Shootings prompt other countries to warn about US travel
CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States often takes a leading role in calling out the world’s most dangerous places, warning its people about the risks of traveling to countries that are at war, under terrorist threats, experiencing civil unrest or displaying significant anti-American sentiment.
The latest mass shootings have triggered a sharp role reversal, with three countries warning their citizens about the risks of traveling to the U.S.
Venezuela, Uruguay and Japan issued warnings to varying degrees following the deaths of 31 people over the weekend in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. Each warning noted U.S. gun violence, and at least one was laced with a dose of political payback.
Without directly naming President Donald Trump, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro blamed the surge in violence on speeches emanating from Washington that are “impregnated with racial discrimination and hatred against immigrants.” It urges Venezuelans to postpone U.S. trips.
The socialist Maduro is ruling over the worst economic crisis in Venezuelan history amid an escalating political battle with the White House, which backs opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s bid to oust him.
Indian PM: Changes in Kashmir will free it from ‘terrorism’
NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation Thursday night that he stripped Kashmir of its statehood and special constitutional status in order to free the disputed Himalayan region of “terrorism and separatism.”
Modi’s Hindu-led nationalist government imposed an unprecedented security lockdown and a near-total communications blackout in the Muslim-majority region since Sunday night, arresting more than 500 people.
Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and its arch-rival Pakistan, although each controls only a part of it and rebels have been fighting Indian rule in the portion it administers for decades. This week, India downgraded the divided region from statehood to a territory, limited its decision-making power and eliminated its right to its own constitution.
In his first nationally broadcast speech on the decision, Modi described the changes for Jammu and Kashmir, as the region is formally known, as historic. He assured its residents that the situation will soon “return to normal gradually,” although he gave no specifics.
From wire sources
Modi said the “mainstreaming” of the Kashmiri people with the rest of the nation would expedite development and create new jobs with investment from public and private companies.
UN climate report: Change land use to avoid a hungry future
GENEVA — Human-caused climate change is dramatically degrading the Earth’s land and the way people use the land is making global warming worse, a new United Nations scientific report says. That creates a vicious cycle which is already making food more expensive, scarcer and less nutritious.
“The cycle is accelerating,” said NASA climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, a co-author of the report. “The threat of climate change affecting people’s food on their dinner table is increasing.”
But if people change the way they eat, grow food and manage forests, it could help save the planet from a far warmer future, scientists said.
Earth’s land masses, which are only 30% of the globe, are warming twice as fast as the planet as a whole. While heat-trapping gases are causing problems in the atmosphere, the land has been less talked about as part of climate change. A special report, written by more than 100 scientists and unanimously approved by diplomats from nations around the world Thursday at a meeting in Geneva, proposed possible fixes and made more dire warnings.
“The way we use land is both part of the problem and also part of the solution,” said Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist who co-chairs one of the panel’s working groups. “Sustainable land management can help secure a future that is comfortable.”
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Biden, Bullock kick off Iowa State Fair blitz talking guns
DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Vice President Joe Biden and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock opened the Iowa State Fair’s 2020 presidential blitz on Thursday by blistering President Donald Trump and promising to push new gun restrictions.
“I believe everything the president’s said and done encourages white supremacists,” Biden said as Trump continued to take criticism for his handling of back-to-back mass shootings. One of the shooters is believed to have written a racist screed echoing some of Trump’s incendiary language about immigrants.
Bullock said Trump’s rhetoric and behavior — attacking his critics on the day he traveled to ostensibly console victims’ families in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio — are beneath the office he holds.
“The lies and the statements that divide us by race, gender, geography — we expect more out of our preschoolers now than we do the president of the United States,” Bullock said.
Biden and Bullock are the first of more than 20 candidates — nearly all Democrats — who will speak at the Iowa fairgrounds over the coming days. It’s a rite of passage for would-be presidents, and for Democrats it highlights their challenges in a state like Iowa, a presidential battleground that mixes cultural conservatives and farm country, liberal college towns and plenty of swing voters in between.
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Experts push for domestic terrorism law after attacks
LOS ANGELES — Seven days, three mass shootings, 34 dead.
The FBI has labeled two of those attacks , at a Texas Walmart and California food festival, as domestic terrorism — acts meant to intimidate or coerce a civilian population and affect government policy. But the bureau hasn’t gone that far with a shooting at an Ohio entertainment district.
Even if there’s a domestic terrorism investigation, no specific domestic terrorism law exists in the federal criminal code. That means the Justice Department must rely on other laws such as hate crimes and weapons offenses in cases of politically motivated shootings.
The legal gap has prompted many survivors, victims’ families, law enforcement officials and legal experts to call on lawmakers to create a domestic terrorism law that could aid investigators and punish perpetrators.
“Calling something for what it is is an important first step in combating this problem,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
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