Protests Pop Up Across Iran, Fueled by Daily Dissatisfaction

TEHRAN — Across Iran’s heartland, from the sweltering heat of its southern cities to the bustling capital, protesters have taken to the streets with increasing intensity in recent months, much to the satisfaction of the Trump administration, which is hoping the civil unrest will put pressure on Iranian leaders.

Some demonstrations — about the weak economy, strict Islamic rules, water shortages, religious disputes, local grievances — have turned deadly. The protesters have shouted harsh slogans against clerical leaders and their policies. The events are broadly shared on social media and on the dozens of Persian language satellite channels beaming into the Islamic republic.

On Thursday, protests were held in the cities of Arak, Isfahan, Karaj and Shiraz, as people — in numbers ranging in the hundreds, perhaps more — took to the streets, chanting slogans like “death to high prices,” but also criticizing top officials. A smaller protest was held in Tehran, where some people were arrested, according to videos taken at the scene.

In the city of Eshtehard, west of the capital, protesters attacked a religious school on Thursday, forcing 500 clerics in training to flee, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported.

Truck drivers who went on strike in May for higher wages restarted their strike last week. The strike has affected fuel deliveries, leaving some gasoline stations empty in parts of the country, including Caspian Sea areas north of Tehran.

Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost nearly 80 percent of its value compared with a year ago, weakened at least in part because the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the nuclear agreement in May and restored American economic sanctions. The first batch of those restored sanctions is set to take effect on Monday.

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is under fire not only from hard-liners but also from the middle-class Iranians who voted for him.CreditAtta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, who supported the nuclear agreement, is under fire not only from hard-liners but also from the Iranians who voted for him — the vast middle class. Both groups say his economic policies have failed.

The demonstrations began after a week of unprecedented nationwide protests in January. In more than 80 cities, including Tehran, people took to the streets with economic demands and calls for more freedoms. In total, 25 people were killed and more than 4,000 were arrested.

The protests over the past six months have been relatively isolated, sporadic, scattered and much smaller than the antigovernment demonstrations in 2009, when millions took to the streets. But they reflect a common theme of rising dissatisfaction, many say.

Activists critical of the government concede the demonstrations do not threaten Iran’s leadership. Security forces, mindful of the 2009 upheavals, are now much better equipped to crush any organized antigovernment demonstrations. The protesters share neither unifying leadership nor clear agenda.

While many members of the large middle class are unhappy, they mostly watch from the sidelines, adverse to uncertainty.

Continue to Read Full Story

Canada says it is using DNA websites to identify some migrants

Canada is using DNA and commercial genealogical sites to help determine the nationality of migrants whose origin is in question.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has confirmed the use of DNA testing “when other avenues of investigation have been exhausted”.

The agency could not confirm how frequently such techniques are used.

One Canadian immigration lawyer says he is personally aware of a handful of such cases.

CBSA spokesman Jayden Robertson said the agency uses DNA testing to assist “in determining identity by providing indicators of nationality thereby enabling us to focus further lines of investigation on particular countries”.

“The CBSA obtains consent from the clients before submitting their information to DNA websites,” he said in a statement to the BBC.

Toronto-based immigration lawyer Subodh Bharati says he is concerned about how well the privacy of those whose DNA has been collected is being protected.

One such case involved Mr Bharati’s client Franklin Godwin, who arrived in Canada in 1994 on a fraudulent Bahamian passport and requested asylum after disclosing to immigration officials that he was Liberian. He was granted refugee status and permanent residency.

He later lost his permanent residency status after being convicted on various drug charges.

Canada sought to deport Mr Godwin in 2003 and in 2005.

Liberia twice denied him entry despite issuing him travel document. In the latter instance, officials claimed he was not Liberian but Nigerian.

Mr Godwin maintains his Liberian nationality but Canada is seeking to confirm his identity.

In 2017, while being held in detention by the CBSA, officials conducted a linguistic test, an interview about his knowledge of Liberia and a DNA test.

Using genealogy websites, they found two distant relatives who claimed Nigerian ancestry and contacted them.

Mr Bharati says he doesn’t believe that DNA testing offers Canada much value in determining someone’s country of origin.

“It’s clear DNA doesn’t give someone’s nationality,” he said.

In another instance reported by AFP, DNA was used to attempt to establish the nationality of Ebrahim Toure, a failed refugee claimant who has been detained by Canadian immigration officials since 2013, pending his removal.

According to AFP, he had arrived in Canada on a fake French passport. He later claimed to be from Guinea, but was refused entry by Guinean officials.

Following a linguistic test, a search of his social media that revealed he had many Gambian acquaintances, and interviews with friends in Canada, officials sought to match his DNA with relatives in The Gambia.

The Toronto Star reports that Mr Toure says his transient upbringing complicates his nationality. He remains in detention.

In a statement to BBC, an Ancestry spokesperson said that protecting customers’ privacy is the company’s “highest priority”.

“That starts with the basic belief that customers should always maintain ownership and control over their own data,” the company said.

It said it does not work with border agencies.

FamilyTreeDNA told Vice News that the company does not work with Canadian law enforcement and has no knowledge of its platform being used to determine a migrant’s nationality.

Source: https://www.daily-sun.com/post/326412/2018/08/01/Canada-says-it-is-using-DNA-websites-to-identify-some-migrants

Zimbabwe election: International calls for restraint

A government crackdown in Zimbabwe after Monday’s elections has prompted international calls for restraint.

The UN and former colonial power the UK both expressed concern about the violence, in which three people were killed after troops opened fire.

Parliamentary results gave victory to the ruling Zanu-PF party in the first vote since the ouster of former ruler Robert Mugabe.

But the opposition says Zanu-PF igged the election.

The result of the presidential election has yet to be declared. The MDC opposition alliance insist their candidate, Nelson Chamisa, beat the incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged Zimbabwe’s politicians to exercise restraint, while UK foreign office minister Harriett Baldwin said she was “deeply concerned” by the violence.

The US embassy in Harare urged the army to “use restraint” on Twitter, saying the country had an “historic opportunity” for a brighter future.

Human rights group Amnesty International meanwhile called on the government to open a probe into the army’s actions.

Amnesty’s acting secretary general Colm O Cuanachain said in a press release that the “militarisation” of the election aftermath “is muzzling freedom of expression, association and assembly”.

“People must be guaranteed their right to protest,” he said.

Source: https://www.daily-sun.com/post/326641/Zimbabwe-election:-International-calls-for-restraint

The man who has seen more U.S. executions than anyone else

Michael Graczyk saw someone die for the first time in March 1984. Graczyk, a reporter with the Associated Press, walked into a Texas prison to watch the execution of James David Autry, who had been sentenced to death for killing a convenience store clerk four years earlier.

Graczyk watched as Autry — a 29-year-old known as Cowboy who had been convicted of killing Shirley Drouet, a mother of five — took his final breaths. It was the second time Graczyk had gone to the prison expecting to see Autry’s execution; a few months earlier, a Supreme Court reprieve halted the lethal injection with the needles already in Autry’s arms.
When it was over, after the lethal drugs were injected and after Autry’s eyes fluttered open one last time, Graczyk sat down to write his story. His dispatch was circulated to readers across Texas and the nation. He wrote about how Autry had unsuccessfully tried to have his execution aired on television and about the heavy fog outside the prison and about Autry’s final meal (a hamburger, fries and a Dr Pepper).
Not long after, Graczyk returned to the prison to

Left Photo: Michael K Williams courtesy VICELAND. Right Photo: Mongkol Nitirojsakul / EyeEm via Getty Images

In Manhattan several weeks ago, a homeless man walked into a drug store and helped himself to a sandwich. When police arrested the man, who had been ordered to steer clear of the place, a prosecutor asked the judge to set a $15,000 bail. They might as well have asked for a million dollars. For this small crime, he likely would have spent the night, and many others, at Rikers Island. Fortunately, a kind member of the community intervened and paid his bail, which was ultimately set at between $500 and $1,000.
Selmin Feratovic was not as fortunate. After being accused of theft, he spent about seven months at Rikers Island while facing $50,000 bail. He had a drug problem but reportedly received no help, and over 200 days later, still awaiting resolution of his case and drug treatment, he overdosed and died.

Then, most notoriously, there’s the case of Kalief Browder. As the New Yorker reported, at 16, Browder entered Rikers when he was accused of stealing a backpack. He spent the better part of three years there, much of that time in solitary confinement, and was beaten by at least one guard as well as other inmates—all because his family couldn’t pay pay his $3,000 bail. Prosecutors eventually dismissed the case, and Browder finally went home. He never felt free. He suffered from extraordinary anxiety and had flashbacks to his time at Rikers. After enrolling in school and showing signs of recovery, Browder succumbed to the torture that had defined his adolescence. He committed suicide in 2015.

I grew up in Brooklyn in a neighborhood where we saw excess incarceration. An unfortunate reality is that every day in New York, we lock people up before trial—people who have not been convicted of a crime. We often do this simply because they cannot pay a get-out-of-jail fee. More likely than not, these are people of color and the poor: 88 percent of the people detained in New York city jails are Black or Latinx.

This is an insane waste of money. In New York City alone, taxpayers spend an estimated $116 million per year to incarcerate people who cannot afford bail. This problem extends throughout the state. The dire reality compounds the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, because pretrial detention causes individuals to lose their jobs, housing, and custody of their children without making the justice system more efficient.

Our money bail system in New York is tearing families apart. It is keeping people from earning a living, from taking their kids to school, from caring for loved ones, and from attending school themselves. In some cases, it is actually killing people. I’ve been visiting friends and family in prisons since I was 17 years old, and I have something to say about the process of how someone makes bad decisions, how they get treated in the system, how they come out of the system.

It’s simple: We can do something about this. States and cities across the country are advancing common-sense bail reforms. Washington DC. New Jersey. California. Houston. But New York is painfully behind, and the human toll is only growing: According to one estimate, on any given day, in New York City alone, an estimated 7,500 people are held in pretrial detention.

The state recently wasted another window of opportunity. This spring, legislation was pending in Albany that, if passed, would have drastically reformed New York’s justice system. Lawmakers were debating proposals to eliminate cash bail and thus decrease the profit incentives in the pretrial system. They also considered other critical pretrial reforms, such as enhancing protections for a person’s right to a speedy trial, potentially reducing or even eliminating the delays that keep people like Kalief Browder in jail before trial for unconscionable amounts of time. And they evaluated discovery reform to amend New York’s arcane law that allows prosecutors to keep their evidence to themselves until the eve of trial, ambushing the defense.

These were not radical proposals—they were obvious and necessary if we were going to have anything that approaches a fair justice system in this state. They have been supported widely—by grassroots groups, athletes, musicians like John Legend, public defenders, members of Congress, advocates like Al Sharpton, and even Kalief Browder’s brother, Akeem.

But time ran out. Although the Assembly passed measures that would have at least begun to address the state’s broken bail, speedy trial, and discovery laws, those bills did not make it through Senate and therefore were not enacted into law. The politicians failed, but the fight is far from over. It’s up to all of us to let them know that we want pretrial reform, and we want it now. With a highly public governor’s race going on and all 63 New York State Senate seats up for grabs in 2018, New York lawmakers will be listening now more than ever.

Make sure they hear you.

Read the full story : https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywkbbx/americas-insane-bail-system-is-even-worse-than-you-think

Haiti’s prime minister resigns amid fuel price hike fallout

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned Saturday amid calls for him to step down over his handling of a failed plan to raise fuel prices that set off a wave of deadly protests.

Lafontant told Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies that he sent President Jovenel Moise his resignation letter and the president had accepted it. Moise has not yet commented publicly.

The prime minister’s abrupt resignation came ahead of a vote on a motion to censure Lafontant, a first step toward asking that Moise name a new prime minister to form a Cabinet to handle the crisis. The prime minister is the second highest official in Haiti after the president.
Lafontant was to answer questions about the July 6-8 riots that followed the government’s attempt to raise fuel prices by up to 51 percent as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. At least seven people were killed and dozens of businesses were looted during the unrest.

Instead, Lafontant used the opportunity to announce his resignation, while in various parts of Haiti’s small protests were held demanding the head of state step down.

As the session began, chamber president Gary Bodaeu wrote on his Twitter account that the legislature “is at a crossroads in history; it must assume its responsibilities.” He had earlier called the price hikes “untimely” and “inoperative.”
Lafontant suspended the fuel prices increases after protests erupted last week but the disturbances continued and calls for the prime minister to resign grew, including from the opposition and some business groups.

Lafontant, a 57-year-old doctor who took office in March 2017, had said the price hikes of 38 percent to 51 percent for gasoline, diesel and kerosene were needed for Haiti to balance its budget.

Government officials agreed to reduce subsidies for fuel in February as part of an assistance package with the IMF. The agreement also included increased spending on social services and infrastructure and improved tax collection in an effort to modernize the economy of one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

SOURCE

‘Dead’ Russian journalist shows up alive at Ukrainian news conference

May 30 (UPI) — Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko surprised everyone Wednesday by showing up alive at a news conference on Ukrainian television, a day after he was reported dead, telling reporters his death was faked as part of a special intelligence operation.

Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday Babchenko had been killed at his home by an assailant, leading Moscow and Kiev to blame each other for his death.

Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, left Russia last year after criticizing the Moscow government.

In a shocking twist Wednesday, he turned up alive at a news conference and revealed he was informed a month ago about the plan to fake his death.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal jury on Friday convicted a former CIA case officer on espionage charges for passing classified documents to China, the U.S. Justice Department said.

The jury in Virginia found Kevin Mallory, 61, guilty of delivery of defense information to aid a foreign government and other charges, and he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison when sentenced on Sept. 21, the department said in a statement.

A U.S. official familiar with the case said it was a serious security breach that highlighted aggressive efforts by Chinese intelligence to gather sensitive American secrets.

Texas school apologizes for asking students to list ‘positive aspects’ of slavery

A charter school in Texas has apologized after eighth-grade students were asked to list the “positive” and “negative” aspects of slavery for an American history class.

“To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity,” Aaron Kindel, superintendent of Great Hearts Texas, said in a Facebook statement Thursday. “We sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense.”

Earlier in the week, Roberto Livar posted a picture of the assigned worksheet, titled “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View,” that his son, Manu, said was asked to complete at Great Hearts Monte Vista North campus in San Antonio, according to HuffPost.

The issue was later brought to the public’s attention when Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, sent out a tweet Thursday, slamming the assignment as “absolutely unacceptable.”

“Asking students to complete such an assignment challenges the reality that slavery was utterly dehumanizing,” Castro said in a statement, according to KENS-TV. “It is also an affront to the basic idea of human liberty. Great Hearts Charter network should do a full review of its history curriculum and those who teach it.”

George H.W. Bush wore socks with books on them to Barbara Bush’s funeral

Former president George H. W. Bush honored his late wife by wearing socks with books on them to her funeral Saturday.

Barbara Bush championed the issue of literacy throughout her life and her husband has a reputation for wearing colorful socks.

“To honor his wife of 73 years and her commitment to family literacy, for which she raised over $110 million over the course of over 30 years, @GeorgeHWBush will be wearing a pair of socks festooned with books at today’s funeral service for former First Lady Barbara Bush,” tweeted the couple’s spokesman Jim McGrath.

The former first lady, who died Tuesday at 92, formed the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy to fund programs that teach parents in low-income families to read and pass on reading to their children.

“If everyone could read and write, all the problems I worried about could be solved,” she told USA TODAY in 2014. “If you can’t read, you can’t do anything.”

McGrath later tweeted a photo of the socks worn by the 93-year-old.