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CARACAS, Venezuela — (AP) — Venezuela's Supreme Court, loyal to President Nicolás Maduro, on Tuesday ordered the takeover of two influential political parties opposed to the socialist government ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year. The court suspended and replaced the board of directors for the Justice First party a day after the same move against the Democratic Action, one of the nation's oldest and largest parties. It was part of a “necessary restructuring process,” the court said in rulings posted on Facebook. No legal action was taken, however, against Popular Will, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who...

Reports that operatives from Cuba and Venezuela had possibly infiltrated protests in Miami first surfaced Monday on Primer Informe, a blog run by former El Nuevo Herald reporter Casto Ocando. According to the blog post by Ocando, FBI counter-terrorism agents had detained and questioned people in Miami and other cities who admitted to having been paid by activists to participate in the protests, and were investigating possible ties to Venezuela and Cuba..... And a woman participating in Sunday's march, identified by the Miami-based En Vivo TV as Hellen Pena, acknowledged when pressed that she was a supporter of the late-Venezuelan...

A 25-year-old Columbia college student has been arrested after federal agents said they discovered he had fraudulently obtained dozens of firearms and more than 23,000 rounds of ammunition. The man, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday, had also researched mass shootings on his computer. Edward Daniel Kimpton Jr. has been charged with federal wire fraud, mail fraud and possession of machine gun violations. In a complaint filed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, agents said Kimpton, a student at Midlands Technical College, had used a complicated scheme to obtain weapons, ammunition and tactical gear without paying for them....

<p>TRINITY, Fla. (AP) — Authorities in Florida say an armed domestic violence suspect was shot and killed by a neighbor who intervened and helped the victim and several children escape the scene. Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco told reporters the man heard his neighbor screaming for help Wednesday and arrived to find the neighbor lowering the children out of a second-story window. He says the man helped the children and attempted to diffuse the situation, but the suspect "wasn't having anything to do with it." He says the man returned to his home, and the suspected followed and shot at him. He says the man returned fire and killed the suspect.</p>

Nearly 80 percent of the equipment for staging the December 23 election in DR Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, was destroyed when a fire ripped through a warehouse, as violence flared just 10 days before the vote. The blaze, which officials blamed on arson, was the latest drama of an increasingly tense election campaign ahead of the December 23 election when the country will choose a successor to President Joseph Kabila. Also Thursday, a teenager was shot dead in the central Kasai region as party faithful gathered ahead of a rally by Felix Tshisekedi of the UDPS, one of the leading opposition...

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

TEHRAN: One of Iran’s top foreign policy officials has called for negotiations with “anti-Trump movements” in the US to dampen the impact of sanctions, local media reported Saturday. “America is not Trump,” said Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh, a conservative lawmaker who heads parliament’s influential national security and foreign policy commission, according to reformist newspaper Arman. “There is a new diplomatic atmosphere for deescalation with America and it is fitting that Iran follows negotiation diplomacy and lobbying anti-Trump movements in America,” he added. He said this would help alleviate pressure caused by Washington’s “extensive sanction-focused force.” The US pulled out of the 2015...

...The rival authorities of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas both used threats, arbitrary arrests and violent abuse against detainees, said the New York-based group. The report is likely to put pressure on governments that fund the PA’s forces, including the United States, which has maintained security funding despite cutting aid to the Palestinians. Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel-Palestine director, said the actions by both sides amounted to potential war crimes that could be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. “Both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas authorities in Gaza are systematically, arbitrarily detaining critics and torturing those in...

CAIRO: Egypt has arrested an economist and his publisher over a book that challenged President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s economic policies, a lawyer said Tuesday, the latest in a wave of detentions in recent years targeting all forms of dissent. Prize-winning economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouq and his publisher, Ibrahim el-Khateib, were detained Sunday. Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, a lawyer for the author, said the two are accused of spreading “fake news,” which carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison. The book — entitled “Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?” — was posted online by activists. Authorities seized 185 copies of an initial 200-copy...

<p>ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The former president of Ethiopia's Somali region was arrested Monday, the state broadcaster ETV reported.</p> <p>The dismissal and arrest of Abdi Mohammed Omar, a well-known politician from the country's eastern area, came after unrest in the Somali region's capital, Jigjiga, and other towns in recent weeks in which ethnic Somalis, suspected to be connected to Abdi, attacked people from other ethnic backgrounds.</p>

New research from Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire indicates that collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes causes short-term changes in their behavior and physiology that could exacerbate the crabs' population decline in parts of the east coast. Each year, the U.S. biomedical industry harvests the blue blood from almost half a million living horseshoe crabs for use in pharmaceuticals—most notably, a product called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), used to ensure vaccines and medical equipment are free of bacterial contamination. This lifesaving product can only be made from horseshoe crab blood, says researcher Win Watson,...

Test flights of a driverless hover-taxi will take place in Singapore next year, a German aviation firm said, the latest innovation to offer an escape from Asia's monster traffic jams. Millions of commuters in the region's cities have to contend with chronic gridlock every day, sparking a race to develop new ways to avoid the snarl-ups. While the developed city-state of Singapore does not suffer major congestion, it is seen as a perfect test-bed for new technologies due to its compact size and openness to innovation. German firm Volocopter said Tuesday it will conduct the test flights in Singapore in...

...Mnangagwa struck a conciliatory tone in the months leading up to the election. Declaring that Zimbabwe was “open for business,” he amended a law requiring local ownership of diamond and platinum mines. He signaled his intent to end farm seizures and vowed to sell off failing state enterprises. He even wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for democracy and equal rights for all citizens. But Mnangagwa is tied to numerous human rights abuses, including overseeing a series of government-ordered massacres between 1982 and 1986 known as the “Gukurahundi.” An estimated 20,000 civilians from Zimbabwe’s Ndebele ethnic group were killed....

THE Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade is planning to meet members of the United States Congress and the European Union to discuss the removal of sanctions as part of its re-engagement drive. In an interview yesterday, committee chairperson, Kindness Paradza said the committee's major thrust is re-engagement and international trade. "Foreign Affairs is the face of Zimbabwe and we have been given an additional mandate which is international trade. So, what we are going to do this session is to assist the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in re-engagement programmes, as well as bringing in foreign direct investment...

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A new documentary on massacres by Zimbabwe's military … The screening in the capital, Harare, would have been almost impossible under former leader Robert Mugabe, who led the country for 37 years and resigned following military intervention in November. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a longtime Mugabe loyalist and enforcer who succeeded him, has tolerated documentaries and plays critical of the government amid promises of a "flowering of democracy." But none has taken such direct aim at Mnangagwa as the new documentary on the army operation he supported as state security minister between 1983 and 1987. "Gukurahundi genocide: 36...

China offers development assistance but not everyone is happy about it. The people of Zimbabwe head to the polls today on July 30, 2018, to cast their votes in the first election after the abrupt end to the almost forty-year rule of Robert Mugabe, the country's only ruler since independence in 1980. The two major candidates to watch are Mugabe's former vice president and now leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Emerson Mnangagwa, the replacement for the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the candidate for the Movement for Democratic Change—Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Nelson Chamisa. The drama that...

As white supremacists converged on a Charlottesville park for their violent “Unite the Right” rally, some of them menaced the city’s historic Beth Israel synagogue during Shabbat services, standing across from the building with semi-automatic weapons in their hands. “Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either,” wrote Alan Zimmerman, the president of the Reform congregation, about the three neo-Nazis he stared down as congregants prayed inside. Zimmerman, in an essay published on ReformJudaism.org, said that neo-Nazis marching past the building shouted hateful...

Hillary Clinton handing over a sizable portion of US uranium production potential to Russia is not an isolated event, but rather is the logical convergence of decades-old Clinton era dealings with Russia and rogue states, for enrichment of the power elite. AT contributor Michael Curtis is correct when he says that the Uranium One deal has serious implications for our national security.  In fact, the revelation of Hillary’s independent intel network, coupled with Clinton era national security policy changes in the form of counter-proliferation (CP) regimes, have been far more strategically harmful than many Americans realize.... 

Press Center Home » Press Center » Press Releases » Treasury Targets Al Qaida Operatives in Iran  Treasury Targets Al Qaida Operatives in Iran 1/16/2009 hp-1360   Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated four al Qaida associates under Executive Order 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. "It is important that Iran give a public accounting of how it is meeting its international obligations to constrain al Qaida," said Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.  "Global efforts to financially isolate al Qaida have made it...

ARUSHA, Tanzania, Feb.3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese influence in Tanzanian soil is increasingly becoming big and bold. This can be seen after the Asian nation built two ultra-modern primary schools in Tanzania. The schools have been built in Tanzania's University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and University of Dodoma (UDOM) campuses. China built the two schools under the Sino-Africa Friendship Primary Schools Project worth 3.23 million U.S. dollars. The schools are fully furnished with all modern teaching and learning facilities, and students enrolled in those schools will have chance of learning Chinese language and culture from Standard One to Standard...