A woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct more than 30 years ago has come forward publicly, detailing her allegations about President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

In an exclusive Washington Post interview on Sunday, Christine Blasey Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend – both “stumbling drunk” corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and groped her over her clothes. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.

“Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation,” Ford told The Post.

Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband.

The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington”.

On Sunday, the White House sent The Post a statement Kavanaugh issued last week, when the outlines of Ford’s account became public.

“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time,” he said in the statement.

Ford in a letter in July described the incident and said she expected her story to be kept confidential.

(IANS)

The United States has warned of having a “fundamentally different set of rules” to deal with the countries continuing to have economic activities with Iran after its sanction against Tehran becomes fully operational on November 4.

Make no mistake about it, come November 4 (and) there will be a fundamentally different set of rules with respect to anyone who deems it necessary to engage in economic activities with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at a news conference here Friday.

In the absence of any waiver or concession from the Trump Administration, it could have major implications for India, which is one of the biggest importers of Iranian oil and is currently developing the strategic Chabahar port.

Officials of the two countries are having an ongoing discussion on both the issues. This includes the meeting between the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department. The meeting took place immediately after Pompeo’s press conference.

“There are still a number of decisions pending before the November 4 deadline that we’ve got to make about waivers or potential waivers, and we’re working our way through each of them, Pompeo said.

India is one of the countries which is likely to get some waiver, given the strategic nature of Indo-US ties, the strategic importance of the Chabahar port and its burgeoning energy needs.

India, on its part has already started reducing its oil intake from Iran, but is unlikely to bring it down to zero.

You can see many countries already taking actions to move out of Iran, to discontinue doing business with them in advance of the November 4 deadline, Pompeo said in response to a question, adding these countries understand the seriousness of the US sanctions.

Pompeo said they also appreciate that trading with Iran is “supporting the exact kinds of malign activity that President Donald Trump has been talking about since the first day he took office.”

The various “malign activities” that the US Secretary of State listed included alleged supply of missiles by Iran to Houthis to launch into Gulf countries airports.

These activities further included “the activities we have seen taken by Shia militias against American interests or the assassination efforts underway in the heart of Europe,” said Pompeo.

The world is beginning to see that the challenge is much bigger than anything that the JCPOA even pretended to have addressed, he said.

Pompeo said he has also seen the statements “the Iranians have said this week.”

They’ve said, boy, if we end up withdrawing, we’ll start from a much higher level. I may have the quote off just a little bit but I’m very close. Wow, what does that say about the existence of the agreement, right?

“They’re going to start from a much higher level. It tells you that the agreement itself didn’t stop all the paths to nuclear weapons in the way that it was sold to the American people,” he said.

During the news conference, Pompeo slammed the former Secretary of State John Kerry for having talks with the Iranian leadership.

What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented. This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. He was talking to them. He was telling them to wait out this administration, Pompeo said.

You can’t find precedent for this in US history, and Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior. It’s inconsistent with what foreign policy of the United States is, as directed by this President, and it is beyond inappropriate for him to be engaged in this, he said.

I wasn’t in the meeting, but I am reasonably confident that he was not there in support of the US policy with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran, who this week fired Katyusha rockets toward the United States embassy in Baghdad and took action against our consulate in Basra, Pompeo said.

The governor of the storm-hit US state of North Carolina has warned that Tropical Storm Florence could linger for days, wiping out communities as it sweeps across the country’s east.

Governor Roy Cooper called the storm, which was downgraded from a hurricane after it made landfall, an “uninvited brute”.

“The fact is this storm is deadly and we know we are days away from an ending,” Cooper said.

At least five people, including a mother and her child, have been killed as Florence brings unending rain and storm surges to the region.

Some towns have experienced as much 60 centimetres of rain, and forecasters warn that could rise to a metre of downpours, triggering floods deep inland.

Storm surges – the bulge of ocean water pushed ashore by the hurricane – were as high as three metres.

The 640km-wide storm has struck regions as far north as New York state and left hundreds besieged by waters.

Rescues and evacuations
Rescue crews used boats to reach more than 360 people stranded by rising waters in New Bern, North Carolina, while many of their neighbours awaited help.

Officials said some 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to evacuate, but it’s unclear how many did. The homes of about 10 million were under watches or warnings for the hurricane or tropical storm conditions.

Coastal towns in the Carolinas were largely empty, and schools and businesses closed as far south as Georgia.

The storm knocked out power to nearly 930,000 homes and businesses, and the number could keep rising.

Florence could become a major test for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was heavily criticised as slow and unprepared last year for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where the death toll was put at nearly 3,000.

Forecasters said that given the storm’s size and sluggish track, it could cause epic damage akin to what the Houston area saw during Hurricane Harvey just over a year ago, with floodwaters swamping homes and businesses and washing over industrial waste sites and hog-manure ponds.

Aljazeera

A series of gas explosions damaged at least 23 buildings and residences, and injured many in several Massachusetts towns in the US, state authorities said on Thursday.

The incident began about 5 p.m. when several explosions occurred in buildings in the towns of Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.

The reason for the blasts, so far, is unknown, Efe reported.

Massachusetts state police said at least 23 explosions and subsequent fires had occurred at a number of different addresses, although local media reported that more blasts had taken place in nearby areas.

The fires were attributed to possible problems with the natural gas system and security forces urged local residents to leave their homes immediately if they smell gas or suspect that they could catch fire.

Local media reported that local fire chief Michael Mansfield said that between 25 and 30 active fires were being battled in Andover and at least 18 more in Lawrence.

“There are multiple basement fires in Andover. It’s some kind of gas issue,” Andover Police Department spokesman Lt. Edward Guy said.

“We urge residents if they are smelling gas to get out of the house and contact 911. We will get units out there,” he added.

(IANS)

India continues to remain on the White House list of countries that are “major” transit points for or producer of illicit drugs.

The annual list was released on Tuesday as US President Donald Trump prepared for a global campaign against drugs at the UN later in September.

The 21 countries on it include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mexico and Colombia.

India has been on the list since 2004 when President George W. Bush first issued it under a 2003 law enacted by Congress and President Barack Obama continued to keep it there.

India’s inclusion on the list has been a point of friction between New Delhi and Washington.

A country’s presence on the list “is not necessarily a reflection of its government’s counter-narcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the US,” Trump said in his memorandum.

“The reason countries are placed on the list is the combination of geographic, commercial, and economic factors that allow drugs to transit or be produced, even if a government has engaged in robust and diligent narcotics control measures,” he clarified.

Significantly, the list has not included any Western countries even though they have figured transit points for drugs.

Nigeria, Brazil, Vietnam and Thailand, which had figured on the original and some subsequent lists are no longer on it.

Trump is scheduled to preside over a high-level meeting of the Security Council on the drug menace on September 24 and issue a global call to action on the world drug problem, US Permanent Representative Nikki Haley announced last week.

Trump has made battling the crisis of opioid addiction that has gripped the US a priority and even suggested that the nation should consider death penalty for drug dealers.

According to the US government more than 72,000 people died from drug overdose in 2017, nearly 50,000 of them from using opioids, including misuse of pharmaceuticals.

Trump said in his memorandum, “My Administration is committed to addressing all factors fuelling this drug crisis, which is devastating communities across America, including steps to curb over-prescription, expand access to treatment and recovery programs, improve public education programs to prevent illicit drug use before it begins, and to strengthening domestic drug enforcement at our borders and throughout our nation.”

“Alongside these massive and historic US efforts, I expect the governments of countries where illicit drugs originate and through which they transit to similarly strengthen their commitments to reduce dangerous drug production and trafficking,” he added.

(IANS)

 The United States wants India and Pakistan to engage in dialogue but feels a conducive atmosphere needs to be created first, a senior State Department official said on Monday.

“We have frequent conversations with our Indian partners on (Pakistan) bringing down cross-border terrorism,” said Alice Wells, the US Principal Deputy Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs, while briefing the Indian media over telephone from the US on the the first-ever India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue held here on September 6.

Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already talked with his new Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan, Wells said: “We need conditions to be created for a constructive dialogue.”

The US statement reflects New Delhi’s position that talks and terror cannot go together.

Wells said that the US would like to work with Pakistan to establish stability and political settlement in Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had also expressed similar view when he stopped over in Islamabad on September 5, ahead of the first-ever India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue held in New Delhi the next day.

“Secretary Pompeo’s trip to Pakistan was another opportunity for the Secretary to meet the new civilian leadership there and describe the aspirations we have for the (US-Pakistan) bilateral relationship,” Wells said.

“We would like to be able to work with Pakistan to establish stability and a political settlement in Afghanistan.”

Wells said the US-Pakistan relationship will be about whether Washington can stop Islamabad from supporting terrorists using its soil.

“There has been a very consistent message during Secretary Pompeo’s visit about our desire to work with Pakistan productively, constructively and the kind of concerns we have,” she said.

She also referred to US President Donald Trump’s new South Asia Strategy, describing it as a decisive step that states what the US believes needs to be done to bring stability in the region.

(IANS)

Two months ago, all 12 boys and the coach of a Thai football team were rescued after being trapped in a cave in northern Thailand for 18 days. Many termed their rescue against heavy odds a miracle.

Sadly, the six-day United Nations Special Climate Conference that concluded on September 9 was not able to rescue the trapped Paris Climate Agreement in the well-lit conference centre in southern Thailand. Many of the delegates wondered if it was about pronouncing the promises only to dodge them.

The Paris Climate Agreement has been hanging from a cliff right from the day US President Donald Trump, a year back, announced his official plan to withdraw from it. Though hundreds of American mayors and thousands of businesses — and even its allies like France — have been seeking to defy the consequences of Trump’s withdrawal, the agreement is getting dangerously close to its fatal consequence.

The good news is that the Paris Agreement has entered into force on November 4, 2016, in less than a year from its consensus adoption on December 12, 2015, in Paris. However, it is yet to be operationalised because its modalities, procedures and guidelines are yet to be agreed upon by its 180 Parties (countries that ratified the Paris Agreement). Indeed, the Paris Agreement in its present form is just an agreement of intent.

These “rules”, as per the time-table agreed in Paris, have to be ready no later than 2018. The Bangkok Climate Conference was a late addition to the schedule after dismal progress was made at the annual meeting of the subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) in Bonn in May 2018. The Bangkok Climate Conference was the last major negotiating meeting before the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP-24) in Poland in December, when finally the Paris Agreement will be in mission mode.

The exercise in Bangkok turned out to be progress in planning but a stalemate in its objective of operationalising. The Paris Agreement remains trapped in a complex maze of the caves of finance for mitigation and adaptation for the developing countries, deployment of market mechanisms, periodicity of stocktaking and transparency, flexibility for developing countries in reporting.

Formulating the rules on the cyclic and iterative nature by enhancing the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), earlier considered an innovation in international agreements, is now proving to be formidable.

It all boils down to the fact that world is now setting the new norms of not keeping the promises made on global cooperation. Not walking the talk and smartly gyrating the agreed goals is now the global attire of the diplomacy. And each of these new patterns are being justified, sometimes diplomatically and, many times with international arrogance.

Take, for example, financing for mitigation and adaptation for the developing countries. The “polluter to pay” norm has been the anchor in the multilateral environment agreements right from the 1992 Rio Agreement, but is now being openly flouted. The promise of providing “additional” finance through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which was first proposed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then President Barack Obama in Copenhagen in 2009, is supposed to become fully operational in 2020, i.e. developed countries would provide — starting with $10 billion per year in 2012 to reach $100 billion per year from 2020 onwards — to help developing countries pay for climate adaptation and mitigation.

What has happened to that promise? As of today, GCF has pledges of $10.4 billion whereas the actually committed is only $3.5 billion. The GCF as institution itself is in chaotic state. The GCF head, an Australian, abruptly resigned in July 2018 after just two years in the job because of “personal reasons”. The deputy head from Nicaragua did not even attend the July meeting of GCF, where no projects were approved. “GCF is melting down faster than Antarctica,” one of the delegates in Bangkok said.

In Bangkok, the developed countries smartly proposed to count all the finances provided by the private sector, philanthropy, FDI and regular international development aid of 0.7 per cent of the GDP as part of the promised $100 billion. They also proposed dilution of the financial reporting rules, thereby flouting the agreement on “additional climate financing”.

Not walking the full talk by the star performers on climate change has also resulted in the angry reaction from civil society, and supported by countries, on such climate-hypocrisy.

An example is the Global Climate Action Summit convened from September 12 to 14, 2018, in San Francisco, under the leadership of California Governor Jerry Brown. The summit’s theme is “Take Ambition to the Next Level”. It will be a star-studded international event to showcase climate action at all levels and to inspire enhanced commitments and god-speed action from countries to realise the goals of the Paris Agreement. Indeed, California, the richest US state, has done more in policy setting and its implementation in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency than any other country in the world. Its firebrand governor can be termed as climate’s game-changer.

In Bangkok, Brown was booed by civil society representatives for his soft approach towards oil producers in California by allowing them to drill for oil. “How can we expect a leader to take climate ambitions to the next level when he himself, from the back-door, takes it to a lower level,” queried one demonstrator in Bangkok.

When state leaders arrive in Poland in December, they would have to muddle through the mess of the draft “rule book” mired in diminishing trust. By that time, the GHGs concentration, already higher by 42 percent as compared to 1992 levels, would have risen to the “next level”.

A rescue operation for the trapped Paris Agreement would be near impossible.

[IANS]

 Leslie Moonves, the powerful longtime Chairman and Chief Executive of CBS, has resigned in the wake of sexual assault accusations, concluding a tumultuous six weeks that saw him fall from the position of one of the countrys most respected media titans.

The company announced the news in a statement late Sunday, saying that CBS Chief Operating Officer Joseph Ianniello will take over as interim CEO and President, both Moonves’ titles, as the company looks for a permanent replacement, The Washington Post reported.

The announcement ends Moonves’ 20-year tenure.

In July, six women accused the media titan of sexual-misconduct in The New Yorker that led to the board hiring outside lawyers to conduct an investigation into Moonves and activists to call for his removal.

On the magazine’s website earlier on Sunday, an additional six women alleged behaviour that includes sexual misconduct, harassment and retaliation.

The allegations also include Moonves exposing himself without consent and the use of physical violence and intimidation to silence the women.

In response to the New Yorker story, a CBS spokesman on Sunday told The Washington Post: “CBS takes these allegations very seriously. Our Board of Directors is conducting a thorough investigation of these matters, which is ongoing.”

Moonves is still expected to collect millions as part of a settlement with the board, though the company said it will withhold any decision on payment until after the investigation is complete.

According to a statement from the company, Moonves and CBS will also “donate $20 million to one or more organisations that support the #MeToo movement and equality for women in the workplace.

“The donation, which will be made immediately, has been deducted from any severance benefits that may be due Moonves following the Board’s ongoing independent investigation.”

Moonves has been with CBS since 1995 and has held the title of Chief Executive for the past 15 years.

In early 2006 CBS became a separate entity as it split from Viacom, and has since been one of the most profitable in entertainment.

 US President Donald Trump has hailed the absence of ballistic missiles at the military parade held by the North Korean government on the 70th anniversary of the country’s founding.

“North Korea has just staged their parade, celebrating 70th anniversary of founding, without the customary display of nuclear missiles,” Trump wrote on his Twitter account on Sunday, Efe news reported.

The US President added that “Theme was peace and economic development.”

He added, citing Fox News, that “Experts believe that North Korea cut out the nuclear missiles to show President Trump … its commitment to denuclearize.” This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea.”

Trump, who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, went on to thank Kim for the gesture, adding that “We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”

The North Korean leader presided at the parade but did not deliver a speech there and authorities opted not to display any intercontinental or medium-range ballistic missiles among the military hardware in the procession.

Since their June 12 meeting, which many in the US and around the world have criticized as being merely a photo op without any substance, the two sides have held several meetings but also engaged in mutual recriminations over failing to make sufficient progress on the points ostensibly agreed to in Singapore.

In late August, Trump decided to cancel the trip of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang due to the lack of such progress.

Kim has reiterated his commitment to dismantle his atomic weapons program, with officials of his government adding that that should occur during Trump’s first term in office, which is scheduled to end in January 2021.

Trump said on Friday that Kim had sent him another letter, which he expected to receive soon, adding that he trusted it contains a “positive” message that will help to unblock the bilateral dialogue.

(IANS)