Iran crash and missile claims put Ukraine president in bind

January 10, 2020

MOSCOW (AP) — As allegations swirl and denials clash over what caused the fatal crash of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran this week, Ukraine's president is caught in the middle. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday appealed to Western countries to present evidence for their claims a day earlier that an Iranian anti-aircraft missile downed the plane, killing all 176 people on board.

If that made Zelenskiy sound uninformed amid strident claims from all sides, he also appeared to be following an astute strategy for damage control. Ukraine knows all too well how an air catastrophe can stir up a maelstrom of rumors and disinformation.

The plane crash Wednesday near Tehran is the third time in 20 years that Ukraine has been linked to the violent destruction of a civilian plane, allegedly or demonstrably due to a missile strike. In each case, denials, unfounded speculation and political posturing clouded the search for the truth.

And the crisis has erupted as Ukraine — under the new leadership of a man with no political experience — is already entangled in other international and U.S. political disputes. Zelenskiy has found himself mired in the turmoil around President Donald Trump's impeachment, which is based on allegations that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into investigating Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Trump and his Republican political allies have pushed an opposing narrative that he wanted to investigate corruption in Ukraine, and by extension, that Ukraine, not just Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections.

The first airline disaster to ensnare Ukraine was on Oct. 4, 2001, when a Russian airliner disappeared over the Black Sea en route from Israel carrying 78 people. Coming just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, speculation on the cause initially focused on terrorism.

Within a day, U.S. officials said the plane likely was hit accidentally by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile fired during military exercises. Both Ukraine and Russia initially rejected that claim. But the rejection by Russian President Vladimir Putin was based on what he had been told by Ukraine — at that time a Russian ally — and Ukraine several weeks later acknowledged that it was at fault.

The incident, and Ukraine's denials and incorrect claims, were a significant embarrassment to the country, which fired its air defense chief and paid more than $15 million in compensation to victims' families.

The next disaster killed far more people and sparked far more contention, pitting Ukraine against Russia with competing claims of responsibility. A Malaysian Airlines jet was shot down on July 17, 2014, over eastern Ukraine where Ukrainian forces were at war with Russian-backed separatists. All 298 people aboard died.

Although much suspicion initially fell on the separatists, bolstered by a reported claim by a rebel commander that a Ukrainian plane was shot down at the same time, Russian officials and Russian news media quickly launched an array of competing theories.

One of them focused on a man who supposedly was a Spanish air traffic controller at Kyiv's Boryspil airport who said on Twitter that his radar screen had spotted two Ukrainian military jets near the Malaysian plane shortly before it went down. That dovetailed with an alleged theory that Ukrainian forces had mistaken the airliner for one carrying Putin.

The most vividly gruesome of the reports was a claim that the Malaysian plane had been filled with corpses before takeoff, then sent to its doom. On-the-ground investigative work to establish what happened was obstructed by the rebels, who did not give investigators full access to the crash site for days. Experts later abandoned the on-site work for several weeks because of concerns about their safety.

Nearly a year later, Russian arms-maker Almaz-Antey confirmed that the plane had been shot down by a Soviet-designed surface-to-air missile, but claimed that particular model was used only by the Ukrainian military.

Investigations led by the Netherlands — the flight originated in Amsterdam and more than half the victims were Dutch — concluded that the plane was shot down from rebel-controlled territory and that the mobile missile launcher used had been brought into Ukraine from Russia on the day of the attack.

Russia and the rebels continue to deny involvement in the downing. A trial is scheduled to start in March in the Netherlands of four suspects — three Russians and one Ukrainian — in the MH-17 downing, although none is expected to be handed over to face the court.

The Iran crash this week took place amid fears of imminent war between the United States and Iran after a U.S. drone strike killed an Iranian military mastermind and Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes.

Zelenskiy and Ukraine may be facing a country just as sensitive and obstinate as Russia was over the 2014 crash. Although Ukrainian investigators are in Iran, their access to the crash site was delayed until Friday. Iran is promising cooperation but still rejects reports that one of its missiles hit the plane.

Russia, which has close relations with Iran, appears to be taking a cautious stance. Russian officials have refrained from commenting on the claims that Iran was responsible, and pro-Kremlin lawmakers have been divided on the issue.

"There are no grounds for making vociferous statements at this stage,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday. “It is important to allow specialists to analyze the situation and make conclusions. Starting some kind of game is, at the very least, indecent.”

The catastrophe is a complex stew for Zelenskiy, who took office less than eight months ago with no prior political experience. His call for evidence in the plane crash and avoidance of strong claims could be the hesitancy of a novice, but it has so far prevented a smoldering crisis from bursting into open flames.

US, Iran step back from the brink; region still on edge

January 09, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war on Wednesday as President Donald Trump signaled he would not retaliate militarily for Iran's missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. No one was harmed in the strikes, but U.S. forces in the region remained on high alert.

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which spiraled after he authorized the targeted killing last week of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded overnight with its most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, firing more than a dozen missiles at two installations in Iraq. The Pentagon said Wednesday that it believed Iran fired with the intent to kill.

Even so, Trump's takeaway was that “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world." Despite such conciliatory talk, the region remained on edge, and American troops including a quick-reaction force dispatched over the weekend, were on high alert. Last week Iranian-backed militia besieged the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and Tehran’s proxies in the region remain able to carry out attacks such as the one on Dec. 27 that killed a U.S. contractor and set off the most recent round of hostilities.

Hours after Trump spoke, an ‘incoming’ siren went off in Baghdad's Green Zone after what seemed to be small rockets "impacted" the diplomatic area, a Western official said. There were no reports of casualties.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that it was “perhaps too early to tell” if Iran will be satisfied that the missile strikes were sufficient to avenge the Soleimani killing.

“We should have some expectation,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper added in a Wednesday briefing, “that Shiite militia groups, either directed or not directed by Iran, will continue in some way, shape or form to try and undermine our presence there,” either politically or militarily.

There is no obvious path to diplomatic engagement, as Trump pledged to add to his “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions. He said the new, unspecified sanctions would remain in place “until Iran changes its behavior."

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the overnight strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran's response. “Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

Trump, facing perhaps the biggest test of his presidency, credited the minimized damage to an early warning system “that worked very well" and said Americans should be “extremely grateful and happy” with the outcome.

The strikes had pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to all-out conflict and left the world waiting to see whether the American president would respond with more military force. Trump, in his nine-minute, televised address, spoke of a robust U.S. military with missiles that are “big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast.” But then he added: “We do not want to use it."

Iran for days had been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani's killing, but its limited strike on two bases — one in the northern Iraqi city in Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq — appeared to signal that it, too, was uninterested in a wider clash with the U.S. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defense."

Trump, who is facing reelection in November, campaigned for president on a promise to extract the United States from “endless wars." On Wednesday, he said the United States was “ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.” That marked a sharp change in tone from his warning a day earlier that “if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly."

Members of Congress were briefed on the Iran situation Wednesday afternoon in closed-door sessions on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and some Republicans expressed dissatisfaction with the administration's justifications for the drone strike on Soleimani.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said it was “probably the worst briefing I've seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I've served in the United States Senate.” He said it was "distressing" that officials suggested it would only embolden Iran if lawmakers debated the merits of further military action. He and Sen. Rand Paul announced their support of a largely symbolic war powers resolution to limit Trump's military action regarding Iran.

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced after the briefing that the House would vote Thursday on a war powers resolution of its own. Trump opened his remarks at the White House by reiterating his promise that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon." Iran had announced in the wake of Soleimani's killing that it would no longer comply with any of the limits on uranium enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal crafted to keep it from building a nuclear device.

The president, who had earlier pulled the U.S. out of the deal, seized on the moment of calm to call for negotiations toward a new agreement that would do more to limit Iran's ballistic missile programs and constrain regional proxy campaigns like those led by Soleimani.

Trump also announced he would ask NATO to become "much more involved in the Middle East process.” While he has frequently criticized NATO as obsolete and has encouraged participants to increase their military spending, Trump has tried to push the military alliance to refocus its efforts on modern threats.

Like the U.S. troops in the region, NATO forces have temporarily halted their training of Iraqi forces and their work to combat the Islamic State. Soleimani's death last week in an American drone strike in Baghdad prompted angry calls for vengeance and drew massive crowds of Iranians to the streets to mourn him. Khamenei himself wept at the funeral in a sign of his bond with the commander.

Milley and Esper told reporters that a total of 16 missiles were fired from three locations in Iran. Eleven hit the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq’s western Anbar province and one targeted a base in Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The missiles were described as likely short-range with 1,000- to 2,000-pound warheads. Four failed to detonate, they said.

Milley added that the Pentagon believes that Iran fired the missiles with the intent “to kill personnel.” He praised early warning systems, which detected the incoming ballistic missiles well in advance, providing U.S. and coalition forces adequate time to take shelter at both bases. He described the damage to tents, parking lots and a helicopter, among other things, as “nothing major.”

Officials also said that the U.S. was aware of preparations for the attack. It's unclear if any intelligence identified specific targets or was more general. Ain al-Asad was first used by American forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and it later was used by American troops in the fight against the Islamic State group. It houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition forces. Trump visited it in December 2018, making his first presidential visit to troops in the region. Vice President Mike Pence visited both Ain al-Asad and Irbil in November.

Trump spoke of new sanctions on Iran, but it was not immediately clear what those would be. The primary agencies involved in implementing such penalties – the departments of Commerce, State and Treasury – do not preview those actions to prevent evasion.

Since withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, the administration had already imposed harsh sanctions on nearly every significant portion of Iran’s economic, energy, shipping and military sectors. Wednesday's effort to deescalate the conflict came after world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, appealed for restraint.

The fallout for Trump's order to kill Soleimani had been swift. Iraq's Parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, though Trump said they would not be leaving. Trump and top national security officials have justified the Soleimani drone strike with general statements about the threat posed by the general, who commanded proxy forces outside Iran and was responsible for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann, Robert Burns, Kevin Freking, Lolita Baldor, Darlene Superville, Alan Fram and Padmananda Rama in Washington and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

Stampede kills 56 at funeral for Iranian general slain by US

January 07, 2020

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A stampede broke out Tuesday at a funeral for a top Iranian general killed in a U.S. airstrike, and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession, Iranian news reports said.

The stampede took place in Kerman, the hometown of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as the procession began, said the semi-official Fars and ISNA news agencies, citing Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran’s emergency medical services.

There was no information as to what had set off the stampede. Online videos showed people lying apparently lifeless, their faces covered by clothing. Emergency crews performed CPR on others as people wailed in the background, crying out to God.

“Unfortunately as a result of the stampede, some of our compatriots have been injured and some have been killed during the funeral processions," Koulivand said. State TV reported the death toll of 56, with 213 injured, citing Koulivand,

Soleimani's burial was later delayed, with no new time given. Authorities cited concerns about the massive crowd that had gathered as a reason for the delay, the semi-official ISNA news agency said. A procession in Tehran on Monday drew over 1 million people in the Iranian capital, crowding both main thoroughfares and side streets in Tehran. Such mass crowds can prove dangerous. A smaller stampede struck the 1989 funeral for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing at least eight people and injuring hundreds.

Soleimani's death in a drone strike on Friday has sparked calls across Iran for revenge against America, drastically raising tensions across the Middle East. The U.S. government warned ships of an unspecified threat from Iran across the region's waterways, crucial routes for global energy supplies. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force launched a drill with 52 fighter jets in Utah, just days after President Donald Trump threatened to hit 52 sites in Iran.

Earlier in the day, Hossein Salami, the new leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, vowed to avenge Soleimani's death as he addressed a crowd of supporters gathered at the coffin in a central square in Kernan.

“We tell our enemies that we will retaliate but if they take another action we will set ablaze the places that they like and are passionate about," Salami said. “Death to Israel!” the crowd shouted in response. Israel is a longtime regional foe of Iran.

The funeral processions in major cities over three days have been an unprecedented honor for Soleimani, viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force.

The U.S. blames him for killing U.S. troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before he was killed in the drone strike near Baghdad’s airport. Soleimani also led forces supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country's civil war, and he also served as the point man for Iranian proxies in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

The U.S. is continuing to reinforce its own positions in the region, including repositioning some forces. Soleimani's slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Iraq, pro-Iranian factions in parliament have pushed to oust American troops from Iraqi soil following Soleimani's killing at the Baghdad airport.

In his eulogy to the crowd, Salami praised Soleimani's work, describing him as essential to backing Palestinian groups, Yemen's Houthi rebels and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. As a martyr, Soleimani represented an even greater threat to Iran's enemies, Salami said.

According to a report on Tuesday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, Iran has worked up 13 sets of plans for revenge for Soleimani's killing. The report quoted Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying that even the weakest among them would be a “historic nightmare” for the U.S. He declined to elaborate,

“If the U.S. troops do not leave our region voluntarily and upright, we will do something to carry their bodies horizontally out," Shamkhani said. The U.S. Maritime Administration warned ships across the Mideast, citing the rising threats. “The Iranian response to this action, if any, is unknown, but there remains the possibility of Iranian action against U.S. maritime interests in the region,” it said.

Oil tankers were targeted in mine attacks last year that the U.S. blamed on Iran. Tehran denied responsibility, although it did seize oil tankers around the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil travels.

The U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet said it would work with shippers in the region to minimize any possible threat. The 5th Fleet “has and will continue to provide advice to merchant shipping as appropriate regarding recommended security precautions in light of the heightened tensions and threats in the region,” 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Joshua Frey told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Iranian Gen. Alireza Tabgsiri, the chief of the Guard’s navy, issued his own warning. “Our message to the enemies is to leave the region," Tabgsiri said, according to ISNA. The Guard routinely has tense encounters with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.

Iran's parliament, meanwhile, has passed an urgent bill declaring the U.S. military's command at the Pentagon and those acting on its behalf in Soleimani's killing as “terrorists," subject to Iranian sanctions. The measure appears to be an attempt to mirror a decision by Trump in April to declare the Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization.”

The U.S. Defense Department used the Guard’s designation as a terror organization in the U.S. to support the strike that killed Soleimani. The decision by Iran’s parliament, done by a special procedure to speed the bill to law, comes as officials across the country threaten to retaliate for Soleimani’s killing.

The vote also saw lawmakers approve funding for the Quds Force with an additional 200 million euros, or about $224 million. Also Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the U.S. had declined to issue him a visa to travel to New York for upcoming meetings at the United Nations. As the host of the U.N. headquarters, the U.S. is supposed to allow foreign officials to attend such meetings.

“This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people,” Zarif said. "But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that.”

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Solemani will ultimately be laid to rest between the graves of Enayatollah Talebizadeh and Mohammad Hossein Yousef Elahi, two former Guard comrades. The two died in Operation Dawn 8 in Iran's 1980s war with Iraq in which Soleimani also took part, a 1986 amphibious assault that cut Iraq off from the Persian Gulf and led to the end of the bloody war that killed 1 million people.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Iran supreme leader weeps for general killed by US airstrike

January 06, 2020

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that's drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least a million.

Authorities later brought his remains and others to Iran's holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd. It was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His death already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called “crazy.” "The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children," she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms.Iranian state television and others online shared a video that showed Trump's American flag tweet following Soleimani's killing turn into a coffin, the “likes” of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 "killed."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capital's famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a “living martyr,” broke down four times in tears while offering traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. “Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way,” Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khamenei's side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimani's death has brought together people from across the country's political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump himself as a legitimate target. Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

“Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington," Rashidi said. "There will be more conflict in the future for sure.” Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran “will retaliate for every drop of his blood.”

“We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the region’s countries,” Mardani said. "Here will become their graveyard.”

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. "God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for some of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the world's oil traded passes.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere. Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans “of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.” In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani’s killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said. The head of the Guard's aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran's response wouldn't stop with a single attack.

“Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood,” Hajizadeh said on state TV. “The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.”

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it won't observe the accord's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. That's a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to “withdraw all measures” not in line with the deal. Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn’t seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran’s longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Iran general steps out of Soleimani's shadow to lead proxies

January 05, 2020

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country's expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran's proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with “harsh revenge” for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani.

The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard oversees Iran's ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and includes an all-volunteer Basij force.

Like his predecessor, a young Esmail Ghaani faced the carnage of Iran's eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s and later joined the newly founded Quds, or Jerusalem, Force. While much still remains unknown about Ghaani, 62, Western sanctions suggest he's long been in a position of power in the organization. And likely one of his first duties will be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for the U.S. airstrike early Friday that killed his longtime friend Soleimani.

“We are children of war,” Ghaani once said of his relationship with Soleimani, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency. “We are comrades on the battlefield and we have become friends in battle.”

The Guard has seen its influence grow ever-stronger both militarily and politically in recent decades. Iran's conventional military was decimated by the execution of its old officer class during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later by sanctions.

A key driver of that influence comes from the elite Quds Force, which works across the region with allied groups to offer an asymmetrical threat to counter the advanced weaponry wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies. Those partners include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels.

In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani's replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the new leader “one of the most prominent commanders” in service to Iran. The Quds Force “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor," Khamenei said, according to IRNA.

Soleimani long has been the face of the Quds Force. His fame surged after American officials began blaming him for deadly roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Images of him, long a feature of hard-line Instagram accounts and mobile phone lockscreens, now plaster billboards calling for Iran to avenge his death.

But while Soleimani's exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained much more in the shadows of the organization. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.

Born on Aug. 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the Guard a year after the 1979 revolution. Like Soleimani, he first deployed to put down the Kurdish uprising in Iran that followed the shah's downfall.

Iraq then invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that would see 1 million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the Guard, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions.

Volunteers “were seeing that all of them are being killed, but when we ordered them to go, would not hesitate,” Ghaani later recounted. “The commander is looking to his soldiers as his children, and in the soldier’s point of view, it seems that he received an order from God and he must to do that.”

He survived the war to join the Quds Force shortly after its creation. He worked with Soleimani, as well as led counterintelligence efforts at the Guard. Western analysts believe while Soleimani focused on nations to Iran's west, Ghaani's remit was those to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Iranian state media has not elaborated on his time in the Guard.

In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over “financial disbursements” to proxies affiliated with the Quds Force. The sanctions particularly tied Ghaani to an intercepted shipment of weapons seized at a port in 2010 in Nigeria's most-populous city, Lagos.

Authorities broke into 13 shipping containers labeled as carrying “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.” They instead found 107 mm Katyusha rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The Katyusha remains a favored weapon of Iranian proxy forces, including Iraqi militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

An Iranian and his Nigerian partner later received five-year prison sentences over the shipment, which appeared bound for Gambia, then under the rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh. Israeli officials had claimed the rockets would be shipped to militants in the Gaza Strip, while Nigerian authorities alleged that local politicians could use the arms in upcoming elections.

Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the U.S. State Department after reportedly saying that “if the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.” That comment came just after gunmen backing Syrian President Bashar Assad killed over 100 people in Houla in the country's Homs province.

“Over the weekend we had the deputy head of the Quds Force saying publicly that they were proud of the role that they had played in training and assisting the Syrian forces — and look what this has wrought," then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at the time.

In January 2015, Ghaani indirectly said that Iran sends missiles and weapons to Palestinians to fight Israel. “The U.S. and Israel are too small to consider themselves in line with Iran's military power," Ghaani said at the time. "This power has now appeared alongside the oppressed people of Palestine and Gaza in the form of missiles and weapons.”

Now, Ghaani is firmly in control of the Quds Force. While Iran's leaders say they have a plan to avenge Soleimani's death, no plan has been announced as the country prepares for funerals for the general starting Sunday.

Whatever that plan for revenge is, Ghaani likely will be involved. “That Qaani survived at such high ranks in the (Guard), and remained Soleimani’s deputy for so long, says a lot about the trust both Khamenei and Soleimani had in him,” said Afshon Ostovar, the author of a book on the Guard. “I suspect he’ll have little difficulty filling Soleimani’s shoes when it comes to operations and strategy.”

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Poll pitch for India's capital plays up growing divisions

February 07, 2020

NEW DELHI (AP) — Campaigning for a crucial state election in India's capital has reached a fever pitch as members of the Hindu nationalist-led government call for violence against minority Muslims and invoke the specter of arch-nemesis Pakistan to reverse course after a pair of losses in recent state polls.

Critics call the incendiary religious appeals a tactic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party to win at the polls and divert attention from the sluggish economy, which expanded at a 4.5% annual pace in the last quarter, its slowest rate since mid-2018.

The election Saturday has also been seen as a referendum on the ruling party's response to nearly two months of protests across India against a new citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for some migrants of neighboring countries living in the country illegally of all South Asia's major religions except Islam.

Modi’s party had anticipated a windfall in state elections after a landslide victory in national polls last year. A move last summer to revoke disputed Kashmir’s semi-autonomy and put the Muslim-majority region under lockdown, and the passage of the new citizenship law, have won him praise from supporters but little reward at the polls. BJP lost two important state elections last year.

The election in New Delhi, where 14.6 million voters are likely to cast ballots on Saturday, pits Modi's party against the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party, or “common man” party, whose pro-poor policies have focused on fixing state-run schools, provided free healthcare and waived bus fare for women during the five years it has been in power.

A win would likely embolden Modi and his party, while a loss could further dent his image as an unstoppable political force. During the campaigning that ended Thursday, Modi and other senior party leaders have focused their ire on a 45-day long sit-in led by Muslim women who have been blocking a highway for weeks through New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, a working-class neighborhood, to protest the citizenship law.

Modi has referred to the protesters as part of a “political design” and a “conspiracy.” “This dog-whistle is basically a signal to his faithful to view the ongoing protests in Delhi through the lens of a well-cultivated prejudice against Muslims,” said Shuddhabrata Sengupta, an artist and curator and longtime Modi critic.

Other BJP leaders, however, have been more blatant. A member of Parliament from Modi’s party cautioned at a public rally that the sit-in demonstrators would "enter people’s homes, rape women and then kill them off." Another minister characterized the protesters as “traitors” and led a crowd in chanting the slogan “shoot them.”

Last week, a gunman fired shots at the protest site. As the police took him away, a video of the incident showed him saying: “In our country, only Hindus will prevail.” The man was immediately arrested and was in police custody.

For the Delhi election campaign, Modi tapped the top elected official of India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who is known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Adityanath recently told a crowd assembled in Uttam Nagar, a densely-populated neighborhood in the capital, that Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, New Delhi’s top elected leader, was dividing the country.

“Whenever Kejriwal is happy, Pakistan is happy too,” he said. The BJP has over the years amplified its Hindu nationalist agenda fuelled by Modi’s extraordinary popularity. By contrast, Kejriwal and the AAP have emphasized good governance, and a push to improve education and healthcare since its inception in 2013. In 2015, it went on to win a historic mandate in Delhi and beat the incumbent Congress party by bagging 67 out of 70 seats.

The Congress, a third party in contention for Saturday''s polls, has run a lackluster campaign and is expected to fare poorly. But Congress, AAP and other opposition parties have banded together to denounce the BJP's “communal polarization.”

Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, a BJP candidate and party spokesman, told The Associated Press that “nationalism is one of our main agenda and we will speak against those who plan to break India.” Campaigning in the acrimonious election has also garnered admonishment by India’s election commission, which oversees the polls.

It banned two star campaigners from Modi’s party for 72 hours for hate speech. Sanjay Kumar, a political scientist at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said many of the remarks made by politicians in the run-up to the polls qualified as such. And many Delhi voters blame the commission for failing to curb the rhetoric.

“The election commission should be more willing to recognize the threat posed by statements that are communal-driven,” said one voter, Shadab Abdullah.

China building a hospital to treat virus, expands lockdowns

January 24, 2020

BEIJING (AP) — China is swiftly building a hospital dedicated to treating patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities home to millions of people during the country's most important holiday.

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, transportation was shut down Friday in at least eight cities with a total of about 25 million people. The cities are Wuhan, where the illness has been concentrated, and seven of its neighbors in central China's Hubei province: Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao.

The Wuhan government said Friday it was building a designated hospital with space for 1,000 beds in the style of a facility that Beijing constructed during the SARS epidemic. The hospital will be erected on a 25,000 square-meter lot and is slated for completion Feb. 3, municipal authorities said.

Normally bustling streets, malls and other public spaces were eerily quiet in Wuhan on the second day of its lockdown. Masks were mandatory in public, and images from the city showed empty shelves as people stocked up for what could be an extended isolation. Train stations, the airport and subways were closed; police checked incoming vehicles but did not entirely close off roads.

Authorities were taking precautions around the country. In the capital, Beijing, major public events were canceled indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of Lunar New Year celebrations. The Forbidden City, a major tourist destination in Beijing, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday.

The number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 830, the National Health Commission said Friday morning. Twenty-six people have died, including the first two deaths outside Hubei. The health commission in Hebei, a northern province bordering Beijing, said an 80-year-old man died there after returning from a two-month stay in Wuhan to see relatives. Heilongjiang province in the northeast confirmed a death there but did not give details.

Initial symptoms of the virus can mirror those of the cold and flu, including cough, fever, chest tightening and shortness of breath, but can worsen to pneumonia. The vast majority of cases have been in and around Wuhan or people with connections the city, but scattered cases have occurred beyond the mainland. South Korea and Japan both confirmed their second cases Friday, and cases have been detected in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, the United States, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Many countries are screening travelers from China and isolating anyone with symptoms. The World Health Organization decided against declaring the outbreak a global emergency for now. The declaration can increase resources to fight a threat but its potential to cause economic damage makes the decision politically fraught.

Chinese officials have not said how long the shutdowns of the cities will last. While sweeping measures are typical of China's Communist Party-led government, large-scale quarantines are rare around the world, even in deadly epidemics, because of concerns about infringing on people's liberties.

The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which is thought to have originated from camels.

The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak late last month were connected to a seafood market, and experts suspect transmission began from wild animals sold there. The market is closed for investigation. Across China, a slew of cancellations and closures dampened the usual liveliness of Lunar New Year.

One Beijing subway station near a transport hub conducted temperature checks at its security checkpoint Friday. Some security personnel were clad in full-body hazardous material suits. Schools prolonged their winter break and were ordered by the Ministry of Education to not hold any mass gatherings or exams. Transport departments will also be waiving fees and providing refunds for ticket cancellations.

Associated Press researcher Henry Hou in Beijing contributed to this report.

Rohingya hail UN ruling that Myanmar act to prevent genocide

January 23, 2020

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations' top court on Thursday ordered Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya people, a ruling met by members of the Muslim minority with gratitude and relief but also some skepticism that the country's rulers will fully comply.

The ruling by the International Court of Justice came despite appeals last month by Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the judges to drop the case amid her denials of genocide by the armed forces that once held the former pro-democracy champion under house arrest for 15 years.

Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, president of the court, said in his order that the Rohingya in Myanmar "remain extremely vulnerable.” In a unanimous decision, the 17-judge panel added that its order for so-called provisional measures intended to protect the Rohingya is binding "and creates international legal obligations" on Myanmar.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomes the court’s order and “will promptly transmit the notice of the provisional measures” it ordered to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Diplomats said the U.N.'s most powerful body is not expected to take any action until it sees how Myanmar is implementing the court's order. While the court has no ability to enforce the orders, one international law expert said the ruling will strengthen other nations pressing for change in Myanmar.

“Thus far, it's been states trying to put pressure on Myanmar or using their good offices or ... diplomatic pressure," said Priya Pillai, head of the Asia Justice Coalition Secretariat. "Now, essentially for any state, there is legal leverage.”

The orders specifically refer to Rohingya still in Myanmar and thus did not look likely to have an immediate impact on more than 700,000 of them who have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in recent years to escape Myanmar's brutal crackdown.

Even so, Yasmin Ullah, a Rohingya activist who lives in Vancouver and was in court for the decision, called it a historic ruling. “Today, having the judges unanimously agree to the protection of Rohingya means so much to us because we're now allowed to exist and it's legally binding," she told reporters on the steps of the court.

But asked if she believes Myanmar will comply, she replied: “I don't think so.” Myanmar's legal team left the court without commenting. Later, its foreign ministry said in a statement that it took note of the ruling, but repeated its assertion that there has been no genocide against the Rohingya.

The court sought to safeguard evidence that could be used in future prosecutions, ordering Myanmar to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related" to allegations of genocidal acts.

At the end of an hour-long session in the court's wood-paneled Great Hall of Justice, judges also ordered Myanmar to report to them in four months on what measures the country has taken to comply with the order and then to report every six months as the case moves slowly through the world court.

“I think this is the court maybe being much more proactive and ... careful in acknowledging that this is a serious situation and there needs to be much more follow-up and monitoring by the court itself, which is which is quite unusual as well,” Pallai said.

Rogingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh welcomed the order, which was even supported by a temporary judge appointed by Myanmar to be part of the panel. “This is good news. We thank the court as it has reflected our hope for justice. The verdict proves that Myanmar has become a nation of torturers,” 39-year-old Abdul Jalil told The Associated Press by phone from Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar.

However, he too expressed doubts that Myanmar would fully comply. “Myanmar has become a notorious state. We do not have confidence in it," Jalil said. “There is little chance that Myanmar will listen.”

Rights activists also welcomed the decision. “The ICJ order to Myanmar to take concrete steps to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya is a landmark step to stop further atrocities against one of the world’s most persecuted people," said Param-Preet Singh, associate international justice director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Concerned governments and U.N. bodies should now weigh in to ensure that the order is enforced as the genocide case moves forward.”

The world court order for what it calls provisional measures came in a case brought by the African nation of Gambia on behalf of an organization of Muslim nations that accuses Myanmar of genocide in its crackdown on the Rohingya.

The judges did not decide on the substance of the case, which will be debated in legal arguments likely to last years before a final ruling is issued. But their order to protect the Rohingya made clear they fear for ongoing attacks.

At public hearings last month, lawyers used maps, satellite images and graphic photos to detail what they called a campaign of murder, rape and destruction amounting to genocide perpetrated by Myanmar's military.

The hearings drew intense scrutiny as Suu Kyi defended the campaign by her country's military forces. Suu Kyi, who as Myanmar's state counselor heads the government, was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy and human rights under Myanmar's then-ruling junta.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya to be "Bengalis" from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.

In August 2017, Myanmar's military launched what it called a clearance campaign in northern Rakhine state in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The campaign forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and led to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.

Suu Kyi told world court judges in December that the exodus was a tragic consequence of the military's response to "coordinated and comprehensive armed attacks" by Rohingya insurgents. Thursday's ruling came two days after an independent commission established by Myanmar's government concluded there are reasons to believe security forces committed war crimes in counterinsurgency operations against the Rohingya, but that there is no evidence supporting charges that genocide was planned or carried out.

Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch's deputy Asia director, said the panel's findings were “what would have been expected from a non-transparent investigation by a politically skewed set of commissioners working closely with the Myanmar government."

At December's public hearings, Paul Reichler, a lawyer for Gambia, cited a U.N. fact-finding mission report at hearings last month that said military "clearance operations" in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state spared nobody. "Mothers, infants, pregnant women, the old and infirm. They all fell victim to this ruthless campaign,” he said.

Gambia's Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou urged the world court to act immediately and “tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people.”

Anna Roberts, executive director of Burma Campaign UK, called the order “a major blow to Aung San Suu Kyi and her anti-Rohingya policies.” She urged the international community to press her to enforce the court's order.

“The chances of Aung San Suu Kyi implementing this ruling will be zero unless significant international pressure is applied,” Roberts said. "So far, the international community has not been willing to apply pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi over her own appalling record on human rights.”

Court to rule in case accusing Myanmar of Rohingya genocide

January 23, 2020

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations' highest court is set to rule Thursday on whether to order Myanmar to halt what has been described as a genocidal campaign against the country's Rohingya Muslims.

The International Court of Justice heard a case brought by the African nation of Gambia on behalf of an organization of Muslim nations that accuses Myanmar of genocide in its crackdown on the Rohingya.

At public hearings last month, lawyers for Myanmar's accusers used maps, satellite images and graphic photos to detail what they call a campaign of murder, rape and destruction amounting to genocide perpetrated by Myanmar's military.

The hearings drew intense scrutiny as Myanmar's former pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi defended the campaign by military forces that once held her under house arrest for 15 years. Suu Kyi, who as Myanmar's state counselor heads the government, was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy and human rights under Myanmar's then-ruling junta.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya to be "Bengalis" from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.

In August 2017, Myanmar's military launched what it called a clearance campaign in northern Rakhine state in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The campaign forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and led to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes, killings and burned thousands of homes.

Suu Kyi told world court judges in December that the exodus was a tragic consequence of the military's response to "coordinated and comprehensive armed attacks" by Rohingya insurgents. She urged judges to drop the genocide case and allow Myanmar's military justice system to deal with any abuses.

Thursday's ruling comes two days after an independent commission established by Myanmar's government concluded there are reasons to believe security forces committed war crimes in counterinsurgency operations against the Rohingya, but that there is no evidence supporting charges that genocide was planned or carried out.

The report drew criticism from rights activists. Pending release of the full report, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the panel's findings were “what would have been expected from a non-transparent investigation by a politically skewed set of commissioners working closely with the Myanmar government."

At December's public hearings, Paul Reichler, a lawyer for Gambia, cited a U.N. fact-finding mission report at hearings last month that said military "clearance operations" in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state spared nobody. "Mothers, infants, pregnant women, the old and infirm. They all fell victim to this ruthless campaign,” he said.

Gambia's Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou urged the world court to act immediately and “tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people.”

The world court's orders are legally binding but it relies on the United Nations to add political pressure, if necessary, to enforce them. The court is expected to take years to issue a final ruling in the case.

Firefighting plane crashes in Australia, killing 3 Americans

January 23, 2020

SYDNEY (AP) — Three American firefighting airplane crew members were killed Thursday when the C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker they were in crashed while battling wildfires in southeastern Australia, officials said.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the deaths in the state's Snowy Monaro region, which came as Australia grapples with an unprecedented fire season that has left a large swath of destruction.

Canada-based Coulson Aviation said in a statement that one of its Lockheed large air tankers was lost after it left Richmond in New South Wales with retardant for a firebombing mission. It said the accident was “extensive" but had few other details.

“The only thing I have from the field reports are that the plane came down, it's crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash,” Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she had conveyed Australia's condolences to U.S. Ambassador Arthur Culvahouse Jr. “Our hearts go out to their loved ones. They were helping Australia, far from their own homes, an embodiment of the deep friendship between our two countries,” she said in a statement.

Payne added: “Thank you to these three, and to all the brave firefighters from Australia and around the world. Your service and contribution are extraordinary. We are ever grateful.” The tragedy brings the death toll from the blazes to at least 31 since September. The fires have also destroyed more than 2,600 homes and razed more than 10.4 million hectares (25.7 million acres), an area bigger than the U.S. state of Indiana.

Coulson grounded other firefighting aircraft as a precaution pending investigation, reducing planes available to firefighters in New South Wales and neighboring Victoria state. The four-propeller Hercules drops more than 15,000 liters (4,000 gallons) of fire retardant in a single pass.

Spokeswoman Robyn Baldwin of Coulson, with headquarters in the Canadian province of British Columbia and extensive U.S. operations, declined to identify the crew members or say what U.S. states they were from.

“We ask for privacy at this time as we mourn the loss of our crew members," Baldwin said. Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the national air crash investigator, and state police will investigate the crash site, which firefighters described as an active fire ground.

“There is no indication at this stage of what's caused the accident,” Fitzsimmons said. Berejiklian said there were more than 1,700 volunteers and personnel in the field, and five fires were being described at an “emergency warning" level — the most dangerous on a three-tier scale — across the state and on the fringes of the national capital Canberra.

Also Thursday, Canberra Airport closed temporarily because of nearby wildfires, and residents south of the city were told to seek shelter. The airport reopened after several hours with Qantas operating limited services, but Virgin and Singapore Airlines canceled flights for the rest of the day.

The blaze started Wednesday, but strong winds and high temperatures caused conditions in Canberra to deteriorate. A second fire near the airport that started on Thursday morning is at a “watch and act” level — the middle of the three tiers.

Residents in some Canberra suburbs were advised to seek shelter and others to leave immediately. "The defense force is both assisting to a degree and looking to whether that needs to be reinforced," Chief of Defense Angus Campbell told reporters.

"I have people who are both involved as persons who need to be moved from areas and office buildings that are potentially in danger, and also those persons who are part of the (Operation) Bushfire Assist effort," he said.

Associated Press writer Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

Grrrrr! Angry herders secure bear ban from France's Macron

January 15, 2020

PARIS (AP) — The bears have cute names — Bubble, Feather, Snowflake and the like — and look so soft and huggable when caught on video by remote cameras that study their habits. But to herders high in the Pyrenees mountains of southwest France, the animals are stone-cold killers, ravaging flocks and undermining farming livelihoods.

Pyrenean livestock farmers who raise sheep for meat and famously pungent cheeses are rejoicing after getting an assurance from President Emmanuel Macron that he won't authorize the release into the wild of any more of the bears blamed for a surge in deadly attacks.

“He promised that the re-insertions (of bears) are finished, that he won't release any more," said Jean-Pierre Pommies, who raises sheep and cows. Pommies wore his broad farmer's beret to Tuesday's meeting with the suit-and-tied Macron in Pau, a Pyrenean town with sweeping views of the mountains.

“He was able to understand that it's a big problem for us,” Pommies added. “We have reached the bottom, and the situation was ridiculous for Pyrenean herders.” When France's last pocket of brown bears appeared headed for extinction in the Pyrenees in the 1990s, the country began importing animals from Slovenia, where the population is booming. A total of eight were freed into the wild in 1996, 1997 and 2006. Another release of two Slovenian female bears — Claverina and Sorita — followed in 2018, the first first full year of Macron's presidency.

The population is now estimated at around 40 bears, doubling its size since 2010 and roaming over a long and expanding swath of the mountains that form the border between France and Spain, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Bear attacks on livestock have grown, too. Having long been largely stable, mostly between 100 and 200 attacks per year across the Pyrenees, including Spain, France and Andorra, they surged to close to 400 in 2018, according to the most recent official annual report.

Herders who suffered included one of Pommies' friends, whose flock was devastated in an attack last year, he said. The sheep took fright and plunged off a cliff together. “There were 256 piled up at the bottom,” he said. “They had to finish some of them off with their knives. For us shepherds, that is traumatic.”

He believes the presence of the predators is simply “incompatible” with the Pyrenean mountain economy that rests largely on herding. “I love bears. I’m passionate about them as animals. But I love that they live happily in Yellowstone, in Canada, in Romania and Slovenia," he said. In the Pyrenees, "the people who are pro-bear say that it used to work for the old timers, that they used to deal with it. And that is completely false. History shows that men have always killed them."

The Pyrenees are only one of the battlegrounds in Europe over efforts to preserve wild fauna and flora. In France's other major mountain range, the Alps, wild wolves that also prey on flocks are a persistent source of tension between herders and those opposed to the deployment of large dogs to keep wolf packs at bay.

In Germany, wolves have been a source of political friction. The far-right opposition Alternative for Germany party accused the government of failing to defend farmers' interests against the 75 wolf packs counted there in 2018. There is also debate in Belgium about the reappearance of wolves after infrared cameras spotted a pair together in woods and a pregnant wolf was killed in northern Belgium last summer.

Slovenia’s brown bear population is so plentiful that authorities are culling the animals that are becoming a headache for farmers, raiding beehives and even attacking people in the small Alpine state. Around 170 bears were shot in 2019, said Damjan Orazem, the Forest Service director.

Herders including Pommies pounced on Macron to talk about the Pyrenees' bears when the French leader turned up at the Tour de France last year on a day when the bicycle race swung through the peaks. Pommies said he threatened to release his animals into the riders' path unless Macron agreed to a meeting. That brief encounter elicited a pledge from Macron that he'd hold talks with them at length at a later date, an offer he made good on this week.

Emmanuelle Wargon, a deputy environment minister who attended the meeting, told broadcaster Sud Radio that Macron “reaffirmed that we don't have any plans to reintroduce (more) bears,” adding: “It was important to tell them this.”

For bear preservationists, herders are greatly exaggerating the risk posed by the predators. Alain Reynes, director of the group Country of the Bear, said he believes the actual number of animals killed by bears is far smaller than the 1,500, mostly sheep, that Pyrenean herders claim they lost last year.

Reynes also said that Macron's moratorium on bear releases can't last, because France is obliged by European law to ensure that the bear population remains viable. “The president can only speak for the period of his mandate,” he said. "There have always been bears. The history in the Pyrenees is one of cohabitation, even if it hasn't always been easy. ... There have been bears in Europe for 250,000 years. This is their space.”

Associated Press writers Raf Casert in Strasbourg, France; Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.

Locust outbreak, most serious in 25 years, hits East Africa

January 17, 2020

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The most serious outbreak of locusts in 25 years is spreading across East Africa and posing an unprecedented threat to food security in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, authorities say. Unusual climate conditions are partly to blame.

The locust swarms hang like shimmering dark clouds on the horizon in some places. Roughly the length of a finger, the insects fly together by the millions and are devouring crops and forcing people in some areas to bodily wade through them. Near the Kenyan town of Isiolo on Thursday, one young camel herder swung a stick at them, with little effect. Others tried to shout them away.

An “extremely dangerous increase” in locust swarm activity has been reported in Kenya, the East African regional body reported this week. One swarm measured 60 kilometers (37 miles) long by 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide in the country's northeast, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development said in a statement.

“A typical desert locust swarm can contain up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer,” it said. “Swarms migrate with the wind and can cover 100 to 150 kilometers in a day. An average swarm can destroy as much food crops in a day as is sufficient to feed 2,500 people.”

The outbreak of desert locusts, considered the most dangerous locust species, also has affected parts of Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea and IGAD warns that parts of South Sudan and Uganda could be next.

The outbreak is making the region's bad food security situation worse, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has warned. Hundreds of thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed. Already millions of people cope with the constant risk of drought or flooding, as well as deadly unrest in Ethiopia, extremist attacks in Somalia and lingering fighting in South Sudan as it emerges from civil war.

The further increase in locust swarms could last until June as favorable breeding conditions continue, IGAD said, helped along by unusually heavy flooding in parts of the region in recent weeks. Major locust outbreaks can be devastating. A major one between 2003 and 2005 cost more than $500 million to control across 20 countries in northern Africa, the FAO has said, with more than $2.5 billion in harvest losses.

To help prevent and control outbreaks, authorities analyze satellite images, stockpile pesticides and conduct aerial spraying. In Ethiopia, officials said they have deployed four small planes to help fight the invasion.

But one approach backfired in Kenya in recent days when the agriculture minister asked people to post photos on social media of suspected locusts, or “nzige” in Swahili. A mocking series of images of warthogs, cats, lizards and other beasts followed, with pleas for help in identifying them, and the appeal was ended.

Anna reported from Johannesburg.

Puerto Rico opens only 20% of schools amid ongoing quakes

January 28, 2020

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico opened only 20% of its public schools on Tuesday following a strong earthquake that delayed the start of classes by nearly three weeks as fears linger over the safety of students.

Only 177 schools were certified to open after engineers inspected them for damage caused by the magnitude-6.4 earthquake that killed one person and damaged hundreds of homes on Jan. 7. But the inspections were not to determine whether a school could withstand another strong earthquake or had structural shortcomings such as short columns that make it vulnerable to collapse, further worrying parents.

“Of course I am afraid,” said 38-year-old Marién Santos, who attended an open house on Monday at her son’s Ramón Vilá Mayo high school in the suburb of Río Piedras where officials gave her a copy of the inspection report and evacuation plans.

Her concerns were echoed by the director of the school, Elisa Delgado. While she believes engineers did a thorough inspection of the school, built in the early 1900s, they warned her not to use the main entrance in an evacuation because it leads to an area filled with gas lines. The problem is that the other exits are too narrow to handle the school’s 450 students, she told The Associated Press.

“It’s not ideal,” she said. Overall, engineers have inspected 561 of the island’s 856 public schools, finding at least 50 too unsafe to reopen, leaving some 240,000 students out of school for now. Ongoing tremors also are forcing crews to automatically re-inspect schools following any quake of 3.0 magnitude or higher, according to Puerto Rico’s Infrastructure Financing Authority.

Since the 6.4 quake, there have been several strong aftershocks, including a 5.9 magnitude one that hit on Jan. 11 and a 5.0 that struck on Saturday. The biggest quake flattened the top two floors of a three-story school in the southern coastal city of Guánica on Jan. 7, two days before classes were scheduled to start.

Overall, experts say that some 500 public schools in Puerto Rico were built before 1987 and don’t meet new construction codes. A plan to retrofit all schools that need it, an estimated 756 buildings, would cost up to $2.5 billion, officials have said, noting those are preliminary figures.

Education Secretary Eligio Hernández noted that another 51 schools are scheduled to start classes on Feb. 3 and that his department is reviewing recommendations on how best to proceed with the other schools.

“The Department of Education is going to take the time it needs and will take all necessary actions so that parents ... feel satisfied,” he told reporters on Monday. Elba Aponte, president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Teachers, told the AP that she has received complaints and pictures from parents and school employees of at least 10 schools that are reopening but that they feel are still unsafe.

Most of the pictures are of cracks in the walls and roofs of those schools, she said. “Their concerns are quite valid,” Aponte said, adding that she would share them with the island’s education secretary.

Meanwhile, school and government officials are trying to figure out what to do with the roughly 240,000 students who aren’t able to go to school yet, either because their building was deemed unsafe or has not yet been inspected. No schools in the island’s southern and southwest region will reopen for now, officials say.

Options include placing students in other schools with revised schedules or holding classes in refurbished trailers or outdoors under tarps, Aponte said as she lamented the situation. “It’s terrible,” she said. “If there was one place where they could feel safe, it was at school.”

Backatcha: Thunberg returns Trump's climate jibe

January 21, 2020

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Greta Thunberg isn't easily intimidated. The 17-year-old Swedish activist wasted little time on Tuesday to push back against U.S. President Donald Trump's description of climate campaigners as “the perennial prophets of doom" who predict the "apocalypse.”

Though Trump didn't mention her directly in his speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, it was clear he had his sights on Thunberg, who shot to fame a year ago by staging a regular strike at her school and sparked a global environmental movement. She then beat the U.S. president to receive Time Magazine's award as the 2019 Person of the Year.

“The facts are clear, but they are still too uncomfortable for you to address,” she told business and political leaders in Davos just after Trump's speech, also without directly mentioning the president. “You just leave it because you think it's too depressing and people will give up, but people will not give up. You are the ones who are giving up.”

Thunberg brushed aside Trump's announcement that the U.S. would join the economic forum's initiative to plant 1 trillion trees across the globe to help capture carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Planting trees is good of course but it’s nowhere near enough," Thunberg said. "It cannot replace mitigation," she added, referring to efforts to drastically cut emissions in the near term. Thunberg accused leaders of "cheating and fiddling around with numbers" with talk of cutting emissions to 'net zero' - that is, emitting no more carbon than is absorbed by the planet or technical means - by 2050.

She and Trump have been sparring for months, but Thunberg did not seek to upstage the U.S. leader by walking out of his speech, which was largely focused on trade and economics instead of the climate issues that the WEF has made a focus of at its meeting this year.

Last month, Trump told Thunberg in a tweet to “chill” and to “work on her Anger Management problem." It prompted a dry and humorous response from Thunberg, who then changed her Twitter caption to read: “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old-fashioned movie with a friend.”

Earth just finished its hottest decade on record with the five last years as the five hottest years on record, according to U.S. and other science agencies. Scientists repeatedly point to more extreme weather as a problem worsened by human-caused climate change. There have been 44 weather and climate disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damage since 2017, killing 3,569 people, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Thunberg is not the only young activist to highlight the climate emergency, and was joined on a keynote panel by three others, all of whom said politicians and executives are not doing enough. A survey of CEOs released this week by financial firm PwC showed that executives rank climate issues as only the 11th most serious risk to their businesses' growth.

Natasha Wang Mwansa, an 18-year-old from Zambia who campaigns for girls’ and women’s rights, said “the older generation has a lot of experience, but we have ideas, we have energy, and we have solutions."

And Salvador Gómez-Colón, who raised funds and awareness after Hurricane María devastated his native Puerto Rico in 2017, said young activists are doing more than just talking. “We’re not waiting five, 10, 20 years to take the action we want to see. We’re not the future of the world, we’re the present, we’re acting now. We’re not waiting any longer.”

Thunberg cited a report released in 2018 by the U.N.'s science panel that calculated the amount of additional carbon dioxide the atmosphere can absorb before global average temperature increases exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). Leaders agreed to try to stay below that threshold when they signed the 2015 Paris climate accord, but scientists warn the chances of doing so are dwindling.

Thunberg noted that the remaining carbon “budget” to confidently meet that target stood at just 420 gigatons of CO2 two years ago, the equivalent of 10 years of global emissions. Even with a more optimistic calculation, keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 C would require a massive reduction in emissions over the next two decades.

While there has been widespread criticism both inside and outside the United States over Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord, Thunberg said the rest of the world, too, was effectively missing the targets set down in that agreement.

"My generation will not give up without a fight," Thunberg said.

Read more stories on climate issues by The Associated Press here.

Kirsten Grieshaber and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Putin's, Xi's ruler-for-life moves pose challenges to West

January 17, 2020

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping have established themselves as the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders in decades. Now it looks like they want to hang on to those roles indefinitely.

Putin's sudden announcement this week of constitutional changes that could allow him to extend control way beyond the end of his term in 2024 echoes Xi’s move in 2018 to eliminate constitutional term limits on the head of state.

That could give them many more years at the helm of two major powers that are frequently at odds with Washington and the West over issues ranging from economic espionage and foreign policy to democracy and human rights.

Both moves reflect their forceful personalities and determination to restore their countries to their former glory after years of perceived humiliation by the West. They also mesh with a trend of strong-man rulers taking power from Hungary and Brazil to the Philippines.

Russia and China are on another level though when it comes to influencing international events — China through its economic might and rising military, Russia through its willingness to insert itself into conflicts such as the Syrian one and to try to influence overseas elections through misinformation or make mischief through cyber attacks.

Putin “believes that Russia is more powerful today than it has been since the end of the Cold War, including in places such as the Middle East," said Ramon Pacheco Pardo of the Department of European & International Studies at King's College London. “Thus, it is a good time to remain in power and use this power."

How much of a challenge he and Xi are to Western models, values and multiparty democracy depends on where you sit. The China-Russian model inspires emulation among some in both smaller powers and major nations. President Donald Trump has praised both Xi and Putin, even while the U.S. battles their countries for economic and strategic dominance.

China touts its authoritarian system as providing the stability and policy continuity that has made it the world’s second-largest economy and pulled some 700 million people out of extreme poverty. Many Russians have backed Putin for standing-up to the West and improving their quality of life following the chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Political competition between different systems of governance in the world is nothing new,” said the European Union’s ambassador to China, Nicolas Chapui. “I feel that we need to feel confident on our principles, our values, our governance system.”

In both their cases, Putin and Xi reflect the tendency of authoritarian leaders to hang onto power for as long as possible and to “die with their boots on,” said David Zweig, professor emeritus of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

“Very few authoritarian leaders give up power, always convinced that only they can save the country, which also justifies and makes their hunger for power morally correct,” Zweig said. For all their similarities, Xi, Putin and the systems they run have distinct features. Xi has repeatedly cited the fall of the former Soviet Union as a cautionary tale, saying its leaders failed to firmly uphold the authority of the ruling Communist Party.

China’s ruling communists have crushed all opposition and are tightening their hold on the economy and what remains of civil society, all while projecting an exterior image of seamless unity around Xi.

Russia at least maintains some of the forms if not the functions of a multiparty democracy, even as Putin, the security services and the oligarchs who run the economy call the shots. Blunt attempts to single-handedly run the country are often met with large-scale protests — like in 2011-2012, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets following Putin’s announcement to return to the presidency for the third time and reports of mass rigging of a parliamentary election.

And while Putin managed to suppress the opposition with draconian anti-protest laws, crippling fines and arbitrary arrests, people’s growing frustration with the regime continues to spill out on the streets.

Crippling international sanctions imposed on Russia for the annexation of Crimea drove the country’s economy into a slump, and unpopular reforms like the raising of the retirement age in 2018 only added insult to injury. As a result, Russia has been regularly shaken by protests and unrest in the past two years.

Putin understands he needs to make changes, former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov told Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper. “That is why now he is trying to solve two tasks at the same time: demonstrating to the society that there is no stagnation and, on the opposite, there are reforms, and securing his own political future," he was quoted as saying.

According to the country’s constitution, Putin will have to step down in 2024, having served two consecutive terms. But the amendments Putin proposed this week would allow him to shift to the prime minister’s seat or continue to run the country as head of the newly defined State Council, a previously consultative body that consists of regional governments and federal officials.

"All of these are potential power bases where Putin could retreat after 2024, which would allow him to preserve a delicate political balance while pulling strings from the shadows," said Cardiff University professor of international relations Sergey Radchenko.

Putin cast his constitutional change proposals as a way to strengthen parliament and bolster democracy. Kremlin critics described the proposed changes as an attempt by Putin to secure his rule for life. However, the suggested reform was so vague and far-reaching that there was hardly any public outrage about it.

When Xi moved to remove term limits in March 2018, there was barely a murmur of dissent. The official explanation was that the office of head of state needed to align with those of the other top posts — party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Other explanations aren’t discussed and even party-backed scholars say the issue is a taboo topic.

The son of a former high communist official, Xi worked his way up through a series of increasingly important provincial positions before taking over as party head in 2012. He then began to consolidate power through a multi-pronged strategy of eliminating dissent and enforcing discipline through an anti-corruption campaign whose scale was unprecedented in recent years.

Xi’s ending of term limits was seen as an attack on former leader Deng Xiaoping’s attempts to regularize and institutionalize power following the cult of personality surrounding Mao Zedong and the political chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Xi further upended the thin precedents set in recent years by refusing to indicate a potential successor, leading to speculation he plans to continue ruling well beyond his second five-year term.

Putin, a former KGB officer, first took office in 2000 and secured popularity with promises of economic stability and ending the drawn-out wars with Chechnya, Russia’s troublesome region in the North Caucasus. He, too, cemented his rule by suppressing the opposition — through enforcing stricter control over the country’s media and giving vast powers to law enforcement and the security services. He has led Russia for more than 20 years — the longest rule since Joseph Stalin.

Their public styles are different. Xi generally communicates his vision for a powerful, prosperous China in dry speeches and prepared comments, while Putin tends to be more loquacious. The Russian leader is also frequently biting in his comments about critics and the West — a task Xi leaves to underlings such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Moritsugu reported from Beijing.