Pakistan warned Wednesday that India was “sowing the seeds” of another war in the region through its controversial actions in Kashmir, a disputed territory that has long been a flashpoint between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a month ago revoked a decades-old constitutionally provided limited autonomy for the two-thirds part of the divided Muslim-majority territory administered by India.

New Delhi also has since imposed curfew-like restrictions in Kashmir, deployed tens of thousands of additional troops there, cut off all communication and arrested thousands of people, including mainstream Kashmiri politicians and activists.

Now in its fifth week, the clampdown to quell violent protests in Kashmir has spurred severe international criticism of India.

Pakistan, which also controls a portion of Kashmir, swiftly denounced and rejected Indian actions, downgrading diplomatic as well as bilateral economic ties.

“India’s actions in occupied Kashmir come at a time when the region as a whole is inching towards stability, but India is sowing the seeds of a new war,” Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor told reporters Wednesday.

Ghafoor explained that Pakistan has successfully fought domestic terrorism and it is now closely cooperating with the United States to facilitate a political settlement to the 18-year-old war in neighboring  Afghanistan to promote regional stability.

The Kashmir dispute has already triggered two wars between India and Pakistan, and their militaries regularly trade fire across the Kashmir border, known as the Line of Control.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned that India could attempt to open another conventional war with his country to try to divert global attention from human rights abuses in Kashmir.

Ghafoor said Pakistan doesn’t want war between the two countries. He reiterated Pakistan’s stated stance that its nuclear weapons are for deference.

Khan, meanwhile, has reached out to world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, to press the Modi government over settling the Kashmir issue. But India maintains its recent actions in its part of the disputed region are an “internal matter.”

Modi has also defended his decision to bring Kashmir under federal rule, saying it would help bring economic development and prosperity to the region.

Khan has also described Modi as “facist” and “supremacist,” comparing his Hindu nationalist government with Nazi Germany.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates met with Khan in Islamabad to discuss Kashmir.

India has long alleged Pakistan-based militant groups foment separatist violence and terrorism in Indian-administered Kashmir. Islamabad maintains it offers only political and diplomatic support for what it calls an indigenous Kashmiri struggle for freedom from Indian rule. 

On Wednesday, armed forces and youth in Indian-held Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar clashed after news broke that a student, who reportedly sustained bullet wounds during last month’s protests, died from his injuries, the first confirmed civilian death since the region was stripped of its autonomy.

Analysts note that international media coverage of the recent events in Kashmir has been highly critical of India. 

Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based expert on South Asian affairs, said India knows if it ends the prolonged lockdown in Kashmir, unrest is all but inevitable. 

“Given New Delhi’s awareness that the international media is already shining a critical lens on New Delhi’s tactics in Kashmir, it doesn’t want to have to face a situation where it needs to launch fresh crackdowns,” Kugelman said.  

That will severely undercut New Delhi’s narrative of Kashmir being calm and normal and fully behind the central government, he added.

…

Nearly two years later, the Syrian city of Raqqa, the former de facto capital of Islamic State (IS) terror group, continues to suffer from the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State. Recently, a new mass grave was unearthed that contained more than 200 bodies of IS victims. Sirwan Kajjo reports from Raqqa, Syria.

…

People in the Bahamas are running out of ways to describe the devastation left by Hurricane Dorian.

Words including “apocalyptic,” “shock” and “looking like a bomb went off” have been used, but just about any description seems too weak to describe conditions on Abaco and Grand Bahama Island.

Dorian spent nearly two days parked on top of the northern Bahamas, drenching the islands with massive rainfall and pounding it with winds as high as 251 kilometers per hour (156 miles per hour).

“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said.

Entire villages are gone and beaches usually packed with tourists are instead covered with parts of buildings, destroyed cars and the remains of people’s lives.

The death toll late Wednesday stood at 20, but officials said search-and-recovery missions were just starting.

“Right now there are just a lot of unknowns,” Bahamian lawmaker Iram Lewis said, adding, “We need help.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has sent the Coast Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams to help. The British Royal Navy, Red Cross and United Nations are also rushing in food, medicine, and any other kind of aid that may be needed.

The White House said Trump spoke to Minnis on Wednesday, assuring him the U.S. would provide “all appropriate support” and sending American condolences to the Bahamian people for the destruction and loss of life.

U.N. Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock was in Nassau Wednesday, meeting with Minnis. Lowcock said 20% of the Bahamian population had been affected and 70,000 people needed food.

“Nothing of this sort has been experienced by the Bahamas before,” he said, adding that he was immediately releasing $1 million from the U.N. central emergency fund for water, food, shelter and medical services.

The National Hurricane Center said late Wednesday that Dorian had strengthened a little bit and was located about 245 kilometers (152 miles) south of Charleston, South Carolina. Its top sustained winds were at 175 kph (109 mph).

A hurricane warning was out for the Savannah River, along the Georgia-South Carolina border, north to the Virginia-North Carolina border.

Forecasters did not expect Dorian to directly hit the Carolinas, but said hurricane- and tropical storm-force winds extended up to 315 kilometers (196 miles) from the center, putting the coastline at risk of life-threatening storm surges, heavy rain, flash floods and isolated tornadoes.

Forecast maps showed Dorian moving away from land as it drifts up the U.S. Atlantic Coast, reaching the tip of Nova Scotia in Canada by Saturday.

…

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Wednesday subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security for documents that could shed light on President Donald Trump’s alleged offer of pardons to officials implementing U.S. immigration policy.

The committee, which is considering whether to recommend impeachment against Trump, cited press reports that the president offered pardons to officials should they face legal action for following his instructions to close a section of the U.S.-Mexico border, aggressively seize private property and disregard environmental rules in erecting a border fence.

“The dangling of pardons by the president to encourage government officials to violate federal law would constitute another reported example of the president’s disregard for the rule of law,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrod Nadler said in a statement.

Two weeks to turn over documents

Neither the White House nor DHS responded immediately to requests for comment.

The subpoena gives acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan until 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) Sept. 17 to turn over a number of documents, notes and communications, including those related to March 21 and April 5 meetings between Trump and DHS officials.

The House panel is heading for what could be a politically explosive period in its investigation of the Trump presidency.

Democrats are gathering evidence of alleged misconduct by the president and planning hearings in hopes of deciding by the end of the year whether to recommend his impeachment to the full House of Representatives.

Previous subpoenas

Last month, the committee subpoenaed testimony from Trump’s former campaign chairman Corey Lewandowski and two White House aides. The three men were cited in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report as witnesses to actions by which Democrats say Trump sought to obstruct the probe.

Mueller also documented the role of pardons in alleged efforts by Trump to dissuade his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former lawyer Michael Cohen from cooperating with federal investigators.

In addition to possible obstruction and pardon dangling, the House committee is investigating alleged hush payments made before the 2016 presidential election to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump and the president’s business dealings that could violate constitutional restrictions against officials receiving profits from foreign and domestic governments.
 

…

The focus in the Bahamas is on rescue and recovery efforts Wednesday after the bulk of Hurricane Dorian finally moved north after flooding neighborhoods, ripping roofs off buildings and leaving thousands of people in need of aid.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said there were seven confirmed deaths from the storm, but that the number was expected to increase. He pledged, “No effort or resources will be held back,” in responding to the disaster.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said flood waters on Grand Bahama and Abaco islands should start to slowly subside.  

Aid efforts have been hampered by the long duration of the storm as it sat over the islands and pummeled the area with strong winds and rain, leaving the runway at Grand Bahama Airport under water.

The Red Cross said Dorian severely damaged or destroyed nearly half the homes on Grand Bahama and Abaco and that 62,000 people were in need of clean water.  The United Nations said some 60,000 people need food after the storm.

Dorian has weakened from its peak power, but still presents a threat to the southeastern United States.

The NHC said early Wednesday the storm still carried maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers per hour and would move “dangerously close” to the coasts of Florida and Georgia during the day and into Wednesday night.  The states of South Carolina and North Carolina are under threat for Thursday and Friday.

Even if the center of Dorian does not make landfall in those states, it is still bringing bands of heavy rains, strong winds that extend out far from the center, and high surf to shorelines. Rainfall forecasts range from seven to 25 centimeters in the coming days.

…

Rescue workers said Tuesday they have recovered the bodies of 20 people killed in a middle-of-the-night fire aboard a dive boat off the coast of Southern California, while continuing to look for 14 more people feared dead.

Divers, in water 20 meters deep, scoured the submerged remains of the 23-meter commercial dive boat, called Conception, where the blaze broke out before dawn Monday, trapping 34 people, who likely were asleep below deck and unable to escape.

The U.S. Coast Guard, however, said it had ended 24 hours of aerial searches of the surrounding waters after finding no sight of survivors swimming to escape the disaster.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown said that among the 20 bodies recovered so far, there were 11 women and nine men. He said the bodies of another four to six victims were spotted, but divers could not immediately pull them from the wreckage.

The U.S. Coast Guard said five crew members were awake on the boat’s bridge when the fire broke out and jumped to safety in a dinghy.

While authorities have not disclosed the names of the victims, a 41-year-old marine biologist with years of diving experience, Kristy Finstad, was identified by her brother Brett Harmeling as the leader of the dive trip and among the missing.

Authorities have not said what they believe caused the fire.

In a recording of a desperate call to the Coast Guard, a man is heard gasping for air, shouting, “Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

The federal National Transportation Safety Board said it has dispatched a team of engineers and fire specialists to investigate the accident.

The Conception was on a Labor Day weekend cruise taking divers to the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. The vessel was chartered by Worldwide Diving Adventures, a Santa Barbara excursion company.

…

Russia’s natural resources and environment minister said on Wednesday he supported allowing private oil and gas companies to work on the Arctic shelf.

Speaking to reporters at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, the minister, Dmitry Kobylkin, said he supported “any decision linked to an increase in investment in projects related to hydrocarbons.”

The Russian economy is heavily reliant on natural resources and the Arctic’s vast oil and gas reserves are expected to become more accessible as climate change melts the ice and technology advances.

“We clearly understand that Russia’s Arctic zone has not been studied enough,” Kobylkin said in separate comments to TASS news agency. “Of course we would like to study it more, but the government cannot allow itself to make such investments. It’s very expensive.”

In August deputy prime ministers Dmitry Kozak and Yuri Trutnev proposed that Russia’s Arctic shelf be opened to private investors and proposed to draft legislation to expand access to it.

Only state-controlled Gazprom and Rosneft are currently authorized to operate on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Kobylkin told TASS that his ministry was also in talks with Gazprom and Rosneft to increase their Arctic exploration.

…

Vienna has held off Melbourne to retain the top spot on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index for 2019, further strengthening its reputation as the world’s most pleasant city, while the ‘gilets jaunes’ protests hurt Paris’ score.

The Austrian capital, which attracts tourists for its classical music scene and imperial history but also has abundant green spaces and excellent public services, last year ended Melbourne’s seven-year run at the top of the survey of 140 cities, helped by an improved security outlook across Europe.

Vienna and Melbourne have been neck and neck in the EIU survey for years, but the Austrian capital also regularly tops a larger ranking of cities by quality of life compiled by consulting firm Mercer.

The gap between the two cities – of 0.7 point out of 100, with Vienna scoring 99.1 – was unchanged in the 2019 ranking published on Wednesday, as were the cities in the top 10, though Sydney closed in on its old rival.

“Sydney has risen from fifth to third, thanks to an improvement in its culture and environment score, reflecting an increased focus on combating and mitigating the impacts of climate change, as outlined by the city’s ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ strategy,” the EIU said.

It poured cold water on Sydney’s prospects of overtaking Melbourne, however.

“With both cities already scoring very highly across all categories, there is only limited potential for Sydney to displace either Melbourne or Vienna at the top of the rankings. No other city in the top ten saw a change to its score.”

Japan’s Osaka was fourth, followed by three Canadian cities – Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. Toronto was tied with Tokyo for seventh place. Copenhagen and Adelaide in South Australia rounded out the top 10.

The EIU’s index ranks cities by five headline criteria.

Stability and culture & environment are the two most important categories, weighted equally at 25% of the total. Healthcare and infrastructure are also matched at 20%, with education coming in last with a 10% weighting.

“Paris in France is the highest-ranked city to have seen a deterioration in its stability score, owing to the ongoing anti-government gilets jaunes protests that began in late 2018,” the EIU said of the French anti-government movement.

Paris slid six places to 25th, from 19th last year.

The culture and environment scores were reduced for many cities in poorer countries that are among the most exposed to the effects of climate change, including New Delhi and Cairo for their poor air quality.

Damascus in war-torn Syria remained the worst-ranked city, below Lagos in Nigeria and the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, which swapped places.

…

Set somewhere in rural eastern Europe towards the end of World War II, “The Painted Bird” is a sombre tale of a young boy trying to survive a harsh wilderness and the cruelty of strangers, and is described by one of its stars as “timeless.”

Based on a 1965 novel by Polish-born novelist Jerzy Kosinski, the 35mm black and white film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, depicts a bleak world where being different is dangerous.

Sent by his persecuted parents to stay with an elderly woman in the desolate countryside of an unnamed country, the lead character, known simply as The Boy, soon finds himself alone when she dies and he sets off on foot to find safety elsewhere.

He wanders from village to village, where he meets and stays with different people – some of them superstitious and cruel, others accommodating and kind.

The Boy, played by Petr Kotlar, endures brutal beatings and abuse and witnesses horrific violence carried out by civilians and soldiers – a man having his eye gouged out, a village ransacked, people shot and a woman kicked in the genitals.

“The questions about humankind, about God, what is the evil, what is the good in all of us, what does it mean that the light is visible only in the dark? That’s the principle of this movie,” director Vaclav Marhoul told Reuters in an interview.

The film, which is just short of three hours long, features very little dialogue. Marhoul, who also wrote the script, said he specifically chose a kind of Slavic Esperanto, a created language, for the villagers’ dialogue.

“I didn’t want the villagers (speaking) Ukrainian or Polish or Russian or something like that because those people (the villagers in the film) are really bad people,” he said. “I didn’t want some nation to be associated with that.”

Brutality and Compassion

In one key scene, one of The Boy’s hosts paints the wings of one of his captive birds and releases it into its flock, only for it to be attacked by the others.

“(The film) depicts Europe at a very dark time, but it’s a dark time that is not specific to that time, that is sort of existing today all over the world in many places,” actor Stellan Skarsgard said.

The “Mamma Mia!” and “Thor” actor plays a Nazi officer in the film, who is also one of the few to feel sympathy for The Boy. The latter also finds kindness in a priest and feels love for a young woman.

“During the most horrible times there are moments of compassion and we as humans, we can be monsters of brutality but we can also be very compassionate and we all have it all in us, if you’re not a psychopath,” Skarsgard said. “So we’re all capable of everything.”

The movie, nearly 11 years in the making, is one of 21 films competing for the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

“It happens to be set in the period just at the end of the Second World War, but it could be medieval, it could be 50 years in the future,” said actor Julian Sands, who plays one of the crueler people The Boy meets.

“It has more in common with Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ than a Holocaust movie, it has more in common with Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ than a specific Second world War historical account. It’s timeless.”

…

China on Tuesday denied it was to blame for fentanyl deaths in the United States after President Donald Trump accused Beijing of reneging on its promise to crack down on the opioid.

U.S. authorities have long accused China of being the main source of the potent drug, which caused 32,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year alone.

In an apparent gesture to Washington amid the U.S.-China trade war, Beijing announced a crackdown on fentanyl earlier this year, designating all analogues of the drug as controlled substances from May 1.

The move aimed to prevent smugglers from skirting the law by changing formulas to make drugs similar to the painkiller.

Fentanyl sellers have used parcel services to send the drug to the United States, and China had also vowed to step up customs checks.

But Trump wrote on Twitter last month that while Xi had pledged to stop exports of fentanyl, “this never happened, and many Americans continue to die!”

Liu Yuejin, vice commissioner of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, countered on Tuesday that no case of fentanyl smuggling has been reported since the May 1 ban.

“What President Trump concluded on Twitter is groundless,” Liu said.

“China has strengthened its control of fentanyl but the number of deaths linked to this substance continue to rise in the United States,” Liu said, suggesting that the drug came from elsewhere.

…

The eco-minded Prince Harry announced a massive travel sustainability initiative Tuesday in partnership with key service providers that’s aimed at bettering the practices of the global industry amid an ever-increasing number of travelers. 
 
The Duke of Sussex unveiled Travalyst at a news conference in Amsterdam, a city hit hard by over-tourism. He was joined by representatives of his partners, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Visa, China’s largest travel company, Ctrip, and the Ctrip-owned fare aggregator Skyscanner.

The long-term initiative is focused on tackling the travel industry’s impact on climate change, improving wildlife conservation and protecting the environment in top tourist spots. It will also look at ways to better serve local communities through tourism dollars.

…

Former Navy SEAL James Hatch says heading to class as a freshman at Yale University is just about as nerve-wracking as preparing for the uncertainty of combat. 
 
At 52 years old, Hatch does not fit the profile of the traditional Yale freshman.

“My experience in academia is somewhat limited, at best,” he said. “But I want to learn, and I feel this can make me a better person. I also feel my life experience, maybe with my maturity — which my wife would say is laughable — I think I can help some of the young people out.”

Hatch’s journey to the Ivy League has been serpentine.

He joined the military out of high school, became a SEAL and spent just short of 26 years in the Navy, fighting in Afghanistan and other hot spots.

His military career ended after he was seriously wounded in 2009 during a mission to find Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had walked off his post. 
 
Eighteen surgeries and some notoriety followed after his story became public during Bergdahl’s trial. He suffered from serious post-traumatic stress, fell into drinking and drugs, and even attempted suicide.

But he got help from professionals and his family, he said, and is now better able to cope. 
 
Hatch has authored a memoir, become a speaker and runs Spikes K-9 Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps cover the health care costs and provides ballistic vests for police and military dogs.

It’s a cause he has been passionate about since being a dog handler in the military. He credits dogs with saving his life several times, including on his final mission, when one alerted him to the position of the enemy.

Hatch was admitted to Yale after applying to be an Eli Whitney scholar, a program for nontraditional students who have had their educational careers interrupted.

“I was shocked to get accepted,” he said. “But my wife told me I would be silly not to take this opportunity, and she’s right. So I’m going to do my best, get in there and start swinging.”

Hatch is in Yale’s Directed Studies program, which teaches students how to analyze great texts and write persuasive essays through courses in philosophy, literature, and historical and political thought. Tuition and other costs are being covered by the G.I. Bill, scholarships from veterans groups and Yale.

He will attend classes with his PTSD service dog, Mina, who he said has already become popular with other students. His biggest worries, he said, are that he’s too old and might not fit in or be able to do the work.

“I think everyone there has a little bit of this ‘impostor syndrome’ where you feel, ‘Oh, my gosh, am I good enough to be here,'” he said. 

‘Incredibly different perspective’
 
But Hatch is just the type of person the Yale wants, said Patricia Wei, the director of admissions for the Eli Whitney Students Program.

“He brings just an incredibly different perspective,” she said. “We don’t have anyone here that is like Jimmy and just his life and professional experiences will add tremendously to the Yale classroom, to the Yale community.”

Hatch said he believes having a Yale degree will open more doors for him in seeking funding for his charity work. He also believes it might broaden his world view and help get him a seat at the table when government officials start discussing where and when to use the U.S. military.

“I feel like the political folks and the senior military folks spend so much time in that particular fish tank, that they some of the givens in their mind, should not be givens,” he said. “I believe getting a classical education can help fill in my base and combined with my military experiences can be the most beneficial thing I can have. I think I have a voice that should be heard.”

…

The gunman in a West Texas rampage “was on a long spiral of going down” and had been fired from his oil services job the morning he killed seven people, calling 911 both before and after the shooting began, authorities said.

Officers killed 36-year-old Seth Aaron Ator on Saturday outside a busy Odessa movie theater after a spate of violence that spanned 10 miles (16 kilometers), injuring around two dozen people in addition to the dead.

FBI special agent Christopher Combs said Monday that Ator called the agency’s tip line as well as local police dispatch on Saturday after being fired from Journey Oilfield Services, making “rambling statements about some of the atrocities that he felt that he had gone through.”

“He was on a long spiral of going down,” Combs said. “He didn’t wake up Saturday morning and walk into his company and then it happened. He went to that company in trouble.”

Fifteen minutes after the call to the FBI, Combs said, a Texas state trooper unaware of the calls to authorities tried pulling over Ator for failing to signal a lane change. That was when Ator pointed an AR-style rifle toward the rear window of his car and fired on the trooper, starting a terrifying police chase as Ator sprayed bullets into passing cars, shopping plazas and killed a U.S. Postal Service employee while hijacking her mail truck.

Combs said Ator “showed up to work enraged” but did not point to any specific source of his anger. Ator’s home on the outskirts of Odessa was a corrugated metal shack along a dirt road surrounded by trailers, mobile homes and oil pump jacks. On Monday, a green car without a rear windshield was parked out front, the entire residence cordoned off by police tape.

Combs described it as a “strange residence” that reflected “what his mental state was going into this.” Combs said he did not know whether Ator had been diagnosed with any prior mental health problems.

A neighbor, Rocio Gutierrez, told The Associated Press that Ator was “a violent, aggressive person” that would shoot at animals, mostly rabbits, at all hours of the night

“We were afraid of him because you could tell what kind of person he was just by looking at him,” Gutierrez said. “He was not nice, he was not friendly, he was not polite.”

The daylight attack over the Labor Day holiday weekend came just weeks after another mass shooting killed 22 people in the Texas border city of El Paso. Authorities have not said how Ator obtained the gun used in the shooting, but Ator had previously failed a federal background check for a firearm, said John Wester, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Wester did not say when Ator failed the background check or why.

Online court records show Ator was arrested in 2001 for a misdemeanor offense that would not have prevented him from legally purchasing firearms in Texas. Federal law defines nine categories that would legally prevent a person from owning a gun, which include being convicted of a felony, a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, being adjudicated as a “mental defect” or committed to a mental institution, the subject of a restraining order or having an active warrant. Authorities have said Ator had no active warrants at the time of the shooting.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Monday that “we must keep guns out of criminals’ hands” — words similar to his remarks that followed the El Paso shooting on Aug. 3, when he said firearms must be kept from “deranged killers.” But Abbott, a Republican and avid gun rights supporter, has been noncommittal about tightening Texas gun laws.

Abbott tweeted that Ator didn’t go through a background check for the weapon he used in Odessa. He did not elaborate, and a spokesman referred questions to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which didn’t immediately respond for comment.

Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke said Ator’s company also called 911 on Saturday after Ator was fired but that Ator had already taken off by the time police showed up.

“Basically, they were complaining on each other because they had a disagreement over the firing,” Gerke said.

Gerke said he believes Ator had also been recently fired from a different job but did not have any details.

Authorities said they remain unable to provide an exact timeline of the shooting, including how much time passed between the traffic stop at 3:13 p.m. and police killing Ator at the movie theater.

Odessa officials Monday released the names of those killed, who were between 15 and 57 years old. Among the dead were Edwin Peregrino, 25, who ran out of his parents’ home to see what the commotion was; mail carrier Mary Granados, 29, slain in her U.S. Postal Service truck; and 15-year-old high school student Leilah Hernandez, who was walking out of an auto dealership.

Ator fired at random as he drove in the area of Odessa and Midland, two cities more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) west of Dallas. Police used a marked SUV to ram the mail truck outside the Cinergy Movie Theater in Odessa, disabling the vehicle. The gunman then fired at police, wounding two officers before he was killed.

Police said Ator’s arrest in 2001 was in the county where Waco is located, hundreds of miles east of Odessa. Online court records show he was charged then with misdemeanor criminal trespass and evading arrest. He entered guilty pleas in a deferred prosecution agreement where the charge was waived after he served 24 months of probation, according to records.

The weekend shooting brings the number of mass killings in the U.S. so far this year to 25, matching the number in all of 2018, according to The AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. The number of people killed this year has already reached 142, surpassing the 140 people who were killed all of last year. The database tracks homicides where four or more people are killed, not including the offender.

…

Joe Biden entered the Democratic primary promising “from day one” to reject campaign cash from lobbyists.

“I work for you _ not any industry,” he tweeted.

Yet hours after his April campaign kickoff, the former vice president went to a fundraiser at the home of a lobbying executive. And in the months since, he’s done it again and again.

It’s difficult to quantify how much Biden has raised from the multibillion-dollar influence industry, but the roughly $200,000 he accepted from employees of major lobbying firms is far more than any of his rivals has received, according to a review of campaign finance data by The Associated Press.

Though it’s a small fraction of the $21.5 million he reported raising in the second quarter of 2019, the money demonstrates a comfort with an industry that is the object of scorn of Democratic activists and some of Biden’s principal rivals.

Biden’s pledge applies only to federally registered lobbyists, and most of the money tracked by the AP was from others in the influence industry. But thousands of dollars did come from federally registered lobbyists, and Biden’s campaign said it is returning such donations.

His campaign accepted roughly $6,000 in contributions from at least six federally registered lobbyists, including representatives of Google, aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin, and pharmaceutical companies, records show. An additional $5,750 was donated by two lobbyists who had been registered shortly before making contributions to Biden’s campaign, records show.

In at least two instances, donations came from lobbyists with criminal records who have served time in federal prison.

Former Florida Rep. Lawrence J. Smith, a federally registered lobbyist representing the city of Pembroke Pines, gave Biden $1,000 after attending a fundraiser in May. Smith left Congress in 1993 after it was revealed he bounced 161 bad checks. He was convicted months later of tax evasion and using campaign cash to settle a gambling debt.

Maryland statehouse lobbyist Gerard E. Evans gave Biden $2,600, records show. He was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison in 2000 after being found guilty of participating in an elaborate fake legislation scheme that bilked clients out of more than $400,000 in lobbying fees, according to court records.

Excluded from Biden’s pledge are lobbyists who work at the state level and those who lobby, or supervise lobbyists, but do not meet the legal threshold requiring them to register.

Spokesman Matt Hill said in a statement that Biden will “fight the influence of corporations and special interests in our political system, which is why his campaign refuses donations from corporations, their PACs, and federal lobbyists.”

Biden’s approach contrasts sharply with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who have built their campaigns around a vow to reject big money in politics. Both have sworn off big-dollar fundraisers, while Biden has embraced them.
Such an embrace “doesn’t mean your positions are up for sale,” said John Wonderlich, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government transparency. But it “can certainly change what issues seem the most salient and whose voice gets heard.”

Biden is not alone in accepting contributions from the influence industry. President Donald Trump vowed to “drain the swamp” but has since reaped contributions from powerful industries with business before his administration. And many of Biden’s Democratic rivals have made similar pledges that also include subtle caveats and omissions.

Still, he collected about $30,000 more from employees of top lobbying firms than California Sen. Kamala Harris and roughly $100,000 more than South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom made similar pledges but have been in the race longer than him. Every other White House hopeful received far less.

Several recent fundraisers held for Biden highlight his ties to prominent figures in the influence business, many of whom have been active in Washington for decades.

In August, Biden was feted at the home of Nelson W. Cunningham, president and co-founder of McLarty Associates and a former adviser to Bill Clinton. The global public affairs firm represents Chevron, General Electric, Walmart and Uber, but notes on its website that the list only includes “the ones we can mention.”

Several days before, Biden attended a fundraiser at the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home of Peter Shields, the leader of Washington-based Wiley Rein, a firm with recent lobbying clients that include AT&T, global mining company Glencore, Nucor steel, Verizon and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

His campaign kickoff fundraiser was at the Philadelphia home of David L. Cohen, a Comcast executive who oversees the telecom giant’s lobbying operation.

Biden’s campaign says the fundraiser hosts are not registered lobbyists and often have diverse work portfolios that include much more than government relations. But they are also players in the influence game.

Biden’s pledge to reject money from lobbyists is a change for him. Before he entered the 2020 race, his American Possibilities political action committee had no such prohibition.

The PAC, which Biden used to finance his political activities after leaving the White House in 2017, accepted at least $113,000 from at least a dozen current and formerly registered lobbyists, in addition to more than 30 others who work in the influence industry, records show. Among them are representatives for Boeing, Apple, the NFL, Facebook, General Motors and the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, as well as other representatives of the big pharmaceutical, tech, telecom and financial services companies, records show.

One of the top recipients of money from the PAC was a company Biden created.

His campaign says the $137,000 routed to Biden’s company, Celtic Capri, was used to pay or reimburse aides for work, such as during last year’s midterm elections when Biden kept up an aggressive campaign schedule.

Yet the move is commonly used to avoid disclosing how political money is spent. Because the money was routed to Celtic Capri, campaign finance records don’t detail the end recipient of the payments, which are listed as reimbursements or “staff support.” Around the same time, Biden collected $425,000 in salary from Celtic Capri, according to a financial disclosure.

Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney, said the use of limited liability companies such as these is a growing problem. “The ultimate recipients of the money aren’t disclosed. Sometimes it’s for legitimate, or quasi-legitimate, reasons. And sometimes it’s for illegitimate reasons.”

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Two senior allies of Burkina Faso’s deposed former president Blaise Compaore were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison on Monday for organizing a 2015 coup attempt against a transitional government.

Protesters, angered by Compaore’s attempt to change the constitution to extend his 27-year rule, forced him to flee the West African nation in 2014. He now lives in exile in neighboring Ivory Coast.

Troops from the elite Presidential Security Regiment under the command of General Gilbert Diendere, Compaore’s right-hand man, took members of the transitional government hostage less than a month before elections the following year.

The week-long power grab failed, but 14 people were killed and more than 250 others were wounded as they attempted to resist the putsch.

Former spy chief Diendere was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder and threatening state security.

Compaore’s former foreign minister Djibril Bassole, who was accused of being the coup’s mastermind, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for treason.

…

Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky hopes a new documentary film about his life chronicling his journey from being Russia’s richest man to an exiled dissident will open the West’s eyes to the nature of modern Russia.

The film, “Citizen K”, was made by Oscar-winning U.S. filmmaker Alex Gibney and premiered at the Venice Film festival this weekend. It was based on more than 24 hours of interviews that Khodorkovsky, who is now based in Britain, gave over a period of months.

It tells the story of Khodorkovsky’s dramatic 2003 arrest on an icy Siberian runway by armed men and his fall from grace, punishment for what he and his supporters believe was his interest in Russian politics and fighting corruption.

The bespectacled tycoon, then head of the now defunct Yukos oil company, went on to serve a decade in jail on fraud charges he says were politically motivated before being freed in 2013 after President Vladimir Putin pardoned him.

“Today’s Kremlin regime has learned the art of window dressing very well, but it’s important to understand that behind these beautiful windows there is not just an ordinary authoritarian state but a real mafia, which has taken over this state,” Khodorkovsky, 56, told Reuters.

“If we look at how these methods are applied in relation to the West, we will see corruption, blackmail, compromising materials and even violence. While negotiating with the current Russian regime the West should understand it’s dealing with a criminal organization.”

Russia, which rejects his criticism as false, has issued an international arrest warrant for Khodorkovsky, accusing him of ordering at least one successful contract killing in the 1990s, something Khodorkovsky denies.

Putin has said he regards the former businessman as a common thief, while Russian authorities have moved to curb the activities of Open Russia, a pro-democracy movement founded by Khodorkovsky.
“A VERY TALENTED KGB GUY”

In “Citizen K,” Khodorkovsky says he misread Putin when the former Soviet intelligence officer first came to power.

“It seemed to me ideologically that he was one of us. A person who gets it and wants to push Russia in the same direction that we want to. That is towards openness, towards democracy,” said Khodorkovsky.

“Boy was I mistaken. He’s a very talented KGB guy.”

Despite living in Britain, Khodorkovsky said he “lived for Russia” and that it occupied his thoughts for 12 out of every 16 waking hours a day, adding that he and his supporters were acutely aware of the risks they ran.

“If the Kremlin decides to kill somebody, it is very difficult for this person to avoid this fate,” he said, a reference to allegations that Moscow has assassinated some of its critics abroad, a charge the Kremlin flatly rejects.

“I tell all my colleagues that the only thing we can do for you is to help you not to be forgotten, as I was not forgotten during 10 years in prison. But it will be difficult, or even impossible, to save you if anything happens.”

…

Almost every day 20-year-old Rizaldian Syahputra puts on his blue uniform, laces up his high boots and leaves his wooden house on stilts for a job many nature-lovers would envy.

But by next year, he may no longer be employed.

Syahputra works as a wildlife guide at Komodo National Park on the eastern Indonesian island of Komodo, taking visitors around the park on foot to get up close to the leathery Komodo dragons, the world’s largest living lizard species.

The Indonesian government plans to close the island to the public from January next year in a bid to conserve the rare reptiles.

The scheme also involves moving about 2,000 villagers off the island. Authorities are holding talks with community leaders on how to relocate the residents, Josef Nae Soi, deputy governor of the province of East Nusa Tenggara, told Reuters recently.

It is hoped that closing the island to tourists will cut the risk of poaching and allow a recovery in the numbers of the animals’ preferred prey, such as deer, buffalo and wild boar.

The island could reopen after a year, but the plan is to make it a premium tourist destination, Soi said.

Syahputra, who says he enjoys his job because of his passion for nature and conservation, shares the fears of many others on the island who rely on tourism for a living.

“The closure is definitely something that makes us unhappy,” he said.

“If we really have to do it, I hope we can find a middle ground on the solution, not closing the whole island but just a certain area.”

More than 176,000 tourists visited Komodo National Park, a conservation area between the islands of Sumbawa and Flores, in 2018. The whole area was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

About 1,700 Komodo dragons are estimated to live on Komodo island. Other islands in the national park that are home to more than 1,400 of the giant lizards, such as nearby Rinca and Padar, will remain open to tourists.

Villagers who have lived on Komodo island for generations are unsurprisingly opposed to the idea of having to leave.

“We have been living as one for years with this village,” said resident Dahlia, who gave only one name. “The graves of my father and ancestors are here. If we move, who will take care of those graves?”

…

The U.S. Coast Guard says 34 people are missing after a fire erupted aboard a dive boat off the coast of Southern California.

Local media are reporting that several people died in the fire, but the Coast Guard could not immediately confirm any fatalities.

Coast Guard officials said five crew members were rescued after the fire broke out on the 20-meter commercial dive boat near Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Santa Barbara.

They said are searching for other passengers who have not been accounted for.

Officials say the missing passengers were sleeping below desk when the fire broke out before dawn Monday morning.

An image posted by the fire department showed the dive vessel engulfed in flames. The Coast Guard says most of the fire has now been extinguished.

The boat was on a Labor Day weekend cruise taking divers to the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California.

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Updated Sept. 2, 2019, 3:40p.m.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened Monday to expel any Conservative Party rebels if they try to block his push for a no-deal exit next month from the European Union.

Johnson has only a one-seat majority in the House of Commons. But as parliament returns Tuesday from its summer recess, as many as 20 Tory rebels could join opposition lawmakers to tie the government’s hands against Johnson’s efforts to quit the EU on Oct. 31 without spelling out the terms of the divorce.

He assailed attempts to delay Britain’s departure from the EU, contending that it would “chop the legs” out of Britain’s attempt at negotiating better terms for splitting from the bloc.

Johnson met with his Cabinet ministers, stoking speculation that he would call for a snap election next month if parliament rejects his Brexit plans, possibly a vote ahead of a mid-October summit of EU leaders on final terms of Britain’s departure from the 28-nation bloc after 46 years of membership. But Johnson said he does not want a new election.

Britain Set For Explosive Week Ahead In Brexit Showdown

“Let’s let our negotiators get on with their work, without that ‘sword of Damocles’ over their necks, and without an election, without an election,” he said. “I don’t want an election, you don’t want an election. Let’s get on with the people’s agenda.”

Johnson became prime minister after the country’s former leader, Theresa May, failed in three parliamentary votes to win approval for the Brexit terms she negotiated with the EU.

A no-deal departure from the EU could lead to economic turmoil, ending decades of Britain’s seamless trade with the EU, its biggest trading partner.

But Johnson said he is determined to leave the EU, even without a deal.

“There are no circumstances under which I will ask Brussels to delay,” Johnson said. “We’re leaving the 31st of October, no ifs or buts.”
 
Former Justice Minister David Gauke told the BBC, “Their strategy to be honest is to lose this week and then seek a general election having removed those of us… who believe we should leave with a deal.”

Opposition Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “We want a general election” to oust what he described as Johnson’s “phony, populist cabal.”

Corbyn said, “We must come together to stop no deal – this week could be our last chance.”

But former Labor leader Tony Blair warned Corbyn, a veteran socialist, said that an election is an “elephant trap” Johnson has laid for Labor.

“Boris Johnson knows that if no-deal Brexit stands on its own as a proposition it might well fail,” Blair said, “but if he mixes it up with the Corbyn question in a general election he could succeed despite a majority being against a no-deal Brexit because some (voters) may fear a Corbyn premiership more.”

The Ladbrokes betting house said odds now are that there will be an election next month, with a 75% probability there would be one before the end of 2019.

…

Wall Street stock futures weakened in early trade on Monday, setting a dour tone for Asian markets after tit-for-tat tariffs between the United States and China took effect, reinforcing investors’ gloomy expectations for global growth prospects.

The E-mini futures for U.S. S&P500 ESc1 fell as much as 1.06% in early trade and last stood down 0.68% at 2,905 while Chicago-traded Nikkei futures NIYcm1 suggest Japan’s Nikkei .N225 is on course to fall 0.7%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS, which lost 4.7% last month, is likely to stay under pressure.

The United States slapped 15% tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods on Sunday – including footwear, smart watches and flat-panel televisions – while China imposed new duties on U.S. crude, the latest escalation in a bruising trade war.

In EscalatingTrade war, US Consumers May See Higher Prices

In China, authorities began charging higher duties on American imports at midday Sunday

A variety of studies suggest the tariffs will cost U.S. households up to $1,000 a year and the latest round will hit a significant number of U.S. consumer goods.

In retaliation, China started to impose additional tariffs on some of the U.S. goods on a $75 billion target list. Beijing did not specify the value of the goods that face higher tariffs from Sunday.

Many market players say the market’s reaction was likely exaggerated by algorithm-driven players’ flows in thin trading conditions at start of Asian trade on Monday.

Liquidity could be even more limited than usual because of a U.S. market holiday on Monday.

“(The market move) goes to show you how many data mining algos are involved with equity linked compared to forex-linked. Was anyone surprised by these tariffs that took effect yesterday?” said Takeo Kamai, head of execution at CLSA in Tokyo.

Trade War Sowing Seeds of Doubt With US Farmers

The typical routines of life on a family farm carry a heavier burden these days for Pam Johnson.

“First thing I do is make a pot of coffee,” she told VOA in an interview in one of the cavernous sheds that contain her green and yellow John Deere farming equipment. Once she has that coffee, she “(goes) to the computer and look at what grain prices have done overnight and usually do a gut clutch, because they’ve been going down. They’re at five-month lows.”

Driven there in part by retaliatory tariffs imposed by one of the largest importers of U.S.

Despite the volatility, the moves lower reflect investors’ underlying worries about increasing costs of Sino-U.S. trade war on the global economy.

An official survey published on Saturday showed factory activity in China shrank in August for the fourth month in a row, further evidence of hit to the world’s second-largest economy from trade war.

Tension is also running high in Hong Kong, with police and protesters clashing in some of the most intense violence since unrest erupted more than three months ago over concerns Beijing is undermining democratic freedoms in the territory.

Thousands of protesters blocked roads and public transport links to Hong Kong airport and police made several arrests after demonstrators smashed CCTV cameras and lamps with metal poles and dismantled station turnstiles.

China, eager to quell the unrest before the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, has accused foreign powers, particularly the United States and Britain, of fomenting the unrest.

Oil prices also fell in early Monday trade.

Brent crude LCOc1 futures fell 0.68% to $58.85 a barrel while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 lost 0.54% to $54.80 per barrel.

The currency market was calmer for now, with the dollar down slightly against the yen at 106.12 yen JPY=, down 0.13% from late U.S. levels.

The euro stood almost flat at $1.09905 EUR=, not far from two-year low of $1.0963 hit in U.S. trade on Friday.

…

The United States and China on Sunday put in place their latest tariff increases on each other’s goods, potentially raising prices Americans pay for some clothes, shoes, sporting goods and other consumer items before the holiday shopping season.

President Donald Trump said U.S.-China trade talks were still on for September. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters as he returned to the White House from the Camp David presidential retreat. “But we can’t allow China to rip us off anymore as a country.”

The 15% U.S. taxes apply to about $112 billion of Chinese imports. All told, more than two-thirds of the consumer goods the United States imports from China now face higher taxes. The administration had largely avoided hitting consumer items in its earlier rounds of tariff increases.

But with prices of many retail goods now likely to rise, the Trump administration’s move threatens the U.S. economy’s main driver: consumer spending. As businesses pull back on investment spending and exports slow in the face of weak global growth, American shoppers have been a key bright spot for the economy.

“We have got a great economy,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. “But I do think that the uncertainty caused by volatile tariff situation and this developing trade war could jeopardize that strength, and that growth, and that is I think that’s a legitimate concern,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”

As a result of Trump’s higher tariffs, many U.S. companies have warned that they will be forced to pass on to their customers the higher prices they will pay on Chinese imports. Some businesses, though, may decide in the end to absorb the higher costs rather than raise prices for their customers.

In China, authorities began charging higher duties on American imports at midday Sunday, according to employees who answered the phone at customs offices in Beijing and the southern port of Guangzhou. They declined to give their names.

Tariffs of 10% and 5% apply to items ranging from frozen sweet corn and pork liver to marble and bicycle tires, the government announced earlier.

After Sunday’s move, 87% of textiles and clothing the United States buys from China and 52% of shoes will be subject to import taxes.

On Dec. 15, the Trump administration is scheduled to impose a second round of 15% tariffs — this time on roughly $160 billion of imports. If those duties take effect, virtually all goods imported from China will be covered.

The Chinese government has released a list of American imports targeted for penalties on Dec. 15 if the U.S. tariff hikes take effect. In total, Beijing says Sunday’s penalties and the planned December increases will apply to $75 billion of American goods.

Washington and Beijing are locked in a war over U.S. complaints that China steals U.S. trade secrets and unfairly subsidizes its own companies in its drive to develop global competitors in such high-tech industries as artificial intelligence and electric cars.

“I give the president credit for challenging China on some of its really egregious behavior” on intellectual property and technology transfers, for example, Toomey said. He said he hopes that’s what Trump’s focus is, “not just the fact that Chinese clothing and shoes are popular among consumers. That’s not the problem.”

If China changes its behavior “in a meaningful way in that area … then we will have ended up in a better place. That’s what I’m hoping for. But let’s be honest. In the meantime, we’re doing damage. It’s a double-edged sword,” he said.

To try to force Beijing to reform its trade practices, the Trump administration has imposed import taxes on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports, and China has retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports.

“It’s a good thing taking on China. Unfortunately, he’s done it the wrong way,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“To take on China there has to be a multilateral approach. One country can’t take on China to try to dry up its overcapacity because they just send it through to you in other ways,” he said.

Trump has insisted that China itself pays the tariffs. But in fact, economic research has concluded that the costs of the duties fall on U.S. businesses and consumers. Trump had indirectly acknowledged the tariffs’ impact by delaying some of the duties until Dec. 15, after holiday goods are already on store shelves.

A study by J.P. Morgan found that Trump’s tariffs will cost the average U.S. household $1,000 a year. That study was done before Trump raised the Sept. 1 and Dec. 15 tariffs to 15% from 10%.

The president has also announced that existing 25% tariffs on a separate group of $250 billion of Chinese imports will increase to 30% on Oct. 1.

That cost could weaken an already slowing U.S. economy. Though consumer spending grew last quarter at its fastest pace in five years, the overall economy expanded at just a modest 2% annual rate, down from a 3.1% rate in the first three months of the year.

The economy is widely expected to slow further in the months ahead as income growth slows, businesses delay expansions and higher prices from tariffs depress consumer spending. Companies have already reduced investment spending, and exports have dropped against a backdrop of slower global growth.

Americans have already turned more pessimistic. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday, fell by the most since December 2012.

“The data indicate that the erosion of consumer confidence due to tariff policies is now well underway,” said Richard Curtin, who oversees the index.

Some retailers may eat the cost of the tariffs. Target confirmed to The Associated Press that it warned suppliers that it won’t accept cost increases arising from the China tariffs. But many smaller retailers won’t have the bargaining power to make such demands and will pass the costs to customers.

Philip Levy, chief economist at the San Francisco freight company Flexport who was an adviser in President George W. Bush administration, said it’s hard to say for sure when the latest tariffs may hit U.S. customers in the form of higher prices.

But, he added, “If you had to pick a time to do it, this is the worst possible time” because it’s when the bulk of holiday goods are brought into the country.

…

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen staged multiple airstrikes on a detention center operated by the Houthi rebels in the southwestern province of Dhamar, killing at least 100 people and wounding dozens more Sunday, officials and the rebels’ health ministry said.

Franz Rauchenstein, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen, suggested that the death toll could be higher after visiting the site of the attack, saying relatively few detainees survived. A Red Cross statement said the detention center held around 170 detainees. It said 40 of those were being treated for injuries and the rest were presumed dead.

“Witnessing this massive damage, seeing the bodies lying among the rubble, was a real shock. Anger and sadness were natural reactions,” Rauchenstein said.

The attack was the deadliest so far this year by the coalition, according to the Yemen Data Project, a database tracking the war. The coalition has faced international criticism for airstrikes that have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties, killing thousands of Yemeni civilians.

Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of the internationally recognized Yemini government in March 2015, after the Iran-backed Houthis took the capital. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, thrust millions to the brink of famine and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The attack comes as the Saudi-led coalition’s partners — chiefly the United Arab Emirates and an array of Yemeni militias — are increasingly at odds over the war’s aims. The past weeks have seen heavy fighting in Yemen’s south between Saudi-backed and Emirati-backed forces.

Yemeni officials said Sunday’s strikes targeted a college in the city of Dhamar, which the Houthi rebels were using as a detention center. The coalition denied it had struck a detention center, saying it had targeted a military site used by the rebels to restore drones and missiles.

“We were sleeping and around midnight, there were maybe three, or four, or six strikes. They were targeting the jail, I really don’t know the strike numbers,” wounded detainee Nazem Saleh said while on a stretcher in a local hospital. He said the Red Cross had visited the center two times before the airstrike.

A line of over a dozen white body bags were laid out in the rubble beside flattened buildings and crushed cars, while rescue workers dug through the debris.

“We have seen now under the ruble that there are still many, many dead bodies that its very, very difficult to extract,” said Rauchenstein.

The U.N. human rights office for Yemen said 52 detainees were among the dead, and at least 68 detainees were still missing.

The Red Cross, which inspects detention centers as part of its global mission, said it had visited detainees at the site in the past.

Former detainees said the Houthis had previously used the site to store and repair weapons.

Youssef al-Hadhri, a spokesman for the Houthi-run Health Ministry, said at least seven airstrikes hit three buildings in the complex overnight.

The rebels’ Health Ministry said in a statement that more than 60 people were killed in Sunday’s airstrikes and another 50 wounded. Later in the day, health officials said the death toll climbed to 65. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.

The Saudi-led coalition said it had hit a military facility “in accordance with international humanitarian law,” and that “all precautionary measures were taken to protect civilians.”

Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition, was quoted by the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV as denying the target was a prison.

Local residents said family members arrested for being critical of the Houthis were imprisoned in the detention center. They said at least seven airstrikes hit the area.

Omat al-Salam al-Haj, a mother of a detainee, said the center housed anti-Houthi political detainees who were rounded up over suspicions of cooperating with the coalition.

Former detainee Mansour al-Zelai said the Houthis were restoring weapons in and close to the detention center.

Houthi rebels have been using scores of sites as detention centers, including schools, mosques, and houses, filling them with thousands of political detainees to use later in prisoner-swap deals.

The Associated Press documented that many of these sites were rife with torture and abuses including Dhamar’s community college.

Former detainees recalled torture and abuses inside the detention center, which came under a series of airstrikes before.

Rights groups have also previously documented that Houthis place civilian detainees in detention centers as human shields by placing them next to army barracks, under constant threat of airstrikes.

In October 2016, an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a prison complex in the Red Sea port of Hodeida, killing at least 58 people, mostly prisoners. At the time, the coalition said the prison complex was used as a command center for Houthis.

On Sunday, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, met with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi in Amman to discuss her efforts to relaunch negotiations after years of stalemate between Yemen’s warring sides.

“Yemen has been at the center of my attention,” she said in a statement.

Wallstrom also met with Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and other government officials in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, according the official Yemeni news agency SABA.

Airstrikes have also punctuated the infighting between erstwhile coalition allies in southern Yemen.

On Thursday, Emirati jets bombed convoys of Saudi-backed government forces, killing scores in series of airstrikes to prevent them from retaking the interim capital, Aden, from militias backed by the UAE.

The Emirati strikes sparked popular anger in Yemen against the UAE. Activists launched an online petition collecting signatures to “kick Emiratis out of Yemen” and members of the Yemeni government issued a statement demanding the president end the UAE’s role in Yemen.

On Sunday, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash posted a reminder on Twitter that the coalition’s goal is to “confront the challenge of the Houthi coup.”

…