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Nasheman News : The Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives has passed a spending package aimed at ending the partial government shutdown without paying for President Donald Trump’s border wall, drawing a veto threat from the White House.

The package was expected to be dead on arrival in the Senate, leaving congressional Democrats and the administration at a stalemate that leaves the partial shutdown no closer to getting resolved. It has affected hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have either been furloughed or have had to work without pay.

Trump has said he will reject any measure that does not provide $5 billion in funding for his wall on the Mexican border. Newly-elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said no funding for the wall would be made available, CNN reported.

The first bill passed by the House on Thursday in a 239-192 vote was a continuing resolution funding the Department of Homeland Security through February 8 that would not allocate any new wall spending. Five Republicans joined Democrats in approving the legislation.

Then, the House voted 241-190 to approve funds for six agencies, including Departments of State, Commerce, Agriculture, Labour, Treasury and other agencies through September 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

Democrats say that Trump was holding government funding hostage for the wall, which they feel was “unnecessary and ineffective”.

Congressional leaders from both parties were expected to meet the President for another round of budget talks at the White House on Friday.

The Republican-run Senate has said it may not even vote on the legislation. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans will not back measures that Trump does not support and called the Democrats’ move a “total non-starter” and a “political sideshow”.

Vice President Mike Pence earlier said that “if there’s no wall, there’s no deal” to end the partial government shutdown during an interview with Fox News.

While he expressed openness to negotiating an end to the shutdown, the wall was a clear sticking point: “We are here to make a deal, but it’s a deal that’s going to result in achieving real gains. … We will have no deal without a wall,” Pence said.

The White House had issued a veto threat against the legislation ahead of the expected House vote.

Pelosi criticized the President’s wall as “a waste of money” and “an immorality” during a news conference hours after reclaiming the gavel in the new Congress.

“We’re asking the President to open up government,” she told the Today show before the first session of the new House. “We have given the Republicans a chance to take yes for an answer.”

The partial government shutdown stretched into its 13th day on Thursday, when the new Democratic House majority was sworn in.

Nasheman News : US President Donald Trump said that the US troops would be withdrawing from Syria “over a period of time,” dismissing the previously reported four-month exit plan.

“Over a period of time. I never said I’m getting out tomorrow,” Trump was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency on Wednesday.

Trump dismissed a New York Times story reporting earlier that the U.S. military had been given about four months to retreat the 2,000 soldiers from the war-torn country.

The Trump administration announced on Dec. 19 that it had started returning U.S. troops home from Syria after claiming a victory in the fight against the Islamic State.

U.S. media cited anonymous officials as saying that the United States was planning a “rapid” and “full” withdrawal of troops from Syria.

Trump himself last week reversed the tone in a tweet, claiming that his country is “slowly” withdrawing troops from Syria.

Currently, there are more than 2,000 US soldiers deployed in Syria.

Nasheman News : Former Republican presidential candidate and incoming Utah Senator Mitt Romney has launched a scathing attack on President Donald Trump, writing in an editorial that he caused dismay around the world and had “not risen to the mantle of the office”.

“It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not,” Romney wrote in the Washington Post opinion piece on Tuesday.

“… His conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions, is evidence that the President has not risen to the mantle of the office.”

Romney, who is set to be sworn into the Senate on Thursday, also said that Trump’s presidency weakened America’s influence abroad, writing that “Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world”.

“The world needs American leadership and it is in America’s interest to provide it.”

“With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable… And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”

Trump hit back at the Republican senator-elect in a tweet on Wednesday, saying: “Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast! Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not,” Trump tweeted, referring to retiring Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who criticized the President often in the last few years. 

“Would much prefer that Mitt focus on Border Security and so many other things where he can be helpful. I won big, and he didn’t. He should be happy for all Republicans. Be a team player and win!” Trump said.

Romney said that he agreed with some of the policy changes Trump has championed. “But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency,” he wrote.

Responding to Romney’s piece, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said that the incoming senator “lacked the ability to save this nation” while Trump “has saved it”.

“Jealously is a drink best served warm and Romney just proved it. So sad, I wish everyone had the courage (Trump) had,” Parscale said.

Romney and Trump have long had a complicated political relationship. The President had called Romney “irrelevant” and had bragged that he was a more successful businessman. 

When Trump was running for President in 2016, Romney called him a “phoney” and a “fraud”. In 2017, he slammed the President after the deadly white supremacist rally in Virginia for causing “racists to rejoice” and “minorities to weep”.

Romney said he would support the President in policies he thought were in the best interests of Utah or the US but speak out against actions “that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions”.

Up to 40 people are believed to be trapped under rubble in Magnitogorsk in temperatures lower than -18 degrees Celsius.

Rescuers are battling through the bitter cold in Russia’s Ural Mountains looking for survivors after a gas explosion tore through a high-rise apartment building killing at least four people.

Officials have said up to 40 people could be trapped under the rubble, at least seven of them children, after the explosion on Monday collapsed a large section of the residential building in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, some 1,700km east of the capital, Moscow.

State TV showed rescue workers combing through mangled heaps of concrete and metal at -18 degrees Celsius, but Russian officials acknowledged that the odds of finding anyone alive looked increasingly slim.

“The chances are reducing with time,” Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said when pressed by reporters on the likelihood of finding the trapped survivors.

“But incredible stories do happen.”

Witnesses told Russian television that the explosion was strong enough to shatter the windows of nearby buildings.

“I woke up and felt myself falling. The walls were gone. My mother was screaming and my son had been buried,” a witness said.

President Vladimir Putin rushed to the city, where the blast left hundreds of residents homeless in freezing temperatures on New Year’s Eve, the biggest holiday of the year in Russia.

Plunging temperatures

Authorities said rescue teams were to work through the night, with local temperatures expected to plunge to -23C.

Officials warned that two more sections of the Soviet-era high-rise on Karl Marx Street were in danger of collapsing.

Located in the mineral-rich southern Urals region, Magnitogorsk, with a population of more than 400,000 people, is home to one of the country’s largest steel producers.

The high-rise was built in 1973 and was home to around 1,100 people. The other residents of the building were moved to a nearby school.

The local governor, Boris Dubrovsky, told Putin that authorities published the missing persons’ list in the hope they were somewhere else when the explosion happened and would report their whereabouts. He promised to quickly provide new apartments for those who were left homeless.

Investigators opened a criminal probe into the accident, with the FSB security service confirming the incident as a gas explosion.

Such deadly gas explosions are relatively common in Russia where much of the infrastructure dates back to the Soviet era and safety requirements are often ignored.

Aljazeera

Reported troop entry into Manbij comes after Kurdish YPG asked for government help in preventing a ‘Turkish invasion’.

Syria’s army says it has entered the flashpoint city of Manbij, according to state media, after the country’s main Kurdish armed group invited government forces to take control of the northern area and protect it from a threatened Turkish offensive.

State-run Sana news agency said the army raised Syria’s flag in Manbij on Friday. 

It also pledged to guarantee “full security for all Syrian citizens and others present in the area”, according to Saba.

However, Reporter Mohammed Adow, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish border, said residents of Manbij dispute the Syrian army’s claim. 

“Manbij residents who we spoke to have said that they have not seen any sign of Syrian forces in their city but what we know is that Syrian government troops have already been on the outskirts of the city, where they were part of an international coalition that is fighting remnants of ISIL,” he said. 

The military declaration came moments after the People’s Protection Unit, or YPG, made an appeal to President Bashar al-Assad’s government to prevent a “Turkish invasion”.

Turkey, which views the YPG as a “terrorist” group, had threatened a military operation against Manbij to remove the Kurdish-led forces there. Turkey and its allied fighters have been amassing troops around the city in recent days.

Our correspondent said the YPG’s appeal was a “tactic by its fighters to avoid confrontation with the Turkish forces who they of course know they are no match for”.

The Turkish threats triggered the US announcement it would withdraw troops from Syria. A timetable for the withdrawal has not yet been made public.

But the surprise US decision rattled allies and the US Syrian Kurdish partners, who scrambled to find new allies to protect their Kurdish-administered areas in northern Syria.

Assad’s government has said it welcomes the Kurdish group returning under its authority.

But government officials have stated they will not consider an autonomous area, a main demand for the Kurds.

There was no immediate response from Turkey or the US.

Russia welcomed the Syrian army’s entry into Manbij.

“Of course, this will help in stabilising the situation. The enlargement of the zone under the control of government forces… is without doubt a positive trend,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Studies, said Syrian troop entry into Manbij, if confirmed, was a “significant development”. 

“It is a solution all regional powers can accept because Turkey doesn’t want US troops in Manbij, while the other players don’t want Turkish troops there,” he told media from Beirut. 

Aljazeera

Nasheman News : An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia’s Papua Barat province on Friday, officials said. There was, however, no report of any casualty.

The earthquake had an epicentre of 26 km under Manokwari town, but no tsunami warning was issued, Xinhua news agency quoted an meteorology official as saying.

No major damage or casualty has been reported, Indonesia’s national disaster management agency spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

“The tremors only triggered panic, people were rushing outside their houses. The jolts were strongly felt for five minutes,” added.

This comes days after a tsunami struck the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra on December 22, shortly after the Anak Krakatau volcano erupted in the Sunda Strait. At least 430 people were killed after the volcanic eruption triggered a massive tsunami. 

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of great seismic and volcanic activity.

Nasheman News : The Syrian air defences were triggered on Tuesday evening to a heavy Israeli missile attack that targeted areas in the countryside of the capital Damascus, media reported.

The Israeli attack was carried out from inside the Lebanese airspace, said the state TV, adding that the air defences have intercepted a number of missiles, some of which were intercepted while over Lebanon.

The residents in Damascus heard a series of explosions in the capital and saw the flaring air defence missiles chasing targets in the sky, Xinhua news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Lebanese reports said Israeli warplanes infiltrated the Lebanese airspace on Tuesday evening at the time of the attack.

The official media outlets haven’t given details about the targeted sites, but said the air defences were responding to the attack over the western countryside of Damascus.

For its side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that the Israeli missile attack targeted areas in the western and southwestern countryside of Damascus.

It said a number of missiles hit three targets, which it claimed are weapon depots that belong to the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

The Israeli attack is the latest in a string of missiles strikes targeting Syrian positions throughout the crisis over the pretext that they are targeting positions of Iranian-backed forces and allied Hezbollah fighters.

The last attack was late last month and targeted military positions in the town of Kisweh in the western countryside of Damascus.

In September, Moscow equipped Damascus with the S-300 air defence missile system, but local reports said that this advanced system hasn’t been used yet.

Nasheman News : At least 28 civilians, one police officer and three attackers were killed after a deadly explosion and ensuing gun firing rocked a government office near a diplomatic district in Afghan capital on Monday, spokesman of Ministry of Interior Affairs said on Tuesday.

Around 20 people, including three policemen, were also wounded. Figures about the casualties may change, spokesman Najib Danish said in a brief message sent to the media, Xinhua news agency reported.

The latest information found that 357 people were rescued by the Afghan Special Operations Forces from the targeted building, he said.

The attack occurred on Monday afternoon when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the targeted office, which provides service to family members of soldiers and ordinary people who lost their lives during the war or terrorist attacks.

At least two gunmen made their way inside the building after the blast, spreading bullets on the people inside before security forces’ arrival.

The attack occurred in Makruyan-e-Awal locality near Shashdarak, where several foreign embassies located.

The area also gives home to several apartment buildings and several government offices, including Afghan Ministry of Public Works.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

NIndian firm India Ports Global Limited on Monday took over the operations of the Shaheed Behesti Port at Chabahar on the southeastern coast of Iran, being jointly developed by India, Iran and Afghanistan.

The company opened its office following the first meeting of the follow-up committee for implementation of the trilateral Chabahar Agreement between India, Afghanistan and Iran at the level of Joint Secretary/ Director General, said a statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry.

“Positive and constructive discussions were held between the three sides on full operationalisation of the Trilateral Transit Agreement for international transit and transport through the Chabahar port,” the statement said.

“They agreed on the routes for the trade and transit corridors between the three countries,” it said.

“It was agreed to finalise at the earliest the protocol to harmonise transit, roads, customs, and consular matters.

“It was agreed to allow cargo movement at Chabahar using TIR Convention provisions.”

The Convention on International Transport of Goods Under Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention) is a multilateral treaty aimed at simplifying and harmonising the administrative formalities of international road transport.

TIR stands for “Transports Internationaux Routiers” or ‘International Road Transports.’

According to the ministry statement, during Monday’s meeting, it was decided to hold an event to promote and popularise the potential of Chabahar on February 26, 2019.

“Also, a study would be initiated for determining measures to make the route attractive, decrease logistic costs and pave the way for smooth operationalisation of the Chabahar Agreement,” it stated.

India is investing $500 million to develop the Chabahar port and a road link from there to Afghanistan to give access to that country, bypassing Pakistan.

The port is also a key link in the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200-km-long multi-modal network of ship, rail and road routes to move freight between India, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.

Last month, the US waived India from its fresh sanctions on Iran’s oil imports and development of the crucial Chabahar port.

Despite President Donald Trump’s animosity towards Iran, the US had to give the exemption to Chabahar to enable Indian assistance to reach Afghanistan, where Washington is mired in a 17-year war against the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and their allies.

Without access to Chabahar, Afghanistan would be forced to depend solely on Pakistan for a sea passage.

The US has pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Tehran had signed with the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union and imposed the new sanctions on Iran over its alleged nuclear programme.

Nasheman News : A “resurgent” Al Qaeda is looking to carry out terror attacks on passenger planes and airports, UK Security Minister Ben Wallace has warned following the widespread chaos at the country’s Gatwick Airport over multiple drone sightings that triggered security concerns and led to numerous flight cancellations.

In an interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times, Wallace said Al Qaeda — the group behind the World Trade Centre attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the US on September 11, 2001 — “still aspires for aviation attacks” and was developing technology to bring down airliners.

“The aviation threat is real. Al Qaeda have reorganized. They are pushing more and more plots towards Europe and have become familiar with the new methods,” he said.

The rise of the Islamic State overshadowed the Al Qaeda threat in recent years — particularly after its most prominent leader, Osama bin Laden, was taken down by the US forces in Pakistan’s Abbottabad in 2011.

But Wallace said the danger had never truly diminished. “Al Qaeda sat quietly in the corner and tried to work out what the 21st century looked like while IS became the latest terrorist boy band.” 

“But they have not gone away,” he said.

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are now active in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and other countries in the Middle East under a new generation of leaders. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s former deputy, is still its spiritual head.

Wallace said improvements in airport security meant terrorists were less likely to smuggle explosive through terminal security systems.

“They have explored other ways of getting bombs on planes. We’ve talked publicly about an insider threat issue. If you can’t get in the front door, you’re going to try to get in the back door,” he told the Times.

Wallace said British intelligence chiefs were concerned about US President Donald Tump’s decision to pull out troops from Syria and said that it will create a “new safe haven for Islamists to launch attacks on the West”.

Wallace’s statements came amid several drone sightings at Gatwick Airport over the weekend that triggered a security concern and led dozens of flights to be cancelled.

However, according to the British authorities the incident was not terror-related.