Gaza in state of alert after blasts kill two policemen: officials

The Gaza Strip was in a "state of alert" Wednesday after explosions killed two policemen in the Palestinian enclave, authorities said. The officers died in "two explosions targeting police checkpoints" late Tuesday night, the interior ministry in the Hamas-controlled coastal territory said in a statement. The Gaza Strip, home to two million Palestinians, was in a "state of alert," the ministry said and AFP journalists reported an increased Hamas presence on the main roads of the enclave.

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Palestinian Harvard student denied entry to US because 'friends posted anti-American statements'

A Palestinian Harvard student claims that he has been denied entry into the US because his friends had posted anti-American statements on social media. Ismail Ajjawi, 17, who is due to begin his studies at the prestigious university next Tuesday, said he was detained when he arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport on Friday night. Mr Ajjawai told the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, that immigration officers subjected him to hours of questioning and demanded access to his phone and computer. Mr Ajjawai, who lives in Lebanon, said he was asked about his religious beliefs and practices before officers trawled through his technology devices. The teenager said that after five hours an officer called him into a room and “started screaming" at him. "She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list,” he said.   Mr Ajjawi said he stressed to the officer that he had not made any political posts himself and that he should not be held responsible for others’ posts. “I have no single post on my timeline discussing politics,” he added. However he claimed that the officer cancelled his visa and informed him that he would be deported back to Lebanon. A spokesman for Harvard University told The Telegraph that the university is working closely with Mr Ajjawi's family "and appropriate authorities to resolve this matter so that he can join his classmates in the coming days”. US immigration officials have refused to divulge the specifics of Mr Ajjawi's case or why he was denied entry into the country but confirmed that the Customs and Border Protection agency found him "inadmissible".  "Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the US by overcoming all grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labour certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds," a spokesman for the CBP told the Crimson in a statement. "This individual was deemed inadmissible to the United States based on information discovered during the CBP inspection.” Mr Ajjawi, who was granted a scholarship by the Washington-based Amideast non-profit organisation, said that he is receiving assistance from an immigration lawyer and hopes to resolve his visa issues in time for the start of classes next week.

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The Hebron Riots of 1929: Consequences and Lessons

In 1929, Arab clerics and politicians provoked riots across Palestine by accusing Jews of plotting to take control of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. This month marks the 90th anniversary of those riots — but they are not a bygone. Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders incite violence today using similar falsehoods and ideology.The 1929 riots destroyed the Jewish community in Hebron. They persuaded Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion that socialist fraternity among Jewish and Arab workers and peasants would not ensure peace. They impelled Palestine’s Jews to bolster the Haganah, their underground self-defense group. And they vindicated Zionist warnings against relying on foreigners for security.To investigate the riots, the British government, which controlled Palestine at the time, appointed an inquiry board known as the Shaw Commission.The commission noted that Arab objections to Zionism were ideological, comprehensive, intense, and inflexible. In its report, it nonetheless devoted thousands of words to minute details of specific Arab grievances. It plumbed complaints that Jews, on one occasion, brought a chair to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and, on another, set up a screen there to divide male and female worshipers.All this brings to mind the story of a man who thoroughly detests his wife but makes his case for divorce on the grounds that she doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. Obviously, what he gripes about is not what accounts for his detestation. Confusion on this score was characteristic of Middle East policy officials in 1929, and it still is.Today’s conventional wisdom holds that Palestinian–Israeli peace will result from resolving the “final-status issues” (borders, water rights, security arrangements, settlements, etc.). This is to assume away profound Muslim religious and Arab national objections to Israel’s very existence. It is like believing that the man detests his wife because of the toothpaste cap.In the run-up to the 1929 riots, Arab leaders claimed (falsely) that the Jews intended to desecrate al-Aqsa. They called for fighting the Zionists without mercy. On a Friday in late August, armed Arab villagers entered Jerusalem for weekly prayers. The British police commandant considered disarming them, the Shaw Commission reported, but accepted assurances that the weapons were defensive. A few hours later, “crowds of Muslims with sticks and clubs, some even with swords” made their way through the city and attacked the Jews.As news of the violence spread, it sparked more rioting. The next morning, “Arabs in Hebron made a most ferocious attack on the Jewish ghetto and on isolated Jewish houses. . . . More than 60 Jews — including many women and children — were murdered and more than 50 were wounded.” The commission found that “this savage attack, of which no condemnation could be too severe, was accompanied by wanton destruction and looting. Jewish synagogues were desecrated, [and] a Jewish hospital, which had provided treatment for Arabs, was attacked and ransacked.”In the immediate aftermath, a Canadian journalist visited one of the massacre sites, a religious school. Blood was still pooled on the floor. The Arab attackers, he reported, had mutilated their Jewish victims, severing the sexual organs of the males and the breasts of the females.Jews in other locations were also attacked. In a village near Jerusalem, the commission said, “the horrors of Hebron were repeated on a smaller scale.” A few days after the Hebron attack, the Jewish survivors departed the city under British escort. No Jews lived there again until Israel won the West Bank in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war.For Ben-Gurion, according to Anita Shapira, the biographer of the future prime minister, the riots were a “turning point.” They killed his hope that the Arab masses would join with the Labor Zionists in class solidarity against the bourgeois landowner-effendis. They showed that violent, uncompromising anti-Zionism had become a Palestinian Arab mass movement. From then on, he supported transforming the Haganah into the kind of professional and national force that would in time evolve into the Israeli army.Though Britain had issued the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration during World War I, British officials in the Middle East generally disfavored Zionism. The Shaw Commission shared their slant. It would denounce the savage murder of Jews but not endorse their ambition to be able to defend themselves within a Jewish-majority state in the Jewish homeland. Accordingly, the commission blamed the riots not on extremist hostility to Zionism but on understandable Arab resentments. In effect, it blamed the Zionists.Similarly, today, enemies of the Jewish State blame anti-Israel terrorism less on the terrorists and jihadist ideology than on actions by Israel — building security barriers and operating checkpoints in and around the West Bank and Gaza, for example — which are described as “provocations” that fuel Palestinian resentment. To commemorate the 1929 riots is to refute the common error that the conflict is about the “occupation” that began in 1967. Arab anti-Zionist violence predates not only 1967 but Israel’s birth in 1948. It started even before the Hebron massacre.United Nations resolutions routinely label the West Bank “Palestinian Arab territory,” implying that the area belongs to the Arabs and that Jews have no right to live there. But, in the years before the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the area was exclusively Arab because the Jews had been expelled. In some cases, as in Hebron, the expulsion was accomplished through mass murder.Arab rejection of Israel and Zionism emerges from an all-or-nothing view of justice and honor. It has never brooked compromise or moderation. It has justified, indeed demanded, murder of the enemy and destructive sacrifice of Palestinian lives. If the conflict were a matter of practicalities — a line-drawing problem of how to partition the land — it would have been resolved long ago. Until the Palestinians have a leadership willing to set aside the ideology and cool rather than inflame the passions that spawned the Hebron massacre, the conflict will not be resolved through diplomacy.Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as under secretary of defense for policy in the George W. Bush administration. Sean Durns is a senior research analyst for the Committee for Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

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Trump blames Obama, not Putin, for Russia seizing Crimea

President Trump blamed the last U.S. president for Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, praising President Vladimir Putin for outsmarting President Obama and saying he thought Russia should be welcomed back into the annual meeting of the leaders of the world’s largest economic powers.

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Japan issues emergency warning after life-threatening rains in south

Japan's meteorological agency issued an emergency warning to residents of Kyushu after the southern island suffered record levels of rain early on Wednesday that threatened to cause landslides, floods and other natural disasters.

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Japan's Aso, Suga to retain posts in cabinet reshuffle - Yomiuri

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga will likely retain their posts at a cabinet reshuffle in September, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Wednesday.

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Trump defends bid to host G7 at his Miami resort: 'I don't care about money'

US president responded to accusations of seeking to profit off the presidency by planning to host the 2020 summit at his resortDefending himself against accusations of seeking to profit off the presidency by planning to host a G7 summit next year at one of his resorts, Donald Trump on Monday estimated that being president had cost him $3bn to $5bn and said: “I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money.”Trump took questions from reporters in a joint appearance with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the conclusion of the G7 summit in Biarritz. The US is slated to host the summit next year.The US president confirmed for the first time that his struggling Trump National Doral Miami resort in Florida is high in the running to host the event.The front entrance to the Trump National Doral. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesHosting the G7 will cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Hosting the event at Doral, an 800-acre golf resort close to the Miami airport, would divert a torrent of taxpayer cash into Trump’s own coffers.But Trump said he had been losing money as president.“I’ve spent, and I think I will, in a combination of loss and opportunity, probably it will cost me anywhere from $3bn to $5bn to be president,” Trump said. “And the only thing I care about is this country.> I used to make a lot of money to give speeches. Now I give speeches all the time, and what do I get? Zippo“People have asked me, ‘What do you think it costs’” to be president, he said.“I used to make a lot of money to give speeches. Now I give speeches all the time, and what do I get? Zippo.”As a number apparently without basis in any vet-able balance sheet, the “$3bn to $5bn” figure was beyond factchecking. But it appeared to be based on a separate false estimation by Trump that exaggerated the size of his eponymous company by about 15 times.Trump proceeded to dump on the assembled press a real estate brochure’s worth of stats and facts about his Doral property.“Doral happens to be ... only five minutes from the airport, the airport’s right next door,” he said. “And by the way, my people looked at 12 sites, all good, but some were two hours from the airport, some four hours.“We have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows, they each hold from 50 to 70 rooms, they have magnificent views. And what we have also is Miami.”The president went on to extol the abundance of parking at his resort, where net operating income has fallen by 69% in the last two years, the Washington Post reported.“The ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida, and the best,” Trump said. “Each country can have their own villa, or their own bungalow, and the bungalows like I say have a lot of units in them.”He concluded: “I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money … It’s not about me, it’s about getting the right location.”Later, when asked about the new British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Trump said “I love the UK” and listed his golf properties there, naming Turnberry and Aberdeen. But he also mentioned Doonbeg, which is in the Republic of Ireland.Trump’s business ties, which he has not fully disclosed to voters, have raised concerns that he could have violated a constitutional ban on government officials taking emoluments – profits derived from the holding of public office – from foreign governments or actors.His continued ownership of the Trump Organization means, for example, that an untold share of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by foreign governments and tens of millions of dollars spent by domestic interest groups at the Trump International hotel in Washington could have found their way to Trump himself.The Trump Organization claims to reimburse the US treasury where appropriate.Trump-branded properties have had mixed success since Trump moved into the White House. A flood of foreign leaders, security spending and staff could stop that skid.The US last hosted the G7 summit (then the G8 with the inclusion of Russia, which was expelled in 2014 and which Trump now wants to readmit) in 2012 at Camp David, Maryland, a government site. In 2004, the US hosted at Sea Island, Georgia.

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Correction: Gun Violence-Missouri Cities story

In a story Aug. 26 about efforts to deal with gun violence in Missouri's two big cities, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Missouri, in 2017, became the first state to allow people to carry guns without a permit.

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21-Year-Old Woman Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murdering Stranger Outside Colorado Restaurant

A 21-year-old woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of first degree murder.

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Trump pitches his country club for G-7 meeting but claims he's losing money as president

The president defends a plan to hold a G-7 meeting at his private golf club.

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Al Haynes, pilot of United Flight 232 and reluctant hero, dies 30 years after deadly crash in Iowa

Flight 232 pilot Al Haynes deflected the title "hero" and focused attention on the crew and unprecedented rescue coordination after the 1989 crash.

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Trump reportedly suggested fighting hurricanes with nukes. Here's what would really happen if we set off a bomb in the eye of a storm.

President Donald Trump has suggested disrupting hurricanes with nuclear weapons, according to Axios. Here's why that wouldn't work.

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Israel's shadow war with Iran bursts into the open

The long shadow war between Israel and Iran has burst into the open in recent days, with Israel allegedly striking Iran-linked targets as far away as Iraq and crash-landing two drones in Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to project strength three weeks before national elections, while Iran has taken a series of provocative actions in recent months aimed at pressuring European nations to provide relief from crippling U.S. sanctions. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, vowed to retaliate after a drone crashed on the militant group's Beirut media office and another exploded midair early Sunday.

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Fuzzy math: Democrats spend big to draw small-dollar donors

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock was told how he could qualify for the next presidential debate, but it didn't make much sense: Spend $60. "You spend $60 on Facebook right now to get a $1 donor," Bullock said last week while campaigning in Iowa , referring to the 130,000 donor threshold that is one of the requirements to reach the debate stage in Houston next month. Facing a Wednesday deadline, a handful of Democratic White House hopefuls are racing against time — and odds — to qualify, trying desperately to meet the donor targets as well as reaching 2% in four approved public opinion polls.

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You can't nuke a hurricane to stop it, as Trump reportedly suggested. Here's why

A report from Axios says Trump suggested using a nuclear bomb to stop a hurricane. The idea isn't a new one, nor would it work, weather experts say.

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Spanish warship picks up 15 migrants to fire political shot

A Spanish warship collected 15 rescued migrants from an Italian port on Tuesday, having sailed halfway across the Mediterranean to fetch the small group in a high-profile maneuver that sharply contrasted with Italy's refusal to accept them. Madrid dispatched the ship a week ago to pick up the migrants at the end of a prolonged standoff between Italian authorities and a Spanish-registered private rescue boat which had plucked more than 100 people, most of them Africans, from seas off Libya. France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal had agreed to take the rest of the migrants but only Spain, which traded angry words with Rome during the standoff, sent a ship.

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Palestinian Harvard student denied entry to US because 'friends posted anti-American statements'

A Palestinian Harvard student claims that he has been denied entry into the US because his friends had posted anti-American statements on social media. Ismail Ajjawi, 17, who is due to begin his studies at the prestigious university next Tuesday, said he was detained when he arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport on Friday night. Mr Ajjawai told the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, that immigration officers subjected him to hours of questioning and demanded access to his phone and computer. Mr Ajjawai, who lives in Lebanon, said he was asked about his religious beliefs and practices before officers trawled through his technology devices. The teenager said that after five hours an officer called him into a room and “started screaming" at him. "She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list,” he said.   Mr Ajjawi said he stressed to the officer that he had not made any political posts himself and that he should not be held responsible for others’ posts. “I have no single post on my timeline discussing politics,” he added. However he claimed that the officer cancelled his visa and informed him that he would be deported back to Lebanon. A spokesman for Harvard University told The Telegraph that the university is working closely with Mr Ajjawi's family "and appropriate authorities to resolve this matter so that he can join his classmates in the coming days”. US immigration officials have refused to divulge the specifics of Mr Ajjawi's case or why he was denied entry into the country but confirmed that the Customs and Border Protection agency found him "inadmissible".  "Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the US by overcoming all grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labour certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds," a spokesman for the CBP told the Crimson in a statement. "This individual was deemed inadmissible to the United States based on information discovered during the CBP inspection.” Mr Ajjawi, who was granted a scholarship by the Washington-based Amideast non-profit organisation, said that he is receiving assistance from an immigration lawyer and hopes to resolve his visa issues in time for the start of classes next week.

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Democrats reportedly worry as list of Joe Biden's gaffes grows

Former Vice President Joe Biden's verbal mistakes pile up in New Hampshire; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

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Beijing confirms arrest of Australian for spying

An Australian academic has been arrested in China for spying, Beijing said Tuesday, prompting Canberra to demand the country upholds "basic standards" of justice. Yang Jun, who also goes by his pen name Yang Hengjun, was detained in January shortly after making a rare return to China from the United States. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said earlier on Tuesday that she was "very concerned" that Yang -- a former official turned author -- had been arrested on "suspicion of espionage".

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Pilot praised for 1989 Iowa crash landing dies in Seattle

Al Haynes, a pilot credited for saving the lives of nearly 200 people by guiding a damaged passenger jet into a crash landing at an Iowa airport in 1989, has died. Haynes died Sunday at age 87 in a Seattle-area hospital, said Gary Brown, an emergency services director for Woodbury County, Iowa. Brown confirmed the death with Haynes' daughter.

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Israel’s Strategy against Tehran: Revealing the Iranian Threat

On Thursday, August 22, members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force took a drone to an area near the Golan Heights, seeking to attack Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) monitored the men, took video of them walking through a field, and struck back two nights later. The air strikes targeted a villa in southern Syria that Jerusalem says was being used by the IRGC and Shiite militias. This includes Hezbollah, a Lebanese ally of Iran that has played a major role in Syria in recent years.The air strike is part of an increasingly firm stand Israel is taking against Iran’s regional ambitions in the Middle East. This includes several recent air strikes in Iraq that Iranian-linked paramilitaries have blamed on Israel. It also includes near-daily reports in media from Lebanon to Kuwait asserting that Israel is targeting Iran’s network of proxies and their bases in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Jerusalem is no longer secretive about this widespread campaign. In January former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot said Israel had carried out thousands of air strikes on Iranian targets.Now IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani has warned Israel that these strikes will be Israel’s last. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has threatened retaliation. This is part of a rising Iranian-backed chorus against Jerusalem, which includes real threats such as continuing rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza. It also includes threats by Iranian proxies such as Iraqi-based Kata’ib Hezbollah against U.S. forces in Iraq.What is Israel’s strategy in all this? The goal is to draw Iran and its allies out of the shadows. Over the past decade, inflamed by the 2015 Iran deal, Tehran has increased its weapons transfers to Hezbollah, sent thousands of advisers to support the Syrian regime, and helped mobilize a network of militias in Iraq. Some of this was used to fight ISIS, or enemies of Bashar al-Assad. But with the ISIS war and Syrian conflict winding down, these groups are turning their threats toward Iran’s adversaries. Tehran is obsessed with destroying Israel, as can be seen in its frequent statements and militaristic parades. It has launched drones from Syria into Israel in February 2018, rockets in May 2018, and a rocket in January 2019. Hezbollah threatens that its 150,000 rockets can strike all of Israel.Air strikes on Iran’s network of proxies force the network out of the shadows. It can’t hide in villas in southern Syria, or launch drones at night, or stockpile ballistic missiles in Iraq if it is looking over its shoulder and increasingly making mistakes through its aggressive and open threats. Iran is used to playing a double game of moderates and hard-liners, sending its smiling foreign minister to the recent G7 while boasting of its allies’ drone technology striking Saudi Arabia.The Israeli air strikes couple well with the Washington-led campaign of “maximum pressure.” Iran now faces two fronts, the sanctions and strikes, that together are designed to blow the lid on its regional strategy. Tehran will be tempted to make a misstep in its otherwise calculated reactions. Iran has a playbook: If a Western power seizes its tanker, as the U.K. did in July, Iran seizes a tanker. It downed a sophisticated U.S. drone in June but hasn’t harmed anyone in six sabotage operations on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. More than anything, Iran wants to preserve its regional power, based in proxies and allies that are often Shiite coreligionists. Its long-term goal is to get Hezbollah and its Shiite paramilitary allies in Iraq into more government positions and build up their parallel-state structures of armed fighters and bases. A war with the U.S. or Israel, or a direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia, as opposed to using proxies such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, is not in Tehran’s interest. This is the strategic calculation that underpins Israel’s actions, but it can go only so far. A game of whack-a-mole against Iran’s drones and missiles is just a setback for Tehran. If Tehran doesn’t gamble on a major conflict with Israel, it will continue its creeping annexation of neighboring states.

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Bolsonaro Says He Will Only Accept G-7 Forest-Fire Donations if Macron Apologizes for Insults

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro said Tuesday that he will only accept the G-7's offer of international aid to fight fires ravaging the Amazon rain forest if French president Emmanuel Macron first apologizes for insulting his handling of the crisis.“Before speaking or accepting anything from France, even if it comes from the best possible intentions, he must retract his words. Then we can talk,” Bolsonaro told reporters.Bolsonaro was referring to the $20 million in aid pledged during the G-7 summit on Monday in France. The offer of aid came after Macron criticized Bolsonaro last week for cutting environmental regulations despite assurances that he would prioritize the fight against global warming.The newly elected Brazilian president responded by accusing Macron of expressing a “colonialist mentality," and suggested that France and the other G-7 nations plan to use the aid to exercise leverage over Brazil and its Amazonian resources.“Look, does anyone help anyone . . . without something in return? What have they wanted there for so long?” Bolsonaro said.In response, Macron assured Bolsonaro that he had no ulterior motives for extending the aid.“We respect your sovereignty. It's your country,” he said, according to the AP. But “the Amazon forest is a subject for the whole planet. We can help you reforest. We can find the means for your economic development that respects the natural balance. But we cannot allow you to destroy everything.”Bolsonaro further exacerbated the disagreement by appearing to mock Macron's wife on Facebook by sharing an image of her next to an image of his own wife with the caption: “Don't humiliate the guy … haha.”Macron addressed the controversy at the G-7 summit on Monday, calling it a “sad” situation for Brazil.“He had extremely disrespectful comments towards my wife,” the French president said. “What can I tell you? It's sad. It's sad for him and for Brazilians. I think that Brazilian women are probably ashamed to read that their president has done that.”The number of fires in the Amazon has increased by 75 percent this year, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The dramatic jump has sparked an international controversy as world leaders express concerns about the potential for the deforestation to increase global warming. While politicians and journalists have emphasized the Amazon's oxygen-producing role as the “lungs” of the world, some skeptical scientists have questioned the rainforest's importance to the global climate.

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