Amazon purchased the Middle East’s biggest online retailer Souq.com on Tuesday for an undisclosed amount, a day after a state-backed firm disclosed an $800 million counteroffer.   A joint statement described the purchase as expanding Amazon’s influence into the Mideast as the state-supported firm Emaar prepares to launch its own retail website in a country known more for its luxury malls than online shopping.   That could put Seattle-based Amazon in a head-to-head competition with a firm helmed by one of the sheikhdom’s favored business magnates.   “This is a milestone for the online shopping space in the region,” Souq.com co-founder and CEO Ronaldo Mouchawar said in a statement.   The announcement said the two companies expect the sale to close this year.   “Together, we’ll work hard to provide the best possible service for millions of customers in the Middle East,” Russ Grandinetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, …

Thirty-eight years ago today — March 28, 1979 — disaster struck at 4 a.m. at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania after its cooling system failed. It remains the worst nuclear accident in American history. A simple plumbing failure prevented the main feedwater pumps from sending water to generators that remove heat from the plant’s core reactor.   During those pre-dawn hours, the temperature of the reactor rose steadily even as staffers were unaware that a valve in the emergency cooling system had become stuck in place, allowing cool water to flow through the valve — not reaching the reactor.  Instruments in the control room misled operators, who thought the cooling system was working normally. As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. As …

An Indiana board is poised to endorse a deal directing $7 million in tax breaks and grants for a deal brokered by President Donald Trump to keep hundreds of jobs at the Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis.   The incentive package is set for a vote by an Indiana Economic Development Board committee on Tuesday, nearly four months after Trump celebrated the deal at the furnace factory.   Carrier is pledging to keep nearly 1,100 jobs at the factory, including about 800 production jobs that the company had planned to outsource to Mexico. But about 550 jobs are still being lost. Carrier is also investing $16 million for automation at the factory.   Plant union president Chuck Jones says the deal means Indiana taxpayers are rewarding a very profitable corporation for cutting jobs. …

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election, calling it a hostile act.   Cheney said Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a serious attempt to interfere in the 2016 election and other democratic processes in America.   In a speech at a speaker’s conference in New Delhi, Cheney said, “In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war.”   Cheney’s accusation comes at a time when both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees are investigating possible Russian interference in the election that brought President Donald Trump to power.   …

The U.N. human rights chief is calling on Iraq’s military and a U.S.-led coalition to review their tactics in the battle against the Islamic State group in Mosul, warning that they should not fall into what he called the militants’ “trap” of endangering civilians. “The conduct of airstrikes on ISIL locations in such an environment, particularly given the clear indications that ISIL is using large numbers of civilians as human shields at such locations, may potentially have a lethal and disproportionate impact on civilians,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement Tuesday, using an acronym for Islamic State. The U.N. says at least 307 people were killed and 273 others wounded between February 17 and March 22 in western Mosul.  It attributed the casualties to all sides involved in the fight for western Mosul — Iraqi and coalition airstrikes, as well as Islamic State shelling and improvised explosive devices. …

Energy Secretary Rick Perry toured the site of a shuttered nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain on Monday, his first visit to a U.S. Energy Department site since taking over the department. Perry’s visit occurred less than two weeks after President Donald Trump proposed $120 million to restart a licensing process for the site in the desert outside Las Vegas — much to the chagrin of Nevada politicians who’ve spent more than a decade making sure it remains in moth balls. Perry said he met Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a fellow Republican, at the Nevada Supreme Court building following his tour of the site. He said he and Sandoval, who are longtime friends dating to Perry’s time as governor of Texas, had a “frank and productive conversation” in which Sandoval reiterated his opposition to the project.    “Today’s meeting with Gov. Sandoval was the first step in a process …

Political satire dates back to the ancient Greeks, 2,400 years ago when Aristophanes made fun of the Peloponnesian War. It’s a staple of late-night American television talk shows and the editorial pages of most newspapers. Successful political cartoonists are able to draw biting commentary with the stroke of a crayon. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan profiles an award-winning cartoonist. …

The Supreme Court is taking up the case of a longtime U.S. resident who is facing deportation to South Korea after pleading guilty to a drug crime based on his lawyer’s bad advice.   The justices are hearing argument Tuesday in an appeal by Jae Lee, who has lived in the United States for 35 years and has never been back to South Korea since coming to the United States when he was 13.   The case has taken on increased importance because President Donald Trump has promised to step up deportations, with a special focus on immigrants who have been convicted of crimes. The American Bar Association has estimated that one of every 10 criminal defendants is not an American citizen. …

A recent spike in civilian casualties in Mosul suggests the U.S.-led coalition is not taking adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths as it battles the Islamic State militants alongside Iraqi ground forces, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.    The human rights group’s report follows acknowledgement from the coalition that the U.S. military was behind a March 17 strike in a western Mosul neighborhood that residents have said killed more than a hundred civilians.    U.S. officials did not confirm there were civilian casualties but opened an investigation.    Amnesty’s report also cites a second strike on Saturday that it said killed “up to 150 people.” The U.S.-led coalition said in a statement that it was investigating multiple strikes in western Mosul that allegedly resulted in civilian deaths.    Evidence gathered on the ground in Mosul “points to an alarming pattern of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes which have destroyed whole houses with …

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has famously declared himself “not a big media press access person,” isn’t alone in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. But it’s too early to call him a trendsetter, either. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Cho, both with extensive private sector backgrounds, have similarly been press-averse at the beginning of their tenures. Others seem to be following the leads of predecessors. In some cases, it’s just too early to tell. Tillerson’s decision not to make room for reporters on the plane for his first major overseas trip earlier this month drew scrutiny because his job is generally considered the most important in the Cabinet and there’s a rich tradition of secretaries of state keeping the public informed of foreign policy objectives. He’s had little visibility so far and the plane decision is more than symbolic; many of his predecessors and their staffs used …

The names Matthew and Otto have been retired for Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes following the deadly 2016 season. According to a statement Monday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the World Meteorological Organization will use Martin and Owen for future Atlantic storms. The new names might first be used in 2022. Names get retired when a storm is so deadly or destructive that future use of its name would be insensitive. Hurricane Matthew caused 585 deaths, including over 500 deaths in Haiti before it made landfall in Cuba, the Bahamas and South Carolina. It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane since 2007 and the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since 2005. Heavy rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Otto caused 18 deaths in Central America.   …

The chairman of the U.S. House intelligence committee, David Nunes, met a source on White House grounds before making his disclosure last week that President Donald Trump was caught up in “incidental” surveillance, according to his spokesman. Nunes’ spokesman Jack Langer told reporters Monday that “Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source.” Previously, Nunes’ would not say where he met his source, and has still not revealed the identity of the source. The White House said it was aware of the reports regarding Nunes but said any questions concerning the meeting should be directed to Nunes himself. Last week, Nunes’ announced that he received information from an undisclosed source that conversations by President Trump and his staff had been swept up in “incidental collection” activities by U.S. spy …

The United States, Russia, China and more than a score of other countries are sitting out new talks at the United Nations toward a treaty that would ban nuclear weapons.   U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and colleagues from Britain, France and about 20 other nations gathered Monday outside the General Assembly to show opposition to the talks starting inside. Haley says the U.S. wants a nuclear-weapons-free world but has to be “realistic” about how to get there while protecting its people.   She says the U.S. has already reduced its nuclear weapons by 85 percent under the decades-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.   More than 100 countries backed a General Assembly resolution that set up the talks. Backers of the proposed treaty say prohibiting nuclear weapons would be a powerful step toward eliminating them.   …

White House officials say President Donald Trump will sign executive orders Tuesday that would effectively dismantle Obama era environmental regulations, rekindling the highly-charged partisan debate about how human activity affects the earth’s climate, and deepening concern decades of work on global climate treaties may be unraveling. “Many agree that would be disastrous,” Dutch Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen told VOA in a telephone interview. “Whatever has been achieved could be destroyed, so I don’t think many scientists would be pleased with this,” said Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for work explaining the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer. Trump has repeatedly signaled disdain for his predecessor’s climate policy. On the campaign trail he called President Obama’s Clean Power Plan “stupid”, largely because it puts in place what he calls “job killing” regulations. The executive orders he is set to sign Tuesday directs the Environmental Protection agency to thoroughly revise …

Driving around the hallowed grounds at Vicksburg National Military Park in the state of Mississippi reminded National Parks traveler Mikah Meyer of another famous battlefield: Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War and where President Abraham Lincoln gave his immortal “Gettysburg Address.” Gettysburg of the south “Having lived in Maryland before this trip, which is very close to Gettysburg — one of the most popular battlefields to visit — I heard people often talk about Vicksburg as kind of a similar experience… just in the South,” Mikah said. Tour Vicksburg National Military Park: Like Gettysburg, Vicksburg is a large battlefield site, with licensed national park guides who cheerfully help visitors navigate the grounds. Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the National Park Service, says he felt lucky to have had “one of …

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reiterating the importance of Israeli and American cooperation in the battle against what he called “militant Islam” in the Middle East, saying the two countries must stand together to ensure “light triumphs over darkness and hope triumphs over despair.” He also emphasized the importance of preventing Iran “from ever developing nuclear weapons. Speaking Monday via satellite to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Netanyahu called on the United States to “vanquish” the so-called Islamic State group and build alliances with moderate Muslims to make sure IS does not return. “We must ensure that the forces of militant Islam are defeated,”  Netanyahu said, adding that Iran can not be allowed to “drag humanity away from the promise of a bright future to the misery of a dark past.” He thanked President Donald Trump for his vocal support of Israel and …

Elissa Montanti can rattle off the stories without hesitation of the hundreds of wounded children who have come through the doors of her small New York charity to get medical help. Marci, a five-year-old from Afghanistan, was shot in the face in a Taliban ambush. She lost her eye, and her father died trying to shield her. Hamandani, nine, was hanging from a tree, trying not to be swept away in Indonesia’s 2004 tsunami when he fell and crushed his arm. And Sarki stumbled into a wood stove as a toddler living high in the Himalayas, a six-hour trek from the nearest passable road. Her burned arm healed into a frozen position, with a web-like hand. They are among the more than 200 children injured in disaster or conflict and brought to the United States for surgery, prosthetics and other medical treatment, courtesy of Montanti’s Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF). …

The United States wants to cut by a quarter the troop cap for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, said diplomats, despite warnings by France and others against drastic changes to the world body’s largest and most expensive operation. The mandate for the $1.2 billion mission in the central African state, known as MONUSCO, expires on Friday. The confidential Security Council negotiations on its renewal are taking place amid U.N. warnings that violence is spreading across Congo ahead of planned elections before the end of 2017. The United States wants the troop cap to be cut to 15,000, diplomats said, and despite a request by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to add two extra police units – 320 officers – Washington does not want to change the current total of 1050. Guterres told the council the extra police units were needed “in light of the increasing threat of violence …

Faced with the Trump administration’s promised crackdown on immigration, faith communities around the country are answering a new call: what they see as their moral imperative to help undocumented immigrants in their communities who face deportation. Niki Papadogiannakis spoke to faith leaders and activists who recently launched a network of sanctuary congregations in Washington. …

Key members of the Trump administration are joining U.S. Congressional leaders for the opening of Washington’s three-day annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as pro-Israel lobbyists and supporters voice hope for bipartisan U.S. support for an array of Israeli objectives. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to address the AIPAC conference Sunday in a speech expected to center on warming ties with the Jewish state and support for new U.S. sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missile program and its widely alleged push to develop nuclear weaponry. The conference opened just days after a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators introduced legislation calling for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, targeting Tehran’s ballistic missile testing and its alleged support of terrorism. In opening remarks Sunday, Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Ron Dermer voiced hope for improved bilateral ties under President Donald Trump, saying “there was a meeting …

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week scrapping Obama cuts in power plant emissions, Trump’s environmental chief says. EPA director Scott Pruitt told ABC Television’s This Week broadcast Sunday that Trump believes the U.S. needs what he calls a “pro-growth and pro-environment approach.” “For too long…we have accepted a narrative that if you’re pro-growth, pro-jobs, you’re anti-environment; if you’re pro-environment, you’re anti-jobs or anti-growth,” Pruitt said. He said the Trump plan to lift restrictions on emissions by plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels will be both pro-growth and pro-environment, but within the rules spelled out by the the Clean Air Act. Pruitt pointed out that innovation and technology, particularly in coal and natural gas, have brought the country’s carbon footprint to pre-1994 levels. He said Trump’s move will also bring down also electricity rates for consumers. Trump has already alarmed environmentalists by ordering completion of …

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame hailed Rwanda-Israel friendship Sunday in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. He was the first African head of state ever to address the pro-Israel forum that brings together thousands of activists, experts and elected officials. “My message today is simple: Rwanda is, without question, a friend of Israel,” said Kagame,who is credited for putting an end to the 1994 genocide in his country. In a refence to the genocide perpetrated against the Jews in Europe during World War II, he told an audience of close to 18,000 delegates that the shared history of tragedy has brought Israel and Rwanda much closer. “No tragedy is so great, so vast that human ingenuity and resilience cannot give rise to a better future.” he said. “The survival and renewal of our two nations testifies to this truth.” AIPAC, with more than 100,000 members …

The coming week will see Republicans attempting to regroup and reignite momentum behind a conservative agenda that failed its first major test of 2017: repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, last week’s legislative train wreck showed that, despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans may not have a governing majority capable of delivering on the party’s promises to voters. …