Jessye Norman was remembered as a force of nature as thousands filled the Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday for a celebration of the soprano, who died Sept. 30 at age 74.

Sopranos Renee Fleming, Latonia Moore, Lise Davidsen and Leah Hawkins sang tributes along with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and bass-baritone Eric Owens that were mixed among remembrances of family and friends, dance performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and video of Norman’s career.

“Yankee Stadium is the house that Babe Ruth built and welcome to this house that Jessye Norman built,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “Of course Jessye wasn’t alone in filling this hallowed hall with her glorious voice. She was joined by rather important voices, from Leontyne Price to Luciano Pavarotti, but in her operatic prime in the ’80s and the 90s, her majestic vocal chords reigned supreme in the dramatic soprano and the mezzo range. Like Babe Ruth, who swung for the fences, Jessye swung for standing room in the family circle, and she always connected.”

Norman’s celebration took place shortly after a memorial to actress Diahann Carroll at the Helen Hayes Theater, about a mile south. On Thursday, author Toni Morrison was memorialized at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, a trio of black Americans who were leaders in their fields.

“Three monumental women who carried through and offered a bounty of gifts to the world,” actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith said.

Smith recalled signing letters “Little Sis” to Norman’s “Big Sis.” She remembered traveling to Norman’s performances around the world, focusing on one at the Festival de Musique de Menton on the French Riviera, near the Italian border. Organizers had arranged to stop traffic to clear the air for Norman but fretted over a train, asking whether Norman preferred they slow it down to lower the noise level in exchange for a lengthier time the noise would be audible.

“When the train came through Menton and Jessye was hitting the high note, I heard Jessye. She sang through it,” Smith said. “Until this morning, this very morning, I thought Jessye’s voice simply overrode that train. I don’t think so anymore. Now I understand that Jessye Norman had the ear, the timing, the love of song, the risk to share and the will to sing through – and with – the roaring train. In the same way, she integrated several musical histories to grace the world with the power of her voice.”

Speakers included Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Gloria Steinem.

Younger sister Elaine Norman Sturkey and brother James Howard Norman told stories of their youth in Augusta, Georgia, and later travels together.

“Travel with Jessye was no small feat,” Norman Sturkey said with humor in her voice. “These Louis Vuittons that she bought were so heavy before you could even put anything in them. Then she would pack them to capacity, so that when we got to the airport, they were all going to be too heavy. We’re not going to have two maybe big suitcases or even three, we were going to have 10. And she’s not lifting anything. That’s somebody else’s problem. And she’s carrying everything from a humidifier to a teapot. And we’re going to be back in less than two weeks, sometimes a week.”

Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson spoke of summoning the courage to ask Norman to curate a festival, which she readily agreed to and became “Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy” in March 2009.

“Clive, this is the project I’ve been waiting my entire life to do,” he quoted her as responding.

Former French Culture Minister spoke of the controversy over his decision to hire Norman rather than a French singer to perform “La Marseillaise” at the Place de la Concorde in 1989 to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His remembrance was followed by a video of Norman’s iconic, blazing rendition.

Fleming received a huge ovation after “Beim Schlafengehen (When Falling Asleep)” from Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” accompanied by pianist Gerald Martin Moore and Met concertmaster David Chan. Hawkins and Moore began and ended the program with traditionals, “Great Day” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand.” Bridges sang Duke Ellington’s “Heaven” and Owen performed Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walkuere.” Davidson, who is to make her Met debut Friday, sang Strauss’ “Morgen!”

…

The voting process Sunday of Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election was “peaceful, calm and orderly,” said Oldemiro Baloi, who heads international observers of the Community of Portuguese speaking countries. Results of the balloting are expected Thursday.

The West African country has seen hardly any political stability since independence from Portugal 45 years ago.

President Jose Mario Vaz, who is seeking a second five-year term, is the only president since independence to survive a full term without a coup or assassination.

“The people of Guinea-Bissau are sovereign and I will respect the verdict of the ballot box,” Vaz said after voting in the capital, Bissau.  “I have accomplished my mission of restoring peace and tranquillity.”

The president’s chief competitor was former Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, one of six prime ministers Vaz fired during his presidency.  

Pereira also vowed to “respect” the results of the election.  “These elections are crucial for future of the country,” he said.  

Twelve candidates – all men – were running for president.

Vaz fired Prime Minister Aristides Gomes in late October and named a new head of government. But Gomes refused to step down. The regional bloc ECOWAS intervened to prevent the country from exploding into violence.

Whoever becomes the country’s next president will face numerous challenges in one of the world’s poorest countries, including poverty, corruption, drug trafficking, and badly needed improvements in health care and education.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff December 29.

…

Despite a significant decrease in recent years of the number of deaths caused by terrorism, terror groups remain a major threat to peace and stability around the world, according to a new report on terrorism.

According to the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), deaths from terrorism fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2018, after reaching a peak in 2014. Since that time, the number of deaths has fallen by 52%, to 15,952 in 2018.

The annual report, published last week by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), focused on terror trends and activities around the world.  

Steve Killelea, executive chairman of IEP, said that “IEP’s research finds that conflict and state-sponsored terror are the key causes of terrorism.”

In 2018, more than 95% of deaths caused by terror-related activities occurred in countries that were already in conflict, he said.

“When combined with countries with high levels of political terror the number jumps to over 99%. Of the 10 countries most impacted by terrorism, all were involved in at least one violent conflict last year,” Killelea said in a statement to reporters.

IS down but not out

The GTI finds that the number of deaths from terrorism in Iraq fell by 75% between 2017 and 2018, with 3,217 fewer people being killed.

Major military gains against the Islamic State terror (IS) group, such as recapturing its strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in those two years, have resulted in less deaths caused by the terror group.

Following the declared defeat of IS’s so-called caliphate in March of this year by U.S.-backed forces in Syria, IS has lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.

“ISIL’s decline continued for the second successive year. Deaths attributed to the group declined 69%, with attacks declining 63 per cent in 2018,” the GTI said, using another acronym for IS.    

IS “now has an estimated 18,000 fighters left in Iraq and Syria, down from over 70,000 in 2014,” it reported.

Despite these significant successes, the terror group remains capable of carrying out terrorist attacks, experts said.

“It has not even been a year out from the fall of Baghuz [IS’s last pocket of control in eastern Syria], and IS is likely to reestablish areas of governance elsewhere in and around parts of Syria,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center in New York.

Clarke told VOA that while IS might not have the ability to make territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, it still represents a major terror threat worldwide.  

“Even if [IS] won’t be there as a state, it will certainly be there in the form of a low-level insurgency for the better part of next decade,” he predicted.

IS “may begin to seek a foothold elsewhere [and] shift resources to some of its affiliate franchise groups in places like the Sinai, Afghanistan or the Philippines,” Clarke said.

Turkey’s Syria invasion

The Pentagon’s Inspector General last week said in a report that Turkey’s military operation last month against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and the U.S. administration’s subsequent withdrawal has allowed IS to restructure itself and has increased its ability to launch attacks abroad.

The Defense Intelligence Agency said in the report that IS “has exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to reconstitute its capabilities and resources both within Syria in the short term and globally in the longer term.”

Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance that has U.S. backing, said it is holding nearly 11,000 IS fighters in at least 30 prisons across northeast Syria.

Some experts said failing to deal with these prisoners is yet another factor that could increase threats posed by IS in the future.

“The U.S. withdrawal, coupled with the Turkish invasion and the inability to deal with people that are in detention camps in Syria, all that together has breathed new life into the Islamic State, where it should have been on life support,” analyst Clarke said.

Taliban in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has replaced Iraq as the country most affected by terrorism, according to the 2019 GTI. The territorial defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq has resulted in the Taliban overtaking IS as the world’s deadliest terror group in 2018.

The study said terror activity by the Taliban rose sharply in 2018, as the militant group carried out attacks across the country.

The Taliban was responsible for 6,103 deaths in 2018, a 71% increase from 2017, the report found.

Experts estimate that approximately half the population of Afghanistan lives in areas either controlled or contested by the Taliban.

The number of deaths attributed to the Taliban rose by nearly 71%, to 6,103, and accounting for 38% of all deaths globally.

In addition to the Taliban, some IS-affiliated groups have had increased levels of terrorist activity in Afghanistan.

IS’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) was the fourth-deadliest terrorist group in 2018, with more than 1,000 recorded deaths, the majority of which occurred in Afghanistan. 

…

Security forces opened fire on protesters in southern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding dozens others, police and medical sources said, as weeks of unrest in Baghdad and some southern cities continue.

Protesters had gathered overnight on three bridges in the city, and security forces used live ammunition and tear gas canisters to disperse them, killing three, police and hospital sources said.

More than 50 others were wounded, mainly by live bullets and tear gas canisters, in clashes in the city, they added.

Two more people were killed and over 70 wounded on Sunday after  security forces used live fire to disperse protesters near the  country’s main Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, police and medical sources said.

Hospital sources said the cause of death was live fire, adding that some of the wounded are in critical condition.

The protesters had gathered to demand security forces open roads around the port town blocked by government forces in an attempt to prevent protesters from reaching the port’s entrance.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces dispersed by force protesters who had been blocking the entrance to the port and reopened it, port officials said.

Umm Qasr is Iraq’s largest commodities port and it receives imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar shipments that feed a country largely dependent on imported food.

At least 330 people have been killed since the start of mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Protesters are demanding the overthrow of a political class seen as corrupt and serving foreign powers while many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, healthcare or education.

The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

Medical authorities evacuated infants and children from a hospital in central Nassiriya overnight after tear gas spread inside hospital courtyards, two hospital sources said.

Protests continued in Nassiriya on Sunday, with some government offices set on fire, sources said.

Elsewhere in southern Iraq, hundreds of protesters burned tyres and blocked some roads on Sunday in Basra, preventing government employees from reaching offices, police said.

Iraqi security forces also wounded at least 24 people in the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala overnight after opening fire on demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the local government headquarters, medical and security sources said.

…

As climate change ramps up weather extremes, good forecasts are increasingly important. A new system makes weather predictions anywhere in the world with the same high resolution that previously was only available in wealthy countries. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.

…

“What do you want government to do for your life?” That’s the question Peggy Huang asks prospective voters at a Starbucks in Yorba Linda, California. Huang is a Republican running against first-term U.S. Representative Katie Porter, who last year became the first Democrat ever elected in California’s conservative 45th district.

Since then, Porter has gained national recognition through her sharp questioning of CEOs and government officials during congressional hearings in Washington.

“She’s more national,” admits Huang, but says in California, “we know politics and in all things, politics is local.”

Greg Raths, a retired United States Marine Corps fighter pilot, is another Republican candidate running against Porter. He says Porter doesn’t “fit the mold” of the area. Raths, the mayor of the largest city in the district, Mission Viejo City, contends it’s a “very conservative” district where “all 10 cities are run by Republican mayors and councils.”

Reelection realities

For a freshman member of the House of Representatives, it can be a shock having to concentrate on reelection before the first year ends. Already six Republicans and one Democrat have filed election papers to run against her, but one of those Republicans has already dropped out because of lack of funding. 

According to third-quarter reports from the Federal Election Commission, Porter leads the pack with $2,461,688 raised for her campaign, three times that of her closest competitor.

Impeachment vs conservative area

During her first year, Porter has proved to be a formidable force. In her first interview with VOA at the beginning of this year, she said she wanted to champion “issues of economic opportunity for working families, and for working parents, including thinking about how people can afford homes, build wealth, save for college, and save for retirement.”

As she arrived in Congress and was named to the House Financial Services Committee, she carved a niche for herself through tough, blunt questioning, often playing the role of a low- to middle-income American to highlight the witnesses’ inattention to regular citizens. This earned her kudos from the House Democratic leadership and an aspect of fame through regular appearances on cable TV news programs.

Porter connected to her constituents by regularly conducting town halls during the first half of the year, but has held them less frequently since then. She told VOA it is a challenge to find “venues that are large enough to accommodate everybody who would like to attend.”

WATCH: Rep. Porter Reflects on Successes, Failures of First Year

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In June, Porter became the first freshman House member from California to announce her support of an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Her competitors accused her of sowing seeds of divisiveness with her Twitter announcement. They predict it will cost her the election.

Ted Denney owns Synergistic Research, a niche research and technology company that employs 30 and has annual sales of $10 million. He says if Porter wins the district again in 2020, he will move his audio business elsewhere, part because of her support of impeachment.

“I don’t want this wall of resistance against the president,” Denney says. “I support his policies. Is he a perfect guy? No, but I don’t care. He’s effective.”

In a videotaped message to constituents, Porter acknowledged that launching an impeachment inquiry would be divisive but said she believes it is necessary.

“I know deeply what this means for our democracy,” she said. “But when faced with a crisis of this magnitude, I cannot with a clean conscience ignore my duty to defend the [U.S.] Constitution.”

Courting the young vote

Heidi Hu is asking about a clipboard. She’s sitting at an iron table outside a coffee shop in Santa Ana, California, learning about voter registration. She is being trained by Field Team 6, a nationwide group of volunteers, registering new voters for Democrats in 2020.

Hu drove an hour south from Los Angeles to sign up college students at the University of California at Irvine. Young voters helped propel Porter to victory in 2018. State figures show voters ages 18 to 24 rose by nearly 20% more than the previous midterm election in 2014.

Hu says the key to Porter’s reelection will be again turning out large numbers of college students. 

“Their values are more aligned with the Orange County of the future,” Hu said.

Porter prevailed in Orange County, an historically conservative portion of the 45th Congressional District, but Hu knows that Porter is vulnerable in that area and must build up her Democratic support among college students to offset Republican voters.

One of those students is Bryan Pham who will be voting for the first time in 2020. He says even though his family is conservative, “I have certain beliefs of my own and I identify with the Democratic party.”

Bills sponsored

In less than a year, Porter, a former law professor, has sponsored 23 bills in the House. In last year’s congressional session, the average for a first-year representative was 14 and the most introduced was 31, so Porter is well ahead of the curve.

One of Porter’s bills has passed the House but has yet to be introduced in the Senate. The “Help America Run Act” would give candidates more freedom to use campaign funds for child care, health care premiums and elder care. Porter, a single mother of three children younger than 12, said the bill would have helped her when she was a candidate. 

“The goal here is to make our Congress more diverse and to make it possible for any American who’s qualified and wants to serve in the U.S. Congress to have the opportunity to do that,” she said.

Porter report card

Nonprofit and special interest groups rate lawmakers’ voting records.

For first-year representatives, these are the first grades published during their two-year tenure. For Porter, the first two grades run along party lines. The conservative Heritage Action for America, typically aligned with Republicans, rates members’ votes on key conservative legislation. It gives Porter a zero.

Freedom Works, another conservative group, gives her a score of 8 out of 100, based on her votes on issues dealing with economic freedom.

The surprise was an “F” given by the group Progressive Punch, based on a formula that compares the voting record of a control group of 33 dominant progressive members of Congress with the representative’s voting record.

Most other groups will wait to publish grades at the end of the year.

Competitors will typically use the voting record and bills sponsored in their challenge to the incumbent. The incumbent uses the voting record to show how they are supporting the constituent needs in the district.

Reflecting on a hectic first year in Congress, Porter said, “I feel like I’m getting my sea legs under me … there is a learning curve to this job. And there should be. This is a big task [legislating] that the American people have trusted us with.”

The California primary to determine Katie Porter’s Republican challenger is in early March with the general election in November 2020.

…

An advocacy group says internet connectivity is rapidly being restored in Iran after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown in response to widespread protests.

The group NetBlocks said Saturday that connectivity had suddenly reached 60% Saturday afternoon.

It said on Twitter: “Internet access is being restored in (hash)Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests.”

Confirmed: Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests; real-time network data show national connectivity now up to 64% of normal levels as of shutdown hour 163 📈📵#IranProtests#Internet4Iran

📰https://t.co/XQmiaOlRL7pic.twitter.com/eimWEIEmrI

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 23, 2019

There were reports that internet service remained spotty in the capital, Tehran, though others around the country began reporting they could again access it.

The order comes a week after the Nov. 15 gasoline price hike, which sparked demonstrations that rapidly turned violent, seeing gas stations, banks and stores burned to the ground.

Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”

…

When he left the house last week, Joseph, a 19-year-old Hong Kong college student, told his parents he was going to hang out with friends. That was only partly true.

In reality, Joseph was headed for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he and a group of hundreds of other young people barricaded themselves on campus, blocked a major highway, and stockpiled homemade weapons in preparation to battle police.

Night after night last week, the urban campus become a battlefield, as police rained tear gas and rubber bullets on students, who responded with Molotov cocktails, bricks, and whatever else they could find.

Though Hong Kong has seen five months of protests, this kind of violence is new. The pro-democracy movement that had been marked by massive street rallies now risks being overtaken by a smaller group of hardcore students who have shown they are willing to go beyond peaceful demonstrations and engage in prolonged battles with police in their push for democratic reforms.

“I would definitely admit that we’re using a certain level of violence,” says Joseph, who spoke via an encrypted messaging app. “But in order to protect the innocent protesters and create pressure on the government, a certain level of violence and power to fight back is necessary.”

In the minds of frontline protesters like Joseph, the violence is a last-ditch effort to preserve what is left of Hong Kong’s freedoms before the semi-autonomous territory is fully taken over by China in 2047. Hong Kong authorities accuse the protesters of engaging in violence that is incompatible with democracy.

VOA spoke with about 10 young protesters, all of whom were at Polytechnic University over the past week. Though the standoff is largely over, a couple dozen holdouts remain on campus. Most have either surrendered to police or escaped. Some of the protesters face possible riot-related charges that could land them in jail for 10 years. VOA has used pseudonyms to protect their identity.

‘We tried peaceful demonstrations’

“We tried peaceful demonstrations, but the government didn’t listen,” says Crystal, a Polytechnic student protester who has been on the run since leaving campus. She says she hasn’t been able to sleep a full night in more than a week.

“I’m scared, really scared,” she says.

Crystal wants to someday be an elementary school teacher, but for now she considers herself a revolutionary.

“Radical, I think, is a positive word for me, for us,” she says. “And most revolutions have violence.”

At this point, she’s unsure of whether to stay in Hong Kong and fight, or seek political asylum in another country.

“This is my place. This is my home. I need to protect it,” she says. “And I know that in 2047, I will become an old woman. But what about the next generation? And the next generation? What they will become? Brainwashed? Everything fake, like China?”

Outmatched

Most of the frontline students that fought at Polytechnic are in their teens or twenties. Some are new protesters. Others are veterans of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a student-led protest that unsuccessfully pushed for universal suffrage.

When it comes to brute strength, the students are outmatched, not only by the weapons of the Hong Kong police, but even more so by those of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest military. The PLA has thousands of troops in Hong Kong and many more just across the border, though they have not yet left their barracks to confront the protesters.

“We deeply understand we are not able to win in hand to hand fighting,” says Joseph. “But still, we shouldn’t be silent in the face of injustices.”

That is a common sentiment among frontline protesters, many of whom resent local and mainland Chinese media that accuse them of being naive children who are being pushed to the frontline by irresponsible adults. In reality, many of the more extreme protesters seem frequently self-aware, expressing a potentially dangerous mix of fatalism and determination.

In other words: they know they’ll likely lose, but they’re willing to fight anyway.

“We both know that it’s impossible to win, but only persistence can bring hope. If we never try, we know how this ends. We can’t just say no no, impossible. Why not just try?” says Crystal.

Another student on campus, who carried a bow and arrow, and donned a military-style camouflage helmet, acknowledged that his weapons are no match for the forces he is up against.

“All the protesters are scared—because maybe we will die,” he said, speaking in front of a pile of mangled classroom desks that had been stacked up to form a barricade against police. “But we think if we don’t stand up this day, [then] all the freedom in Hong Kong will lose. There is no way for us to go back now.”

“All of us here know what we are doing,” said another frontline protester at Polytechnic, who spoke through a black gas mask that distorted his voice. “Because our demands are not being addressed, that’s why we are having to escalate and upgrade our actions so as to get the results from the government,” he said.

Five demands

The latest round of protests erupted in June in opposition to an extradition bill. The proposal could have seen Hong Kongers tried in mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party and reports of torture and forced confessions are common.

Though authorities eventually abandoned the extradition bill, by then the protests had morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to the expanding influence of Beijing.

The protesters have adopted a list of five demands, including an investigation into police brutality, amnesty for arrested protesters, and direct elections for both the legislature and top executive.

But besides scrapping the extradition bill, Hong Kong authorities have refused to make concessions. Instead, as they have from the beginning, authorities dismiss the protests as riots.

“The rioters’ actions have far exceeded the call for democracy. They are now the enemy of the people,” Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly Chief Executive Carrie Lam said earlier this month.

‘Off the rails’

Though the protesters appear to still have the support of a large segment of the Hong Kong public, some are worried about the direction of the protests.

“This movement has come off the rails and is really out of control,” says Steve Vickers, the former head of the Royal Hong Kong Police Criminal Intelligence Bureau. “The violent element, the sharp end of it, is really destroying the message that the rest of them had established through large demonstrations, which were peaceful.”

Vickers points to instances where protesters have vandalized public infrastructure, such as subway stations and highway toll booths. In other cases, pro-Beijing individuals or businesses have been attacked or set on fire.

“Demanding five things or we will burn down your railway stations on a regular basis is not going to end happily anywhere in the world,” says Vickers, who heads the SVA Risk Consultancy.

In recent weeks, there have also been several attacks on pro-democracy figures, including one politician who had his ear partially bitten off by a knife-wielding man outside a shopping mall.

Election a referendum?

Sunday’s local elections could serve as a de facto referendum on the protest movement. Authorities had considered postponing the vote because of the violence, but they decided to move ahead, with a large police presence expected at polling stations.

“If the democrats really score a landslide victory, that will show very clearly that the public is in support of the movement, despite recent violence,” says Ma Ngok, a political scientist with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This will, I think … [create] much more pressure for the Hong Kong government to respond to the demands of the protesters.”

Polls suggest a generational divide between younger Hong Kongers, who are resentful of increasing Chinese influence, and older Hong Kongers, who prefer stability even if it means a lesser degree of freedom.

For frontline protester Joseph, whose father is pro-Beijing, that means sneaking out of the house to attend violent protests.

“We’ve had a few strong arguments, but I’m pretty sure there are many families struggling with that,” he says.

Although Joseph says he has no plans to stop protesting, he doesn’t expect the violence to get much worse, for now.

“Keeping pressure on the government,” he says. “That is our first priority at the moment.”

…

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, dubbed by critics “Putin on the Nile,” is set to boost his burgeoning relationship with Russia by dispatching his son, Mahmoud, to Moscow as a military attache, independent regional media outlets are reporting.

Russian officials say they welcome the prospect of Mahmoud el-Sissi being based in Moscow.  

The reassignment would coincide with an open rupture between Cairo and Washington over Egyptian plans to buy advanced Russian warplanes.

In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official Thursday threatened the Cairo government with sanctions if Egypt goes ahead with a $2 billion agreement to purchase more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets, a deal the relocated Mahmoud el-Sissi would likely oversee as military attache.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the Trump administration  was still discussing how to address its defense needs with Egypt adding that U.S. officials “have also been very transparent with them in that if they are to acquire a significant Russian platform like the Sukhoi-35 or the Su-35, that puts them at risk towards sanctions.”

The United States has provided billions of dollars in economic and military aid to Egypt, a longtime ally, whose military has been operating the U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter. Moving his son to Moscow is seen by Western diplomats here as a signal to Washington by el-Sissi of his intent to go ahead with buying the Su-35s.

“He’s playing hardball with Washington,” said a Western diplomat based here, who asked not to identified for this article.

According to independent media, Mahmoud el-Sissi’s reassignment, planned for next year, has the added benefit for Egypt’s president of moving his son out of the spotlight in Cairo. His role as a top official in the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Service, has prompted turmoil within that agency, as well as growing public criticism of his father for not curbing his son, who has also been drawing allegations of corruption.

General Intelligence Service sources told Mada Masr, an Egyptian online newspaper, the reassignment to Moscow is “based on the perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud el-Sissi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been intensifying his engagement with Middle Eastern and North African leaders, and seeking to rebuild Russian influence in the region, clout that was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to analysts. Some analysts see the re-engagement as an effort to safeguard established strategic interests.  They cite as an example Russian intervention in Syria, where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base and needed to prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad if it wanted to ensure its continuance.

Others say Russia’s renewed assertiveness is being overblown.

“Putin’s apparent victories in spreading Russian influence are mirages, some of which have come at a great cost,” according to Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. “Putin’s gambit in Syria had more to do with safeguarding a long-standing strategic investment that appeared imperiled than with outmaneuvering the United States,” he said in a Foreign Policy magazine commentary.

Nonetheless the dispatch of Mahmoud el-Sissi to Moscow is coming at a time of heightened disagreement between Washington and Cairo. Washington has told Cairo that buying the Russian warplanes would place U.S. and NATO military cooperation at risk. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote jointly to the Egyptian leader urging him to reverse the decision to buy Russian jets.

Ties between el-Sissi and Putin began warming in 2014, when the Obama administration curtailed military aid to Egypt after the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Cairo’s generals, smarting at Washington’s criticism of the coup that brought el-Sissi to power, talked openly of forging a “strategic realignment” with the Kremlin, evoking Egypt’s Nasser-era alliance with the Soviets.

Putin was quick to endorse el-Sissi as Egypt’s president, telling him during a 2014 visit to Moscow, “I wish you luck both from myself personally and from the Russian people.”

Putin also gave el-Sissi a black jacket with a red star on it, which el-Sissi wore during the Russian trip. Both men have much in common, coming from modest backgrounds and having gravitated toward the most powerful institutions in their closed societies, the KGB and the Egyptian army. They each rose cautiously up the bureaucratic ladder.

Last month, el-Sissi and Putin co-hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, held at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.  It was the third meeting between the two presidents this year. In October the Egyptian air force’s tactical training center near Cairo hosted joint Russian-Egyptian military exercises dubbed Arrow of Friendship-1. The two countries have held several joint naval and airborne counterterrorism exercises since 2015.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a visit to Cairo this month, “When we are in Egypt we always feel like at home.” The Russian military, he said, “is ready to assist in strengthening Egyptian military forces and defense capabilities.”

Shoigu’s delegation included top officials from Russia’s trade ministry, Rosoboronexport, Russia’s arms exporter, and the deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, prompting speculation among military analysts that Moscow and Cairo may be discussing arms deals other than the Su-35s and weapons systems co-production arrangements.

…

Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government, prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing the outage.

The #Iran internet shutdown is now in its 144th hour, keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians⏱

Subscribe to our network monitor channel to track national connectivity in real-time #IranProtests#Internet4Iran

📡https://t.co/71lkPvV2e2pic.twitter.com/EHpyZflNSE

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 22, 2019

In a tweet late Friday, London-based internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the shutdown had lasted a full six days and was “keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians.” A livestream of Iran’s internet connectivity rate on the group’s YouTube channel  showed a slight improvement to 20%, after having risen to 15% from 5% on Thursday.

Some Iranian officials have said they expect internet access to be gradually restored in the coming days. But there was no government announcement of a date for an end to the shutdown, which began in the evening of November 16 as authorities tried to stop Iranians from sharing images of nationwide anti-government protests that had erupted the previous day.

A news agency of Iran’s Islamic Azad University, a private national university network, said in a Thursday article  that seven other major universities in the country had their internet access restored. But it cited a public relations director for one of them, Sharif University, as saying the renewed access was “very slow.”

Iranian officials sparked the protests when they raised the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% on Nov. 15. The hike further strains the finances of many Iranians facing hardship in an economy already weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.

In its first punitive response to the internet shutdown, the Trump administration sanctioned Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Friday.

The Treasury Department said Azari Jahromi’s ministry has been responsible for restricting the Iranian people’s access to the internet, including popular messaging apps used by tens of millions of Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. It added Azari Jahromi to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, freezing his assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting Americans from any dealings involving those assets.

British rights group Amnesty International has said it documented the killings of 106 protesters in the crackdown by security forces during the period Nov. 15-19.

Tehran has rejected Amnesty’s death toll as speculative but has declined to issue its own tally of protester fatalities. Authorities said several security personnel also were killed in violence by “thugs” who attacked stores and burned buildings in cities around the country.

Iranian leaders have said they succeeded in crushing the unrest after several days, while blaming the protests on incitement by foreign “enemies” and exiled opposition groups. The internet shutdown made it difficult to verify whether the demonstrations have ended.

“The United States stands with the people of Iran in their struggle against an oppressive regime that silences them while arresting and murdering protesters,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Friday statement. “No country or company should enable the regime’s censorship or human rights abuses. The United States will expose these human rights abusers and record their shameful acts for history.”

A day earlier, Pompeo took the unusual step of tweeting an appeal, in Farsi and English, for Iranians to send “videos, photos and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protesters.” He said people could do so via the @RFJ_Farsi_Bot Telegram channel. It was not clear when the State Department would reveal any content that it has received.

Azari Jahromi, who has 168,000 followers on his verified Twitter account, tweeted late Friday for the first time since the protests began, issuing a defiant response to being sanctioned by Washington.

I’m not the only member of club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB children were there.
I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development.#EconomicTerrorism

— MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) November 22, 2019

“I’m not the only member of [the] club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, [there were] Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB [skin disease] children,” Jahromi wrote.

Iran has said U.S. sanctions targeting its oil, banks and other major industries represent a campaign of “economic terrorism” against the Iranian people. Washington has said humanitarian trade with Iran is exempt from its sanctions, whose aim is to deny resources to the Iranian government for malign activity.

“I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development,” Azari Jahromi added.

A U.S. Treasury statement identified the 38-year-old as a former Iranian intelligence officer involved in surveillance operations that enabled the government to arrest protesters involved in peaceful opposition demonstrations in 2009. The Treasury said Azari Jahromi has been accused of personally interrogating multiple activists during that period.

In a VOA Persian interview, analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Azari Jahromi has been a key figure in Iran’s censorship apparatus.

“Targeting him is both symbolic and effective, but should not be the end of the stick. It should be a first step toward the U.S. going after Iran’s entire telecommunications infrastructure, and that could include its satellites,” Taleblu said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. Katherine Ahn contributed to this report.

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