Новини

As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters vow to keep up their fight, churches remain on the front lines. Christian groups hold regular public gatherings and sing hymns at demonstrations, both as a way to protest and to de-escalate clashes between police and more aggressive protesters. As VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, many churches in Hong Kong fear a crackdown on religion as China expands its influence.

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As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic mission to land humans on the surface of the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh presents this reflection of the monumental achievement through the eyes of the NASA astronauts themselves. In exclusive interviews Farabaugh gathered, the men of the Apollo program reflect on the path to the moon, and what lies beyond.
 

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Congressional Democrats are pushing for new protections for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They unveiled legislation this week that reflects the lawmakers’ increasing anger and concern over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But Republicans accuse Democrats of refusing to acknowledge an immigration crisis exists and making the problem worse. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.

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The attorney general for the District of Columbia issued subpoenas Friday to the National Rifle Association and its charitable foundation seeking financial records in an investigation into their nonprofit status.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement his office “has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act.”

The announcement, first reported by the Washington Post, follows similar action in April by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who sought documents in a probe that the New York Times said involved the powerful gun lobby group’s tax-exempt status.

William Brewer, an attorney for the NRA, said the group “will cooperate with any appropriate inquiry into its finances.” 

“The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance,” Brewer said in an emailed statement Friday.

With more than 5 million members, the NRA is, by far, the most powerful and well-connected gun lobby in the United States. It has worked closely with legislators to protect firearms manufacturers from liability for gun violence and pushed a ban on U.S. health officials promoting gun control.

“We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors,” Racine said.

Racine’s office has the power to bring court actions to dissolve or place in receivership a nonprofit corporation that misuses funds or acts contrary to its nonprofit purposes.

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Mexicans are dismayed by the continued increases in the price for avocados, a staple of the country’s cuisine.

The government says increased demand in the United States and a slight drop in production are to blame.

The price in the United States hit $2.23 per pound this week. The most expensive stores in Mexico price them about the same, though the average price is just less than $2.

Some Mexicans say they have cut back on buying avocados because of the high prices.

But it’s also led to outrage, as recipes have begun appearing in Mexico for making so-called guacamole without avocados.
 

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he had invited his son Eduardo to become ambassador to the United States, underscoring his family’s influential role in the country’s diplomacy and domestic politics.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, currently a federal congressman, told reporters separately he would accept the role if nominated. His father said earlier that the appointment would hinge on his son’s acceptance.

“If it is a mission given by the president, I would accept,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told reporters, adding he was prepared to resign from Congress if the president appoints him. He added the ultimate nomination still depended on conversations with his father and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo.

The appointment would need to be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before passing to the full upper house for confirmation.

Brazil’s previous ambassador to Washington retired in April. The far-right Brazilian president, who said his campaign last year was inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has made friendly overtures to the American leader and made similar use of family members as official advisers.

Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, is advancing his conservative social agenda as a senator.

Carlos Bolsonaro, another son of the president and a Rio de Janeiro city councilman, has taken a role in his father’s social media communications and stirred controversy by attacking members of the Brazilian Cabinet.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third of the president’s four sons and a daughter from three marriages, has counseled his father on foreign affairs.

After his father’s election in October, Eduardo Bolsonaro was one of his first envoys to Washington, where he met with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and was spotted wearing a “Trump 2020” cap.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon named the younger Bolsonaro the Latin American leader of his right-wing nationalist organization, “The Movement.”

During the Brazilian leader’s White House visit in March, Trump heaped praise on Eduardo Bolsonaro, who sat by his father during an Oval Office chat while Brazil’s foreign minister and ambassador in Washington were nowhere to be seen.

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Syphilis cases have soared in Europe over the last decade and become, for the first time since the early 2000s, more common in some countries than new cases of HIV, health experts said Friday.

Reported cases of the sexually transmitted disease are up by 70% since 2010, a report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed, with the rise driven by more unprotected sex and riskier sexual behavior among gay men.

“The increases in syphilis infections that we see across Europe … are a result of several factors, such as people having sex without condoms and multiple sexual partners, combined with a reduced fear of acquiring HIV,” said Andrew Amato-Gauci, an ECDC expert on sexually transmitted infections.

The European report comes after the World Health Organization said last month that around a million people each day worldwide catch a sexually transmitted infection.

Left untreated, syphilis can have severe complications in men and women, including causing stillbirths and newborn deaths and increasing the risk of HIV. Syphilis was one of the leading causes of baby loss globally in 2016.

The Stockholm-based ECDC, which monitors health and disease in Europe, said that overall, more than 260,000 syphilis cases were reported from 30 countries from 2007 to 2017.

In 2017, syphilis rates reached an all-time high with more than 33,000 reported cases, the ECDC said. This meant that for the first time since the early 2000s, the region reported more cases of syphilis than new cases of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

But the problem varied significantly by country, with rates more than doubling in five countries — Britain, Germany, Ireland, Iceland and Malta — but dropping by 50% or more in Estonia and Romania.

Close to two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017 where sexual orientation was known were in men who have sex with men, the ECDC report said, while heterosexual men contributed 23% of cases and women 15%.

The proportion of cases diagnosed among men who have sex with men ranged from less than 20% in Latvia, Lithuania and Romania to more than 80% in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain.

Amato-Gauci said complacency among men who have gay sex and seem unconcerned about HIV risks appeared to be fuelling the problem. 

“To reverse this trend, we need to encourage people to use condoms consistently with new and casual partners,” he said.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized Bitcoin, Facebook’s proposed Libra

digital coin and other cryptocurrencies and demanded that companies seek a banking charter and make themselves subject to U.S. and global regulations if they wanted to “become a bank.”

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump wrote on Twitter.”If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks, both National and International,” he added.

Trump’s comments come one day after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers that Facebook’s plan to build a digital currency called Libra cannot move forward unless it addresses concerns over privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.

Powell said the Fed has established a working group to follow the project and is coordinating with other government’s central banks. The U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council, a panel of regulators that identifies risks to the financial system, is also expected to make a review.

Hours earlier on Thursday, Trump criticized large technology companies at an event at the White House, who he said treated conservative voices unfairly.

The Internet Association, a trade group representing major tech firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, said, “Internet companies are not biased against any political ideology, and conservative voices in particular have used social media to great effect.”

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The Democratic presidential field continues to shift as one candidate drops out and another joins an already crowded group hoping to oust President Donald Trump from office next year.  Former Vice President Joe Biden remains the leading contender but finds himself fending off increasingly strong challenges from two senators—Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the shifting sands of the Democratic race from Washington.

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The Islamic State terror group is adapting to the loss of its self-declared territorial caliphate by returning to its origins and becoming once again a more local, Iraq-focused insurgency, and is recruiting in remote border areas in Iraq’s western desert. But it still harbors ambitions to strike in the West, warn European officials and analysts.

Britain’s Security Minister Ben Wallace on Thursday warned that Islamic State and rival jihadists in al-Qaida remain a serious threat to the West. Exploiting the internet and social media platforms, IS can still recruit Westerners, and if not organize attacks itself at least inspire adherents to strike, he said.
 
“That means that everyone has potentially an ISIS problem in every country around the world,” he told Britain’s Sky News. “It is a different type of threat because at the moment it’s manifesting itself in lone actors.”
 
For security services the threat is unpredictable “because they have to watch one person who may be just literally talking to themselves on one day and the next day they’ll go and grab a knife or a truck.”
 
Still a threat

But IS has not lost the ambition to plot and organize terror attacks in the West itself.
 
In the current top IS leadership, two out of 12 members of al-Lajna al-Mufawada, the group’s Cabinet, are tasked with overseeing operations abroad. They are Sukru Tuncer, a Frenchman of Turkish origins, and Abu ‘Ammar al-Sa’udi, a Saudi. But analysts say Daesh, the group’s Arab acronym, has had to return to its roots as a mainly Iraq-based insurgency force and is undergoing a generational change. Nonetheless it has the capacity to reemerge, if it’s ignored.
 
“It still survives as result of the temporary lack of interest that various belligerents in the Syrian war show in the region in which Daesh remains,” say analysts Ronen Zeidel and Hisham al-Hashimi in a study of the group published in the latest edition of Perspectives on Terrorism, a peer-reviewed journal. “This lack of attention works in favor of the organization and is willing it to regroup,” they argue.

“In Iraq they maintain a clandestine presence in the Hamrin and Makhul hilly region between the provinces of Salah al-Din, Diyala and Kirkuk, in Sharqat and Qiyara south of Mosul and in the western desert. This presence is confined to uninhabited areas, but poses a daily threat to the population in the Sunni periphery,” they say. Among the prime goals of the leadership is to sow and reactivate “sleeper cells” in Iraq for attacks in bigger cities and to transfer fighters across border with Syria into Iraq in order to increase its presence there, they say.
 
Different strategies

In Syria, IS is training and recruiting in the desert areas south-west of the Euphrates, an area supposedly under control of the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad, but neglected now as the Syrian army focuses on the last remaining enclave of anti-Assad rebels and al-Qaida-tied groups in north-west Syria. But the modes of IS operation differ between Iraq and Syria, where the threat of air strikes forces the group to be be defensive.

In Iraq the group’s commanders have more freedom to plan operations and attacks have increased in tempo steadily over the last year with government officials and local ‘collaborators’ targeted in the Sunni countryside. Executions in villages Mukhtars (local dignitaries) are filmed as a lesson to others.
 
“Defeat brought the organization back to its basic essence: a small, marginal Sunni-Iraqi terror/guerrilla force, capable of waging small wars, intimidating populations and carrying out terror attacks in peripheral areas, exploiting the geopolitical and governmental vacuum there. In fact, Daesh became a more practical, matter-of-fact organization. Its organizational changes are impressive. Apparently, this is the heritage of men who served in Saddam Hussein’s highly organized security services,” write authors Zeidel and al-Hashimi.
 
Generational change

The group, though, is undergoing a generational change and has become even more Iraqi in character. Ten out of twelve of the IS Cabinet are Iraqis; and of the 26 top field commanders 21 are Iraqis, three are Syrian. Of the remaining two one is Saudi and another European. It is estimated that just one out of 50 fighters comes from outside either Syria or Iraq.
 
“As long as the situation in Syria remains as it is and the lethargy of the Iraqi state in providing security to the peripheral Sunni areas continues, Daesh will enjoy more years of survival and might become a more threatening menace, especially to Iraq,” Zeidel, a researcher in the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, and al-Hashimi, an analyst at Al-Nahrayn Center for Security and Strategic Studies, Baghdad. But as an insurgency forces Daesh is not imperishable, they argue.

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Las Vegas police learned from the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history to secure high-rise buildings overseeing open-air crowds and train more officers with rifles to stop a shooter in an elevated position, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Wednesday.
 
Among 93 recommendations in a newly released department “after-action review” are requirements to plan ahead with neighboring police, fire, hospital and coroner officials; to let responding officers remove reflective vests so they’re less of a target to a shooter; and to ensure more paramedics and trauma kits are available at large-scale events.
 
“We hope we never have to use these procedures that we are putting in place,” said Lombardo, who characterized the report as “our textbook on our response” to the October 2017 massacre that killed 58 people at an open-air music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. He said it’s now required reading for every Las Vegas police officer above the rank of sergeant.
 
Lombardo noted that report authors Capt. Kelly McMahill and Detective Stephanie Ward studied other mass casualty incidents around the country, and said he hoped the Las Vegas report would help others prepare.
 
The 158-page document acknowledged communications snags similar to those described in a separate August 2018 “after-action report” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Clark County Fire Department and Las Vegas police.
 
That 61-page document said communications were overwhelmed by 911 calls, the number of victims, and by false reports of active shooters at other Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos and nearby McCarran International Airport.
 
Lombardo, the elected head of some 5,000 officers, said the new report focuses on internal department “preparedness, response and recovery.”
 
It comes almost a year after Las Vegas police closed the criminal investigation with a 187-page criminal investigation report and nearly six months after the FBI issued a three-page summary of its behavioral analysis of gunman Stephen Paddock.
 
Paddock, 64, a former accountant and high-stakes video poker player with homes in Reno and the southern Nevada resort community of Mesquite, killed himself before officers reached his hotel room.
 
The FBI said Paddock sought notoriety but that investigators found no “single or clear motivating factor” for the shooting.
 
Investigators said Paddock planned meticulously and acted alone amassing an arsenal of assault-style weapons before opening fire from a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort into a crowd of 22,000 country music fans below. Authorities said more than 850 people were wounded or injured fleeing the gunfire.
 
Lombardo noted the NFL’s Oakland Raiders plan to move to Las Vegas and begin play in 2020 at a 65,000-seat Las Vegas Stadium being built just off the Las Vegas Strip.
 
He said policing changes will apply to scheduled events drawing at least 15,000 people, and the report listed more than 17 such events: New Year’s Eve fireworks on the Strip; conventions including the Consumer Electronics gadget show at the Las Vegas Convention Center; NASCAR races at Las Vegas Speedway; the Las Vegas Rock `n’ Roll Marathon; uncounted hotel “day club” pool parties; and 41 NHL Vegas Golden Knights hockey home games per year at T-Mobile Arena.
 
Lombardo noted that Las Vegas police already make presentations about what the department experienced in October 2017 to law enforcement officials in the U.S. and abroad. He said the department has already implemented 40% of the new report’s recommendations.
 
The release comes a week after Las Vegas police confirmed the firing in March of a veteran officer who froze in a hotel hallway one floor below while Paddock rained rapid gunfire into the concert crowd below.
 
Lombardo said an unspecified number of other officers received lesser discipline for turning off or failing to activate body-worn video cameras, and one for accidentally firing a three-round burst of gunfire inside Paddock’s suite.
 
Police union executive director Steve Grammas said the dismissed officer, Cordell Hendrex, was one of two officers disciplined following departmental reviews of their actions during the shooting. The union is fighting to get Hendrex reinstated.
 
Grammas said the only other officer he knew of who had been disciplined for actions during the shooting got his job back after an arbitrator reviewed his firing.
 
Grammas declined to identify that officer, but said he had at least seven years on the job.
 
The Las Vegas Police Protective Association official said the officer had been accused of making comments the department deemed unbecoming and of telling a woman to keep moving away from the scene of the shooting instead of investigating her complaint that she had been a victim of a crime.
 
 

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U.S. President Donald Trump will host Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, at the White House on July 22 for official talks aimed at “creating conditions” for an “enduring partnership” and cooperation to secure a peaceful South Asia.  
 
The White House said Wednesday that that the two leaders would discuss such issues as counterterrorism, defense, energy and trade.  
 
Peace efforts in Afghanistan are expected to be high on the agenda.  
 
“The visit will focus on strengthening cooperation between the United States and Pakistan to bring peace, stability and economic prosperity to a region that has seen far too much conflict,” a White House statement said. 
 
Khan’s first interaction with Trump is seen in the region as signaling a thaw in the often acrimonious relationship between Washington and Islamabad.  
 
The acrimony stems from U.S. allegations that, despite having received billions of dollars in financial assistance as an ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan has harbored Taliban leaders and fighters and other militants who plot deadly attacks against American and NATO troops in Afghanistan and rival India. Islamabad rejects the charges.  

Since taking office, Trump has suspended all military cooperation and assistance to Pakistan, alleging the country has “given us nothing but lies and deceit.”  
 
Khan took office nearly a year ago and argued with Trump on Twitter a few months later about the U.S. allegations. He defended Pakistan’s counterterrorism successes, saying the country had suffered tens of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars in losses to its national economy while fighting America’s war on terrorism. 
 
However, Islamabad has since helped arrange direct peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year Afghan war. The effort is credited with easing tensions, which prompted Trump to acknowledge in February that the two countries had recently “developed a much better relationship.” 
 
Analysts do not expect anything major to emerge from the Trump-Khan meeting, but they note it could still go a long way toward improving bilateral ties because both leaders dislike the status quo and have strong personalities. 
 
Trump has consistently been critical of U.S. involvement in foreign wars while Khan is known for leading anti-war campaigns and calling for seeking a politically negotiated settlement to the Afghan war, even when his party was in the opposition. 

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A former Caribbean soccer official has been ordered to pay a $79 million penalty stemming from the FIFA bribery scandal.

A federal judge in New York City imposed the judgment against Jack Warner in a lawsuit brought by the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football.

The 2017 suit accused Warner of embezzling millions of dollars from the soccer association. It said he arranged kickbacks in connection with broadcasting rights for regional tournaments.

The civil allegations mirrored ones in a U.S. criminal investigation that has resulted in convictions of several top soccer officials.

Warner is still fighting extradition in Trinidad and Tobago, where he has denied any wrongdoing. There was no immediate response on Wednesday to an email sent to one of his extradition lawyers.

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Ask about Jeffrey Epstein on St. Thomas and rooms go quiet. Some people leave. Those who share stories speak in barely audible tones.

The 66-year-old billionaire bought Little St. James Island off this U.S. Caribbean territory more than two decades ago and began to transform it — clearing the native vegetation, ringing the property with towering palm trees and planting two massive U.S. flags on either end. When guides took scuba divers to spots near the island, security guards would walk to the water’s edge.

It was off-putting to residents of St. Thomas — a lush tropical island east of Puerto Rico with winding roads through mountains dotted with dainty Danish colonial-era homes. Then, when Epstein pleaded guilty in a 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, his need for privacy began to appear more sinister.

“Everybody called it `Pedophile Island,”’ said Kevin Goodrich, who is from St. Thomas and operates boat charters. “It’s our dark corner.”

Many people who worked for Epstein told The Associated Press this week that they had signed long non-disclosure agreements, and refused to talk. One former employee who declined to be identified said Epstein once had five boats, including a large ferry in which he transported up to 200 workers from St. Thomas to his island every day for construction work.

The man said he saw a handful of young women when he was on Epstein’s property but he believed they were older than 18.

“When he was there, it was keep to yourself and do your thing,” the man recalled, adding that Epstein paid well and would give away older machinery and surplus including lumber to his employees.

Epstein built a stone mansion with cream-colored walls and a bright turquoise roof surrounded by several other structures including the maids’ quarters and a massive, square-shaped white building on one end of the island. Workers told each other it was a music room fitted with a grand piano and acoustic walls. Its gold dome flew off during the deadly 2017 hurricane season.

Locals recalled seeing Epstein’s black helicopter flying back and forth from the tiny international airport in St. Thomas to his helipad on Little St. James Island, a roughly 75-acre retreat a little over a mile (about 2 kilometers) southeast of St. Thomas.

Epstein later bought neighboring Great St. James Island, which once was popular with locals and tourists for its main attraction, Christmas Cove, a place where you could hang out and order pizza and have it delivered via boat.

“He wasn’t well received,” recalled Spencer Consolvo, a St. Thomas native who runs a tourist shop near a large marina. “People think he’s too rich to be policed properly.”

Federal authorities consider the smaller of the two islands to be Epstein’s primary residence in the United States, a place where at least one alleged victim said in a court affidavit that she participated in an orgy, as well as had sex with Epstein and other people. She said she saw former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the island, but that she never saw him having sex with anyone. A Clinton spokesman issued a statement saying he never visited there.

A day after he pleaded not guilty in a New York courtroom to charges of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, there was scant movement on the Caribbean island. Hurricane shutters covered the windows, locals hadn’t seen any lights at night and a lone worker drove a bright blue golf cart around the property.

At a nearby office that locals say Epstein owns in a seaside strip mall, a man in a T-shirt and sunglasses on his head opened the door a crack, shook his head vehemently when asked about Epstein and locked the door. The firm, Southern Trust Company Inc., hired Cecile de Jongh, wife of former Gov. John de Jongh, as its office manager, according to records with the U.S. Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority.

Meanwhile, Epstein’s arrest also prompted the U.S. Virgin Islands representative in Congress, Stacey Plaskett, to announce she would give the money Epstein had donated to her campaigns to charitable groups.

Now that Epstein has been arrested a second time, locals say tourists are increasingly asking about his islands when they visit St. Thomas. A woman who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job running a charter company said she was elated when Epstein got arrested but is now vexed at tourists’ curiosity, saying she reluctantly shares whispered details of his case to prying adults if children are around.

Some of that fascination aggravates Vernon Morgan, a taxi driver and St. Thomas native.

“It brought some kind of notoriety to the Virgin Islands,” he said. “We would much rather that the Virgin Islands be seen in a different light.”

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