Military militia?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/asia/australia-helicopters-lasers-south-china-sea-intl/index.html
2019-05-29 08:15:00Z
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FILE: National Security Adviser John Bolton arrives to speak at the commencement for the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. (AP)
U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday that ships sabotaged off the United Arab Emirates coast were attacked "almost certainly by Iran."
Bolton made the comments to journalists in Abu Dhabi ahead of planned meetings with to Emirati officials. He did not offer evidence to support his comments.
The U.S. recently deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf over a still-unexplained threat it perceives from Tehran. The U.S. also pulled nonessential diplomats out of Iraq.
Emirati officials also say four ships off their coast were sabotaged. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have also launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Bolton dismissed the idea that there was any difference between his positions and Trump, saying: "I am the national security adviser, not the national security decider."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The UN mission in Kosovo (Unmik) has expressed "great concern" after two of its members were held in a police raid on suspected organised crime gangs.
It said "any harm" to its staff would have serious diplomatic consequences.
The two members were detained on Tuesday in northern Kosovo, an area with mainly ethnic Serbian inhabitants.
They were then taken to hospital "for treatment of injuries", Unmik said. One of the staff members, a Russian national, was later released.
More than 20 people were arrested during the police raid, targeting suspected smugglers, media reports say.
Police officers reportedly fired live ammunition over the heads of protesting Serbs.
Unmik said it was working to establish the "precise circumstances" of the detention of its personnel.
In response to the police raid, Serbia put the country's armed forces on high alert.
Russia, a key Serbian ally in the Balkans, condemned the detention of the Russian national.
"We consider this blatant act as yet another manifestation of the provocative line" by the Kosovo authorities, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Kosovo, which has a majority ethnic Albanian population, seceded from Serbia in 2008, and has since been recognised by more than 100 countries.
But Belgrade and Moscow continue to see the region as part of Serbia.

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JERUSALEM — Israel was in an unprecedented political impasse Tuesday as parliament pressed forward with legislation to dissolve itself in a high-stakes showdown that could lead to another snap election.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had appeared to have secured a fresh mandate to rule after last month's election, with a clear path to build a coalition government with his traditional political partners.
But a shocking crisis with his longtime ally and erstwhile rival Avigdor Lieberman has thrust the country into unchartered territory.
Netanyahu has until late Wednesday to present his new coalition or else Israel's largely ceremonial president can task someone else with the job. But the prime minister seems to have no intention of letting that happen and is threatening another election instead.
Backed by Netanyahu, the first of three motions required to dissolve parliament passed early Tuesday with a 66-44 majority, and a tentative election date was set for Sept. 17.
Negotiations are expected to continue right up till the final deadline. But if no compromise is found, Israel will likely go to elections for the second time this year — something that has never happened before.
Though Netanyahu's Likud party increased its power to 35 seats in parliament in the Apr. 9 vote, it cannot muster a 61-seat majority without Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party.
The Likud has assailed Lieberman in recent days for undermining the people's will of a right-wing government and accused him of acting out of personal spite for Netanyahu. The prime minister himself said Lieberman would be fully responsible for dragging the country to an "expensive, wasteful" election and his people have vowed to aggressively go after Lieberman's core supporters in response.
But the mercurial Lieberman seems to be holding his ground.
"The only motivation of Yisrael Beiteinu is to stand by our principles and our commitments," he said in a Facebook post. "We are not looking to topple Netanyahu and are not looking for an alternative candidate, but we will not compromise."
The crisis ostensibly revolves around Lieberman's insistence that current legislation mandating that young ultra-Orthodox men be drafted into the military, like most other Jewish males, run its course.
Ultra-Orthodox parties consider conscription a taboo, fearing that military service will lead to immersion in secularism. They insist that years of exemptions that have generated widespread resentment among the rest of Jewish Israelis remain in place.
A stalemate on the issue was one of the factors that shortened the term of the previous coalition government, but the assumption was that a creative compromise would be found this time around. Instead, Netanyahu finds himself on the precipice of having to call new elections that could once again put his lengthy rule in peril.
The crisis shines a spotlight on the 60-year-old Lieberman, one of the most influential and unpredictable politicians in Israel. The tough-talking, Moldovan-born Lieberman started out as a top aide to Netanyahu during his first term in office in the 1990s before embarking on a political career of his own. Since then, he has known his ups and downs with his former boss in stints in various ministries, including as foreign minister and defense minister.
A staunch nationalist, he has faced long-standing accusations of racism for branding Arab lawmakers as enemies of the state and advocating for population swaps in a future peace deal that would leave many Arab citizens outside Israel's borders.
But Lieberman, who still speaks in a thick, monotonous Russian accent, also champions a secular agenda aimed toward his political base of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and has pledged to confront efforts of ultra-Orthodox parties to coerce religion on a secular majority.
And despite his fiery rhetoric and strongman persona, he has shown signs of pragmatism such as once suggesting he'd be willing to dismantle his own West Bank settlement if Israel's final borders were redrawn. Mostly he has emerged as an iconoclast in a right-wing bloc that has largely blindly bent to the will of Netanyahu in recent years. It's made him an unlikely savior in the eyes of some anti-Netanyahu forces.
"He is insisting on a matter of principle. True, we look at the spectacle and can scarcely believe it," said Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist for the Yediot Ahronot daily, which is highly critical of Netanyahu.
"Lieberman's very act of abiding by the principles with which he is identified is a refreshing change in the political scene," Yemini added.
Associated Press

The race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, and consequently the next U.K. prime minister, has begun to accelerate with the first round of voting set to take place next week.
Whoever wins will have the unenviable task of trying to deliver Brexit after a political deadlock — and three failed parliamentary votes — helped bring down Theresa May who resigned as leader on Friday.
CNBC takes a look at the Conservative lawmakers who are vying for power through the prism of Britain's withdrawal from the EU.
Boris Johnson
This is not the first Conservative leadership contest for the former foreign secretary and mayor of London, after he prematurely ended a previous attempt in 2016 that paved the way for May to enter Downing Street.
He is one of Britain's most globally prominent but domestically-divisive politicians. May brought him into her government in a senior role that left him responsible for Britain's presence on the world stage and frequently kept him away from Westminster.
He later resigned from his post as a result of May's willingness to lead the U.K. into what he called a "semi-Brexit" that would leave Britain as a "colony" of the European Union.
He has recently insisted that Britain must stick to the new October 31 Brexit deadline; that he would attempt to renegotiate the complex and contentious Northern Irish backstop contained within the Britain's withdrawal agreement with Brussels — something May tried and failed to do repeatedly. But absent changes to that backstop, Johnson has said he would take the U.K. out of Europe without a deal.
Boris Johnson is the bookmakers favorite to replace outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.
Artur Widak | NurPhoto | Getty Images
Dominic Raab
The former minister tasked with handling Brexit negotiations for May after his predecessor David Davis resigned, Raab stayed in the role for a little more than four months before he too quit in protest at the deal May finally struck with the EU.
He called the deal a betrayal of Conservative Party manifesto promises made during the 2017 general election campaign, insisting that the Irish backstop was undemocratic and that the deal threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom because of regulatory differences it would introduce for Northern Ireland.
Raab is another leadership contender who says Britain must leave the EU on October 31, perhaps even without a deal, and he has hinted that it might be possible for a prime minister to pursue that course of action unilaterally, without parliamentary approval.
Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Dominic Raab arrives in Downing Street in London, Britain, October 29, 2018.
Henry Nicholls | Reuters
Andrea Leadsom
Her resignation as leader of the House of Commons made her the last of the three-dozen ministers who have stepped down from May's government in the past 13 months.
In a sign of the divisive nature of the Brexit process for those inside the British cabinet, she was the 31st minister to do so for reasons relating to the U.K.'s departure from the European Union.
In her role as Commons leader, Leadsom acted as the interface between the government and the lower chamber of the British parliament, a polarizing and at times difficult role during a period of heightened confrontation between the executive and legislature.
Leadsom's departure appears to have been the final straw for May's premiership, since it was within 48 hours that the embattled prime minister finally announced her Downing Street departure date. Leadsom had previously ceded her prime ministerial ambitions to May in 2016, to prevent a prolonged struggle between two final candidates in that most recent Conservative leadership race. But her raised public profile as a Leave campaigner during the Brexit referendum earlier that year had propelled her to the runner-up spot in that previous contest, despite her lack of cabinet-level experience.
Britain's Conservative Party's leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom is seen outside Downing Street in London, Britain, April 1, 2019.
Henry Nicholls | Reuters
Esther McVey
The former work and pensions secretary under May, she resigned the same day as Dominic Raab and claimed that the prime minister's negotiated Brexit deal did not honor the result of the 2016 referendum.
In her resignation letter she repeated a common refrain among Conservative euroskeptics in recent months that the Northern Irish backstop contained in the withdrawal agreement would "trap" the U.K. in a permanent customs union with Europe, and would "bind the hands" of future governments that might seek to strike fresh trade deals.
Over the weekend, she told Sky News that what she called an "invisible border" between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom is already technically possible, despite the EU's insistence that this is not yet the case. She argued that the U.K. must leave Europe on October 31, with or without a deal, and that politicians must regain the trust of the British public with an honest appraisal of the 2016 referendum result.
Conservative Party MP Esther McVey speaking at a Brexit:Lets Go WTO Rally organised by the Leave Means Leave campaign in Westminster, London, UK on January 17, 2019.
Vickie Flores/In Pictures via Getty Images
Sajid Javid
A former managing director at Deutsche Bank, Javid is the first member of an ethnic minority to serve as home secretary, the British equivalent to a minister of the interior with responsibility for immigration and security.
He took on the role after his predecessor resigned during a national scandal about their department's role in deporting legal residents whose residency paperwork the government had lost. In announcing his candidacy he said the dismal Conservative performance in the European parliamentary elections over the weekend showed that the party must deliver Brexit and do so quickly.
His personal backstory as the son of a bus driver is markedly different to that of many of his Conservative colleagues and competitors, but he too insists that restoring trust in British politics must be a priority. He originally voted to remain in the EU during 2016's referendum. This fact may work against Javid if he makes it through the parliamentary voting rounds to compete in a ballot of party members, since polls indicate that members' views on Brexit have become increasingly hardline and purist.
U.K. Home Secretary, Sajid Javid.
Getty Images
Matt Hancock
The minister responsible for Britain's health and social service system, he has previously worked as an economist at the Bank of England.
Hancock has written this week in British newspaper The Daily Mail that it is "mission critical" for the Conservative Party to complete the Brexit process, after its disastrous performance in European parliamentary elections.
He has tried to assure his fellow Conservative lawmakers that they would not need to go through a general election until after he has led them through Brexit as prime minister. But he has also made clear in a BBC radio interview that there must be "trade offs" between access to European markets and British sovereignty, in order to get a Brexit deal through the current parliament, he has indicated he would not be prepared to pursue a "no deal" policy.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock arrives for the weekly Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street on 21 May, 2019 in London, England.
Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Michael Gove
One of the most high-profile Brexit supporters during the 2016 referendum, Gove's commitment to Brexit has never been in doubt, but he has also not insisted that October 31 must be a hard deadline for Britain to exit the EU.
He says he wants to unify his party and has implied that a deal with Brussels is ultimately the best way to do that. He damaged his reputation as a trustworthy politician for his decision to end his support for Boris Johnson during the last leadership contest in 2016, but even his political critics have acknowledged that he has proven himself a capable minister with innovative ideas. And according to one lawmaker who has campaigned for the rights of Europeans living in the U.K., Gove has promised this week that if he becomes prime minister then he will offer those roughly 3 million EU nationals the opportunity to obtain British citizenship free of charge.
Kevin Winter | Getty Images
Jeremy Hunt
The current foreign secretary has overnight reiterated in an article for British newspaper The Daily Telegraph his view that a "no deal" Brexit would be disastrous not only for the U.K., but would constitute "political suicide" for the Conservative Party as it would trigger a general election that would risk the party's "extinction."
Hunt has served in senior government roles for the best part of a decade, and oversaw Britain's hosting of the 2012 Olympics. He was a high-profile opponent of Brexit during the 2016 referendum campaign, but has publicly said he has reconciled himself with the need to honor the referendum result.
He replaced his Oxford University contemporary Boris Johnson as foreign secretary, and as the founder of a successful directory business before he entered government, he is the wealthiest member of the current cabinet. He has stated that his entrepreneurial acumen would help him renegotiate a better deal than May was able to reach with the EU.
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt speaks during the annual Conservative Party Conference on September 30, 2018 in Birmingham, England.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Rory Stewart
As a relatively newly-installed international development secretary, Stewart perhaps enjoys a slightly lower profile outside of the U.K. than many of his rivals for the Conservative leadership. But he first rose to public prominence almost two decades ago when he wrote a book as a young British diplomat about walking solo across a war-torn Afghanistan just months after Al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks from there.
He went on to administrate a southern Iraqi province after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there, so he can lay claim to the rather unique experience of having mediated between warring tribes — a skill that might prove useful in contemporary Westminster.
He has said recently that British politics needs to take itself more seriously and has publicly criticized several of his competitors, most notably Boris Johnson. He says he wants to strike a deal and then to move on to focus on other domestic priorities if he becomes prime minister.
Rory Stewart, U.K. international development secretary, departs after attending a weekly meeting of cabinet ministers at number 10 Downing Street on May 21, 2019 in London, England.
Luke Dray/Getty Images
Kit Malthouse
The minister currently responsible for housing, Malthouse gained a reputation as a pragmatist and mediator earlier this year when Conservative lawmakers with widely different views on Brexit came together for discussions he chaired, to thrash out a compromise that was then put to May.
It called for a reworking of the Irish backstop through the establishment of a free trade agreement between the U.K. and EU, as well as an extension to the Brexit deadline. But the suggestion — although voted through by Parliament — was never seriously pursued by May's negotiators, nor indeed European officials.
Malthouse was previously deputy mayor of London and voted for the U.K. to leave Europe, but in his announcement as a candidate he said that any deal will need "unity" across the country, and that a "new generation" of politicians unscarred by internal Conservative conflicts must lead the party forward into the future.
Housing minister Kit Malthouse in Westminster, London after he became the latest person to enter the race to succeed Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party.
Isabel Infantes/PA Images via Getty Images