(MIAMI BEACH, Fla.) — Tropical Depression Fred may restrengthen to a tropical storm Friday as it closes in on Florida.
The biggest threat from Fred is flash flooding, especially in South Florida, where up to 10 inches of rain is possible. A flood watch has been issued across South Florida, including Miami.
Fred will move over the Florida Keys early Saturday morning and then graze Tampa on Sunday morning with some rain and gusty winds. Fred is expected to make landfall as a weak tropical storm near Apalachicola in the Florida panhandle Sunday night into Monday early morning.
Meanwhile, another tropical threat developing in the Atlantic is expected to become Tropical Storm Grace by Saturday morning. A tropical storm watch has been issued for portions of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.
Grace is expected to remain a tropical storm as it passes over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
By the middle of next week, Grace will approach the Bahamas and South Florida. The storm will likely be weak at that point but the forecast could change.
Some long-range models track the storm heading to the Carolinas, but it is too early to tell.
(WASHINGTON) — As the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate and criticism mounts over the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal from the country after the 20-year war, President Joe Biden has kept a low profile.
Spending the day in Wilmington, Delaware, before departing for Camp David, a presidential retreat, Biden has no public events on his schedule as he resumes what was supposed to be a week of vacation and the president did not stop to speak with reporters as he and first lady Jill Biden departed Wilmington Friday afternoon.
Biden was scheduled to receive his presidential daily briefing at 10 a.m. Friday, though the White House did not say if Biden had received additional briefings on Afghanistan Thursday evening or Friday.
A senior administration official said Biden would continue to be engaged on the issue and stay in close contact with his team about the situation Thursday afternoon.
In the hours surrounding the U.S.’s decision Thursday to send 3,000 troops into Afghanistan to assist the drawdown of the embassy in Kabul, Biden did not engage publicly on the issue.
Delivering remarks about his plan to lower prescription drug prices Thursday — his only public event before departing for Delaware — the president ignored a shouted question from the press as he left the East Room.
“Is Afghanistan lost?” someone had yelled.
Behind the scenes, Biden was briefed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the worsening situation in Afghanistan Thursday morning. It followed a meeting Biden held with principals Wednesday night, tasking them to come up with recommendations for next moves, according to a senior administration official.
After they met Thursday morning to review the recommendations, Biden gave the order to move forward with the new plans. The president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday to discuss a diplomatic strategy, the official added.
The administration is on defense over its handling of the situation, saying it was not caught off guard or surprised at the speed of the Taliban’s advancement, arguing that there were a number of contingencies in play.
But according to a U.S. official, the precarious Afghan control over major cities growing more tenuous over the last day was a significant factor in Biden’s decision to go forward with the reduction in staffing and the new military mission.
And just over a month ago, the president doubted the country would fall to Taliban control.
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” he told reporters on July 8.
The conditions for total withdrawal from Afghanistan were initially put in place by President Donald Trump. In February 2020, the Trump administration struck a deal with the Taliban under which the U.S. would pull out all of its troops from Afghanistan by May 1 if the Taliban met certain requirements, including refraining from attacks on U.S. forces.
In April, Biden announced his intention to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks because it was “time to end America’s longest war.”
“We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely,” Biden said of the plan.
But in the months since that announcement, the U.S. has struggled to follow through on that promise. U.S. forces departed Bagram Air Field, its de facto headquarters in Afghanistan, in the middle of the night, without notifying Afghan commanders, Afghan military officials said.
The White House did not announce a plan to evacuate Afghan interpreters and contractors who have aided U.S. forces and diplomats, and who are now targets of the Taliban for their work, until July. While some flights for these Afghans to the U.S. have begun, thousands remain stranded in Afghanistan.
“Please send my word to the officials, if they don’t evacuate us there will be a slaughter. I have no idea what to do. I need help to leave this country or I will be dead, I need evacuation. I need help!” one Afghan interpreter wrote in a note shared with ABC News.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has requested a full House briefing on Afghanistan when the House returns to session Aug. 23, and congressional Republicans issued a swift rebuke of Biden.
“President Biden’s strategy has turned an imperfect but stable situation into a major embarrassment and a global emergency in a matter of weeks. President Biden is finding that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it. The costs and ramifications will echo across the world,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Thursday night.
“America’s enemies know that the slogan ‘ending endless war’ actually means unconditional surrender. That is what we are seeing in Afghanistan today. American weakness is dangerously provocative,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted.
Still, even as reports of the deteriorating situation in the region emerged this week, Biden stood by his decision to withdraw all troops.
“Look, we spent over a trillion dollars — over 20 years we trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces. And Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands — lost to death and injury thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves. Fight for their nation.”
“[W]e are continuing to keep our commitment. But I do not regret my decision,” he added.
ABC’s Luis Martinez, Matt Seyler and Conor Finnegan contributed to this report
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon is sending in troops “as we speak” to help facilitate those departures, the agency said Friday, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby wouldn’t say the advances took the Biden administration by surprise but said officials are “certainly concerned” by the speed at which the Taliban is moving.
“We’re obviously watching this just like you’re watching this and seeing it happen in real-time, and it’s deeply concerning. In fact, the deteriorating conditions are a factor — a big factor — in why the president has approved this mission to help support our — the reduction of personnel there in Kabul,” he said in a briefing from the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
Kirby said the “leading elements” of one of the two Marine battalions headed to the capital city of Kabul have arrived and that “the bulk” of the 3,000 troops will be there by the end of the weekend.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has instructed all U.S. personnel to destroy items like documents and electronic devices to “reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property,” according to an internal notice obtained by ABC News.
“Please also include items with embassy or agency logos, Americans flags, or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts,” the notice said.
A State Department spokesperson is not denying this is the case, but in a statement described things as “standard operating procedure designed to minimize our footprint.”
There wasn’t any specific event that led President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to execute the plan to send troops, Kirby said Thursday afternoon as the crisis escalated, but rather the overall worsening trend in Afghanistan.
“There wasn’t one precipitating event in the last couple of days that led the president and the secretary to make this decision. It’s a confluence of events, and as I’ve been saying for now for several weeks, we have been watching very closely with concern the security situation on the ground — and far better to be prudent about it and be responsible and watching the trends to make the best decisions you can for safety and security of our people than to wait until it’s too late,” Kirby said.
The events in Afghanistan over the last 48 hours, with the Taliban pressuring major Afghan cities, were significant factors in the decision to go forward with the reduction in embassy staffing and the new military mission, a U.S. official told ABC News.
A military analysis said Kabul could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News. That timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city. As of Friday, the Taliban had taken control of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, located 300 miles south of Kabul and considered the birthplace of the Taliban. The Taliban has also seized Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Kirby said of the Taliban at the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
As the Taliban gained ground Friday, Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, a senior fellow for the Middle East Institute, Afghanistan war veteran and ABC News national security analyst, called on the U.S. to reverse its decision to withdraw troops in order to “prevent the country’s fall to the Taliban and the establishment of a safe haven for terrorist organizations.”
“In the absence of that, the international community must immediately establish a secure, fortified area within the Kabul region where Afghans, especially females, fleeing the Taliban can have their own safe haven,” he said.
“This should also come with a clear warning to the Taliban that if they enter the Kabul region, they will be met by military force from the United States,” he added. “This is the only thing they will understand and likely the only thing that will stop them from an assault on Kabul that will cause a major humanitarian crisis.”
Biden held a meeting with his team Wednesday night and tasked them to come up with recommendations, according to a senior administration official. Then, at a meeting Thursday morning with Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the recommendations were presented to Biden and he gave the order to move forward.
The official also said the president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday morning to discuss a diplomatic strategy and that Biden continues to be engaged on this issue and is staying in close contact with his team on the situation.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the embassy in Kabul will remain open as it reduces its civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that the embassy expects to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
“What this is not — this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” Price said Thursday. “What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere, whether that’s in the United States or elsewhere in the region.”
The United Kingdom is also sending military personnel — about 600 paratroopers — to Kabul on a short-term basis to provide support to British nationals leaving the country, according to a joint press release from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The number of staffers working at the British Embassy in Kabul has been reduced to a core team focused on providing consular and visa services for those needing to rapidly leave the country.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Friday he believed the country was “heading towards a civil war” as the Taliban gain momentum.
At the Pentagon, Kirby announced Thursday the Defense Department was sending 3,000 troops from three infantry battalions — two Marine and one Army — to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help out with the removal of American personnel from the U.S. Embassy. These numbers are on top of the 650 who were already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.
An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
“I want to stress that these forces are being deployed to support the orderly and safe reduction of civilian personnel at the request of the State Department and to help facilitate an accelerated process of working through SIV applicants,” Kirby said. “This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus. As with all deployments of our troops into harm’s way, our commanders have the inherent right of self defense, and any attack on them can and will be met with a forceful and appropriate response.”
A brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will also be sent to Kuwait to preposition in case they are needed.
Kirby called it a “very temporary mission for a very temporary purpose,” and said the DOD expects to keep no more than 1,000 troops in Kabul to protect the airport and embassy after the Aug. 31 deadline — a number that has notably crept up from the 650 troops originally set to remain.
Price said officials will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.
Blinken and Austin spoke to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier Thursday to brief him on the U.S. plans, but the two U.S. officials did not tell Ghani to resign, according to a State Department spokesperson, who added, “Rumors indicating we have done so are completely false. Decisions about who leads the country are for Afghans to make.”
The Taliban have demanded that Ghani resign, in exchange for a reduction in violence and to lay the groundwork for a transitional government. But Ghani has said he is the democratically elected leader of the country and will remain so until negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government reach a conclusion — an increasingly distant reality.
Shabia Mantoo, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, warned Friday at a press conference in Geneva that a worsening humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Afghanistan.
“The human toll of spiraling hostilities is immense. The United Nations Assistance Mission has warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan is on course to witness the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since the UN’s records began,” she said.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for a cease-fire in remarks on Friday.
“The message from the international community to those on the warpath must be clear: seizing power through military force is a losing proposition,” he said. “That can only lead to prolonged civil war or to the complete isolation of Afghanistan.”
“I call on the Taliban to immediately halt the offensive and to negotiate in good faith in the interest of Afghanistan and its people,” Guterres continued.
According to the U.N., some 400,000 civilians have been forced to flee from their homes since the start of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of last year, she said.
ABC News’ Cindy Smith, Justin Gomez, Guy Davies and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan is urging Washington to evacuate Afghans who are under threat because of their work with the U.S. government — warning they cannot get out on their own and are in desperate need, according to an internal cable obtained by ABC News.
In an urgent and emotional appeal to State Department leadership, Ambassador Ross Wilson called for help for the thousands of Afghans who served the U.S., but will not be evacuated in the coming weeks by the administration.
President Joe Biden has said he is committed to helping Afghans who helped the U.S. But his plans only call for relocating Afghans who have received approval for a special immigrant visa — a program created by Congress for interpreters, guides and other contractors who worked for the U.S. military and diplomatic missions for two years.
With nearly one third of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals now captured by Taliban fighters, Afghans, U.S. lawmakers and advocacy groups are urging the administration to increase the tempo of evacuation flights and the scope of who qualifies for a coveted seat on one.
“They fear being watched walking in and out of the Embassy and lay awake at night fearing the Taliban will knock on their doors,” Wilson wrote of two Afghan staffers who spoke with U.S. officials.
Last week, the State Department announced that Afghans who did not qualify for the special immigrant visa program could instead apply for refugee status under a new initiative. That includes Afghans who didn’t meet the two-year employment requirement, who worked for a U.S.-funded program or a contractor instead of directly for the government, or who worked for a U.S.-based media outlet.
But that new program requires that these Afghans flee the country first — a barrier too high for the vast majority of them, according to Wilson.
“Any assumption that Afghan refugees can make their way to safety on foot does not reflect the new reality,” Wilson wrote — noting Taliban forces exercise control of more than half of the country’s border crossings, neighboring countries Iran and Pakistan are closing their borders to more refugees and other countries around the world are not offering Afghans visas to enter.
Instead, these Afghans embassy employees and close contacts are “under threat because of their work with the U.S. government … but cannot get out,” he added.
That group includes prominent women’s rights activists that the U.S. itself “raised as examples of progress toward gender equality” and are now threatened because of it, according to Wilson.
There are 2,000 Afghan embassy employees and their families, along with thousands more with U.S. ties who are seeking this new refugee status, according to the cable.
The administration, however, has already said it is not planning to help evacuate these Afghans.
“At this point in time, unfortunately, we do not anticipate relocating them, but we will continue to examine all the options to protect those who have served with or for us, and we will review the situation on the ground,” a senior State Department official told reporters last week.
Instead, it may struggle to evacuate all those special immigrant visa applicants, along with their families, that it has already committed to helping.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday that despite the evacuation of a significant number of U.S. diplomats, the embassy will continue to process visas in Afghanistan.
The administration also announced Thursday that is is moving 1,000 U.S. troops to Qatar shortly to help process evacuated Afghans there, as it increases the number of flights of Afghans directly to the U.S., too.
Some 4,000 Afghans — 1,000 interpreters and their family members — are being evacuated to Fort Lee, a U.S. Army post in central Virginia, and those flights will become daily in the coming days, Price said. These applicants have been approved for U.S. visas by the embassy and cleared security vetting, according to U.S. officials.
“We have a solemn, a sincere responsibility to these brave Afghans,” Price told reporters Thursday. “We’re going to honor that responsibility and increase the pace of those relocation flights.”
In total now, 1,200 Afghans have been relocated to Fort Lee, according to Price. Roughly 90% of them have been processed and cleared to depart the installation, moving to their new homes across the U.S., a State Department spokesperson told ABC News on Wednesday.
In addition, the administration has said it plans to evacuate 4,000 more interpreters, plus their family members, who have been approved by the embassy, but not yet vetted.
This group — estimated to be approximately 20,000 Afghans in total — will be relocated to safe third locations, such as Qatar, Kuwait or the U.S. territory Guam, but it’s unclear whether the administration has any agreements to host them yet.
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the 1,000 service members — medical personnel, military police and engineers, among others — will support processing applicants, who could spend months at U.S. military installations in Qatar as they await their applications to be adjudicated. But a State Department spokesperson later told ABC News they have no announcements yet on third-country relocation sites.
(LONDON) — Multiple people were killed and a number of others were injured in a shooting in Plymouth, England, Thursday night.
Police responded to a “serious firearms incident” in the Keyham section of the city in southwest England at about 6:10 p.m. local time, according to Devon and Cornwall police.
“There have been a number of fatalities at the scene and several other casualties are receiving treatment,” police said in a statement. “A critical incident has been declared. The area has been cordoned off and police believe the situation is contained.”
Johnny Mercer, a member of Parliament representing the region, said the shooting was not believed to be terror-related.
Police said no suspect is on the loose.
It is not clear how many people were killed or injured and police have not speculated on a motive.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Six people are dead, including the suspect, following a shooting in Plymouth, England, Thursday night.
Police responded to a “serious firearms incident” in the Keyham section of the city in southwest England at about 6:10 p.m. local time, according to Devon and Cornwall police.
When they arrived, they found two men and two women dead from gunshot wounds, police said. They also found a man who is believed to be the shooter dead at the scene. All five were pronounced dead from gunshot wounds.
A third woman was taken to a local hospital, where she later died, police said.
Police said the next of kin for all of the deceased have been notified. Police did not say how the suspect died, but he was dead prior to police arriving.
Names and ages of the victims have not been released.
“There have been a number of fatalities at the scene and several other casualties are receiving treatment,” police said in a statement earlier in the evening. “A critical incident has been declared. The area has been cordoned off and police believe the situation is contained.”
Johnny Mercer, a member of Parliament representing the region, said the shooting was not believed to be terror-related.
Devon and Cornwall police reiterated in a statement announcing the deaths that the case was not related to terrorism.
Police said they are not searching for any further suspects related to the shooting.
There was no speculation about a motive and no information on how the victims were connected to the shooter, if at all.
Priti Patel, the country’s home secretary, tweeted, “The incident in Plymouth is shocking and my thoughts are with those affected. I have spoken to the Chief Constable and offered my full support.”
Devon and Cornwall police said an investigation of the incident is ongoing.
Forget about industry pundits: Lorde will be the first to tell you that her highly anticipated new album Solar Power, due out August 20, won’t be as successful as her previous records, the Grammy-winning Pure Heroine and the Grammy-nominated Melodrama.
Speaking to The New York Times, she laughs, “There’s definitely not a smash [on the album]. It makes sense that there wouldn’t be a smash, because I don’t even know really what the smashes are now.”
In the past, “Royals” was certainly a smash, but Lorde swore she’d never try to approach that level of success again. “What a lost cause,” she tells the NYT. “Can you imagine? I’m under no illusion. That was a moonshot.”
Like Melodrama, Lorde made Solar Power with producer and Bleachers front man Jack Antonoff, but she resents any attempt to lump her in with the other female artists he’s worked with, like Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and St. Vincent.
“I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record,” the singer said. “I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement. Jack would agree with this. To give him that amount of credit is frankly insulting.”
She calls that narrative “retro” and “sexist,” adding, “No one who’s in a job that isn’t my job has a relationship like the one I have with Jack. He’s like a partner to me. We’re in a relationship.”
“It’s not a romantic relationship, but we’ve been in it for seven years, and it’s a really unique thing,” she adds. “And so I don’t begrudge people maybe not being able to understand it.”
Lorde feels the same way about the album, apparently; of Solar Power, she says, “I would almost value people not understanding it at first.”
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon will send troops in to help facilitate those departures, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said that while the embassy in Kabul will remain open, they will be reducing their civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that they expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
“What this is not — this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” Price said Thursday. “What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere, whether that’s in the United States or elsewhere in the region.”
In a briefing at the Pentagon, the Defense Department’s top spokesman announced that it’s sending 3,000 troops from three infantry battalions — two Marine and one Army — to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help out with the removal of American personnel from the U.S. embassy.
They’ll be there “temporarily” and will begin shipping out in the next 24 to 48 hours. These numbers are on top of the 650 already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.
An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas.
Furthermore, a brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will be sent to Kuwait to pre-position in case they are needed further.
Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that after a meeting with business leaders Thursday afternoon she would leave to “continue the briefings that we’ve been receiving.”
Price said they will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.
A military analysis said the city could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News, but that timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Hawa Doucouré and her teammates on the Les Hijabeuses soccer team have a simple message to send while playing the game they love: “Hands off my hijab.”
It’s a message they hope is received not only by the French Football Federation, but the country’s government as well.
“We are strong together and we will fight to the end,” Doucouré, 19, told ABC News. “We will fight until every woman can play the sport that she wants to play, how she wants to play it.”
The Hijabeuses, a collective of French soccer players, have spent the last year fighting to be included in official competitions. While FIFA, the world governing body for football, has permitted the Muslim veil on the field since 2014, the French Football Federation continues to ban it in club matches and international games, telling ABC News that it “promotes and defends the values of secularism, living together, neutrality and the fight against all forms of discrimination.”
The players’ calls for change are part of a larger movement against the country’s ban on religious symbols and garb, including niqabs and burqas. The latest controversy surrounds an amendment proposed earlier this year that bans minors from wearing a hijab in public.
France currently bans public workers and school students from wearing religious symbols, except at universities. The proposals that were also discussed included bans on Muslim mothers wearing hijabs on school trips and Muslim women wearing burkinis, or full-body swimsuits. They were eventually cut from the bill in one of the legislative rounds.
Rim-Sarah Alouane, a lawyer and researcher of religious freedom living in Toulouse, noted, “These conversations will keep on happening.”
“There was a time when the French had unveiling ceremonies and you had a bunch of French women surrounding a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf celebrating the fact that she would remove her headscarf, usually by force, to say, ‘Now you’re welcome in our society,'” said Alouane.
There is currently no law in France specifically banning hijabs in sports competitions. The Hijabeuses said they have yet to hear back from the French Football Federation about why it has gone beyond the rule of law to restrict the wearing of hijabs in official sports competitions even as FIFA permits them.
The French government said it’s passing these laws in the name of safety and secularism, and that the law strengthens its ability to adhere to principles of neutrality in government institutions. However, critics of the law argue that it will further stoke racism and discrimination in France, which is home to the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe. The country has seen an alarming rise in Islamophobia in recent years in part due to a rash of recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists and the subsequent strengthening of far-right politics.
Doucouré and her teammates are part of a movement of female athletes around the world challenging patriarchal norms to dress a certain way during competition.
At the Tokyo Olympics, Germany’s women’s gymnastics team wore full-length bodysuits instead of the more revealing leotards. Norway’s women’s beach handball team, meanwhile, wore shorts instead of bikinis at the Beach Handball EURO 2021 competition.
Germany’s women’s gymnastics team had complied with the existing rules under the International Gymnastics Federation, and thus faced no consequences. Norway’s women’s beach handball team, however, were fined 1,500 euros (about $1,700) by the Disciplinary Commission at the Beach Handball EURO 2021 for “improper clothing,” according to a statement from the European Handball Federation. The singer Pink later offered to pay the fine for the team.
Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a former Division I college basketball player, said that when it came to deciding between wearing Muslim garb or continuing to play basketball, she chose her faith. She went on advocate for Muslim women in sports and, in 2017, her efforts paid off when the International Basketball Federation amended its rules to allow head coverings — while also noting that there were no health safety concerns in doing so.
Now, she says that not only are Muslim women allowed to wear head coverings, “but Jewish men can wear yarmulkes, and Sikh men who wear turbans can all participate. So, this rule change was big for just the greater good.”
It’s a struggle that Abdul-Qaadir said has been a “rough” part of her “journey” in her sporting career. Doucouré said times have changed for Muslim women.
“Nowadays, women are visible,” said Doucouré. “We are not like the kind of hijabi they think we are. They have the idea of the hijabi that struggles in the house, who does housework, who don’t have a life. When they see young women wearing it — doing sports, educated — they don’t want to see that because it’s a contradiction with the vision they have of the hijab.”
(LONDON) — The head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick, was asked on Thursday about the new civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew filed Monday in a New York court by Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Giuffre is accusing Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her at locations including Epstein’s Manhattan mansion before she turned 18.
London’s chief of police said her team was “open to working with authorities from overseas” and are themselves reviewing their position, saying that “no one is above the law.” She also confirmed that there’s currently no investigation open.
Dick was speaking on her monthly radio phone-in program on LBC, a London radio station.
Nick Ferrari, the interviewer, asked her, “What investigation is taking place into the allegations of Virginia Roberts concerning Prince Andrew?”
She replied: “I’m not going to talk about individuals, but what I can say is that I think what you’re referring to is associated with Jeffrey Epstein, who I will talk about since he is deceased.
“The position there is that we have had more than one allegation that is connected with Mr. Epstein, and we have reviewed those, assessed those and we have not opened an investigation.”
Ferrari replied: “If there are reports of underage girls being trafficked to London to have sex with the Duke of York, isn’t that something you’d want to take a look at?”
Dick explained she’d reviewed the evidence twice and concluded that “that there is no investigation to open.”
“What we will look at is, is there evidence of a crime? Is this the right jurisdiction for it to be dealt with? And is the person against whom the crime alleged still alive?” she responded. “Those are the three things that we do look at and have looked at in these cases. And we have concluded that there is no investigation to open, and we haven’t.
“I’m aware that there’s been a lot of commentary in the media and an apparent civil case going on in America and we will again, of course, review our position.”
When asked for further explanation as to what the commissioner meant by “review our position,” the Metropolitan Police said in a following statement to ABC News: “We do not comment on named individuals who are alive unless they have been charged with an offence.”
In her interview with LBC, Dick also refused to comment on whether she’s seen the testimony from Prince Andrew’s police protection officers.
Ferrari quizzed her, “Have you seen the testimony from the Duke of York’s royal protection team pertaining to the night of the allegations which he strenuously denies what took place in a London apartment?”
Dick replied: “I’m not going to comment any further. … It’s been reviewed twice before, we’ve worked closely with the CPS, we are of course open to working with authorities from overseas, we will give them every assistance if they ask us for anything — within the law, obviously — and as a result of what’s going on I’ve asked my team to have another look at the material.”
“No one is above the law,” she added.
The Met police do not comment on security but there has been much speculation that their records could help to establish Prince Andrew’s movements on the night that Virginia Giuffre alleges he sexually assaulted her.
Prince Andrew has consistently denied these allegations. In a 2019 interview with the BBC, he said, “I’ve said consistently and frequently said that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever.”
He claimed to have no memory of ever meeting her and suggested that a widely circulated photograph of him with his arm around the waist of the then-17-year-old Giuffre, allegedly taken by Epstein in the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001, might have been doctored.
“I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested,” he said. “I think it’s, from the investigations that we’ve done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not, because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it’s very difficult to be able to prove it, but I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken.”
The prince also contended that he had an alibi for the date of the alleged encounter, claiming he was home with his daughter, Beatrice.
“I was at home,” the prince said. “I was with the children, and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at, I suppose, sort of 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And then, because the duchess was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other one is there. I was on terminal leave at the time from the Royal Navy, so therefore I was at home.”
The prince’s interview was harshly criticized in the British press and, within days, he released a new statement conceding that his “former association” with Epstein had become a major distraction for the royal family, and he stepped back from official duties.
He vowed in that statement that he would be willing “to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations.”
But since then there have been complaints from the Southern District of New York that the prince has not cooperated with their requests to interview him as a witness for the federal investigation into sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
Prince Andrew’s lawyers, Blackfords LLP, however denied this, issuing a statement in June 2020 saying the prince had offered “his assistance as a witness to the DOJ” several times.
The beleaguered royal was last seen Tuesday arriving at his mother’s Scottish home, Balmoral Castle, accompanied by ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Several UK newspapers are reporting that they are holding crisis talks, deliberating the best response to this lawsuit.
“Now that this lawsuit has been filed, unless it is stopped in its tracks, it doesn’t seem that any of the options for Prince Andrew and his legal team will be particularly palatable to him,” said ABC News Royal Contributor Victoria Murphy.
Legal opinions vary as to what the prince might do, but his options appear to be fourfold.
Firstly, he could ignore the entire thing, the case could go ahead without him and a possible default judgment and damages could be entered against him.
Secondly, he could instruct lawyers to argue that the case is spurious and lacking in evidence in the hopes it would be thrown out before trial.
Thirdly, he could agree to answer questions under oath, attend the trial and defend himself.
And lastly, he could agree to settle the claims out-of-court.
Each option has its own pitfall.
“No one could have predicted just how low Prince Andrew’s reputation could have plummeted in the last two to three years,” Murphy added. “The accusations that have been leveled against him, the fact they’ve been so widely reported and his attempts to draw a line under them spectacularly backfiring have all left his reputation in tatters — and has the potential to seriously impact people’s perception of the monarchy.”
No member of the royal family has made a public comment about the latest developments, and Buckingham Palace told ABC News that this was a legal matter and for Andrew’s lawyers to respond. A spokesman for Prince Andrew said there would be no comment on the new lawsuit.
The Times of London, however, quotes a source close to Prince Charles as saying, “This will be unwelcome reputational damage to the institution. [Prince Charles] has long ago concluded that it is probably an unsolvable problem. This will probably further strengthen in the prince’s mind that a way back for the duke is demonstrably not possible, because the spectre of this [accusation] raises its head with hideous regularity.”
The source also said, “The prince loves his brother and has the ability to have sympathy for the slings and arrows that his brother endures, whatever the reasons may be. His ability to support and feel for those having a tough time is well known.”
It is a difficult position for the family to be in, Murphy explains, as they may be tainted by association whatever they do.
“The monarchy has done everything they can to distance itself officially,” she said. “He has stepped down from official duties, Buckingham Palace no longer speaks for him and he’s not being represented by royal lawyers, but the fact is, he is still the queen’s son. He’s at Balmoral now. There’s no avoiding that this will continue to damage the image of the monarchy and could even affect the standing of other royals.”
