by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Hassan Rouhani
Tehran : Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said here on Monday that Iran attaches high importance to ties with Europe after the US exit from the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May.
“Now that the Americans have exited the JCPOA (the nuclear deal) in breach of international rules and their multi-lateral commitments, communication and negotiation with Europe enjoy a special position,” Rouhani told reporters in the capital Tehran before heading to Switzerland on Monday, Xinhua reported.
Rouhani is visiting the European country at the official invitation of his Swiss counterpart.
During his trip, the Iranian president will discuss a host of topics of mutual interest and is expected to discuss the future of nuclear agreement and Iran’s interests therewith, Press TV reported.
One of the key subjects on the agenda is a package which the Europeans are expected to offer to Iran in order to keep Tehran in the nuclear deal, also known as JCPOA.
From Switzerland, the Iranian president will travel to Austria where he will meet President Alexander Van der Bellen and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Rouhani said “Europe’s current situation is to some extent different from the past. Europe is opposing unilateralism with a louder voice, and expressing readiness to cooperate with Iran and other important and influential countries on regional and international issues.”
“We will negotiate with Austria (over the JCPOA) as the president of the EU,” he said.
Rouhani is also expected to discuss other issues, including the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
“The oppression which has been imposed on Syria and the crimes being committed against the Yemeni people, as well as the entire world’s responsibility vis-a-vis these issues, and the role which Iran can play in strengthening stability in the Middle East” will also be discussed, said Rouhani.
Iran will also sign documents for cooperation in the industrial, commercial, healthcare, education, and water resources management fields with Switzerland and Austria, he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
New York : Indian American federal appeals court judge Amul Thapar has emerged as a “serious” contender for a spot in the US Supreme court and has been interviewed for the position by President Donald Trump, according media reports.
He was one of four judges interviewed for the position on the nation’s highest court by Trump on Monday, according to The Washington Post and other media outlets that quoted unnamed sources who had been briefed about the meetings.
Trump’s Spokesperson Sarah Sanders confirmed that he met for 45 minutes with four candidates, but would not identify them.
Trump has said he would announce his pick next Monday.
Thapar was appointed by Trump last year to the federal Sixth Circuit Appeals Court based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that covers four states including his home state of Kentucky.
Considered a conservative, Thapar, 49, had served as a federal prosecutor before President George W. Bush appointed him a judge of the federal court for Eastern Kentucky by in 2007.
Thapar has the backing of Mitch McConnell, the influential Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky, for the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last month.
“I think he’s absolutely brilliant, with the right temperament,” McConnell said on Saturday.
The Washington Post said Trump’s meeting with Thapar “was described by several White House aides as both a gesture of respect for the Senate GOP leader and evidence that he is in serious contention”.
He is the second Indian-American judge to be a leading contender for the Supreme Court showing the community’s reach across both parties and its influence.
Washington Appeals Court Judge Sri Srinivasan was among the top choices considered by then President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court in 2016.
Obama ultimately picked Merrick Garland but McConnell blocked the nomination refusing to take it up for Senate’s consideration citing the presidential election coming up later that year.
Earlier on Monday, Trump appointed his Deputy Principal Press Secretary Raj Shah to a key role in the difficult process of getting his nominee for the Supreme Court approved by the Senate.
“Raj Shah will oversee communications, strategy and messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies,” Sanders said in a statement.
Legalised abortion that many countries like India take for granted is looming over the selection of the next Supreme Court judge, with many Senators making it the litmus test to vote for or against a nominee.
It is likely that a case involving abortions may come up before the Supreme Court leaving open the possibility a conservative majority bench could overturn its 1973 ruling legalising it.
During his election campaign Trump changed his stance and came out as an opponent of abortions and said that he would appoint judges with the same view.
But he said last week that he would not discuss with candidates their views on abortion.
The Republicans have slender two-vote lead in the 100-member Senate and at least one Senator from the party, Susan Collins, has said that keeping abortions legal would be a requirement for supporting the Trump nominee and another, Lisa Murkowski, has previously opposed efforts to overturn the 1973 ruling.
The 49 Democrats and the two independents are all expected to oppose any Trump nominee and Shah will have to work with Republicans in Congress to get a majority backing for the candidate.
However, other factors such as immigration, the powers of the president and any possible litigation involving the 2016 election of Trump and the alleged Russian interference are at play.
Thapar is widely considered to conservative in his approach, which aligns him with Trump and his base.
His father, Raj Thapar, told Courier Journal that his son is so conservative that he “nearly wouldn’t speak to me after I voted for Barack Obama.”
Thapar was born in Detroit and his family wanted him to become a doctor, but he chose law instead, the newspaper said.
Raj Thapar told the newspaper that his son’s only dream was to become a Supreme Court Justice.
Amul’s maternal grandfather had impressed on him how Mahatma Gandhi had defeated the British using non violence, Raj Thapar told the newspaper.
According his father, Amul had converted to Catholicism when he married Kim Schulte, a real estate agent, Courier Journal reported.
Thapar’s mother Veena Bhalla sold a successful restaurant after 9/11 to work as a civilian clinical social worker to help soldiers returning from the battlefield, the newspaper reported quoting McConnell.
According to Thapar’s bio for a convention of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association his father had come to the US to study and after graduating went to work for Ford Motor Company.
Later, he bought a share of a heating and air conditioning company.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Tehran : The US is exerting “in vain” economic pressure on the Iranian nation to divide and turn them against the establishment, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday.
“The enemy’s plan is to create division between the establishment and the people,” Xinhua quoted Khamenei as saying.
“Washington’s plan reflects their stupidity because they do not know that the Islamic republic is nothing but the Iranian nation and these two cannot be separated,” he made the remarks at a ceremony at Imam Hussein University in the capital Tehran.
The US is not able to press Iran alone, so it has made coalitions with “disgraceful and reactionary states” in the region, he said.
“We will increase our bond with the people day by day,” he said, stressing that “the hatred of the Iranian nation for the United States has been increasing day by day.”
Following US President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the historic Iran nuclear pact on May 8, Washington vowed to re-impose sanctions against Iran and inflict punishments including secondary sanctions on countries that have business links with the Islamic republic.
Firms doing business in Iran were given up to 180 days to terminate investments, before they risk huge fines.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Thousands of Americans from all walks of life took to the streets of cities across the US and chanted “families belong together”, nearly two months after President Donald Trump implemented the “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants, prompting the separation of thousands of children from their parents.
The main rally on Saturday was in Washington, D.C., but hundreds of marches, protests and rallies took place across the country in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Miami, St. Louis, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where crowds called for the immediate reunification of migrant families and an end to family detentions and separations, reports CNN.
According to organisers, the protesters called for three demands: they want separated migrant families to be reunited immediately; they want the government to end family detentions; and they want the Trump administration to end its zero tolerance policy.
Attendees in Washington marched from Lafayette Square to the White House — though the President is at his golf resort in New Jersey — and down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Trump Hotel, where chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” broke out.
In Atlanta, demonstrators carried cages with dolls inside, and marchers in Chicago encouraged each other to “fight back”.
In New York, protesters overflowed Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and filled the surrounding sidewalks. Crowds also inched across the Brooklyn Bridge for more than two hours.
Protesters in Houston chanted, “No baby jails”, outside City Hall. Crowds gathered in McAllen, Texas, the border town where one of the Customs and Border Protection agency’s processing detention centres sits.
Several celebrities joined the rallies, including singer-songwriter John Legend, who sang his song “Preach” at a demonstration in Los Angeles, veteran singer Cher who encouraged people to vote in November, actresses Kerry Washington and Amy Schumer marched in New York while singer Alicia Keys performed in Washington.
Many attendees carried signs, some demanding a change to the administration’s policy, others celebrating the contributions that immigrants make to the country.
There were also plenty of signs and shirts declaring, “I really do care, do u?” — a dig at the jacket First Lady Melania Trump wore while departing for a trip to the southwest border last week.
Event organisers said Saturday’s protests were about addressing an ethical issue.
“This is not left or right,” Anna Galland, Executive Director of MoveOn.org, one of the organisations leading Saturday’s protests, told CNN.
“It is right and wrong.”
Galland said she and Indian American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal put out a call for protests less than two weeks ago and they were “overwhelmed” by the response.
Jayapal, who was also arrested during a similar protest at the Senate office building last week, said: “This is beyond politics… You don’t put kids in cages. You don’t separate breastfeeding babies from their mothers. You don’t put asylum-seekers in prison, and we’re calling for an end to that today.”
More than 2,500 undocumented children were separated from their parents in the weeks since the zero-tolerance policy took effect, reports CNN.
Under the policy, any adult caught crossing the border illegally faced prosecution and their children were sent to federal shelters all over the US.
There were widespread outrage over the separations which prompted Trump to sign an executive order on June 20 reversing the family separation policy.
Six days after that order was signed, only six children had been reunited with their parents — meaning more than 2,000 children were still in limbo.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Tehran : Iran will overcome the new wave of sanction pressures by the US, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.
“The American officials believe that Iran would surrender under the pressure of sanctions, but it will become obvious soon that the Iranian nation will successfully overcome the challenge of new sanctions,” Xinhua quoted Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying.
“Today, the region’s top power is undoubtedly Iran, which has been able to cut off the hands of the US and its regional allies from the set (of pro-resistance countries) around us,” the Iranian former foreign minister said.
Velayati described the US anti-Iran sanctions as “a kind of revenge”, stressing that the Iranian government and nation will stand together in confronting the sanctions.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that Iran will suffer the toughest sanctions in history from the United States if it does not change the current course.
Pompeo urged Tehran to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program, end proliferation of its missiles, and stop supporting “terrorist groups” in the Middle East.
—IANS
