The US Navy said on Wednesday that recovered limpet mine fragments from one of two tanker ships that are believed to have been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz last week bore a “striking resemblance” to mines seen during Iranian military parades.

“The limpet mine that was used in the attack is distinguishable and also strikingly bearing a resemblance to Iranian mines that have already been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,” said Sean Kido, commanding officer of an explosive ordnance dive and salvage task group in the US Naval Forces Central Command, stopping short of outrightly blaming Tehran for the suspected attacks.

US Navy personnel showed reporters pieces of debris and a magnet the Navy said was used to attach an unexploded mine to the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous oil tanker, which was attacked on June 13, along with the Norwegian-owned Front Altair tanker.

The display came two days after the US military released video that it said showed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) removing an unexploded mine from the Japanese-owned ship.

Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement in the June 13 suspected attacks, as well as in a similar attack on May 12 off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s mission to the UN declined to comment on the Navy’s display, referring reporters to remarks by Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami, who said allegations that Tehran was behind the suspected tanker attacks was “totally a lie” meant to tarnish Iran’s image. 

According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Hatami questioned the authenticity of a grainy video released by the US following the attack that purports to show Revolutionary Guard forces removing the unexploded mine.

“The date and the location shown in the footage have not been authenticated,” he said. The Americans “can show any footage … but it cannot be used as evidence.”

Kolka said on Wednesday that the damage to the Kokuka Courageous was “not consistent with an external flying object hitting the ship”. The owner of the ship had previously said the tanker was hit by two “flying objects”.

The incidents have flared tensions between the US and Iran, which have been escalating since US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the landmark, multilateral nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

Hearing on Trump’s Iran policy

The Navy’s comments on Wednesday came as a senior Trump administration official for Iran policy told Congress specific US intelligence shows the suspected attacks were conducted by Iran’s IRGC. 

Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, offered a House panel new details about the information underlying US claims that Iran conducted the attacks on the two tankers.

“Our intelligence confirms that Iranian vessels operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz on June 12 and 13 approached both the Front Altair and the Kokuka Courageous before each vessel suffered explosions,” Hook told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. He did not share the specific intelligence during the open-door House panel hearing.

“We assessed this activity was consistent with an Iranian operation to attach limpet mines to the vessels,” Hook said.

“I can also say that a senior IRGC official confirmed that personnel, IRGC personnel had completed two actions,” he added, without naming the official.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, supported the Trump administration claims earlier on Wednesday, saying that the “the intelligence is pretty strong here that Iran is responsible for the attacks.”

“We are seeing the dangers of a policy of going it alone, of castigating and alienating our allies, that when we need our allies, as we do right now they are nowhere to be found,” Schiff, who has been a critic of Trump’s Iran policy, told reporters in Washington, DC.

“This really calls for an international effort to protect shipping and to deter any further attacks,” he said.

Iran said it may soon begin to diverge from the 2015 nuclear agreement, by stockpiling more uranium than the deal allows and enriching fuel up to 20 percent putting the nation closer to obtaining weapons-grade material.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo met yesterday with the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini to seek European support for US economic sanctions against Iran. Europe has called for preserving the 2015 nuclear deal.

On Monday, Trump ordered another 1,000 US troops to the Middle East, which will include a Patriot missile battalion, manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft and “other deterrence capabilities”, the Pentagon said.

In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, Trump discounted the suspected tanker attacks as “very minor” but said he would be willing to go to war to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Pompeo later appeared to walk back those comments, however, saying that Trump does not want war with Iran, but would continue to apply maximum pressure on the country.

Alarm from Democrats

But Trump’s comments to Time triggered alarm among Democrats in Congress who fear the president – advised by his hawkish, anti-Iran National Security Adviser John Bolton – would launch a military strike without consulting Congress to obtain legal authority. 

“The administration’s most recent steps seem to be pushing us more toward a confrontation than a negotiation,” Representative Eliot Engel, Democrat chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned Hook.

“Military action against Iran without the approval of Congress is absolutely not an option,” Engel said.

Hook refused to say whether Trump administration officials believe they have the authority to act without Congress.

Senator Tom Cotton, one of Trump’s allies in Congress, has urged publicly the president attack Iran in retaliation.

“Unprovoked attacks on commercial shipping warrant a retaliatory military strike,” Cotton told CBS on Sunday.

Others refrained from supporting a military response. Senator Lindsey Graham, another a close Republican ally of the president, said in a statement after the June 13 tanker attacks “additional sanctions would be the appropriate response”.

With additional reporting from William Roberts in Washington, DC. 

Glaciers on the Himalayas are now melting about twice as fast since the start of the century, a new study based on Cold War-era spy satellite images has found.

The Asian mountain range, which includes Mount Everest, has been losing ice at a rate of about one percent a year since 2000, according to the research that was published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

“The amount of ice (lost) is scary but what is much more scary is the doubling of the melt rate,” said Josh Maurer, a glacier researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study.

Scientists lacked some critical data on ice in the Himalayas until Maurer found once-classified 3D images from US spy satellites that had been put online. Those images allowed Maurer to calculate how much ice was on the Himalayas in 1975. He then used other satellite data to measure ice in 2000 and then again in 2016.

‘Disaster in the making’

The Himalayas, part of an area that is referred to as “The Third Pole” because it has so much ice, has only 72 percent of the ice that was there in 1975. It has been losing about 8.3bn tonnes (7.5bn metric tonnes) of ice a year, compared to 4.3bn tonnes (3.9bn metric tonnes) a year between 1975 and 2000, according to the study.

Although melting ice caps at Earth’s North and South Poles are already destabilising the climate system, the retreat of Himalayan ice has more direct consequences for some 800 million people who depend on meltwater to sustain their rivers.

Seasonal flows of runoff appear to be increasing for the time being as glaciers degrade. But scientists fear what is likely to happen as time goes on: a gradual dwindling of water supplies to densely-populated floodplains in India, Pakistan and China, potentially stoking local and international tensions.

Meltwater is relied upon as hydropower, agriculture, and drinking, said study co-author Jorg Schaefer, a climate geochemistry professor at Columbia.

“Disaster is in the making here,” Schaefer said.

Past research looked at individual Himalayan glaciers over short time periods, but this was the first to look at the big picture – 650 glaciers over decades, Schaefer said.

For years, scientists have looked at many possible causes for melting glaciers, including pollution and changes in rainfall. But when the team was able to see trends using long-term data, they found the major culprit: “It’s clear it is temperature and everything else doesn’t matter as much,” Schaefer said.

Maurer double-checked that conclusion by feeding the data into a computer model. It “predicted” the same type of ice melt that happened over the four decades.

Scientists’ suspicions confirmed

NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, who was not part of the study, said it provided important confirmation of what scientists suspected and what models showed.

“As a scientist it’s nice to hear that we’re right, but then again as a civilian it’s sometimes a little scary to hear that we’re right,” Willis said.

The new findings were published as governments met for talks in Bonn aimed at pushing forward efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Global carbon emissions hit a record high last year.

Climate models suggest that existing pledges made by governments to try to bend the emissions curve downwards still fall far short of the rapid transformational economic change needed to prevent climate impacts worsening by many orders of magnitude.

The attackers behind the latest attack to have hit central Mali identified victims one by one before executing then, survivors have said.

Monday’s attack on the Gangafani and Yoro villages in the Mopti region was the last in a cycle of apparent tit-for-tat violence between the Dogon and Fulani communities.

At least 38 people were killed in the villages where survivors and officials say Fulani gunmen arrived by motorbike before massacring people in “revenge” on suspicion they collaborated with the Malian army.

Abdoulaye Goro, a security guard, had been travelling by truck to his father’s funeral near the two villages, when about 40 armed men intercepted the vehicle and forced the passengers into the bush.

“They did identity checks and they only looked for the people from Yoro and Gangafani, and all those who were from those two villages were set apart,” Goro said.

“They killed them in front of us, with rifles, and released us afterwards.”

The raids followed a massacre of dozens of people earlier this month in another Dogon village, Sobane Da.

That attack came months after suspected Dogon militiamen in late March killed more than 150 Fulani in two villages in central Mali, one of the worst acts of bloodshed in the country’s recent history.

Mali’s government said on Wednesday the army had dispatched a contingent to reinforce security and protect property in the Gangafani and Yoro villages, near the border with Burkina Faso.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for restrain in order to end the “vicious circle of violence”.

“As our teams prepare to provide emergency assistance to the survivors of Sobane Da, we have learned that other villages in the Mopti region also suffered attacks, causing a large number of casualties,” Jean-Nicolas Marti, the ICRC head of delegation for Mali, said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

“We’ve now seen four major attacks since the beginning of the year, on top of daily violence. Our colleagues on the ground see an overwhelming amount of need and remain determined to support the victims of the violence, first and foremost through the provision of medical care.”

Ethnic tensions in central Mali surged after an armed group led by preacher Amadou Koufa emerged in 2015 and recruited mainly from among the Fulanis. Clashes increased with Dogons and Bambaras who formed their own self-defence militias.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita appealed for an end to revenge attacks after he visited the site of the Sobane Da massacre.

But despite military help from France and the United Nations, Mali’s government is struggling to calm violence that began in the north of the country in 2012, sparked by rebel fighters and Tuareg militias, while groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) have used central and northern Mali as a launch pad for attacks across the Sahel region and stoke tensions among different communities.

Arrived by motorbike

During Monday’s attack, witness Goro said, the gunmen blamed inhabitants for having “cooperated” with the Malian and Burkinabe military about 15 days ago in a raid in the neighbouring town of Dinagourou.

At the local level, “there is a dispute between the people of Gangafani and Yoro against the Fulani,” Goro said.

“Our kidnappers were taking revenge,” the security guard said.

Local officials said the situation has calmed down, but residents were shocked how the gunmen were able to arrive en masse by motorbike even after the government imposed a ban on the vehicles as a way to tighten security.

“Ee need to strengthen security,” said Amidou Maiga, a local retired civil servant. “People are frightened.”

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, said in May it had recorded nearly 500 deaths in attacks on Fulanis in the central regions of Mopti and Segou since January 2018.

Armed Fulanis caused 63 deaths among civilians in the Mopti region over the same period, it said.

The Fulanis are primarily cattle breeders and traders, while the Dogons and Bambara are traditionally sedentary farmers.

congress

Attorney General Bill Barr said he wanted to find out whether there was inappropriate government “spying” on the Trump campaign.

The House Intelligence Committee has “very little visibility” into the three Justice Department investigations into the intelligence officials who launched the Russia probe, the panel’s chairman Adam Schiff said on Wednesday.

It’s a situation that has Schiff concerned, given his fears that the probes are politically motivated.

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“It’s an effort to amplify the counter-narrative, and to ignore what the Russians did, and what they will do in the next election,” Schiff said at a National Press Club event on Wednesday. “We’ve already seen a disturbing erosion of our checks and balances” with regard to the White House’s contact with DOJ, he added.

DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General has been investigating the origins of the Russia probe since last year. Attorney General Bill Barr launched a parallel investigation in May, tapping John Durham to spearhead the inquiry around the time special counsel Robert Mueller was wrapping up the two-year probe, which concluded Trump’s campaign did not criminally conspire with Russian intermediaries to disrupt the 2016 election. Barr said he wanted to find out whether there was inappropriate government “spying” on the Trump campaign that drove suspicions of a Kremlin link.

According to The New York Times, Durham’s efforts have since zeroed in on the CIA analysts responsible for the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election specifically to help Trump win. The focus has alarmed some in the national security community who worry that Durham’s probe will cast doubt on the apolitical nature of intelligence gathering and give credence to the president’s misleading claims that Obama-era officials tried to sabotage his campaign.

Those fears have been exacerbated by Trump’s decision to give Barr sweeping declassification authority, a power usually delegated to intelligence leaders for their own evidence.

Schiff indicated that, despite asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department to keep him informed about any official declassification requests from Barr, the House Intelligence Committee — which oversees the intelligence community — remains largely in the dark about what the agencies are having to produce and whether their cooperation is voluntary or being compelled.

“I have discussed personally with the Director of National Intelligence [Dan] Coats my profound concern about what Bill Barr is doing in particular,” Schiff said. “Namely, his desire to provide cover to the president by investigating the investigators.”

Others are less anxious about Durham’s probe, noting that the CIA has been investigated by Durham before and is accustomed to this kind of oversight. They point to 2008, when Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Durham to conduct a criminal investigation into the destruction of torture tapes made by the CIA years earlier. That probe was expanded and later resulted in full criminal investigations into the deaths of two detainees, which ultimately wrapped in 2012 with no charges brought against anyone in the agency.

It’s unclear, though, what mandate Durham is operating under and whether he is looking at the intelligence agencies with an eye to recommending criminal charges. He has not been appointed to lead a criminal investigation, and the Justice Department has formally described the inquiry as only as a “review.” Durham also won’t be leaving his day job as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.

Schiff, meanwhile, said he is still trying to get answers from the FBI about the counterintelligence findings of Mueller’s investigation, and whether the counterintelligence investigation launched in early 2017 into Trump himself was ever formally closed.

While the FBI has “started to provide some answers” and increased briefings, Schiff said, they’ve been reluctant to go into any detail. “They’re just telling us about process,” Schiff said. “Like everything else, it’s like pulling teeth, and our patience is growing fatigued at this point.”

United Nations, New York – Sudan‘s Transitional Military Council (TMC) should hand over overthrown President Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice for masterminding atrocities in the western Darfur region, the court’s prosecutor has said.

Al-Bashir, who lost power in a military coup in April and was immediately arrested by the transitional authorities, is wanted by the ICC on charges, which he denies, of crimes against humanity and genocide relating to abuses by Sudanese forces in Darfur between 2003 and 2008. The Hague-based tribunal issued warrants for his arrest in 2009 and 2010.

Speaking in New York, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that “circumstances have changed dramatically” in the wake of the coup and now the victims of historic abuses in Darfur had a shot at getting justice.

“The former status quo is over. Mr Omar al-Bashir has been deposed, arrested, detained and charged with domestic offences,” Bensouda told the UN’s 15-member Security Council.

“Sudan remains under a legal obligation to transfer these suspects to the ICC to stand trial unless it can demonstrate to the judges of the ICC that it is willing and able to genuinely prosecute them for the same cases.”

Bensouda also called on the TMC to hand over four other suspects wanted over the Darfur atrocities, including Ahmad Harun, a former state interior minister, and Abdel Raheem Hussein, an ex-Darfur envoy, who have also reportedly been detained in Khartoum.

The two other suspects – Ali Kushayb and Abdallah Banda, who both led militia groups during the Darfur atrocities – were still “at large” and should be arrested and handed over to the ICC soonest, Bensouda said.

“I have a clear message to convey: now is the time to act. Now is the time for the people of Sudan to choose law over impunity and ensure that the ICC suspects in the Darfur situation finally face justice in a court of law.”

Bensouda acknowledged the “complexity and fluidity of the events unfolding in Sudan” but called on officials there to help her visit Sudan and the Darfur region “in the very near future to resolve these issues”.

She also blasted the June 3 crackdown on a protest camp in the capital that led to dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators being killed, noting how the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that protesters blamed for the massacre had grown out of the Janjaweed militia that perpetrated atrocities in Darfur. The head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemeti, is also the deputy head of the TMC and the man seen by many as the key player today in Sudanese politics.

“It is imperative that allegations of violence against civilians, including sexual and gender-based violence, are promptly and effectively investigated by the Sudanese authorities, and that those responsible are brought to justice,” Bensouda said.

Corruption charges

According to the United Nations, as many as 300,000 people died from fighting in Darfur, where the government and the Janjaweed militia have battled rebel groups and suppressed the minority non-Arab population.

While in power, al-Bashir evaded the ICC warrant and even travelled to South Africa, Jordan and other countries without being arrested, but his removal in April revived hopes that he would ultimately answer for atrocities in Darfur.

On April 11, Sudan’s military overthrew and detained al-Bashir, ending his three-decade rule. This followed months of street protests against his autocratic rule, including the sit-in outside the army headquarters in Khartoum. Protesters demanding a swift transition to a civilian-led administration remained at the protest camp until its bloody dispersal on June 3.

On Sunday, al-Bashir appeared for the first time in public since his overthrow, as he was escorted under heavy guard from a maximum security prison in Khartoum to the office of the prosecutor.

The 75-year-old former president faces corruption charges.

Prosecutors have also indicated more allegations to come relating to money laundering, financing “terrorism” and “ordering the killing of protesters”.

None of the charges by Sudanese authorities relate to Darfur atrocities.

This month, the UK-based human rights group Amnesty International reported that militias backed by Sudanese government forces were still committing atrocities – such as killings, rape and looting – in Darfur until as recently as February.

Bernie Sanders on Wednesday lashed out at the “corporate wing of the Democratic Party,” seizing on a report that centrists in the party are coming around to Elizabeth Warren as a compromise nominee if the alternative is Sanders.

“The cat is out of the bag. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party is publicly ‘anybody but Bernie,’” Sanders wrote on Twitter, sharing a POLITICO story headlined: “Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee.”

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“They know our progressive agenda of Medicare for All, breaking up big banks, taking on drug companies and raising wages is the real threat to the billionaire class,” Sanders added.

POLITICO’s report details how many moderate Democrats, united in their opposition to Sanders, are increasingly gravitating toward Warren as a more acceptable general election rival to President Donald Trump who could still harness the energy of the party’s progressive coalition.

Centrist think tank Third Way, which notably criticized Warren in a 2013 op-ed that highlighted intra-party divisions, has since praised parts of her candidacy and highlighted perhaps the most glaring distinction between Warren’s and Sanders’ campaigns.

“One is a Democratic capitalist narrative,” Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, told POLITICO. “The other is a socialist narrative.”

Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir lashed out Wednesday at Third Way on Twitter, writing that the organization’s “approach antagonizes no one, stands up to nobody and changes nothing.”

“This is a Washington think tank that takes Wall Street money, so if @ThirdWayTweet is the opposition to @BernieSanders‘ campaign, which is leading Trump in poll after poll, we welcome the contrast,” Shakir added.

Sanders and Warren have competed for months over the party’s left flank — both lobbying for the endorsement of liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — while former Vice President Joe Biden, the ostensible Democratic frontrunner, has enjoyed the backing of more middle-of-the-road voters.

But Warren in recent weeks has vaulted to the top tier of 2020 candidates, and appears to have siphoned some support from Sanders, who still regularly ranks second to Biden in primary polling.