Democrats and liberal advocacy groups, however, sense an opportunity to galvanize voters by turning the issue around on vulnerable Republican incumbents, especially in races where suburban women could be a pivotal voting bloc. And over the last week they have bolstered their efforts.Naral, an abortion rights group, on Monday said it would spend $1 million on an ad campaign attacking seven House Republicans. “Right now, women are under attack,” says the first ad in the campaign, which is directed at Representative Peter Roskam, whose highly competitive district includes the affluent suburbs west of Chicago. So far, Mr. Roskam has said little about the Kavanaugh confirmation.House Democrats are also intent on making Republicans own the Kavanaugh confirmation. In a letter to colleagues on Monday, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, issued a rallying cry: “We must not agonize, we must organize. People must vote.”Many Republicans appear wary of the risks of being drawn into the debate, which has been inflamed by a president who is quite unpopular in their states. John Cox, the Republican nominee for governor in California, would not take a position on Justice Kavanaugh when asked about it during a debate on Monday with his opponent, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. “I’m not going to get in the middle of that,” Mr. Cox said.On Monday, President Trump called the allegations by Justice Kavanaugh’s accusers “a hoax” and “fabricated,” echoing the language he has used when damaging charges were leveled at him. “It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil,” Mr. Trump added.Though few Republicans have gone that far, many have had no problems adopting the president’s aggressive language.

19:54 | 01/23/18 | NR | CC Democrats accuse Trump of not holding up his end of the bargain on DACA deal; 'The Shape of Water' racks up 13 Oscar nominations, including best picture Continue Reading

Although Donald Trump did not name the targets of his racists tweets on 14 July, it was clear the attack was directed at a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Only Omar, who is from Somalia, was not born in the US. Pressley is African American, Tlaib was born to Palestinian immigrants and Ocasio-Cortez comes from a New York-Puerto Rican family.While many were quick to criticise the president, Republicans mostly defended Trump against charges of racism. Several days later, lawmakers passed a resolution condemning his tweets – though this was approved along mostly partisan lines, with only four Republicans joining Democrats in condemning the president’s racism. The Guardian US reporter Jamiles Lartey talks to Anushka Asthana about Trump’s history of racism, while the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, looks as how it will affect the 2020 presidential race. And: Ellie Geranmayeh on the crisis in the Gulf after Iran seized a British oil tanker.

US president Donald Trump was roundly criticized last month for his failure to condemn the white supremacist rally and the killing of a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia in August by a man who drove through a crowd of counter-protestors. After Trump argued there were bad people and “fine people” on “both sides,” his business council disbanded, and even members of his own party and some in his own cabinet expressed disapproval.But his statement seems to have brought about one of the few bipartisan measures of Trump’s presidency so far, and marks a significant moment for the government’s approach to white supremacism in the US. While the US Congress has been bitterly divided over everything from healthcare to Trump’s White House nominees, Republicans and Democrats quickly banded together to write and pass a new law to condemn the “violence and domestic terrorist attack” on Aug. 11 that left a counter-protester, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, dead, as well as two Virginia State police officers who died in a helicopter crash. The Senate introduced the bill on September 6, and less that two weeks later it was on the president’s desk.On Thursday, September 14, 2017, the president signed into law S.J. Res. 49, which:condemns the violence and domestic terrorist attack that took place during events between August 11 and August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, recognizing the first responders who lost their lives while monitoring the events, offering deepest condolences to the families and friends of those individuals who were killed and deepest sympathies and support to those individuals who were injured by the violence, expressing support for the Charlottesville community, rejecting White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups, and urging the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.Calling an attack by a white man (Heyer’s killer, James Alex Fields, is a 20-year-old from Ohio who had publicly supported Nazism) “domestic terror” is an important turning point in the US. Such attacks by the far-right are rarely labeled terrorism in the media, or by elected officials.Far-right extremists have carried out more attacks in the US than Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001, although attacks by Islamic extremists have been more deadly, according to data from the US Government Accountability Office.It’s notable, however, that Trump didn’t spend any time publicizing the bipartisan success of the bill. The White House put out a brief statement, but the same day he signed it, Trump seemed to reiterate the stance on Charlottesville that turned so many people against him. “You’ve got some very bad people on the other side also,” he said, referring to those protesting against white supremacists.Then, on Friday morning, Trump promised to take a hard line on immigrants and railed against the sports network ESPN on Twitter. ESPN is “paying a big price” for its “politics and programming” he wrote—an apparent reference to the channel’s refusal to fire African American journalist Jemele Hill. Hill earlier referred to Trump as a “white supremacist” on Twitter, and the White House said this week she should be fired.In signing the Sept. 14 law, Trump appears to be trying to placate his critics, and show that he condemns the nationalists and white supremacists that support him. But on Twitter and in person, he’s sending a different signal.

White nationalists have staged a rally near the White House in Washington, but were far outnumbered by counter-protesters.About 20 far-right supporters attended the demonstration, which came a year after violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one person dead.Hundreds of chanting opponents staged their own rally nearby, denouncing white supremacy and racism.The two sides were kept apart by a heavy police presence.About 400 people had initially been expected at the "Unite the Right 2" rally but on the day nowhere near that number took part.The white nationalists were escorted by police officers to Lafayette Square, in front of the White House, and were heckled along the route by a larger group of counter-protesters chanting "shame" and "get out of my city". Charlottesville: 'A battle for the soul of America' The rise of the alt-right Tight security was in place and authorities banned all firearms from the area.After about two hours, under heavy rain, the rally ended and supporters were escorted out of the area in two police vans.A larger group of counter-protesters meanwhile gathered at Freedom Plaza, at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue that leads to the US Capitol, chanting and waving banners.At the scene: Rajini Vaidyanathan, BBC News, WashingtonAs a small group of white supremacists gathered for their second "Unite the Right" rally, the rain began to fall. Much like the sodden pavements outside the White House, the follow up to last year's rally in Charlottesville was nothing more than a damp squib.Organisers had applied for a permit for as many as 400 people - but in the end they couldn't gather much more than 20. The counter-protesters came out in much larger numbers, a mix of locals with hand-made signs; Black Lives Matter activists, and also some Antifa - left-wing militants - dressed head to toe in black. It all passed off peacefully, to the relief of many who remember last year's violent clashes. Police had worked hard to ensure the Unite the Right group was well away from counter-protesters. If today showed anything, it was that a message of racism was well and truly drowned out, in more ways than one. Last year's far-right rally in Charlottesville was one of the largest gatherings of white nationalists in America in decades.The march had been organised to protest against plans to remove a statue of a general who had fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the US Civil War.Heather Heyer, 32, was killed after a neo-Nazi driver ploughed his car into a group of anti-racist protesters.Dozens of other people were injured in violence between the two groups.

Many people seem confused about the nature of the “deal” Donald Trump might be cutting with Democratic minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Trump himself appears to be one of them.At a dinner on Wednesday, Trump reportedly canvassed a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented “Dreamers” who were brought to the country by their parents. Perhaps the price exacted was congressional funding for Trump’s beloved wall; perhaps not. Accounts of the meeting diverged on Thursday, with Trump appearing to change his story more than once, and then trying to change the subject to the wall in tweets and supporter emails.Either way, reports of a Daca deal were enough to set off the nationalist and “alt-right”, and other hardline immigration hawks, who labelled it an amnesty. Other, less hysterical, voices predicted that in any negotiation, Trump would be rolled.It’s not the first time we have asked a version of this question, but if Trump upsets the white nationalists who form the most loyal part of his supporter base, who will he have left?Publication: VdareAuthor: James Kirkpatrick writes for Vdare, and a range of other forums for white supremacy including American Renaissance and Unz Review. Why you should read: Normally I spare Guardian readers the ordeal of full-bore “alt-right” publications, but just this once it’s important to understand the extent to which Trump is alienating the racists who once saw him as their great white hope. Kirkpatrick spends thousands of words screaming blue murder about Trump’s apparent conversion to establishment views, and his abandonment of explicitly exclusionary immigration policies, then calls for an “alt-right” revolt. Extract: “Donald Trump won because of his policies, which overcame his many flaws and self-inflicted wounds. Donald Trump will continue to win if he stands by the policies which got him elected.But if Donald Trump tries to become just another Republican, he will lose. And he’ll lose more spectacularly than even Mitt Romney or John McCain did.Which is why, as I predicted long ago, it is time to rise against Trump, albeit in his name and in his own true interests. If President Trump follows the guidance of people like Paul Ryan and Marc Short, he will be out of office in 2020 (if not before). And he will have squandered the last, best chance for America to continue as an English-speaking first world country instead of just another diversity-ridden dystopia like Brazil.”Publication: WNDAuthor: Ann Coulter is a hardline anti-immigrationist, columnist, author, and notorious troll. With WND running her columns, she appears to have finally found her level. Why you should read: Coulter presents, in her customary punchy style, the apocalyptic view of immigration that underpins so much conservative angst – essentially, they think, amnesty and “open borders” is a plot to import more Democrat voters. No matter that President Obama deported thousands, and that “the wall” already exists – columnists like Coulter are out to convince conservative white Americans that the other side are playing a demographic long game that ends with them being displaced. This column was published just before Trump’s meeting Extract: “No matter how the law is written, as long as anyone is eligible for amnesty, everybody’s getting amnesty. President Trump is the last president who will ever have a chance to make the right decision on immigration. After this, it’s over. The boat will have sailed.If he succeeds, all the pussy-grabbing and Russia nonsense will burn off like a morning fog. He will be the president who saved the American nation, its character, its sovereignty, its core identity. But if he fails, Donald Trump will go down in history as the man who killed America.”Publication: The American ConservativeAuthor: Daniel Larison is one of the most patient and persistent anti-war (and anti-Trump) voices in conservative media. Why you should read: Larison sees Trump’s deal-making as perfectly in line with his long-held view of the president as a grifter, a political cypher, and a narcissist. He expects Trump to disappoint his diehard supporters further by going wherever his thirst for adulation takes him. Extract “He gave his opponents a little of what they wanted, and just like that Trump was getting credit for supposedly up-ending the two-party system. If he thinks that switching to a slightly different immigration policy position will get him better coverage, that is what he’ll do because what he needs more than anything is affirmation and having his ego stroked by others.There are a few things to take away from this episode: 1) Trump generally doesn’t understand or care about policy substance; 2) He doesn’t feel any obligation to honor commitments he has made; 3) He will get rolled in any negotiation he enters into because all that interests him is the appearance of successful deal-making.”Publication: BreitbartAuthor: Joel B Pollak was a Tea Party congressional candidate, and Breitbart’s chief counsel before the site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, made him editor-in-chief in 2010. He was a major player in the site’s decision to hang its reporter, Michelle Fields, out to dry when she was manhandled by Corey Lewandowski. He now glories in the title of “editor at large.”Why you should read: Immigration is core business for Breitbart, and if Trump persists in the direction of what they consider “amnesty”, expect shots over the bow like this article to develop into broadsides. Pollak’s tone, for now, is more sadness than anger – he argues that Trump is being played, and is vainly looking for credit from his sworn enemies. Extract: “There is something Clintonesque about Trump’s approach. After losing Congress in 1994, Bill Clinton famously undercut his Republican opponents by adopting many of their policies. He revived his political fortunes and went on to be re-elected, easily, while the economy boomed.Trump may hope to use similar triangulation to improve his approval ratings and weaken opposition to his policies on tax reform and repealing and replacing Obamacare.”Publication: National Review Author: Peer of the realm, author, former media tycoon, ex-convict. Conrad Black has done it all.Why you should read: Black’s novel interpretation of Trump’s inconstancy and confusion is that he is playing eight-dimensional chess with us all. Trump is pivoting to cooperation with Democrats at precisely the right time, and doing so will give him the whip hand in Washington, and allow him to see out a successful term. Bartender, I’ll have whatever Lord Black’s having. Extract: “Doesn’t anyone get it? McConnell and Ryan don’t hold the balance of power between the administration and the Democrats, and it isn’t a matter of a durable and late ‘pivot’ by the president. His accusers have fallen on their faces and he is prepared to go easy on the Democrats if they will work with him in policy areas, especially tax reform, which he is bringing on now.He couldn’t have pivoted earlier, when the Democrats thought they could impeach him and were listening to the lunatics in Hollywood and the media. As the mood deescalates and the system finally starts to work, he will hold the balance of power between the congressional parties and factions, and he will use it.” Topics Donald Trump Burst your bubble Republicans The far right features

Terrorism in America remains relatively rare, and white-nationalist terrorism causes only a small fraction of the violent deaths in the United States each year. But these attacks are political acts that tear at the social ties that bind Americans together, cause immense psychological trauma to the communities they target, and inspire further acts of violence. The threat these attacks pose, however, extends beyond the violence itself and the wider pain it causes, to the further mainstreaming of the core white-nationalist idea that citizens of European descent are the only true Americans.Although jihadists are capable of shocking acts of violence, terror, and mass murder, most notably the 9/11 attacks, Muslims compose about 1 percent of the American population. Despite the fevered dreams of the Islamophobia industry, there was never any possibility that the United States would somehow become governed by Taliban-style Islamic law.By contrast, white supremacy was the governing philosophy of the United States until 1965, a core belief of most of the men who have occupied the Oval Office. Only since the end of the civil-rights movement has the American government truly attempted to be a state for all of its people. Between the Civil War, the violent overthrow of Reconstruction governments by white Redeemers, the thousands of lynchings of the Jim Crow era, and the lives lost in World War II, no single political idea has been responsible for extinguishing the lives of more Americans than white supremacy. Yet despite its long, violent history in the United States, the population it seeks to radicalize exceeds that of Islamist extremism by a couple hundred million.The strength of white nationalism’s roots in American history is why it poses a different, and more dangerous, challenge—not just to American lives, but to democracy itself. Those roots are precisely why law enforcement has been slow to respond to the challenge posed by far-right terrorism, why most Americans have failed to recognize that such attacks dwarf the number executed by jihadists, and why the Trump administration itself has deliberately chosen to refocus resources elsewhere.Democrats have proposed specifically criminalizing domestic terrorism under federal law. Any substantial changes to the criminal code should take care not to repeat the worst excesses of the War on Terror, or to criminalize radical speech. (If history is any guide, such speech restrictions would end up being borne not by white nationalists but by the communities targeted by them.)White nationalism cannot be destroyed simply by imitating ill-advised policies adopted by the United States in an effort to defeat Islamist extremism, such as eliminating due process in the use of lethal force or imprisonment, disregarding protections against illegal search and seizure, criminalizing radical beliefs, or using torture in interrogation. In fact, all of those things would likely make the problem worse. Law-enforcement agencies cannot settle the existential arguments about the nature of American democracy, and it should not be their responsibility to do so.

“I would think that any person, even acting in totally good faith, would not be able to put aside the obvious trauma of this hearing for him, whether he’s telling the truth, lying or suffering from cognitive dissonance,” Professor Segall said. “This kind of event could greatly affect one’s decision making in the gray areas that most Supreme Court cases present.”Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, said a Justice Kavanaugh would not consciously alter his approach to his work. “He wouldn’t allow himself to think that he is the sort of person who is voting out of spite,” Professor Dorf said. “But it’s hard to imagine that it doesn’t affect him in much the way that one can imagine that Justice Thomas’s lingering anger affects him.”In 1991, in a hearing with distinct echoes of the one on Thursday, Judge Clarence Thomas vehemently and categorically denied accusations that he had sexually harassed a subordinate, Anita F. Hill.He was in the bathtub when he learned that the Senate had confirmed him by a 52-to-48 vote. “Whoop-dee-damn-doo,” he said, according to his memoir. His reputation had been destroyed, he wrote. “Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court,” he wrote, “seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me.”A bitter Justice Thomas went on to become the most conservative member of the Supreme Court in modern history.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s confirmation hearings in 2006 were far less bruising than the ones endured by Justice Thomas and Judge Kavanaugh. But they were painful enough that Justice Alito has said he avoids walking by the Senate building where his hearings were held.

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“I was pushed into a bedroom and was locked in the room and pushed onto a bed. Two boys were in the room. Brett laid on top of me and tried to remove my clothes while groping me. He held me down and put his hand on my mouth to stop me from screaming for help.” — Dr. Blasey wrote in a letter.Dr. Blasey, who is also known by her married name of Ford, is a professor at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at Stanford University’s medical school. She grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and attended Holton-Arms, an elite high school for girls. Women at Dr. Blasey’s high school often socialized with students from other private schools in the area, including Judge Kavanaugh’s school. Dr. Blasey’s claim stems from a party that she believes occurred in 1982, when she and Judge Kavanaugh were both high school students. Dr. Blasey sent a letter detailing her allegations to the office of Representative Anna Eshoo, Democrat of California, her congresswoman, but asked for confidentiality. Ms. Eshoo’s office forwarded it to Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member on the Judiciary Committee. Ms. Feinstein released a statement after the initial round of hearings was completed, saying she had referred a matter involving Judge Kavanaugh to the F.B.I., but did not give details about who or what it entailed. Days later, Dr. Blasey gave an interview to The Washington Post, revealing her identity and describing the claims.

RUSSELLVILLE, ARK. (Reuters) - Two years ago, America’s white nationalist movement stunned the country. Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, had turned deadly when a far-right protester drove a car through a crowd, killing one and injuring dozens. Some movement leaders regrouped. Instead of stoking outrage, they set out to build support with another tack: Looking normal. Members of the ShieldWall Network, a white nationalist group, burn a swastika and cross during a party outside Atkins, Arkansas, U.S., March 9, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart The larger goal was what many white nationalists call “Phase 2” — gaining mainstream acceptance for far-right ideas widely rejected as repugnant and getting white nationalists into positions of influence. The normalization effort included softened rhetoric and social gatherings that, for many groups, would increasingly replace confrontational rallies. “The strategy is internally focused now — having families get together,” said alt-right blogger Brad Griffin, a self-avowed white nationalist from Montgomery, Alabama. He fondly recalled a river-tubing trip he organized in 2018 for friends who had attended a local white nationalist conference. The goal of such low-key gatherings, he said, is to spread far-right ideology away from the public spectacle of a public protest. “It’s a lot more fun to do that than to go out and tangle with Antifa” — members of America’s far-left “anti-fascist” movement — “and get hit with piss balloons in the street.” (INTERACTIVE: tmsnrt.rs/2MXA7kL) Griffin spoke in an interview before last weekend’s massacre in El Paso, Texas — an event that has scrambled the calculus for the movement’s aspiring normalizers. On Saturday, authorities say, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius shot and killed 22 people and wounded two dozen more shortly after a manifesto appeared online explaining his motivation and decrying a “Hispanic invasion” of the United States. The El Paso attack has also put new pressure on a man some white nationalists praise as helping advance their movement: Donald Trump. The U.S. president has come under sustained criticism for his racially incendiary rhetoric since launching his candidacy in 2015 — including his repeated use of the word “invasion” to describe immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border. On Monday, Trump issued his most forceful disavowal of white supremacism to date. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said in response to the weekend’s shootings. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.” After Charlottesville, the lie-low approach was seen as a necessity by some in the movement. Many white nationalist groups were sued and lost access to social media, which has caused them to avoid public confrontations, said Heidi Beirich, who studies far-right groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization that tracks extremists. “We haven’t seen many rallies since Charlottesville,” she said. The combination of bad press, prosecutions and lost access to social media, has “depressed people in the movement” and created a sense that “maybe the softer approach is the way to go.” The shootings, and Trump’s repudiation, leave the normalizers in a difficult, perhaps impossible spot. Their gambit was always a stretch. A Reuters photojournalist has observed the approach up close — at a children’s nursery in a “church” run by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK); a restaurant-and-bar that caters to white supremacists in Georgia; a barbecue held in Arkansas by the ShieldWall Network, a self-avowed neo-Nazi group with dozens of members. Even as they described their hopes of mainstreaming, many members of these and other groups also voiced the violent tropes that animate the movement. (WIDER IMAGE photo essay: reut.rs/2KnI80l ) One is the so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory, common in white nationalist circles, which holds that leftist elites are engineering the replacement of white majorities globally through policies that encourage mass migrations as white birth rates decline. The manifesto tied to the El Paso shooting referenced the replacement theory in explaining why the shooter chose to kill Hispanic people. Asked in a May interview how whites could regain demographic dominance, ShieldWall’s leader, Billy Roper, told Reuters that promoting a higher birth rate among white people is helpful, but “bullets” would be faster. Roper said his organization doesn’t advocate anything illegal but that he “couldn’t disagree” with the goals of the mass shooter who murdered 51 people at two Muslim mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in March. That killer, too, had cited the replacement theory as a motive. In a phone interview after the Texas massacre, Roper said he didn’t support the killings. But the victims, Roper said, “were just pawns in the Jewish game of demographic replacement of whites,” adding that such “cultural conflicts” are an “unfortunate fact of modern life” in an increasingly diverse nation moving closer to racial “balkanization.” The strategy of trying to couch such extreme views in mainstream rhetoric is not new. One of the highest-profile examples of the normalization tack is that of David Duke, a former KKK grand wizard who traded the klan’s signature white robes and pointy hats for a business suit, adopted more mainstream conservative talking points, and made the runoff election for Louisiana governor in 1991. Duke lost by a wide margin but drew support from about half the state’s white voters. The normalization effort is also not universal. Some far-right groups are still known for confrontation, including the Proud Boys, who last October fought with people protesting a Republican Club event in New York City. Members of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, carry guns and other weapons (left) as they gather in a parking lot before attending a rally at the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, in November 2018. The group was protesting what it called the “white genocide” taking place in South Africa. In Draketown, Georgia, Pat Lanzo runs a restaurant-and-bar that white supremacists have claimed as their own. Lanzo insists the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar is merely a celebration of free speech. “We’re not racist,” he said. “We hate everyone equally.” The decor inside his bar is filled with the kind of racist tropes that remain a hard sell with mainstream America. His menus feature a drawing of a Klan member relaxing on a hammock made of two lynched black corpses tied together at the feet. And Lanzo has rented his property to neo-Nazis and klan members for cross burnings, a traditional show of force by the KKK in the American South. The image-scrubbing by today’s white nationalists belies a long history of violence by far-right ideologues. In the ten years ending in 2018, murderers motivated by far-right ideology took the lives of 124 people in 62 incidents, according to the U.S. Extremist Crime Database, a collaboration of criminal justice researchers from multiple universities. The statistics include white supremacists but also those with other far-right agendas that are not focused on race, such as anti-government militants. Thomas Robb, the national director of The Knights Party, a group formerly named the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said the movement should think beyond confrontations and rallies. “When the rally’s over, what do you do?” said Robb in an interview before the El Paso shootings. “Our goal isn’t so much to get membership, but influence. When people come to our website, they see responsible people who aren’t using the ‘N word’ in every sentence.” Instead, Robb said, the aim is to “speak like Corporate America” as a way to make far-right ideas more palatable to a broader audience. White nationalists have always debated whether putting “reasonable clothing” on their movement would get them further than street clashes and violence, said Mike German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning policy institute. But the approach appears to have gained momentum under Trump in part because of the president’s racially divisive rhetoric, said German, who previously spent years undercover with white nationalists as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Before, white nationalists were trying to shove their way into the mainstream,” German said. “Now, they’re being invited in.” It’s far from clear whether many true believers are ready for life in the mainstream. This past April in Russellville, Arkansas, a lakeside college town, three members of the ShieldWall Network gathered to rent a houseboat and cruise around Lake Dardanelle. A Reuters photojournalist went with them. Moods were light; they toasted one another with Fireball whiskey shots, laughed when one of them dropped his phone in the lake and cooed as another cuddled with his pregnant wife. Later that night, the group would initiate a new recruit, Nicholas Holloway, and burn wooden swastikas. Two months later, in June, Holloway and two other ShieldWall members on the boat that day — Julian Calfy and John Carollo — were arrested for allegedly beating a gay man and holding a gun to his head after luring him to Calfy’s home with a false dating advertisement, according to police reports. Calfy remains in jail, while the other two members are free on bail, according to a spokesman for the Pope County, Arkansas, Sheriff’s Office. Each is charged with third-degree battery, first-degree terroristic threatening and first-degree criminal mischief in connection with the attack. Neither the defendants nor their attorneys could be reached for comment. Slideshow (32 Images)Griffin, the alt-right blogger, condemned the El Paso shooting in stronger terms than other extremists who spoke to Reuters, calling it and other mass shootings by avowed white nationalists “insane tragedies.” At the same time, Griffin said he supported resegregation of the races, echoing one of the core principles of the manifesto that authorities tied to the Texas shooter. The continuing violence, he said, undermines any attempt by the movement to gain more mainstream acceptance. At this point, he said, most white nationalists would rather just “stay out of the debate.” Reporting by Jim Urquhart and Nick Brown; Editing by Brian ThevenotOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image ISIS claimed responsibility for Thursday's deadly attack on a Shiite cultural center in Kabul. The Taliban issued its own statement, saying it had nothing to do with the attack. Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images ISIS claimed responsibility for Thursday's deadly attack on a Shiite cultural center in Kabul. The Taliban issued its own statement, saying it had nothing to do with the attack. Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images Explosions caused what Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office calls "a massacre" in a Shiite area in Kabul on Thursday. The attack targeted civilians at a cultural center and affected a nearby news agency. At least 41 people died, and dozens more are wounded."Local media reported there were two suicide bombers," NPR's Diaa Hadid reports from Islamabad. "One of them detonated his explosives at the gate of a Shiite cultural center — the blast also damaged an Iranian-owned news agency."That Iran-backed news outlet, the Afghan Voice Agency, says its offices are housed in the Tabyan Cultural Center that was targeted. It also says one journalist was killed and others were wounded.The attack struck as people were gathering for a celebration, the U.N. says. After the bombing, ISIS claimed responsibility. The Taliban issued its own statement, saying it had nothing to do with the attack."I have little doubt that this attack deliberately targeted civilians," said Toby Lanzer, acting head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. "Today in Kabul, we have witnessed another truly despicable crime in a year already marked by unspeakable atrocities."The attack struck on the three-year anniversary of the day that the U.S.-led NATO coalition officially ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, handing off many security duties to local forces.

‘There aren’t ‘many sides,’” it declared, a response to President Trump’s much-derided comment last year that seemed to lay the blame for the Charlottesville violence at the feet of both right-wing extremists and counterprotesters.Ms. Balaschak said she hoped to help show the country that “we’re not O.K. with this at all,” meaning the white nationalists and the president who she believes has emboldened them.“They’re so confident that the government supports their views that they’re marching around showing their faces in public,” she said. “This isn’t like arguing over the marginal tax rate. This is a very black-and-white situation.”Among the speakers at a counter rally was Dr. Harriette Wimms, an activist and psychologist from Baltimore. She led a chant of “love wins” as a protester to her right held up a sign that read “Give Nazis a Platform” — and showed a bloody guillotine on a platform.Ms. Wimms, 50, an African-American, spoke of the overt racism and discrimination that older members of her family had experienced in the past, and how, as a younger woman, she had argued with her parents that times had changed — that a new generation of Americans had renounced bigotry, and that they should no longer be “a little leery of white people.”But recent events, she said, had complicated her view. Now, she felt that both she and her parents had been right.Fascism persists in America, she said. But “we are still here, and we will stand strong in love.”

David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, said he had struggled to think of an appropriate way to understand the destruction of Brazil’s National Museum by fire.“It’s as if the Metropolitan Museum of Art burned down,” he said.ImageCreditMuseu Nacional Brasil, via Associated PressImageA reconstruction, right, of the face of the woman known as Luzia based on her fossilized skull, left.CreditAntonio Scorza/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe was responding to a question about Luzia, one of the oldest examples of human remains in the Americas. It may have been lost in the fire on Sunday night, and it was certainly damaged. But his reaction was to the extent of the loss, not the specimen itself.As valuable as that specimen was to those who study the peopling of the Americas, it was almost trivial in comparison to the vast scope of the museum, which was a cultural and scientific treasure. Science museums are not only displays of what we have learned, but also chances to learn so much more from studying the specimens stored there. The Luzia fossil, for instance, is the skull of a woman who lived 11,500 years ago in Brazil. It is valuable to science not just because it is rare and has already told us much about who lived in the Americas, but also because of how much more it could say. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Dr. Reich is a specialist in ancient human DNA, using such material to study our species’ migrations around the planet. He was unaware of any retrieval of DNA from the Luzia fossil. But while no sufficiently preserved DNA has so far been reported from bones older than 1,000 years in South America, technology for the study of ancient DNA is advancing by leaps and bounds and a specimen like Luzia might have concealed genetic secrets.ImageA display from the museum’s entomological collection in 2017.CreditErwan Le Bourdonnec/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMichael Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said that museums maintain “our tangible record of life on earth.” A great collection, he said, is like new terrain to explore, a place of rediscovery, where new studies of old objects yield new truths. Much of the entomology collection at the museum in Brazil was lost, including dragonflies and beetles. Part of its collection was of lace bugs, which was preserved in no other museum.Marcus Guidoti, a Brazilian entomologist and former researcher at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, says it’s likely that about a quarter of Brazilian lace bug holotypes, or unique specimens used to describe a species, was lost in the fire.“The Smithsonian collection on lace bugs is the biggest in the world,” he said, but he said that because of a feud between an American and a Brazilian scientist, it has “a big hole: South America.”ImageA meteorite on exhibit at the National Museum, seen through a door following the fire.CreditSilvia Izquierdo/Associated PressThere was at least one object that survived the fire, one of the world’s largest meteorites. It had been through worse. ImageCreditMuseu Nacional Brasil, via Associated PressImageA mummified individual who was found in a cave in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the 19th century, left, and an Egyptian wooden coffin of Sha-Amun-em-su, right, may have both been destroyed in the fire.CreditMuseu Nacional Brasil, via Associated PressMummies, from Egypt and South America, as well as Egyptian artifacts, were another specialty of the museum. But Dalton de Souza Amorim, a professor of biology at the University of São Paulo, said, “The anthropological collections were the worst loss.” Among them, he said, were the only recordings of people whose nations have disappeared.ImageThe museum contained many items of feather works and masks made by South America’s indigenous peoples.CreditErwan Le Bourdonnec/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHuge collections of feather work and masks from indigenous peoples of South America were also consumed in the fire, as well as pottery and artifacts of a culture that made shell mounds along what is now Brazil’s Atlantic Coast for thousands of years. While some of the biological collections may be replenished, this cultural history is simply gone. Carlos Fausto, a professor of anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said this material memory of Brazilian history was “just irreplaceable.”Dr. Amorim agreed. “What is the value of the cultural heritage of a country?” he asked. “It is beyond value.”ImageA Mesoamerican mortar at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.CreditMuseu Nacional Brasil, via Associated Press____Manuela Andreoni contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday to receive the remains of four Americans killed in a suicide bombing in northern Syria. Trump, locked in a battle with congressional Democrats that has led to a nearly month-long partial government shutdown, announced his trip via a pre-dawn tweet, saying he was going “to be with the families of 4 very special people who lost their lives in service to our Country!” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House prior to departure that he planned to meet the families, a duty which he said “might be the toughest thing I have to do as president.” He was greeted by military staff at Dover Air Force Base after a short flight from Joint Base Andrews, but did not speak to reporters before entering his motorcade. Flanked by military officials, Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan filed up a ramp leading onto a military transport aircraft, where a prayer was given to honor the memory of Scott Wirtz, a civilian Department of Defense employee from St. Louis. Trump filed down the plank and saluted while six service members clad in fatigues and white gloves carried an American flag-draped casket carrying Wirtz to a waiting gray van. The Dover base is a traditional hub for returning the remains of American troops abroad. The United States believes the attack that killed the Americans was the work of Islamic State militants. Trump announced last month that he planned to speedily withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, but has since said it does not need to go quickly as he tries to ensure safety of Kurdish allies in northern Syria who are at risk of attack from neighboring Turkey. Trump told reporters on Saturday that his Syria policy has made progress but that some work remained in destroying Islamic State targets. He defended his plans for a withdrawal. Slideshow (10 Images)“It’s moving along very well, but when I took over it was a total mess. But you do have to ask yourself, we’re killing ISIS for Russia, for Iran, for Syria, for Iraq, for a lot of other places. At some point you want to bring our people back home,” he said. In addition to Wirtz, those who died during the Wednesday attack in Manbij, Syria, were Army Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida, and Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent, 35, identified as being from upstate New York, the Department of Defense said in a statement. The Pentagon did not identify the fourth person killed, a contractor working for a private company. U.S. media identified her as Ghadir Taher, a 27-year-old employee of defense contractor Valiant Integrated Services. Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Writing by Steve Holland and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Comments Related Extras Related Videos Video Transcript Transcript for Apple pre-orders for IPhone 8 and Plus are now live It's a basic rights pre orders for Apple's iPhone aide added plus. 699. Dollars and they'll be the most advanced I've phones on the market. Very exactly six rigs until the iPhone ten is released on November 3 Ani for android fans Samsung's latest edition of its flagship Smartphone goes on sale today. And it got you know eight has already received its first update improving cameras stability and wireless charging prices start at 930 dollars. And FaceBook has come up with a new way to keep over sharing friends off your news speed temporarily without hitting the un friend button. FaceBook assessing our news news feature that can temporarily block a person group or page you can hide them. And their post for 24 hours a week for an entire month I'd give him a little probation jury exactly does your tech bikes. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. Apple unveils 3 new smartphones and Apple Watch device Apple fans are getting ready to preorder the new iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X. Apple expected to unveil $1,000 iPhone today The iPhone X, as some are calling it, is rumored to cost at least $1,000 and come with new features like an improved camera and the use of facial recognition technology to unlock the phone.

Western officials and Kremlin critics are watching with mounting alarm as Interpol prepares for a vote that could put a Russian interior ministry general in charge.The general assembly of Interpol, which facilitates international police cooperation, is under way in Dubai and will vote on a new president on Wednesday. Alexander Prokopchuk, who was appointed to lead the Russian bureau of Interpol in 2011 and is currently a vice-president of the organisation, is considered to be the leading candidate. Critics say that he oversaw a policy of systematically targeting critics and dissidents during his time in charge of the Russian office of Interpol.Bill Browder, a British-American financier who has campaigned for western countries to implement sanctions against Russian officials accused of human rights abuses, said on Tuesday that Prokopchuk had been in charge of Russia’s Interpol bureau at a time when Moscow repeatedly tried to have “red notice” arrest warrants issued for him through the organisation. The central Interpol body rescinded the warrants, believing them to be politically motivated.“There is probably no more inappropriate person than this person and there’s no more inappropriate country to have any kind of leadership position at Interpol than Russia,” said Browder at a press conference in London.Browder later tweeted a letter signed by 12 US senators including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein that said: “Mr Prokopchuk has a history of serving in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dubious security services and reportedly attempting to abuse Interpol to pursue Russia’s political enemies.”Marina Litvinenko, the widow of poisoned dissident Alexander Litvinenko, told the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Tuesday night that having a Russian as president of Interpol would lead to abuse of the red notice system. “Everybody who is asking for political asylum here in the UK now will not feel safe at all,” she said.Her concerns were echoed by Tory MP Bob Seely, an expert in Russian affairs, who told the programme: “Putting ... a general, a senior representative of one of the most criminalised governments on Earth in charge of Interpol makes a mockery of the organisation in principle.”Interpol is looking for a new president after its previous chief, China’s Meng Hongwei, unexpectedly disappeared during a routine visit home in September. It later transpired he had been swept up in an investigation of corrupt officials. The two main candidates to replace him are Prokopchuk and South Korea’s Kim Jong Yang, but the Russian is widely tipped as favourite.Russian opposition politicians and exiles have expressed fears that if a Russian is in charge of the whole organisation, there will be less of a filter to screen out inappropriate Kremlin requests. Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and opposition politician, wrote on Twitter that his team had “suffered from abuse of Interpol for political persecution by Russia”.In London, the exiled former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky said: “I have serious concerns that if Prokopchuk is elected, he will be ready to carry out absolutely any actions on the orders of the Kremlin.”Browder said: “If a Russian is in charge of Interpol, then the west will have to look for Plan B.” This would either involve setting careful restrictions on Interpol’s actions, he said, or setting up a new body only involving “countries who abide by the rule of law”.The Trump administration threw its weight behind Kim on Tuesday. Speaking in Washington, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said: “We encourage all nations and organisations that are part of Interpol and that respect the rule of law to choose a leader of credibility and integrity that reflects one of the world’s most critical law enforcement bodies. We believe Mr Kim will be just that.”In a sign of the potential turmoil that could ensue, Lithuania’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to consider leaving Interpol if Prokopchuk wins the vote.The British human rights lawyer Ben Emmerson said there was “systematic evidence of abusive use of the Interpol process in order to pursue those who are perceived to represent a political threat” by Russia and several other authoritarian countries. Similar concerns were raised after the election of Meng, and China was also accused of abusing the Interpol system.British officials have made it clear that they are backing Yang, and have expressed alarm at the prospect of Prokopchuk taking over.“This is really quite an extraordinary situation, to find ourselves with the possibility of not just a fox in charge of the hen coop, but actually the assassin in charge of the murder investigation,” the Conservative MP and chair of the commons foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, said on Tuesday.A day earlier, four US senators signed a letter opposing the election of Prokopchuk. Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said the letter amounted to “interference in the electoral process of an international organisation”. Topics Russia International criminal justice Alexei Navalny Mikhail Khodorkovsky Human rights news

Devastating wildfires raged across the globe in 2017, from Australia to Portugal. The worst-hit area was most likely California, where wildfire victims have filed insurance claims worth an estimated $30 billion. As climate change worsens, scientists predict wildfires will get bigger.So far, however, the number of wildfires over the last century has fallen. That’s the conclusion of a new study undertaken by researchers from the Canadian government’s environmental department, and published in Nature Communications today (April 17). The work furthers a NASA study on the subject published last year, which came to the same conclusion but only looked back two decades.This may seem like good news at first, but it’s really not. The reason for fewer wildfires is simple: As humans have cut forests to build farms and settlements, there is less forest cover that can catch fire. And the impact of that human-made environmental change on nature is complex.Wildfires have raged ever since plants moved from the ocean to the land hundreds of millions of years ago. In this period, evolution has helped plants in fire-prone regions adapt to these violent events. In grasslands, for example, fires pass quickly without heating the soil underneath. This allows roots in the ground to avoid damage, so grass and other plants grow back quickly. In some cases, a wildfire can be a boon to an ecosystem. After a fire, new leaves shoot up, attracting herbivores and kickstarting an ecological rejuvenation.Of course, wildfires also damage human-made structures, put humans at risk, and release carbon held in trees into the atmosphere. From that perspective, a decline in wildfires is good: it means less carbon dioxide emissions from that one source. The trouble is those benefits are, according to the Canadian government study, mitigated by loss in forest cover, and, therefore, a decrease in CO2-absorbing greenery,Overall, there has been a reduction in overall wildfire-related CO2 emissions, but that’s only because of human effort to stop the spread of fires. That, the study says, led to a drop in about 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year in the period from 1960 to 2009. For context, annual global emissions today stand at about 38 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The researchers reached the conclusion using sediment records and satellite data, along with computer modeling.In other words, we are slightly making up for the environmental damage done by our deforestation by controlling wildfire spread. But only slightly.There are limitations to the study. It doesn’t compare the benefits of reducing wildfire emissions to the loss of ecosystem services from deforestation. It also doesn’t consider whether wildfires are becoming more severe (previous studies have shown this is the case), which could affect the true amount of carbon emissions. Nevertheless, as the world looks to hit zero emissions and the climate goals set under the Paris climate agreement, we need to understand better how every carbon source and sink can help us get there.

The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, has warned his regime’s “imperialist” foes in the United States, Colombia and Brazil their troops “will not make it out alive” if they dare invade a single inch of Venezuela’s “sacred soil”.Addressing thousands of armed members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian militia in Caracas, Maduro declared himself a “warrior of peace” who hoped to bring happiness and prosperity to his crumbling nation.But amid rising tensions between Venezuela and its regional neighbours, Maduro ordered his troops to meticulously prepare to repel and crush foreign invaders.Militiamen and women needed to be ready “to go to the heart of the enemy who dares touch Venezuelan soil – to go to the heart of the enemy and to tear out his heart in his own territory”.Maduro warned it was possible an “imperialist force” might seek to storm some corner of the country. “But what the imperialists should know is that they won’t make it out alive, because the people will track them down and the people will defend our beloved and sacred Venezuela’s right to peace and independence and sovereignty with their lives.“We will defend our homeland from imperialists and oligarchs and traitors … whether they are in Bogotá or Brasília,” he insisted, calling for the 1.6 million-member civilian force to be strengthened and “armed to the teeth” to make Venezuela “impregnable and untouchable”.Maduro’s sabre-rattling speech came exactly a week after Russia landed two nuclear-capable bombers in Caracas in a high-profile show of support for Venezuela’s embattled president.The US has turned up the heat on Maduro in recent months, declaring Venezuela part of a Latin America “troika of terror” and warning Maduro he will “have to go”.The incoming administration of Brazil’s far-right president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, has also set Maduro in its sights, with its next foreign minister on Sunday calling for Venezuela’s liberation.In an interview with a Chilean newspaper, Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, insisted Brazil was not about to invade Venezuela with tanks and sought Maduro’s removal from power rather than his death.But on Monday Maduro told his troops to prepare to protect Venezuela’s “coasts, rivers, plains, mountains, barrios, fields and cities” from foreign aggressors.“Are we ready to defend the homeland? Are we ready to pounce on and defeat the traitors and the oligarchs?” Maduro bellowed. Members of the militia hoisted their assault rifles into the air and shouted: “Sí!” Topics Nicolás Maduro Venezuela Americas news

Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters rallied peacefully in Hong Kong on Sunday, filling major thoroughfares under torrential downpours in the eleventh week of what have been often violent demonstrations in the Asian financial hub.Sunday's turnout showed that the movement still has broad-based support despite the ugly scenes witnessed in recent days when protesters occupied the Chinese-ruled city's airport, a move for which some activists apologized.It was the calmest weekend protest since the latest demonstrations against perceived creeping Beijing influence in the former British colony began."They've been telling everyone we're rioters. The march today is to show everyone we are not," said a 23-year-old named Chris, who works in marketing and was dressed all in black, including a scarf covering his face and baseball cap."It does not mean we won't keep fighting. We will do whatever is necessary to win, but today we take a break, then we reassess." NASA eyes the ocean: How the deep sea could unlock outer spaceOne protester shouted at others who were jeering at police, "Today is a peaceful march! Don't fall into the trap! The world is watching us," prompting the group to move on.Late in the evening, some demonstrators were urging others to go home and rest. Police said on Monday that while Sunday's demonstration was mostly peaceful, there were breaches of the peace in the evening when some protesters defaced public buildings and aimed laser beams at officers. The weekend was also noteworthy for a lack of tear gas use by police.It was a far cry from the violent clashes between protesters and riot police throughout the summer, with activists storming the legislature and targeting China's main Liaison Office in the city. Anger erupted in June over a now-suspended bill that would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China, but the unrest has been fueled by broader worries about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the "one country, two systems" formula put in place after Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule in 1997, including an independent judiciary and right to protest.SENSITIVE TIME FOR BEIJINGThe protests present one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012, with the ruling Communist Party preparing to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic on Oct. 1.Protesters held aloft placards with slogans including "Free Hong Kong!" and "Democracy now!" and umbrellas to shield them from the sometimes heavy rain.Some aimed green lasers at police and government buildings. The crowd in Causeway Bay's leafy Victoria Park, where the rally started, included elderly people and young families, with some parents carrying toddlers.Despite rally organizers not having permission to march, the park could not accommodate the crowd, which thronged nearby streets. Many protesters headed towards Hong Kong's financial center, chanting for the city's Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, to step down.It was impossible to put an exact figure on the number of protesters. The organizers put the number at 1.7 million, adding they had applied for permission to march to the Hong Kong Liaison Office, Beijing's main representative body in the city, on the last day of the month.Police estimated there were 128,000 people in Victoria Park at the height of the protest."It's bloody hot and it's raining. It's a torture just to turn up, frankly. But we have to be here because we have no other choice," said a 24-year-old student named Jonathan."We have to continue until the government finally shows us the respect that we deserve."A government spokesman said the protests were generally peaceful, but they had disrupted traffic badly."The most important thing at present is to restore social order as soon as possible," he said. "When everything is calm, the government will engage in a sincere dialog with the public to fix the social rifts and rebuild social harmony."Aside from Lam's resignation, demonstrators are seeking complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, a halt to descriptions of the protests as "rioting," a waiver of charges against those arrested, an independent inquiry and resumption of political reform.Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey on Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump drew parallels between the violent protests in Hong Kong and Beijing's bloody suppression of student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.He added that he supported liberty and democracy in Hong Kong and said that he hoped the situation would be resolved in a "humanitarian" fashion.'WE WILL STILL FIGHT'"When we were young, we didn't think about it. But my son tells me: After 2047, what will happen to me?" said a history teacher named Poon, referring to the year when the 50-year agreement enshrining Hong Kong's separate system will lapse."I will come again and again and again. We do not know how any of this is going to end. We will still fight," she said.Police have come under criticism for using increasingly aggressive tactics to break up demonstrations and on Sunday some people handed out balloons resembling eyeballs, some wore eye patches, a reference to the injury suffered by a female medic hit by a pellet round in the eye.On Saturday, however, a demonstration in support of the government attracted what organizers said was 476,000 people, although police put the number of attendees at 108,000.Beijing has struck an increasingly strident tone over the protests, accusing foreign countries including the United States of fomenting unrest. Scenes of Chinese paramilitary troops training this past week at a stadium in the city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, gave a clear warning that mainland intervention by force is possible.Last week, protesters who occupied the terminal at Hong Kong's airport forced the cancellation of nearly 1,000 flights and detained two men they thought were pro-government sympathizers, prompting Beijing to liken the behavior to terrorism."We are Hong Kongers. We are here for our future. We feel for the teenagers," said Frances Chan, 60, a retired journalist attending Sunday's rally. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. She said only a few protesters had used violence, sparingly, brought on by pressure from the authorities."Actually, we want peace and freedom," she said. (Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook, Lukas Job, Felix Tam, Anne Marie Roantree, Donny Kwok, Twinnie Siu and Clare Jim; Writing by Tony Munroe and Nick Macfie; Editing by Daniel Wallis)