Sunday, December 31, 2017
Iran protests turn deadly as 2 killed amid warnings from the regime
The growing unrest over the economic woes plaguing
Iran turned deadly overnight as two protesters were killed at a rally
amid warnings from the country’s government that anyone who disrupts
order and breaks the law “must be responsible for their behavior and pay
the price.”
The deaths were the first of the
demonstrations, which began Thursday and appear to be the largest to
strike the Islamic Republic since the protests that followed the
country's disputed 2009 presidential election.
"On Saturday evening, there was an illegal protest in
Dorud and a number of people took to the streets responding to calls
from hostile groups, leading to clashes,” said Habibollah Khojastehpour,
the deputy governor of the western Lorestan province, according to Sky
News. “Unfortunately in these clashes two citizens from Dorud were
killed."Khojastehpour told state television that "no shots were fired by the police and security forces” and “foreign agents” and “enemies of the revolutions” were to blame.
Videos circulating on social media late Saturday appeared to show fallen protesters in Doroud as gunshots sounded in the background, although the footage could not be independently confirmed.
The killings came as interior minister Abdolrahman Rahmani Fazli warned Iranians about participating in the protests.
"Those who damage public property, disrupt order and break the law must be responsible for their behavior and pay the price," Sky News quoted Fazli as saying early Sunday on state television.
TRUMP REDOUBLES SUPPORT OF IRAN PROTESTS, SAYING THE 'WORLD IS WATCHING'
Thousands have taken to the streets of cities across Iran, beginning on Thursday in Mashhad, the country's second-largest city and a holy site for Shiite pilgrims.
At least 50 protesters have been arrested since Thursday, authorities said Saturday. State TV said some protesters chanted the name of the U.S.-backed shah, who fled into exile just before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and later died, according to the Associated Press.
The protests have also spread to Iran’s capital of Tehran, and on Saturday, tens of thousands of government supporters marched in cities to show their support for the regime, Sky News reported.
On Sunday, the semi-official ILNA news agency reported that authorities have arrested some 80 protesters in the city of Arak, some 173 miles south of Tehran.
President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that Iranians are “fed up with [the] regime’s corruption [and] its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad.”
Texas Rep. Will Hurd said a day later that the “Iranian regime is of course trying to suppress the fact that protests against their tyrannical reign are popping up across Iran.
“The Ayatollahs are out of touch with their citizens and are exporting terror abroad,” the Republican congressman wrote in a message on his Facebook page. “We should support a free and peaceful Iran. We should support the people of Iran who have had enough.”
But Iran has dismissed American support for the protests.
“Iranian people give no credit to the deceitful and opportunist remarks of U.S. officials or Mr. Trump," Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Saturday, according to a state television report.
Iran's economy has improved since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Iran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the end of some international sanctions. Tehran now sells its oil on the global market and has signed deals to purchase tens of billions of dollars' worth of Western aircraft.
That improvement has not reached the average Iranian, however. Unemployment remains high, and official inflation has crept up to 10 percent again. A recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent, which a government spokesman has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears, appears to have been the spark for the economic protests.
While the protests have sparked clashes, Iran's hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and its affiliates have not intervened as they have in other unauthorized demonstrations since the 2009 election.
Some analysts outside of Iran have suggested that may be because the economic protests initially just put pressure on the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose administration struck the nuclear deal.
Merkel calls for unity as nearly half of Germans want her gone
German Chancellor Angela Merkel |
German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented her
country's social divisions in a New Year’s address Sunday, but
emphasized her commitment to forming a unified government in 2018.
Merkel’s comments came three months
after her party suffered major blows at the polls, in which the centrist
"grand coalition" between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and
Christian Social Union (CSU), which has run Germany since 2013, fell
apart.
Nevereheless, Merkel indicated her willingness to
tackle the challenges of the future by forming a new government, which
means again reaching out to her former political partners, the
center-left Social Democrats (SPD).Many Germans have expressed concern over the social changes taking place within the country. The most contentious issue has been an influx of asylum-seekers that has caused many conservatives to question her leadership.
A poll released Sunday, revealed that nearly 50 percent of Germans would prefer that Merkel resign immediately.
But in Sunday's speech she pointed to falling unemployment and rapid economic growth as reasons for optimism, and cited among her priorities the need to safeguard prosperity, improve education and the use of digital technology, strengthen families and elderly care, even out regional imbalances and ensure security.
Merkel reiterated the need for Europe to work together and defend its external borders.
Addressing the increasingly tense debate in Germany that's seen some political opponents describe her as a "traitor," Merkel urged her fellow Germans to focus more on what they have in common, and to "respect each other more again."
Talks to form a new coalition government between CDU/CSU and SPD are scheduled to begin Jan. 7.
Ex-Sheriff David Clarke denies facing FBI probe, calls reports 'fake news'
Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke accused the media of misreporting about an FBI warrant from earlier this year (Admin) |
Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke lashed
out Saturday at what he called the “lying lib media,” after multiple
reports claimed he was under investigation by the FBI.
Clarke dismissed the reports as “fake news.”
According to the Washington Examiner,
several news organizations reported Friday that an FBI search warrant
in March allowed the agency to look into Clarke’s personal email.Clarke, who resigned as a sheriff in August, tweeted, “BREAKING NEWS! When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up FAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is go right at them. Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD. Nothing gets a bully like LYING LIB MEDIA’S attention better than to give them a taste of their own blood #neverbackdown”
The tweet included a Photoshopped image of Clarke and President Donald Trump in a “wrestling match” against CNN. In the photo, Trump is shown restraining a wrestler who has a CNN logo for a face, while Clarke is shown kicking that face.
In another tweet, Clarke wrote, “LYING Lib media spreads FAKE NEWS about me and @realDonaldTrump to fool their liberal followers into believing LIES because as Mrs. Bill Clinton once said, ‘Look, the average DEMOCRAT VOTER is just plain STUPID. They’re easy to manipulate.’Classic!”
Despite the FBI’s search warrant in March, which related to an intimidation lawsuit, the agency’s probe closed in May, according to several news outlets.
According to the Washington Examiner, Clarke’s incendinary tweets were reported to Twitter as being in violation of its content policies, but the social media site's operators did not agree.
Clarke tweeted Saturday evening, “Winning against LYING LIB MEDIA and Whiney SNOWFLAKES again. Like @realDonaldTrump said, we’ll win so much we’ll get tired of winning. Not yet however. Diaper wearing lefty didn’t like my metaphor reference to punching LYING LIB MEDIA in the nose. Twitter said no violation. Duh.”
Trump pulls brakes on $13B Obama-backed rail-tunnel plan
An Obama-era plan to have the federal government
finance half of a $13 billion rail tunnel project ran into a red light
Friday from the Trump administration.
The plan, proposed under President
Barack Obama in 2015, includes revitalizing a deteriorating Amtrak
tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York City, repairing damage to a
dual-tunnel conduit, and reconstructing the New Jersey railroad
network’s aging Portal Bridge, Crain’s New York Business reported.
Amtrak, which owns most of the rail tunnels and tracks
between Boston and Washington, D.C., contends that the existing tunnel
connecting New Jersey and New York City is damaged and could fail within
10 to 15 years, threatening daily rail transportation in the Northeast.The original Obama-era plan called for costs to be split among New York state, New Jersey and the federal government.
'A local project'
But in a letter Friday, the Trump administration notified New York and New Jersey that the Obama-era deal was now "non-existent" because the states recently requested that their portions be covered by loans from the federal government -- meaning Washington would supply all of the initial funding for what the Trump White House is calling "a local project."
"Your letter also references a non-existent '50/50' agreement between USDOT, New York, and New Jersey. There is no such agreement," wrote K. Jane Williams, deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. "We consider it unhelpful to reference a non-existent 'agreement' rather than directly address the responsibility for funding a local project where nine out of 10 passengers are local transit riders."
The letter raises questions about whether the so-called Gateway project will be included in a $1 trillion national infrastructure plan that President Donald Trump is expected to unveil in January."We consider it unhelpful to reference a non-existent 'agreement' rather than directly address the responsibility for funding a local project where nine out of 10 passengers are local transit riders."- K. Jane Williams, deputy administrator, Federal Transit Administration
Gateway Development Corp., the project overseer composed of representatives of New York, New Jersey and Amtrak, dismissed Williams' letter as "posturing," adding in a statement Friday that "we are confident that the Trump Administration will engage with us as the President turns to infrastructure in 2018."
Tens of thousands of commuters
Proponents view Gateway as crucial for revitalizing rail service in the New York City metro area, where multiple lines, including Amtrak, carry tens of thousands of commuters into the city each day -- in one of the nation's key economic regions.
They also note that having states borrow from the federal government to finance infrastructure projects is not unprecedented. Some allege that the Trump administration's action is simply a political maneuver to put pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a key supporter of the plan, Crain's reported.
Why should taxpayers in South Dakota or South Carolina have to chip in for a rail tunnel for Jersey commuters who work in New York? Pay for the damn project out of the fare box or forget it. https://t.co/KkUWq4iwzI— Scott St. Clair (@PiperScott1949) December 31, 2017
The official noted that for other projects underway in Hawaii and Maryland, federal loans compose only a fraction of the capital investment, Crain's reported.
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