Activities of Gulf Van Gent Holding.
Commenting on a report published earlier today in The New York Times, the Pakistani official confirmed the offer made by General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani (Pakistan’s army chief of staff) during a visit last month to NATO headquarters in Belgium.
(Left: Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani presides at a meeting of top military commanders in Rawalpindi, 대구 마사지 Pakistan in this October 2009 file photo.)
“Sometimes they arrive too late,” said Dr. Adrien Colimon, the chief of pediatrics, shaking her head.
The second stage of Haiti’s medical emergency has begun, with diarrheal illnesses, acute respiratory infections and malnutrition beginning to claim lives by the dozen.
And while the half-million people jammed into germ-breeding makeshift camps have so far been spared a contagious-disease outbreak, health officials fear epidemics. They are rushing to vaccinate 530,000 children against measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
“It’s still tough,” said Chris Lewis, emergency health co-ordinator for Save the Children, which by Tuesday had treated 11,000 people at 14 mobile clinics in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel and Leogane. “At the moment we’re providing lifesaving services. What we’d like to do is to move to provide quality, longer-term care, but we’re not there yet.”
Haiti’s government raised the death toll for the Jan. 12 earthquake to 230,000 on Tuesday – the same death toll as the 2004 Asian tsunami. Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said she expects the toll to rise as more bodies are counted, and noted the number does not include bodies buried privately by funeral homes or families.
The number of deaths not directly caused by the quake is unclear; U.N. officials are only now beginning to survey the more than 200 international medical aid groups working out of 91 hospitals – most of them just collections of tents – to compile the data.
Special Report: Road to Recovery in Haiti
Some 300,000 people are injured. At Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital, patients continue arriving with infections in wounds they can’t keep clean because the street is their home. The number of amputees, estimated at 2,000 to 4,000 by Handicap International, keeps rising as people reach Port-au-Prince with untreated fractures.
Violence bred of food shortages and inadequate security is also producing casualties. Dr. Santiago Arraffat of Evansville, Ind., said he treats several gunshot wounds a day at General Hospital.
“People are just shooting each other,” he said. “There are fights over food. People are so desperate.”
Nearly a month after the quake, respiratory infections, malnutrition, diarrhea from waterborne diseases and a lack of appropriate food for young children may be the biggest killers, health workers say.
Part of the problem is ignorance. Abigail’s mother, 20-year-old Simone Bess, waited a week after her child fell ill to bring her in, Colimon said.
Colimon ushered Bess into an adjacent tent when it became clear the Swiss doctors trying to hydrate and keep her child breathing would fail. Bess screamed in agony and crumpled to the paving stones when she heard.
“Please give me my child!” she wailed. “My one and only child. Tell them to do something for her! Tell them to wake her up!”
Twenty yards away, the child’s father, James Charlot, curled up against a wall, shaking with grief.
A shortage of medical equipment and spotty electrical power – service has been restored to about 20 per cent of Port-au-Prince – have worsened the medical emergency.
A respirator might have saved Abigail, Colimon said. But the hospital has none. Nor does it have electrocardiogram machines. The sweltering heat inside the pediatric tent may also have been a factor.
“This whole tent – all (the infants inside) are dried up because it’s so hot in there,” said Willow Walsh-Hughes, of Draper, Utah, a nurse who hugged and stroked Bess as her child’s life slipped away.
The wire-thin Bess had stopped lactating after the quake, Walsh-Hughes said. Because breast-feeding is the best way to avoid infant diarrhea, a mother’s ability to lactate can determine a baby’s survival.
At another General Hospital tent, Farah Paul, 16, held her acutely malnourished daughter Roselande. Doctors said the wan-looking, 4-month-old baby was coughing and not gaining weight.
Paul said her breast milk dried up the day of the quake, even before she learned that her sister, mother and aunt had been killed in the disaster. Doctors said Paul had given the baby porridge and bananas, 천안 마사지 food the child could not digest.
Acute child malnutrition is only expected to worsen until the summer harvest in August, said Mija Ververs, a UNICEF child nutrition expert.
Ververs said that while shock and trauma can cause a mother to stop lactating, it is a myth that hungry women can no longer breast-feed.
“Little infants are like parasites in a way. No matter how little the mother gets herself, she is always able to nourish a child,” Ververs said.
She noted that breast-feeding provides the best nutritional chance for babies in a crisis such as Haiti’s and protects against disease by helping them build immunity. Powdered infant formula is a terrible idea, doctors say, because mothers living in tent camps have limited access to clean water and are unable to sterilize bottles.
Forty-seven per cent of Haiti’s population of more than 9 million is under age 18. The Caribbean country has the Western Hemisphere’s highest birth rate and its highest child and maternal mortality rates. Haiti also has the hemisphere’s highest malnutrition rate – with some 17,500 children under age 5 acutely malnourished even before the quake, according to UNICEF.
At a Save the Children clinic west of the capital, about 30 people stood in line for help. Camp residents subsisting in part on plantains from an adjacent grove said two adults and five children died of starvation there last week. A clinic doctor, Nermie Augustin, said she was seeing a lot of infants with diarrhea.
A mother of five, Janina Desir, said her children were barely getting one meal a day.
“Since this morning all they’ve had was coffee – and a tiny portion of bread,” she said. “No milk.”
An official from a major field hospital said the case of 10 American Baptists charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without permission was impeding the evacuation of critically injured youngsters to the U.S.
“Pilots are very reluctant to take off from the United States and take back children without the proper papers,” said Elizabeth Greig, chief administrative officer for the University of Miami-Medishare Foundation. “That fear has been exacerbated by the kidnapping case, and now they’re just paralyzed.”
The evacuation of eight critically injured children in all has been held up, Greig said. None of them are orphans, she said, but obtaining identity papers after a catastrophic quake can be impossible.
She said she could not say with confidence whether any children have died as a result.
The head of UNICEF warned Tuesday that people may still be trying to smuggle children out of Haiti and said protecting youngsters who survived the earthquake is the top concern of the U.N. children’s agency.
Ann Veneman said in an interview with The Associated Press that UNICEF is starting a program to identify children who lost or can’t find their parents. The group is also working with other groups to put children who are alone into facilities where they can receive food, water and psychological help, she said.
“This is a children’s emergency,” she said.
Complete Coverage: Devastation in Haiti Haiti Quake: How You can Help
Veneman, who visited Haiti last week, said in every humanitarian crisis there’s a risk that children will be trafficked out of the country for sexual exploitation, 청주 안마 adoption, child labor or other illegal purposes. In Haiti, she said, “this is a big concern.”
Last week, 10 Americans were charged with kidnapping and criminal association for trying to take 33 children into the neighboring Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 without proper documentation. The Baptist missionaries say they were heading to a Dominican orphanage following Haiti’s devastating quake, and had only good intentions.
Veneman said UNICEF has learned of some other instances “where there is concern that children may not have (had) the necessary documents when they left.”
At the airport in Port-au-Prince and the border with the Dominican Republic, specially trained officials are now checking documents, which Veneman said should make a difference.
Veneman declined to comment on the detained Americans, saying the judicial system in Haiti is handling the case: “I think we need to await the outcome of those proceedings,” she said.
Veneman said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive expressed concern at the massive media attention directed at the detained Americans.
“As the prime minister said to me in a meeting with him, `I spend so much of my time answering questions about these 10 Americans when I have 2 million people in need here,”‘ the UNICEF chief said,
Even before the Americans were detained, fears that child traffickers would take advantage of the chaos following the quake led Bellerive to announce that all foreign adoptions would need his personal approval.
Veneman said there is no estimate of the number of children left alone as a result of the Jan. 12 quake. Before it struck, there were between 300,000 and 350,000 children in residential care facilities but many were left by parents too poor to take care of them, she said.
Veneman said some care facilities and orphanages collapsed in the quake, killing children, though nobody has any figures.
Many children lost their parents, and most have now been put “into some kind of safe place,” including residential care facilities like an SOS children’s village, she said.
“The primary concern is protection of children making sure they have shelter, food, water, the basic necessities and care,” Veneman said.
UNICEF has begun a program to to give children some kind of identity such as an arm band to make sure that as the process goes through they can then reunite them with family members.
“This is really the goal, to reunite any unaccompanied children with family members,” she said.
According to population estimates, 38 percent of Haiti’s nine million people are under the age of 15 and about 45 percent are 18 and under, Veneman said.
A Haitian judge has decided to release 10 American missionaries accused of kidnapping children in Haiti, Reuters news agency reported Wednesday afternoon, siting a “judicial source”.
The judge decided the Americans had no “criminal intentions” when they tried to take the children out of Haiti, according to Reuters’ report.
A defense lawyer for the Americans, however, tells The Associated Press that the judge deciding whether the Baptist group should face trial for attempting to take a busload of children out of the country is probably ready to make his ruling, but has not yet decided what that ruling will be.
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil finished questioning the Americans on Wednesday and now must transmit his recommendation to the prosecutor, lawyer Gary Lassade toldd the AP.
The prosecutor could appeal if the judge recommended dropping charges, but the judge has the last say, the attorney told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He said he expected the judge to issue that final decision Thursday.
Haiti Earthquake – Latest CoverageHaiti Relief: How You Can Help
“The judge will not take a decision before he sends his finding to the prosecutor,” Lassade told the AP.
The Americans, most from an Idaho Baptist group, were charged last week with child kidnapping and criminal association after being arrested Jan. 29 trying to take 33 children, ages 2 to 12, across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.
The day after the group’s arrest, its leader, Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, told the AP that the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives. She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.
Who is Laura Silsby?
However, at least 20 of the children are from a single village and have living parents. Some of the parents told the AP they willingly turned over their children to the missionaries on the promise the Americans would educate them and allow relatives to visit.
Saint-Vil questioned at least two of the parents Wednesday as well as the 10 Americans.
In a brief conversation afterward through cell bars in the stuffy, grimy jail where they have been held, the missionaries refused to be interviewed by the AP.
“We’ve said all we’re going to say for now. We don’t want to talk now,” Silsby said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The women were held separately from the men, who shared their cell with nine Haitian men, 부산 안마 some of whom played checkers on the cell floor.
“We will not talk unless our lawyer is present,” said Paul Thompson, pastor of the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Lassade represents Thompson’s cousin, Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas.
A Dallas attorney for Allen, Hiram Sasser, told the AP that his client was recruited just 48 hours before the group left last month for the Dominican Republic on what Silsby termed an emergency rescue mission.
“He did not know many of the other people who were on the mission trip, or what other people were going to do, or about paperwork,” Sasser said.
Silsby had decided last summer to create an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and in November registered the nonprofit New Life Children’s Refuge foundation in Idaho.
After Haiti’s catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake she accelerated the plan and recruited her fellow missionaries. Silsby told the AP she was only interested in saving suffering children.
She told the AP after her arrest, however, that she did not have all the Haitian papers required to take the children out of the country.
A Dominican diplomat who said she visited him the same day the missionaries tried to take the children out of the country told the AP that he warned her that without those papers she could be arrested.
The Treasury Department said it was targeting one person and four companies for penalties over their alleged involvement in producing and spreading weapons of mass destruction. The agency said it was freezing the assets in U.S. jurisdictions of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Rostam Qasemi and four subsidiaries of a previously penalized construction firm that he runs.
The sanctions made public Wednesday expand existing U.S. unilateral penalties against elements of the Guard Corps, or IRGC, which Western intelligence officials believe is spearheading Iran’s nuclear program.
The announcement came as U.S. officials lobby for action at the U.N. Security Council, which has already hit Iran with three sets of sanctions. The Obama White House wants to impose fresh international sanctions over Tehran’s failure to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
Qasemi commands the Guard Corps’ Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, which Treasury described as its engineering arm that is involved in the construction of streets, tunnels, waterworks, agricultural projects and pipelines. Its profits “are available to support the full range of the IRGC’s illicit activities, including WMD proliferation and support for terrorism,” Treasury said in a statement.
Khatam al-Anbiya was hit with U.S. sanctions by the Bush administration in 2007. Wednesday’s penalties apply to Qasemi and Khatam al-Anbiya subsidiaries, the Fater Engineering Institute, the Imensazen Consultant Engineers Institute, the Makin Institute and the Rahab Institute.
“As the IRGC consolidates control over broad swaths of the Iranian economy, displacing ordinary Iranian businessmen in favor of a select group of insiders, it is hiding behind companies like Khatam al-Anbiya and its affiliates to maintain vital ties to the outside world,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“Today’s action exposing Khatam al-Anbiya subsidiaries will help firms worldwide avoid business that ultimately benefits the IRGC and its dangerous activities,” he said.
Treasury’s move followed a tough new warning to Iran from President Barack Obama, who said on Tuesday that the country remains on an “unacceptable” path to nuclear weapons, despite its denials, and that the U.S. and like-minded countries would soon present a set of punishing sanctions at the United Nations.
His comments came in response to Iran’s announcement that it was rejecting a deal it provisionally accepted in October under which it would ship low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enriching for use in a Tehran medical research reactor. On Sunday, Iran said it would would produce its own higher-enriched uranium. On Tuesday, Iranian state television said the process began in the presence of inspectors from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.
Mr. Obama said he was sticking to a two-track approach: offering to negotiate, while threatening further pressure. He said the world would welcome an Iranian decision to accept U.N. demands that it live up to its nuclear control obligations.
“And if not, then the next step is sanctions,” he said. “They have made their choice so far, although the door is still open. And what we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole.”
Mr. Obama said that work to broaden the U.N.’s sanctions was moving quickly, but he gave no specific timeline for the presentation of a new resolution. Russia, a traditional opponent of sanctions, appears ready to support new penalties. But another of the council’s five permanent, veto-wielding members, China, which has increasingly close economic ties to Iran, can block a resolution by itself. China has said the time is not yet right for 청주 안마 fresh sanctions.
Instead of keeping the offensive secret, Americans have been talking about it for weeks, expecting the Taliban would flee. But the militants appear to be digging in, apparently believing that even a losing fight would rally supporters and sabotage U.S. plans if the battle proves destructive.
No date for the main attack has been announced but all signs indicate it will come soon. It will be the first major offensive since President Barack Obama announced last December that he was sending 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan, and will serve as a significant test of the new U.S. strategy for 천안 마사지 turning back the Taliban.
Marjah Marines Brace for Offensive Afghanistan: Life on the Frontline
About 400 U.S. troops from the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade and about 250 Afghan soldiers moved into positions northeast of Marjah before dawn Tuesday as U.S. Marines pushed to the outskirts of the town.
Automatic rifle fire rattled in the distance as the Marines dug in for the night with temperatures below freezing. The occasional thud of mortar shells and the sharp blast of rocket-propelled grenades fired by the Taliban pierced the air.
“They’re trying to bait us, don’t get sucked in,” yelled a Marine sergeant, warning his troops not to venture closer to the town. In the distance, Marines could see farmers and nomads gathering their livestock at sunset, seemingly indifferent to the firing.
The U.S. goal is to take control quickly of the farming community, located in a vast, irrigated swath of land in Helmand province 380 miles southwest of Kabul. That would enable the Afghan government to re-establish a presence, bringing security, electricity, clean water and other public services to the estimated 80,000 inhabitants.
Over time, American commanders believe such services will undermine the appeal of the Taliban among their fellow Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country and the base of the insurgents’ support.
“The military operation is phase one,” Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal told reporters Tuesday in Kabul. “In addition to that, we will have development in place, justice, good governance, bringing job opportunities to the people.”
Marjah will serve as the first trial for the new strategy implemented last year by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He maintains that success in the eight-year conflict cannot be achieved by killing Taliban fighters, but rather by protecting civilians and winning over their support.
Many Afghan Pashtuns are believed to have turned to the Taliban, who were driven from power in the U.S.-led invasion of 2001, because of disgust over the ineffectual and corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai.
“The success of the operation will not be in the military phase,” NATO’s civilian chief in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, told reporters Tuesday. “It will be over the next weeks and months as the people … feel the benefits of better governance, of economic opportunities and of operating under the legitimate authorities of Afghanistan.”
To accomplish that, NATO needs to take the town without causing significant damage or civilian casualties. That would risk a public backlash among residents, many of whose sons and brothers are probably among the estimated 400 to 1,000 Taliban defenders. U.S. aircraft have been dropping leaflets over the town, urging militants not to resist and warning civilians to remain indoors.
Provincial officials believe about 164 families – or about 980 people – have left the town in recent weeks, although the real figure could be higher because many of them moved in with relatives and never registered with authorities.
Residents contacted by telephone in Marjah said the Taliban were preventing civilians from leaving, warning them they have placed bombs along the roads to stop the American attack. The militants may believe the Americans will restrain their fire if they know civilians are at risk.
Mohammad Hakim said he waited until the last minute to leave Marjah with his wife, nine sons, four daughters and grandchildren because he was worried about abandoning his cotton fields in a village on the edge of town. He decided to leave Tuesday, but Taliban fighters turned him back because they said the road was mined.
“All of the people are very scared,” Hakim said by telephone. “Our village is like a ghost town. The people are staying in their homes.”
Sedwill said NATO hopes that when Marjah has fallen, many Taliban militants could be persuaded to join a government-promoted reintegration process.
“The message to them is accept it,” he said. “The message to the people of the area is, of course, keep your heads down, stay inside when the operation is going ahead.”
Mangal, the governor, said authorities believe some local Taliban are ready to renounce al Qaeda and give the government a chance.
“I’m confident that there are a number of Taliban members who will reconcile with us and who will be under the sovereignty of the Afghan government,” he said.
Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister who lectures at the National Defense University in Washington, said the U.S. had little choice but to publicize the offensive so civilians could leave and minimize casualties. He said it would have been impossible to achieve complete surprise because “an operation of this scale cannot be kept secret.”
But Jalali added that publicizing the operation may have encouraged hard-core Taliban to stand and fight to show their supporters and the international community that they will not be easily swayed by promises of amnesty and reintegration.
“Normally the Taliban would leave. They would not normally decisively engage in this kind of pitched battle. They would leave and come back because they have the time to come back,” Jalali told The Associated Press.
“If there’s stiff resistance in Marjah, this could increase the recruiting power of the Taliban or at least retain what they have in that area,” he said. “It’s become the symbol of Taliban resistance. So I would suspect it’s possible there would be stiff rearguard resistance. If it becomes bloody, it would affect opinion in Europe and the U.S.”
Jalali also said that success would depend on whether the Afghan government can make good on its promise of services once the battle is over.
“If the coalition can stabilize Marjah, rebuild it and install good governance, that can be an example for other places,” he said. “If not, it would be another problem.”
Echoing this theory, McChrystal told reporters at a defense conference in Turkey last weekend that it was necessary to tell Afghans that the attack on Marjah was coming so they would know “that when the government re-establishes security, they’ll have choices.”
“They are divorced,” the pop star’s attorney, Laura Wasser, said after a Superior Court hearing. “Everything is finalized.”
Court Commissioner Scott Gordon signed orders for dissolution of marriage, an alimony agreement and child custody. The alimony agreement will not be made public unless there is an enforcement issue, Wasser said.
“Most of that tracks the pre-nup,” the attorney said, without elaborating.
“The best interests of the children could be harmed” if the arrangement were not sealed, Gordon said.
Spears, 25, and Federline have two sons, 22-month-old Sean Preston Federline and 10-month-old Jayden James Federline.
The couple had a private wedding ceremony on Sept. 18, 2004. Spears filed for 부산 안마 divorce on Nov. 7, 2005.
By Amanda Beck
One of the biggest names in musical theater — the star and creator of “Hamilton” — has plunged right into his NEXT ACT. It’s in a place a long way from Broadway, but very close to his heart, as David Begnaud shows us:
As the creator and star of the Broadway sensation, “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda is used to getting mobbed by adoring crowds. But the crowds that greeted him a few days ago in Puerto Rico were different. They weren’t there just to applaud him they wanted to thank him.
What is Miranda’s biggest concern about the island? “It’s still the immediate needs of the hardest-hit towns. It’s those towns in the mountains, and the hardest-hit towns that we are still struggling to get aid to.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is still reeling. Fifty-three days later, much of the island remains without power and running water. Many roads and bridges are still out.
Since the storm, the 37-year-old Miranda has been using his voice, and his fame, to sound the alarm.
Begnaud asked, “What is expected of you, as a Puerto Rican?”
“Well, it’s complicated, because I didn’t grow up here, so it’s this weird mix of I will do anything to support the island, but I also don’t for a second pretend I know what’s best for the island, because I don’t live here,” he replied. “My job is to amplify the concerns of Puerto Rico.”
While Miranda wasn’t born on the island, his parents were, and Lin-Manuel spent summers as a child visiting his grandparents in Vega Alta, outside San Juan.
“They were such a constant in my life,” he said. “They never missed a play. They’d fly to New York to come see me in the school play. I think of them so much.”
He walked through what was left of his grandparents’ home. “They bought this property and the only thing that was here was the porch. And they built the house around that,” he said.
Here, as on much of the island, there is little left.
“The porch has survived, has survived them, and has survived this hurricane. Is there a better metaphor for what Puerto Rico is going through than this footprint?” Miranda said. “We have to start from scratch. But we have this footprint.
“The metaphor is, you know, 대전 안마 Hurricane Maria just wiped us out, but this footprint is still here, this porch is still here, and we are still here,” he said. “And as long as we’re still here and we are trying, we’re gonna rebuild this house. And we’re going to rebuild it with solar panels on top. The metaphor is we have an opportunity in the wake of tragedy to rebuild, and rebuild smarter, and rebuild better. And that’s the hope with this house, and that’s the hope with our island.”
The day after Maria hit, Miranda did what he does best: he wrote a song, “Almost Like Praying,” inspired by “Maria,” from “West Side Story,” to raise money to help the devastated island. He rounded up some of the world’s biggest Latino stars — from J-Lo to Rita Moreno — to perform:
Released on October 6, it hit #1 on iTunes in 17 countries. All the profits go to a fund to help the Caribbean island recover.
“Through the Hispanic Federation, not even including ‘Almost Like Praying,’ we’ve raised just shy of $20 million,” Miranda said.
“How much money has the song alone brought in?” asked Begnaud.
“I don’t know yet! You know, I know that we’ve sold over 150,000 copies on iTunes. That’s $1.29 each. So that’s minimum $150,000.”
But as he was finishing the song, Miranda got caught up in a controversy on Twitter war with President Trump:
The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.
You’re going straight to hell, @realDonaldTrump. No long lines for you. Someone will say, “Right this way, sir.”They’ll clear a path. https://t.co/xXfJH0KJmw
“Any regrets?” asked Begnaud.
“No. Those were the only words I had on the occasion,” Miranda laughed. “You know, disasters are moments when leaders unite us, you know? They’re no one’s fault, and he starts attacking people on the front lines.”
Last week, Miranda hop-scotched the island, an unofficial goodwill ambassador. In Isla Verde, he made sandwiches at a relief kitchen. He was moved to tears from the welcome he received with his parents, Luis and Luz, looking on.
Begnaud said, “I thought of the two of you as I watched you walk around the island right behind him today. The pride a parent must feel to watch their son give such honor to the place where they’re all from.”
“And that people are so proud of him,” said Luis. “That’s, you know, in my town they remember him when he was a little boy. And that pride that you see — you made us proud of who you are.”
Miranda then visited an aid distribution center in San Juan, where he met with the mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz.
Begnaud asked her, “When he comes here, what does it do?”
“It’s a boost,” Cruz replied, “and it brings joy to people’s hearts.”
When he wasn’t making friends, he was making headlines. On Tuesday, he announced a $2.5 million fund to help residents get back on their feet.
On Wednesday, he announced he’ll return in the lead role in “Hamilton” for a three-week run at the University of Puerto Rico in January 2019.
“It’s weird; just yesterday the Smithsonian announced that I donated my act two costume to the Smithsonian. I need it back!” he laughed. “Just three weeks!”
“Aren’t you too young to be donating things to the Smithsonian?” Begnaud laughed.
“Well, yeah, I think so too.”
Thousands of tickets will be sold for just $10, though more expensive travel packages will be offered for sale to help bring tourism back to this home away from home.
Celebrated for his musical about the immigrant who became a founding father, Lin-Manuel Miranda has found his next act.
“Puerto Rico will come back stronger,” he replied. “I have nothing but faith in the character and the resilience and the brilliance of the Puerto Rican people. If they’re given a fair shot to come back, we’ll have an even better Puerto Rico than before.”
For the man who achieved fame and fortune through his musical about an immigrant who became a founding father, Lin-Manuel Miranda says giving back is the least he can do…
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The Treasury Department said it was targeting one person and four companies for penalties over their alleged involvement in producing and spreading weapons of mass destruction. The agency said it was freezing the assets in U.S. jurisdictions of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Rostam Qasemi and four subsidiaries of a previously penalized construction firm that he runs.
The sanctions made public Wednesday expand existing U.S. unilateral penalties against elements of the Guard Corps, or IRGC, which Western intelligence officials believe is spearheading Iran’s nuclear program.
The announcement came as U.S. officials lobby for action at the U.N. Security Council, which has already hit Iran with three sets of sanctions. The Obama White House wants to impose fresh international sanctions over Tehran’s failure to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
Qasemi commands the Guard Corps’ Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, which Treasury described as its engineering arm that is involved in the construction of streets, tunnels, waterworks, agricultural projects and pipelines. Its profits “are available to support the full range of the IRGC’s illicit activities, including WMD proliferation and support for terrorism,” Treasury said in a statement.
Khatam al-Anbiya was hit with U.S. sanctions by the Bush administration in 2007. Wednesday’s penalties apply to Qasemi and Khatam al-Anbiya subsidiaries, the Fater Engineering Institute, the Imensazen Consultant Engineers Institute, the Makin Institute and 대구 마사지 the Rahab Institute.
“As the IRGC consolidates control over broad swaths of the Iranian economy, displacing ordinary Iranian businessmen in favor of a select group of insiders, it is hiding behind companies like Khatam al-Anbiya and its affiliates to maintain vital ties to the outside world,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“Today’s action exposing Khatam al-Anbiya subsidiaries will help firms worldwide avoid business that ultimately benefits the IRGC and its dangerous activities,” he said.
Treasury’s move followed a tough new warning to Iran from President Barack Obama, who said on Tuesday that the country remains on an “unacceptable” path to nuclear weapons, despite its denials, and that the U.S. and like-minded countries would soon present a set of punishing sanctions at the United Nations.
His comments came in response to Iran’s announcement that it was rejecting a deal it provisionally accepted in October under which it would ship low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enriching for use in a Tehran medical research reactor. On Sunday, Iran said it would would produce its own higher-enriched uranium. On Tuesday, Iranian state television said the process began in the presence of inspectors from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.
Mr. Obama said he was sticking to a two-track approach: offering to negotiate, while threatening further pressure. He said the world would welcome an Iranian decision to accept U.N. demands that it live up to its nuclear control obligations.
“And if not, then the next step is sanctions,” he said. “They have made their choice so far, although the door is still open. And what we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole.”
Mr. Obama said that work to broaden the U.N.’s sanctions was moving quickly, but he gave no specific timeline for the presentation of a new resolution. Russia, a traditional opponent of sanctions, appears ready to support new penalties. But another of the council’s five permanent, veto-wielding members, China, which has increasingly close economic ties to Iran, can block a resolution by itself. China has said the time is not yet right for fresh sanctions.
Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, said his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz.
Known for his improvised, 대구 안마 casual style and robust laughter, Snyder conducted a number of memorable interviews as host of NBC’s “The Tomorrow Show.” Among his guests were John Lennon, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.
Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local television news. He anchored newscasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before moving to late night. He gained more fame when Dan Aykroyd lampooned him in the early days of “Saturday Night Live.”
In 1972, Snyder left news to host “The Tomorrow Show,” which followed “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.
His catch phrase for the show was: “Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.” Snyder smoked throughout his show, the cigarette cloud swirling around him during interviews.
In 1995, he returned to late night television as the host of “The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder” on CBS. The program followed David Letterman’s “Late Show” until 1998, when Snyder was replaced by Craig Kilborn.
Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
“When I was a kid leukemia was a death sentence,” he wrote then. “Now, my doctors say it’s treatable!”
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