Dominican tourism official vows 'disciplinary action' if U.S. tourist death probe finds negligence - Fox News

The Dominican Republic's tourism minister said on Friday that if the investigation into the rash of deaths of U.S. tourists finds wrongdoing or negligence, those responsible will face "disciplinary measures to fit their actions."

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia expressed confidence that the deaths were all rooted in natural causes and insisted that it is safe to vacation there.

"We wish these things didn't happen," he said. "But unfortunately, they do. ... That's why we're interested in knowing what happened to them."

Garcia stressed that autopsy reports that were done following the deaths of most of the tourists showed that there was nothing nefarious, and acknowledged the toxicological tests the FBI is conducting in its research center in Quantico, Va., in the deaths of three Americans who died in their rooms at Bahia Principe resorts.

"If there's something that went wrong, we will take the disciplinary measures that are warranted," Garcia said. "We will make whatever decision we must make if there's been negligence of any kind. We will act."

The FBI told Fox News on Friday that it has sent a team to the Dominican Republic to investigate the deaths.

Earlier in the day, Garcia held a press conference to make the case that the popular Caribbean vacation spot is safe and that it did not deserve the negative attention triggered by worldwide headlines about the rash of U.S. tourist deaths. The Dominican Republic has signed a $35,000 monthly contract with the New York-based Rubenstein public relations powerhouse to fight the negative publicity.

As Dominican officials tried to quell rising concerns among would-be travelers worldwide about safety there, the State Department on Friday confirmed to Fox News the June 17 death of a New York business owner, Vittorio Caruso, 56, who died after becoming critically ill at the Boca Chica Resort in Santo Domingo.

Vittorio Caruso, 56, of Glen Cove, N.Y. (Courtesy of Lisa Caruso)

Caruso's death is the third in a seven-day span in June, and he's the 11th American tourist to die in the Dominican Republic since last year. The case of another tourist, a woman from Pennsylvania who died in 2016 under similar circumstances, was made public by her family this past week after they read about the others and detected common threads.

The two other U.S. tourists who died this month are Leyla Cox, a 53-year-old hospital MRI technician from New York who was found dead in her hotel room on June 10, and Joseph Allen, 55, from New Jersey, who died in his room on June 13.

Caruso's sister-in-law, Lisa Maria Caruso, told Fox News that Vittorio was in good health and had owned and operated a pizzeria in New York with his brother until a month ago. She said that he'd traveled alone to the Dominican Republic.

DAUGHTER OF ARMY VET WHO DIED AT DOMINICAN RESORT: FUNERAL HOME 'PRESSURED' ME TO MAKE A DECISION ABOUT MY FATHER'S REMAINS

"We found out he was brought by ambulance to the hospital in respiratory distress after drinking something," Caruso said. "We were told he wasn't responding to any meds he was given and died. I honestly don't know exactly what happened, as we have been told conflicting stories from different people there."

"It is very hard to get a straight story from anyone there," she said, adding that relatives are awaiting the autopsy report. "They even wanted to cremate the body. We insisted on having the body sent back here."

"This was a complete shock to us, as Vittorio was not a sick person," Caruso said. "He was expected to return home on June 27."

Chris Palmer with granddaughter Ruby (Courtesy of Bernadette Hiller)

On Thursday, Garcia told Fox News that the Tourism Ministry has tested the alcohol, food, water, kitchens and other areas of the resorts where U.S. tourists have died. He said the results of those tests could be known as soon as Monday.

From the outset, Dominican officials have denounced the characterization of the deaths as mysterious or in some way linked.

"There are no mysterious deaths here," Garcia said in the Friday interview with Fox News."'Mysterious' implies that things happened that science cannot explain."

Garcia struck a sympathetic tone when asked what he would tell the deceased tourists' relatives, who have uniformly told stories of being given the run-around by resort workers and government officials as they've tried to learn more about what happened.

JUAN WILLIAMS: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HASN'T 'BEEN TRANSPARENT OR CLEAR' AMID RESORT DEATHS

Like Caruso, the relatives have said that the tourists, who range in age from 41 to 78, were in relatively good health and showed no signs of illness prior to traveling to the Dominican Republic. The deaths have been described as happening following a sudden and rapidly worsening onset of symptoms.

Several tourists died shortly after consuming a minibar drink.

"To the people who have lost loved ones here, we want to say that when we learned about each one, it's been the worst news we have received," Garcia said. "When those people come to the Dominican Republic, just like when someone goes on vacation, you go happy, your family expects to see you again. When this happens, there's pain and a sense of tragedy. The pain and the tragedy, we feel it [too]."

But Garcia took pains to emphasize that the Dominican Republic is one of the safest vacation spots in the world.

Will Cox and his mother, Leyla Cox (Courtesy of Will Cox)

“We’ve become the favorite destination for Americans first because of how we treat them," he said, "second, because of the natural resources God blessed the Dominican Republic with, and third, because of the excellent hotels and resorts, of which are of a standard above that of facilities in other countries.”

Attorneys and relatives of the U.S. tourists assailed efforts by Dominican officials to depict the deaths as an unfortunate twist of fate and promote the country as a desirable vacation spot. Some are moving to have independent autopsies and toxicological tests done in the United States.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC OFFICIALS DOWNPLAY SPATE OF AMERICAN TOURIST DEATHS IN CARIBBEAN NATION

Steve Bullock, an attorney representing the families of Edward Holmes, 63, and his fiance Cynthia Day, 47, who both were found dead in their room on May 30 at the five-star Grand Bahia Principe La Romana resort, said: "That kind of reckless statement is repulsive and repugnant. We will let the facts and medical reports tell the story."

Holmes and Day will be buried next week, Bullock said.

In an interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Meghan Arnold --whose father Chris Palmer, an Army veteran, was found dead in his resort room on April 18, 2018--said that she is shocked that Dominican officials appear to resist seeing the rash of deaths of otherwise healthy people as mysterious.

"Honestly I have no words," she said when Faulkner asked for her reaction to the tourism minister's press conference. "I don't understand how somebody can see --what is this, 11 deaths now? They all have somewhat of the same [offical cause of death], they're all in the same area. He's claiming that 'You know, this can happen anywhere,' and I completely agree. Heart attacks can happen anywhere. Bad things can happen anywhere. But where else are we seeing eleven cases of almost the same thing in the same area as we're seeing in the Dominican Republic?"

"I'm just fighting to find answers," Arnold said. "I feel for all of these other families because I know how hard this process is and I just feel that we all need to work together as a team, [let's] come forward and report these. Tell your story and let's work together to get it figured out...because nobody deserves this."

Garcia said that statistically, the Dominican Republic has far fewer U.S. tourist deaths than other countries.

The US State Department website shows that between 2012 to 2018, 128 Americans died in the Dominican Republic from something other than natural causes. Dominican officials have been highlighting that statistic to argue that the country is safe, given that more than 2 million U.S. tourists visit there each year.

What is not clear, however, is how many U.S. tourists die of what Dominican authorities document as natural causes -- the focus of the worldwide headlines.

When asked by Fox News on repeated occasions what the annual number of such deaths is, neither the U.S. State Department nor Dominican authorities has provided them.

Dominican authorities and U.S. intelligence and public health experts say that ultimately, the FBI report on toxicology results, as well as tests relatives are having done here, will shed critical light on what caused the spate of deaths.

Former FBI special agent Manny Gomez said on Fox News that while, as Dominican officials have stressed, people do die on vacation all over the world, the similarities of the U.S. tourists deaths seem extraordinary. In nearly every case, the cause of death was deemed to be a heart attack, and many of the tourists consumed a beverage before dying. Particularly odd was the death of Holmes and Day at the same time in their room.

"I see something that's happening that's very suspicious," Gomez said. "These deaths have occurred in different resorts, it just hasn't been one resort, it's been at several different resorts in a short amount of time."

Gomez theorized it could be alcohol laced with methanol, "or another poisonous substance."

He said that would be "criminal in nature because people have been hurt and dying, there are dozens of people who've gotten severely ill, worse than that we don't know how many other bad batches are out there."

"That is why the FBI is there," Gomez said. "The next phase in the investigation if they identify that there's a toxic substance they have to find out where it came from and stop it, [find out] where it came from and who is responsible. The Dominican Republic needs to let the FBI do the good work that they do."

Garcia said they requested help from the FBI because they lack the resources that the agency has in the U.S.

"We're interested in knowing what caused" the deaths, he said.

Meanwhile, social media is filled with debates about whether there should be concern about vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Many said they were canceling reservations, but many others said they believe that the deaths were just fate and that the island is safe.

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2019-06-22 08:12:16Z
52780318063495

Dominican tourism official vows 'disciplinary action' if U.S. tourist death probe finds negligence - Fox News

The Dominican Republic's tourism minister said on Friday that if the investigation into the rash of deaths of U.S. tourists finds wrongdoing or negligence, those responsible will face "disciplinary measures to fit their actions."

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia expressed confidence that the deaths were all rooted in natural causes and insisted that it is safe to vacation there.

"We wish these things didn't happen," he said. "But unfortunately, they do. ... That's why we're interested in knowing what happened to them."

Garcia stressed that autopsy reports that were done following the deaths of most of the tourists showed that there was nothing nefarious, and acknowledged the toxicological tests the FBI is conducting in its research center in Quantico, Va., in the deaths of three Americans who died in their rooms at Bahia Principe resorts.

"If there's something that went wrong, we will take the disciplinary measures that are warranted," Garcia said. "We will make whatever decision we must make if there's been negligence of any kind. We will act."

The FBI told Fox News on Friday that it has sent a team to the Dominican Republic to investigate the deaths.

Earlier in the day, Garcia held a press conference to make the case that the popular Caribbean vacation spot is safe and that it did not deserve the negative attention triggered by worldwide headlines about the rash of U.S. tourist deaths. The Dominican Republic has signed a $35,000 monthly contract with the New York-based Rubenstein public relations powerhouse to fight the negative publicity.

As Dominican officials tried to quell rising concerns among would-be travelers worldwide about safety there, the State Department on Friday confirmed to Fox News the June 17 death of a New York business owner, Vittorio Caruso, 56, who died after becoming critically ill at the Boca Chica Resort in Santo Domingo.

Vittorio Caruso, 56, of Glen Cove, N.Y. (Courtesy of Lisa Caruso)

Caruso's death is the third in a seven-day span in June, and he's the 11th American tourist to die in the Dominican Republic since last year. The case of another tourist, a woman from Pennsylvania who died in 2016 under similar circumstances, was made public by her family this past week after they read about the others and detected common threads.

The two other U.S. tourists who died this month are Leyla Cox, a 53-year-old hospital MRI technician from New York who was found dead in her hotel room on June 10, and Joseph Allen, 55, from New Jersey, who died in his room on June 13.

Caruso's sister-in-law, Lisa Maria Caruso, told Fox News that Vittorio was in good health and had owned and operated a pizzeria in New York with his brother until a month ago. She said that he'd traveled alone to the Dominican Republic.

DAUGHTER OF ARMY VET WHO DIED AT DOMINICAN RESORT: FUNERAL HOME 'PRESSURED' ME TO MAKE A DECISION ABOUT MY FATHER'S REMAINS

"We found out he was brought by ambulance to the hospital in respiratory distress after drinking something," Caruso said. "We were told he wasn't responding to any meds he was given and died. I honestly don't know exactly what happened, as we have been told conflicting stories from different people there."

"It is very hard to get a straight story from anyone there," she said, adding that relatives are awaiting the autopsy report. "They even wanted to cremate the body. We insisted on having the body sent back here."

"This was a complete shock to us, as Vittorio was not a sick person," Caruso said. "He was expected to return home on June 27."

Chris Palmer with granddaughter Ruby (Courtesy of Bernadette Hiller)

On Thursday, Garcia told Fox News that the Tourism Ministry has tested the alcohol, food, water, kitchens and other areas of the resorts where U.S. tourists have died. He said the results of those tests could be known as soon as Monday.

From the outset, Dominican officials have denounced the characterization of the deaths as mysterious or in some way linked.

"There are no mysterious deaths here," Garcia said in the Friday interview with Fox News."'Mysterious' implies that things happened that science cannot explain."

Garcia struck a sympathetic tone when asked what he would tell the deceased tourists' relatives, who have uniformly told stories of being given the run-around by resort workers and government officials as they've tried to learn more about what happened.

JUAN WILLIAMS: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HASN'T 'BEEN TRANSPARENT OR CLEAR' AMID RESORT DEATHS

Like Caruso, the relatives have said that the tourists, who range in age from 41 to 78, were in relatively good health and showed no signs of illness prior to traveling to the Dominican Republic. The deaths have been described as happening following a sudden and rapidly worsening onset of symptoms.

Several tourists died shortly after consuming a minibar drink.

"To the people who have lost loved ones here, we want to say that when we learned about each one, it's been the worst news we have received," Garcia said. "When those people come to the Dominican Republic, just like when someone goes on vacation, you go happy, your family expects to see you again. When this happens, there's pain and a sense of tragedy. The pain and the tragedy, we feel it [too]."

But Garcia took pains to emphasize that the Dominican Republic is one of the safest vacation spots in the world.

Will Cox and his mother, Leyla Cox (Courtesy of Will Cox)

“We’ve become the favorite destination for Americans first because of how we treat them," he said, "second, because of the natural resources God blessed the Dominican Republic with, and third, because of the excellent hotels and resorts, of which are of a standard above that of facilities in other countries.”

Attorneys and relatives of the U.S. tourists assailed efforts by Dominican officials to depict the deaths as an unfortunate twist of fate and promote the country as a desirable vacation spot. Some are moving to have independent autopsies and toxicological tests done in the United States.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC OFFICIALS DOWNPLAY SPATE OF AMERICAN TOURIST DEATHS IN CARIBBEAN NATION

Steve Bullock, an attorney representing the families of Edward Holmes, 63, and his fiance Cynthia Day, 47, who both were found dead in their room on May 30 at the five-star Grand Bahia Principe La Romana resort, said: "That kind of reckless statement is repulsive and repugnant. We will let the facts and medical reports tell the story."

Holmes and Day will be buried next week, Bullock said.

In an interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Meghan Arnold --whose father Chris Palmer, an Army veteran, was found dead in his resort room on April 18, 2018--said that she is shocked that Dominican officials appear to resist seeing the rash of deaths of otherwise healthy people as mysterious.

"Honestly I have no words," she said when Faulkner asked for her reaction to the tourism minister's press conference. "I don't understand how somebody can see --what is this, 11 deaths now? They all have somewhat of the same [offical cause of death], they're all in the same area. He's claiming that 'You know, this can happen anywhere,' and I completely agree. Heart attacks can happen anywhere. Bad things can happen anywhere. But where else are we seeing eleven cases of almost the same thing in the same area as we're seeing in the Dominican Republic?"

"I'm just fighting to find answers," Arnold said. "I feel for all of these other families because I know how hard this process is and I just feel that we all need to work together as a team, [let's] come forward and report these. Tell your story and let's work together to get it figured out...because nobody deserves this."

Garcia said that statistically, the Dominican Republic has far fewer U.S. tourist deaths than other countries.

The US State Department website shows that between 2012 to 2018, 128 Americans died in the Dominican Republic from something other than natural causes. Dominican officials have been highlighting that statistic to argue that the country is safe, given that more than 2 million U.S. tourists visit there each year.

What is not clear, however, is how many U.S. tourists die of what Dominican authorities document as natural causes -- the focus of the worldwide headlines.

When asked by Fox News on repeated occasions what the annual number of such deaths is, neither the U.S. State Department nor Dominican authorities has provided them.

Dominican authorities and U.S. intelligence and public health experts say that ultimately, the FBI report on toxicology results, as well as tests relatives are having done here, will shed critical light on what caused the spate of deaths.

Former FBI special agent Manny Gomez said on Fox News that while, as Dominican officials have stressed, people do die on vacation all over the world, the similarities of the U.S. tourists deaths seem extraordinary. In nearly every case, the cause of death was deemed to be a heart attack, and many of the tourists consumed a beverage before dying. Particularly odd was the death of Holmes and Day at the same time in their room.

"I see something that's happening that's very suspicious," Gomez said. "These deaths have occurred in different resorts, it just hasn't been one resort, it's been at several different resorts in a short amount of time."

Gomez theorized it could be alcohol laced with methanol, "or another poisonous substance."

He said that would be "criminal in nature because people have been hurt and dying, there are dozens of people who've gotten severely ill, worse than that we don't know how many other bad batches are out there."

"That is why the FBI is there," Gomez said. "The next phase in the investigation if they identify that there's a toxic substance they have to find out where it came from and stop it, [find out] where it came from and who is responsible. The Dominican Republic needs to let the FBI do the good work that they do."

Garcia said they requested help from the FBI because they lack the resources that the agency has in the U.S.

"We're interested in knowing what caused" the deaths, he said.

Meanwhile, social media is filled with debates about whether there should be concern about vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Many said they were canceling reservations, but many others said they believe that the deaths were just fate and that the island is safe.

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https://www.foxnews.com/world/dominican-tourism-official-vows-disciplinary-action-if-u-s-tourist-deaths-probe-finds-negligence

2019-06-22 07:50:58Z
52780318063495

What You Need to Know About the Iran Crisis - The New York Times

What happened — or did not happen — last night?

President Trump on Thursday approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for shooting down an unmanned American surveillance drone. The American operation was to be carried out before sunrise against Iranian military sites to avoid human casualties, which would have been around 9 p.m. Thursday Eastern Daylight Time.

Throughout the day on Thursday, Mr. Trump was not specific about how he planned to respond to Iran’s strike, which American officials say happened over international waters while Iran asserts the drone was in its airspace. Mr. Trump responded to questions with wait-and-see answers and also suggested that the Iranian attack was a mistake. Around 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were prepared for a strike, and the operation was underway.

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights,” Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post on Friday morning.

Then, Mr. Trump called it off.

[Trump stopped the strike on Iran because it was “not proportionate.”]

What started the latest crisis?

The United States and Iran have a long history of tensions, but the latest escalation started when American officials blamed Iran for attacking two oil tankers on June 13 in or near the Strait of Hormuz, a major thoroughfare for transporting much of the world’s oil.

Days later, the Pentagon authorized the deployment of an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East with surveillance and military equipment, intended to serve as a deterrent to Iran. In April, the Trump administration also designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization and in May imposed even tighter sanctions on Tehran’s aluminum, iron and copper industries, sectors that make up about a tenth of its exports, according to the Trump administration.

Earlier this week, Tehran said it would soon violate a significant piece of the 2015 international agreement designed to contain Iran’s nuclear program. The countries in the pact had agreed to reduce economic sanctions on Iran as long as Iran held up its end of the deal, which includes curbing its uranium enrichment activities. Iran said it would soon violate the limit on uranium stockpiling.

Under Mr. Trump, the United States in 2018 backed out of the Iran deal, though it remains in force with five other countries. Trump administration has reinstated crushing economic sanctions and pressured other countries to do the same, leaving Iran’s economy in serious trouble.

[Here’s a timeline showing the escalation between the United States and Iran.]

Why did Mr. Trump call off the strike?

The president on Friday said the prospect of casualties stopped him. An attack with the potential to kill 150 people, he said, was not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned American aircraft.

How soon was the attack canceled?

Mr. Trump said he called off the strike with 10 minutes to spare. No missiles had been fired, but American military planes were in the air and ships were in position, a senior administration official said. Officials said the operation was to be carried out in the early morning hours on Friday, which would have been around 9 p.m. Thursday in Washington.

Is this crisis affecting anything else?

Some international airlines on Friday diverted planes flying over parts of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, and the Federal Aviation Administration gave an emergency order early Friday, banning all American flights in Tehran-controlled airspace above the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman because of “heightened military activities and increased political tensions.”

Oil prices for Brent crude, the international standard, rose about 5.8 percent since the American drone was shot down. It was trading at about $64.80 a barrel on Friday morning, which is below the recent high in mid-May when prices were about $72 a barrel.

About a third of the world’s crude oil and other petroleum products is carried by tankers that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, described by one federal agency as one of the most important oil choke points in the world. The body of water separates the United Arab Emirates and Oman from Iran and sees dozens of ships pass through each day.

Would this have been the president’s first military action in the Middle East?

No. Mr. Trump struck twice at targets in Syria in 2017 and 2018 in response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons. The operation against Iran would have been his third in the region. Among his campaign promises was a vow to get the United States out of conflicts in the Middle East.

Does the president need congressional approval to start a war with Iran?

Not necessarily, but some members of Congress have asked Mr. Trump to seek congressional authorization.

The Constitution gives Congress the decision of whether to declare war, but government lawyers have argued that the president alone can order attacks if it is in self-defense or if the attacks would benefit American interests.

What does Iran hope to accomplish with these escalations?

It wants its economy, crippled by sanctions, to improve.

That objective was at the heart of the 2015 nuclear deal: As Iran complied with international demands for limiting its nuclear program, sanctions against the country would decrease over time. But that changed when the United States backed out of the deal and resumed the economic squeeze.

Some experts view Iran’s recent aggressions as part of strategy to provoke the United States into action and to pressure American allies in Europe and Asia — countries already uneasy about the escalating tensions — to reign in the world superpower and force the Trump administration back to the negotiating table. The strategy, however, carries significant risks: total collapse of the nuclear agreement and possibly war.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/us-iran-news.html

2019-06-21 15:23:59Z
52780317816762

Trump abruptly cancels military strike against Iran - CBS This Morning

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqKg8zNvSY

2019-06-21 15:11:56Z
52780317816762

Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack.

....On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019

....proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues oil sales, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episode was evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was hit, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down on Thursday evening, it was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

The Iranian government on Friday denied a report by Reuters that Mr. Trump warned Iran about an imminent attack Thursday night by sending a message to Tehran’s leaders through contacts in Oman. A senior administration official said the Pentagon did propose sending such a message but that John Bolton, the national security adviser, rejected the idea. It was not clear why Mr. Bolton objected.

This is not the first time that the United States and Iran have had conflicting accounts of American military actions near Iran.

On July 3, 1988, the Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. The Defense Department initially denied that the Vincennes had shot it down. Then the Pentagon said that the Vincennes was in international waters and that the jet was descending toward the ship in a threatening manner. The Defense Department also said it radioed the plane repeatedly in warning.

The first two assertions turned out to be false and the last assertion irrelevant because the Navy was using a frequency rarely checked by passenger jets. In 1996, the United States, expressing “deep regret,” agreed to pay $61.8 million to the families of the people on the plane.

Also on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order barring American airlines from flying in airspace controlled by Iran over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The F.A.A. said the order was because of “heightened military activities and increased political tensions.”

Several carriers, including United Airlines and Lufthansa, a German airline, quickly suspended routes that fly through that airspace. United flies from Newark, N.J., to Mumbai along a route that takes the plane over Iran.

Mr. Trump made his decisions about a military strike Thursday night without the advice of a permanent defense secretary, the senior civilian official presidents usually lean on during times of such crises.

The position has been formally vacant since Jim Mattis left at the end of 2018, declaring in his resignation letter that Mr. Trump deserves “a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” about how to treat allies with respect, and other issues.

Patrick M. Shanahan, the Pentagon’s deputy, had been serving as the acting secretary but withdrew from consideration for the post this week amid revelations about his divorce and an ongoing F.B.I. investigation into episodes of family violence.

Mr. Shanahan has not yet left the position, but he will be replaced over coming days by Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, who the president said would take over as acting secretary of defense. Mr. Trump plans to nominate Mr. Esper to permanently serve as defense secretary, according to administration officials.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:56:05Z
52780317816762

Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack.

....On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019

....proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues oil sales, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episode was evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was hit, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down on Thursday evening, it was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

The Iranian government on Friday denied a report by Reuters that Mr. Trump warned Iran about an imminent attack Thursday night by sending a message to Tehran’s leaders through contacts in Oman. A senior administration official said the Pentagon did propose sending such a message but that John Bolton, the national security adviser, rejected the idea. It was not clear why Mr. Bolton objected.

This is not the first time that the United States and Iran have had conflicting accounts of American military actions near Iran.

On July 3, 1988, the Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. The Defense Department initially denied that the Vincennes had shot it down. Then the Pentagon said that the Vincennes was in international waters and that the jet was descending toward the ship in a threatening manner. The Defense Department also said it radioed the plane repeatedly in warning.

The first two assertions turned out to be false and the last assertion irrelevant because the Navy was using a frequency rarely checked by passenger jets. In 1996, the United States, expressing “deep regret,” agreed to pay $61.8 million to the families of the people on the plane.

Also on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order barring American airlines from flying in airspace controlled by Iran over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The F.A.A. said the order was because of “heightened military activities and increased political tensions.”

Several carriers, including United Airlines and Lufthansa, a German airline, quickly suspended routes that fly through that airspace. United flies from Newark, N.J., to Mumbai along a route that takes the plane over Iran.

Mr. Trump made his decisions about a military strike Thursday night without the advice of a permanent defense secretary, the senior civilian official presidents usually lean on during times of such crises.

The position has been formally vacant since Jim Mattis left at the end of 2018, declaring in his resignation letter that Mr. Trump deserves “a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” about how to treat allies with respect, and other issues.

Patrick M. Shanahan, the Pentagon’s deputy, had been serving as the acting secretary but withdrew from consideration for the post this week amid revelations about his divorce and an ongoing F.B.I. investigation into episodes of family violence.

Mr. Shanahan has not yet left the position, but he will be replaced over coming days by Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, who the president said would take over as acting secretary of defense. Mr. Trump plans to nominate Mr. Esper to permanently serve as defense secretary, according to administration officials.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:48:49Z
52780317816762

'Wolf Pack' found guilty of rape by Spain's Supreme Court - CNN International

The men were convicted of sexual abuse but cleared of gang rape charges in December 2018 for their attack on a teenage girl, which happened at the 2016 running of the bulls in Pamplona.

The country's highest court has now reversed that decision, upgrading their conviction and dealing a long-awaited victory to the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets throughout the case.

Defendants Jose Angel Prenda Martinez, Angel Boza Florido, Jesus Escudero Dominguez, Antonio Manuel Guerrero Escudero and Alfonso Jesus Cabezuelo Entrena -- known as the Wolf Pack after the name of a WhatsApp group they spoke on -- recorded cellphone video of their encounter in July 2016 with the woman, then 18.

Four of the men were arrested after the Friday ruling, police told CNN, leaving just one at large.

The case shocked the nation and prompted widespread outrage, which was ultimately diverted towards Spain's judicial system, and a change in the law, once the men were cleared of rape and released on bail.

The original ruling had been made on the grounds that Spanish law requires evidence of physical violence or intimidation to prove a rape charge, a stipulation that has since been brought into question.

Prosecutors had called on the Supreme Court to upgrade the sentence, and the court agreed that the victim had indeed faced intimidation. "The factual account describes an intimidating scenario, in which the victim in no way consents to the sexual acts carried out by the accused," the court said.

Antonio Manuel Guerrero Escudero received an extra two years, as he was also found guilty of the theft of the victim's phone.

According to court documents, WhatsApp messages circulated to the group by one of the defendants included "us five are ****ing one girl," "there is more than what I'm telling you," "a ****ing amazing trip" and "there is video."

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/europe/spain-wolf-pack-rape-verdict-intl/index.html

2019-06-21 14:49:00Z
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