(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for active “diplomatic and military countermeasures” to preserve the country’s security in a lengthy speech at a key political conference possibly meant to legitimize major changes to his nuclear diplomacy with the United States.
Kim spoke for seven hours during the ruling Workers’ Party meeting that continued for the third day on Monday. He issued national goals for rebuilding the North’s economy and preparing active and “offensive political, diplomatic and military countermeasures for firmly preserving the sovereignty and security of the country,” according to state media on Tuesday.
The Korean Central News Agency said the plenary meeting of the party’s Central Committee will extend to the fourth day on Tuesday, a day before Kim is expected to use his annual New Year’s address to announce major changes to his economic and security policies.
Some experts believe Kim could use the speech to declare he is suspending his nuclear negotiations with Washington, which have stalemated over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament, and he could possibly revive confrontation by lifting a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.
KCNA did not report any decisions made at the party meeting or mention any specific comment by Kim toward the United States.
But it said Kim noted that the Workers’ Party is determined to enter “another arduous and protracted struggle,” possibly referring to efforts to overcome U.S.-led sanctions and pressure, before concluding his speech with calls for “dynamically opening the road” toward building a powerful socialist nation. KCNA said the party is working to draft a resolution based on the agenda laid out by Kim and plans to discuss an unspecified “important document.”
In his New Year’s speech to begin 2019, Kim said his country would pursue an unspecified “new path” if the administration of President Donald Trump persists with sanctions and pressure on North Korea.
Negotiations faltered following the collapse of his second summit with Trump in February, where the Americans rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for the dismantling of an aging nuclear facility in Yongbyon, which would only represent a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
The North said earlier this month it conducted two “crucial” tests at its long-range rocket launch facility, raising speculation it has been developing a new long-range missile or preparing a satellite launch.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration still believes it “can find a path forward to convince the leadership in North Korea that their best course of action is to create a better opportunity for their people by getting rid of their nuclear weapons.”
“We’re watching what they’re doing here in the closing days of this year, and we hope that they’ll make a decision that will lead to a path of peace and not one towards confrontation,” Pompeo said in an interview Monday morning with Fox and Friends.
(Bloomberg) — Reliance Industries Ltd. started testing its online shopping portal, moving a step closer to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s goal of setting up a digital platform to take on e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. in India.
JioMart, open to select customers who pre-register, promises more than 50,000 grocery products, free home delivery and a return policy that asks no questions. Labeled ‘the nation’s new store,’ it is currently available in only three neighborhoods surrounding Mumbai, according to the website.
The pilot site provides an early glimpse of how the energy-and-petrochemicals conglomerate controlled by Asia’s richest man is stepping up consumer offerings in a pivot toward newer businesses. With the unveiling of the portal, Reliance Industries will join the battle with Amazon.com and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt. for a slice of an e-commerce market that KPMG says is set to grow to $200 billion by 2027.
Ambani, 62, is giving shape to his online retail ambitions by spending billions of dollars on a string of small acquisitions. The newer businesses, including telecommunications and retail, are likely to contribute 50% of Reliance Industries’ earnings in a few years, from about 32% now, Ambani said in August.
A spokesman for Mumbai-based Reliance Industries declined to provide further details on the retail project.
Ambani’s previous project, which needed almost $50 billion of capital expenditure, is already showing signs of success.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., the group’s wireless carrier started in 2016, is India’s No. 1 operator today and has more than 350 million users. The company entered the world’s second-largest market by subscribers with free calls and cheap data, forcing some incumbents to exit or merge with rivals.
Ambani is seeking to replicate that success in online retail as well. Terming it “new commerce,” the tycoon said in August that his goal is to “completely transform” India’s unorganized retail market — mostly mom-and-pop stores — which accounts for 90% of the nation’s industry.
“This tech-enabled partnership will link producers, traders, small merchants, consumer brands and consumers,” Ambani told shareholders in August. After beta trials with thousands of merchants across the country showed promise, “we are now getting ready to roll out the platform at a larger scale,” he said.
Reliance Industries has unveiled a sweeping plan to create a $24 billion digital-services holding firm, and also vowed listings of the new businesses within five years.
Betting the plan would unlock value, investors have piled on Reliance Industries shares, sending the stock soaring 36% this year against the 15% advance in the benchmark index. The gains helped Ambani add more than $15 billion to his wealth — the most in Asia — and taking his net worth to almost $60 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
(BOSTON) — A medical student from China who U.S. authorities say tried to smuggle cancer research material taken from a Boston hospital out of the country has been held without bail by a judge who ruled he was a flight risk.
Zaosong Zheng, 29, who last year earned a visa sponsored by Harvard University to study in the U.S., appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston. He was arrested Dec. 10 at Boston’s Logan Airport on a charge of making false statements.
Magistrate Judge David Hennessy ruled that evidence suggested Zheng had tried to smuggle vials of research specimens in a sock in his suitcase bound for China and granted the prosecution’s request to hold him without bail.
Zheng stole the materials from his lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, authorities allege.
Some vials contained a colleague’s work he had replicated without the authorization or knowledge of the lab, Zheng told authorities, according to court documents. He was possibly acting on behalf of the Chinese government, the FBI said in an affidavit included in court documents.
Zheng’s federal public defender declined to comment outside court when questioned by the Boston Herald. A voicemail message was left with the defense attorney Tuesday.
Harvard officials told The Boston Globe that Zheng’s educational exchange visa had been revoked. Beth Israel, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital, has fired Zheng and is cooperating with authorities, a spokeswoman said.
“We are deeply proud of the breadth and depth of our research programs,” Jennifer Kritz said. “Any efforts to compromise research undermine the hard work of our faculty and staff to advance patient care.”
The investigation is ongoing, and more charges are possible, prosecutors said.
(LONDON) — England and Wales have marked a new era in which heterosexual couples can choose to have a civil partnership instead of a marriage.
The change, mandated by Britain’s Supreme Court last year, took effect Tuesday. The groundbreaking case had been brought by Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who were among the first to form a civil partnership under the new rules. They were joined by their two children for the partnership formed at the Kensington and Chelsea Register Office in central London.
Steinfeld called it “a unique, special and personal moment for us” that had been “rooted in our desire to formalize our relationship in a more modern way, focus on equality and mutual respect.”
The new rules means that mixed-sex couples can opt for a civil partnership that will give them similar rights as married couples, including marriage allowance tax relief, inheritance tax exemption, and joint parental responsibility for children. It is expected to be an attractive option for couples who believe marriage gives men the upper hand and also by couples who don’t want any religious element in their union.
The Supreme Court ruling means that civil partnerships, which have been available to same-sex couples since 2005, will be available to everyone.
Same-sex couples have been allowed to marry in England, Scotland and Wales since 2014. Same-sex marriages will be allowed for the first time in Northern Ireland early next year.
(Bloomberg) — More than a million Russians have been caught up in the worst wave of bomb threats in years, sending people to social media for information about events largely ignored by Kremlin-controlled national television.
While all of the threats to date have been hoaxes, bomb squads have descended upon schools, airports and shopping malls to investigate the calls, according to news reports from around Russia. In Moscow alone, more than a million people have been evacuated since Nov. 28, according to Interfax.
The number of threats appears worse than a 2017 epidemic, when about 2,500 places received fake bomb threats in 75 regions around Russia over a four-month period.
“This is a large-scale phenomenon,” said Alexander Khinstein, a member of the ruling United Russia party who sits on the lower house of parliament’s security committee. “We are dealing with cyber-terrorism here.”
The source of the calls hasn’t been established, but Russia has been targeted by terrorist groups, including Islamic State, in the past. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, detained two suspects in St. Petersburg last week after receiving intelligence from the U.S. about a possible attack.
Several law enforcement agencies contacted by Bloomberg did not respond to requests for comments.
The situation has attracted official attention this year, with security services giving a closed briefing for lawmakers explaining the problem, according to Khinstein.
However, the 72% of Russians who get their news from television have been kept in the dark, with the main federal channels choosing to ignore the epidemic, opting instead for spots on President Vladimir Putin’s every move and year-end summaries.
During the 2017 outbreak, coverage was more frequent. At the time, Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, announced in early October on national television that they’d found the culprits, only to see the problem drag out for another three months.
In the absence of news coverage, a video statement by the deputy head of Moscow’s Department of Education about the bomb threats against schools received nearly 100,000 hits on YouTube and was widely shared on social media.
“Parents have started to panic, they have pulled their children from classes and nobody knows when this will end,” said Nadezhda Ivanchenko, a teacher at a Moscow school that has been targeted eight times in December. “The strangest thing is that nobody understands what’s happening and there’s no official explanation.”
The disruptions have stretched across the country, including in Khabarovsk, more than 13,000 kilometers (8,100 miles) to the east of Moscow. That city has been hit with numerous threats, with the airport and main rail station evacuated last week. More than 11,000 children had to leave their schools on Dec. 19 with the temperature at -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit).
“Before there were bomb threats, but they usually targeted business centers and the perpetrators tried to collect ransom,” Ruslan Sokolov, a spokesman for Khabarovsk’s mayor, said. “This time it’s different.”
(BAGHDAD) — Dozens of angry Iraqi Shiite militia supporters broke into the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday after smashing a main door and setting fire to a reception area, prompting tear gas and sounds of gunfire.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the main embassy building. There was a fire at the reception area near the parking lot of the compound but it was unclear what had caused it. A man on a loudspeaker urged the mob not to enter the compound, saying: “The message was delivered.”
The embassy attack, one of the worst in recent memory, followed deadly U.S. airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. military said the airstrikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that it had blamed on the militia.
Dozens of protesters pushed into the compound after smashing the gate used by cars to enter the embassy. The protesters, many in militia uniform, stopped in a corridor after about 5 meters (16 feet), and were only about 200 meters away from the main building. Half a dozen U.S. soldiers were seen on the roof of the main building, their guns were pointed at the protesters.
Smoke from the tear gas rose in the area, and at least three of the protesters appeared to have difficulties breathing. It wasn’t immediately known whether the embassy staff had remained inside the main building or were evacuated at some point. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy.
The protesters hanged a poster on the wall: “America is an aggressor,” and some commanders of militia factions loyal to Iran joined the protesters. Among those was Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the state-sanctioned paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units, the umbrella group for the Iran-backed militias.
Ahmad Al-Rubaye—AFP/Getty ImagesProtesters set ablaze a sentry box in front of the U.S. embassy building in Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2019.
Yassine al-Yasseri, Iraq’s interior minister, also appeared outside the embassy at one point and walked around to inspect the scene. He told the AP that the prime minister had warned the U.S. strikes on the Shiite militiamen would have serious consequences. “This is one of the implications,” al-Yasseri said. “This is a problem and is embarrassing to the government.”
He said more security will be deployed to separate the protesters from the embassy, an indication the Iraqi troops would not move in to break up the crowd by force.
Earlier, the mob shouted “Down, Down USA!” as the crowd tried to push inside the embassy grounds, hurling water and stones over its walls. They raised yellow militia flags and taunted the embassy’s security staff who remained behind the glass windows in the gates’ reception area and also sprayed graffiti on the wall and windows. The graffiti, in red in support of the Kataeb Hezbollah, read: “Closed in the name of the resistance.”
Also, hundreds of angry protesters set up tents outside the embassy. As tempers rose, the mob set fire to three trailers used by security guards along the embassy wall.
No one was immediately reported hurt in the rampage and security staff had withdrawn to inside the embassy earlier, soon after protesters gathered outside.
Seven armored vehicles with about 30 Iraqi soldiers arrived near the embassy hours after the violence erupted, deploying near the embassy walls but not close to the breached area. Four vehicles carrying riot police approached the embassy later but were forced back by the protesters who blocked their path.
There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon and the State Department.
The U.S. airstrikes — the largest targeting an Iraqi state-sanctioned militia in recent years — and the subsequent calls by the militia for retaliation, represent a new escalation in the proxy war between the U.S. and Iran playing out in the Middle East.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday’s strikes send the message that the U.S. will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardize American lives. The Iranian-backed Iraqi militia had vowed Monday to retaliate for the U.S. military strikes. The attack and vows for revenge raised concerns of new attacks that could threaten American interests in the region.
The U.S. attack also outraged both the militias and the Iraqi government, which said it will reconsider its relationship with the U.S.-led coalition — the first time it has said it will do so since an agreement was struck to keep some U.S. troops in the country. It called the attack a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
In a partly televised meeting Monday, Caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi told Cabinet members that he had tried to stop the U.S. operation “but there was insistence” from American officials. He declared three days of mourning for those killed in the U.S. strikes, starting Tuesday.
The U.S. military said “precision defensive strikes” were conducted against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq and Syria. The group, which is a separate force from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, operates under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.
If the Tokyo Olympics aren’t enough reason to plan a trip to Japan this summer, Japan Airlines has an offer that could sweeten the deal—free tickets to a surprise destination in the country for 50,000 lucky travelers.
To encourage visitors to travel more widely within Japan, the airline is giving away free round-trip tickets for flights within Japan to foreign tourists this summer.
There are a few requirements: Travelers must fly to Japan on Japan Airlinesbetween July 1 and Sept. 30. They must also be registered with the carrier’s Mileage Bank frequent flier program.
Applications for the program will open in late February and the airline is expected to release more details in January. The free tickets will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. You can learn more about the program on Japan Airlines’ website.
The airline offers direct flights to major U.S. cities, but travelers can book connections from other cities on the Japan Airlines website.
Applicants will select which airport they want to fly out of — either Haneda Airport in Tokyo, or Itami or Kansai Airports in Osaka. Travelers will be shown four possible destinations within Japan. If they win, they’ll receive an email within three days notifying them which of the four places they’ll be flying free to.
All Nippon Airways, Japan’s largest airline, will be offering discount airfares to lesser-visited parts of Japan this summer. The tickets, which will allow travelers to make multi-stop trips, will go on sale in time for the Olympics.
Japan is expected to see a surge in tourism this summer as the country hosts the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo from July 24 to Aug. 9. Some famous hotels in the capital have already stopped taking room reservations and a 14,000-room shortfall is forecast. The government expects that the Olympics will attract about 10 million visitors, according to Japan Times.
The country has been seeing a tourist boom in recent years. Japan saw more than 31 million international visitors in 2018, including 1.5 million from the U.S., according to figures from the Japan National Tourist Organization.
Final preparations for the 2020 games are underway; the new national stadium, which will be used as the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies, was completed earlier this month. The official Olympics mascot, a half-superhero, half-robot name Miraitowa, has also been unveiled.
This is the second time the Olympics has been held in Tokyo. In 1964, the city became the first in Asia to host the games.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The newly appointed chief of Colombia’s army says he is willing to meet with soccer star Juan Fernando Quintero to discuss his father’s disappearance more than 20 years ago.
Gen. Eduardo Zapateiro said during a military ceremony on Monday he “shares the pain” of Quintero’s family and added that he is willing to meet with the River Plate and Colombian national team midfielder to discuss his father’s final days.
Jaime Quintero was last seen in 1995 at an army base in the city of Carepa, which was then commanded by Zapateiro. According to Quintero’s relatives, Jaime was carrying out his compulsory military service, and disappeared after falling out with Zapateiro, who wanted to transfer him to another base due to his unruly behavior.
Following Zapateiro’s appointment as army chief last week, Quintero’s relatives gave interviews on local media in which they complained about the general’s promotion, saying he still had not answered questions on Jaime’s disappearance. Juan Fernando Quintero, who was 2 years old when his father went missing, took to Twitter on Monday morning, asking for a meeting with the general and saying that he had the right to know the truth about his father.
Zapateiro denies involvement in the disappearance of Jaime Quintero, and in a statement published yesterday the military cited investigations conducted by local courts, which blamed rebel groups for the crime.
According to Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory, more than 80,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Colombia between 1958 and 2015, as the military and rebel groups fought for control of rural areas.
(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit Ukraine this week, making his first trip to the country at the heart of President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
As the Senate weighs options for a trial, Pompeo will depart Thursday on a five-nation tour of Europe and Central Asia. Ukraine will be the first stop on the trip, the State Department said Monday.
Trump’s impeachment on charges of abuse of office and obstruction of Congress hinges on his policy toward Ukraine. Witnesses told House investigators that Trump wanted Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son in return for releasing critical military aid to Ukraine.
One of those witnesses, William Taylor, is the current acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine although he will leave Kyiv shortly before Pompeo’s arrival. Pompeo appointed Taylor to the post over the summer to take over from Marie Yovanovitch, whose tour was abruptly cut short in May after Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani made unsubstantiated allegations against her.
Taylor’s position was temporary and time-limited by law but his tenure could have lasted until mid-January, prompting complaints from lawmakers that his departure is similar to Yovanovitch’s early recall and sends a poor message to the embassy in Kyiv and career diplomats more generally, as well as Ukraine.
A senior State Department official ignored several questions about Taylor’s status in a conference call with reporters Monday. The official gave details about the trip on condition of anonymity under State Department rules for such briefings.
In Kyiv, Pompeo will meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose July 25 phone call with Trump triggered the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment. In that call, Trump disparaged Yovanovitch and asked Zelenskiy for “a favor,” suggesting he wanted Ukrainian authorities to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for corruption. Trump has said the call was “perfect” and has denied doing anything wrong.
In his meetings, Pompeo will “reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” as the country continues to battle Russia-backed separatists in the east, the State Department said. Pompeo also will honor Ukrainians who have died in the conflict, which intensified after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014, in a move condemned and rejected by most of the international community. The senior official said Pompeo would underscore that the U.S. will never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
The official said Pompeo would discuss Zelenskiy’s anti-corruption efforts but would not comment on whether the secretary would raise Trump’s desire for an investigation into Hunter Biden and his role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company or discredited claims that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In addition, Pompeo plans to meet Ukrainian religious, civic and business leaders for talks on human rights, investment and economic and political reform, the department said.
From Ukraine, Pompeo will travel on to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus before returning home. Human rights, energy independence and economic reform will top Pompeo’s agenda at each of those stops, the department said.
In Minsk, the secretary plans to affirm the U.S. commitment to improving ties with Belarus, which has had a strained relationship with Russia. President Alexander Lukashenko has pursued better relations with the West since Russia’s annexation of Crimea as Belarus is wary that Russia could try to absorb it.
In September, the U.S. and Belarus agreed to upgrade diplomatic ties by returning ambassadors to each other’s capitals after an 11-year break.
If you happen to swing by the grave of KFC founder Col. Harland Sanders at the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, you may see buckets of chicken sitting atop his memorial. In Japan, though, you may see statues of Col. Sanders at a memorial service for KFC Japan’s chickens.
While KFC is known for their oddball promotions and PR stunts, the chicken memorial is not that. According to English-language Japanese news site SoraNews24, each year KFC Japan holds an annual memorial service for the brave chickens whose lives were lost in service of sating Japan’s hunger for fried chicken.
The memorial service, known as Chicken Thanksgiving, is an annual event that has reportedly taken place since 1974, as a way for the company to give thanks for the birds. Each year to mark the solemn occasion, per SoraNews24, the president of KFC Japan and other high-ranking executives in the company as well as “key people along the supply chain such as meat processors, sales reps, and seasoning producers,” gather at one of Japan’s temples to appreciate, remember, and honor the chickens that are so valuable to their business. They also “pray for safe and healthy meat during the following year.”
While Chicken Thanksgiving is a long standing tradition, according to SoraNews24, the memorials aren’t particularly well known even in Japan.
The memorial is typically held in early summer, but it is in the news now because many Japanese families mark Christmas with buckets of KFC, thanks to a clever businessman, a white lie, and a marketing campaign, according to Business Insider who reported the story for their podcast. The chain first came to Japan in 1970, opening a branch in Nagoya, which was saved when the businessman convinced his Japanese market that people in the U.S. marked Christmas with buckets of KFC.
The idea caught on and come 1974, KFC Japan launched a marketing campaign promoting “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” or “Kentucky for Christmas!”, which helped turned buckets of chicken from a fast food dinner to an annual holiday feast. Now, the tradition is so popular that the chain relies on it for a third of its annual income, per the BBC.
One firefighter has died and tens of thousands of people have been told to evacuate because of wildfires raging across Australia on Monday.
The total number of firefighters killed across Australia is now 10, as high temperatures and winds drive the blazes across the dry landscape.
Fires are burning all over the country, including on the outskirts of Sydney, Melbourne and the capital, Canberra. In the worst-affected state, New South Wales, 97 fires were burning on Monday, 43 of which were not yet contained, according to the Associated Press.
Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks will go ahead, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, despite a petition signed by more than 250,000 people calling for them to be scrapped in light of the fires.
“In the midst of the challenges that we face, subject to the safety considerations, I can think of no better time to express to the world just how optimistic and positive we are as a country,” Morrison said.
Temperatures near Sydney are expected to reach 44 degrees celcius (111.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming days, the Guardian reported. Fire bans are in place across the state of New South Wales, but the fireworks have been granted an exemption.
Other cities, including Canberra, have canceled their New Year’s firework celebrations.
More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed since the blazes, known locally as bushfires, began in September. At least 2,000 firefighters are currently battling the fires.
For Nadia Whittome, the evening of Dec. 11 passed in a blur — not because of frantic last-minute campaigning forthe U.K. electionthe following day, but because she was in hospital being treated for the flu.
When the results came through some 24 hours later, Whittome found out that, aged just 23, she had been elected as the U.K.’s youngest sitting lawmaker. She gave her victory speech in the early hours of Dec. 13 between bouts of vomiting. “It was really grim,” she says.
Now almost fully recovered, Whittome has had time to process her victory. Last week, she traveled to London from her home in Nottingham to take her seat in the House of Commons for the first time. At 23, she is less thanhalf the ageof an average member of parliament (MP) and, as the youngest sitting one, she finds herself surrounded by people whose political priorities are very different to her own.
Whittome is just the latest member of a new generation of elected representatives around the world who have grown up in an era of cuts to public services after the financial crash of 2007-8 — as well as an accelerating climate crisis. Similar in her progressive outlook toAlexandria Ocasio-Cortezin Congress and Sanna Marin, the new 34 year-old Prime Minister of Finland, Whittome’s politics have been shaped by her generation’s precarious status. “We grew up around people who have struggled to put food on the table,” she tells TIME. “People my age and younger have grown up with a very pressing worry of the climate crisis meaning we won’t have a planet to live on.”
Now, this daughter of working-class immigrants is getting ready to push her generation’s politics as an elected lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party. “We know that the crises we’re up against are huge in scale,” Whittome says, “and that the solutions to them need to be equally bold and implemented urgently.” She gives credit to theclimate school strikers, led byGreta Thunberg, for waking some governments up to that fact. “It’s been down to them that world leaders have been forced to concede that we’re facing a climate emergency and drastic action needs to be taken.”
Whittome has already pledged to donate a large chunk of her £79,468 ($103,000) lawmaker’s salary to local charities, instead taking home a “worker’s wage” of £35,000 ($45,000) after tax. (The median U.K. salary is £30,420 before tax.) “I think it’s important for workers’ representatives, and that’s what I am, to be on a worker’s wage,” she says. “Not because MPs don’t deserve [nearly] £80,000, but because so do firefighters, nurses, teachers, shop workers. When they get their pay rise, I’ll get mine.”
Whittome was born in the 1990s, at a historical juncture where the role of the welfare state in Britain was being pulled in two opposite directions. After the Second World War, there was political consensus that the state should be large, with a strong social safety net that could provide healthcare, housing and benefits for those in need. Even during the 1980s under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who rolled back some welfare policies while preaching a free-market gospel, Britain’s welfare state kept its reputation as one of the world’s most generous. The first 13 years of Whittome’s life were spent under Labour governments, which spent heavily on social programs in a bid to reverse what they saw as the damage Thatcher had done. But in 2010, Labour was defeated and replaced by a Conservative Party-led coalition government, which argued that slashing public spending was the only way for Britain to reduce its budget deficit and recover from the 2008 financial crisis. “I know what it’s like to live under a Labour government and have opportunities bestowed on me, then suddenly I was plunged into this world of austerity,” Whittome says. Countries around the world also reduced public spending after the global crash, but the spending cuts that followed in Britain were some of the most severe in any developed economy — and resulted inslower recoverythanother countries.
For Whittome, a woman of color who grew up in a single-parent household, the effect of those austerity policies was immediately visible. Whittome says it was a specific move, the so-called “bedroom tax,” that first led her to get into politics in 2012. In order to tackle an acute shortage of social housing, the Conservative coalition government introduced a policy that forced tenants who had a spare room in their public housing unit to accept a cut in their state benefits, in a bid to incentivize them to move into smaller accommodation. The “bedroom tax” hit many of the most vulnerable in society hardest — just 6% of people affected by the tax moved house, but75%said they were forced to spend less on food. “It was seeing austerity measures impact my community, my friends, my family, my neighbors, which drove me to organize against the government,” Whittome says.
At the 2015 election, it appeared the Conservatives had won the debate on the welfare state when the opposition Labour Party argued that some welfare cuts were indeed necessary and pledged to not reverse some of them if elected. After Labour was defeated, its leader Ed Miliband stepped down, and a little-known lawmaker called Jeremy Corbyn stood to replace him. He was reviled by many Labour lawmakers for supporting policies like the nationalization of industry and higher taxes, which the party had moved away from in the 1990s. Though Corbyn was predicted to lose the internal party leadership contest, he won in September 2015, partly because Labour’s leader is elected by its members rather than its parliamentarians, and Corbyn had tapped into a grassroots desire for full-throated opposition to austerity. He was unexpectedly elected, and designed a radical policy platform pledging turbocharged state spending on infrastructure, welfare and health, while reversing the small-state reforms pursued by the Conservatives.
When Whittome learned Corbyn was running, she supported him “from the minute he announced his leadership bid.” She began leading campaigns in Nottingham against austerity, climate change and the government’s “hostile environment” policy toward immigrants, while holding down a job as a hate crime support worker. Suddenly, her leftwing pursuits were chiming with the messages coming from the party leadership. Whittome credits Corbyn with laying the conditions for her candidacy, though she wasn’t supported by Momentum, the grassroots Corbyn-backing campaign group. In late October 2019, she won an internal vote to be selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for the inner-city safe seat, Nottingham East. (Its former occupant, Chris Leslie, hadquit the partyin February in protest against Corbyn’s leadership.) Less than 24 hours later, a nationwide election was announced.
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty ImagesBritain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves his home in north London on December 17, 2019 for the first full day of the new parliament following the general election.
Whittome won easily on election night on Dec. 12, with 64.3% of the vote. Had her victory come at a different time, it would have been a resounding vote of confidence in the radical left wing of the party. But across the country, Corbyn led the Labour Party to its worst defeat since 1935, losing 59 seats in parliament. Its longtime opponent the Conservative Party, now led by Boris Johnson, secured a commanding majority. Corbyn announced he would stand down as leader in the new year. “It was a devastating set of results for us nationally,” Whittome says. She blames Brexit and Labour’s campaign strategy — not Corbyn or the party’s economic policies — for the defeat.
Others in the party disagree, and its future direction is now uncertain. The campaign to choose a new leader has not officially begun, but candidates are positioning themselves in earnest. A dividing line has already emerged between the left-wing faction Whittome is part of, and those who say the only way the party can win an election is to move closer to the center-ground by renouncing Corbyn’s big spending pledges.
Despite the grim outlook for the Labour Party and its outgoing leader, Whittome credits Corbyn with shifting the center-ground in British politics toward policies that are more friendly to young people, like ending austerity and pledging to decarbonize the economy. “Austerity was a political choice,” she says. “We’ve been saying that for the last decade.” That stance was “vindicated” by the Dec. 2019 election, Whittome says, “because the Labour Party, although we didn’t win, shifted the terms of debate on austerity.” During the election campaign, Johnson pledged an end to austerity, increasing public spending on health and police — though not as much as Whittome would like to see.
When it comes to the planet, Whittome is less optimistic. The Conservatives have pledged to decarbonize the British economy by 2050, which is 20 years later than Labour’s target. “Not only is that far too late, the date is imposed on us by the planet. It’s 2030,” Whittome says. “The question isn’t what year we’re going to decarbonize by, it’s what are we going to do to decarbonize by 2030.” In Parliament she says the climate emergency will be her top priority; she hopes to use her status as the youngest MP to pressurize the government to do more.
Whittome may be up against some major challenges, but she’s hopeful about the changes her generation will bring. People tend to assume that young people turn more conservative as they age. And it’s true that in the U.K. at least, the older you are,the more likely you areto vote for a right-wing party.But researchers say those assumptions might be mistaken when it comes to the deeply-held convictions on welfare and the climate held by Whittome and many of her peers. “There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people’s views on key values such as concerns over the climate emergency, support for investment in public services rather than privatization — those sorts of broader values do tend to remain with people,” says Matt Henn, a professor of social research at Nottingham Trent University and author ofYouthquake, a book about young people’s impact on British politics.
“Young people now are more socially liberal than young people were in the past. Those values are not necessarily going to dissipate over time. These are fundamental values that, research suggests, broadly stay with people into later life.”
(TENGGULUN, Indonesia) — The young Balinese widow stared across the courthouse at the man who had murdered her husband and 201 others, and longed to see him suffer.
Ever since that horrible night, when she realized amid the blackened body parts and smoldering debris that the father of her two little boys was dead, Ni Luh Erniati’s rage at the men behind the bombing had remained locked deep inside. But now, it came roaring out.
She tried to scramble over a table blocking her path to hit Amrozi Nurhasyim, whose unrepentant grin throughout the trial over Indonesia’s worst terrorist attack had earned him the nickname “The Smiling Assassin.” And then she felt hands pulling her back, halting her bid for vengeance.
What would happen a decade later between her and Amrozi’s brother — the man who had taught Amrozi how to make bombs — was unthinkable in that moment. Unthinkable that they would come face to face in a delicate attempt at reconciliation. Unthinkable that they would try to find the humanity in each other.
But inside that courthouse, and for years to come, Erniati wanted everyone associated with the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali to be executed by firing squad. And she wanted to be the one to pull the trigger.
Her words to a reporter in 2012 were blunt: “I hate them,” she said.
“I always will.”
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The practice of reconciling former terrorists and victims is rare and, to some, abhorrent. Yet it is gaining attention in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. While Islam in Indonesia is largely moderate, the country has battled Islamic militants since the Bali attacks. Last year, two families carried out suicide bombings at churches, and in October, a militant stabbed Indonesia’s top security minister.
The attacks have left Indonesia hunting for ways to prevent terrorism — and to heal from it.
Indonesia embraces a so-called soft approach to counterterrorism, where officials recruit former militants to try to change extremist attitudes in their communities, and jailed terrorists go through deradicalization programs. Last year, Indonesia’s government brought together dozens of former Islamic militants and victims for what was billed as a reconciliation conference. The results were mixed.
More quietly, over the past several years, there has been a growing alliance of former terrorists and victims brought together under the guidance of a group founded by the victim of a terrorist attack. Since 2013, 49 victims and six former extremists have reconciled through the Alliance for a Peaceful Indonesia, or AIDA. They have visited around 150 schools in parts of Indonesia known as hotbeds for extremist recruiters, sharing their stories with more than 8,000 students.
The hope is that if former terrorists and victims can learn to see each other as human, they can stop the cycle of vengeance. While reconciliation efforts have been launched after several large-scale conflicts — such as South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission — few attempts have been made in cases of terrorism.
“It’s difficult for everyone to go through this,” says Gema Varona, a Spanish researcher who studied reconciliation meetings between militants from the Basque separatist group ETA and their victims. “But it makes sense, because in terrorism, victims have been objectified. … So we need that empathy.”
Victims and perpetrators can learn to understand each other without legitimizing the violence, says Brunilda Pali, a board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.
“Understanding can help a lot,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean forgiving.”
For Erniati, there was nothing at first to understand. How could she possibly understand something so horrific?
And why would she want to?
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Firdia Lisnawati–APPhotos of Gede Badrawan and his family are seen as Ni Luh Erniati and her son go through family albums in Bali, Indonesia on Thursday, April 25, 2019. Gede, Erniati’s late husband, was one of 202 people killed in the 2002 bombings in Bali’s nightclub district.
Erniati doesn’t remember the first time she spotted the handsome, quiet waiter with the wavy black hair. But she remembers how much she and her fellow waitresses at the Sari Club idolized him.
Unlike the other men who worked at the popular nightclub, Gede Badrawan didn’t flirt with customers. He only had eyes for Erniati.
Gede never asked her on a proper first date. They just fell into a relationship, and then into love, and a year later, into marriage. Two sons followed.
As a father, Gede was kind and doting. He took the family to play soccer at Kuta Beach, and to their favorite park. That park is the source of one of Erniati’s most precious memories: of her younger son Made taking his first steps and starting to tumble, and of Gede catching him.
Around 11 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2002, Erniati had just settled into bed when a blast shattered the stillness.
She thought it was an electrical explosion. She didn’t know that a suicide bomber had detonated himself inside Paddy’s Pub, across the street from the Sari Club. She didn’t know that seconds later, a van carrying a massive bomb and parked in front of the club had exploded. She wouldn’t know until a witness told her much later that Gede had been standing near the van.
Erniati overheard people outside talking about bombs and body parts. She told herself Gede would return home after his shift ended.
When he didn’t, she grew frantic. She wanted to search for him, but couldn’t leave their sons — aged 9 and 1 — home alone. So Erniati, a Hindu, prayed for Gede until a friend arrived to watch the boys. As she sped toward the club on another friend’s motorbike, she reassured herself: “My husband is alive. My husband is alive.”
When she got there, she knew instantly that he was not. The club was a wasteland. At the hospital, she saw bodies so mangled they were unrecognizable.
The bombings had been carried out by al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah. The attack killed mostly Western tourists.
It took four months before Erniati received confirmation that her husband was among the dead. When the forensics officer finally called, Erniati could manage only one question: “Exactly what condition is my husband’s body in?”
“We probably identified about 70% of him,” the officer replied. They had not found his head or his forearms or his abdomen or anything from the knees down.
For more than a year, Erniati continued to make Gede’s breakfast, carefully laying the food on the table every morning, and throwing it away every night. He had been stolen from her so suddenly that part of her still felt he would come home.
Her tears made Made cry, so she shut herself in the bathroom to weep alone. She pretended for years that his father was simply away for work. He was 9 before she told him the truth.
In the midst of her agony, she searched for answers. But there were none to be found.
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More than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Bali, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Ali Fauzi had received word of the carnage.
He was, he says, as stunned as the rest of the world. Though he was one of Jemaah Islamiyah’s most skilled bombmakers, and though three of his brothers had helped orchestrate the attack, Fauzi says he knew nothing of the plot.
He was raised in the east Java village of Tenggulun, which would become an epicenter of Islamic extremism. His radicalization, he says, was heavily influenced by his big brother Ali Ghufron. Ghufron, who often went by the alias Mukhlas, studied at an Islamic boarding school under the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
In 1994, the group sent Fauzi to a military-style camp in the Philippines, where he honed his knowledge of explosives. He became Jemaah Islamiyah’s chief bomb instructor, teaching countless men — including his brothers — how to construct lethal devices.
Everything unraveled after the bombs erupted in Bali.
His brothers Mukhlas, Amrozi and Ali Imron were charged with the attack, along with several other members of Jemaah Islamiyah. Fauzi found himself on a police wanted list and fled to the Philippines, where he says he was jailed for three years on a charge of illegally joining the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He was then extradited to Indonesia.
Fauzi was never charged with the bombings, but he spent months in police detention in Jakarta. It was there that the kindness of a police officer who helped get him medical treatment began to chip away at his convictions about people he had long seen as the enemy.
Yet it wasn’t until a night years later, when he found himself staring at a Dutch man named Max Boon, that Fauzi truly understood the horror of his life’s work.
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Boon was sitting in his hotel room, waiting for a former terrorist to knock on his door. He was terrified.
Four years earlier, a suicide bomber had detonated his devices in the Jakarta JW Marriott lobby lounge, where then-33-year-old Boon was attending a business breakfast. Police suspected the attack had been orchestrated by Jemaah Islamiyah.
Boon suffered burns to over 70 percent of his body. Doctors amputated most of his left leg and his lower right leg.
Yet the attack hadn’t shaken Boon’s belief in the goodness of humans. He believed that had the bomber met him before the Marriott attack, he might have realized Boon wasn’t his enemy.
Boon threw himself into peacebuilding efforts, working through the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague.
Fauzi, meanwhile, had been working to help deradicalize Islamic militants across Indonesia. Which is how he ended up shaking hands with Boon at a terrorism awareness conference in 2013.
Boon had already been planning a project in which terrorism victims would share their stories with students in areas targeted by extremist recruiters. He invited Fauzi to stop by his room to discuss the idea.
Though Fauzi was not connected to the bombing that destroyed Boon’s legs, Boon knew his history. As he waited, a dark thought rattled him: What if Fauzi was coming to finish the job?
But as Fauzi listened to the Dutch man talk about peace, he felt his heart crack.
That Boon, who was of a different faith, could forgive those who had caused him such pain rocked Fauzi to his core. He stared at the handsome young man sitting before him, with no legs where legs should be. And for the first time, he truly understood what a bomb does to a body and to a life.
Fauzi began to cry, and wrapped Boon in a hug. Boon hugged him back. Fauzi quickly agreed to meet other victims.
At the airport the next day, Fauzi sailed through security. But Boon’s prosthetic legs set off the metal detector, forcing him to endure a pat-down. Boon turned to Fauzi and quipped: “So the former terrorist they let walk through, but the victim they have to control.”
The former bombmaker burst out laughing and a friendship was born.
They had found the humanity in each other. Boon could only hope that when the others met Fauzi, they would find the same.
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Erniati was filling her plate at a hotel buffet when Fauzi first approached her. Her heart pounded. How had she gotten here?
Months earlier, Boon had met with Erniati and several other bombing victims to present his idea. Erniati had balked.
For 12 years, she had struggled to move beyond her anger. The executions of Amrozi, Mukhlas and another convicted perpetrator had brought her no relief. The prospect of sitting down with a former terrorist sounded crazy.
A few victims, however, agreed to meet Fauzi for AIDA’s pilot project. Afterward, their reviews were positive. Erniati warmed to the idea. Maybe he could answer her questions.
But now, staring at Fauzi inside the hotel where she and four other victims had gathered to meet him, she had no idea what to ask.
Fauzi’s heart was pounding, too. “Hello,” he said with a smile. “How are you?”
Erniati bristled. How could he smile after what he had done?
Her reply was curt: “I’m from Bali.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I apologize for what my brothers and my friends have done.”
But Erniati couldn’t get past his grin.
Fauzi saw the way the other victims were looking at him.
They hate me, he thought.
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That night, Fauzi couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed, fretting over what to say to Erniati and the others at their first official meeting.
When they finally convened around a table, Fauzi felt like a defendant on trial. Then Erniati began to tell her story.
As Fauzi listened, his awkwardness morphed into anguish. The image of Erniati searching for Gede amid the smoking ruins, of her struggles to raise their sons alone, was unbearable.
Fauzi had long been proud of his skills as a bombmaker. But in that moment, he wished he could erase everything he’d ever known about bombs.
He began to weep. “I’m sorry,” he said through tears. “I’m very sorry.”
Erniati looked at Fauzi and felt something shift within her. He was in pain, just as she was. Their pain came from different places, but it was pain all the same.
What he said meant less to her than what he felt. To Erniati, apologies are just words. But the ability to understand another person’s suffering, she says, goes to the core of who you are.
The anger that had long suffocated her began to lift.
Fauzi excused himself to wash his tearstained face. When he returned, he told his own story, about his path in and out of radical ideology, and his commitment to peace.
His apologies, though, were not welcomed by all. One victim angrily rejected his words.
Fauzi understood. Were the situation reversed, he says, he doubts he would be as accepting as Boon and Erniati.
Over the next few years, Erniati and Fauzi grew closer. They visited schools with AIDA, sharing their story of reconciliation. Fauzi started a foundation called the Circle of Peace, which helps deradicalize extremists. Erniati was moved by his efforts, which seemed a genuine attempt to atone.
One day, Erniati asked Fauzi if she could see his home. It was a stunning request; The bombers had plotted the attack that killed her husband in a house not far away, and Mukhlas and Amrozi’s families live just across the street.
But she wanted to see how Fauzi lived. And so, with some trepidation, Boon and others from AIDA agreed. As their car rolled into Fauzi’s village, Erniati felt like she was entering a lion’s den.
When she arrived at Fauzi’s home, however, she found it reassuringly normal. There was laundry scattered around, just like at her house. Fauzi introduced her to his wife and children and showed her his goats.
When he had to break away to teach a class at Islamic school, he sent the group to a water park with his friend Iswanto, another former Jemaah Islamiyah militant. Erniati and Iswanto rode the rollercoaster together; for her, the ride was scarier than the one-time terrorist.
She and Fauzi became friends on Facebook. Fauzi sent Erniati a gem she had once mentioned was beautiful. She had it made into a necklace.
But she still couldn’t accept what his brothers had done.
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Erniati stands barefoot on the verandah of her modest home, slicing scissors through black fabric as Hindu chants ring out from a nearby temple. This is how she has kept her family alive for 17 years, through a small garment company an Australian man set up for Balinese bombing widows.
Her colleague, Warti, swings by. Like Erniati, Warti’s husband was killed in the attack. Unlike Erniati, she has no desire to meet anyone associated with his killers. For her, all of that is best left in the past. To meet now, she says, would only cause her more pain.
“I don’t want to dwell and keep thinking about it,” she says.
Erniati understands this. She runs the Isana Dewata Foundation, an advocacy group for bombing victims, and knows everyone heals in different ways.
And reconciliation doesn’t help everyone. Karen Brouneus, a Swedish psychologist, studied the effects of Rwanda’s post-genocide, community-based court system, which focused on reconciliation. Her survey of 1,200 Rwandans found that those who participated in the courts had higher levels of depression and PTSD than those who didn’t.
Those who have studied reconciliation efforts say victims must never be forced into them. The victims in AIDA’s programs are all voluntary, Boon says. The foundation also carefully vets former extremists to ensure they have truly reformed, checking their background with Indonesian researchers and slowly getting to know them.
AIDA says the results of its efforts have been promising: Friendships have formed between former terrorists and victims. And after sharing their stories at schools, students’ attitudes toward violence changed significantly, includinga 68% decrease in those who agree they’re entitled to revenge if they or their family fell victim to violence.
Fauzi himself acknowledges that reconciliation wouldn’t work for every former militant.
“I realize that humans are different from one another,” he says. “So it’s not easy to take their hearts as a whole.”
The uniqueness of these bonds is something that Jo Berry understands intimately. In 1984, Berry’s father was killed in a bombing by the Irish Republican Army. In 2000, she asked to meet the man who planted the bomb, Patrick Magee, and the two became friends. Yet she has met plenty of former IRA activists she hopes to never meet again.
“It’s not like there’s one formula,” she says. “And that’s why I think it’s really hard.”
Erniati found that her warmth toward Fauzi did not carry over to his brothers. In 2015, she visited one of them, Ali Imron, in jail. He too apologized, but she wasn’t convinced.
Her feelings toward the executed Amrozi and Mukhlas are even more muddied.
When it comes to them, she says, she just wants to forget.
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On a sunny morning in east Java, Erniati and Fauzi sit on his couch, nibbling dates. The smile that once enraged Erniati she now returns.
Outside, around a dozen ex-Jemaah Islamiyah militants prepare for a local bicycle race. Erniati smiles politely at them, but keeps her distance.
Fauzi still wrestles with guilt, but Erniati’s acceptance of him has lessened the sting.
Erniati continues to meet with former militants. She hopes her story can put them on the right path. Her sadness returns on occasion. But her anger is gone.
Later, she heads to lunch with Iswanto, the ex-militant with whom she’d ridden the rollercoaster years before. Along the way, he gestures toward a fenced-off enclosure on the side of the road.
This, he tells her, is the burial site of Amrozi and Mukhlas.
Erniati stares at the grassy plot. Someday, she says, she would like to place flowers on their graves and send up a prayer.
She will pray for God to forgive the men who killed her husband.
Not because she accepts what they did. But because if God can forgive them, even if she can’t, then maybe their spirits can help bring the world what Fauzi’s friendship helped bring her: peace.
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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — Zac Efron said he has “bounced back” after an illness while filming a show in Papua New Guinea.
On his Twitter and Instagram accounts Sunday, the 32-year-old “High School Musical” actor addressed recent media reports that he had been rushed to the hospital in a serious emergency while filming his new reality adventure series, “Killing Zac Efron.”
“Very thankful to everyone who has reached out. I did get sick in Papua New Guinea but I bounced back quick and finished an amazing 3 weeks in P.N.G,” Efron said along with a picture of himself smiling and waving amid a group of local children.
He gave no details on what the sickness had been or what treatment he underwent.
“I’m home for the holidays with my friends and family,” Efron said. “Thanks for all the love and concern, see you in 2020!”
(BEIJING) — Three researchers involved in the births of genetically edited babies have been sentenced for practicing medicine illegally, Chinese state media said Monday.
The report by Xinhua news agency said lead researcher He Jiankui was sentenced to three years and fined 3 million yuan ($430,000).
Two other people received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, but with a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000 yuan fine.
He, the lead researcher, said 13 months ago that he had helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls born in November 2018. The announcement sparked a global debate over the ethics of gene editing.
He also was involved in the birth of a third gene-edited baby.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia blamed for a rocket attack that killed an American contractor, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strikes send the message that the U.S. will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardize American lives.
“Precision defensive strikes” were conducted against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement earlier Sunday.
The U.S. blames the militia for a rocket barrage Friday that killed a U.S. defense contractor at a military compound near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. Officials said as many as 30 rockets were fired in Friday’s assault.
Esper said the U.S. hit three of the militia’s sites in western Iraq and two in eastern Syria, including weapon depots and the militia’s command and control bases.
U.S. Air Force F-15 Strike Eagles carried out the strikes and all the aircraft safely returned to their home base, Esper said. At the ammunition storage facilities that were struck, significant secondary explosions were observed.
Pompeo, Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Palm Beach, Florida, after the operation to brief President Donald Trump.
Esper said they discussed with Trump “other options that are available” to respond to Iran.
“I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran,” Esper, who was accompanied by Pompeo and Milley, said in a brief statement to reporters in a ballroom at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where the president is on a more than two-week winter break.
The national security officials did not answer any questions.
Pompeo said the “decisive response” makes clear that the U.S. ”will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy.”
Trump was at Mar-a-Lago but did not appear with his top national security officials. After Pompeo and Esper spoke, the president traveled to his private golf club in West Palm Beach. The White House did not immediately say why Trump returned to the club after spending nearly six hours there earlier Sunday.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said in a statement that three U.S. airstrikes on Sunday evening Iraq time hit the headquarters of the Hezbollah Brigades at the Iraq-Syria border, killing four fighters.
Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades, a separate force from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.
The Popular Mobilization Forces said Sunday that the U.S. strikes killed at least 19 of Kataeb Hezbollah’s members.
Kataeb Hezbollah is led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, one of Iraq’s most powerful men. He once battled U.S. troops and is now the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
In 2009, the State Department linked him to the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, designated a foreign terrorist organization by President Donald Trump earlier this year.
The U.S. maintains some 5,000 troops in Iraq. They are there based on an invitation by the Iraqi government to assist and train in the fight against the Islamic State group.
The militia strike and U.S. counter-strike come as months of political turmoil roil Iraq. About 500 people have died in anti-government protests in recent months, most of them demonstrators killed by Iraqi security forces.
The mass uprisings prompted the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi late last month. Abdul-Mahdi remains for now in a caretaker capacity.
Abdul-Mahdi had made no public comment on Friday’s militia attack but condemned the U.S. retaliatory strike on Sunday. He called it a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and a “dangerous escalation that threatens the security of Iraq and the region.”
In a statement, Abdul-Mahdi said Defense Secretary Mark Esper had called him about a half-hour before the U.S. strikes to tell him of U.S. intentions to hit bases of the militia suspected of being behind Friday’s rocket attack. Abdul-Mahdi said in the statement he asked Esper to call off U.S. retaliation plans.
The statement said Iraqi President Barham Salih also received advance notice from a U.S. diplomat, and also asked unsuccessfully for Americans to call off it off.
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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Palm Beach, Fla., and Zeina Karam in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
