Stamau123

BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes between Bedouin tribes, government forces and members of a minority sect in Syria have left dozens dead and once again raised fears of a breakdown in the country’s fragile postwar order.

The country is deeply divided as it tries to emerge from decades of dictatorship and nearly 14 years of civil war.

Clashes have on several occasions broken out between forces loyal to the government and Druze fighters since the fall of President Bashar Assad in early December in a lightning rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups, but Monday’s fighting threatened to escalate into a larger conflict.

Here are the main reasons the clashes expanded in recent days and background on the two sides:

The Druze and Syria’s new government

The Druze religious sec t is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus, mainly in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya to the south.

The transitional government has promised to include minorities, including the Druze, but the new 23-member government in Syria announced in late March only has one Druze member, Minister of Agriculture Amjad Badr.

Under the Assad family’s tight rule, religious freedom was guaranteed as the country then boasted about its secular and Arab nationalist system.

The Druze have been divided over how to deal with their issues with the new status quo in the country. Many Druze support a dialogue with the government while others want a more confrontational approach.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much, but they share a conviction that the government should help American manufacturers, one way or another.

Democratic President Joe Biden handed out subsidies to chipmakers and electric vehicle manufacturers. Republican President Donald Trump is building a wall of import taxes — tariffs — around the U.S. economy to protect domestic industry from foreign competition.

Yet American manufacturing has been stuck in a rut for nearly three years. And it remains to be seen whether the trend will reverse itself.

The U.S. Labor Department reports that American factories shed 7,000 jobs in June for the second month in a row. Manufacturing employment is on track to drop for the third straight year.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A wildfire raging along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim that leveled a historic lodge erupted over the weekend after burning for more than a week, raising scrutiny over the National Park Service’s decision not to aggressively attack the fire right away.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs called for a federal investigation into the Park Service’s handling of the fire, which was sparked by lightning July 4.

“Arizonans deserve answers for how this fire was allowed to decimate the Grand Canyon National Park,” the governor said in a social media post Sunday. “The federal government chose to manage that fire as a controlled burn during the driest, hottest part of the Arizona summer.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia met with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, as anticipation grew over a possible shift in the Trump administration’s policy on the three-year war.

Trump last week said he would make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday. He was due to meet with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Washington. Rutte also planned to hold talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as members of Congress.

Trump made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and he has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unbudging stance on U.S-led peace efforts.

Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin, and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. At the same time, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a “dictator without elections.”

But Russia’s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump’s patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to “STOP!” launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader “ has gone absolutely CRAZY!” as the bombardments continued.

"I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said,” Trump said late Sunday. “He’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”

Zelenskyy said he and Trump’s envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, had “a productive conversation” about strengthening Ukrainian air defenses, joint arms production and purchasing U.S. weapons in conjunction with European countries, as well as the possibility of tighter international sanctions on the Kremlin.

“We hope for the leadership of the United States, because it is clear that Moscow will not stop unless its ... ambitions are stopped by force,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

BUSRA AL-HARIR, Syria (AP) — Israel’s army said Monday it has struck military tanks in southern Syria as Syrian government forces and Bedouin tribes clashed with Druze militias there.

Dozens of people have been killed in the fighting between local militias and clans in Syria ’s Sweida province. Government security forces that were sent to restore order Monday also clashed with local armed groups.

Syria’s Interior Ministry has said more than 30 people died and nearly 100 others have been injured in that fighting. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, reported at least 64 dead, including two children, a woman and six members of the security forces.

The clashes in Syria initially broke out between armed groups from the Druze and Sunni Bedouin clans, the observatory said, with some members of the government security forces “actively participating” in support of the Bedouins.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba said government forces entered Sweida in the early morning to restore order.

“Some clashes occurred with outlawed armed groups, but our forces are doing their best to prevent any civilian casualties,” he told the state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV.

An estimated 1 in 3 teens and preteens, ages 12 to 17, have prediabetes, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC data means an estimated 8.4 million young people -- or 32.7% of the U.S. adolescent population -- had prediabetes in 2023, the most recent data available.

With prediabetes, blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough for a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis.

• Businessman heads Congo trip to try to free U.S. prisoners
  

• Team of three runs foul of the authorities and has to flee
• Venture shows how Washington works with unofficial envoys

DAKAR, July 11 (Reuters) - An Israeli-American businessman, a former State Department official and a decorated Green Beret pitched up in the Democratic Republic of Congo in March with a message for President Felix Tshisekedi from the Trump administration.

Two days later, they fled the country in fear of arrest.

The three envoys had come with an offer from Washington: release three American prisoners on death row and, in return, President Donald Trump will accept your minerals-for-security proposal.

The trip started well with a police motorcycle escort from the airport, but a frosty first meeting with Tshisekedi's security adviser, some ill-advised late-night target practice by some of the envoys and a Congolese general with an axe to grind put paid to the mission.

Reuters pieced together the course of events by speaking to the three Americans on the trip, a State Department official involved in the initiative, and two people the trio met during their brief stay in Congo's capital Kinshasa.

The story of the ill-fated venture, which has not previously been reported, provides a glimpse of how the Trump administration is prepared to work through unconventional channels in pursuit of deals to bring Americans home, a top priority for the president.

"We want to work with folks who have the right connections, but more importantly, have the positive relationships that can help influence a decision-maker's thinking ... so it's not uncommon for us to do that," Dustin Stewart, Trump's deputy special envoy for hostage affairs, who was involved in discussions on the initiative, told Reuters.

"We thought they had enough sway to talk to the right people. Obviously, that proved incorrect," he said.

President Tshisekedi's office did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Congo has become a focus of U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the decades-long conflict in the east and help American companies access critical minerals, making the country ripe territory for endeavours such as this mission.

"Trump gave every indication right from the beginning that he was going to be purely transactional," said Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "He's thrown out the old playbook. He's not going through normal diplomatic channels."

July 11 (Reuters) - Boeing reached a settlement with a Canadian man whose family died in the March 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX, the man's lawyer said on Friday.

The terms of the settlement with Paul Njoroge of Toronto were not released. The 41-year-old man's wife Carolyne and three young children - Ryan, 6, Kellie, 4, and nine-month-old Rubi - died in the crash. His mother-in-law was traveling with them and also died in the crash.

The trial was scheduled to start on Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago and would have been the first against the U.S. planemaker stemming from two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together killed 346 people.

Boeing also averted a trial in April, when it settled with the families of two other victims in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

The planemaker declined to comment on the latest settlement.

PENNSYLVANIA (WOLF) — Fire departments and county emergency centers across Pennsylvania are advising the public of a statewide 911 outage.

WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - A California farmworker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier when U.S. immigration agents raided a cannabis operation and arrested hundreds of workers, according to a farmworker advocacy group.

Dozens of migrant-rights activists faced off with federal agents in rural Southern California on Thursday. It was the latest escalation of President Donald Trump's campaign to deport all immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that approximately 200 people in the country illegally were arrested in the raid, which targeted two locations of the cannabis operation Glass House Farms.

Agents also found 10 migrant minors at the farm, the statement said. The facility is under investigation for child labor violations, said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott in a post on X.

The Catholic Church's approval of blessings of couples in same-sex relationships "will remain" under Pope Leo XIV, the head of the Vatican's doctrine office told an Italian reporter in a brief interview.

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández made the statement in response to a question from a journalist for the Rome-based daily Il Messaggero as he left the Holy See Press Office on July 3.

Fernández's remarks are the clearest indication to date since Pope Leo's election of a likely continuation of Pope Francis' gay-blessings declaration. However, the impromptu interview falls short of an explicit, official statement from the Vatican.

Under Francis, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2023 released a document entitled "Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings," which opened the door to church blessings for couples in "irregular" situations, including same-sex relationships.

The document, signed by Fernández and his deputy Msgr. Armando Matteo, and approved by Pope Francis, stressed that such blessings could not take the form of a liturgical rite, and did not imply formal approval of "irregular" unions.

The blessings document generated considerable conservative backlash, and some critics of the late Pope Francis had expressed hope that Pope Leo would rescind or ignore it.

• Investigators say Starovoit likely took his own life
  

• Starovoit had held transport brief for barely a year
• He previously ran the Kursk region next to Ukraine
• His successor there was embroiled in a corruption case
• Ukrainian troops seized part of Kursk for months

July 7 (Reuters) - Russia's sacked transport minister has been found dead in his car outside Moscow with a gunshot wound and the principal hypothesis is that he took his own life, state investigators said on Monday, hours after President Vladimir Putin fired him.

A presidential decree published earlier on Monday gave no reason for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit, 53, after barely a year in the job, though political analysts were quick to raise the possibility that he may have been dismissed in connection with an investigation into corruption in the region he once ran.

Reuters could not independently confirm these suggestions, though a transport industry source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Starovoit's position had been in question for months due to questions about the same corruption scandal.

That investigation centres on whether 19.4 billion roubles ($246 million) earmarked in 2022 for fortifying Russia's border with Ukraine in the Kursk region was properly spent or whether some of that money was embezzled.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement it was working to establish the precise circumstances of Starovoit's death.

A pistol belonging to Starovoit, who was divorced with two daughters, had been found near his body, various Russian media outlets cited law enforcement sources as saying.

Some Russian media, citing law enforcement sources, also said his body had been found with a gunshot wound to the head in bushes near his car, a Tesla, rather than in the car itself.

The vehicle was left near a park not far from his home in the Moscow region.

Before being appointed transport minister in May 2024, Starovoit had been governor of the Kursk region for nearly five years.