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US Sanctions Put Telecoms Firms Off Cuba, Internet Task Force Says

U.S. sanctions on Cuba are deterring American firms from exploring its telecommunications sector even as Washington seeks to expand internet access on the Communist-run island, according to the final report of a U.S. government task force released on Tuesday.

Chinese companies dominate Cuba’s telecoms sector, a status quo “worth challenging given concerns that the Cuban government potentially obtains its censorship equipment from Chinese Internet infrastructure providers,” the report said.

Cuba’s government protested the U.S. State Department’s creation of a Cuba Internet Task Force last year as “foreign interference.” It remains unclear how open it would be to U.S. investment in the strategic telecoms sector.

“U.S. companies informed the subcommittees they are often deterred from entering the market due to uncertainty caused by frequent changes to U.S. regulations concerning Cuba,” according to the task force, convened last year by the State Department.

U.S. presidents have successively tightened and loosened the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba imposed in the years after its 1959 revolution.

Former President Barack Obama created a loophole for U.S. telecommunications companies to provide certain services to Cuba. His successor, Donald Trump, maintained the loophole but tightened the broader sanctions, worsening the overall business climate.

Banks are increasingly reluctant to process payments originating in Cuba. Some telecoms firms surveyed by the task force said that was putting them off offering key services and products in the country.

The task force advised the U.S. government to clear up the regulatory uncertainty and seek feedback on how to improve telecoms firms’ ability to invest.

Until 2013, the internet was largely available to the public in Cuba only at tourist hotels amid the U.S. embargo, lack of cash and concerns over the free flow of information.

The government has increased web access in recent years, installing a fiber-optic cable to Venezuela and introducing cyber cafes, Wi-Fi hot spots and mobile internet.

Cuban telecoms monopoly ETECSA signed a deal earlier this year with Alphabet’s Google on increasing connectivity, but the two have not publicly agreed on any significant investments.

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Denmark Becomes Third Nordic Country to Form Leftist Government This Year

Denmark on Wednesday became the third Nordic country this year to form a leftist government after Social Democratic leader Mette Frederiksen finalized terms for a one-party minority government, making her the country’s youngest-ever prime minister.

While the new left-leaning government is unlikely to fundamentally change Denmark’s economic policy, Frederiksen, 41, has promised to increase welfare spending after years of austerity.

A bloc of five left-leaning opposition parties led by Frederiksen’s Social Democratic Party won a majority in a June 5 election, prompting center-right leader Lars Lokke Rasmussen to resign as prime minister.

“It is with great pleasure I can announce that after three weeks of negotiations, we have a majority to form a new government,” she said.

Ageing populations have prompted Nordic governments to chip away at the cradle-to-grave welfare state, but the June 5 election showed clear support among Danish voters for leftist parties. It also dealt a blow to right-wing nationalists, who lost more than half of their votes compared with 2015.

While the leftist opposition bloc received a convincing majority, support for the Social Democratic Party declined slightly compared with the 2015 vote. But it remained the country’s biggest party.

Despite differences among left-leaning parties over issues such as welfare and immigration, Frederiksen got their backing to form a one-party minority government, a common arrangement inDenmark.

Frederiksen’s Social Democrats will have to rely on the Socialist People’s Party, the Red-Green Alliance and the Social-Liberal Party – formerly headed by European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager – to pass laws in the 179-seat parliament.

The four parties agreed to soften some tough measures on immigration, including abandoning a plan by the previous government to hold foreign criminals on a tiny island.

The parties also said they agreed on a plan to allow more foreign labor, on further measures to eliminate rising inequality and on a plan to create a binding law on the reduction of emissions.

Following spending cuts by successive governments to reduce the public deficit, which has resulted in an erosion of traditional welfare services, the Social Democrats campaigned for an increase in spending and making businesses and the wealthy pay more toward welfare through higher taxes.

Many Danes, who like counterparts in other Nordic states pay some of the highest taxes in the world to underpin their welfare system, worry that further austerity will erode the universal healthcare, education and elderly services long seen as a given.

Economists have said there is some room within the country’s sound public finances to increase spending.

In Finland and Sweden, the Social Democratic parties formed governments earlier this year.

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Kenyan Ice Hockey Team Hosts First Exhibition Tournament

A Kenyan ice hockey team, the only one in East Africa, has hosted an exhibition tournament with teams made up by foreign diplomats.  The Kenya Ice Lions hope to bring more attention to the sport and its bid to qualify for the 2022 Winter Olympics.  Sarah Kimani reports from Nairobi.

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China Hopes Trump-Xi Meeting Will Help Ease Escalating Trade War

China hopes an upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will help build trust and deescalate the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

The two leaders are scheduled to meet later this week at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, their first face-to-face meeting since trade talks broke off in May.  

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters Tuesday in Beijing the meeting will hopefully “promote mutual trust” and “resolve some of the outstanding issues we are facing now.”

During a phone call Monday between Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, they exchanged opinions on trade and and agreed to maintain communications, China’s Commerce ministry said. China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency said the phone call was requested by U.S. officials.

A senior U.S. official said Monday the meeting will provide Trump the chance to get China’s position on the escalating trade war. The official added that Trump would be “comfortable with any outcome” of the meeting.

Trump has said he is prepared to impose tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports. The move would extend tariffs to everything China transports to the U.S., since Trump had previously imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports. China has retaliated with tariffs on U.S. goods.

Eleven rounds of previous talks have failed to ease U.S. concerns over China’s massive trade surplus and China’s acquisition of U.S. technology.

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Midwifery Students Use Augmented Technology to Improve Clinical Skills

Midwifery students in London are learning to bring new life into the world in a radically new way with the help of augmented reality (AR) technology.

Using AR headsets and lifelike models of full-term mothers, trainee midwives at Middlesex University can take part in fully simulated births, which the university’s clinical staff hope will both hone their clinical skills and leave them better prepared to face challenges rarely seen in day-to-day practice.

AR technology offers users an interactive experience in which objects in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated information.

Midwifery educator Sarah Chitongo said the AR system allowed students to understand better the birthing process by displaying an interactive representation of a patient’s anatomy.

“It allows you to see a visual picture of the actual anatomy itself, which is raised out of the normal body, and you can step in, walk around and have an internal view,” Chitongo told Reuters.

Chitongo cited high-risk problems such as shoulder dystocia – when a baby’s shoulders get stuck in the mother’s body – and breech births – when a baby is born bottom first – as particular rarities for midwives where AR could help prepare students to cope better and ultimately to save lives.

Chitongo believes that younger trainees will embrace the technology positively as they are of a generation that has largely grown up with computers and interactive environments.

However, her overarching aim is for midwives to become better prepared to reduce mortality rates, which are disproportionately high among ethnic minority pregnancies.

“Currently, here in the U.K., it sits at 60% combined, compared to 9.8% in white women,” Chitongo said, adding that the issue had not been meaningfully addressed despite the trend having risen since 2011. “When you get it right, with a population where it’s actually on the worst side (of the statistics), it means you’ve got a better and safer maternity service across the U.K.”

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Britain Sharpens Tone Towards Iran

Britain appears to be moving closer to U.S. President Donald Trump’s position on Iran and hardening its attitude towards Tehran — the result, diplomats say, partly of talks during the American leader’s recent visit to London, but also because of aggressive Iranian actions.

U.S. officials say they’ve been cheered by the stiffening of Britain’s public rhetoric in support of Trump in the precarious standoff with Tehran.

They contrast that with British criticism of Trump’s decision last year to pull out of a 2015 deal, co-signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.  President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, citing concerns that Tehran had done nothing to curb expansionist behavior in the region and was still determined to eventually build nuclear weapons.

British officials had also bristled at Trump’s reimposition of sanctions on Iran and had been searching with other European powers ways to circumvent the U.S. sanctions so they wouldn’t impact European businesses.

Britain is still calling for a “de-escalation” in the Persian Gulf, but has been more forthright than France or Germany in condemning Iran for aggression in the Strait of Hormuz, including mining tankers and downing a U.S. drone — as well as for Tehran’s threats to step up nuclear activities and to breach the cap on uranium stockpile limits set by the 2015 accord.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said Monday he was worried an accidental war could be triggered, adding, “we are doing everything we can to ratchet things down.”

Hunt said Britain is closely in touch with the United States over the “very dangerous situation in the Gulf” and is “doing everything we can to de-escalate.”

But he did not rule out the possibility Britain would consider a request for military support from its “strongest ally,” and would consider backing the U.S. in the Gulf “on a case-by-case basis.” That might include greater British support in protecting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Britain blames Iran for strains

And Hunt put the onus on Iran for the dramatic rise in tension.

“We do strongly believe that the solution is for Iran to stop its destabilizing activity throughout the Middle East and we are very concerned about the sabotaging of tankers that has happened recently, which is almost certainly Iran,” he said.

Concern about a potential armed confrontation between the U.S. and Iran has mounted since Washington blamed Tehran for mine attacks on a pair of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic sea passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Tehran denies it mined any ships.

Last week, Trump said he had canceled a retaliatory airstrike against several Iranian targets, including anti-aircraft missile batteries, for the downing of a U.S. drone, on the grounds that it would have been disproportionate because of the loss of life it would entail.

But according to U.S. news accounts, Trump approved cyber-warfare disruption of Iranian intelligence computer systems used to control missile and rocket launches.

The U.S. president has been criticized in Washington by some in his own party as well as Democratic Party foes for ordering a retaliatory airstrike and then calling it off. Hawks in his own party fear the about-turn makes him look like a “paper tiger;” Democrats says it demonstrates confusion and “strategic incoherence.”

But Trump’s restraint appears to have calmed British fears of the president being reckless, with some officials saying it demonstrates his determination to calibrate his responses. Trump has said he wants to force the Iranians to return to negotiations in order to hammer out a better and more sustainable nuclear deal, in which the Iranians agree to curtail expansionist activity in the region.

“We certainly don’t want to give the Iranians any encouragement or make them think that their threats or aggression will drive a wedge between us and Washington,” a senior British diplomat told VOA.

“Tehran is calculating that it can use brinkmanship to isolate Trump and to get the Europeans en masse on side against Washington, hoping to weaken the American sanctions regime. We need to set them straight. One can dispute whether the U.S. should have withdrawn from the nuclear treaty in the first place, but we are where are,” he added.

The change in Britain’s tone appears to have been noted in Tehran. On Sunday, officials there said they were disappointed in the talks they held with a junior British foreign minister, Andrew Murrison, describing the discussions as “disappointing and repetitive.”

Speaking in the Iranian capital, Murrison said Iran “almost certainly bears responsibility for” the mining, but added, “I was clear that the UK will continue to play its full part alongside international partners to find diplomatic solutions to reduce the current tensions.”

Britain also signed on to a joint statement Monday with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates expressing “their concern over escalating tensions in the region and the dangers posed by Iranian destabilizing activity to peace and security both in Yemen and the broader region.”

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New US Sanctions Target Iran’s Supreme Leader

U.S. President Donald Trump imposed what he described as “hard-hitting” new financial sanctions on Iran on Monday, specifically targeting the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump signed an executive order he said would curb access that Khamenei and the country have to world financial markets. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the action would “literally” lock up “tens and tens of billions of dollars” of Iranian assets.

The U.S. leader called his order a “strong and proportionate” American response to Tehran’s shoot-down last week of an unmanned U.S. drone, which Washington says occurred in international airspace near the Strait of Hormuz and Iran claims occurred over its airspace.

Drone incident

Trump at the last minute last Thursday rejected a military response to the downing of the drone upon learning that about 150 Iranians would be killed in a U.S. attack. In announcing the new sanctions, he said “I think a lot of restraint has been shown by us, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to show it in the future. But we’ll give it a chance.”

Trump said he imposed the sanctions because of a series of “belligerent acts” carried out by Iran, which U.S. officials say include Iran’s targeting of Norwegian and Japanese ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz with mine explosions days before the attack on the drone.

The executive order is aimed at pushing Tehran back to one-on-one talks with the U.S. over its nuclear weapons program after Trump last year withdrew from the 2015 international pact restraining Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump called the international deal negotiated by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, “a disaster.”

“We’d love to be able to negotiate a deal,” Trump said.

But he declared, “Never can Iran have a nuclear weapon,” adding, “They sponsor terrorism like no one’s seen before.”

He said, “I look forward to the day when sanctions can be lifted and Iran can be a peace-loving nation. The people of Iran are great people.”

‘Highly effective’

Mnuchin said earlier sanctions imposed when Trump pulled out of the international agreement have been “highly effective in locking up the Iranian economy. We follow the money and it’s highly effective.”

“Locking up the money worked last time and they’ll work this time,” Mnuchin said. The Treasury chief said the U.S. could target Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of Tehran’s best known figures on the world stage, with sanctions in the coming days.

He said some of the sanctions Trump imposed Monday had been “in the works” before the drone was shot down, and some were being imposed because of the attack on the drone.

The Treasury Department headed by Mnuchin said that in addition to Khamenei, the U.S. sanctions also targeted eight senior commanders in the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. It said that any foreign financial institution that engages in a “significant financial transaction” with the Iranians targeted by the sanctions could be cut off from U.S. financial deals.

Coalition to counter Iran

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the new sanctions as “significant” as he left Washington on Sunday for a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to continue the Trump administration’s effort to build a coalition of allies to counter Iran.  Pompeo met Monday with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“The world should know,” Pompeo said, “that we will continue to make sure it’s understood that this effort that we’ve engaged in to deny Iran the resources to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapon system, to build out their missile program, we are going to deny them the resources they need to do that thereby keeping American interests and American people safe all around the world.”

Iran has defended its missile work as legal and necessary for its defense. Tehran has sought support from the remaining signatories to the 2015 agreement to provide the economic relief it wants, especially with its key oil exports as the U.S. has tightened sanctions in an attempt to cut off Iranian oil shipments.

Trump said in a series of tweets Saturday about the sanctions that he looks forward to the day when “sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous national again — The sooner the better!”

Iran cannot have Nuclear Weapons! Under the terrible Obama plan, they would have been on their way to Nuclear in a short number of years, and existing verification is not acceptable. We are putting major additional Sanctions on Iran on Monday. I look forward to the day that…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2019

….Sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous nation again – The sooner the better!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2019

He also said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that he is “not looking for war” with Iran and is willing to negotiate with its leaders without preconditions.

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Liberal US Lawmakers Push Bill to Cancel Student Debt

Days before the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Bernie Sanders and House progressives came out with legislation to cancel all student debt, going farther than a signature proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the two jockey for support from the party’s liberal base .

By canceling all student loans, Sanders says the proposal would address an economic burden for 45 million Americans. The key difference is that Warren’s plan considers the income of the borrowers, canceling $50,000 in debt for those earning less than $100,000 per year and affecting an estimated 42 million people in the U.S.

Questions face both candidates about how to pay for all of that plus their proposals for free tuition at public colleges and universities. But the battling ideas highlight the rivalry between senators who have made fighting economic inequality the cornerstones of their 2020 presidential campaigns.

Sanders vowed at a Monday news conference that his plan “completely eliminates student debt in this country and the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation, the millennial generation, to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing. And that is going out and getting a higher education.” He appeared alongside the proposal’s House sponsors, Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also in attendance.

His bill and Warren’s plan are part of their broader appeal to liberal voters on issues such as health care, technology and education.

That appeal is likely to be fleshed out this week during the first Democratic debates . Twenty candidates are set for the showdown, with Warren part of the lineup on Wednesday and Sanders appearing a day later. The events come as Warren appears to be cutting into Sanders’ support from the left.

Sanders’ effort at one-upmanship on student loans, named the College For All Act, would cancel $1.6 trillion of debt and save the average borrower about $3,000 a year, according to materials obtained by The Associated Press. The result would be a stimulus that allows millennials in particular to invest in homes and cars that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. It would cost $2.2 billion and be paid for — and then some — by a series of taxes on such things as stock trades, bonds and derivatives, according to the proposal.

The universal debt relief is designed partly around the idea that it would mostly benefit Americans who can’t afford college tuition without loans, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legislation wasn’t yet public.

Warren’s plan, which she has suggested in published reports will be introduced as legislation, would be paid for by imposing a 2% fee on fortunes greater than $50 million. Warren projects the levy would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, enough to pay for a universal child-care plan, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and student loan debt forgiveness for an estimated 42 million Americans — with revenue left over. Critics say top earners would find ways around such penalties.

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Retired US Admiral Joe Sestak Announces Democratic Run for White House

Another Democrat has entered the 2020 race for the White House.

Retired Navy admiral and former Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak announced his candidacy Sunday on his website.

He introduced himself to voters by telling them “I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold War eras to Afghanistan and Iran and the emergence of China.”

He said he postponed announcing his candidacy to care for a daughter ill with brain cancer.

Sestak was also part of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s national security team, holds a doctorate in government from Harvard, and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate twice.

He embraces many positions popular with liberals, including abortion rights, gun control, and backs the nuclear deal with Iran.

Sestak is the 24th Democrat to officially announce a challenge to President Donald Trump in 2020, with Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren leading the polls so far.

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Analysts: New Rebel Offensive May Further Complicate Syria’s Conflict

Syrian rebel groups have launched a major offensive this week against government troops in a Syrian province in what is seen by analysts as a new twist to the ongoing conflict in the northwestern part of the country.

Rebel fighters affiliated with the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation said Tuesday that they have begun targeting Syrian regime forces in the northern part of Hama, a province bordering the flashpoint province of Idlib, which is the last rebel stronghold in Syria.

The new assault is primarily aimed at targeting villages from which government forces launch attacks on Idlib, according to a rebel source quoted by German news agency DPA.

This “military operation that opposition groups have started positions belonging to regime troops came about after government forces deployed military reinforcements in the countryside of Hama and Idlib in order to launch a large military offensive,” the unidentified rebel source said.  

Hama province has largely been under the control of the Syrian regime with parts of it briefly captured by rebel groups and Islamic State (IS) militants during different stages of Syria’s civil war.

For weeks, Syrian government troops, backed by Russian warplanes and Iranian militias, have been trying to dislodge rebels from Idlib. Dozens of civilians have been killed in the recent escalation across Idlib, according to local media.

Distraction strategy

Assaulting areas like Hama at this point could be an attempt by the rebels to distract the regime from focusing on it, some analysts charge.

“This offensive is to move the battle to regime-held areas as opposed to keeping in rebel-held areas, which has been Idlib for a long time now,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian war monitor.

“There is a Russian military presence in Hama. So rebels are also seeking to threaten Russian forces there,” he told VOA.

But other experts view this offensive as an extension of the ongoing battle between rebels and Syrian government forces.

“For rebels, the battles of Idlib and Hama is one battle because to be able to enter Idlib, they have to first battle regime troops in northern Hama,” said Ahmed Rahal, a former Syrian army general who is now a military analyst based in Istanbul.

Impasse for Russia

Rahal added that such battlefronts could create a new impasse for Russia as Moscow has been seeking to assert the control of its embattled ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Russians are in an awkward position. They clearly didn’t accomplish their objectives to retake Idlib from opposition fighters and now Hama is under threat,” he told VOA.

Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the University of Lyon in France, echoes Rahal’s assessment about the ongoing battle for northwestern Syria.

“More than the Syrian regime itself, Russia has been trying so hard to remove rebels and extremist groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from the entirety of Idlib,” he said.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a powerful Islamist group that was once al-Qaida’s Syria branch, controls large territory in Idlib.

Recently, HTS claimed responsibility for a missile attack against the Russian Hmeimim air base in the nearby province of Latakia.

Turkey’s role

With hopes to end the violence in Idlib, Turkey and Russia signed an agreement in September of 2018 which required Turkey to remove extremist elements from Idlib, while Russia would stop the Syrian regime from carrying out attacks on the province.

Several months into the deal, however, both sides have so far been unable to fully implement a ceasefire. This, experts believe, has caused tensions between the two powers.

“Turkey is not happy about Russia’s insistence to retake Idlib from rebels,” Balanche said.

“So by launching an offensive in Hama, Turkish President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan wants to tell Moscow that Turkish-backed rebels can still create problems for Russian forces elsewhere in Syria,” he said.  

Yielding to pressure

While Syrian regime forces seem to have the upper hand in recent battles against opposition fighters, some experts believe this time around rebel fighters are poised to shift the balance.

“Opposition forces appear to be more organized which could make this offensive [on Hama] very costly for the Assad regime,” military analyst Rahal said.

“That’s why we are seeing Hezbollah and other Shi’ite militias are being deployed to the frontlines once again,” he added.

Since the beginning of Syria’s conflict in 2011, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias have played a central role in recapturing major cities from rebel forces.  

Depleted from years of fighting on different fronts across the country, experts express doubts about the capability of Syrian government troops to get involved in yet another unpredictable battle with rebels.

“The Syrian regime could yield to this pressure from rebels, because they understand that they don’t have enough resources to protect Hama and engage in a large battle in Idlib at the same time,” analyst Balanche said.

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Saudis: Yemeni Rebel Attack on Saudi Airport Kills 1, Wounds 7

A Yemeni Houthi rebel attack on an airport in southern Saudi Arabia has killed one civilian and wounded seven others, the Saudi-led military coalition said Sunday.

Coalition officials say the parking lot at the Abha airport, which services a resort, was hit. It gave no other details including whether it was struck by a missile or a drone.

The Houthi rebels say they flew drones over the Abha and Jizan airports, but the Saudis did not confirm Jizan was also targeted.

A Houthi missile struck Abha last week, wounding 26. Human Rights Watch condemned the attack as a possible “war crime” and the Saudis promised to take “stern action.”

The Saudi coalition is helping the Yemeni government try to push the Iranian-backed Houthis out of the capital, Sana’a.

While Iran admits support for the Houthis, it denies Saudi allegations of arming the rebels.

A diplomatic quartet made up of Britain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and United States issued a statement Sunday condemning the Houthi attacks on the airports and what it calls Iranian “destabilizing activity” in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The statement demands Houthis end all restrictions on food and emergency aid deliveries in Yemen and allow the World Food Program to get back to work.

While the quartet’s statement makes no mention of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, which have killed thousands of civilians, it urges all parties to accelerate implementation of the December ceasefire agreement. The statement says the quartet remains committed to the peace process and Security Council resolutions concerning Yemen.

The Saudi coalition and rebels agreed at Stockholm in December to a military withdrawal from southern Yemen, including the key ports of Hodeidah, Ras Issa, and Saleef.

While the rebels have started pulling back from the ports, the Saudis say they will not do so until the U.N. can verify the Houthis have fully kept their side of the bargain.

The Houthis accuse the coalition of stepping up airstrikes on their positions in northern Yemen, prompting retaliatory airstrikes on Saudi territory.

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LGBTQ News Coverage Evolving 50 Years After Stonewall

During the 1969 series of riots that followed a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, the New York Daily News headlined a story that quickly became infamous: “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees are Stinging Mad.”

Some of the coverage of rioting outside the gay bar — unimaginable today in mainstream publications for its mocking tone — was itself a source of the fury that led Stonewall to become a synonym for the fight for gay rights.

Fifty years later, media treatment of the LGBTQ community has changed and is still changing.

“The progress has been extraordinary, with the caveat that we still have a lot to do,” said Cathy Renna, a former executive for the media watchdog GLAAD who runs her own media consulting firm.

Coverage nonexistent or negative

Before Stonewall, mainstream media coverage of gays was generally nonexistent or consisted of negative, police blotter items.

When a small group demonstrated against government treatment outside the White House in 1965, a newspaper headline said, “Protesters Call Government Unfair to Deviants,” noted Josh Howard, whose film “The Lavender Scare,” about an Eisenhower-era campaign against gays and lesbians in government, aired on PBS this week.

A 1966 Time magazine article called homosexuality “a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste and above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.”

This is the sort of thing that Howard, who was 14 at the time of Stonewall, read about people like himself when he was young.

“It’s a hard way to grow up,” said the longtime CBS News producer. “I sort of realized that it was safe for me to be in the closet.”

Stonewall got some straightforward coverage at the time, although stories in The New York Times and the New York Post ran well inside the newspapers. An Associated Press story from June 30, 1969, said “police cleared the streets in the Sheridan Square area of Greenwich Village early Sunday as crowds of young men complained of police harassment of homosexuals.”

New York television stations ignored it, so the visual record amounts to a handful of still pictures.

Wake-up call for the media

The Daily News story was filled with slurs, and it began: “She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave.”

At the time, many demonstrators were more upset with riot coverage by the now-defunct alternative newsweekly The Village Voice, said Edward Alwood, author of “Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media.”

One Voice writer holed up with police inside Stonewall and said he wished he was armed. 

“The sound filtering in doesn’t suggest dancing faggots anymore,” Howard Smith wrote. “It sounds like a powerful rage bent on vendetta.”

Another Voice writer, Lucian Truscott IV, repeatedly referred to “faggot” and “faggotry” and said of the rioters at one point, “limp wrists were forgotten.”

“That event has generally been seen through political lenses,” Alwood said. “It was also a wake-up call for the media.”

Discomfort, stereotyping persisted

The immediate impact was growth and a heightened profile for news outlets specifically oriented to gays and lesbians, said Eric Marcus, author of the book “Making Gay History” and host of a podcast of the same name.

Marcus wrote in an essay this week about how Time magazine’s 1966 story “just about burned the skin off my face as I read it.”

Time didn’t cover Stonewall, but in October 1969 published a cover story about the emerging civil rights movement. While more straightforward in its reporting than the essay three years earlier, the story “was still dripping with sarcasm and contempt,” he said.

Time published Marcus’ piece as part of its Stonewall anniversary coverage, although it didn’t apologize for its past work.

While outright hate within the mainstream media subsided through the years, discomfort and stereotyping persisted. The go-to gay image for most publications was a silhouette of two men holding hands.

Coverage of gays in the military, for example, focused on “showers and submarines,” Renna said, or the unease of straight males in the presence of gays. Lesbians were barely mentioned, a sign of little awareness of diversity.

Through her work at GLAAD, Renna saw how Ellen DeGeneres’ revelation that she was a lesbian, both the ABC sitcom character she played at the time and the comedian in real life, was pivotal to promoting understanding.

Attention to language

Renna has urged journalists to pay attention to their language. Being gay is not a lifestyle, she notes; “Having a dog is a lifestyle.” She also urges the use of “sexual orientation” as opposed to “sexual preference,” a recognition that being gay isn’t a choice.

“The vast majority of journalists are not homophobic,” she said. “They’re homo-ignorant.”

Renna, who wears her hair short and favors tailored suits, is used to being mistaken for a man. Until about a decade ago, people she would correct generally shrugged. As a sign of changing attitudes, “now people fall over themselves to apologize once they realize I’m a girl,” she said.

A handbook of terminology for news organizations that is put out by LGBTQ journalists has helped increase awareness.

There are still missteps. The AP decreed in 2013 that its journalists would not use the word “husband” or “wife” in reference to a legally married gay or lesbian couple. After a protest, the AP reversed its call a week later.

Two 2017 entries in the AP Stylebook, considered the authoritative reference for journalists on the use of language, illustrate how far things have come since the “queen bees” days 50 years ago. The AP endorses the use of “they, them or theirs” as singular pronouns (replacing he or she) if the story subject requests it, although the AP urges care in writing to avoid confusion.

The stylebook also reminds readers that not all people fit under one of two categories for gender, “so avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes.”

Gender identification remains an object of confusion for many journalists. Activists also urge news organizations to be aware of people who are emboldened to lash out at the LGBTQ community by the divided politics of the past few years.

A newspaper apologizes

With the Stonewall anniversary, Marcus, of “Making Gay History,” has been busy working with news organizations doing stories about the event.

One publication he finds particularly interested and responsible in marking the occasion is the New York Daily News. The News on June 7 wrote an editorial recognizing its unseemly moment in history.

“We here at the Daily News played an unhelpful role in helping create a climate that treated the victims as the punchline of jokes, not as dignified individuals with legitimate complaints about mistreatment,” the newspaper wrote. “For that, we apologize.”

It was the newspaper’s second apology for its 1969 story in four years.

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Technology Helps People who are Visually Impaired to ‘See’ Art

Museums across the United States are striving to be more accessible to everyone. That includes touchable versions of photographs and paintings for people who may not be able to see them. At a recent expo by the American Alliance of Museums in New Orleans, new technology was used to help the visually impaired “see” art and pictures. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more.

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