Washington, DC – Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, appeared before a US House of Representatives panel on Thursday to share her love for her fiance and call for a US-sponsored international investigation into his killing.

But US lawmakers, while sympathetic to her cause, have been unable to offer concrete assurances that the United States will pursue an investigation into the grisly murder. 

“All members of Congress that we have spoken with so far tell us about their regrets, but if you are asking for a clear answer, there has been no clear confirmation that there will be an investigation,” Cengiz told Al Jazeera through a translator after the hearing.

“It has been more than six months since this horrible event, but there has been no truth, justice or accountability for those responsible for this terrible incident, to this stain on human rights and press freedom,” Cengiz earlier told a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee on human rights.

In passionate and heart-wrenching testimony, Cengiz described Khashoggi’s final moments after the two arrived at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to pick up a marriage papers on October 2, 2018. While Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi assassination team inside, Cengiz waited outside for her future husband who never emerged.

“As I hoped for good news from him that our marriage papers were in order, as I eagerly awaited the happy surprise of seeing him again, no such things ever happened,” Cengiz, a Turkish national, said in written testimony.

Saudi killers

Saudi officials initially denied Khashoggi’s killing at the consulate, saying he had left the premises.

But Turkish authorities released security video showing the arrival and departure of Saudi killers dispatched from Riyadh. Turkish surveillance audio, which was shared with US officials, captured the screaming, choking moments of Khashoggi’s death.

Khashoggi and Cengiz met at a conference in May 2018 and began a relationship. Khashoggi, a journalist who wrote critically about politics in Saudi Arabia, had been banned from publishing at home. He fled to the United States, was divorced from his Saudi wife as a result, but regained his journalistic voice as a columnist for the Washington Post.

“Jamal was uncomfortable with the changing political atmosphere in his country that began in 2017,” Cengiz told members of Congress. “He was disturbed by the uncontrolled exercise of power in Saudi Arabia, its violations of human rights, arbitrary arrests and detentions of scholars and writers, an unprecedented violation to people’s basic freedoms.”

‘Cannot make sense of this’

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged it was responsible for Khashoggi’s killing but has attempted to blame “rogue” security agents. The Saudi government announced legal proceedings against a number of individuals involved in the assassination, although those proceedings have not been transparent.

The kingdom has denied any involvement of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. US intelligence assessments concluded the prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder. The US Senate has passed a resolution holding him responsible.

US President Donald Trump and members of his administration have declined to assign blame to Prince Mohammed and instead emphasised the importance of the US’ strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.

“I simply cannot make human sense of this,” Cengiz said, speaking to lawmakers through a translator. “I simply cannot understand why the world has done nothing about this.

“In the early days President Trump said that this would be solved. [House Speaker] Pelosi talked about how unacceptable this was. But so many months later, nothing has been done. That is why I am here,” she said.

“It wasn’t just Jamal that was killed it is also the values that we are talking about here: freedom, of the United States.”

The topic of the congressional hearing was the problem of rising dangers for journalists covering human rights worldwide.

More than 250 journalists were imprisoned and 54 killed in 2018, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

As it turns out, literary trilogies involving vice presidential pets are not moneymakers.

Marlon Bundo, the beloved pet bunny of Vice President Mike Pence’s family, has his own Instagram account, his own acronym (BOTUS) and three children’s books documenting his time in Washington. But financially, he’s not contributing much to the second family.

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The trio of books about the well-traveled rabbit, written and illustrated by Karen Pence and her daughter Charlotte, generated between $2,501 and $5,000 in income for the Pence family last year, according to financial disclosures released Thursday. It was not immediately clear which of the three books — “Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President,” “Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Nation’s Capital” or “Marlon Bundo’s Best Christmas Ever” — earned the most in royalties.

The third installment in the mother-daughter series about Bundo’s romp through D.C. was released by Regnery Publishing last month and starts at about $13 for a hardcover copy on Amazon. Through the perspective of Bundo, the book teaches young readers about popular Washington spots like the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, as well as the purpose of the Supreme Court.

Compared with President Donald Trump’s 88-page financial disclosure, the sparse 10-page document underscores a frequent claim Pence made on the campaign trail: that he and Trump are very much alike except for “a whole lot of zeroes.”

Pence, who rejected a scheduled pay raise during the extended government shutdown earlier this year, currently earns about $230,700 annually for serving as vice president. He has a pension plan valued at between $500,000 and $1 million, according to his previous financial filings, and carries between $70,005 and $215,000 of student loan debt from his children’s educations.

Pence’s wife, Karen, returned to teaching art at a Christian school in Virginia earlier this year, though it is unclear whether she’s being compensated for the part-time work. A spokesperson for the vice president could not immediately be reached for comment.

Image: adamkaz / Getty Images

Using an app to order an air taxi that won’t break the bank is one test flight closer to being realised. 

Thursday, the German startup Lilium announced that it has staged a successful maiden flight of its pilotless, all-electric and five-seater prototype of an air taxi. 

The aircraft could serve as a template for a fleet of battery-powered air taxis that the Bavaria-based startup hopes to operate in several cities around the world by 2025, with trials beginning sooner.

But Lillium could face skies crowded with competition. Other startups – as well as giants including Airbus, Boeing and Uber – are also vying to transform urban transport with their own projects. 

With challengers’ rotor-powered fliers offering only limited range, Lilium believes its emissions-free aircraft can set itself apart from the pack.

Lilium’s model can take off vertically like a helicopter, and it sports wings for horizontal flight, allowing a top speed of 300 kilometres per hour and a range of 300km (186mph and 186 miles). In crowded metropolitan areas, that could facilitate transportation four times faster than cars.

Both Airbus and Boeing’s models can only travel up to roughly one-third of that distance.

Flights ‘on demand’

The test flight of Lilium’s prototype took place in Munich, Germany at the start of May. The company did not say exactly how long the aircraft was airborne.

“While a maiden flight is always a moment of truth for a business, the jet performed exactly as expected and responded well,” Leandro Bigarella, Lilium’s head of test flights, said in a statement.

Controlled from the ground, the five-seater jet follows on the heels of the firm’s two-seater prototype, which successfully flew in 2017.

The company is billing its proposed “on-demand air taxi service” as “urban air travel that is quiet, safe and environmentally positive” and will offer an app to let passengers find nearby landing pads for a ride “comparable in price with a taxi”.

Offering a larger cabin than competitors is key to the air taxi’s design, with five seats making for “an economy of scale you just can’t achieve with two,” said Lilium cofounder and chief executive Daniel Wiegand.

Lillium was founded in 2015 by Wiegand and three friends from the Technical University of Munich. It has raised around $100m from investors.  

But the startup – and other air-taxi hopefuls – will have to hack through a forest of regulations, safety concerns and public scepticism to build a sustainable business.

The US-based Aerospace Industries Association predicted in March that with artificial intelligence at the helm, such aircraft “will be a part of everyday commutes” by mid-century.

Image: amy osborne / AFP/Getty Images

Sudanese protest leaders have denounced the ruling military council’s 72-hour suspension of talks over a peaceful transfer of power to civilian rule as a “regrettable” setback to efforts to forge a new democratic era following the overthrow of veteran leader Omar al-Bashir.

The Alliance for Freedom and Change, the umbrella group leading the protest movement and negotiating the transfer of power with Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC), said in a statement on Thursday that the generals’ move “ignores the developments achieved in negotiations so far”.

Sudan’s protest leaders and the TMC had been expected to meet on Wednesday evening to hammer out an agreement on the makeup of the ruling body designed to steer the country towards democracy having already reached an agreement on the composition of a 300-member legislative council and a three-year transition period to a civilian administration.

But in the early hours of Thursday, the chief of Sudan’s ruling military council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, announced the talks had been suspended amid a deteriorating security situation in the capital, Khartoum.

Al-Burhan accused protesters of disrupting life in the city by blocking roads outside a protest zone set up outside of the defence ministry compound, where demonstrators have held a weeks-long sit-in.

He also called on demonstrators to open blocked bridges connecting the capital with other regions and “stop provoking security forces”, saying the TMC was waiting until “a suitable atmosphere is created to complete an agreement” with the opposition alliance.

The protest movement vowed to maintain sit-in protests outside the defence ministry and across the country, however.

Protesters killed

The dispute came after at least 14 people were wounded, some from gunfire, on Wednesday when Sudanese forces tried to remove demonstrators from central Khartoum, according to the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors.

Protesters said troops in military vehicles using the logo of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – – whose chief is also the deputy head of the military council – fired extensively as they tried to clear demonstrators from an avenue near Sudan’s foreign ministry.

“People were walking towards the barricades and they (security forces) were firing shots at them,” a 20-year-old demonstrator, who asked not to be named, told Reuters news agency, showing a handful of empty bullet casings and referring to roadblocks set up by protesters.

The RSF denied opening fire at demonstrators, state TV reported.

On Monday, similar violence in Khartoum saw security forces open fire while allegedly trying to clear protest sites, leaving at least four people dead, including three protesters and a military police officer. They were the first deaths linked to the protests for several weeks.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said the TMC denied responsibility for Monday’s violence.

“The military council came out and said the people who fired at protesters were not part of their forces or from the RSF,” she said, adding that the military council said it would launch an independent investigation into the incident.

The United States blamed Sudan’s military rulers for the deaths, however.

“The tragic attacks on protesters … were clearly the result of the Transitional Military Council trying to impose its will on the protesters by attempting to remove roadblocks,” the US Embassy in Khartoum said in a statement on Facebook.

“The decision for security forces to escalate the use of force, including the unnecessary use of tear gas, led directly to the unacceptable violence later in the day that the TMC was unable to control.”