A multi-day international music festival in Lebanon said Tuesday that it’s cancelled a planned concert by a popular Mideast rock band whose lead singer is openly gay, apparently caving to pressure after weeklong calls by some Christian groups to pull the plug on the show, as well as online threats to stop it by force. Festival organizers released a statement saying the “unprecedented step” of cancelling the performance by Mashrou’ Leila was done “to prevent bloodshed and maintain peace and stability.” ”We apologize for what happened, and apologize to the public,” it added. Some church leaders and conservative politicians set off a storm of indignation on social media this week when they demanded that the Mashrou’ Leila concert be canceled, accusing the Lebanese group of blasphemy and saying some of its songs are an insult to Christianity. The band, known for its rousing music and lyrics challenging norms in the conservative Arab world, soon became the center of a heated debate about freedom of expression. Online, some groups and users posted threats suggesting they would violently stop the concert. Mashrou’ Leila was scheduled to perform in the coastal city of Byblos on Aug. 9, marking the third time the group …

South Africa says unemployment has reached its highest level in a decade at 29%. Second-quarter figures released Tuesday show the number of unemployed rose by 573,000 over the past year, with only 21,000 jobs created. It is the latest grim report for Africa’s most developed economy, which in May announced that growth had dropped by the most in a decade during the first quarter. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration is under public pressure to turn around the economy and clean up corruption. That dissatisfaction led to the worst election showing in 25 years for Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress in May. The unemployment numbers were released on the same day that South Africa’s struggling state-owned power utility Eskom announced losses of more than 20 billion rand ($1.4 billion) last fiscal year. Eskom supplies about 95% of the country’s electricity and is at the center of Ramaphosa’s efforts to rid state-owned enterprises of corruption and mismanagement. When Ramaphosa won election in May “we expected a solid emergency plan to address the economic challenges and these unemployment challenges,” Lumkile Mondi, an economics lecturer at Witwatersrand University, told The Associated Press. “But that has not been forthcoming and all we have had so far …

The U.N. human rights office criticized the Trump administration’s decision to reinstate federal executions after a 16-year hiatus, saying it bucks the national and international trend to abolish the death penalty.  The U.N. human rights office says Washington’s decision to resume executions of federal inmates on death row flies in the face of the most basic human right, that of the right to life.  It says it also is a blow to progress toward universal abolition of capital punishment. The United Nations reports around 170 of 194 U.N. member sates either have abolished the death penalty altogether in law or in practice. Human rights spokesman Rupert Colville says executing people is wrong on many levels.  He says a major concern is the risk of putting to death people who are innocent of the crime for which they are charged.  He says reports in the United States based on DNA evidence have shown that some states have put innocent people to death. “There is also really an absence of any proof that the death penalty actually serves as a deterrent, which is often given as a reason for using it,” Colville said. “And, there also, of course, are considerable concerns, especially …

A court in Moscow rejected jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s appeal for early release on health grounds on Tuesday, after he was suddenly taken ill in custody at the weekend and rushed to hospital to be treated. Navalny was jailed for 30 days last week for urging people to take part in an unauthorized opposition protest. He was hospitalized on Sunday and discharged on Monday. He has said he may have been poisoned, a suspicion shared by his lawyer and personal doctor. Navalny’s lawyer had asked the court to free him early on health grounds, saying the cell where he is being kept looked like it had been the source of his mysterious illness. …

A hacker accessed more than 100 million credit card applications with US financial heavyweight Capital One, the firm said on Monday, in one of the biggest data thefts to hit a financial services company. FBI agents arrested Paige Thompson, 33, a former Seattle technology company software engineer, after she boasted about the data theft on the information sharing site GitHub, authorities said. “The intrusion occurred through a misconfigured web application firewall that enabled access to the data,” a statement by the US attorney’s office in the northwest state of Washington said. “On July 17, 2019, a GitHub user who saw the post alerted Capital One to the possibility it had suffered a data theft.” It said the Virginia-based bank that specializes in credit cards contacted the FBI after confirming the data theft, which took place between March 12 and July 17 of this year. “According to Capital One, the data includes data regarding large numbers of [credit card] applications, likely tens of millions of applications,” according to the criminal complaint. In a statement, Capital One said the hack affected 100 million individuals in the United States and six million in Canada. “Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials …

Taha Shakouri keeps finding remote corners to play in at a Tehran children’s charity hospital, unaware that his doctors are running out of chemo medicine needed to treat the eight-year-old boy’s liver cancer. With Iran’s economy in free fall after the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported medicines have soared as the national currency tumbled about 70% against the dollar. Even medicines manufactured in Iran are tougher to come by for ordinary Iranians, their cost out of reach for many in a country where the average monthly salary is equivalent to about $450. Iran’s health system can’t keep up and many are blaming President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign for the staggering prices and shortages. The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for everything from staples and consumer goods to housing skyward, while raising the specter of war with the U.S. Taha’s mother, Laya Taghizadeh, says the hospital provides her son’s medication for free – a single treatment would otherwise cost $1,380 at a private hospital. She adds the family is deeply grateful to the doctors and the hospital staff. “We couldn’t make it without their support,” says the 30-year-old woman. …

France’s agriculture minister on Tuesday slammed US President Donald Trump’s argument behind threatened tariffs on French wines as “absurd” and “stupid,” as a row between Paris and Washington over taxing tech giants intensified. France drew an angry response from Trump when it became the first major economy to impose a tax on digital giants earlier this month. The GAFA tax — an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — aims to plug a fiscal loophole that has seen some internet heavyweights pay next to nothing in countries where they make huge profits. The US president blasted the reform and pledged to retaliate with “substantial reciprocal action on (French President Emmanuel) Macron’s foolishness” in a tweet last week. When asked if French wine could be a target, Trump replied: “Might be on wine or something else.” “I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!” added the US president, who insists he is a teetotaller, in a none too subtle threat of tariffs. “It’s absurd, as a political and economic debate, to say ‘you’re taxing the GAFAs, so we’re going to tax your wine’. It’s completely stupid,” French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume told French TV channel BFM. He also …

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Wales on Tuesday as part of a national tour intended to reassure Britons that his hard-Brexit push won’t hurt the economy and rip apart the U.K. Currency markets were far from reassured, however, as the pound slid to a new 28-month low. And Johnson faced a tough reception from farmers _ a group central to the Welsh economy who fear economic havoc if Britain leaves the European Union without a divorce deal. They say millions of sheep might have to be slaughtered if tariffs are slapped on lamb exports to the EU. “The bottom line is we’re exporting 40% of our sheep production, we are the second-largest producer of sheep meat in the world, so if we are priced … we’re tariffed out of the EU market, where does that 40% go?” said Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union. The government argues that leaving the 28-nation bloc and its rules-bound Common Agricultural Policy will be “a historic opportunity to introduce new schemes to support farming” and will open up new markets for U.K. agricultural exports. The government’s Wales Secretary Alun Cairns said “90% of global growth will come from outside of the …

An aide to Poland’s president says that President Donald Trump will visit Warsaw from Aug. 31 through Sept. 2 to take part in observances marking the 80th anniversary of World War II. It would be Trump’s second visit to Poland since July 2017. Poland is among Washington’s closest partners in Europe, with cooperation focusing on defense and energy security.   The head of President Andrzej Duda’s office, Krzysztof Szczerski, said Tuesday that Trump would arrive in Warsaw on the evening of Aug. 31.   The next day Trump will take part in ceremonies in Warsaw marking 80 years since Nazi German troops invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 starting the war.   He would depart on Sept. 2.   Trump has hosted Duda twice at the White House. …

The United Nations called for a probe into the killing of five schoolchildren at a Sudan rally as protesters piled on pressure on army rulers to transfer power ahead of talks on the country’s transition Tuesday. Protesters accused the feared paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, headed by powerful General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, of shooting dead the five teenagers at a rally held against shortages of bread and fuel in the city of Al-Obeid on Monday. The killings come as protest leaders are due to hold talks with the ruling generals on Tuesday on the remaining aspects of installing civilian rule after the two sides inked a power-sharing deal earlier this month. The UN children’s agency UNICEF called on the authorities “to investigate and hold all perpetrators of violence against children accountable”. “No child should be buried in their school uniform,” it said in a statement, saying the students killed were between 15 and 17 years old. Sudan’s military ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Tuesday condemned the shootings as an “unacceptable crime”, state television reported. “What happened in Al-Obeid is sad. Killing peaceful civilians is an unacceptable crime that needs immediate accountability,” state television quoted Burhan as telling a …

The United Nations says more Afghan civilians were killed by government and NATO-led troops than by the Taliban and other insurgent groups in the first half of 2019. The U.N.’s mission in Afghanistan released a report Monday that showed a combined 717 civilians were killed by government and international forces — an increase of 31% from the same period in 2018 — compared to 531 killed by the Taliban and other hardline Islamist groups. Most of the deaths occurred during Afghan and NATO air and ground attacks against insurgents.   The report said a total of 2,446 Afghan civilians were injured at that hands of pro-government and insurgent troops.   “Parties to the conflict may give differing explanations for recent trends, each designed to justify their own military tactics,” said Richard Bennett, the human rights chief of the U.N.’s Afghanistan Mission. He said both sides could improve the situation “not just by abiding by international humanitarian law but also by reducing the intensity of the fighting.” The United States is negotiating with Taliban on a peace deal to end the 18-year-long war, launched by the U.S. against Afghanistan’s then-ruling Taliban in response to the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terror attacks …

U.S. President Donald Trump wants combat forces reduced in Afghanistan by the next U.S. presidential election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday, in comments that underlined the growing pressure from Washington to cut troop numbers there. Trump’s South Asia strategy, unveiled in August 2017, called for an open-ended deployment of U.S. forces with the goal of compelling the Taliban to negotiate peace with the Kabul government to end nearly 18 years of war. However, Pompeo’s comments underscored a shift that has apparently taken place since talks with the Taliban opened last year. “That’s my directive from the president of the United States,” Pompeo told The Economic Club of Washington D.C. when asked whether he expects the United States to reduce troops in Afghanistan before the next election in November 2020. “He’s been unambiguous: end the endless wars, draw down, reduce. It won’t just be us,” he said, referring to Trump’s directive. “We hope that overall the need for combat forces in the region is reduced.” The disclosure of a timeline will add to speculation that Trump is prepared to strike any deal with the Taliban that will allow for at least partial U.S. withdrawal before American voters go …

Top diplomats from the Asia-Pacific region started gathering Tuesday in the Thai capital to discuss issues of concern to the area, including security on the Korean peninsula and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The meetings in Bangkok are hosted by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, chaired this year by Thailand. Thai officials say there will be 27 meetings in all through Saturday, and 31 countries and alliances will participate. The core ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting brings together the group’s top diplomats, but they are likely to be overshadowed by the big power players attending the adjunct meetings, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. The heavy-hitters in Bangkok this week include U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Other ASEAN dialogue partners include Australia, India, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. Most attention will be on these side meetings, in which ASEAN will play a supporting role, if any. A representative of North Korea will be present in Bangkok, a Thai foreign ministry spokesman said last week, though it is not clear if Pyongyang is sending its foreign …

Fresh protests erupted in India Tuesday amid growing public fury over a car crash that critically injured a teenager who accused a lawmaker from the ruling party of rape and harassment. Two of the 19-year-old’s aunts were killed and her lawyer was badly injured when a truck collided with their car in northern Uttar Pradesh state Sunday, raising suspicions of foul play.  The incident will be probed by federal investigators amid speculation that local police could favor her alleged rapist, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar. Sengar, a four-term lawmaker, has been in jail since last year but reports say he still enjoys considerable clout.  The young woman and the lawyer were battling for their lives in hospital in the state capital Lucknow Tuesday.  The teenager had accused Sengar of raping her at his home in Unnao district in 2017 but police in the notoriously lawless state initially refused to take action. Her father was detained by police and severely beaten in custody — allegedly by Sengar’s brother — and later died from his injuries. The woman also tried to set herself on fire outside the home of state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a hardline BJP stalwart. On …

A crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates will square off in a second round of debates Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the U.S., with 20 contenders looking for a breakout moment to make the case that they are the party’s best of hope of defeating President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The two debates with 10 candidates each are occurring six months ahead of the Democratic party’s first presidential nominating contests early next year. But the debates on a theater stage in Detroit, Michigan, the heart of the country’s auto industry, and nationally televised by CNN could prove pivotal in both winnowing the field, forcing the weakest challengers out of the race before the next debate in mid-September, and in solidifying the list of front-runners. Just as before the first round of debates a month ago, national polls show former Vice President Joe Biden as the leading choice among Democratic voters. Some party stalwarts say he is the more moderate, center-left, politically safe choice to take on the unpredictable Trump, whose populist base of conservative voters remains strong. A new Quinnipiac University national FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker speaks during a presidential candidates forum sponsored by …

Hundreds of people gathered Monday outside City Hall in the California city of Gilroy for a vigil honoring the victims killed and injured by a teenager who attacked a popular food festival. Those in attendance lit candles, listened to speeches from local leaders and joined in chants of “Gilroy strong.” “We cannot let the bastard that did this tear us down,” Mayor Roland Velasco said.  “Now the person that did this took something from us. They took a small town festival that has generated millions of dollars over the last 41 years. They took that from us. He took that from us.” Authorities are still trying to figure out the motive behind Sunday’s attack in this city about 170 kilometers southeast of San Francisco. The shooter, identified as 19-year-old Santino William Legan, appeared to randomly target people with an “assault-type rifle” on the last day of the Gilroy Garlic festival, according to Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee. The dead included a six-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s. Twelve other festival-goers were wounded in the attack, which ended with police killing the shooter. Smithee told reporters Monday that police responded in less than a minute after …

Two Somalia refugees living in Arizona were charged with providing support to a terror group after federal agents say they were planning to travel from Tucson to Egypt to join the Islamic State. A criminal charge unsealed Monday alleged 21-year-old Ahmed Mahad Mohamed and 20-year-old Abdi Yemani Hussein had told an undercover FBI employee that they wanted to travel to the Middle East to carry out violence and “achieve martyrdom.” Both Tucson residents, who had received government documents to travel to Egypt, were arrested Friday after they checked in for their flights and made their way through security at Tucson International Airport. Mohamed is accused of expressing an interest in beheading people, while authorities say Hussein expressed a desire to kill people in the Middle East.  Tom Hartzell, an attorney for Mohamed, didn’t return a call seeking comment on his client’s behalf. Brad Roach, attorney for Hussein, said his client is asserting his innocence and “looking forward to the legal process going forward.” Authorities say Mohamed told an undercover FBI employee during social-media exchanges that he was “thirsty” for the blood of disbelievers and that “the best wake up call is (for the) Islamic State to get victory or another …

A small Pakistani military plane crashed into a residential area near the garrison city of Rawalpindi before dawn Tuesday, killing at least 12 people, including two pilots, officials said. In a statement, the military said five soldiers were among those killed in the plane crash. Rescue officials said the death toll could rise further since there are injured in critical condition.  The military gave no details about the cause of the crash and only said an army aviation aircraft was on a routine training flight when the plane went down in the village of Mora Kalu on outskirts of Rawalpindi. TV footage showed fire erupting in the residential area. Farooq Butt, an official at the state-run emergency service called 1122, said at least 12 people, including soldiers died in the crash and that authorities had declared an emergency in hospitals. He said about 20 people were injured in the plane crash. Butt said a rescue operation was still ongoing.  An AP reporter at scene of the crash saw a burning house and some makeshift homes. Rescue officials say the plane suddenly lost control with the tower and reason for the incident was not known. …

The U.N. human rights chief calls the murder of the leader of Brazil’s indigenous Wajapi tribe “reprehensible” and demands the Brazilian government respect the integrity of indigenous territories. “The Brazilian government’s proposed policy to open up more areas of the Amazon to mining could lead to incidents of violence, intimidation and killings,” Michelle Bachelet said Monday. “When indigenous people are pushed off their lands, it is not just an economic issue. As the U.N Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes clear, it affects their entire way of life.” The body of Wajapi chief Emrya Wajapi was found in a river last week. The tribe controls part of Brazil’s northern Amapa state.  The Brazilian government set aside part of the state in the 1980s for the use of 800,000 tribespeople. But Brazil’s new far right president Jair Bolsonaro has called on other nations to exploit what he calls the “absurd quantity of minerals” in the Amazon rainforest, despite the irreversible environmental damage such actions could bring. Bolsonaro is supported by Brazilian logging, mining, and farming industries whose interest in the Amazon could lead to a “new wave of violence aimed at scaring people off their ancestral lands,” Bachelet warns. …

The deadliest time for many surgery patients isn’t when they’re on the operating table, it’s while they’re recovering in the hospital and after they go home, a new study suggests. For the study, researchers examined outcomes for more than 40,000 patients age 45 and older who underwent non-cardiac surgery at 28 hospitals in 14 countries. Researchers monitored patients for complications and deaths within 30 days of surgery. Overall, five people, or less than 1% of patients, died on the operating table, and another 500 patients, or 70%, died in the hospital. Another 210 deaths, or 29%, didn’t happen until after patients were sent home. Nearly half of all the deaths were associated with three complications: major bleeding, heart damage, and bloodstream infections. “Many families anxiously wait to hear from the surgeon whether their loved one survived the operation, but our research demonstrates that very few of the deaths occur in the operating room,” said Dr. P.J. Devereaux, senior author of the study and director of the Division of Perioperative Care at McMaster University in Canada. “Our research now demonstrates that there is a need to focus on postoperative care and transitional care into the home setting to improve outcomes,” Devereaux …

Tom Barrack, a billionaire friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, pursued a plan to buy Westinghouse Electric Corp even as he lobbied Trump to become a special envoy to promote the building by the firm of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia, said a congressional report released on Monday. While Barrack failed in both efforts, the report provides fresh evidence of the ease with which some corporate and foreign interests have gained access to Trump and other senior members of his administration. Documents obtained by the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee raise “serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons,” the report said. The report is the second from the panel’s investigation into the plan to construct 40 nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. The plan was supported by Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, Barrack, Trump’s inaugural committee chairman, and a consortium of firms led by retired U.S. military commanders and former White House officials called IP3. One company was Westinghouse, …

The unprecedented resignation of Puerto Rico’s governor after days of massive island-wide protests has thrown the U.S. territory into a full-blown political crisis. Less than four days before Gov. Ricardo Rossello steps down, no one knows who will take his place. Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, his constitutional successor, said Sunday that she didn’t want the job. The next in line would be Education Secretary Eligio Hernandez, a largely unknown bureaucrat with little political experience. Rossello’s party says it wants him to nominate a successor before he steps down, but Rossello has said nothing about his plans, time is running out and some on the island are even talking about the need for more federal control over a territory whose finances are already overseen from Washington. FILE – Demonstrators march on Las Americas highway demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rossello, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 22, 2019. Rossello resigned following nearly two weeks of daily protests in which hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans took to the streets, mounted horses and jet skis, organized a twerkathon and came up with other creative ways to demand his ouster. On Monday, protesters were to gather once again, but this time to …

For weeks, Turkey has been amassing its troops near its border with Syria for what appears to be an imminent attack against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces that Ankara views as terrorists. In this border town in northern Syria, locals say such an attack could throw the already-volatile region into further instability. While the situation may seem calm at the moment, residents in Amude say they have been living in constant fear since the Turkish military has recently increased its threats to carry out an offensive against this Kurdish enclave that is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his ruling party members, in Ankara, Turkey, July 26, 2019. “Terror corridor” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week that his country is determined to destroy “to pieces” what he called a “terror corridor” in northern Syria. Turkey views the SDF and its political wing, the PYD, as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization. Kurdish fighters affiliated with the SDF, however, have played an effective role in the ongoing U.S.-led fight against Islamic State militants in Syria. FILE – In this April1 14, 2018, file …

Ethiopians planted more than 350 million trees in one day, officials say, in what they believe is a world record. Ethiopia’s minister of innovation and technology, Getahun Mekuria, tweeted estimates of the number of trees being planted throughout the day Monday. By early evening, he said 353,633,660 tree seedlings were planted in 12 hours. 353,633,660 Tree Seedlings Planted in 12 Hours. This is in #Ethiopians Regional Shares of Trees Planted today.#PMOEthiopia#GreenLegacyEthiopiapic.twitter.com/2BkTDtYedC — Dr.-Ing. Getahun Mekuria (@DrGetahun) July 29, 2019 The massive effort is part of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Green Legacy Initiative, which aims to plant more than 4 billion trees between May and October, or 40 trees per person.  The campaign aims to reverse the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drought-prone country. According to the United Nations, Ethiopia’s forest coverage was just 4% in the 2000s, down from 35% a century earlier. Besides ordinary Ethiopians, various international organizations and the business community also joined the exercise, which aims to surpass India’s record planting of 66 million trees in 12 hours in 2017. …