політика, бізнес, народ

VOA Immigration Reporter Aline Barros contributed to this report from Washington.

NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO — Off to the side of the Puente #1, the bridge that connects pedestrians, drivers and cyclists from the Texas city of Laredo to the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, dozens of migrants and asylum-seekers sit on what was built as a parking lot for the customs office.

The concrete radiated after hours of 42-degree Celsius (108-degree Fahrenheit) heat from the sun.

They hadn’t been able to shower in three days, several said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) often apprehended them within an hour of crossing the river, held them for two to three days, then transported them back to Mexico.

Now a month after the start of the Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican government is busing hundreds of returned migrants to faraway Chiapas, in what is described as a thinly disguised deportation program.

Bus departures

VOA witnessed two nights of bus departures from a location adjacent to a pedestrian bridge where CBP dropped off migrants to await their immigration hearings in the U.S. from outside the country.

The first, around 12:30 a.m. on August 7, consisted of eight full buses, transporting 350 to 400 migrants; the next night, another three buses departed from the same location, carrying approximately 120 people, largely families with children under age 10.

Migrants returned to Mexico under MPP have been camping beneath puente 1 (intl bridge) in Nuevo Laredo for days or longer. As of a couple hours ago, buses came to pick them up. Migrants say they are being forced to leave. All of the buses appear to be headed to Chiapas. pic.twitter.com/ZpMBYlMyL1

— Ramón Taylor (@ramonctaylor) August 7, 2019

The majority of migrants VOA spoke with ahead of their 2,100-kilometer (1,300-mile) journey were from Honduras and had crossed the Rio Grande into the United States in the first days of August.

Some of the migrants who spoke to VOA said they felt their hearings stood no chance and would self-deport to their respective countries. Others planned to utilize temporary work permits in southern Mexico while they considered their next moves.

MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, began in January 2019 in other border cities. It expanded in earnest in March, and then June, as Mexico scrambled to respond to the U.S. threat of tariffs if the number of unauthorized border crossings did not decrease.

In a statement to VOA, a CBP spokesperson said MPP allows the U.S. “to more effectively assist legitimate asylum-seekers and individuals fleeing persecution while migrants with false or meritless claims no longer have that incentive to make the journey.”

The Trump administration said it created the program to alleviate overcrowding in U.S. detention facilities by making migrants await immigration court dates in Mexico.

The United States has returned more than 30,000 migrants to Mexico under the policy, CBP acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said Thursday.

According to an analysis by Human Rights First, CBP has returned an average of 450 migrants per day to Mexico in early August, more than double the rate of returns in early June.

More than 3,000 migrants have been returned to Nuevo Laredo during MPP’s first month operating in the city, the independent, U.S.-based human rights organization reported.

That number includes children and adults who have been apprehended crossing the Rio Grande without authorization by U.S. Border Patrol agents, as well as people who presented themselves at ports of entry to formally request asylum.

Left in border city

The migrants VOA met hours after their return from the U.S. were predominantly from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Many felt they had no real choice but to leave on the buses, wherever they were headed, just to get out of Nuevo Laredo.

Sitting in the shade of a bus shelter, they were trying to determine who wanted to go where, and how they would get there.

Few had cellphones or money to contact relatives. They had no knowledge of the city, no map and no means to get to a local shelter. All they carried were clear plastic bags with a few toiletries, paperwork, and the phone numbers of relatives to call when they could borrow a phone from someone with cell service in Mexico.

The Mexican city’s reputation as a hub of drug cartel activity and ransom kidnappings kept many migrants within the confines of the parking lot adjacent to Puente #1.

The U.S. State Department posts a maximum “Level 4: Do Not Travel” warning because of crime and kidnapping in the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, where “armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses as well as private automobiles,” according to its advisory. 

“They bring us here, where you’re surrounded by the Zetas drug cartel, and in the end, what security do we have?” said Yuna, a Cuban asylum-seeker returned under MPP, who boarded one of Tuesday’s eight buses to Tapachula, Chiapas. “We can’t [take a taxi] because they’ll send us to the lion’s mouth. If we go to the [bus] station, they’ll kidnap us.”

But according to Nuevo Laredo Mayor Enrique Rivas Montaño, “The issue of insecurity is not exclusive to the border.”

“Everywhere, there are risks, there are dangers in a city you don’t know,” Rivas Montaño told VOA.

Awaiting US court hearings

Although Mexican immigration authorities first thinned the number of returnees in Nuevo Laredo by busing some to Monterrey, roughly 220 kilometers (137 miles) to the southwest, this week the buses were bound for Tapachula, Chiapas, roughly 10 times farther away. 

Monterrey is at a Level 3 warning, with the caution to “reconsider travel due to crime” and curfews on U.S. personnel in the area.

Chiapas, the more recent destination, is considered a Level 2 safety risk, according to the State Department, which urges visitors to “exercise increased caution due to crime.”

It is also Mexico’s southernmost state, which means that within the country’s boundaries, it gets as close to Guatemala — and in turn, El Salvador and Honduras — as a person possibly could be while remaining in Mexico.

That distance puts 35 hours of road travel between the migrants and their court dates in border cities, some for September, others as late as November, requiring additional expenses few people VOA spoke with could afford. A one-way return economy bus ticket, with a connection in Mexico City, costs $111.

Mexico’s National Institute of Migration did not respond to an emailed request for more information about the busing system.

The first buses bound for Chiapas left on August 2, according to one local media report. 

Father Julio López, the head of the Nazareth migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, said that southbound trip — while in theory is voluntary but in practice feels like the only option to some migrants — shows that from the outset, even the name of policy was a ruse.

“The Migrant Protection Protocol is, to me, a protocol of lies for migrants,” the priest said. “There is no protocol, and if there were one, it’s not for protection. There is no protection.”

Likewise, a Mexican federal immigration agent at the CBP drop-off site near the bridge said he believed MPP was not a policy of waiting for court dates, but rather one of “dolled-up deportations.”

“Honestly, what we’re seeing here, these are deportations,” he told VOA. “Deportations in disguise.”

CBP deferred comment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a VOA inquiry about whether the MPP program effectively works as a deportation plan. DHS and Mexico’s National Institute of Migration have not yet responded to similar inquiries.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump is renewing focus on mental illness as a major cause of gun violence, following two mass shootings in two days in the U.S. that killed 31 people. VOA’s Brian Padden reports that while Trump has called for more treatment and involuntary detention of mentally disturbed individuals, his administration has rolled back federal regulations to restrict the mentally ill from buying guns and has tried to abolish a health care law that expanded access to mental health services.

…

Climate change is about to hit the world in the stomach, according to the United Nations. A new scientific report from the world body that examines land degradation concludes that climate change will imperil crops and worsen hunger.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
 

…

Russia appears to be using one of its most powerful weapons — tourism — against Georgia, its smaller neighbor to the south. Moscow has banned direct flights between Russia and Georgia, after the latest wave of protests in Georgia against Russia’s occupation of two of its regions.  Moscow has also called for its citizens to return home. That is meant to damage the Georgian economy, which is highly dependent on tourism.  Ricardo Marquina reports from Tbilisi in this report narrated by Jim Randle.
 

…

Raging floods across Myanmar have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent weeks, officials said Thursday, as monsoon rains pummel the nation.

Aerial images from Shwegyin township in Bago region showed how the area had become a vast lake of water.

Only the rooftops could be seen of many homes lining the Sittaung river.

Emergency services have been helping bring people to dry ground, many seeking shelter in local monasteries.

Others waded through waist-deep floodwaters or rowed on wooden boats with pets and any belongings they could take with them.

Than Aye, 42, who has diabetes and is partially-sighted, struggled to escape the deluge.

“I could not do anything when the flooding started but then the fire service came to rescue me by boat,” he told AFP from the safety of the monastery that has been his home for the last five days.

The most severe flooding is currently in eastern Bago region and Mon and Karen states, according to the social welfare ministry.

“There are currently over 30,000 people (across the country) displaced by floods,” said director general of disaster management Ko Ko Naing.

UN’s Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates around 89,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks, although many have since been able to return home.

…

Damascus on Thursday accused Turkey of “expansionist ambitions,” saying Ankara’s agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in northeastern Syria only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

The statement by Syria’s Foreign Ministry comes a day after the U.S. and Turkey announced they’d agreed to form a coordination center to set up the safe zone. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move, which is designed to address Ankara’s security concerns, was important.

The announcement of the deal may have averted for now a Turkish incursion into that part of Syria. Ankara seeks to push out U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters from the region as it considers them terrorists, allied with a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
 
The Syrian Kurdish fighters were the main fighting force on the ground against Islamic State militants in the area, and Washington has been hard pressed to protect its partners.

Damascus said the Syrian Kurdish groups “bear historic responsibility” for the U.S-Turkey deal and urged them to drop “this aggressive U.S.-Turkish project” and align with the Syrian government instead.

Damascus has had no presence along the Turkish border since 2012, when Syrian rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups took control of different parts of the region.
 
After three days of talks in Ankara and repeated Turkish threats of a military incursion in northeast Syria, Turkish and U.S. officials agreed that the coordination center would be based in Turkey and would be set up “as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish defense ministry.
 
The ministry did not provide further details but said the sides had agreed that the safe zone would become a “corridor of peace” and that all additional measures would be taken to ensure the return of refugees to Syria.

Turkey has been pressing to control _ in coordination with the U.S. a 19-25 mile-deep zone within Syria, east of the Euphrates River, and wants no Syrian Kurdish forces there.

In its previous military incursions, Turkey entered northwestern Syria, expelling Islamic State militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from the area and setting up Turkish military posts there, with allied Syrian opposition fighters in control. Turkish troops also man observation points that ring the last opposition stronghold in the northwest _ posts that are meant to uphold a now fraying cease-fire.

…

President Trump and his wife Melania were greeted by dozens of protesters when they traveled to Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas, Wednesday to visit the victims of last weekend’s mass shootings. Richard Green has the full story from Washington.

…

Greek search crews have found the body of a British scientist who went missing while on holiday on the Aegean island of Ikaria in a ravine near where she had been staying, authorities said Wednesday.
 
Police said the body of Cyprus-based astrophysicist Natalie Christopher, 34, was found in a 20-meter (65-foot) deep ravine. Christopher had been reported missing on Monday by her Cypriot partner with whom she was vacationing after she went for a morning run.
 
The cause of death was not immediately clear and authorities planned an autopsy.
 
Police, firefighters, volunteers and the coast guard had been scouring the area where Christopher had been staying during her vacation, which has paths along ravines and steep seaside cliffs. A specialized police unit with geolocation equipment was sent to the island to help in the search.
 
Cypriot authorities said they were in close contact with Greek search crews and the woman’s family.
 
“I express the sincere condolences of the Cypriot state and of myself to the family and friends of Natalie Christopher,” Cypriot Justice and Public Order Minister George Savvides said after being informed that the body had been identified.

…

They are seen as the shock troops of a burgeoning direct-action environmental movement. Earlier this year, members of Extinction Rebellion brought the center of London and some other major British towns to a standstill by barricading bridges, standing on top of trains, and blocking major thoroughfares and crossroads. 

Extinction Rebellion (XR), a campaign of civil disobedience born in Britain and aiming to address a worldwide climate crisis, has been endorsed by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, the teenage poster child of environmentalism. XR has pledged to cause more disruption, arguing that governments are not doing enough to stop the “climate emergency.” 

The group, which is spawning similar campaigns in the United States and Australia, says climate activists have no choice but to take matters into their own hands. It demands that governments prevent further biodiversity loss and commit to producing net-zero greenhouse gases by 2025. Otherwise, XR says, there will be a mass extinction of life forms on the planet within the lifetimes of the demonstrators themselves.

The group’s next target is next month’s star-studded London Fashion Week. Activists have promised to shut down the five-day runway event in a bid to raise awareness of the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry.

“We need to change our culture around consumption,” said climate activist Bel Jacobs. “People have no idea how environmentally destructive fashion is.”

Greenhouse gas emissions from making textiles was estimated at 1.2 billion tons of CO2-equivalent in 2015, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British environmental charity.

‘Cultish nature’

XR’s actions have been applauded by many environmentalists, who say the only way to make governments, people and corporations sit up and take climate action is to shock them into it. But the radical philosophy underpinning the group, which includes wanting to set up citizens’ assemblies that could overrule parliament, is drawing increasing criticism from foes, who compare the group to a millenarian sect. 

“The cultish nature of XR’s activities is a little spooky,” said Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project, a group that focuses on urban planning and futurist technological solutions.

Sympathizers acknowledge that XR hasn’t helped itself with some of the remarks made by its leaders. Co-founder Gail Bradbrook said her realization that humanity was on the brink of extinction came from taking huge doses of psychedelic drugs, which “rewired” her brain and gave her the “codes of social change.”

Roger Hallam, another co-founder, has said, “We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose. And yes, some may die in the process.”

Hallam is not a scientist but has a track record as a political activist, and holds a Ph.D. on “digitally enhanced political resistance and empowerment strategies.”

BirthStrikers

Several leading XR adherents have announced they’ve decided not to procreate in response to the coming “climate breakdown and civilization collapse,” arguing the world is too horrible a place to bring children into it. 

The BirthStrikers, as they are nicknamed, received some endorsement earlier this year from U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said the climate emergency “does lead young people to have a legitimate question — ‘Is it OK still to have children?'”

XR critics have compared the BirthStrikers to the Cathars, a medieval religious sect that encouraged celibacy and discouraged marriage on the grounds that every person born was just another poor soul trapped by the devil in a body.

Defections

XR has also seen defections. Sherrie Yeomans, coordinator of XR blockades in the English city of Bristol, left the group, saying, “I can no longer surround myself with the toxic, manipulative Extinction Rebellion cult.”

Johan Norberg, a Swedish author, historian and XR critic, worries that the group is fueling anxiety while not being practical about the possible solutions to global warming. 

“I guess it depends on your definition of cult,” he said. “But I think it is a growing, but very radical, sentiment that I fear plays a part in giving people anxiety about their life choices, and also leads us to thinking about these things in the wrong way,” he told VOA. 

On the BirthStrikers he said: “The bizarre thing is that they just think of another human being as a burden, a mouth to feed. But they also come along with a brain to think, and hands to work. I don’t know what scientific insight and which technology will save us from not just global warming but also the many other problems that will affect us — the next pandemic, natural disaster and so on — but I know that the chance that we’ll find it is greater if we have more people alive, who live longer lives than ever, get a longer education than ever, and are more free to make use of the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind to take on those problems.”

Norberg points to a future of “electric cars and, soon, planes,” and biofuels made from algae and extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. He worries about the economic consequences if the abrupt zero-growth goals of XR were adopted. 

“It would result in a reversal of the amazing economic development that has resulted in the fastest reduction of poverty in history. A lack of growth and international trade would result in human tragedies on a massive scale,” he said.

XR response

XR’s co-founders say Norberg’s formula won’t halt climate change and stop extinction. They defended themselves against critics’ cult charges, arguing recently in an article in a British newspaper, “We’ve made many mistakes, but now is the time for collective action, not recriminations.”  

“Extinction Rebellion is humbly following in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King,” Hallam said. “After covering basic material needs, human beings are not made happier through consuming more stuff.”

Bradbrook told reporters in London, “We oppose a system that generates huge wealth through astonishing innovation but is fatally unable to distribute fairly and provide universal access to its spoils. … We need a ‘revolution’ in consciousness to overturn the system.” 

…

The last time Samuel Botros stepped into the Lebanese monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya was in 1978. He was 24, newly married, and the country was in the grip of an all-out war. Like many of his generation, he left. It took him 41 years to return. 

The 1975-90 civil war may be over in Lebanon, but conflicts in nearby countries like Iraq and Syria have devastated entire communities where Christians once lived alongside Muslims. That has triggered an exodus among people of both faiths, especially among minority sects — like Botros’ Syriac Orthodox community whose roots are in early Christianity.

The monastery, which is nestled in a remote valley in the northern Lebanese mountains and dates from the fourth century, is a meeting place for Christians who have fled conflict.

“It is the war that did this to us. It is the wars that continue to leave behind destruction and force people to leave,” said Botros, visiting the monastery as part of a gathering of his community’s scout group — their first in the region since the 1950s.

The scout group’s roughly 150 members include people living in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and further afield. Lebanon was the only country where they could all meet easily and safely, Botros said.

In Iraq, years of conflict, most recently with Islamic State, erased much of the Christian heritage in ancient cities like Mosul and Sinjar in the north. In Syria’s civil war, some of the oldest churches in Aleppo, Homs and other cities were damaged.

Botros, now 65, is about to retire in Sweden where he made his home years ago. He is father and grandfather to children who know Lebanon only through photos.

“I would like them to visit so that when I pass, there is something to pull them back,” he said.

Ancient sanctuary

On Sundays and public holidays, the monastery’s small church, with the bell tower and facade, etched into the cliffs is full of people huddled in the pews or standing at the back of the vaulted interior. 

Its patron is Saint Anthony, a monk who is believed to have lived in rural Egypt in the fourth or fifth century.

“This place has always been a shrine … we don’t even know when it started. Even when there was no development … people still came,” said Father Fadi Imad, the priest who gives sermons.

Qozhaya lies within a valley known as the Valley of Saints, or Qannoubine in ancient Syriac, part of a wider valley network called Qadisha that has a long history as a refuge for monks. At one time, Qadisha was home to hundreds of hermitages, churches, caves and monasteries. The monastery of Saint Anthony is the last surviving one.

It was an early home for Lebanon’s Christian Maronites, the first followers of the Roman Catholic church in the East. 

The Maronites and sometimes the Druze, a Muslim sect, sought the sanctuary of the mountains away from the political and religious dynasties of the times with whom they did not always agree, Father Imad said.

“The inhabitants of this mountain … and they were not only Christians, came here because they were persecuted and weak,” he said.

“Qozhaya holds in its heart 1,600 years of history and it doesn’t belong to anyone, church or faith, … it belongs to the homeland,” he said.

‘I will never forget’

The monastery is surrounded by forests of pine and cedar and orchards that can only be reached via a narrow, winding road.

Its grounds include a cave where visitors light candles, a museum housing the Middle East’s oldest printing press in ancient Syriac and halls for resident priests.

Visitors nowadays include foreign and Arab tourists and local residents including Muslims who sometimes come to ask for a blessing.

Father Imad said the monastery was the safest it had been in its history despite being surrounded by countries at war or suffering its aftermath.

“No one is telling us that they are coming to kill us anymore … at least in Lebanon,” he said.

Before he left, Botros and his fellows stood for a final photo outside the building with the valley behind. With their flags and scarves around their necks, they smiled and cheered as the bells rang.

“What I have seen today I will never forget for as long as I live,” Botros said. “No matter how long it takes, the son always returns to the mother.”

…

The National Basketball Association on Tuesday said that Amazon.com’s Twitch would be its exclusive digital partner for streaming USA Basketball games globally through 2020.

Twitch — best known as a platform for video game players to interact and stream their own competitions — will also exclusively stream up to 76 boys and girls youth basketball games during the Jr. NBA Global Championship, which begins Tuesday, the league said.

USA Basketball is the governing body of American basketball and fields men’s and women’s teams for international competitions, including this year’s International Basketball Federation (FIBA) World Cup in China starting Aug. 31 and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. NBA handles media and marketing partnerships for the organization.

The deals will add to the growing library of live sporting content on Twitch, which streams the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, as does Amazon Prime.

They will also allow the NBA to keep experimenting with digital partnerships as more fans dump traditional cable subscriptions.

Some purely digital media subscription services — like Amazon Prime and London-based newcomer DAZN — have drawn viewers, as have ESPN and other networks that have started their own direct-to-consumer products.

Leagues themselves now also stream some games on their own websites, in this case on NBA.com.

Extra content

Even so, leagues still view linear television networks as valuable partners because of their high production capabilities and the huge audiences they continue to capture for big events.

The NBA’s main media rights are tied up with Walt Disney Co’s ESPN and ABC, as well as TNT, a unit of AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia, through the 2025 season.

That has left the league carving out other rights in order to try out new kinds of content and partnerships.

As part of Tuesday’s deals, Twitch and USA Basketball will develop extra content around each event, including the USA Men’s National Team, certain 3×3 events and USA Women’s National team friendly games, training camps and the 2020 Nike Hoop Summit, the NBA said.

Twitch has already been streaming matches from the NBA’s minor league organization, the G League, as well as its NBA 2K videogame matches. Financial terms of Tuesday’s agreements were not disclosed. 

…

U.S. plans to keep just a residual force in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State may be on the verge of backfiring, with some military officials warning the strategy is giving the terror group new life.

The doubts, raised in a Defense Department Inspector General report released Tuesday, come as Washington has struggled to secure additional on-the-ground help in Syria from allies and amid renewed warnings that while IS may have lost control of its self-declared caliphate, the group’s fighters are far from defeated.

Some of the strongest criticism for what the report described as Washington’s completed “partial withdrawal” from Syria is from officials with Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the headquarters responsible for overseeing U.S. and coalition efforts against IS.

“According to CJTF-OIR, the reduction of U.S. forces has decreased the support available for Syrian partner forces at a time when their forces need more training and equipping to respond to the ISIS resurgence,” Principal Deputy Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote, using another acronym for Islamic State.

Additionally, coalition officials told the inspector general the drawdown could cause U.S.-backed forces, including the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to turn away from Washington and seek out “alternate partnerships and resources.”

‘Detrimental’ to U.S. mission

CJTF-OIR warned that such developments could be “detrimental to the United States’ mission in Iraq and Syria.”

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon immediately responded to requests for comment on the report, which also identified other shortcomings with White House strategy and U.S. military efforts in Syria and Iraq.

U.S. President Donald Trump first announced the U.S. withdrawal from Syria this past December via Twitter.

We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2018

But the announcement sparked significant divisions within the administration, especially from military officials, ultimately prompting then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to resign.

Differences With Trump’s Views Prompted Mattis Departure

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis Thursday announced he was quitting, personally handing his letter of resignation to U.S. President Donald Trump following a lunch meeting at the White House.
 
While not mentioning Trump by name, the letter from Mattis outlined sharp differences between his views and those of the president, notably on the importance of allies and the use of U.S.

Later, the outgoing commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, General Joseph Votel, told lawmakers he was never even asked for advice.

“I was not consulted,” he said during a congressional appearance this past February.

Top US General ‘Not Consulted’ About Syria Troop Withdrawal

The commanding general of U.S. forces in the Middle East was not told before President Donald Trump initially declared victory over the Islamic State terror group and announced his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

“I was not aware of the specific announcement,” Gen. Joseph Votel told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday of the president’s announcement this past December.

“I was not consulted,” he added.

Since the announcement, Pentagon officials have confirmed some equipment has been moved out of Syria. Other preparations to pull some 2,000 U.S.

Despite concerns, Pentagon officials proceeded with what they described as a deliberate and orderly withdrawal of most of the 2,200 U.S. troops in Syria, completing the drawdown in the months following the fall of IS’s last Syrian stronghold in late March.

But since then, there have been numerous warnings that while IS may no longer have outright control of territory, its grip on Syria remains strong.

IS’ “covert network in the Syrian Arab Republic is spreading, and cells are being established at the provincial level,” a United Nations report warned last week, adding the terror group “is adapting, consolidating and creating conditions for eventual resurgence in its Iraqi and Syrian heartland.”

Additionally, U.S. estimates put the number of IS fighters and supporters in Syria and neighboring Iraq at between 14,000 and 18,000.

But U.S. and coalition officials worry the drawdown has made it more difficult for them and for partner forces to keep track of IS activity.

According to the new inspector general report, the U.S. drawdown came as partner forces needed more “training and equipping to build trust with local communities and to develop the human-based intelligence necessary to confront ISIS resurgent cells and insurgent capabilities in Syria.”

Disinformation campaign

At the same time, officials warn the U.S.-backed SDF is falling victim to a damaging disinformation campaign.

“ISIS has been successful in portraying the SDF as the new occupying force in the area ‘to exploit tension between the Kurdish-led SDF and local Arab residents,'” the inspector general report said, citing an assessment by U.S. Central Command.

Coalition military officials voiced similar concerns, noting Russia, Iran and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also “seek to weaken the SDF by leveraging Arab grievances against it, which could result in ‘overall failure to maintain the mission [against ISIS] in Syria.'”

Adding to the concerns, coalition officials said efforts to increase the size of U.S. and coalition-backed forces are falling short.

CJTF-OIR said by the end of June, partner forces had a total of 100,000 troops — 10,000 less than needed.

U.S. officials have been trying to make up for the drawdown of U.S. forces in Syria by securing commitments from allied nations to send additional forces. But officials admit it has been a challenge.

“I would say that we are well on the way to getting formal commitments by a good number of countries, far more than where they are a year ago,” U.S. Special Representative for Syria, Ambassador James Jeffrey, told a security forum last month.

“This will be a satisfactory outcome,” he added.

But even if U.S. allies send more troops to Syria, U.S. officials admitted efforts to keep IS defeated in Iraq are also struggling.

U.S. military officials said IS still retains significant support, especially in northern and western Iraq, where it has been able to recruit and raise money.

The inspector general report cautioned that coalition officials also worry “Iraq lacks hold forces capable of maintaining security in areas cleared of ISIS.”

IS “is able to operate as an insurgency in Iraq and Syria in part because the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) remain unable to sustain long-term operations against ISIS militants,” the report said.

…

China says it will take “countermeasures” if the United States deploys ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.  

Fu Cong, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s arms control division, told reporters Tuesday that Beijing “will not stand idly by” if Washington follows through on a pledge made last weekend by new Defense Secretary Mark Esper to deploy the missiles in the region “sooner rather than later,” preferably within months. 

He urged China’s neighbors, specifically Japan, South Korea and Australia, to “exercise prudence” by refusing to deploy the U.S. missiles, adding that it would serve those countries national security interests.  

Fu did not specify what countermeasures China would take, but said “everything is on the table.” 

Secretary Esper’s stated goal to deploy ground-based missiles in the region came after the Trump administration formally pulled the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty last week. The pact, reached with the former Soviet Union, bans ground-based nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles with a range between 500-5,000 kilometers. Washington said it withdrew from the INF because of continued violations by Moscow.  

Fu said China had no interest in taking part in trilateral talks with the United States and Russia due to the “huge gap” in the size of China’s nuclear arsenal compared to the other two nations.  

…

Chinese companies have stopped buying U.S. agricultural products, China’s Commerce Ministry said on Tuesday, a blow to U.S. farmers who have already seen their exports slashed by the more than year-old trade war.

China may impose additional tariffs on U.S. farm products bought shortly before the purchase ban took effect, China’s Commerce Ministry said. China also let the yuan weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level on Monday for the first time in more than a decade.

Before the trade war started, China bought $19.5 billion worth of farm goods in 2017, mainly soybeans, dairy, sorghum and pork. The trade war reduced those sales to $9.1 billion in 2018, according to the American Farm Bureau.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement it hoped the United States would keep its promises and create the “necessary conditions” for bilateral cooperation.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Beijing had not fulfilled a promise to buy large volumes of U.S. farm products and vowed to impose new tariffs on around $300 billion of Chinese goods, abruptly ending a truce in the Sino-U.S. trade war.

Earlier, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported an official from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as saying Trump’s accusations were “groundless.”

China is the world’s top buyer of soybeans, the most valuable U.S. export crop. The Trump administration has announced plans to spend up to $28 billion compensating U.S. farmers, a key Trump constituency, for lost income from trade disputes.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall called the announcement “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”

The National Pork Producers Council said in an email it was important to end the trade war so pork producers could “more fully participate in a historic sales opportunity.”

Farmers can start applying for the next round of trade aid this month, but trade uncertainty makes long-term planning difficult.

“We’ve been thankful for the aid payments. They have helped but we’d rather have open markets because it creates stability in our financial sectors,” said Derek Sawyer, 39, a corn, soybean, wheat and cattle farm from McPherson, Kansas. “There’s just so much volatility right now because nobody knows the rules of the game and nobody knows how to look at things going forward.”

China is buying more soybeans from Brazil. Its overall need for soybeans used to feed livestock has fallen as African Swine Fever kills millions of pigs. U.S. meat exporters had hoped to take advantage of the disease to export more pork to China but 62% retaliatory tariffs have limited exports.

Overall, China has purchased about 14.3 million tons of last season’s soybean crop, the least in 11 years, and some 3.7 million tons still need to be shipped, according to U.S. data.

China bought 32.9 million tons of U.S. soybeans in 2017, before the trade war.

China applied a 25% tariff on soybeans in July of last year in response to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

China is honoring agreements signed earlier to import U.S. soybeans, according to Cong Liang, secretary general of China’s NDRC, CCTV reported. The report said that 2.27 million tons of U.S. soybeans had been loaded and shipped to China in July, since Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka at the G20 summit at the end of June.

China bought 130,000 tons of soybeans, 120,000 tons of sorghum, 60,000 tons of wheat, 40,000 tons of pork and products, and 25,000 tons of cotton from the United States between July 19 and Aug. 2, Cong said according to the report.

Weekly U.S. data on Aug. 1 confirmed the first new U.S. soybean sale to China since June, of 68,000 tons from the crop that will be harvested this fall. Additional sales through Aug. 1 could be recorded in the next U.S. government export sales report on Thursday.

Two million tons of U.S. soybeans destined for China will be loaded in August, followed by another 300,000 tons in September, Cong said.

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday less than 600,000 tons of soybeans were inspected for export to China the week ended Aug. 1, fewer than the previous week.

…

The escalating trade tensions between the United States and China that sent U.S. stock prices plunging Monday continued to reverberate around the globe as Asian stock prices opened sharply lower at the start of Tuesday’s trading session.

Both Japan’s benchmark Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng indexes both opened less than two percent at the opening bell, while China’s benchmark Shanghai index dropped more than 1.5 percent at the start.  Australia and South Korea also posted sharp losses in their early morning trading.

Tuesday’s sell-offs in Asia came hours after Wall Street posted its worst losses of the year, with the S&P 500 index losing three percent on Monday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.5 percent and Dow Jones losing nearly three percent.  The selloff was triggered by Beijing’s decision to allow its currency to fall to weaken to its lowest point in 11 years, triggering an angry response by U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter, accusing China of manipulating its currency.  

China’s move to devalue its currency gives its exporters a price edge in world markets.  

Hours later, the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated China a currency manipulator.

The months-long trade war between the world’s two biggest economies worsened last week when President Trump announced plans to impose a 10 percent increase of tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. worth $300 billion.  China has retaliated by ending all new purchases of agricultural products from the United States. 

…

China allowed its yuan to fall below the politically sensitive level of seven to the U.S. dollar on Monday for the first time in 11 years, prompting concern Beijing might use devaluation as a weapon in a tariff war with Washington.
 
The central bank blamed the exchange rate’s decline on “trade protectionism.” That followed President Donald Trump’s threat last week of more tariff hikes on Chinese goods in a bruising fight over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology policies.

The currency weakened to 7.0391 to the dollar by late afternoon, making one yuan worth 14.2 cents, its lowest level since February 2008.

“The thought of a currency war is crossing more than a few traders’ minds,” Stephen Innes of VM Markets said in a report.

The weakness of the yuan, also known as the renminbi, or “people’s money,” is among U.S. grievances against Beijing. American officials complain it makes Chinese export prices unfairly low, hurting foreign competitors and swelling Beijing’s trade surplus.

China’s central bank sets the exchange rate each morning and allows the yuan to fluctuate by 2% against the dollar during the day. The central bank can buy or sell currency or order commercial banks to do so to dampen price movements.

It appears “the currency is now also considered part of the arsenal to be drawn upon,” Robert Carnell of ING said in a report. He said Monday’s move might be part of “a concerted series of steps aimed at pushing back at the latest U.S. tariffs.”

The level of seven yuan to the dollar has no economic significance, but could revive U.S. attention to the exchange rate.
Until now, economists said the potential jolt to financial markets of falling beyond that level was big enough that the People’s Bank of China would step in to put a floor under the currency.
 
A central bank statement Monday blamed “unilateralism and trade protectionism measures,” a reference to Trump’s tariff hikes. But it tried to play down the significance of “breaking seven.”
 
“It is normal to rise and fall,” the statement said. It promised to “maintain stable operation of the foreign exchange market.”
 
Chinese leaders have promised to avoid “competitive devaluation” to boost exports by making them less expensive abroad _ a pledge the central bank governor, Yi Gang, affirmed in March. But regulators are trying to make the state-controlled exchange rate more responsive to market forces, which are pushing the yuan lower.

Trump’s tariff hikes have put downward pressure on the yuan by fueling fears economic growth might weaken.

The U.S. Treasury Department declined in May to label China a currency manipulator but said it was closely watching Beijing.
 
The yuan has lost 5% since hitting a high in February of 6.6862 to the dollar.
 
That helps exporters cope with tariffs of up to 25% imposed by Trump on billions of dollars of Chinese goods. But it raises the risk of inflaming American complaints.
 
Trump rattled financial markets Thursday by announcing plans for 10% tariffs on an additional $300 billion of Chinese goods, effective Sept. 1. That would extend penalty duties to almost all U.S. imports from China.
 
The Treasury report in May urged Beijing to take steps “to avoid a persistently weak currency.”
 
A weaker yuan also might disrupt Chinese efforts to shore up cooling economic growth. It would raise borrowing costs by encouraging an outflow of capital from the world’s second-largest economy.
 
Globally, a weaker yuan might lead to more volatility in currency markets and pressure for the dollar to strengthen, Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said in a report. That would be “unwelcome in Washington,” where Trump has threatened to weaken the dollar to boost exports.
A weaker dollar “would be bad news” for Europe and Japan, hurting demand for their exports at a time of cooling economic growth, Kuijs said.

The Chinese central bank tried to discourage speculation last August by imposing a requirement that traders post deposits for contracts to buy or sell yuan. That allows trading to continue but raises the cost.
 
Beijing imposed similar controls in October 2015 after a change in the exchange rate mechanism prompted markets to bet the yuan would fall. The currency temporarily steadied but fell the following year.

…

South Korea’s president on Monday described the country’s escalating trade war with Japan as a wake-up call to revamp its economy and issued a nationalistic call for economic cooperation with North Korea, which he said would allow the Koreas to erase Japan’s economic superiority in “one burst.”

President Moon Jae-in’s comments were made during a meeting with senior aides to discuss Japan’s imposing of trade curbs on South Korea. They came as a surprise as North Korea has raised tensions in recent weeks with tests of new short-range weapons that experts say pose a serious threat to the South Korea’s security.
 
“The advantage Japan’s economy has over us is the size of its [overall] economy and domestic market. If the South and North could create a peace economy through economic cooperation, we can catch up with Japan’s superiority in one burst,” Moon said during the meeting at Seoul’s presidential Blue House.
 
 “Japan absolutely cannot prevent our economy from taking a leap. Rather, [Japan] will serve as a stimulant that strengthens our determination to become an economic power,” he said.
 
Some analysts say Moon is getting desperate to find any leverage against Japan, which for decades has maintained a huge trade surplus with South Korea, and they question whether there could be any possible way for Seoul to use inter-Korean relations to boost its position against Tokyo.
 
Even if inter-Korean economic cooperation is fully resumed after quick progress in nuclear diplomacy — a possibility that looks increasingly unlikely — rebuilding the North’s dismal economy following decades of isolation and policy blunders could be a long and excruciating process.
 
Moon has described Japan’s moves to downgrade South Korea’s trade status and tighten controls on exports to South Korean manufacturers as a deliberate attempt to damage his country’s export-dependent economy. He has accused Tokyo of weaponizing trade to retaliate over political disputes surrounding the countries’ bitter wartime history.
 
Tokyo says its measures are based on national security concerns and, without providing specific evidence, has questioned the credibility of South Korea’s export controls on sensitive products. Japanese officials have also claimed that South Korea could not be trusted to faithfully implement sanctions against North Korea and suggested that the South may have allowed sensitive materials to reach the North.
 
North Korea and Japan didn’t immediately respond to Moon’s comments. The North has been demanding that Seoul turn away from Washington and restart inter-Korean economic projects held back by U.S.-led sanctions against the North. The U.S. has said the sanctions should stay in place until the North takes concrete steps to relinquish its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
 
The North has significantly reduced its diplomatic activity with the South amid a stalemate in the larger nuclear negotiations with the U.S. It has been ramping up its weapons tests, including two test firings of what it described as a new rocket artillery system last week, while expressing frustration over the slow pace of diplomacy and the continuance of U.S.-South Korea military drills that it sees as an invasion rehearsal.
 
Choi Kang, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said Moon’s comments Monday could create friction with Washington and also send a wrong message to North Korea, which may think that its brinkmanship is working and push further to increase pressure on Seoul.
 
He said Moon’s comments are “a confession that Seoul doesn’t have many cards in its hands.”
 
He said it was unclear whether Moon’s suggestion that he could create a breakthrough in the trade row with Japan through inter-Korean relations was be realistic.
 
Choi also said Moon’s words would strengthen views that the trade dispute between South Korea and Japan may signal a larger geopolitical divergence between the U.S. allies over North Korea and other security issues. He said that may complicate Washington’s efforts to maintain cooperation to deal with the North’s nuclear threat and counter the regional influence of China.
 
Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times last year and the leaders agreed to resume economic cooperation when possible, voicing optimism that international sanctions could end to allow such activity. But the inter-Korean peace process has halted since the collapse of a nuclear summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in February over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament.
 
Earlier on Monday, South Korea said it plans to spend 7.8 trillion won ($6.5 billion) over the next seven years to develop technologies for industrial materials and parts as it moves to reduce its dependence on imports. The government will also financially support South Korean companies in mergers and acquisitions of foreign companies and expand tax benefits to lure more international investment, while easing labor and environmental regulations so that local companies could boost their production, the country’s trade ministry said.
 
 South Korea’s plans are aimed at stabilizing the supply of 100 key materials and parts in semiconductors, display screens, automobiles and other major export sectors, where its companies have heavily relied on Japanese imports to produce finished products.
 
On Friday, Japan’s Cabinet approved the removal of South Korea from a list of countries with preferential trade status, which would require Japanese companies to apply for case-by-case approvals for exports to South Korea of hundreds of items deemed sensitive.
 
The decision followed a July measure to strengthen controls on certain technology exports to South Korean companies that rely on Japanese materials to produce computer chips and displays used in smartphones and TVs, which are key South Korean export products.
 
South Korean officials have vowed retaliation, including taking Japan off its own “whitelist” of nations receiving preferential treatment in trade. Moon’s office said it will also consider ending its military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan as part of its countermeasures, saying it could be difficult to share sensitive information considering the deterioration of trust between the countries.

…

The United Nations investigators assembled in the departure hall of Sanaa’s airport were preparing to leave with precious evidence: laptops and external drives collected from the staff of the World Health Organization.
 
These computers, they believed, contained proof of corruption and fraud within the U.N. agency’s office in Yemen.

But before they could board their flight out, armed militiamen from the Houthi rebels ruling northern Yemen marched into the hall and confiscated the computers, according to six former and current aid officials.
 
The stunned investigators were left unharmed, but flew out without the telltale devices.
 
The Houthis had been tipped off by a WHO staffer with connections to the rebel movement who feared her theft of aid funding would be uncovered, according to the six former and current officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the seizure of the computers had not previously been made public.

The October 2018 scene at the Sanaa airport is another episode in the continuing struggle over corruption that has diverted donated food, medicine, fuel and money from desperate Yemenis amid their country’s five-year civil war.
 
More than a dozen U.N. aid workers deployed to deal with the wartime humanitarian crisis have been accused of joining with combatants on all sides to enrich themselves from the billions of dollars in donated aid flowing into the country, according to individuals with knowledge of internal U.N. investigations and confidential documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

The AP obtained U.N. investigative documents, and interviewed eight aid workers and former government officials.
 
The upshot: WHO internal auditors are investigating allegations that unqualified people were placed in high-paying jobs, millions of dollars were deposited in staffers’ personal bank accounts, dozens of suspicious contracts were approved without the proper paperwork, and tons of donated medicine and fuel went missing.
 
A second probe by another U.N. agency, UNICEF, focuses on a staffer who allowed a Houthi rebel leader to travel in agency vehicles, shielding him from potential airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition. The individuals who spoke to AP about the investigations did so on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Yemeni activists said the actions by the U.N. agencies are welcome but fall short of the kind of investigation needed to track the millions of dollars in supplies and money from aid programs that have gone missing or been diverted to the coffers of local officials on both sides of the conflict since the start of the civil war.

Over the past three months, the activists have been pushing for aid transparency in an online campaign called “Where Is The Money?” They demand that U.N. and international agencies provide financial reports on how the hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Yemen since 2015 have been spent. Last year, the agency said international donors pledged $2 billion for humanitarian efforts in Yemen.
 
The U.N. has responded with an online campaign of its own called “Check Our Results,” showing programs implemented in Yemen. The campaign does not provide detailed financial reports on how aid money is spent.
 
“We see big numbers, billions of dollars reaching Yemen, and we don’t know where they go,” Feda Yahia, a “Where is the Money?” activist, said in a video for the campaign.

The WHO probe of its Yemen office began in November with allegations of financial mismanagement against Nevio Zagaria, an Italian doctor, who was chief of the agency’s Sanaa office from 2016 until September 2018, according to three individuals with direct knowledge of the investigation.  
 
The only public announcement of the probe came in a sentence buried in the 37 pages of the internal auditor’s 2018 annual report of activities worldwide. The report did not mention Zagaria by name.
 
The report, released May 1, found that financial and administrative controls in the Yemen office were “unsatisfactory its lowest rating _ and noted hiring irregularities, no-competition contracts and lack of monitoring over procurement.
 
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic confirmed to the AP that the investigation is underway. He said Zagaria retired in September 2018, but he would not confirm or deny that Zagaria specifically was under investigation.

“The Office of Internal Oversight Services is currently investigating all concerns raised,” he said. “We must respect the confidentiality of this process and are unable go into details on specific concerns.”

Zagaria did not respond to emailed questions from the AP.

Zagaria, a 20-year WHO employee, arrived in Yemen in December 2016, after a four-year stint in the Philippines. He had earned widespread acclaim for his handling of the agency’s response to Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013.
 
Because of his work during the typhoon, Zagaria seemed the perfect person to lead the agency’s humanitarian efforts in Yemen, a massive operation, providing support for more than 1,700 hospitals and health centers around the country.
 
But from the beginning, six current and former workers said, the WHO’s Yemen office under Zagaria was riddled with corruption and nepotism.
 
Zagaria brought in junior staffers who worked with him in the Philippines and promoted them to high-salary posts that they were not qualified for, three individuals said.
 
Two of them a Filipino university student and a former intern were given senior posts, but their only role was to take care of Zagaria’s dog, two of the officials said.

“Incompetent staff with heavy salaries” undermined the quality of work and monitoring of projects and created “many loopholes for corruption,” a former aid official said.

Zagaria also allegedly approved suspicious contracts signed by staffers with no competitive bidding or documentation for the spending, according to internal documents reviewed by the AP.
 
The documents show that local firms contracted to provide services at WHO’s Aden office were later found to have hired WHO staffers’ friends and family and overcharged for services. The owner of one firm was seen handing cash to one staffer, the documents show an apparent kickback.

Four people aware of the activities in the office said a WHO staffer named Tamima al-Ghuly was the one who notified the Houthis that the investigators were leaving with the laptops. They said she had been fabricating payrolls, adding ghost employees and collecting their salaries or taking cash to hire people. Among those she put on the payroll was her husband, a member of a leading Houthi family, they said.
 
Al-Ghuly has since been suspended, but remains a WHO employee, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the incident. She did not respond to AP’s attempts to reach her.

Under Zagaria, aid funds meant to be spent during emergencies were also used with little accountability or monitoring, according to internal documents.

Under WHO rules, aid money can be transferred directly into the accounts of staffers, a measure meant to speed up the purchasing of goods and services in a crisis. The WHO says the arrangement is needed to keep operations going in remote areas because Yemen’s banking sector is not fully functioning.

Because they are supposed to be restricted to emergencies, there is no requirement that spending of these direct transfers be itemized. Zagaria approved direct transfers of cash worth a total of $1 million for certain staffers, according to internal documents. But in many cases it was unclear how they spent the money.  

Omar Zein, a deputy head of the agency’s Aden branch who worked under Zagaria, received several hundred thousand dollars in aid money to his personal account, according to interviews with officials and internal documents. But Zein could not explain what happened to more than half of the money, internal documents show.

Four individuals with direct knowledge of the aid operations in southern Yemen said that even as Zein held his WHO position, he also served as an official adviser to the health minister in the Aden-based government and ran his own private nonprofit that had a $1.3 million contract with the U.N. to run nutritional programs in the southern city of Mukalla. These arrangements created conflicts of interest, the individuals said.

UNICEF later refused to renew the contract with Zein’s nonprofit after discovering the organization was fabricating reports and had no actual presence on the ground in the city of Mukalla, two individuals with knowledge of the programs said.

When contacted by the AP, Zein declined comment and said he had left his post at the health ministry.

Asked if he were under investigation for corruption, he said, ‘The one who leaked this to you can provide you an answer.”

WHO isn’t the only U.N. agency looking into allegations of wrongdoing by its staffers in Yemen.
 
According to three people with knowledge of the probe, UNICEF is investigating Khurram Javed, a Pakistani national who is suspected of letting a senior Houthi official use an agency vehicle.
 
That effectively gave the Houthi official protection from airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, since UNICEF clears its vehicles’ movements with the coalition to ensure their safety. Officials say they fear the agency’s vehicles could be targeted by airstrikes if coalition forces believe they are being used to shield Houthi rebels.
 
Javed was well known for his close ties to Houthi security agencies; he boasted that he used his connection to prevent UNICEF auditors from entering the country, a former co-worker and an aid official said.  The Houthi rebels even put up a large billboard of him on a Sanaa street, thanking him for his services.

Javed could not be reached for comment. UNICEF officials confirmed that as part of an ongoing probe, an investigative team had traveled to Yemen to look into the allegations. They said Javed has been transferred to another office but did not disclose the location.
 
According to several people who spoke to the AP, close ties between U.N. staffers and local officials on both sides of the conflict are common.
 
A confidential report by a U.N. panel of experts on Yemen, obtained by the AP, said Houthi authorities constantly pressure aid agencies, forcing them to hire loyalists, intimidating them with threats to revoke visas and aiming to control their movements and project implementation.

Officials said it’s unclear how many staffers may be aiding combatants. The officials said several incidents in recent years indicate the U.N. staffers may have been involved in the theft of aid supplies.

Internal U.N. reports from 2016 and 2017 obtained by the AP show several incidents where trucks carrying medical supplies were hijacked by Houthi rebels in the battleground province of Taiz. The supplies were later given to Houthi fighters on the front lines fighting the Saudi-led coalition or sold in pharmacies in territory controlled by the rebel group.

An official who help draft the reports said it was “obvious there were some individuals who were working with Houthis behind the scene because there was coordination on the movement of trucks.”
 
Another official said the U.N.’s inability or unwillingness to address the alleged corruption in its aid programs harms the agency’s efforts to help Yemenis affected by the war.
 
“This is scandalous to any agency and ruins the impartiality of U.N.,” the aid official said.

…

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has slammed China’s “destabilizing” actions in the Indo-Pacific region during his first trip to the region.

Speaking to reporters in Sydney with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their Australian counterparts, Esper said the United States is “firmly against a disturbing pattern of aggressive behavior, destabilizing behavior from China.”

Esper and Pompeo pointed to Beijing’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea and accused it of promoting the state-sponsored theft of other nation’s intellectual property, and “predatory economics.”

The last was an apparent reference to so-called “debt traps” like a 2017 arrangement that gave China control of a port in Sri Lanka. After failing to keep up with its debt payments to China, Sri Lanka handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land to the Chinese government for 99 years.

China has arguably undertaken the largest transfer of intellectual property in human history, according to Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Bowman told VOA that intellectual property stolen by Beijing has been used to modernize Chinese weapons which, in the event of a future military conflict, would be used to kill Americans and their allies.

“The United States will not stand by idly while any one nation attempts to reshape the region to its favor at the expense of others,” Esper said.

Pompeo said Sunday the United States was not asking nations to “choose” between the U.S. and China.

However, allies in the region have grown increasingly worried amid increasing economic and military tensions between China and the United States.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne praised the strong “mateship” between the United States and Australia, but added that China is also a vitally important partner for her country.

“It’s in no one’s interest for the Indo-Pacific to become more competitive or adversarial in character,” she said.

Southeast Asian nations grappled with the prospect of choosing sides in June during the annual Shangri-la Dialogue defense forum in Singapore. The question loomed so large that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned of smaller countries being “forced” to take sides.

…

Updated Aug.4, 2:10PM

In 13 hours of carnage in the United States, two shooters in separate incidents killed 29 people and injured dozens, leaving authorities searching for motives behind the mayhem.

A gunman wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines of ammunition was shot to death by police less than a minute after he opened fire early Sunday in a popular nightlife area in the Midwest city of Dayton, Ohio. The man killed nine people including his own sister and injured at least 27, four of them seriously.

Police said they believe there was only one shooter in the incident, but have yet to suggest a motive. News accounts identified the shooter as 24-year-old Connor Betts, who identifies himself on social media as a psychology student at a community college in the Dayton area.

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said the quick response by police “saved literally hundreds of lives” in the crowded Oregon district of the city filled with bars, restaurants and theaters.

She said the gunman was carrying a .223-caliber semi-automatic weapon, the same-sized weapon a gunman employed in the one of the most horrific mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years, the assault in which 20 school children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

The Ohio bloodshed occurred about 13 hours after police in the U.S.-Mexican border city of El Paso, Texas, say a gunman opened fired at a Walmart store, killing at least 20 people and wounding 26 — an attack authorities say they are investigating as a possible hate crime targeting Hispanics.

The El Paso and Dayton incidents are the nation’s 21st and 22nd mass killing incidents this year, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The archive defines a mass killing as four or more people shot dead, excluding the gunman, at one location. A separate database counts more than 250 incidents this year in which four or more people have been killed or wounded.

The latest incidents occurred a week after a gunman killed three at a food festival in California and followed the killing of 58 at a country music festival in 2017 in California, 49 at an Orlando, Fla., night club in 2016 and 25 at a Texas church in 2017.

U.S. authorities occasionally try to figure out ways to stop the slaughter of innocents in a country where gun ownership is enshrined as a constitutional right. Some lawmakers have attempted to curb gun ownership or stiffen the regulations surrounding gun sales, but have generally been rebuffed by other lawmakers opposed to new restrictions.

After the Dayton attack, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said he was angered that state and national lawmakers won’t approve more gun controls, saying politicians’ “thoughts and prayers are not enough” of a response to mass killings.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday on Twitter, “The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!”

The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2019

“God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio,” he implored.

God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2019

Several Democratic presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke — blamed Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric for fostering a climate of hate leading to the El Paso shooting.

 “Donald Trump is responsible for this,” Booker told CNN. “He is responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry.”

But acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney rejected any attempt to blame Trump.

“I blame the people who are sick,” Mulvaney told NBC’s Meet the Press interview show. “People are going to hear what they want to hear,” but added: “This was a political motive by a crazy person.”

In El Paso, police chief Greg Allen said police are seeking to confirm that the 21-year-old white male suspect now in custody was the author of an online posting predicting a shooting spree intended to target Hispanics.

The suspect was identified by police as Patrick Crusius, who lived in the Dallas area, hundreds of kilometers away from El Paso.

The post appeared online about an hour before the shooting and included language that complained about the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The author of the manifesto wrote that he expected to be killed during the attack.

The writer of the manifesto denied that he was a white supremacist, but decried “race mixing” in the United States, calling instead for territorial enclaves separated by race. The first sentence of the document expressed support for the man accused of killing 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March, after he had posted his own conspiracy theory that non-white migrants were replacing whites.

Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said in a statement that in El Paso, “This vile act of terrorism against Hispanic Americans was inspired by divisive racial and ethnic rhetoric and enabled by weapons of war. The language in the shooter’s manifesto is consistent with President Donald Trump’s description of Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.'”

Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said, “Today’s shooting is a stark reminder of the dangers of such rhetoric.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were killed in the shooting and six Mexicans were wounded.
 
Trump said Saturday that he and first lady Melania Trump “send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the great people of Texas.”

He also tweeted: “Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice.  I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.”
 
Police began receiving calls about 10:39 a.m. local time with multiple reports of a shooting at Walmart and the nearby Cielo Vista Mall complex on the east side of the city.

 
Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesman with the El Paso Police Department, said most of the shootings occurred at the Walmart, where there were more than 1,000 shoppers and 100 employees. Many families were taking advantage of a sales-tax holiday to shop for back-to-school supplies, officials said.
 
“This is unprecedented in El Paso,” Gomez said of the mass shooting.
 
Gomez said an assault-style rifle was used in the shooting.

El Paso, a city of about 680,000 people in western Texas, shares the border with Juarez, Mexico.

…

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is crisscrossing the Asia-Pacific region on his first international trip as head of the Defense Department. The trip began as the U.S. withdrew from a decades-old arms control pact with Russia, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The withdrawal means Washington and Moscow are free to develop ground-based missiles with a range of 500-5,500km. And that could be bad news for a country that was never even part of the pact–China. Our VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb is traveling with Esper and explains why.

…

LONDON — Lawmakers will be unable to stop a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31 by bringing down Britain’s government in a vote of no confidence next month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top aide has advised, according to the Sunday Telegraph. 

Dominic Cummings, one of architects of the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union, told ministers that Johnson could schedule a general election after the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline if he loses a vote of no confidence in parliament, the newspaper said, citing sources. 

Johnson has promised to lead Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal but has a working majority of just one after his Conservative Party lost a parliamentary seat on Friday. 

Some of his lawmakers have hinted they would vote against him to prevent a no-deal Brexit — a rising prospect that has sent the pound tumbling to 30-month lows against the dollar over the last few days. 

Lawmakers are unable to table a motion of no confidence before next month because the House of Commons is in recess until Sept. 3. 

“[Lawmakers] don’t realize that if there is a no-confidence vote in September or October, we’ll call an election for after the 31st and leave anyway,” Cummings was quoted by one of the Sunday Telegraph’s sources as saying. 

Johnson has said he would prefer to the leave the EU with a deal but has rejected the Irish backstop — an insurance policy to prevent the return of a hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland — which the EU says is key to any agreement. 

The main opposition Labour Party has said it will oppose any Brexit deal brought forward by Johnson if it does not protect jobs, workers’ rights and the environment. 

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MEXICO CITY — U.S. federal prosecutors have accused the Honduran government of essentially functioning as a narco-state, with the current and former presidents having received campaign contributions from cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection. 
 
A 49-page document filed in New York’s southern district on Friday refers to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez as a co-conspirator who worked with his brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, and former President Porfirio Lobo “to use drug trafficking to help assert power and control in Honduras.” 
 
It says that the president and his predecessor “relied on drug proceeds” to fund political campaigns and cites “evidence of high-level political corruption.” 
 
The filing came months after other U.S. federal court documents showed the current president and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation, casting further doubt on the United States’ assertion that Honduras has helped stop the flow of drugs.  

U.S. support 
  
The U.S. government has been a staunch supporter of Hernandez’s government, pouring millions of dollars into security cooperation to stop cocaine headed to the U.S. from South America. 
 
The office of the Honduran president said via Twitter on Saturday that Hernandez “categorically denies the false and perverse accusations.”  
  
It later issued a separate, lengthier statement suggesting that the allegations in New York were put forward by drug dealers seeking retaliation against the president, who was head of the Central American country’s congress in 2012 when the legislature authorized extradition of Honduran nationals to face drug-trafficking charges in the U.S. 
 
Since then, the president’s office said, more than 40 Hondurans have been extradited and others have negotiated plea deals with U.S. officials in exchange for information. 
 
“President Hernandez has been relentless in the fight against drug traffickers despite predictable reprisals, to the point that one of his 17 siblings, a younger brother, is now being tried in New York,” the office said.  
  
Specifically, New York prosecutors allege that the president used $1.5 million in drug trafficking proceeds to help secure power in 2013. That campaign support came via cash bribes to Honduran officials as well as gifts and favors to local politicians, prosecutors argue. Hernandez won re-election in 2017, despite term limits in Honduras and widespread allegations of election fraud. 
 

The filing also alludes to multiple payments of $1 million or more from drug dealers to Lobo. 
 
Lobo’s wife was arrested by Honduran officials in 2018 on charges of diverting $700,000 in public funds. His son, Fabio, was sentenced in the U.S. to 24 years in prison in 2017 for drug trafficking. 
 
Lobo was Hernandez’s mentor and oversaw his rise to power.  
  
Upcoming case

The filing forms part of pre-trial documents in an upcoming case against Tony Hernandez, who was arrested in 2018 in Miami on charges of smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. 
 
Prosecutors describe Tony Hernandez as a “violent, multi-ton drug trafficker” with significant influence over high-ranking Honduran officials, who in turn protected his shipments and turf. They also say that members of the Honduran National Police escorted his cocaine through the country’s waters and airspace, while Lobo once deployed military personnel to the nation’s border with Guatemala to deter another drug trafficker from encroaching on territory in western Honduras. 
 
On at least two occasions, prosecutors say Tony Hernandez helped arrange murders of drug-trafficking rivals, one of whom he had executed by a member of the national police. That hit man was later promoted to chief of police, they say. 
 
The court filing included an image of a kilo of cocaine monogrammed with the initials TH, which prosecutors say stood for Tony Hernandez. 
 
The DEA says Tony Hernandez’s trafficking career began in 2004 and continued after he won a seat in Honduras’ congress in 2014. It’s unclear why Hernandez was in Miami when U.S. officials arrested him last year. 
 
Separately, on Friday, a New York judged sentenced Honduran Hector Emilio Fernandez Rosa to life in prison for drug trafficking.  
  
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman, who is also handling the Tony Hernandez case, said Fernandez paid millions of dollars in bribes to Honduran officials during his career, including a $2 million payment to former President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales. 
 
Zelaya was forced out of office via a 2009 coup, after which Lobo was elected president. 

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Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings took the high road Saturday, inviting President Donald Trump and other Americans to visit Baltimore but declining to respond in kind to the barrage of presidential tweets and comments disparaging him and the majority-black city he has long represented.

“We are a great community,” Cummings, the chairman of the powerful House Oversight committee investigating the administration, said in his first public remarks about the controversy as he participated in the midday opening of a small neighborhood park near his home.

Community leaders and residents gathered to cut the ribbon on a pocket of greenery and flowers, built from what had been a vacant lot often used as a dumping ground for trash.

“Come to Baltimore. Do not just criticize us, but come to Baltimore and I promise you, you will be welcomed,” he said.

‘President welcome to our district’

Cummings said he doesn’t have time for those who criticize the city where he grew up but wants to hear from people willing to help make the community better. He noted the outpouring of support he has received, thousands of emails, and the presence at the event of leaders from the University of Maryland’s medical center, foundations and businesses. He wore a hat and polo shirt by Under Armour, the popular apparel maker headquartered in Baltimore.

Asked directly by reporters afterward if there would be a meeting with Trump, the congressman said he’d love to see Trump in the city.

“The president is welcome to our district,” he said.

In a weeklong series of attacks, Trump called the Baltimore district a “rat and rodent infested mess” and complained about Cummings, whose district includes key parts of the city.

The president widened his attack on other cities he did not name but complained are run by Democrats. His comments were widely seen as a race-centered attack on big cities with minority populations.

Cummings’ comments Saturday came at another pivotal juncture for the administration, as half of House Democrats now say they favor launching an impeachment inquiry against Trump. It’s a threshold that pushes renewed focus on the issue, even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declined to move ahead with proceedings unless there is a greater groundswell, including in public opinion.

Cummings, whose committee is one of the six House committees investigating the Trump administration, said Saturday he was not yet ready to support impeachment.

“There may well come a time when impeachment is appropriate,” he told reporters. But for now, he said, he agrees with Pelosi’s approach and said that his committee would continue its investigations. “I’m trying to be fair to him,” he said. “That’s why we need to do our research.”

A long-struggling city

Under sunny skies, with a light breeze, the neighborhood situated in a historic part of West Baltimore offered another view of a city that struggled long before Trump’s disparaging tweets, a once-gilded American seaport now confronted with other problems.

Leaders from the community spoke of the region’s historic segregation in housing and how that legacy impacted neighborhoods.

Cummings recounted the city’s famous residents, including the late Thurgood Marshall, a justice of the Supreme Court, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, a noted black scholar who testified recently in Congress on reparations for slavery. The congressman also gave a nod to his own family’s history, his parents arriving from a Southern state, to build a better life for their children, and his ascent from the community to law school and the halls of Congress for two decades.

To residents, especially young people, he said, “Let no one define you.”

Trying to ‘lift up’ president

Residents said they were heartened by the attention being paid to Baltimore, and they too urged the White House to consider the way the president’s comments may land in a community.

Jackie Cornish, a founder of the Druid Heights community development corporation more than 40 years ago, said she hoped Trump and Cummings could put their collective power together and work for the good of the city. While she feels the president has “disrespected our congressman as well as disrespected our city,” she also said: “We still respect our president. As long as he’s president, we’re trying to lift him up.”

Amos Gaskins, who lives across the street from the park and stepped out to greet Cummings, said the congressman has been through “a lot” and added, “He’s doing a great job, a beautiful job.”

“We’re not what you call a dirty city and a dirty people,” Gaskins said. “Donald Trump shouldn’t have said that. That’s uncalled for.”

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This story originated in VOA’s Serbian Service. Some information is from Reuters.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer says an unresolved extortion investigation in North Macedonia could undermine prospects for the small Balkan nation’s long-awaited European Union accession talks.

North Macedonia’s former chief Special Prosecutor, Katica Janeva, unexpectedly tendered her resignation last month amid allegations that she masterminded a scheme to extort millions from an indicted businessman in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Janeva’s Special Prosecution Office (SPO), an organized-crime-busting outfit also tasked with addressing high-level corruption, has long been emblematic of the former Yugoslav republic’s transatlantic aspirations. By spearheading investigations of the now-ousted authoritarian regime of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, Janeva’s office was largely mandated to restore rule of law.

“These are serious charges and all such serious charges require a serious response,” Palmer told VOA’s Serbian Service. “We support a complete, thorough, transparent investigation of these charges and, if the evidence is there, then appropriate prosecution. This is really an opportunity for the authorities in North Macedonia to demonstrate fealty to adherence to the rule of law.”

The country changed its name from Macedonia to North Macedonia in February, ending a more than two-decade dispute with Greece over its name, and removing an obstacle to EU and NATO membership.

Just last week, EU commissioner Johannes Hahn said Skopje needs to reform the judiciary to ensure it can handle high-level crime and corruption cases before the EU can set a date to start accession talks, but that he was “confident that the decision (on the start of EU accession talks) will be taken in October.”

Palmer said he’s optimistic talks can begin this fall, but that resolving the Janeva investigation will be key to ensuring it happens.

Both of North Macedonia’s major political parties have been squabbling over the drafting of a law to regulate the prosecution, which will determine the fate of the special prosecutor’s office that Janeva used to run.

“We believe that North Macedonia has earned that opportunity [to have EU accession talks begin this year], but … signals that the government sends — and the success of the SPO law — will be important to that.”

Whether new legislation can be ratified, a precondition for EU accession talks, will determine the pace of North Macedonia’s European accession process, which is why both U.S. and EU officials have repeatedly pressed both parties, the right-wing opposition VMRO-DPMNE and ruling Social Democratic Union, to come to an agreement.

Meetings between party officials earlier this week produced indications of progress, but working groups are still in negotiations.

“It’s important that these parties come together, negotiate, resolve their differences and reach an agreement on how the SPO can be reformed or modified in a manner that advances the interests of the country,” Palmer told VOA.

“There’s been enough politicking. The time for politicking is over. Now is the time for statesmanship,” he said.

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Another scientific study has confirmed that trees can have a far-reaching effect in stemming global warming by removing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Tree-planting advocates say this is something they’ve known for decades, and the world is finally getting the message. Mike O’Sullivan has more from Los Angeles.

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There are 48 insects included on the U.S. Endangered Species List, and the only way any insect has ever come off the list is through extinction. This is especially troubling for the world’s butterfly populations, which have declined by 20% in the last decades. Erika Celeste takes us to visit one of the rarest wild butterfly populations in the world, the Mitchell’s satyr butterfly at the Sarett Nature Center in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
 

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Indonesian authorities on Friday urged people living near the coast to move to higher ground, after issuing a tsunami warning in the wake of a magnitude 7 earthquake off the islands of Sumatra and Java.

The Indonesian geophysics agency issued a tsunami warning after the quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey said had a magnitude of 7 and hit at a depth of 59 km (37 miles), about 227 km (141 miles) from the city of Teluk Betung in Banten province on the island of Java.

Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said on its Twitter feed that residents on the Banten coast should “immediately evacuate to higher ground.”

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, but strong tremors were felt in Jakarta, the capital, prompting people to run out of office buildings.

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