The Jim Bakker Show

Lawsuit seeks to block Illinois abortion coverage expansion

By Chris Kenning

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Abortion opponents in Illinois filed a lawsuit on Thursday to block a recently approved law expanding state-funded coverage of abortions for low-income Medicaid recipients and state workers.

The lawsuit was filed in Sangamon County Circuit Court on behalf of taxpayers by the conservative Thomas More Society, along with some state lawmakers and anti-abortion groups.

It asked a judge to block state funding for the law, arguing that the state failed to set aside up to $30 million in the budget to pay for abortions. The lawsuit also argued that the law could not take effect until June 2018, instead of January, because of when it was approved.

“The people of Illinois are opposed to taxpayer funded abortion, especially with the terrible financial state that Illinois is in,” Peter Breen, a Republican state lawmaker and an attorney for the Thomas More Society, said on Thursday.

He argued that the state would have to pay for up to 30,000 abortions a year.

Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner signed the bill in September, upsetting many conservatives.

“I do not think it’s fair to deny poor women the choice that wealthy women have,” Rauner said at the time.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois supported the law, saying it would keep women from being denied abortion coverage just because they were on Medicaid or worked for the state. Medicaid is a government healthcare program for the poor and disabled.

Ed Yohnka, the ACLU’s director of public policy and communications, on Thursday rejected the lawsuit’s contention that lawmakers needed to designate specific funds.

“That’s like saying the General Assembly has to appropriate money for knee replacements,” he said.

About 15 other states allow Medicaid to pay for abortion, including some required by courts, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Illinois was the first state in decades to voluntarily lift a restriction on such services.

Illinois’ Medicaid program has previously covered abortions in cases of rape, incest and when a mother’s life or health is threatened.

The expansion would enable poor women to obtain elective abortions. The law would also allow state employees to have the procedures covered under state health insurance.

The law’s passage by the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature came after some other U.S. states, which are controlled by Republicans, have sought in recent years to tighten regulations on abortion clinics and forced closures in Texas and Kentucky.

Germany withdraws diplomat from North Korea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Germany is withdrawing a third diplomat from its embassy in North Korea over increasing concerns about Pyongyang’s missile program, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday, a day after Pyongyang test fired a new missile.

North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a powerful new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons.

Berlin strongly condemned the test as a violation of international law.

Speaking in Washington after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Gabriel said he had offered support for taking a tough line towards Pyongyang.

“He wants our support for their efforts to pursue a hardline position vis a vis North Korea, and he has it. But it’s our job to decide what we will do in diplomatic channels.”

Two diplomats had already been withdrawn from the German embassy in Pyongyang, and a third was being pulled out now, Gabriel said. Germany was also demanding North Korea reduce its diplomatic presence in Germany.

Gabriel said Washington had not demanded that Germany, one of seven European countries with embassies in North Korea, shut its mission or withdraw its ambassador. It was not Germany’s desire to shut down its embassy, he said, but added: “that doesn’t mean we are ruling it out.”

Gabriel said Germany would discuss North Korea options with fellow European countries to determine “whether it’s necessary to further increase the diplomatic pressure.”

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had called on countries to scale back or cut ties with North Korea as part of an effort to pressure Pyongyang to give up its weapons programs.

“If they would be willing to close their missions in North Korea altogether, that is also something we would be supportive of,” she said, while adding that Tillerson had not specifically asked in his meeting with Gabriel for Germany to recall its ambassador.

Gabriel also told reporters that he had no information about reports that the White House planned to replace Tillerson, noting that he had already scheduled another meeting with Tillerson for next week. U.S. officials said on Thursday the White House had developed a plan for CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson within weeks.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Dalia Fahmy; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Peter Graff and Frances Kerry)

Islamic State seizes new Afghan foothold after luring Taliban defectors

By Matin Sahak and Girish Gupta

JAWZJAN, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) – When a Taliban commander defected to Islamic State in northern Afghanistan a few months ago, his men and the foreign fighters he invited in started to enslave local women and set up a bomb-making school for 300 children, officials and residents said.

The mini-caliphate established six months ago in two districts of Jawzjan province marks a new inroad in Afghanistan by Islamic State (IS), which is claiming more attacks even as its fighters suffer heavy losses in Iraq and Syria.

Qari Hekmat, a prominent Taliban leader in Jawzjan, switched allegiance around six months ago, according to local people who have since fled, raising the movement’s black flag over the local mosque and forcing residents to swear fealty to IS’s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

“They started killing a lot of people and warned others to cooperate,” said Baz Mohammad, who fled Darz Aab district after his 19-year-old son was recruited into IS at the local mosque.

IS in Jawzjan has now attracted the attention of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which will launch an offensive in the north in the next few days, U.S. Army General John Nicholson said on Tuesday.

U.S. air strikes and special forces have been pounding the main Afghan foothold of IS fighters in the eastern province of Nangarhar, but that has not prevented the movement from stepping up attacks.

IS has claimed at least 15 bombings and other attacks in Afghanistan this year, including two in Kabul last month, killing at least 188 people. The number of attacks is up from just a couple nationwide last year.

It is unclear whether the all the attacks claimed by IS were carried out by the group, or linked to its central leadership in the Middle East. Afghan intelligence officials say some of the attacks may in fact have been carried out by the Taliban or its allied Haqqani network and opportunistically claimed by IS.

Yet the sheer number of attacks plus the targeting of Shi’ite mosques, an IS hallmark, indicates the movement is gaining some strength, though their links to the leadership in the Middle East remain murky.

Some analysts see IS as an umbrella term covering groups of fighters in Nangarhar’s mountains, armed gangs in northern Afghanistan and suicide bombers in Kabul. Little is known about what ties them together.

“IS in Afghanistan never was such a solid, coherent organization, even from the beginning,” said Borhan Osman, an International Crisis Group analyst.

“BRUTAL AND BARBARIC”

In Jawzjan, Islamic State gained its pocket of territory in much the same way it did in Nangarhar – through defection of an established militant commander.

Hekmat’s Taliban fighters had long held sway in Darz Aab and Qushtepa districts, with the Afghan government having little control, residents who fled to Shiberghan, some 120 km away (75 miles), told Reuters.

But when Hekmat had a falling-out with the central Taliban leadership and switched allegiance, his men were joined by about 400 IS-affiliated fighters from China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and elsewhere, according to Darz Aab’s district chief, Baz Mohammad Dawar.

Foreign militants have long operated in the border areas of Afghanistan, and in Jawzjan they had typically moved from place to place, occasionally cooperating with the Taliban.

But once they came to stay, life changed for the worse, according to three families and local officials who spoke to Reuters, even by the war-weary standards of Afghanistan.

“IS took our women as slaves, or forcefully made them marry a fighter. The Taliban never did that,” said Sayed Habibullah, a Darz Aab resident.

“The Taliban had mercy and we spoke the same language, but IS fighters are foreigners, much more brutal and barbaric.”

The fighters also forced some 300 children into IS training.

“In the school, IS allocated two classes for the children to learn about guns and bombs,” said Ghawsuddin, a former headmaster in Darz Aab who, like many Afghans, goes by one name.

“OUR ENEMY”

Islamic State emerged in Afghanistan more than two years ago, when members of the Pakistani Taliban swore allegiance to the relatively new global Islamist movement that at the time had seized vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.

By June 2015, newly IS-aligned fighters had crossed into Afghanistan and seized around half a dozen districts in Nangarhar, scorching Taliban poppy fields and forcing them to flee. (http://reut.rs/2j2l6Oy)

Soon after, U.S. forces began air strikes and dispatched special forces to assist Afghan troops in fighting Islamic State – also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh.

Nicholson, the commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said on Tuesday that some 1,400 operations had been conducted against IS since March, “removing over 1,600” from the battlefield and cutting off their outside finance and support.

“Daesh has been unable to establish a caliphate in Afghanistan,” Nicholson said, adding “We see no evidence of fighters making their way from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, because they know if they come here they will face death.”.

Even if IS is not bringing in new fighters – though that remains a fear – it is another obstacle to Afghan security after 16 years of war against the Taliban.

“Whether it is Islamic State or Taliban, they are our enemy,” said Jawzjan police chief Faqir Mohammad Jawzjani. “And they have to be eliminated.”

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by Kay Johnson and Alex Richardson)

Zimbabwe’s military muscles into first post-Mugabe cabinet

By Emelia Sithole-Matarise

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa appointed senior military officials to top posts in his first cabinet on Friday in what was widely seen as a reward for the army’s role in the removal of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.

Sworn in as president a week ago after 93-year-old Mugabe quit in the wake of a de facto military coup, Mnangagwa made Major-General Sibusiso Moyo foreign minister and handed Air Marshal Perrance Shiri the sensitive land portfolio.

The new president, who later on Friday spoke publicly about the need to draw on local expertise and skills to put the economy back on robust footing, also brought back Patrick Chinamasa as finance minister despite his chequered record in that post previously.

Most Zimbabweans remember Moyo as the khaki-clad general who went on state television in the early hours of Nov. 15 to announce the military takeover that ended Mugabe’s 37-year rule.

Shiri is feared – and loathed – by many Zimbabweans as the former commander of the North Korean-trained ‘5 Brigade’ that played a central role in the so-called Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in 1983 in which an estimated 20,000 people were killed.

The land portfolio is a sensitive but economically crucial one since land reforms in the early 2000s led to violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and the collapse of the nation’s economy.

“For most observers, this (the new cabinet line-up) looks like a reward for the military – or more specifically like the military asserting its authority,” London-based political analyst Alex Magaisa wrote on Twitter.

Mnangagwa, a former state security chief known as ‘The Crocodile’, dropped allies of Mugabe’s wife, Grace, but brought back many Mugabe loyalists from the ruling ZANU-PF party, disappointing those who had been expecting a break with the past.

“Zimbabweans were expecting a sea change from the Mugabe era. After all, had there not been a revolution, or so they thought?” Magaisa said.

New information minister Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of the powerful liberation war veterans, was not immediately available for comment.

OLD WINE

Mnangagwa’s opponents from Grace Mugabe’s ousted G40 faction derided the line-up as old wine in a khaki bottle.

“Even #Nigeria didn’t have so many commanders in Cabinet in its coup days!” former information minister and G40 leader Jonathan Moyo, who remains in hiding, said on Twitter.

Chinamasa, a lawyer by training, had been finance minister since 2013 until he was shifted to the new ministry of cyber security in a reshuffle this year.

During his time in charge, though, the economy stagnated, with a lack of exports causing acute dollars shortages that crippled the financial system and led to long queues outside banks.

The issuance of billions of dollars of domestic debt to pay for a bloated civil service – a key component of the ZANU-PF patronage machine under Mugabe – also triggered a collapse in the value of Zimbabwe’s de facto currency and ignited inflation.

“I had expected a more broad-based cabinet,” said economist Anthony Hawkins, adding that Mnangagwa’s faith in Chinamasa suggested loyalty trumped ability. “Chinamasa’s appointment was to be expected, notwithstanding his appalling record.”

With elections due next year, Mnangagwa needs to deliver a quick economic bounce and has made clear he wants to curb wasteful expenditure, pointing out that his cabinet has 22 ministers compared to Mugabe’s 33.

One of his most pressing tasks will be to patch up relations with donors and the outside world and work out a deal to clear Zimbabwe’s $1.8 billion of arrears to the World Bank and African Development Bank.

Without that, the new administration will be unable to unlock any new external financing.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Reuters this week London was thinking about extending a bridging loan to Harare to allow this to happen, although said it depended on “how the democratic process unfolds”.

Speaking publicly for the first time as president at a graduation ceremony at a university in Chinhoyi, 110 km (68 miles) south of Harare, Mnangagwa, however, appeared to be looking to local expertise to put the economy on a stronger footing.

“As we engage the world it is of great importance to have our own home-grown solutions to develop our economy and benchmark ourselves on the best in the global village,” he said.

(Reporting Emelia Sithole-Matarise; Additional reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Trump weighs recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital: officials

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is considering recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that could upend decades of American policy and ratchet up Middle East tensions, but is expected to again delay his campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy there, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

After months of intense White House deliberations, Trump is likely to make an announcement next week that seeks to strike a balance between domestic political demands and geopolitical pressures over an issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the status of Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions.

Trump is weighing a plan under which he would declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the officials said, deviating from White House predecessors who have insisted that it is a matter that must be decided in peace negotiations.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel’s claim on the entire city.

Such a move by Trump, which could be carried out through a presidential statement or speech, would anger the Palestinians as well as the broader Arab World and likely undermine the Trump administration’s fledgling effort to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

It could, however, help satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped him win the presidency and also please the Israeli government, a close U.S. ally.

Trump is likely to continue his predecessors’ policy of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the U.S. Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the officials said.

But among the options under consideration is for Trump to order his aides to develop a longer-term plan for the embassy’s relocation to make clear his intent to do so eventually, according to one of the officials.

However, the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the plan has yet to be finalized and Trump could still alter parts of it.

“No decision has been made on that matter yet,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday.

CAMPAIGN PLEDGE

Trump pledged on the presidential campaign trail last year that he would move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But Trump in June waived the requirement, saying he wanted to “maximize the chances” for a peace push led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Those efforts have made little if any progress.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally.

Palestinian leaders, Arab governments and Western allies have long urged Trump not to proceed with the embassy relocation, which would go against decades of U.S. policy by granting de facto U.S. recognition of Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital.

However, if Trump decides to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even without ordering an embassy move, it would be certain to spark an international uproar.

A key question would be whether such a declaration would be enshrined as a formal presidential action or simply be a symbolic statement by Trump.

Some of Trump’s top aides have privately pushed for him to keep his campaign promise to satisfy a range of supporters, including evangelical Christians, while others have warned of the potential damage to U.S. relations with Muslim countries.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Jonathan Oatis, G Crosse)

Nigeria puts fortress towns at heart of new Boko Haram strategy

By Paul Carsten and Ola Lanre

BAMA, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigeria’s government has a plan for the northeast, torn apart by eight years of conflict with Boko Haram: displaced people will be housed in fortified garrison towns, ringed by farms, with the rest of the countryside effectively left to fend for itself.

The vision for the state of Borno, ground zero for the war with the Islamist insurgency, is a stark admission of the reality in the northeast.

For two years, the military and government have said Boko Haram is all but defeated, and the remnants are being mopped up.

But the military is largely unable to control territory beyond the cities and towns it has wrested back from Boko Haram. That means many of the nearly 2 million displaced people across the northeast cannot return to their homes in rural areas.

Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state, said it was not possible for people to live in small villages.

“There’s beauty in numbers, there’s security in numbers. So our target is to congregate all the people in five major urban settlements and provide them with means of livelihood, education, health care and of course security,” he told Reuters. “It’s a long term solution, certainly.”

The plan for the eastern part of the state, centered on the town of Bama, is intended as a pilot scheme to be rolled out in other parts of Borno if it is successful.

Vigilantes, currently members of a group known as the Civilian Joint Task Force, will become agricultural rangers, the governor said.

Aided by Nigerian security forces, they will aim to secure and patrol a five-km (three-mile) radius around each garrison town where people can farm.

An aerial view of the Federal Training Centre camp on the road between Maiduguri and the town of Bama in northeast Nigeria, November 23, 2017. Picture taken November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Paul Carsten

PROTECTION

“It’s logical. Bama is the second biggest city in Borno,” said Peter Lundberg, the United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, who heads the organization’s response in the northeast.

“People are very eager to go back if the conditions are right and if the conditions are safe, if the conditions are dignified, and of course it has to be voluntary,” he told Reuters.

Sentiment amongst the displaced is mixed.

Abubakar Goni, who lived outside Bama before fleeing to the Borno state capital Maiduguri, said he wants to return home, but if the town is safer he will agree to go there.

“I will support it as long as I will have a place to farm. I am also happy to hear the government will give us protection on the farm because I learnt Boko Haram men are still around.”

Others, like Tijja Modu Alhaji, are wary of potential disputes between residents of the towns where people will be sent and the returnees.

“I don’t want to stay in Bama because I will still be a stranger there, just as I am in Maiduguri now,” he said. “I want to go home, not to somebody else’s land.”

The governor’s plan is still in its early stages. It involves bringing back thousands of people who fled the town of Bama and the surrounding area and sought refuge in camps in Maiduguri and elsewhere.

They will eventually be housed in towns such as Bama, which was largely abandoned by its inhabitants when Boko Haram took it three years ago, but has since been recaptured by the military.

Many of Bama’s buildings are still shells, windows smashed, doors ripped out and roofs gone. Telephone and electricity wires remain torn down, more than two years after the military evicted Boko Haram.

It is not clear how the returnees will be housed. There are already 15,000 people in a crowded camp for displaced local residents set up by the military after it retook the town.

The United Nations had planned to move them gradually to new shelters accommodating 30,000 people that have been erected in the town, but the military said it could not oversee two camps there at the same time, UN and military officials told Reuters.

NEW HOMES

The government has announced plans to build 3,000 homes in the Bama area. But there are concerns about how people sent to the town will manage, since many did not originally live there.

“It’s one thing to move people to Bama,” said Lundberg. “Unless the engine of the economy can restart, the risk is that people are moving back to places where they will become very dependent (on aid).”

Aid workers said the demarcation between garrison towns and a lawless countryside means people have a choice: live in virtual quarantine, or return to their homes in the countryside, where Boko Haram roam, and be treated by security forces as potential insurgency sympathizers.

“You’re imprisoned, but you’re safe,” said one senior relief worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If you prefer your own life you can do it on the outside.”

Boko Haram’s recent attacks, including a suicide bombing that killed at least 50 in a mosque in Adamawa state last week, are the “last kicks of a dying horse,” Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed said last Sunday.

But military and diplomatic officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said overstretched troops are unable to push Boko Haram out of non-urban areas. Much of Borno is not under the authorities’ control and attacks are rife.

“Borno is not getting better at all. It may have even gotten worse,” a diplomat said of the security situation outside urban areas. “There is no recovery and stabilization.”

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri; editing by Giles Elgood)

Supreme Court’s cake case pits gay rights versus Christian faith

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When conservative Christian baker Jack Phillips in 2012 politely but firmly told Colorado gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig he would not make them a cake to celebrate their wedding, it triggered a chain of events that will climax on Tuesday in highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court arguments.

Phillips contends the U.S. Constitution’s free speech guarantees protect him from making a cake that would violate his religious beliefs against gay marriage. To Mullins and Craig, the baker’s refusal represented a simple case of unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In one of the biggest cases of the conservative-majority court’s nine-month term, the justices — just two years after legalizing gay marriage — must decide whether Phillips’ action was constitutionally protected and he can avoid punishment for violating Colorado anti-discrimination law.

A ruling favoring Phillips could open the door for certain businesses to spurn gay couples by invoking religious beliefs, as some wedding photographers, florists and others already have done.

The brief encounter at Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop in the Denver suburb of Lakewood left Mullins and Craig distraught. They filed a successful complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the first step in the five-year-old legal battle that the nine justices will resolve in a ruling due by the end of June.

The baker’s lawyers argue that because his cakes are artistic endeavors, guarantees of freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protect Phillips from being forced to make baked creations that express a message he opposes on religious grounds.

Mullins and Craig were planning their wedding in Massachusetts that September and wanted the cake for a reception to be held in Colorado, where gay marriage was not yet legal. Craig’s mother witnessed the tense exchange, which he said made it harder for him to bear.

“I ended up starting to cry because I felt really bad and overwhelmed that my mom had to see me go through this. I guess it was the feeling of helplessness,” Craig said in an interview.

Phillips said he offered to sell the couple other products in his store but was adamant that his religious beliefs compelled him to draw a line when it comes to certain issues.

‘I SERVE EVERYBODY’

“Everybody that comes in my store is welcome in my store,” Phillips said in an interview. “I serve everybody that comes in and I create products for many events, just not all events.”

Based on his Christian beliefs, Phillips said he also refuses to make Halloween cakes as well as baked goods “that denigrate other people.”

The civil rights commission found that Phillips violated state anti-discrimination law that bars businesses from refusing service based on race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation. It ordered him to take remedial measures including staff training and the filing of quarterly compliance reports.

Phillips said he found the penalty “deeply offensive” in part because until recently his mother was one of his employees.

“I have to tell my mom, ‘Everything you have taught me doesn’t count here,'” Phillips said.

In 2015, the Colorado Court of Appeals also ruled against Phillips. The Colorado Supreme Court subsequently denied his appeal, prompting Phillips to take the case to the top U.S. court.

Evangelical Christians are an important part of President Donald Trump’s political base, and his administration filed a brief in support of Phillips.

The case puts 81-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of the court’s five conservative, in the spotlight. Kennedy, a potential deciding vote in a 5-4 ruling, has joined the court’s liberals in major decisions on issues such as abortion and gay rights. He authored the court’s landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. But Kennedy is also a strong proponent of free speech rights.

CULTURAL FLASHPOINT

The case has become a cultural flashpoint in the United States that underscores the tensions between gay rights proponents and conservative Christians.

National advocacy groups have jumped in on both sides. Mullins and Craig are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. Phillips is represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Similar cases are being litigated in other U.S. courts, and other countries also are confronting the issue. In April, Britain’s Supreme Court will consider whether a Christian-run bakery in Northern Ireland can refuse to make a cake backing gay rights.

In this case and others involving such issues as abortion, union dues and campaign funding, conservatives have relied on free speech arguments before the Supreme Court, but the issue of religious liberty still looms large.

“This is about will the U.S. Supreme Court decide that the fundamental freedoms and liberties that Americans have taken for granted for 200 years are still valid,” said Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner.

The ACLU said a ruling favoring Phillips could lead to other efforts to skirt anti-discrimination laws.

“They are asking for a constitutional right to discriminate,” ACLU lawyer Louise Melling said. “This is not a case about a cake. It is a case about a very radical proposition.”

Mullins and Craig did get to celebrate their marriage with a cake made by another bakery. Phillips will once again encounter them on Tuesday, this time in the grand marble halls of the Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Quake hits southeast Iran, destroys homes; no fatalities reported

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – A strong earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck southeastern Iran on Friday, injuring at least 42 people and destroying several homes in an area where most people live in villages of mud-walled homes. State media said no deaths had been reported.

Rescue workers, special teams with sniffer dogs and units of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia forces were sent to the quake-hit areas in Kerman province, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said.

State TV said many residents rushed out of houses in Kerman city and nearby villages and towns, fearing more tremors after some 51 aftershocks following the 6:32 a.m. (0232 GMT) quake.

“The quake destroyed some houses in 14 villages but so far there has been no fatalities,” a local official told state TV. “Fortunately no deaths have been reported so far.”

The quake struck less than three weeks after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit villages and towns in Iran’s western Kermansheh province along the mountainous border with Iraq, killing 530 people and injuring thousands of others.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday’s quake, at first reported as magnitude 6.3, was centered 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Kerman city, which has a population of more than 821,000. The quake was very shallow, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 km), which would have amplified the shaking in the poor, sparsely populated area.

Head of Relief and Rescue Organization of Iran’s Red Crescent Morteza Salimi told state television that at least 42 people were injured. Iran’s state news agency IRNA said most of those hurt had minor injuries.

“Assessment teams are surveying the earthquake-stricken areas and villages in Kerman province,” IRNA quoted local official Mohammadreza Mirsadeqi as saying.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said the quake had caused heavy damage in Hojedk town and some villages were hit by power and water cuts.

State TV aired footage of damaged buildings in remote mountainous villages near Hojedk town, the epicenter of the earthquake with a population of 3,000 people. TV said coal mines in the area had been closed because of aftershocks.

Iran’s Red Crescent said emergency shelter, food and water had been sent to the quake-hit areas.

Criss-crossed by several major fault lines, Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 quake in Kerman province killed 31,000 people and flattened the ancient city of Bam.

(Additional reporting by Sandra Maler in Washington; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

Turkish gold trader implicates Erdogan in Iran money laundering

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A Turkish-Iranian gold trader on Thursday told jurors in a New York federal court that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

Reza Zarrab is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the criminal trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping to launder money for Iran. At the time of the alleged conspiracy, Erdogan was Turkey’s prime minister.

Zarrab also said for the first time on Thursday that Turkey’s Ziraat Bank and VakifBank were involved in the scheme. The two banks could not immediately be reached for comment after business hours in Turkey.

The testimony came on the third day of the trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank, who has pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court.

U.S. prosecutors have charged nine people in the case, although only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by U.S. authorities. Prosecutors have said the defendants took part in a scheme from 2010 to 2015 that involved gold trades and fake purchases of food to give Iran access to international markets, violating U.S. sanctions.

The case has fueled tensions between the United States and Turkey, which are NATO allies. Erdogan’s government has said the case was fabricated for political reasons.

Zarrab, who began testifying on Wednesday morning, has told jurors that he ran an international money laundering scheme to help Iran get around U.S. sanctions and spend its oil and gas revenues abroad. He said he helped Iran use funds deposited at Halkbank to buy gold, which was smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash.

Zarrab has said that Atilla helped design the transactions, along with Halkbank’s former general manager, Suleyman Aslan.

Zarrab said that he paid bribes worth more than $50 million to Zafer Caglayan, who was Turkey’s economy minister, to further the scheme. He said he bribed Aslan as well.

Both Caglayan and Aslan were charged in the case. Turkey’s government has previously said that Caglayan acted within Turkish and international law, and Halkbank has said all of its transactions complied with national and international regulations.

Zarrab’s testimony has focused on Halkbank and Turkey, but on Thursday, he said that he had tried to duplicate his scheme in China before Chinese banks shut him down.

“The banks that realized this had something to do with Iran, they immediately stopped it,” he said.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Dan Grebler)

Year of protests and crisis in volatile Venezuela

By Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) – Even by the volatile and violent standards of recent times in Venezuela, 2017 was an exceptional year, a “perfect storm” of political and economic crisis.

Going into a fourth year of crippling recession, Venezuela’s 30 million people found themselves skipping meals, suffering shortages of basic foods and medicines, jostling in lines for ever-scarcer subsidized goods, unable to keep up with dizzying inflation rates, and emigrating in ever larger numbers.

In unprecedented scenes for the once-prosperous OPEC nation, some citizens survived only by scavenging through garbage.

Demonstrators scuffle with security forces during an opposition rally in Caracas, Venezuela, April 4, 2017. Venezuelan security forces quelled masked protesters with tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray in Caracas after blocking an opposition rally against socialist President Nicolas Maduro. The clashes began after authorities closed subway stations, set up checkpoints and cordoned off a square where opponents had planned their latest protest against the government and the crippling economic crisis. Carlos Garcia Rawlins: “For me that was the day that made a difference, never before had I seen the protesters and police clashing men-to-men and struggling back and forward. From then, the strategy of the police changed and they never faced the protesters so close again.” REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

Not surprisingly in that context, President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling Socialists – the inheritors of Hugo Chavez’s “21st century revolution” – – lost popularity on the street, and the opposition coalition sensed a chance to unseat them.

The tipping point came in March when the pro-Maduro Supreme Court essentially took over functions of the opposition-led National Assembly. Though the controversial ruling was later modified, it was a trigger and rallying cry for the opposition, which began a campaign of street protests that ran from April to July.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Venezuela, decrying economic hardship, demanding a presidential election, urging a foreign humanitarian aid corridor, and seeking freedom for scores of jailed activists.

Slogans that read “Maduro, murderer!” and “Maduro, dictator!” began appearing on roads and walls around the country. Though the majority of protesters were peaceful, youths wearing masks and brandishing homemade Viking-style shields started turning up at the front of rallies to taunt security forces.

When police and National Guard soldiers blocked marches, youths threw Molotov cocktails and stones. The security forces quickly escalated tactics, routinely turning water-cannons on the protesters and firing teargas into crowds.

Guns appeared on the streets, and on several occasions security officials were caught on camera firing directly at demonstrators. Police were targeted with homemade explosives. Opposition supporters burned one man alive.

The deaths, injuries and arrests mounted. Over the chaotic months, at least 125 people died, thousands were injured and thousands were jailed.

Demonstrators march during the so-called “mother of all marches” against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, April 19, 2017. Carlos Garcia Rawlins: “That day was one of the biggest rallies up to then. There were thousands of people trying to find their way to the office of the state ombudsman after gathering in more than two dozen points around Caracas. But as in previous rallies, they were blocked by the National Guard. Waving the country’s yellow, blue and red flag and shouting ‘No more dictatorship’ and ‘Maduro out,’ demonstrators clogged a stretch of the main highway in Caracas. I remember the desperation of the people trying to escape the tear gas and not having space to run because there were so many.” REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

Global opinion hardened against Maduro. Amid the extraordinary daily events, gangs burst into the National Assembly and beat up opposition lawmakers. The nation’s best-known jailed opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, was released from prison and placed on home arrest to the joy of his supporters, then taken back to jail, then allowed home again, all in a matter of days.

Venezuelans grew accustomed to navigating around barricades and burning streets as they tried to get to school and work. Some days, the country virtually shut down.

By the end of July, many opposition supporters feared for their lives and protest numbers dwindled. Maduro said he was defeating a U.S.-backed coup attempt and authorities held an election, which the opposition boycotted, for an all-powerful Constituent Assembly charged with imposing order on the country.

Having failed to block the Constituent Assembly, the protests fizzled out, leaving opposition supporters nursing their wounds and planning their next moves.

They decided to tackle Maduro at the ballot-box in regional elections in October, but that backfired badly when they lost most of the governorships despite polls showing they would win. The opposition alleged fraud, but their complaints did not get traction and Maduro cemented his authority.

In November, Venezuela said it planned to renegotiate its entire foreign debt, adding another dimension to the deepening national crisis.

(See http://reut.rs/2AdRQ0Q for related photo essay)

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

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