A four-legged hero who saved then-President Barack Obama from a White House intruder is now an award-winner in Britain.
Hurricane, a former Secret Service dog, has earned the Order of Merit from British veterinary charity PDSA. He’s the first foreigner to win the honor, to be bestowed at a London ceremony in October.
The Belgian Malinois intercepted an intruder who scaled the White House fence in October 2014. The intruder swung Hurricane around, punching and kicking him, but the dog dragged him to the ground, allowing Secret Service agents to intercept him. Obama, home at the time, was not harmed.
Handler Marshall Mirarchi described Hurricane as a “legend” within the service after the attack. Mirarchi said injuries suffered in the incident contributed to Hurricane’s 2016 retirement from the Secret Service.
When President Donald Trump levied tariffs on China that scrambled global markets, farmer Randy Miller was willing to absorb the financial hit. Even as the soybeans in his fields about an hour south of Des Moines became less valuable, Miller saw long-term promise in Trump’s efforts to rebalance America’s trade relationship with Beijing.
“The farmer plays the long game,” said Miller, who grows soybeans and corn and raises pigs in Lacona. “I look at my job through my son, my grandkids. So am I willing to suffer today to get this done to where I think it will be better for them? Yes.”
But the patience of Miller and many other Midwest farmers with a president they mostly supported in 2016 is being put sorely to the test.
The trigger wasn’t Trump’s China tariffs, but the waivers the administration granted this month to 31 oil refineries so they don’t have to blend ethanol into their gasoline. Since roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop is turned into ethanol, it was a fresh blow to corn producers already struggling with five years of low commodity prices and the threat of mediocre harvests this fall after some of the worst weather in years.
“That flashpoint was reached and the frustration boiled over, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Lynn Chrisp, who grows corn and soybeans near Hastings, Nebraska, and is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
“I’ve never seen farmers so tired, so frustrated, and they’re to the point of anger,” says Kelly Nieuwenhuis, a farmer from Primghar in northwest Iowa who said the waivers were a hot topic at a recent meeting of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. Nieuwenhuis said he voted for Trump in 2016, but now he’s not sure who he’ll support in 2020.
While Iowa farmer Miller saw Trump’s brinkmanship with China as a necessary gamble to help American workers, the ethanol waivers smacked to him of favoritism for a wealthy and powerful industry _ Big Oil.
“That’s our own country stabbing us in the back,” Miller said. “That’s the president going, the oil companies need to make more than the American farmer. … That was just, `I like the oil company better or I’m friends with the oil company more than I’m friends with the farmer.”
The Environmental Protection Agency last month kept its annual target for the level of corn ethanol that must be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply under the Renewable Fuel Standard at 15 billion gallons (56.78 billion liters) for 2020. That was a deep disappointment to an ethanol industry that wanted a higher target to offset exemptions granted to smaller refiners. Those waivers have cut demand by an estimated 2.6 billion gallons (9.84 billion liters) since Trump took office.
At least 15 ethanol plants already have been shut down or idled since the EPA increased waivers under Trump, and a 16th casualty came Wednesday at the Corn Plus ethanol plant in the south-central Minnesota town of Winnebago. The Renewable Fuels Association says the closures have affected more than 2,500 jobs.
The 31 new waivers issued this month came on top of 54 granted since early 2018, according to the association. While the waivers are intended to reduce hardships on small oil refiners, some beneficiaries include smaller refineries owned by big oil companies.
The administration knows it has a problem. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said at a farm policy summit in Decatur, Illinois, on Wednesday that Trump will take action to soften the effects. He would not say what the president might do or when, but said Trump believes the waivers by his EPA were “way overdone.”
Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the heads of the EPA and Agriculture Department and key White House officials have been discussing relief, and said his group has been talking with officials involved in those conversations. He said they’ve heard the plan may include reallocating the ethanol demand lost from the exempted smaller refiners to larger refiners that would pick up the slack, but many key details remain unclear, including whether the reallocation would apply in 2020 or be delayed until 2021.
“Anything short of that redistribution or reallocation is not going to be well received by farmers, I’ll tell you that,” Cooper said.
The White House referred questions to the EPA, where spokesman Michael Abboud said that the agency would “continue to consult” on the best path forward.
Meanwhile, the oil industry has spoken out against some of the steps Trump has taken to try to appease the farmers, including allowing year-round sales of gasoline with more ethanol mixed in.
“We hope the administration walks back from the brink of a disastrous political decision that punishes American drivers. Bad policy is bad politics,” Frank Macchiarola, a vice president for the American Petroleum Institute trade group, said in a statement.
Another example of the tensions came last week when the Agriculture Department pulled its staffers out of the ProFarmer Crop Tour, an annual assessment of Midwest crop yields, in response to an unspecified threat. The agency said it came from “someone not involved with the tour” and Federal Protective Services was investigating.
Despite farmers’ mounting frustrations, there’s little evidence so far that many farmers who backed Trump in 2016 will desert him in 2020. Many are still pleased with his rollbacks in other regulations. Cultural issues such as abortion or gun rights are important to many of them. And many are wary of a Democratic Party they see as growing more liberal.
Miller, too, says he’s still inclined to support Trump in the next election.
Though Trump has inserted new uncertainty into Miller’s own financial situation, he believes the president has been good for the economy as a whole. And as a staunch opponent of abortion, he sees no viable alternatives in the Democratic presidential field.
Chrisp, too, says he doesn’t see an acceptable Democratic alternative. Still, he cautioned Republicans against taking farmers for granted.
“We’re not a chip in the political game, though I’m certain there are folks who are political strategists who view us that way, but it’s not the case,” he said.
Brian Thalmann, who farms near Plato in south-central Minnesota and serves as president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, confronted Perdue at a trade show this month about Trump’s recent statements that farmers are starting to do well again.
“Things are going downhill and downhill very quickly,” Thalmann told Perdue.
Thalmann, who voted for Trump in 2016, said this week that he can’t support him at the moment. He said farmers have worked too hard to build up markets and the reputation of American farm products and “I can’t see agriculture getting dragged down the path it currently is.”
Children born to U.S. citizens stationed abroad as government employees or members of the U.S. military will no longer qualify for automatic American citizenship under a policy change unveiled on Wednesday by the Trump administration.
Effective Oct. 29, parents serving overseas in the U.S. armed forces or other agencies of the federal government would need to go through a formal application process seeking U.S. citizenship on their children’s behalf, the policy states.
Currently, children born to U.S. citizens stationed by their government in a foreign country are legally considered to be “residing in the United States,” allowing their parents to simply obtain a certificate showing the children acquired citizenship automatically.
But an 11-page “policy alert” issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said the agency found the prevailing policy to be at odds with other parts of federal immigration law. Beyond that, the rationale for the policy change remained unclear.
“USCIS is updating its policy regarding children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members employed or stationed outside the United States to explain that they are not considered to be ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship,” the memorandum said.
The number of government and military personnel affected by the change was not immediately known, but the revised policy sparked immediate consternation on the part of some organizations representing members of the armed forces.
“Military members already have enough to deal with, and the last thing that they should have to do when stationed overseas is go through hoops to ensure their children are U.S. citizens,” said Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.
He urged Congress to take action to address the situation to “ensure our military families don’t suffer the consequences of a reckless administration.”
After celebrating her two-decade-plus career at the MTV Video Music Awards with a performance featuring a slew of her hits, Missy Elliott knew she did a great job when the first text she received after the performance was from another musical icon and longtime friend: Janet Jackson.
“She was like, ‘You shut that [expletive] down,'” Elliott said, laughing in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after the VMAs. “And just to know that Janet even said that word was amazing. And I was like, ‘OK, I must have done good for her to use that [word].'”
FILE – Janet Jackson accepts the ultimate icon: music dance visual award at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, June 28, 2015.
Elliott, who has collaborated musically with Jackson in the past, received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award on Monday night for the eccentric and vibrant music videos that helped establish her as a trailblazer on the music scene.
The 48-year-old Grammy winner said the road to creating iconic videos was not easy. She said in the “She’s a B—h” clip, which includes a scene where she and others are submerged, two of the dancers “had asthma attacks just from being underwater.”
For “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — her 1997 debut single where she wore an inflated trash bag — she recalls walking “to the gas station to use the air pump … in Brooklyn to pump up the suit, and then realized I was too big to fit in the car, so we had to walk … on the main street in this outfit all the way to set, and it had deflated.”
She confirmed that the bees in the “Work It” video were in fact real. And in the “Pass that Dutch” clip when she was lifted up and rapping from a cornfield, “they dropped me on my knees; I thought my kneecaps had broken.”
“I was just doing these videos and … it wasn’t like I was doing them and trying to make a point for later down the line. I was just doing it,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey you should have gotten [this award] a long time ago and I realize that I’m a spiritual person and so I always say, ‘I’m on God’s time.’ And so whenever God says it was time for me to have it is the correct time.”
FILE – Alyson Stoner arrives at the season three premiere of “Stranger Things” at Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, Calif., June 28, 2019.
Elliott’s VMA performance also included the well-known hits “Lose Control” and “Get Ur Freak On,” as well as “Throw It Back,” the first single from her new EP “Iconology,” released last week. Her performance also featured dancer and actress Alyson Stoner, who first gained fame as the young child who danced with skill in the “Work It” video.
“It’s been 17 years since we shot that video,” Elliott said. “I couldn’t have done it without [Alyson]. I was like, ‘I’ve got to have Alyson in here because everywhere I went since then people have always been like, ‘What happened to that little girl that used to be in your ‘Work It’ video?'”
At the VMAs, Elliott also honored late R&B singer Aaliyah when she gave her acceptance speech. Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced a number of hits for Aaliyah, from “One In a Million” to “4 Page Letter.”
“I always pay tribute to her. And I’m always in contact with her brother, you know, checking on them. Even though each year makes it a year longer, it always still feels like it was yesterday,” Elliott said of Aaliyah, who was killed in a plane crash 18 years ago last Sunday.
“I could still hear her laughter and I could see her smile and almost kind of could sense what she would be like today. She’s always been a risk taker and never a follower because when she chose to work with Timbaland and myself, we had style that was so different; she could have picked any other producer and writer that was already hot and popping,” she continued. “We hadn’t had anything out but she heard something in us and so I know that she would have just been setting the bar high.”
Pinterest said it would try to combat misinformation about vaccines by showing only information from health organizations when people search.
Social media sites have been trying to combat the spread of misinformation about vaccines. Pinterest previously tried blocking all searches for vaccines, with mixed results.
Now searches for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and related terms will bring up results from such groups as the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net.
Pinterest won’t show ads or other users’ posts, as they may contain misinformation.
“We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” Pinterest said Wednesday in a blog post.
Though anti-vaccine sentiments have been around for as long as vaccines have existed, health experts worry that anti-vaccine propaganda can spread more quickly on social media. The misinformation includes soundly debunked notions that vaccines cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can harm people.
Experts say the spread of such information can push parents who are worried about vaccines toward refusing to inoculate their children, leading to a comeback of various diseases.
Spike in measles cases
Measles outbreaks have spiked in the U.S. this year to their highest number in more than 25 years.
In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed people “listening to that superstitious mumbo jumbo on the internet” for a rising incidence of measles in that country. The government plans to call a summit of social media companies to discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation, though details are still being worked out.
Facebook said in March that it would no longer recommend groups and pages that spread hoaxes about vaccines and that it would reject ads that do this. But anti-vax information still slips through.
The WHO praised Pinterest’s move and encouraged other social media companies to follow.
“Misinformation about vaccination has spread far and fast on social media platforms in many different countries,” the statement said. “We see this as a critical issue and one that needs our collective effort to protect people’s health and lives.”
The Trump administration is shifting $271 million earmarked for disaster aid and cyber security to pay for immigration-related facilities, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a leading congressional Democrat said on Tuesday.
The money, which was also set aside for the U.S. Coast Guard, will be used to pay for detention facilities and courts for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say they have been overwhelmed by a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.
The Trump administration is seeking to circumvent Congress and move money originally designated for other programs. This will allow the administration to continue to house immigrants arriving at the border, part of President Donald Trump’s promise not to “catch and release” migrants and allow them to await hearings outside of custody.
The administration plans to take $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief fund just as hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a letter from U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the congressional panel that oversees Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending.
Cybersecurity upgrades will have to wait
The letter also details that money will be taken for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, Roybal-Allard said.
DHS said Congress did not provide enough money for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain single adults as they wait for their cases to be heard by an immigration judge.
Congress appropriated $2.8 billion to pay for 52,000 beds this year, but ICE is currently detaining more than 55,000 immigrants, a record high, according to agency statistics.
Roybal-Allard said DHS exceeded its authority to move money around to respond to emergencies.
“Once again, DHS has ignored the negotiated agreement with Congress by vastly exceeding the amount appropriated for immigration enforcement and removal operations,” she said in a statement.
Won’t impact readiness
FEMA spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said the funding reduction will not impact readiness efforts or other functions for which the money was earmarked.
Trump has made cracking down on legal and illegal immigration a hallmark of his presidency after campaigning in 2016 on a promise, so far unfulfilled, that Mexico would pay for a border wall to keep migrants from entering the United States.
A record-setting 42,000 families were apprehended along the U.S. southern border in July, more than twice as many as in May.
Last week, DHS unveiled a new rule that would allow officials to detain migrant families indefinitely — abolishing a previous 20-day limit — while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States.
With just a few months left before America starts taking its biggest-ever self-portrait, the U.S. Census Bureau is grappling with a host of concerns about the head count, including how to ensure that it is secure and accurate and the challenge of getting most people to answer questions online.
All of that is on top of the main attention-grabber of the 2020 census so far — a citizenship question that was nixed by the Supreme Court, dropped by the Trump administration, resuscitated briefly and then abandoned again.
Beginning early next year, residents from Utqiagvik, Alaska, the town formerly known as Barrow, to Key West, Florida, will be quizzed on their sex, age, race, the type of home they have and how they are related to everyone living with them.
At stake is the balance of political power in a deeply divided country, billions of dollars a year in federal funding and population data that will shape business decisions nationwide for years to come.
Costing as much as $15.6 billion, the once-a-decade census not only captures the United States at a given moment — in this case April 1, 2020, officially — but it is perhaps the only thing every U.S. household is legally required to participate in regardless of who lives there.
Counting some 330 million heads is the largest peacetime operation the federal government undertakes. The Census Bureau hires a half million workers, opens around 250 offices and mails out a multitude of forms in English and 12 other languages to more than 130 million households.
“The kind of scale we’re talking about to count this nation is massive, massive, massive,” Democratic Rep. Darren Soto of Florida said recently.
Citizenship question
A census has taken place in the U.S. every decade since 1790, and contentious legal fights about it are nothing new. But the Trump administration’s attempt to add the citizenship question triggered lawsuits that carried the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
FILE – Immigration activists rally outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments over the Trump administration’s plan to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census, in Washington, April 23, 2019.
Opponents of the question said it would have discouraged participation by minorities, primarily Hispanics, who tend to support Democrats. The Republican administration argued that the question would have helped enforce the Voting Rights Act, a rationale that seemed “contrived” to Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion.
President Donald Trump later said the question was needed to help draw congressional districts, even though the Constitution mandates districts based on total population, not the number of citizens.
After the administration abandoned the question, Trump directed federal agencies to compile the information in other ways. That ensured the controversy would continue and raised the possibility that it still might affect the count.
Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, acknowledged the challenge but vowed to conduct “the best census ever, one that is complete and accurate.”
Adriana Ibarra, a 43-year-old doctoral student from Mexico living in Memphis, Tennessee, under a temporary visa, said the chilling effect lingers. She said immigrants who are in the country illegally and others may shy away because they do not feel included in decisions made in their communities anyway.
“There’s a feeling that their voice, their vote, their presence does not substantially affect the situation or the course the country is taking,” she said.
Political ramifications
The census determines which states gain congressional seats and which lose them. Election Data Services, a firm that consults on redistricting, estimates that Texas could gain as many as three seats and Florida two. Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon could add one each.
New York is expected to lose two seats. Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia are expected to lose one apiece. California and Minnesota could also lose seats, but if the citizenship question had been included, experts projected smaller gains in Florida, Texas and Arizona and a more likely loss in California.
The count is also used to map districts for state legislatures, city councils and school boards, and to determine the flow of federal money to state and local governments. George Washington University’s Andrew Reamer estimated that as much as $900 billion a year in federal funding is tied to the census in some way.
Reamer calculates that each person missed in the census would cost a state an average of nearly $1,100 a year under five Department of Health and Human Services programs, including Medicaid. The impact would be biggest in Vermont, at $2,300, and smallest in Utah, at roughly $500.
Digital responses
For the first time, the Census Bureau is relying in 2020 on most respondents answering questions via computer, tablet or smartphone. Respondents can also call a phone number to give their answers. Those who don’t respond will receive paper questionnaires in the mail.
FILE – This March 23, 2018, photo shows an envelope containing a 2018 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident as part of the nation’s only test run of the 2020 Census.
If all those methods fail, the bureau will send out “enumerators” to knock on doors.
The agency intends to spread the word about its “internet first” approach. Census officials envision clergy asking churchgoers to take out their cellphones to answer questions before services and announcers nudging fans at baseball games.
Leaders of some minority groups worry that the reliance on the internet risks undercounting people less likely to be online: low-income households, immigrants, and elderly and rural residents. Other historically undercounted groups include Native Americans, renters and people whose primary language isn’t English. Owners of multiple homes are among the most likely to be double-counted.
Some experts say the online approach should have been tested more. The only end-to-end test was done in Providence, Rhode Island, last year after two other tests were scaled back to save money. The rate of people responding on their own was higher than expected at 52.3 percent, but the bureau is aiming for 60.5 percent in 2020.
Cybersecurity worries also persist. The Government Accountability Office added the census to its “high risk” list of federal programs two years ago. As recently as this past spring, the watchdog agency said a squeezed testing schedule increased the risk that systems would fail.
Dillingham promised to address those problems, and others have offered to help.
Facebook, which was used to spread misinformation during the 2016 election, is building a team to protect against census misinformation. Microsoft has agreed to audit security practices and provide the bureau with threat intelligence.
A lot is at stake for ordinary Americans — right down to the last house on the last block in every city and hamlet. Virtually every aspect of American life could be affected, a point Florida Rep. John Cortes made at a recent forum on the decennial census in Orlando.
“We have to focus on getting people to fill out the census so we can get the money,” said Cortes, a Democrat. “Without money, we get zero. Money is the honey.”
The two parties trying to form a new Italian government appeared close to a coalition deal Tuesday, cheering financial markets as well as U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he hoped Giuseppe Conte would be reinstated as prime minister.
The role of Conte has been a sticking point in the negotiations between the 5-Star Movement, a member of the outgoing coalition, and the opposition Democratic Party (PD), which has been resisting his reappointment.
“Starting to look good for the highly respected Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Giuseppi (sic) Conte,” Trump said on Twitter. “A very talented man who will hopefully remain Prime Minister.”
After setbacks early Tuesday, the roller-coaster talks between the anti-establishment 5-Star and the center-left PD appeared to be back on track later in the day, with upbeat comments from both sides prompting a strong market rally.
FILE – Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini meets journalists at the end of a security conference in Castel Volturno, southern Italy, Aug. 15, 2019.
Italian 10-year bond yields fell to three-year lows and the spread between German Bunds narrowed to below 182 basis points, the tightest since May 2018.
Investors betting Italy can avoid a snap election are concerned that it would be won by Matteo Salvini’s hard-right League party, which would put the country on a collision course with the European Union over expansionary government spending.
“Our work is continuing in a fruitful way,” the PD’s Senate leader Andrea Marcucci told reporters in brief comments after an evening meeting with 5-Star officials.
Deputy PD leader Paola De Micheli said the two sides had “analyzed points for the basis of a common program,” while 5-Star’s Senate chief Stefano Patuanelli reported a “good climate” and said contacts would continue Wednesday.
The parties are due to report back to President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday from 1400 GMT. If no deal has been sealed, he will name a caretaker government and call elections.
Conte, who belongs to no party but is close to 5-Star, resigned last week after League chief Salvini declared his 14-month coalition with 5-Star was dead, seeking to trigger elections and capitalize on his surging popularity.
The move has not gone to plan, as 5-Star and the PD seek to form a coalition of their own, pushing the League into opposition.
Fight over jobs
Earlier Tuesday the PD/5-Star talks seemed to have run into trouble, with the two sides fighting over key jobs as well as being at loggerheads over Conte’s role.
FILE – 5-Star leader and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio presents his EU election program in Rome, Italy, May 2, 2019.
The PD accused 5-Star of undermining the formation of a new cabinet by demanding the interior ministry for its leader, Luigi Di Maio. 5-Star denied this, and the parties canceled a scheduled meeting.
Despite the later upbeat comments, tensions persist and surprises are possible.
The PD says Di Maio is insisting on keeping the role of deputy prime minister that he held in the outgoing government, something it considers unacceptable if Conte is to stay on as premier.
It remains to be seen if the exchanges are merely tactics to secure the upper hand in negotiations over cabinet jobs, or whether they have the potential to scupper an accord between the two parties which have always been bitter adversaries.
The picture is complicated by deep internal divisions in both parties, each one split between leadership factions that want a deal and others that would prefer to risk an election.
Di Maio was absent at the start of an evening meeting of all the 5-Star lawmakers. The great majority favors an accord with the PD rather than a snap election which would probably see many lose their seats less than 18 months into this parliament.
Meanwhile, Salvini continues to demand elections, and is likely to be disappointed by Trump’s endorsement of Conte, especially as the populist League chief has always expressed his admiration for the U.S. president.
Opinion polls suggest the League has lost 3-7 percentage points since collapsing the government, though it remains easily the most popular party, followed by the PD and 5-Star.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday she is open to dialogue with protesters, but that the government will not tolerate violence.
“If violence continues, the only thing that we should do is to stamp out that violence through law enforcement actions,” Lam said.
She said it would be inappropriate for the government to accept the demands of protesters who resort to violence and harassment.
“We want to put an end to the chaotic situation in Hong Kong through law enforcement,” Lam said. “At the same time, we will not give up on building a platform for dialogue.”
Lam has made few public comments through several months of demonstrations that began with a call for stopping an extradition bill and expanded to include demands for full democracy.
Protesters have plans to continue the demonstrations, which represent the biggest threat to peace in the Asian finance center since Britain handed over control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The protesters say they are demonstrating against what they see as an erosion of rights under the “one country, two systems” arrangement under which Beijing assumed control of the territory.
Students and others gather during a demonstration at Edinburgh Place in Hong Kong, Aug. 22, 2019.
Police arrested more than 80 people during protests Saturday and Sunday that included clashes with officers.
The police blamed protesters for “escalating and illegal violent acts,” while a group of pro-democracy lawmakers said it was police actions that were “totally unnecessary.”
Lawmaker Andrew Wan said police had provoked protesters to occupy a road already blocked by officers, and that government and police actions during the weeks of protests have caused a “hatred among the people.”
“I think the ultimate responsibility should be on the police side. That is what I observed,” Wan said at a Monday news conference.
The vast majority of the thousands of protesters marched peacefully Sunday, but police at times fired bursts of tear gas at wildcat demonstrators who broke away from the largest groups. Officers also used water cannons for the first time in responding to protesters.
Some of the protesters threw bricks at police, attacked them with sticks and rods and sprayed detergent on streets to make it slippery for police.
In France, leaders of the Group of Seven countries meeting in Biarritz backed Hong Kong’s autonomy and called for “avoiding violence.”
“The G-7 reaffirms the existence and the importance of the 1984 Sino-British agreement on Hong Kong,” according to a joint statement, referring to a deal between Britain and China that calls for Hong Kong to be part of China, but autonomous.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters that the leaders of the G-7 all expressed “deep concern” about the situation in Hong Kong.
Taylor Swift picked up two awards, including video of the year, in a girl-powered start to the MTV Video Music Awards show on Monday, while rapper Cardi B won best hip-hop video and newcomer Lizzo celebrated big women.
Swift opened the show with a rainbow-themed performance of her pro-LGBTQ single “You Need to Calm Down,” followed by her first live performance of the romantic ballad “Lover,” the lead single from her new, and already best-selling, album of the same name.
“You Need to Calm Down” brought the country-turned-pop singer one of the top prizes – video of the year – being handed out during Monday’s ceremony. It also took the “video for good” statuette for songs that have raised awareness.
Accepting the video of the year award, Swift said that since the VMAs are chosen by fans: “It means that you want a world where we are all treated equally under the law.”
Swift and pop singer Ariana Grande went into the fan-voted ceremony in Newark, New Jersey, with a leading 10 nominations each and also were competing for song of the year, best pop, and video of the year.
Grande, currently on tour in Europe and absent from Monday’s show, is also a contender for the top award – artist of the year – along with Cardi B, 17-year-old alternative pop newcomer Billie Eilish, Halsey, the Jonas Brothers and Shawn Mendes.
Missy Elliott accepts the Video Vanguard award at the MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center, Aug. 26, 2019, in Newark, N.J.
Cardi B beat out a male-dominated lineup to win best hip-hop video for “Money,” and ended a delighted acceptance speech saying: “Thank you, Jesus.”
The outspoken rapper was also on hand to present Missy Elliott with this year’s Vanguard Award for career achievement, calling her “a champion for women who want to be doing their own thing.”
Best new artist contender Lizzo, enjoying a breakout year, performed her hits “Truth Hurts” and “Good as Hell” in a yellow sequined bodysuit, accompanied by plus-size dancers, in a message for body positivity.
Mendes and Camila Cabello stoked reports they are dating in real life with a steamy live version of their romantic duet “Senorita,” which reached No. 1 this week on the Billboard singles charts.
Male winners included Korean boy band BTS, who won for best K-Pop; the recently reunited Jonas Brothers, who paid tribute to their New Jersey roots with a performance from Asbury Park; newcomer Lil Nas; and Mendes.
Native American representation in Congress made great strides with the 2018 election of two American women to Congress. Now, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma says it will send its own delegate to Congress, a move that will not only test the tribe’s sovereignty and the willingness of the U.S. to meet its treaty promises.
Cherokee Nation principal chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., announcing his intention to send a delegate to U.S. Congress, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Aug. 22, 2019.
Newly-elected Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., announced the decision on August 22, naming Cherokee Nation Vice President of Government Relations Kimberly Teehee as his choice to represent the tribe on Capitol Hill.
“As Native issues continue to rise to the forefront of the national dialogue, now is the time for Cherokee Nation to execute a provision in our treaties,” Hoskins said. “It’s a right negotiated by our ancestors in two treaties with the federal government and reaffirmed in the Treaty of 1866 and reflected in our Constitution.”
It was the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell that first gave the Cherokee “the right to send a deputy of their choice” to Congress.
Fifty years later, in December 1835, a breakaway faction of Cherokee tribe members met with U.S. officials in the Cherokee capital of New Enchota. Dissatisfied with the way their chief was handling negotiations with Washington, they signed a treaty giving up all land east of the Mississippi in exchange for $5 million.
That move led to the 1,900-kilometer “Trail of Tears,” the forced trek to Indian Territory — today, Oklahoma — by thousands of men, women and children, as many as a quarter of whom died of hunger, disease and exhaustion.
Signature page, Treaty of Enchota, 1835.
The Enchota Treaty states that the Cherokee “shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.”
Long road ahead
The U.S. Constitution mandates that only members of states may serve in the House and Senate, but territories and properties “owned” or administered by the United States may send delegates, who have limited power: They may debate but not vote on the House floor, but may vote in committees on which they serve.
Today, six non-voting parties sit in Washington: A resident commissioner from Puerto Rico, and five individual delegates from the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
But is Congress prepared to welcome a seventh delegate?
Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, said that the Cherokee claim would likely need the approval of the full House of Representatives, something that could take “a long time.”
FILE – U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., shown at a town hall meeting in Moore, Oklahoma, in Aug. 2015.
“There’s a lot of questions that have to be answered,” Republican representative from Oklahoma Tom Cole said in a town hall meeting that took place August 20 in Norman, Oklahoma. “Number one, I don’t know that the treaty still is valid. They’re basing it on something that is 185 years ago.”
Stacy L. Leeds, a Cherokee citizen, dean emeritus and professor of law at the University of Arkansas, expressed surprise at Cole’s remark.
“Many of these treaties have been upheld by the federal courts — two this last Supreme Court term alone, and the treaties that the Cherokees are talking about have been held to be in full force and in effect by federal courts within the last five years,” she said.
Leeds cited the example of the Mariana Islands, whose population of 55,000 is significantly smaller than that of the Cherokee Nation
“When the Mariana Islands seated non-voting delegates, that took congressional action, approval by the House and Senate,” she said. “A similar act of Congress would have to take place now. In terms of overall population, the Cherokee Nation is much larger and has a much longer diplomatic relationship with the United States.”
She sees no reason why the Senate, which historically approved these treaties, would fail to recognize them now.
‘Ready to defend’
Teehee is no stranger to Washington. She served as the first-ever senior policy advisor for Native American affairs in the White House Domestic Policy Council for three years under President Barack Obama. Earlier, she was senior advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Native American Caucus Co-Chair, Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan.
Teehee said Hoskin’s nomination comes as a great honor.
“This is a historic moment for Cherokee Nation and our citizens,” she said. “A Cherokee Nation delegate to Congress is a negotiated right that our ancestors advocated for, and today, our tribal nation is … ready to defend all our constitutional and treaty rights.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military on Monday to cut fuel transfers to Gaza in half, in response to rocket attacks from the coastal strip, raising tensions along Israel’s southern border in addition to those stemming from a renewed threat from the north amid reported Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Netanyahu also instructed his staff to prepare plans for building a new neighborhood in a West Bank settlement near where a teenage Israeli girl was killed in an explosion last week. Israel said the blast was a Palestinian attack.
The flurry of activity comes amid a massive manhunt by Israeli troops for the 17-year-old’s killers and dire warnings from Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader of an imminent attack, just weeks before an unprecedented repeat Israeli election.
Netanyahu ordered the Gaza measure to take effect immediately and until further notice. The cut is expected to exacerbate the already dire flow of electricity in the impoverished coastal strip. The move follows airstrikes the military carried out overnight in the Gaza Strip, after three rockets were launched from the territory into southern Israel.
The military said the airstrikes included one on the office of a Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip. There were no reports of casualties.
Air raid sirens warning of an incoming attack wailed late on Sunday during an outdoor music festival in the Israeli border town of Sderot, sending panicked revelers scurrying for cover. The military said two rockets were intercepted by its missile defense system.
The rocket attack was the latest in a recent uptick following a relative lull that has threatened to unleash another round of fighting along the volatile Gaza-Israel border.
Israel accused the Iranian-backed militant Islamic Jihad group of orchestrating the rocket attacks, as part of what it considers Iran’s region-wide campaign of chaos.
“Hostile elements near and far, attempting to ignite a war, are dragging you into violence and destroying the stability and security of your home,” wrote Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, in a direct message to Gaza residents in Arabic on his Facebook page.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers say that Israel’s slow-moving approach to implementing an unofficial Egyptian-brokered truce aimed at alleviating the enclave’s dire living conditions could lead to further escalation.
The continued impasse, in which Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has been highlighted by the occasional outburst of violence, has also begun to spark a different tone in Israel, where critics have been advocating for a stronger military response alongside a need to address the civilian needs of Gaza’s impoverished 2 million residents.
“Israel’s strategy over the past few years has been to maintain the situation as it is,” retired general Guy Tzur told Israel’s Army Radio. “Therefore we are in a strategy of ‘rounds’ (of violence) and this does nothing to change the situation … we need to establish deterrence on the one hand and provide serious humanitarian relief on the other.”
In the West Bank, the search was still on for the attackers behind the deadly blast Friday at a water spring that killed Rina Shnerb, 17, near the settlement of Dolev, and wounded her brother and father. As politicians paid the family condolence visits, Netanyahu announced he had ordered his staff to prepare plans for building a new neighborhood in Dolev that would have about 300 residential housing units.
Dolev is a small settlement northwest of Jerusalem and, if approved, the new housing plans would herald a significant boost in its population. Most of the world considers settlements to be illegal and Netanyahu is typically careful in announcing such plans. But with Sept. 17 elections looming, he is wary of losing the backing of hard-liners who supports such measures.
“We will deepen our roots and strike at our enemies. We will continue to strengthen and develop the settlements,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The flare-ups come as Israel has also dramatically stepped up its campaign against the growing Iranian military activity in the region. In recent days, Israel has acknowledged attacking targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus, to thwart what it called an imminent Iranian drone strike against Israel.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in recent years, most of them aimed at arms shipments believed to be headed from Iran to its Shiite proxy Hezbollah. But direct clashes between Israel and Iranian forces have been rare, and Israel has typically been wary of publicly acknowledging them for fear of sparking a fierce response that could deteriorate into all-out war.
Lebanese officials reported that Israeli warplanes also attacked a Palestinian base in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria early Monday, a day after an alleged Israeli drone crashed in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut while another exploded and crashed nearby.
In recent days, U.S. officials have said that Israeli strikes have also hit Iranian targets in Iraq.
Israel Security Cabinet was convening Monday to discuss the next steps in the various fronts the country currently faces.
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy and has repeatedly vowed that it will not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence in Syria, where Iranian troops have been supporting President Bashar Assad during the country’s eight-year civil war.
Russia’s state meteorological agency says it found several radioactive isotopes in samples it took following a recent accident at a northern military base during a weapons test.
Roshydromet said in a statement on August 26 that it found strontium, barium and lanthanum in test samples in nearby Severodvinsk, but added that there was no danger to the public at large.
The August 8 accident in the northern Russian region of Arkhangelsk, which killed at least five people and injured several others, raised concerns of atmospheric contamination after emergency officials reported a spike in background radiation levels.
“I’m absolutely positive, and I have every reason to affirm the absence of any factors endangering the health and lives of people in the Arkhangelsk region, both on August 8 and at the present,” Interfax quoted regional Governor Igor Orlov as saying on August 26 after the Roshydromet statement was released.
“There are no residents of the region or medical professionals who have been or are exposed as a result of the incident,” Orlov added.
Some U.S. officials have said they believe radioactive elements were involved in the accident, and many analysts have focused attention on a nuclear-powered cruise missile that President Vladimir Putin announced was under development last year.
The White Sea bay where both the shipbuilding port and the regional capital, Arkhangelsk, are located were ordered closed for swimming and fishing due to the presence of toxic rocket fuel.
Following the accident, there were reports of panic buying of iodine drops in the shipbuilding town of Severodvinsk. Iodine is often taken to protect the thyroid gland from some types of radiation.
Roshydromet said a cloud of inert radioactive gases formed as a result of a decay of the isotopes and was the cause of the brief spike in radiation in Severodvinsk.
The isotopes were Strontium-91, Barium-139, Barium-140, and Lanthanum-140, which have half-lives of 9.3 hours, 83 minutes, 12.8 days, and 40 hours respectively, it said.
Mary Banda – not her real name – is a 35-year-old HIV positive sex worker from neighboring Zambia who cannot afford life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs.
Like many sex workers living with HIV in Botswana, she also cannot afford to travel back home to receive free treatment.
That is why Banda welcomes legislation before the Botswana cabinet that, if passed, would provide free ARVs to HIV positive foreigners.
“If they do that it will be a good idea because some of us are dying here,” she said. “Maybe someone will be getting (the) tablets back home, and when they get finished, they don’t have money to go back and take the tablets.”
Banda says a number of sex workers she knew in Botswana have died from AIDS-related illnesses due to lack of treatment.
Immigrants and sex workers in Botswana afflicted with the HIV virus that causes AIDS could get a lifeline as the southern African country is due to decide on offering free Anti-Retroviral (ARV) treatment to foreigners. An estimated 30,000 migrants have HIV in Botswana, which has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world. Experts say refusing to offer free ARV treatment is making it harder for Botswana to eradicate the virus.
Tosh Beka, who is head of the sex worker rights group Sisonke, says Botswana has about 1,500 foreign sex workers in need of ARV treatment.
“If they are infected and are not getting any help and we are saying we want zero infections, then it means we are doing nothing,” he said.
Botswana’s has an estimated 30,000 HIV positive foreigners but only 7,000 are getting treatment, according to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
PEPFAR coordinator Dan Craun-Selka says the agency supports offering free ARVs for all and has pledged to provide funding to Botswana.
“Once the government changes this policy, it will help bring about epidemic controls in this country,” he said. “That is something that really needs to take place. We have discussed this with ministries and it’s now with the cabinet for their decision.”
Botswana became the first country in southern Africa to provide free ARV treatment to HIV positive citizens.
The measure has been partially credited with reducing Botswana’s high rate of HIV infection from 25 percent of the population down to 21 percent.
But Botswana still has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world, after Lesotho and eSwatini.
National AIDS Coordinating Agency director Richard Matlhare says free treatment for HIV positive foreigners would further reduce the virus’s spread.
“We must look at the overall bigger picture of ending AIDS and not leaving anyone behind,” he said. “On the other hand, we must look at the prevailing policies on the ground, and the cabinet must make a determination.”
Botswana’s cabinet is expected to make a decision before the country holds general elections in October.
Heavy rainfall and flash floods have killed 62 people in Sudan and left 98 others injured, the official SUNA news agency reported on Sunday.
Sudan has been hit by torrential rains since the start of July, affecting nearly 200,000 people in at least 15 states across the country including the capital Khartoum.
The worst affected area is the White Nile state in the south.
Flooding of the Nile river remains “the biggest problem”, SUNA said, citing a health ministry official.
On Friday the United Nations said 54 people had died due to the heavy rains.
It said more than 37,000 homes had been destroyed or damaged, quoting figures from the government body it partners with in the crisis response.
“Humanitarians are concerned by the high likelihood of more flash floods,” the UN said, adding that the rainy season was expected to last until October.
The floods are having a lasting humanitarian impact on communities, with cut roads, damaged water points, lost livestock and the spread of water-borne diseases by insects.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said an extra $150 million were needed from donors to respond to surging waters, in addition to the $1.1 billion required for the overall humanitarian situation in Sudan.
Sudan’s new prime minister says in an interview that ending his country’s international pariah status and drastically cutting military spending are prerequisites for rescuing a faltering economy.
Abdalla Hamdok, a well-known economist, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he has already talked to U.S. officials about removing Sudan from Washington’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism and portrayed their reaction as positive. He says that “a democratic Sudan is not a threat to anybody in the world.”
He also hopes to drastically cut Sudan’s military spending which he says makes up a large chunk of the state budget.
Hamdok was sworn in last week as the leader of Sudan’s transitional government. His appointment came four months after the overthrow of autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir, who ruled for nearly three decades.
Two members of an Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary force say that a new drone attack has killed one commander and wounded another near the border with Syria.
Officials from the Hezbollah Brigades, separate from the Lebanese groups of the same name, said the drone attack occurred Sunday near the Qaim border crossing.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists about the matter.
Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.
If confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted PMF bases and weapons depot in Iraq. U.S. officials have said that Israel was behind at least one of them.
Six people were injured Saturday when lightning struck a 60-foot pine at the Tour Championship where they were taking cover from rain and showered them with debris, Atlanta police said.
A pine tree is stripped of bark after being hit by lightning at East Lake Golf Club during the third round of the Tour Championship golf tournament, Aug. 24, 2019, in Atlanta.
The third round of the season-ending PGA Tour event at East Lake Golf Club had been suspended for about 30 minutes because of storms in the area, and fans were instructed to seek shelter. The strike hit the top of the tree just off the 16th tee and shattered the bark all the way to the bottom.
Ambulances streamed into the private club about 6 miles east of downtown Atlanta. The players already had been taken into the clubhouse before the lightning hit.
Brad Uhl of Atlanta was among those crammed under a hospital tent to the right of the 16th hole that was open to the public.
“There was just a big explosion and then an aftershock so strong you could feel the wind from it,” Uhl said after the last of the ambulances pulled out of the golf course. “It was just a flash out of the corner of the eye.”
Atlanta police spokesman James H. White III said five men and one female juvenile were injured in the lightning strike. He said they were taken to hospitals for further treatment, all of them alert, conscious and breathing.
The PGA Tour canceled the rest of golf Saturday, with the round to resume at 8 a.m. Sunday, followed by the final round.
Last week at the BMW Championship in the Chicago suburbs, Phil Mickelson was delayed getting to the golf course when lightning struck the top of his hotel, causing a precautionary evacuation.
When a “Himalayan tsunami” roars down from the rooftop of the world, water from an overflowing glacial lake obeys gravity. Obliterating everything in its path, a burst is predictable only in its destructiveness.
“There was no meaning in it,” one person who withstood the waters in India’s Himalayas told a Public Radio International reporter. “It didn’t give anyone a chance to survive.”
Christian Huggel, a professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who specializes in glaciology and geomorphodynamics (the study of changing forms of geologic surfaces), said thousands of cubic meters of water moving down a mountain “is really quite destructive and it can happen suddenly.”
That water comes from glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, which are increasing in frequency as climate change increases the rate of glacial melting. This catastrophic lake drainage occurs wherever there are glaciers in places such as Peru and Alaska.
The most devastating GLOFs occur in the Himalayan regions of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and the Tibetan Plateau. When combined, the area has the third-largest accumulation of snow and ice after Antarctica and the Arctic.
Melting glaciers
In the Himalayas, climate change melted glaciers by a vertical foot and half of ice each year from 2000 to 2016, according to a study released in June’s Science Advances by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
That is twice the rate of melting from 1975 to 2000.
Local people have noticed the change. In a 2016 interview from the Everest basecamp, Dr. Nima Namgyal Sherpa told VOA that in the past, the glacial streams in the mid-Everest region started flowing in May, but the Sherpas now see the flow beginning in April.
That melted snowpack seeps down to fill mountainside indentations to form glacial lakes. As global warming accelerates the melting, the lakes are expanding, as is their number and threat, monitored in some areas with automated sensors and manual early warning systems by army and police personnel with communication gear.
“Bigger lakes may increase the risk of catastrophic dam failure,” Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the magazine Science.
The retreating ice of the Pastoruri glacier is seen in the Huascaran National Park in Huaraz, Peru, Aug. 12, 2016. The melting of glaciers has put cities like Huaraz at risk of what scientists call a “glof,” or glacial lake outburst flood.
Today, there are more than a thousand glacial lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, with more than 130 larger than 0.1 square kilometer in Nepal alone. The lakes threaten the livelihoods and lives of tens of thousands of people who live in some of the world’s most remote areas.
On June 12, 2016, a GLOF near Mount Everest sent 2 million cubic meters of water toward the Nepalese village of Chukhung, which lost just one outhouse to the torrents, in part because scientists warned residents in the area about the approaching danger.
Weeks later, on July 5, a GLOF near the village of Chaku registered on seismometers, which had been installed after an earthquake the year before, as a “huge pulse of energy,” Kristen Cook, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, told EOS, an online site that covers earth and space science news.
Examining satellite images, Cook and her colleagues found the GLOF moved boulders as large as 6 meters in diameter.
Early warning systems
This year, on July 7, a GLOF early warning system of weather monitoring stations and river discharge sensors saved lives in Pakistan’s Golain Valley, which has more than 50 glaciers and nine glacial lakes.
“Our standing crops [and] apple and apricot orchards have been completely destroyed,” Safdar Ali, whose shop was heavily damaged as the water swept away livestock, stored grain, irrigation channels and micro hydropower plants, told Reuters.
“I see no loss of human life this time as a positive,” Amanullah Khan, assistant country director for the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) told Reuters. “It shows our training has been a success.”
The UNDP program, which helped establish flood protection systems in the area starting in 2011, has installed small-scale drainage systems and mini-dams, and taught people in the remote region survival skills, such as simple first aid, because the arrival of skilled emergency help can be delayed by the rugged topography.
Local governments are taking preventive measures, such as removing loose rocks and debris that make the bursts of water even more destructive. Authorities are also draining glacial lakes to reduce the amount of water released by a breach, and they are discouraging settlement in GLOF hazard zones.
“If the lakes burst above the villages up in the Everest area, up between 12,000 to 13,000 feet, there are villages all the way downstream and they will wipe [away] some of these villages,” said Norbu Tenzin Norgyal, whose father, Sherpa Tenzin Norgyal, summited Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. “The danger is real.”
The U.N. refugee agency said Saturday that 8,500 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kasai province had spontaneously abandoned their camp in Angola and were heading to the homes they fled more than one year ago.
The march home from the Lovua settlement in Angola’s Lunda Norte province began one week ago. U.N. refugee spokesman Andrej Mahecic said more than 1,000 refugees already had crossed into DRC and many more were moving toward the border with DRC’s Kasai region.
“This appears to be in response to reports of improved security in some of their places of origin,” Mahecic said. “It is also linked to their wish to return, as well as to be back home in time for the beginning of the new school year.”
Displaced by violence
Violence broke out in the Kasai region in August 2016, triggered by tensions between traditional chiefs and the government. Deadly clashes intensified between the government and armed groups in March 2017, displacing about 1.4 million people from their homes. An estimated 37,000 others fled across the border into Angola in search of refuge.
Mahecic told VOA the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was engaged in tripartite discussions with Angolan and Congolese authorities to make sure this refugee return movement was well-organized and sustainable.
“The key point for us is to make sure there is proper planning and transport,” he said. “That is why we have engaged both governments on setting up a system where this can be planned, and the transport can be facilitated for those who wish to return home. And that is the key factor. The refugees themselves are the ones making that decision.”
Staff members along routes
Mahecic said UNHCR staff members were placed along the return routes to monitor the condition of people arriving and to assess the nature of these spontaneous returns. He said staff members were on hand to provide immediate help and to get firsthand information about the type of assistance the refugees would need when they returned home.
He added that not everyone was on the move. He noted most of the Congolese refugees remained in Angola. He said the UNHCR would continue to monitor the situation to make sure those who returned to their homes in Kasai were doing so voluntarily.
Will Russia join next year’s G-7 summit? The question is being considered after U.S. President Donald Trump raised the idea ahead of the group’s annual summit this week in France. The group voted to suspend Moscow’s membership in 2014 after it annexed Crimea, which Russia continues to hold. Trump says it’s time for them to rejoin. Anna Rice reports on whether that’s likely to happen.
President Donald Trump has abandoned his fight with Congress over slashing $4 billion in foreign aid and will allow the appropriated funds to be spent. But the State Department says it agreed with the White House to “redirect all funding that does not directly support our priorities.” VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report.
WHITE HOUSE — The trade war between Washington and Beijing further escalated Friday.
The United States will additionally hike tariffs on Chinese products, President Donald Trump announced.
Terming China’s announcement Friday of additional tariffs on $75 billion worth of American products “politically motivated,” Trump said he is retaliating by increasing the 25% tax, effective October 1, on $250 billion on goods of products from China to 30%.
Additionally, Trump announced on Twitter, the tariffs on the remaining $300 billion of Chinese goods to be imposed September 1 will rise from the 10% level to 15%.
….Sadly, past Administrations have allowed China to get so far ahead of Fair and Balanced Trade that it has become a great burden to the American Taxpayer. As President, I can no longer allow this to happen! In the spirit of achieving Fair Trade, we must Balance this very….
…Additionally, the remaining 300 BILLION DOLLARS of goods and products from China, that was being taxed from September 1st at 10%, will now be taxed at 15%. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Trade talks between the United States and China are tentatively set to resume next month in Washington.
VOA asked Trump Friday night if he still wanted those negotiations to proceed.
“At this moment they want to do that,” the president replied before he boarded the Marine One helicopter for the start of his trip to the G-7 leaders’ summit in France. “I’m always open to talks.”
FILE – China Shipping Company containers are stacked at the Virginia International’s terminal in Portsmouth, Va., May 10, 2019.
Ordering companies to leave China
Hours earlier, Trump declared he is “ordering” American companies “to immediately start looking for alternatives to China” after Beijing announced it is raising tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. goods and resuming 25% tariffs on American autos, in retaliation against Trump’s September 1 duty increase.
In a series of tweets, the U.S. president said the companies should bring their manufacturing home.
Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far….
Asked, as he departed the White House, under what authority he could do that, Trump told reporters to look up the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, enacted in 1977, which authorizes the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to extraordinary threats originating outside the United States.
“I have the absolute right to do that,” Trump stated.
FILE – Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, May 1, 2019, in Washington.
Markets drop
The escalating trade war unsettled markets Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average of the New York Stock Exchange closed down more than 620 points, a loss of 2.37%.
Trump, before boarding the helicopter Friday night, brushed off the plunge in share prices, saying that since the time of his November 2016 election “we’re up 50 percent or more.”
Trump, earlier on Twitter, also criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, both before and after he made a closely watched speech at the institution’s annual symposium in the state of Wyoming.
Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve, which cut interest rates last month for the first time in a decade, is willing to make another reduction to keep the U.S. economy growing, but he did not specify the amount or the timing of such action.
That angered the president, who tweeted: “As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can speak’ without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly.” The president then added: “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or (Chinese Communist Party) Chairman Xi?”
Xi is also China’s president.
Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far….
Trump has repeatedly referred to Xi as a friend and touted his relationship with Xi as a way to achieve significant breakthroughs on trade and other major issues.
China’s commerce ministry, earlier Friday, stated it will be imposing additional tariffs of 5% or 10% on a total of 5,078 products originating from the U.S., including agricultural products, crude oil, small aircraft and cars.
Chinese tariffs on some U.S. products would take effect September 1 and on others December 15.
“America’s manufacturing workers will bear the brunt of these retaliatory tariffs, which will make it even harder to sell the products they make to customers in China,” said Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Manufacturers.
“While we share the president’s frustration, we believe that continued, constructive engagement is the right way forward,” said Myron Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Time is of the essence. We do not want to see a further deterioration of U.S.-China relations.”
Rick Helfenbein, president and CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said: “This is not how you negotiate. This is tit-for-tat exercise that is hurting Americans and distracting from the task at hand — creating a sustainable trade agreement that solves long-standing and deep-seated issues.”
“The administration needs to rise above the fray and start negotiating for the American people,” Helfenbein added.
Analysts are expressing fears that if there is no truce soon in the trade war with China, it could lead to a recession in the United States.
However, Trump is holding firm to his policies.
“Our economy is doing great. We’re having a little spat with China and we’ll win it …” he said Friday night. Adding, “I think that our tariffs are working out very well for us, people don’t understand that yet…”
“We’re not going to lose close to a trillion dollars a year to China,” Trump told reporters Friday. “This is more important than anything else right now, just about, that we’re working on.”
The three Baltic countries on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the 1989 “Baltic Way,” a historic anti-Soviet protest that involved nearly 2 million people forming a human chain more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) long.
On Aug. 23, 1989, as the Soviet Union was weakening, the gesture was a powerful expression on the part of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians that they were not giving up on their independence even after decades of Soviet occupation.
“People holding hands can be stronger than people holding guns,” said Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas in a tweet.
The celebrations come as the inhabitants of the three nations _ and many beyond _ worry about Russia’s renewed ambitions to influence the region.
“We must remember the courage and dreams of the participants. But let it also be a reminder that freedom and democracy can never be taken for granted,” Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.
The Baltic News Service recalled Friday that then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Moscow “started realizing very clearly that the three Baltic nations were moving toward political independence.”
The main commemorations are taking place in Vilnius, the capital of the southern-most Baltic country, and along the Lithuania-Latvia border, with a relay-race and an exhibition. In the evening, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda will host a concert in central Vilnius.
In the Latvian capital of Riga, the three Baltic prime ministers will lay wreaths at the foot of a freedom monument.
The chain has inspired others, including a 2008 human chain in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, where a crowd of at least 100,000 people jammed Tbilisi’s main avenue.
In Hong-Kong, protesters planned Friday to form a 40-kilometer (25-mile) human chain to demand more freedoms from China, saying it was inspired by the “Baltic Way.”
The Baltic countries declared their independence from Russia in 1918 but were annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940. Friday’s events also marked the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that led to the occupation of the Baltic states and Poland.
The Baltic nations remained part of the Soviet Union until 1991.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to find a quid pro quo response after the test of a new U.S. missile banned under a now-defunct arms treaty.
In Sunday’s test, a modified ground-launched version of a Navy Tomahawk cruise missile accurately struck its target more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. The test came after the U.S. and Russia withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The U.S. has explained its withdrawal from the treaty by Russian violations, a claim Moscow has denied. Speaking Friday, Putin charged that the U.S. wanted to untie its hands to deploy the previously banned missiles in different parts of the world.''<br />
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He ordered the Defense Ministry and other agencies totake the necessary measures to prepare a symmetrical answer.”
Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government have taken full control of a key southern city after overnight clashes with separatists, Yemeni security officials said Friday.
Clashes over Etq, the capital of oil-rich Shabwa province erupted late Thursday night and lasted until Friday morning, said the security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because there were not authorized to talk to the media.
The city of Etq was previously divided between Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government forces and a separatist militia, trained and armed by the United Arab Emirates.
The infighting between Hadi’s forces and the UAE-backed separatists,ostensibly allies in Yemen’s war against the Shiite Houthi rebels, erupted earlier this month. It has threatened to fracture the Saudi-led coalition, a group of Arab states that intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, to help restore Hadi’s government to power. The previous year, the rebel Houthis overran the capital, Sanaa, and gained control of much of the country’s north.
Separatist militiamen of the so-called Southern Transitional Council, have so far seized strategic southern areas, including the city of Aden and much of the nearby Abyan province.
A Saudi-Emirati commission flew to southern Yemen last week to negotiate a truce between the government forces and separatists but has so far made no progress.
In a tweet posted early Friday, Hani Ben Braik, a separatist leader, would not admit defeat at Etq but said his militiamen chose not to pursue a battle in the city out of “respect” for the truce efforts. However, Ben Baraik warned his forces would fight back if they were attacked again.
Rwanda has introduced the use of electric motorcycles as part of its efforts to protect the environment and cut fuel costs.
Passengers and motorcyclists say the electric vehicles could dramatically change how Rwandans do business.
James Musisi, 45, is one of 10 motorcyclists who have started to use the motorcycles in what is known as the moto-taxi business — motorcycle taxis.
He says the vehicles are quiet, which means passengers are able to make phone calls as they’re taken to their destinations.
They’re also relatively cheap. One electric bike costs $1,300 — less expensive than the $1,600 price for fuel motorcycles.
Also, Musisi said, “There is no chain, no drum brake, and requires less [maintenance compared to] those that use fuel lubricant every week and have to change the oil.”
Currently, there are 10 of the motorcycles running on Kigali’s roads, but more than 600 are being built.
Two charging stations exist in Kigali. A moto-taxi driver has to bring an exhausted battery to take a charged one, which runs for 70 kilometers (43 miles). The price for recharging an electric vehicle is equal to the cost of the fuel for traditional cycles.
In 2016, four entrepreneurs from different countries formed a start-up called Ampersand with a mission to transform Rwanda into a mass market for commercial electric motorcycles.
Josh Whale, the company’s chief executive officer, said electric motorcycles, also known as e-Motos, have great potential in Rwanda — a country known for its environmental initiatives.
“For electricity, we found that the grid is sufficiently reliable in Kigali,” he said. “There has been a lot of investment made in new transmission lines, which are operating well, so everything is good for us.”
Environmental efforts
Engineer Colleta Ruhamya, director-general of Rwanda’s Environment Management Authority, says this is another milestone for the country, which has become an important player in the global environmental protection movement.
“I don’t see why Rwanda should be behind. I think it’s the right time for Rwanda to come forward. We call each and every person to also embrace [the effort] and to go [forward] together,” Ruhamya said.
FILE – Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame addresses a news conference in Kigali, Rwanda, April 8, 2019.
This comes after Rwandan President Paul Kagame declared that his government is going to replace all motorcycles with new electric ones.
“We will find a way to replace the ones you have now. We urge taxi-moto operators to help us when the phase-out process comes,” Kagame said recently.
The adoption of electric motorcycles follows many other initiatives the Rwandan government has taken to protect the environment and keep Kigali clean.
In 2008, Rwanda banned plastic shopping bags. Last year, it banned the use of single-use plastic materials, including water bottles.
According to the United Nations, every year 8 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans, poisoning sea life and harming fisheries.
SAN FRANCISCO — Democratic Party leaders are arguing over whether to hold a presidential primary debate exclusively on the climate crisis.
Hundreds of activists were at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting Thursday in California, where an influential party committee was discussing the matter.
But Chairman Tom Perez shows no signs of rewriting the debate rules months into the campaign.
Perez opposes single-issue debates with multiple candidates on stage at the same time. The DNC instead has encouraged other groups to hold issue-based forums where candidates appear one at a time. Activists say that approach hasn’t gotten climate policy enough attention.
The meeting came a day after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ended his presidential bid after failing to gain enough support for his pledge to make climate action the nation’s top priority.
