Trump administration moving quickly to build up nationwide deportation force

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By David Nakamura

The Trump administration is quickly identifying ways to assemble the nationwide deportation force that President Trump promised on the campaign trail as he railed against the dangers posed by illegal immigration.

An internal Department of Homeland Security assessment obtained by The Washington Post shows the agency has already found 33,000 more detention beds to house undocumented immigrants, opened discussions with dozens of local police forces that could be empowered with enforcement authority and identified where construction of Trump’s border wall could begin.

The agency also is considering ways to speed up the hiring of hundreds of new Customs and Border Patrol officers, including ending polygraph and physical fitness tests in some cases, according to the documents.

But these plans could be held up by the prohibitive costs outlined in the internal report and resistance in Congress, where many lawmakers are already balking at approving billions in spending on the wall and additional border security measures.

Administration officials said the plans are preliminary and have not been reviewed by senior DHS management, but the assessment offers a glimpse of the department’s behind-the-scenes planning to carry out the two executive orders Trump signed in January to boost deportations and strengthen border enforcement.

Gillian Christensen, DHS’s acting spokeswoman, said the agency would not comment on what she called “pre-decisional documents.”

Immigrant-rights advocates called the plans an unnecessary waste of money and resources that are aimed at scaring the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the country for more than a decade.

Although Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has said DHS is not pursuing mass deportations, Trump’s executive orders broadly expanded the pool of undocumented immigrants who are deemed a priority for removal.

“This is an administration that very much is interested in setting up that mass deportation infrastructure and creating the levers of a police state,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “In these documents, you have more proof and evidence that they’re planning to carry it out.”

Congressional Democrats, who have opposed Trump’s immigration agenda, have expressed skepticism that Congress would agree to approve funding for many of the expensive initiatives.

For example, Trump has called for CBP to hire 5,000 new agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement an additional 10,000. The DHS assessment said the cost of hiring just 500 agents would reach $100 million.

Republican leaders have proposed delaying a decision on Trump’s initial request of $1.5 billion for the wall and an additional $2.6 billion for more border security next year until after a new spending bill is approved this month in the hope of averting a government shutdown.

“We believe it would be inappropriate to insist on the inclusion of such funding in a must-pass appropriations bill,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and four Democratic colleagues wrote of the wall in a recent letter to the Senate’s Republican leadership.

But the DHS assessment states that Border Patrol is moving forward with the construction of a border wall prototype with $20 million that lawmakers reappropriated in March, with completion of the prototype to be completed July 22.

If Congress were to allocate more funds, the next step for CBP, according to the documents, would be to begin work with the Army Corps of Engineers to launch construction of 34 miles of levee wall or a border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which the agency calls the “highest-priority area,” as well as 14 additional miles of a border barrier in the San Diego sector.

Cost concerns are peppered throughout the DHS assessment documents. Although ICE has identified 27 potential locations that could increase its detention space by 21,000 beds, that agency “will be unable to secure additional detention capability until funding has been identified,” according to the documents.

In addition, CBP has made contingencies to expand its own detention capacity by 12,500 spaces, but the agency does not spell out whether funding is available for those slots.

CBP also is laying the groundwork to potentially hold immigration-court hearings through video conferences at or near U.S. ports of entry if the government of Mexico agrees to house third-country immigrants awaiting adjudication in the U.S. legal system, the documents show.

The Mexican government has balked at such a procedure, which would raise significant jurisdictional concerns. But if such a procedure were established, it would cost $50,000 per location for the video equipment, the DHS documents state.

Alternative plans to send U.S. judges to the “port courts” are also being considered, although such a procedure would cost $400,000 per location.

“They’re throwing a lot of public resources at a problem that should not be a priority, especially since the number of [border] crossers is down considerably,” said J. Kevin Appleby, a senior director at the Center for Migration Studies.

Government figures show the number of people illegally crossing the border from Mexico has dropped sharply in the first two months of Trump’s administration. The DHS assessment states that 2,100 detention spaces previously reserved by CBP and ICE during an immigration surge late last year are unused.

“Overall, it’s a wasted use of resources that could be used more efficiently,” Appleby said.

One area in which the Trump administration could potentially increase its deportation capacity at relatively lower costs is expanding a program in which ICE grants local law enforcement agencies immigration enforcement powers traditionally reserved for the federal government.

The program — known as 287(g), which is the federal code that established it in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 — grew to encompass more than 70 local jurisdictions at its peak. But immigrant-rights groups charged that the program has resulted in civil rights abuses and racial profiling by poorly trained local police and lax supervision by ICE.

The program fell out of favor in the latter years of President Obama’s administration, and there are now 37 jurisdictions participating at a cost of $24 million, according to the American Immigration Council.

Trump’s executive orders instruct ICE to expand the program and allow CBP, which did not previously participate, to launch its own version — in hopes of creating a “force multiplier.”

The DHS assessment states that the ICE review board is considering applications from 18 new jurisdictions and has identified 50 more that are interested in participating.

Yet the documents again raise a cautionary flag about funding, stating that ICE probably will be unable to add more than 20 new 287(g) partnerships this year because of limited resources.

“Up to now, they have really been using scare tactics to put on a show, to demonstrate to supporters they are tough on immigration,” Appleby said. “Eventually, they really have to produce results. Without congressional approval [for funding], they will not reach the deportation numbers under Obama. That will be the test. If in the first year, if there are not a significant number deported, how will they distinguish themselves from the previous administration?”

We don’t know where Trump stands. Neither does he.

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By Eugene Robinson

So much for Donald Trump, the “America First” populist champion of the forgotten working class. The president now sounds pretty much like a garden-variety globalist, defending the “rigged” system he denounced during the campaign.

Then again, who knows how he’ll sound next week? He hasn’t even been in office for three full months, and Trump may already be the most erratic president we’ve ever seen. We have no idea where he really stands because, well, neither does he.

Remember when Russia was good and President Vladimir Putin was a potential partner in fighting the Islamic State? Now Russia is bad because it continues to support Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who killed civilians, including “beautiful babies,” with chemical weapons. Russia’s support of Assad, of course, is nothing new. But Putin, who no longer compliments Trump, kept Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cooling his heels before deigning to meet with him. Horrible!

Remember when China was bad because it “eats our lunch” in trade deals? Now, after Trump established personal chemistry with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a summit last week at Mar-a-Lago, Trump declines to repeat his long-standing allegation that China manipulates its currency. And as for the North Korea threat, which Trump once said China could easily resolve, the president now realizes it’s complicated. There’s a historical context for the relationship between China and the Koreas. Who knew?

“We’re not going into Syria,” Trump told the New York Post. Those on the receiving end of the 59 cruise missiles launched last week might be puzzled. There are roughly 1,000 U.S. personnel inside the war-torn country, and the number is inching up. Trump used to believe in nonintervention. Now he’s being cheered by those who want the United States to take a much larger role in the Syrian civil war.

Similar confusion abounds in domestic policy. First it was vital that Congress tackle health care before moving on to tax reform and other initiatives. Then, after the debacle of the ill-fated American Health Care Act — which Trump decided to avidly support, despite the fact that it reneged on his promise of “insurance for everybody” — Trump was ready to move on to other issues. But now, maybe health care is back as a priority.

Both parties support corporate tax reform, so it wouldn’t require much “Art of the Deal” magic to make it happen. Why hasn’t Trump moved in this direction, which could give him an actual accomplishment to brag about? I have no idea, and I doubt Trump knows, either.

It was inevitable that a rookie president with no experience in government at any level, much less the highest, would have a ridiculously steep learning curve to climb. It was also inevitable that Trump’s lack of focus and his tendency to be distracted by whatever cable news is yammering about at any given moment would hamper his ability to get anything done.

A truly first-rate staff could help. Instead, however, Trump has populated his West Wing with warring factions that battle one another with a ruthlessness the characters in “Game of Thrones” might find excessive. Currently on the outs is Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, the “economic nationalist” who wants to sharply curtail immigration, erect trade barriers, reduce U.S. commitments overseas and destroy what he calls the “administrative state.”

Bannon, who used to run Breitbart News, would be the scariest character in the administration if he were better at bureaucratic infighting. He was seen as the motivating force behind the attempts to impose a Muslim travel ban, which were stalled by the courts. He urged all-out support of a health-care bill that Trump reportedly had doubts about — and went to Capitol Hill to order GOP House members to support the measure, which just stiffened their opposition.

Bannon was recently removed from the National Security Council, a position he never should have been given in the first place. Trump this week said that he actually serves as his own strategist, describing Bannon tepidly as “a guy who works for me.” Trump is reported to have said privately that Bannon “is not a team player.” If this were a slasher movie, the audience would be screaming at the screen, “Steve, don’t go into that basement!”

If Bannon is toast, that’s good for the nation and the world. But Trump still lacks a White House team capable of executing his vision, or any vision. The answer to Casey Stengel’s question — “Can’t anybody here play this game?” — is an unambiguous no.

North Korea may have sarin-tipped missiles, Abe says

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By REIJI YOSHIDA

North Korea might already possess the ability to strike Japan using ballistic missiles armed with deadly chemical weapons like sarin, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Thursday.

Abe made the remark to the security committee of the Upper House when asked about a proposal by his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to have Japan pursue the capability to directly attack North Korean military bases.

Abe emphasized that Tokyo has no plan to acquire such powerful weapons and would never launch a pre-emptive strike against any country.

But the government at the same time should conduct “various studies” for defense and strengthen the Japan-U.S. military alliance, Abe said.

“It’s possible that North Korea has the ability to hit (Japan) with a ballistic missile carrying sarin in its warhead,” he said.

He also noted that “nearly 100 innocent people, including children and babies, were victimized” by chemical weapons in Syria.

“We need to squarely look at a reality like that, and firmly maintain the deterrence power to not let such things happen” to Japan, Abe said.

The South Korean Defense Ministry has estimated that Pyongyang, which reportedly started producing chemical weapons in the 1980s, now owns 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, including the lethal nerve agents sarin and VX.

At a news conference later in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Tokyo believes North Korea has “multiple numbers of plants” producing chemical weapons and possess “considerable amount” of them.

Abe’s remark follows on the heels of a Kyodo News report that said U.S. President Donald Trump promised Abe during a telephone discussion earlier this month to consult with Japan before taking action — including military action — against North Korea.

Quoting bilateral diplomatic sources, the report Wednesday said Trump also indicated to Abe that the United States will tighten sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with North Korea if China does not cooperate in addressing the threat presented by Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

That suggests Trump is prepared for active involvement in blocking further provocations by Pyongyang while at same time mindful of U.S. ally Japan, which has significant concerns about a potential U.S. attack on North Korea, the report said.

In telephone conversations on April 6 and Sunday, the leaders agreed that North Korea’s nuclear tests and repeated ballistic missile launches posed a grave security threat and affirmed that they will work together with South Korea on the matter.

According to the report, Trump showed Abe that he understands the risks Japan would face from a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Abe said he highly appreciates Trump’s assertion that all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea.

While telling Abe the United States stands with Japan “100 percent,” Trump signaled his intention to consult with Japan before taking action on the North, the report said.

It also said the president sought Abe’s agreement with his administration’s security and diplomacy doctrine of “peace through strength” — an about-face from the “strategic patience” approach of his predecessor, Barack Obama, toward the reclusive state.

Ahead of the discussions, the Japanese government had requested the United States first discuss with Japan at the working level before mounting any attack on North Korea, out of fear that retaliation would directly affect Japan’s security, the report said.

The leaders also confirmed the necessity of urging China to get more involved in dealing with the North, it said.

After his summit last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump shared with Abe that he had told the Chinese leader that Washington has not ruled out taking unilateral action if no concrete moves are made toward de-nuclearizing Pyongyang, the report said.

The United States has fresh economic sanctions ready for the North, including asset freezes and stronger sanctions on Chinese firms that do financial transactions with the hermit state, Trump said according to the report.

New Revelations Belie Trump Claims on Syria Chemical Attack

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By Gareth Porter

Two unnamed senior Trump administration officials briefing journalists Tuesday asserted that a Syrian regime airstrike in the city of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 had deliberately killed dozens of civilians with sarin gas.

The Trump administration officials dismissed the Russian claim that the Syrian airstrike had targeted a munitions warehouse controlled by Islamic extremists as an afterthought to cover up the Syrian government's culpability for the chemical attack. Moreover, the Trump officials claimed that US intelligence had located the site where the Syrian regime had dropped the chemical weapon.

However, two new revelations contradict the Trump administration's line on the April 4 attack. A former US official knowledgeable about the episode told Truthout that the Russians had actually informed their US counterparts in Syria of the Syrian military's plan to strike the warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun 24 hours before the strike. And a leading analyst on military technology, Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT, has concluded that the alleged device for a sarin attack could not have been delivered from the air but only from the ground, meaning that the chemical attack may not have been the result of the Syrian airstrike.

The Trump administration is pushing the accusation that the Assad regime was the force that carried out the highly lethal chemical attack on April 4 very hard, perhaps not so much to justify the already politically popular US strike against the Shayrat airbase on April 6, but rather to buttress a new hardline policy against the Syrian regime.

The two unnamed senior Trump officials who briefed journalists Tuesday sought to discredit the Russian claim that the Syrian airstrike had hit a warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun that was believed to hold weapons including toxic chemicals. One of the two unnamed officials said that a Syrian military source had "told Russian state media on April 4 that regime forces had not carried out any strike in Khan Sheikhoun, which contradicted Russia's claim directly." 

This Trump administration official appeared to be suggesting that there was no evidence that a weapons storage site had been hit by a Syrian airstrike. But an internal administration paper on the issue now circulating in Washington, a copy of which Truthout obtained, clearly refers to "a regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition dump in the eastern suburbs of Khan Sheikhoun."

More importantly, the US military allegedly knew in advance that the strike was coming: Russian military officers informed their American counterparts of the Syrian military's plan to strike the warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun city 24 hours before the planned airstrike, according to the former US official who spoke with Truthout. The official is in direct contact with a US military intelligence officer with access to information about the US-Russian communications. The military intelligence officer reported to his associate that the Russians provided the information about the strike to the Americans through the normal US-Russian Syria deconfliction telephone line, which was established after the Russian intervention in 2015 to prevent any accidental clash between the two powers. The officer said that Russia communicated to the US the fact that the Syrians believed that the warehouse held toxic chemicals. 

That information was considered so politically sensitive that after its initial dissemination, it was available only to a few officials, the US military intelligence officer told his associate.

Despite the US denial of the Russian account of a Syrian strike on a warehouse in the city, an eyewitness account appears to confirm it. A 14-year-old resident told The New York Times she was walking only a few dozen yards away from a one-story building when she saw a plane drop a bomb on it.  The eyewitness reported the explosion created a "mushroom cloud" that stung her eyes. 

She added that she then hurried back home and watched as people began to arrive to help others in the neighborhood and were stricken by the toxic chemical in the air.

The airstrike she saw appears to be the one that was the objective of the Syrian operation in Khan Sheikhoun. The mushroom cloud she saw seems to be the widest of the three mushroom clouds shown in a video taken sometime after the explosion.

Two other strikes were apparently carried out after the initial strike on the building for which there is an eyewitness account. One was at a hospital in or near the city and the other was at a center of the White Helmets organization, built into a rock formation. The hospital strike was reported in an Associated Press story on Tuesday, which reported that a Russian drone was said to be hovering over a hospital as victims of the earlier attack were being brought in for treatment. The story said the hospital was later attacked. 

The hospital attack was cited by an anonymous AP source as evidence that the Russians knew in advance that a chemical weapons attack was going to be carried out. In fact it indicates that the hospital strike may well have been linked to the earlier airstrike on the one-story building.

When asked about the bombing at the hospital during the press briefing on Tuesday, one of the unnamed senior US officials would not confirm that the Syrians had carried out the attack or discuss the issue further, saying, "We don't have any comment right now on who may have been involved in bombing that hospital and why and how."

The senior US officials briefing the press insisted that a Syrian air strike delivering sarin was the only credible explanation for the dozens of deaths in Khan Sheikhoun. One of the officials cited a video showing a crater in the middle of a main road, which the Trump administration's key officials have determined was the site of the chemical weapon that reportedly killed 50 to 100 people. He implied that this was evidence that a Syrian airstrike had released what was believed to be sarin.

But Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT, who debunked the original official claims of the location of rockets that hit Syria's Ghouta area with what appeared to be sarin on August 21, 2013, has come to a different conclusion. Postol says that the carcass of the delivery vehicle -- shown in last week's video and in still photos of the small crater -- indicates that the chemical attack was not delivered via airstrike but from the spot on the road where it was found.

In an assessment completed on Tuesday, Postol called the collapsed metal tube shown in the crater, which he estimates to be about two and a half feet long, "an improvised dispersal device." He analyzes the device as having been assembled from a section of pipe from a 122 mm rocket with caps at both ends that was filled with sarin and with some kind of explosive placed on top of it. The explosive on top smashed in the pipe holding the sarin, and pushed the sarin out of its tube, according to Postol, "like toothpaste from a toothpaste tube."

Postol estimates that the device might have held eight to 10 liters of sarin. Was it actually used to emit the toxic chemical that killed dozens of residents? Postol doesn't claim to know, but he states that it did not resemble an air-delivered chemical weapon. "The administration attempted to use evidence that contradicted their own claim," Postol told Truthout.

One of the unnamed US officials briefing the press declared, "We are confident that terrorists or non-state actors did not commit this particular attack," and explained that non-state actors don't have the sarin required. But whether that assumption is well-founded or not, the universal assumption that the deaths could only have been caused by exposure to sarin is mistaken. Exposure to smoke munitions that create phosphine gas when in contact with moisture can cause neurological symptoms that mimic those of sarin, because they both damage the body's ability to produce the enzyme cholinesterase.

Both the Syrian Army and the Al-Nusra Front fighters in the Aleppo area, moreover, had abundant stocks of phosphine-producing smoke munitions in 2013, as was documented by German journalist Alfred Hackensberger of Die Welt. Furthermore, both ISIS (also known as Daesh) and al-Qaeda in Aleppo have been reported to have access to phosphine-based weapons.

These phosphine-producing munitions can be lethal if humans are exposed in confined space, and they have the smell of garlic or rotting food. That is precisely the smell that was reported by eyewitnesses in Khan Seikhoun. Sarin, on the other hand, is normally odorless.

Why Did the U.S. Use the 'Mother of All Bombs' in Afghanistan?

The military says it was to destroy tunnels used by ISIS, but the group’s presence is becoming marginal.

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By KRISHNADEV CALAMUR

The U.S. military’s announcement that it dropped the “mother of all bombs,” one of the largest non-nuclear devices, against an ISIS facility in Afghanistan comes despite the U.S. assessment that only about 700 ISIS fighters remain in the country. It’s the first time the bomb has been used on the battlefield.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), which has a yield of 11 tons, targeted the tunnels and caves used by ISIS in Achin district, Nangarhar province, which is on the border with Pakistan. In comparison, Little Boy, the nuclear device dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, had a blast yield of 15 kilotons. Fat Boy, which was dropped on Nagasaki, was a 21-kiloton bomb. In other words, while the MOAB is one of the largest nonnuclear bombs, it’s far smaller than most nuclear weapons the U.S. possesses or the ones it has used.

The 30-foot-long MOAB was first tested in 2003. NPR reports it was then “deployed to bases in the Middle East where it could be loaded aboard an American aircraft” such as the the MC-130 Combat Talon, which opens its ramp and releases the weapon, as it did Thursday. The bomb is satellite-guided, making its delivery precise in a way the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, MOAB’s predecessor, was not.

“As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense,” General John W. Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in a statement, referring to the ISIS-Khorasan group, the Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”

ISIS is a relative newcomer to Afghanistan, announcing its arrival in the country in January 2015. Since then it has claimed a number of high-profile and often horrific attacks against civilian targets—attacks that have drawn criticism even from the Taliban, whose rebels have fought the Afghan government and the U.S. since 2001. Nangarhar is ISIS’s stronghold, and it is there the U.S. and its allies in the Afghan military have been fighting the group, targeting militants with airstrikes as well as ground attacks. Just this week, a U.S. special-operation forces soldier was killed in the fighting the area.

“We have been conducting a series of operations against ISIS-K on a regular basis since the beginning of 2016 and have succeeded in reducing their number of fighters almost in half and their territory by two-thirds,” Nicholson told the Combating Terror Center at West Point in February. “We’ve killed their top 14 leaders.”

He added: “We’ve been striking them and eliminating people, but they are adapting. We have reduced their financial flows, but we haven’t eliminated them.”

The Trump administration has increased the pace of airstrikes the U.S. military has carried out in Afghanistan. From January to March, the U.S. Air Force dropped 450 bombs in the country; that number was close to 1,300 for all of 2016, according to the Air Force’s open-source database of such strikes.

“Our goal is to defeat ISIS-K in Afghanistan in 2017,” U.S. Navy Captain Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Kabul, told Foreign Policy. 

He said the MOAB “has the ability to collapse the tunnels” that ISIS fighters use to evade Afghan forces. It’s that capability that led to the expectation the MOAB would be used against an underground nuclear facility in a place like Iran or North Korea.

MISDIRECTED US STRIKE KILLED 18 ALLIED FIGHTERS IN SYRIA

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BY PHILIP ISSA AND BASSEM MROUE

A misdirected airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition earlier this week killed 18 allied fighters battling the Islamic State group in northern Syria, the U.S. military said Thursday.

U.S. Central Command said coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by their partner forces, the predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, for the strike on Tuesday that was intended to target IS militants south of their Tabqa stronghold, near the extremists' de facto capital, Raqqa. The strike hit an SDF position instead.

Several nations have lent their air power to the U.S.-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State group, and it wasn't clear which air force was behind the errant strike.

The SDF acknowledged the strike, saying a number of its fighters were killed and wounded. On Thursday, the group held funerals for 17 of its fighters in the border town of Tal al-Abyad, the SDF-linked Hawar news agency said, though it did not say whether they were killed in the friendly fire incident.

An activist-run group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said three days of mourning had been declared for the town. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 25 SDF fighters were killed in the last two days of battle.

The SDF, meanwhile, announced the launch of a new phase of its campaign to retake Raqqa. The Kurdish fighters, with U.S.-led air and ground support, have surrounded Tabqa, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of the city and are working to clear Islamic State militants out of Jalab Valley, north of Raqqa.

The SDF says it wants to isolate Raqqa before attacking it. Its closest position is less than eight kilometers (five miles) northeast of the city. But the countryside south of Raqqa is still under IS control.

Meanwhile, President Bashar Assad said a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northern Idlib province last week that was widely blamed on his forces was a "fabrication."

"Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists," Assad told Agence France-Presse in his first comments since a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the chemical attack.

"They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext" to attack the air base, Assad said in the interview, a video of which was released by his office.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner called Assad's comments "an attempt by him to throw up false flags, create confusion."

"There can be little doubt that the recent attacks and the chemical weapons attack in Idlib was by the Syrian government, by the Syrian regime and that it wasn't only a violation of the laws of war but it was, we believe, a war crime," Toner said.

Syria strongly denies it was behind the April 4 chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including more than a dozen children. The government says Syrian warplanes struck an al-Qaida arms depot that contained chemical weapons.

The international chemical weapons watchdog is testing samples from the suspected nerve gas attack and could produce a report on the matter within three weeks, the British delegation to the commission said Thursday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has a standing fact-finding mission on Syria to investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks, but does not apportion blame. During a meeting of its executive council called to discuss the Khan Sheikhoun attack, the U.S. ambassador, Kenneth D. Ward, said Syrian authorities "abetted by Russia's continuing efforts to bury the truth" still possess and use banned chemical weapons.

On Wednesday, Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a speedy probe into the Khan Sheikhoun attack. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said the veto left Moscow, a key ally of the Syrian government, with "a lot to prove."

Meanwhile, preparations were underway for the planned evacuation of more than 10,000 residents from two pro-government Shiite villages in northern Syria, Foua and Kfarya, and the rebel-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus.

Dozens of buses entered the areas Wednesday but by late Thursday people had not boarded them, according to opposition activists in the rebel-held towns.

If the evacuations go through, they would be the first in number of rounds stretching over two months to evacuate some 30,000 Syrians from besieged areas, in a deal struck by rebels and the government. It is unclear whether they will ever be able to return to their homes.

Civilians are being given the option to stay, but activists and doctors said it's too dangerous for medical workers to do so. Since the beginning of the conflict, the government has targeted medical workers with detention, torture, and bombardment.

"Even for Pruitt, It's Outrageous": EPA Chief Says US Should Exit Paris Deal

'Pulling out of the Paris climate accord would damage the U.S. more than it damages the Paris agreement or climate action globally'

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By Nadia Prupis

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt on Thursday explicitly called for the U.S. to remove itself from the Paris climate agreement, one of his strongest remarks yet expressing his opposition to the landmark deal to keep global warming below 2°C.

"Paris is something we need to look at closely. It's something we need to exit in my opinion," Pruitt said in an interview on "Fox & Friends."

"It's a bad deal for America," he said. "It's an 'America second, third or fourth' kind of approach."

The Trump administration has already taken steps to undo landmark climate regulations, such as the executive order President Donald Trump signed last month that called for repealing former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which requires states to slash emissions and was a central component of the U.S.'s plan to meet its Paris goals.

Pruitt said adhering to the global climate treaty would cost American jobs, a claim which environmentalists—and, increasingly, even fossil fuel companies—say is wrong.

Nathaniel Keohane, the Environmental Defense Fund's vice president on global climate, told InsideClimate News that "[p]ulling out of the Paris climate accord would damage the U.S. more than it damages the Paris agreement or climate action globally."

"American leadership on climate is the key to attracting jobs and investment in the industries and sectors that will define the 21st century," Keohane said.

Tiernen Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, added, "Even for Scott Pruitt, this is outrageous and beyond the pale."

"The U.S. helped to lead the world on this treaty and it's clear that other countries are moving ahead because they see the incredible opportunities it offers," Sittenfeld said.

Kim Glas, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups, also said Thursday, "Administrator Pruitt's statements are unsurprising. He just can't seem to grasp what the vast majority of Americans and scientists have already figured out: climate change is real, it is happening now and human activities are causing it."

The Paris agreement "is a good deal for America," Glas said. "It will help ensure that America leads the way globally in creating quality jobs designing, manufacturing, and installing the clean energy technologies needed to reduce the carbon pollution that is driving climate change."

Nasa announces one of Saturn's moons could support alien life in our solar system

Molecular hydrogen, as found on Enceladus, is one of the essential parts of life on Earth

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By Andrew Griffin

There might be alien life in our own solar system, Nasa has announced.

All of the necessary things to support life have been found on one of the moons that orbits Saturn.

Enceladus has chemicals that when found on Earth tend to indicate life, suggesting that there might be living things under its icy shell.

Scientists have long thought of Enceladus as one of the prime candidates for life within our solar system, in large part because of its subsurface ocean that covers its entire body. But the new research gives the best look yet at that moon, showing that it has a chemical energy source capable of supporting life.

The new findings came from the Cassini spacecraft, which flew through a huge plume of water that was being shot out of the surface of Enceladus. As it did, the spacecraft took readings of the water and sent them back to Earth for further study.

That study found evidence of molecular hydrogen in those jets of vapour. That molecular hydrogen could only plausibly have come from hydrothermal reactions between hot rocks and water underneath the moon’s icy crust, the researchers claim.

On Earth, that same process provides energy for the ecosystems found around hydrothermal vents.

That hydrogen serves as an especially good food, and some of the most ancient life forms on Earth use it for fuel. The kind of life that may live on Enceladus would likely eat that hydrogen and then release methane – which has also been found coming from the moon.

Further research found that the material Cassini flew through also included large amounts of carbon dioxide. Molecular hydrogen and carbon dioxide are critical for the process of methanogenesis – a reaction that sustains microbes in similar dark, undersea environments on Earth.

Scientists think that three ingredients are needed for life on a planet: water, organic molecules and a source of energy. The first two have been detected on Enceladus before, but the new discovery means that all three key components are there, with the addition of a fuel source for keeping that life alive.

“We now know there’s not only a warm, wet environment – we now realise there’s food for life,” said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiology researcher at the University of Westminster. “There’s fuel for an ecosystem on Enceladus.”

That ecosystem hasn’t been yet detected directly, but the new findings suggest that all of the pieces are in place for it to thrive.

“That’s what’s very significant here: this molecular hydrogen is a direct observation of an energetic process that is potentially capable of fuelling life,” said Caitriona Jackman from the University of Southampton.

One leading scientist called the new research “an important advance in assessing the habitability of Enceladus”. While noting that much work still needed to be done to understand the geological makeup of the moon, the new research helps “constrain the possibility of life elsewhere in our solar system”, geochemist Jeffrey Seewald wrote in an assessment of the work.

The work shows that humanity should send a mission specifically to Enceladus to hunt for signs of life, researchers said.

Professor Jackman, who worked on the Cassini mission, called the findings a “tantalising result” and called for further work to establish more about the icy moon. Professor Dartnell said that there are “some really profound discoveries awaiting us”.