, the presidential retreat near Washington, and that city, state and federal authorities were “working great together” to respond to the storm.

He commended the head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, for his handling of the situation.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the hurricane will be a “major disaster” and warned residents to prepare for record flooding. The storm has dumped more than 50 centimeters of rain in some places.

The storm is predicted to move through a 600-kilometer-wide swath of the Texas coast.

Flooding

Authorities say the storm surge will gradually subside Saturday, but they still warn of “potentially catastrophic” rainfall that is likely to continue for several days.

Speaking on CNN, Long said his biggest concern was that some citizens along the coast ignored warnings from officials and have chosen not to evacuate their homes.

“Storm surge has the highest potential to kill the most amount of people and cause the most damage. On top of that, we are looking at a significant inland flood event over many counties,” he said.

The mayor of the Texas Gulf Coast city of Galveston, James Yarbrough, said Friday the hurricane is expected to flood downtown streets, and the water might not recede for three or four days.

“We’ve all been through a number of these, this one’s a little different. …This one’s not going anywhere,” Yarbrough said.

The eye wall of Hurricane Harvey reaches Rockport, Texas:

Hurricanes usually weaken rapidly once they move inland, but forecasters say this storm will follow an unusual pattern — stalling over land, then probably moving back out to sea briefly and making a second drenching pass at low-lying coastal communities.

Harvey is expected to pour nearly 100 centimeters of rain over a wide area of the Texas coast during the next three days.

Brad Kieserman, vice president for disaster operations at the American Red Cross, told VOA, “I expect we are going to see major flood stage on probably every major river in the lower half of Texas.

“That is going to destroy homes, it is going to destroy businesses, it is going to render many homes to be uninhabitable. And I think you are going to see many of those rivers stay at major flood stage well past Labor Day (September 4),” Kieserman said.

The last hurricane to hit the southern portion of the Texas coast was 14 years ago. Governor Abbott ordered state emergency workers to mobilize for any necessary search-and-rescue operations.

He has preemptively declared a state of disaster in 30 counties on or near the coast to speed deployment of state resources.
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A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the coast of Yemen on Friday during a training mission and a search was under way for one U.S. service member, the U.S. military said.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that five other service members aboard the aircraft had been rescued after the crash, which took place about 20 miles (32 km) off the southern coast of Yemen at 7 p.m. (16000 GMT).

A U.S. official told Reuters that the cause of the crash was under investigation.

“When the incident took place the helicopter was not very high above the water,” CENTCOM spokesman Colonel John Thomas said.

The United States has been carrying out air strikes against al Qaeda in Yemen, with at least 80 launched since the end of February.

A small number of ground raids using U.S. Special Operations forces have also taken place, including one in January which resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy Seal.

There have been a number of aviation mishaps involving U.S military aircraft in the past few months.

The U.S. Coast Guard recently said that it had suspended its search off Hawaii for five Army aviators missing since their Black Hawk helicopter crashed earlier this month.

In April, a Black Hawk U.S. Army helicopter crashed on a Maryland golf course, killing one crewmember and seriously injuring two others.

Last month, a military transport plane crash killing 16 service members including elite special operations forces in northern Mississippi.
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