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Wednesday August 2, 2017

IRAN’S former President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad is facing sentencing after a parliamentary court found him guilty of misus-ing billions of dollars in govern-ment funds, the public prosecutor at Iran’s S u p r e m e Audit Court said in an i n t e r v i e w publ ished Sunday.

In an i n t e r v i e w with the Etemaad newspaper, Fayaz Shojaie assessed that the funds could not be recovered and that Ahmadinejad did not have the resources himself to pay back the cash.

He now faces seven sentences of misusing billions of dollars.

The audit court is under the supervision of the Iranian par-liament, and lawmakers have been informed of the verdicts, Shojaie said.

The prosecutor explained that in one of the cases relating to Ahmadinejad’s second term in offi ce from 2009-2013 some US$2 billion were misused. It was not clear how the money was misused.

It was not known if the former president was tried by the court and will now be sentenced or if it is the responsibility of the parlia-ment to take action. (SD-Agencies)

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI was removed as U.S. President Donald Trump’s communica-tions director Monday, ending a tumultuous eleven days in the role.

The president made the deci-sion following a request from John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff, who insiders said wanted to make clear he was in charge.

“A great day at the White House!” Trump tweeted.

In a statement, the White House said: “Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff

John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best.”

Kelly, the widely-respected former retired U.S. Marine Corps gen-eral and former com-mander of United States Southern Command, was sworn in as chief of staff Monday.

The speed with which he apparently brought about the removal of Scaramucci sug-gested he was keen to assert order quickly.

“Kelly is already changing the culture here,” one White House aide report-edly said, adding there was “no way” he could work with Scaramucci.

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” said Barry Bennett, a former Trump cam-

paign adviser.Kelly summoned Scaramucci

to his offi ce Monday morn-ing and fi red him on the spot, an offi cial said. It was one of

Kelly’s fi rst acts as chief of staff.Scaramucci was escorted

from the White House grounds, becoming yet another high-ranking offi cial to leave an administration that is barely beyond the six-month mark. He was the third person to hold the communications director title in that time.

The departure of Scaramucci followed one of the rockiest weeks of Trump’s presidency in which a major Republican effort to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system failed in Congress.

(SD-Agencies)

CHARLIE GARD, the terminally ill baby who died a week shy of his fi rst birthday after a lengthy court battle that captured world-wide attention, will be buried with his “beloved” toy monkeys, his parents said Monday.

Gard died Friday in a hos-pice after he was taken off life support. His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, were embroiled in a legal battle for months, trying to bring their infant son to the United States for an experimental medical treatment that offered a sliver of hope to combat Gard’s rare genetic disease, mitochondrial depletion syndrome.

Family spokeswoman Alison Smith-Squire said the parents “have decided Charlie will be buried with his beloved toy monkeys.”

Charlie was described as being born “perfectly healthy” at birth, but he was admitted to the hospi-tal months later. His parents then spent several months trying to persuade London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Charlie was being treated, to allow them to bring their ill son to the U.S. in an attempt to save his life.

But Charlie’s doctors opposed the idea, despite support from international leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. The doctors said they believed the trip and treatment would cause Charlie more pain, and argued instead to switch off the child’s life support to allow him to die peacefully.

Last week, Charlie’s parents dropped their bid to bring Charlie to the U.S., saying “the window of opportunity has been lost. Recent medical tests revealed Charlie has irreversible muscular damage.”

(SD-Agencies)

RUSSIA said Monday the United States and other countries were trying “to shift responsibility for the situation to Russia and China” following the most recent missile test by North Korea.

“We view as groundless attempts undertaken by the U.S. and a number of other countries to shift responsibility to Russia and China, almost blaming Moscow and Beijing for indulging the missile and nuclear ambitions of the DPRK (North Korea),” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

North Korea said Saturday it had conducted another successful test of an intercontinental ballis-tic missile that proved its ability to strike the U.S. mainland, drawing a sharp warning from U.S. Presi-dent Donald Trump.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke with Trump on Monday and agreed on the need for more action on North Korea just hours after the U.S. Ambas-sador to the United Nations said Washington is “done talking about North Korea.”

Trump tweeted Saturday after

the missile test that he was “very disappointed” in China and that Beijing profi ts from U.S. trade but had done “nothing” for the United States with regards to North Korea.

China’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement responding to Trump’s earlier tweets, said the North Korean nuclear issue did not arise because of China and that everyone needed to work together to seek a resolution.

At the United Nations in New York, China’s U.N. ambassador said Monday it is primarily up

to the United States and North Korea, not Beijing, to reduce ten-sions and work toward resuming talks to end Pyongyang’s nuclear weapon and missile programs.

“China-U.S. relations are the world’s most important bilateral relations and Trump certainly knows this. Yet he still chooses to unfairly blame China for two unrelated issues,” a Xinhua com-mentary said Monday.

“As a neighbor of the DPRK, China knows well it has a lot to lose if the Korean Peninsula slides further away from denucleariza-

tion, so it has been making strenu-ous efforts, including organizing the Six-Party Talks, to maintain the fragile calm on the peninsula and work toward an early solution to the problem.

“It is absurd to suggest that China could repay the so-called U.S. generosity of allowing a huge trade defi cit by “easily resolving” the Korea nuclear issue, as the two issues are in completely different domains and can not be consid-ered tradeoffs for each other,” the commentary said.

(SD-Xinhua)

Russia hits back at US criticism over N. Korea

Scaramucci removed as communications director

Ex-Iranian leader to be sentenced

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Anthony Scaramucci

Charlie Gard to be buried with ‘beloved’ toy monkeys

Charlie Gard

FORMER Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra declared her innocence and asked for “kindness” from a court yester-day during her fi nal statement in a criminal negligence trial that could land her in prison for 10 years if she is convicted.

The case centers around a rice subsidy program that Thailand’s current military government says she grossly mishandled. Yingluck’s bank accounts were frozen after an administrative ruling held her responsible for about US$1 billion of the losses from the subsidy.

The case against Yingluck is widely seen as an effort to put another nail in the coffi n of the political machine founded and directed by her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup for alleged cor-ruption and disrespect for the monarchy.

The telecommunications mogul has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape a prison sentence on a confl ict of interest conviction. The 2006 coup trig-gered years of sometimes violent battles for power in Thailand.

The Shinawatras’ critics describe them as corrupt, profi t-seeking politicians, but their supporters have repeatedly voted them and their political allies into power. The supporters say the traditional political establishment opposes Thaksin because his electoral pop-ularity threatens their entrenched privileges.

“I beg the court for kindness and (to) please dismiss the charge,” Yingluck said in her closing state-ment to the court, according to prepared remarks.

The verdict is to be issued Aug. 25. (SD-Agencies)

Former Thai PM says she’s innocent

Ousted former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra greets supporters as she leaves the Supreme Court in Bangkok, Thailand, yesterday. SD-Agencies