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.
A boy rides his bicycle, July 29. 2019, after volunteering to paint a mural outside the New Song Community Church in the Sandtown section of Baltimore.
‘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.
FILE – House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., speaks to members of the media before Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan appears before a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 18, 2019.
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.”
An entire block of vacant row houses in West Baltimore, within the 7th Congressional District of Representative Elijah Cummings. (VOA/C. Presutti)
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.”
A woman enjoys lunch at the Mount Vernon Place Square in the Mount Vernon section of Baltimore, July 29, 2019.
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.”
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.”
FILE – Newly elected President of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski, right, walks with outgoing president Gjorge Ivanov, during his inauguration ceremony in Skopje, North Macedonia, May 12, 2019.
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.”
FILE – Protesters take part in a demonstration near the Greek Parliament against the agreement with Skopje to rename neighbouring country Macedonia as the Republic of North Macedonia, Jan. 20, 2019 in Athens.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Taliban targeted a police checkpoint in Afghanistan’s central province of Day Kundi on Friday, killing at least 10 policemen, provincial officials said as the U.S. envoy for talks with the insurgents pressed ahead with meetings with key players in the conflict.
The governor of Day Kundi, Anwar Rahmati, said that along with the 10 killed, 15 policemen were also wounded in the attack, which took place in the district of Patu. The insurgents also suffered casualties, he said.
However, provincial councilman Ghayrat Jawaheri gave a higher death toll, saying 13 policemen were killed in the attack. The different tolls could not immediately be reconciled.
Also Friday, a second Taliban attack in Day Kundi, this one in Kijran district, left one police officer dead and another wounded, Rahmati said. The district has been “under the attack of the Taliban since at least one month” he added.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusouf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the Patu attack but didn’t immediately comment on the Kijran assault.
The Taliban now effectively control half the country and stage near-daily attacks, mainly targeting Afghan security forces and government officials or those they see as siding with the government. Many civilians caught in the crossfire are also killed.
Since late last year, the insurgents have been meeting with U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad for talks on finding a peaceful resolution to the nearly 18-year war, America’s longest conflict.
Khalilzad has shuttled between Kabul, Islamabad and the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office. The Taliban refuse to negotiate directly with the Kabul government, considering it a U.S. puppet.
On Friday, Khalilzad concluded a two-day visit to Pakistan during which he met with Prime Minister Imran Khan, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and country’s powerful army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. From Islamabad, he left for Qatar and was expected to be in Doha later in the day for another round of talks with the Taliban.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said Khalilzad “outlined the positive momentum in the Afghan peace process and next steps” in his meetings with Pakistani officials.
“They also discussed the role Pakistan has played in support of the process and additional positive steps Pakistan can take,” the embassy statement said.
Khalilzad has hinted that an agreement between Washington and the Taliban could be reached in the next round of talks.
“In Doha, if the Taliban do their part, we will do ours, and conclude the agreement we have been working on,” he tweeted Wednesday, adding he was “Wrapping up my most productive visit to #Afghanistan since I took this job as Special Rep.”
Indian security officials on Friday said they had found evidence of attacks planned by Pakistani military-backed militants on a major Hindu pilgrimage in the disputed Muslim-dominated region of Kashmir.
Tension has run high in the mountainous region since a vehicle laden with explosive rammed into an Indian police convoy on Feb. 14, killing 40 paramilitary policemen, and leading to aerial clashes between the two nations.
Indian officials said a mine with Pakistan ordinance marking was among caches of ammunition, explosives and weapons retrieved following intelligence reports of likely attacks on routes used by hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus who trek to the region’s holy Amarnath cave every year.
In an order issued on Friday, the government in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir effectively called off the pilgrimage and asked the gathered pilgrims to return home, citing the intelligence reports.
“The Pakistan ordinance factory markings (on the mine)…clearly indicate (the) Pakistan army is involved in terrorism in Kashmir,” Indian military commander Lieutenant-General K.J.S. Dhillon told a news conference in Srinagar.
There was no immediate comment from spokesmen for Pakistan’s military and its foreign ministry.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been the site of decades of hostility between nuclear arch-rivals India and Pakistan. Both countries claim it in full but rule it in part.
India accuses Pakistan of funding armed militants, along with separatist groups in India’s portion of the region considered non-violent by international observers.
Islamabad denies the Indian accusation, saying it provides only diplomatic and moral support to the separatist movement.
Dhillon said security forces in Kashmir, where more than 300 people have died in just the last six months, were still being targeted with improvised explosive devices.
“All these things are an indication that Pakistan and the Pakistani army is desperate to disrupt peace in Kashmir Valley,” he said.
Police had received intelligence reports there could be an increase in militant-led violence, Kashmir police chief Dilbagh Singh told the briefing in the region’s main city of Srinagar.
India has moved an additional 10,000 paramilitary troops into the restive region, because of the security situation, training requirements and the need for rotation, a home ministry official said on Friday.
The influx swells an estimated 40,000 troops already in the region to provide security for the Amarnath pilgrimage. The new deployment has caused concern among residents that Indian security forces planned another major crackdown.
People had bought provisions in bulk over the last week, but more have lined up since this morning, said Zahoor Ahmad, the owner of a grocery in Srinagar.
“We are running out of stocks due to panic buying,” he said.
Poland on Thursday scrapped its personal income tax for young employees earning less than $22,000 a year, as part of a drive to reverse a brain drain and demographic decline that’s dimming the prospects of a country that is otherwise experiencing strong economic growth.
A new law by the right-wing government took effect Thursday, slashing the personal income tax from 18 percent to zero for workers under the age of 26 below the income threshold. It is expected to boost the earnings of nearly 2 million Poles at home, and the government hopes it will also persuade young Poles working abroad to return home.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said he hoped it would “prevent a further loss, a bleeding of the population that is especially painful for a nation, a society, when it concerns the young generation.”
But there were strong doubts if the tax relief would stop the drain of talented and educated young Poles to London, Berlin and other cities that offer higher wages and other opportunities.
”I do not think it would stop me and my peers from leaving,” said Paulina Rokicka, a 19-year-old in Warsaw who works part-time at a TV station. “It seems to me that we will want to leave [anyway] because there are better perspectives abroad than in Poland.”
Introduced ahead of fall parliamentary elections, the exemption is part of a larger package of social benefits that has earned the government strong voter support but raised worries about strains on state finances. They include cash bonuses to families with children and a one-off payment to pensioners.
Morawiecki said that some 1.5 million Poles, a number comparable to the population of Warsaw, have emigrated since the nation of 38 million joined the European Union in 2004. Some other estimates have put that number at 2 million but it is hard to pin down exactly due to the large number of those who go back and forth.
While wages still are far lower than in the West, Poland’s economy is growing at around 4.5% and unemployment had dipped below 6%. In order to fill labor shortages companies have turned to hiring migrants, mostly Ukrainians, some 2 million of whom are estimated to be working in Poland.
The government says it is focusing on innovation where young inventive minds are highly valued.
Morawiecki recently urged a gathering of young people to “stay here, to take your future in your own hands and be enterprising.”
The government estimates the program will cost the budget some 2 billion zlotys ($519 million) a year.
Pawel Jurek, the Finance Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press on Thursday that young Poles will now have more money left in their bank accounts to allow them to start families earlier. But he said the most important aim is to keep professionals in the country.
Maciej Biernacki, another young employee in Warsaw, also voiced doubts that the tax relief would sway many people, calling it only “one small” element that would be considered in people’s life decisions. More important, he said, are issues like business predictability and how the country is run.
”I doubt that this kind of exemption would make anyone stay here in the country if he hesitates about whether to leave or stay,” the 25-year-old public relations manager told the AP.
A recent survey by the National Bank of Poland showed that some 15 percent of Polish emigres would be willing to return home, especially from Britain, where the prospect of a hard Brexit threatens economic pain.
The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island’s ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82% of its surface covered in ice.
The area of the Greenland ice sheet that is showing indications of melt has been growing daily, and hit a record 56.5% for this year on Wednesday, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. She says that’s expected to expand and peak on Thursday before cooler temperatures slow the pace of the melt.
More than 10 billion tons (11 billion U.S. tons) of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 197 billion tons (217 billion U.S. tons) from Greenland in July, she said.
”It looks like the peak will be today. But the long-term forecast is for continuing warm and sunny weather in Greenland, so that means the amount of the ice loss will continue,” she said Thursday in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.
The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons — or 1 gigaton — of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said. And 100 billion tons (110 billion U.S. tons) corresponds to a 0.28 mm (0.01 inch) rise in global sea levels.
Mottram said since June 1 — roughly the start of the ice-loss season — the Greenland ice sheet has lost 240 gigatons (240 billion metric tons) this year. That compares with 290 gigatons lost overall in the 2012 melt season, which usually goes through the end of August.
A June 2019 study by scientists in the U.S. and Denmark said melting ice in Greenland alone will add between 5 and 33 centimeters (2 to 13 inches) to rising global sea levels by the year 2100. If all the ice in Greenland melted — which would take centuries — the world’s oceans would rise by 7.2 meters (23 feet, 7 inches), the study found.
The current melting has been brought on by the arrival of the same warm air from North Africa and Spain that melted European cities and towns last week, setting national temperature records in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Britain.
In Russia, meanwhile, forest fires caused by hot, dry weather and spread by high winds are raging over nearly 30,000 square kilometers (11,580 sq. miles) of territory in Siberia and the Russian Far East, an area the size of Belgium. The smoke from these fires, some of them in Arctic territory, is so heavy it can easily be seen in satellite photos and is causing air quality problems in Russia’s third-largest city, Novosibirsk. Protesters in Moscow on Thursday were demanding that the government do more to fight the blazes.
Greenland has also been battling a slew of Arctic wildfires, something that Mottram said was uncommon in the past.
In Greenland, the melt area this year is the second-biggest in terms of ice area affected, behind more than 90% in 2012, said Mark Serreze, director of the Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, which monitors ice sheets globally. Records go back to 1981.
A lot of what melts can later refreeze onto the ice sheet, but because of the conditions ahead of this summer’s heat wave, the amount of ice lost for good this year might be the same as in 2012 or more, according to scientists. They noted a long build up to this summer’s ice melt — including higher overall temperatures for months — and a very dry winter with little snow in many places, which would normally offer some protection to glacier ice.
”This is certainly a weather event superimposed on this overall trend of warmer conditions” that have increasingly melted Greenland ice over the long term, Serreze said.
Compounding the melt, the Greenland ice sheet started out behind this year because of the low ice and snow accumulation, said Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Twila Moon.
With man-made climate change, “there’s a potential for these kind of rates to become more common 50 years from now,” Moon said.
Heat waves have always occurred, but Mike Sparrow, a spokesman for the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, noted that as global temperatures have risen, extreme heat waves are now occurring at least 10 times more frequently than a century ago. This year, the world saw its hottest month of June ever.
”These kind of heat waves are weather events and can occur naturally but studies have shown that both the frequency and intensity of these heat waves have increased due to global warming,” Sparrow said in a telephone interview from Geneva.
He noted that sea ice spread in the Arctic and Antarctic are both currently at record lows.
”When people talk about the average global temperature increasing by a little more than 1 degree [Celsius], that’s not a huge amount to notice if you’re sitting in Hamburg or London, but that’s a global average and it’s much greater in the polar regions,” he said.
Even though temperatures will be going down in Greenland by the end of this week, the ice melt is not likely to stop anytime soon, Mottram said.
”Over the last couple of days, you could see the warm wave passing over Greenland,” she said. “That peak of warm air has passed over the summit of the ice sheet, but the clear skies are almost as important, or maybe even more important, for the total melt of the ice sheet.”
She added that clear skies are likely to continue in Greenland “so we can still get a lot of ice melt even if the temperature is not spectacularly high.”
Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren examines the global cancer crisis and the search for a cure. Insights from Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society; Cary Adams, CEO of the Union for International Cancer Control; and Dr. Otis Brawley, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology & Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. VOA’s Mil Arcega anchors the show for Greta.
U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky is expected to give testimony in a Swedish court Thursday on the second day of his assault trial after he and two of his entourage were accused of punching and kicking a teenager.
The 30-year-old performer, producer and model, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm on the first day of the trial Tuesday. His lawyer told the court he acted in self-defense.
Mayers was detained July 3 in connection with a brawl outside a hamburger restaurant in Stockholm June 30 and later charged with assault.
On Tuesday, prosecutor Daniel Suneson showed video from security cameras and witnesses’ mobile phones and said following an altercation Mayers threw 19-year-old Mustafa Jafari to the ground, after which he and two of his entourage kicked and punched him.
The prosecutor said a bottle was used to hit Jafari, who suffered cuts and bruises.
Jafari told the court he was pushed and grabbed by the neck by Mayers’ bodyguard outside the restaurant and followed the rapper’s group to get back his headphones. He said he was then hit on the head with a bottle and kicked and punched while on the ground.
If convicted, the accused could face up to two years in jail.
FILE – Posters asking for A$AP Rocky to be freed line the wall across from the jail where the American rapper is being held on charges of assault in Stockholm, Sweden, July 25, 2019.
The case has drawn huge media attention, forcing the trial to be moved to a secure courtroom.
Celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and Rod Stewart, have leaped to Mayers’ defense and U.S. President Donald Trump asked Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven to help free Mayers.
Sweden’s judiciary is independent of the political system, and Lofven has said he will not influence the rapper’s case.
Mayers, best known for his song “Praise the Lord,” was in Stockholm for a concert. He has canceled several shows across Europe because of his detention.
The trial could run into a third day Friday. The verdict is expected at a later date.
The United States does not plan to make changes to a military drill with South Korea, a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday, despite a series of North Korean missile launches intended to pressure Seoul and Washington to stop joint exercises.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries are planning to stage a joint exercise in August, known as Dong Maeng, which is believed to be a slimmed down version of an annual drill once known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which included thousands of U.S. troops.
FILE – A South Korean army soldier passes by an advertising board during an anti-terror drill as part of Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, at Sadang Subway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 19, 2015.
North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles Wednesday after two similar missile tests last week, raising the stakes for U.S. and South Korean diplomats hoping to restart talks on North Korean denuclearization.
No plans to change
“No adjustment or change in plans that we’re aware of or are planning,” the U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
It is unclear how many U.S. troops will be involved this year, but the official noted that the exercise, as in the past, would have a large computer simulated portion.
“The main thing you want to test, exercise, practice is to make decisions in a combined decision making environment because we have an integrated command structure,” the official said.
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met June 30, but Pyongyang has since accused Washington of breaking a promise by planning the military exercises and warned the drills could derail talks.
North Korean State news agency KCNA repeated calls for the United States and South Korea to end their “hostile” joint drills, but did not mention the missile launches.
South Korea denies promise broken
South Korea has said previously that the joint military exercise would go ahead, denying Pyongyang’s charges that holding it would breach an agreement made between Trump and Kim.
“We have to do two things: We have to give the diplomats appropriate space for their diplomacy and help create an environment that is conducive to the talks when they resume … and we have to maintain readiness,” the U.S. official said.
Newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will be making his first official visit to Seoul, which the Pentagon said Tuesday was scheduled as part of a tour through Asia in August.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kelly Craft, a Republican donor who is currently ambassador to Canada, as ambassador to the United Nations, despite opposition from Democrats who criticized President Donald Trump’s nominee as not having sufficient experience for the post.
The Senate backed Craft 56 to 34, largely along party lines, moving to end seven months without a permanent U.S. envoy to the world body.
U.N. ambassador is one of several high-level positions in the Trump administration held for months by temporary appointees as the White House struggles to deal with a chronic high turnover of top administration officials.
The Senate last week confirmed Army Secretary Mark Esper, a former lobbyist, as secretary of defense, ending a record seven-month period in which the Pentagon lacked a permanent top official.
This week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats announced his resignation.
Trump nominated Craft, 57, for the U.N. post after a receiving a recommendation from Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who represents her home state of Kentucky.
She had faced fierce opposition from some Democrats. Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, accused Craft of lacking the “seriousness and professionalism” for the post at the world body.
Craft, the wife of a billionaire coal industry executive, generated controversy shortly after assuming her post in Ottawa by telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that she believed “both sides” of the climate change debate.
However, she acknowledged during her confirmation hearing that climate change is a global threat and pledged to recuse herself from any U.N. talks on the issue involving coal because of her husband’s position.
Menendez on Wednesday released a report that said Craft spent the majority of her time as ambassador to Canada outside the country.
Craft’s backers called her a tough negotiator on a trade deal with Canada and Mexico who had established decent working relationships with both Republicans and Democrats.
Craft will have the difficult job of defending Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and navigating his criticism of the United Nations while getting global diplomats to back U.S. policies.
Trump’s first U.N. ambassador, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, announced her resignation in October and left the position at the end of last year.
The first night of the second round of Democratic presidential candidate debates took place in Detroit Tuesday. The candidates answered questions on a range of issues, including health care, recent mass shootings, immigration and foreign trade.
Here are some quotes from each candidate:
Steve Bullock, in responding to a discussion on gun violence, discussed a personal story, saying: “I’m a gun owner, I hunt, like far too many people in America, I have been personally impacted by gun violence. I had an 11-year-old nephew, Jeremy, shot and killed on a playground. We need to start looking at this as a public health issue, not a political issue.”
Pete Buttigieg, who as South Bend, Indiana, mayor has been criticized for his handling of a recent racially tinged shooting, said about race: “As an urban mayor serving a diverse community, the racial divide lives within me. I’m not saying that I became mayor and racism or crime or poverty ended on my watch. But in our city, we have come together repeatedly to tackle challenges like the fact that far too many people were not getting the help they needed in their housing and so we directed it to a historically underinvested African American neighborhood. Right now in the wake of a police involved shooting, our community is moving from hurting to healing by making sure that the community can participate in things like revising the use of force policy, and making sure there are community voices on the board of safety that handles police matters.”
John Delaney, in criticizing health care plans by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, said: “We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction and telling half the country who has private health insurance that their health insurance is illegal. It’s also bad policy. It’ll under-fund the industry, many hospitals will close, and it’s bad politics. … Folks, we have a choice. We can go down the road that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren want to take us with bad policies like Medicare for All, free everything, and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get (President Donald) Trump re-elected.”
John Hickenlooper, in criticizing Senator Sanders’ health care plan, said: “I’m saying the policies of this notion that you’re going to take private insurance away from 180 million American, who many of them don’t want to give it, many of them do want to get rid of it, but some don’t, many don’t. The Green New Deal makes sure that every American’s guaranteed a government job if they want, that is a disaster. You might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump. I think we have to focus on where Donald Trump is failing.”
Amy Klobuchar, answering a question on infrastructure, discusses the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, said: “I was just in Flint, and they are still drinking bottled water in that town, and that is outrageous, and my plan, and I am the first one that came out with an infrastructure plan and I did that because this is a bread and butter issue for people that are caught in traffic jams. I truly believe that if we’re going to move on infrastructure, climate change, you need a voice from the heartland.”
Beto O’Rourke, who lives in the border town of El Paso, Texas, in explaining his stance on decriminalizing border crossings by undocumented immigrants, said: “In my administration, after we have waived citizenship fees for green card holders, more than 9 million of our fellow Americans, free Dreamers who many fear of deportation, and stop criminally prosecuting families and children for seeking asylum and refuge, and for-profit detention, and so that no family has to make that 2,000-mile journey, then I expect that people who come here follow our laws and we reserve the right to criminally prosecute them.”
Tim Ryan, who said he agrees in part with President Trump’s use of tariffs against China, saying: “I think President Trump was onto something when he talked about China. China has been abusing the economic system for a long time. They steal intellectual property. They subsidize goods. They eroded manufacturing. We transfer our wealth of the middle class either up to the top 1% or to China for them to build the military. So I think we need some targeted response against China.”
Bernie Sanders, in explaining his climate change agenda, said: “To win this election and to defeat Donald Trump, which by the way, in my view is not going to be easy, we need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision. … I get a little bit tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas. Republicans are not afraid of big ideas. They could give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to billionaires and profitable corporations. … On this issue, my friends, there is no choice, we have got to be super aggressive if we love our children and if we want to leave them a planet that is healthy and is habitable. … What that means is we got to take on the fossil fuel industry.”
Elizabeth Warren, on a night when North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, explained her position on the use of nuclear weapons, saying: “The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively. We need to say so to the entire world. It reduces the likelihood someone miscalculates or misunderstands. Our first responsibility is to keep ourselves safe. And what’s happening right now with Donald Trump is they keep expanding the different ways we have nuclear weapons. The different ways they can be used puts us all at risk.”
Marianne Williamson, in defending her plan to offer up to $500 billion in reparations to the U.S. descendants of enslaved Africans, said: “It is time for us to simply realize that this country will not heal. All that a country is a collection of people. People heal when there’s deep truth-telling. We need to recognize when it comes to the economic gap between blacks and whites in America, it does come from a great injustice that has never been dealt with. That great injustice has had to do with the fact that there was 250 years of slavery, followed by another 100 years of domestic terrorism.”
Christy Lee contributed to this report which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.
The National Defense University, an institution funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, has published a journal article suggesting Washington should share its nuclear tactical missiles with Japan and South Korea to deter North Korea’s growing nuclear threat to East Asia and the U.S.
“The United States should strongly consider … sharing of nonstrategic nuclear capabilities during times of crisis with select Asia-Pacific partners, specially Japan and the Republic of Korea,” according to “Twenty-First Century Nuclear Deterrence,” published by the university in the current issue of Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ). The Republic of Korea is the official name for South Korea.
Publication guidelines on the university’s site say “The views expressed by this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.”
Sharing American nuclear capabilities with Japan and South Korea would involve deploying its nuclear weapons in the territories of its two allies in East Asia so that the weapons can be used in such time as a nuclear war, as the U.S. does with five member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO), according to the article.
Japan and South Korea are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella that promises defense against threats. The U.S. maintains military bases in both countries, which are currently embroiled in a trade dispute colored by historical animosities.
The article’s release on July 25 coincided with North Korea’s launch of two short-range missiles. Then, early Wednesday local time, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that North Korea launched multiple unidentified projectiles off the east coast of its Hodo Peninsula.
The four authors, who serve in the U.S. army, navy, and air force, suggest U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Japan and South Korea would be used for exigent purposes during war but would mainly serve as an extended deterrence against North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons in peacetime, effectively preventing it from launching a nuclear attack.
The article suggests American nuclear sharing with Japan and South Korea could be undertaken in a manner similar to an agreement the U.S. signed with five NATO member states.
NATO is a multilateral alliance now composed of 29 member-states from North America and Europe established in 1949 by 12 countries to serve as a collective defense against emerging threats in the region.
American nuclear weapons have been deployed to the five NATO countries since the mid-1950s in an arrangement known as nuclear sharing. Nuclear sharing allows these countries without nuclear weapons to use American deployed nuclear weapons in case of war at which time the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be disabled.
The NPT, which entered into force in 1970, prohibits signatory states from transferring and accepting direct and indirect control of nuclear weapons.
The JFQ article came out as the process of denuclearization diplomacy with Pyongyang, stalled since the Hanoi summit in February, has started to inch forward.
In June, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump met for an impromptu summit at the inter-Korean border in June where they agreed to resume denuclearization efforts. North Korea has been reluctant to engage in the working-level negotiations since Hanoi where Washington rejected Pyongyang’s demand for sanctions lift.
The JFQ authors highlighted that the U.S. may face “difficulties in shaping [North Korean] behavior” if it does not give up its nuclear program.
“If left unchecked, North Korea will continue to threaten the East Asian region and perhaps one day the United States itself,” they noted.
North Korea threat
On June 25, North Korea fired what South Korea called new types of short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, the body of water between the Korean peninsula and Japan, rattling the East Asian countries.
The next day, Pyongyang said it had tested a new type of “tactical guided weapon” intended to send a “solemn warning” to South Korea to end its joint military exercises with the U.S.
In May, North Korea tested three short-range missiles off its east coast that experts considered to be similar to a Russian Iskander, a nuclear loadable short-range ballistic missile.
The article said, “Considering North Korea’s history of aggressive nuclear rhetoric and recent missile tests,” sharing U.S. nuclear weapons with its regional allies “would provide renewed physical evidence of U.S. resolve.”
The article also stated that nuclear sharing with Japan and South Korea will strengthen a “military partnership through joint-regional exercises” necessary to deter North Korea.
However, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, the time may not be ripe for the U.S. to propose nuclear sharing with Seoul and Tokyo because of an on-going trade row between the two.
“My sense is that [in] both South Korea and Japan, there is very little political support for such a step at this time,” said Samore, currently senior fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center’s Korea Project. “It could change, but, for now, I think it would be very controversial.”
Seoul and Tokyo have been involved in a trade dispute after Japan placed export restrictions on three high-tech items South Korean companies use to manufacture parts used in smart phones and other high-tech devices. The trade dispute is widely seen as rooted in Korean anger at Japan for decades of colonization and occupation from 1910 until Japan’s 1945 surrender to the U.S. to end World War II. During that period, many Japanese companies used Korean forced labor.
Boycotts against Japanese-made products have been widespread in Seoul, and Japan has rejected Seoul’s call for talks to resolve the dispute.
Samore said, “There may come a time when the domestic politics in South Korea and Japan have changed especially when North Korea continues to maintain and advance nuclear weapons and (a) ballistic missile program.” He added, “And then at that point it would make more sense.”
U.S. health care policies took center stage Tuesday night at the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, with more moderate challengers attacking Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the leading progressives looking to oust President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Warren and Sanders have both called for a sweeping end to the country’s current health care system centered on private company insurance plans offered to 150 million workers through their employers. But their views were under attack almost from the start of the debate on a theater stage in Detroit, Michigan, the country’s auto industry hub.
“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction and telling half the country who has private health insurance that their health insurance is illegal,” former Maryland Congressman John Delaney said. “It’s also bad policy. It’ll under-fund the industry, many hospitals will close, and it’s bad politics.”
Often political allies
Warren, a former Harvard law professor, and Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, are friends of long-standing and often political allies. They now are both looking for votes from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Both defended their position calling for a government-run health care system.
“This is not radical,” Sanders of Vermont shouted at one point, noting that numerous other Western societies already have adopted government-run systems. “I get a little tired of Democrats who are afraid of big ideas.”
Warren of Massachusetts rebuffed the critics, saying, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”
But their challengers lobbed multiple attacks at the pair, saying their proposals would, over four years or longer, upend the long-standing U.S. health care system, including government-subsidized insurance for moderate and low-income families under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has called for more incremental health care policy changes, said, “I have bold ideas, but they are grounded in reality.”
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. talk during a break in the first of two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN Tuesday, July 30, 2019, in the Fox Theatre in Detroit.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said that Democrats had picked up 40 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2018 mid-term elections and not one of them had pushed for the Warren-Sanders Medicare for All plan.
“I’m a little more pragmatic,” Hickenlooper declared.
‘Recipe for disaster’
Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan called for a plan allowing Americans to buy into government-run insurance if they want to, but said that closing down the insurance industry “is a recipe for disaster,” especially among union members who would face the loss of hard-won health care benefits through collective bargaining.
The moderate candidates also attacked Sanders and Warren on immigration issues, even as several candidates assailed Trump’s immigration policies, including his since-abandoned practice of separating migrant children from their parents.
The moderate challengers criticized Sanders and Warren for proposing to end the filing of criminal charges against the thousands of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.
“We’ve got 100,000 people showing up at the border right now,” said Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. “If we decriminalize entry, if we give free health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.” He said that by effectively encouraging migration to the United States, “You are playing into Donald Trump’s hands.”
Ryan said, “If you want to come into the country, you should at least ring the doorbell.”
Sanders answered that he does not think that immigrants should be prosecuted, saying, “If a mother and a child walk thousands of miles on a dangerous path, in my view, they are not criminals.”
Warren called for civil penalties, not criminal charges against migrants arriving in the U.S. “The point is not about criminalization,” she said. “That has given Donald Trump the tool to break families apart.”
Throughout the night, the candidates sparred over foreign policy, Warren’s controversial plan for a wealth tax and debt-free college, payment of reparations to the U.S. descendants of slaves, trade, the city of Flint, Michigan’s prolonged drinking water crisis, and even the age of the candidates. Buttigieg, who is 37, stood next to Sanders, who is 77, and was asked by CNN’s Don Lemon whether Sanders was too old to be president.
Buttigieg demurred, saying, “I don’t care how old you are, I care about your vision. … We need the kind of vision that’s going to win. We can’t have the kind of vision that says, ‘Back to normal.'”
Sanders readily agreed with Buttigieg, boasting of the ideas he has advocated to dramatically alter the health care system and bring the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to heel.
First of two nights
Tuesday’s debate, lasting more than 2.5 hours, was the first of two nights with two groups of 10 Democratic candidates sparring with each other over domestic and foreign policy differences, but more importantly trying to make the case that they are the party’s best hope to defeat Trump when he seeks re-election in 2020.
Trump’s relentless attacks on Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, a prominent African American political leader, and the predominantly black city of Baltimore that he represents, drew sharp criticism from some of the Democratic presidential candidates.
“Donald Trump disgraces the office of the presidency every single day,” Warren said. Klobuchar added: “I don’t think anyone can justify what this president is doing.”
The two debates are occurring six months ahead of the Democratic Party’s first presidential nominating contests. The debates could prove pivotal in both winnowing the field, forcing the weakest challengers out of the race before the next debate in mid-September, and in solidifying the list of front-runners. It largely depends on who is perceived by pundits in the post-debate analyses as making a plausible case to be the Democratic standard-bearer, or, conversely, flubbing their opportunity on CNN’s nationally televised broadcasts.
On Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden, currently the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in national surveys of Democrats and some independents, will be at center stage. Some party stalwarts say he is the more moderate, center-left, politically safe choice to take on the unpredictable Trump, whose populist base of conservative voters remains strong.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, speaks during the National Urban League Conference, Thursday, July 25, 2019, in Indianapolis.
Tuesday’s debaters never mentioned Biden, even though all of them would eventually have to overtake him to win the Democratic nomination.
Biden had a shaky first debate performance a month ago, faltering as California Sen. Kamala Harris challenged him to explain his opposition three decades ago to forced busing of schoolchildren to racially desegregate public schools. Harris said that she, as a black woman and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, benefited from such a busing program to attend a better school while growing up in California.
Biden, a fixture on the U.S. political scene for four decades, and Harris, a former state attorney general before winning election to the Senate, will be standing alongside each other on the debate stage. Biden is promising a more robust performance than in the first debate, saying, “I’m not going to be as polite this time.”
But questions remain about Biden’s standing, whether at 76 he is too old to lead the country, even though Trump is 73, and whether Democratic voters want a candidate with more progressive views than Biden on health care, prevention of crime, migrant immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border and other issues.
Some analysts think Biden’s top standing in national polls is at least partly a reflection of name recognition, from his 36 years as a U.S. senator, two unsuccessful runs for the presidency and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
Tough-on-crime legislation
On the same stage Wednesday, Biden is also likely to face a challenge from Sen. Cory Booker, an African American former mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
Booker has assailed Biden’s support 25 years ago for get-tough-on-crime legislation that led to the disproportionate imprisonment of black defendants.
Biden recently offered a new criminal justice plan, reversing key provisions of the 1994 measure, such as ending the stricter sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Booker scoffed that Biden was hardly the best candidate to lay out a new criminal justice plan and has called for slashing mandatory minimum sentences.
Despite Biden’s first debate stumbles, the ranks of the top Democratic candidates have changed little in national surveys.
Biden remains ahead of three challengers, all U.S. senators: Sanders, from the Northeastern state of Vermont; Warren, from neighboring Massachusetts, and Harris. Booker has edged up a bit in the polling, while South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has slipped a notch. The remaining candidates are far down the ranks and struggling to gain a foothold.
A new Quinnipiac University national poll this week shows Biden leading the pack with 34% of Democrats and independents leaning Democratic, followed by Warren at 15%, Harris with 12% and Sanders with 11%.
Biden claims he has the best chance of making the Republican Trump the country’s first single-term president in nearly three decades, denying him a second four years in the White House.
National surveys, 15 months ahead of the Nov. 3, 2020, election, consistently show Biden winning a hypothetical match-up over Trump, whose voter approval ratings remain mired in the mid-40% range. Sanders often defeats Trump as well, although not by Biden’s margin, while surveys show the other top Democrats potentially locked in tight, either-or outcomes with Trump.
Aside from Biden, Harris and Booker, the Wednesday debate stage also includes former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Five other Democratic candidates did not qualify for the Detroit debates, but the 20 who did had to have collected campaign donations from at least 65,000 individuals and hit a 1% threshold in at least three separate polls.
It gets tougher to appear on the stage at the third debate six weeks from now. To qualify then, candidates must have 130,000 campaign contributors and at least 2 percent support in four polls.
Only seven of this week’s 20 debaters have already met the third debate criteria: Biden, Harris, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke.
As U.S.-China trade talks are set to begin, U.S. President Donald Trump is warning China against negotiating a deal after the 2020 U.S. presidential election — declaring a delayed agreement would be less attractive than a deal reached in the near term.
“The problem with them waiting … is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now … or no deal at all,” Trump said in a post Tuesday on Twitter.
…to ripoff the USA, even bigger and better than ever before. The problem with them waiting, however, is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now…or no deal at all. We have all the cards, our past leaders never got it!
The tweet came as U.S. and Chinese officials gathered in Shanghai to revive talks, with both sides trying to temper expectations for a breakthrough.
The world’s two largest economies are engaged in an intense trade war, having imposed punitive tariffs on each other totaling more than $360 billion in two-way trade.
The negotiations come after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at June’s G-20 summit to resurrect efforts to end the costly trade war over China’s technology ambitions and trade surplus.
China is resisting U.S. demands to abolish government-led plans for industrial leaders to enhance robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies.
The U.S. has complained China’s plans depend on the acquisition of foreign technology through theft or coercion.
Days prior to the Shanghai meeting, Trump threatened to withdraw recognition of China’s developing nation’s status at the World Trade Organization. China responded by saying the threat is indicative of the “arrogance and selfishness” of the U.S.
The U.S. delegation in Shanghai will be represented by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. They are due to meet with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He, who serves as the country’s economic czar.
A top U.N. official warned Monday that Yemen’s devastating five-year civil war has knocked the country back 20 years in terms of development and access to education.
Yemen was already the Arab world’s poorest nation before the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people. In 2014, rebels known as Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention. The stalemated conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, thrust millions to the brink of famine and spawned the world’s most devastating humanitarian crisis.
“Much of the Yemeni economy has collapsed. People literally do not have any money to buy food,” Achim Steiner, U.N. Development Program administrator, told The Associated Press.
“Thousands of schools are closed, millions of children aren’t able to attend school, missing a generation of education,” he said. “Yemen has lost… 20 years of development.”
Steiner recently returned from a visit to Yemen, including the strategic port city of Hodeida. He waned that one in every three Yemenis are at risk of starving to death, out of a population of 30 million.
In Hodeida, he said the U.N. Development Program has been working to remove land mines from Hodeida’s port, which handles 70 percent of Yemen’s food imports and humanitarian aid. He said he met with local authorities to create an agreement on “the priorities that are now needed in terms of repair spare parts, technologies that are needed in order to be able to allow the port to function again.”
Both sides of the conflict agreed in December to withdraw from Hodeida, considered an important first step toward ending the war. But the implementation of the U.N.-brokered deal has since been delayed, as the agreement was vague on who would control Hodeida’s key port facilities after the withdrawal, saying only that a “local force” would take over.
Steiner urged both sides to help U.N. agencies “deliver fast and with little obstruction, the kinds of services, support, food, medicines” that ordinary Yemenis need.
A boy and his sisters watch graffiti artists spray on a wall, commemorating the victims who were killed in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, May 18, 2015.
“We would like to see that port up and running again in a matter of months. It can be done but only with the full cooperation of both sides,” he said.
Steiner said the UNDP in Yemen faces financial difficulties, as the pledges for humanitarian support in Yemen were close to $3 billion this year, but less than $1.1 billion has been delivered.
“We will have to stop programs, we will have to cut rations, and probably in the next two to three months, 21 support programs in the country have to be stopped,” he warned.
Former Tehran mayor Mohammad Ali Najafi was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering his wife, the judiciary said Tuesday, after a high-profile case that received extensive media coverage.
A prominent reformist, Najafi was found guilty of shooting dead his second wife Mitra Ostad at their home in the capital on May 28, said Iran’s judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili.
According to Iranian media reports, her body was found in a bathtub after Najafi, 67, turned himself in and confessed to killing her.
“The charge sheet included premeditated murder, battery and possession of an illegal firearm,” Esmaili said, quoted by the judiciary’s official news agency Mizan Online.
“The court has established premeditated murder and passed the execution sentence,” he added.
Najafi was acquitted of the battery charge but received a two-year jail sentence for possessing the illegal firearm, the spokesman said without elaborating.
“The sentence is not yet final and can be appealed at the supreme court,” said Esmaili.
Ostad’s family had appealed for the Islamic law of retribution to be applied — an “eye for an eye” form of punishment which would see the death penalty served in this instance.
Najafi’s trial received detailed coverage in state media where scandals related to politicians rarely appear on television.
A mathematician, professor and veteran politician, Najafi had previously served as President Hassan Rouhani’s economic adviser and education minister.
He was elected Tehran mayor in August 2017, but resigned the following April after facing criticism from conservatives for attending a dance performed by schoolgirls.
Najafi married Ostad without divorcing his first wife, unusual in Iran where polygamy is legal but socially frowned upon.
Some of Iran’s ultra-conservatives said the case showed the “moral bankruptcy” of reformists, while reformists accused the conservative-dominated state television of bias in its coverage and highlighting the case for political ends.
The International Monetary Fund says the cumulative decline of the Venezuelan economy since 2013 will surpass 60% and is among the deepest five-year contractions the world has seen over the last half century.
Alejandro Werner is director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department. He describes the Venezuelan decline as a “historical case” because it is unprecedented in the hemisphere and also because it is the only one of the top global five-year contractions that is unrelated to armed conflicts or natural disasters.
The IMF on Monday also adjusted its 2019 forecast for the South American country to a contraction of 35% — up from the 25% decline expected back in April — due to a sharp fall in the oil production, which has already plunged to its lowest level in seven decades.
Syrian troops made advances on the ground in northern Syria on Monday, seizing a hilltop village and a nearby town from insurgents in the first breakthrough for President Bashar Assad’s forces following weeks of intensive air and artillery bombardment.
The area has been repeatedly targeted in recent days as Syria’s government looks to regain momentum in its stalled offensive against the last opposition-controlled stronghold in Syria. The rebel area encompasses Idlib province and the surrounding rural areas of Hama province.
At least 450 civilians have been confirmed killed in the three-month offensive, including more than 100 in the last 10 days alone, according to the U.N. human rights chief.
Over the last three years, the government has regained control of most of the territories that were initially seized by the opposition in the early days of the civil conflict _ now in its 9th year. Those military victories, supported by Russian airpower and Iranian-backed militias on the ground, followed intense military campaigns and tight sieges that forced rebels to surrender and move north.
The Idlib region is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and other jihadi groups, and is home to an estimated 3 million people, many of them displaced by other bouts of violence in other areas. The government, which launched its offensive in late April, says it is targeting terrorist locations.
Syria’s Central Military Media said troops captured the Tal Malah village and the nearby town of Jibeen on Monday after fierce confrontations with militants entrenched in the area. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported the advances, saying government troops were able to seize the territory after militant groups withdrew, following intense air and ground shelling.
The area has changed hands several times over the past weeks in the offensive. More than 440,000 people have been displaced inside the crowded enclave to escape the airstrikes.
A large crowd bid a final tearful farewell to an Italian police officer who was stabbed to death in Rome last Friday. Two American teenagers are in custody in connection with the killing.
Relatives, friends, colleagues and top political leaders attended the service in the officer’s hometown of Somma Vesuviana, near Naples. The solemn service was held in the same church of Santa Croce where the 35-year-old officer was married a month-and-a-half ago. Those who did not make it inside the church for the service stood outside in the square.
A minute of silence Monday preceded the funeral.
Carabinieri officers carry the coffin of slain Carabinieri military police officer Mario Cerciello Rega during his funeral in his hometown Somma Vesuviana, Italy, July 29, 2019.
Applause broke out when the coffin, wrapped in the Italian tricolor, arrived and was carried inside the church by his widow, Maria Rosaria, and six police officers. Atop the coffin were wedding pictures, Mario’s officer cap and a shirt of soccer club Naples, his favorite team.
Top political leaders, including Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and top Carabinieri officials, attended the ceremony.
In his homily, Monsignor Santo Marciano said, “We would not have liked to be in this church today, the same church where Mario got married.”
He added, “We are here to ask for justice so that events like this may never ever occur again.”
He also told the gathering, “Enough with mourning servants of the state, children of a nation that seems to have lost those values for which they sacrifice their lives.”
As the coffin left the church, the crowd outside released white balloons into the sky.
White balloons are released as the coffin of slain Carabinieri military police officer Mario Cerciello Rega is carried by Carabinieri officers outside Santa Croce church, during his funeral in his hometown Somma Vesuviana, Italy, July 29, 2019.
Many of the residents of Somma Vesuviana knew Mario personally. Many say he was a wonderful, kind person who did not deserve to die in this way.
A resident said the entire town has been completely covered with posters and signs left from every person’s heart — an emblem, a flag, a note saying goodbye to Mario.
Mario Cerciello Rega was in plainclothes when he was stabbed 11 times in a central Rome neighborhood. Two American teenagers, Finnegan Lee Elder, age 19, and 18-year old Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth have been detained over the killing. Both had attempted to obtain some cocaine earlier.
Both are being held in the Rome prison of Regina Coeli as investigations continue. They could face up to life imprisonment if convicted.
Cuban government and Communist Party officials attended funeral services for Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega on Sunday in a testament to his success in elevating the Church’s position on the Caribbean island after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Cuban First Vice President Salvador Mesa and two other top leaders on the Communist Party Politburo attended the Requiem Mass along with other officials.
Religious leaders from other countries including Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, Puerto Rico Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves and Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston also attended the event in the colonial district’s Havana Cathedral.
Ortega, who died on Friday aged 82, was buried afterwards in the city’s Colon cemetery.
A labor camp inmate in the 1960s when Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government was rounding up religious figures and other perceived enemies, Ortega became archbishop of Havana in 1981 at a time when Cuba was still officially atheist.
For the more than three decades that followed, as Castro’s stance on the Church softened, Ortega raised its visibility and power, building a working relationship with the government thanks to his nonconfrontational style and opposition to U.S. sanctions.
Ortega earned the wrath of hardline exiles and some dissidents on the Caribbean island with his stance.
“His work helped a lot to bring closer the ideas of the Cuban government and the Catholic church,” retiree Maria Green, said, standing outside the Cathedral.
“He managed to solve many things and opened the way for many, many Cubans,” she added.
Ortega hosted three popes and negotiated the release of dozens of political prisoners in 2010 and 2011.
When Raul Castro became president in 2010, Ortega backed his attempts to open up the country and restore relations with Western nations.
At a critical moment in secret talks between Cuba and the United States that led to a detente in December 2014, it was Ortega who relayed messages among Pope Francis, Castro and then-President Barack Obama.
Ortega met with hundreds of U.S. lawmakers, religious figures and businessmen over the years.
John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, worked with Ortega in the 1990s to channel medical aid to the country and said members of his organization provided some logistics for Pope John Paul II’s historic visit in 1998.
“With Cardinal Ortega, there was never a “can’t do it,’ or ‘we must wait,’ or ‘no’,” Kavulich said.
Boko Haram militants killed at least 65 people at a funeral in northeastern Nigeria, local officials said Sunday, revising the earlier death toll of 23.
“It is 65 people dead and 10 injured,” said Muhammed Bulama, the local government chairman. Bulama said he thought the attack was in revenge for the killing of 11 Boko Haram fighters by the villagers two weeks ago.
Nigerians last week marked the 10-year anniversary of the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has killed more than 30,000 people, displaced millions and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. The extremists are known for mass abductions of schoolgirls and putting young women and men into suicide vests for attacks on markets, mosques and other high-traffic areas.
The insurgent group, which promotes an extreme form of Islamist fundamentalism and opposes Western-style education, has defied the claims of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration that the insurgency has been crushed. The violence also has spilled into neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
Brazil deployed police to a remote Amazon village on Sunday after reports it had been overrun by armed miners following the murder of an indigenous leader, officials and tribal chiefs said.
The violence in an area of the northern Amapa state controlled by the Waiapi tribe comes as Brazil’s indigenous people face growing pressures from miners, ranchers and loggers under pro-business President Jair Bolsonaro, who on Saturday called for the “first world” to help exploit the “absurd quantity of minerals” in the Amazon rainforest.
Last Monday, a Waiapi indigenous leader was killed and his body found the following day in a river, the Amapa attorney general’s office (AGO) said in a statement.
While none of the Waiapi witnessed the “violent” killing, a council of village chiefs said on Facebook a search of the area found “trails and other signs that the death was caused by non-indigenous people.”
On Friday, a group of “armed non-indigenous” overran the nearby village of Yvytoto, prompting residents to flee, the council said. Local media called them “garimpeiros,” a term for armed miners active in the Amazon, and said they numbered 50.
After reports of the attacks emerged Saturday, members of the federal police and a military police special forces unit were dispatched, the AGO said, arriving in the village some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the state capital Macapa on Sunday.
The indigenous affairs agency FUNAI said its officers were also on the ground monitoring the police investigation.
“Law enforcement officials have reported that no hypothesis for the murder has been ruled out, nor can they can say at this time who carried out the crime,” the AGO said, as it announced the establishment of a crisis management group to oversee the investigation.
“The alleged presence of garimpeiros and other groups in the region is being investigated.”
‘Environmental psychosis’
Rich in gold, manganese, iron and copper, the Waiapi’s territory is deep inside the Amazon, making communication difficult, police said.
The Waiapi council said some of the tribe’s fighters had stationed themselves near the village occupied by the miners.
“The situation is urgent,” said Randolfe Rodrigues, an opposition senator from Amapa, on his official Facebook page.
The Brazilian Bar Association issued a statement calling on the government to protect the Waiapi’s land and ensure perpetrators of criminal offenses were “punished.”
The tribe’s territory is one of hundreds Brazil’s government demarcated in the 1980s for the exclusive use of its 800,000 indigenous inhabitants. Access by outsiders is strictly regulated.
Since taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon and indigenous tribes in order to benefit his supporters in the logging, mining and farming industries.
“We are experiencing a real environmental psychosis,” Bolsonaro said recently.
He’s also pledged to crackdown on what he’s called radical environmental activism, and also questioned the latest official figures showing deforestation increasing by 88 percent in June compared with the same period last year.
Protesters and police prepared Sunday for a likely showdown in central Hong Kong, one day after clashes led to 11 arrests and left at least two dozen injured in an outlying district toward the border with mainland China.
A midafternoon rally has been called at Chater Garden, an urban park in the financial district and about 500 meters (yards) west of the city’s government headquarters and legislature.
Police have denied a request from protest organizers to march about 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) west to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park, but at least some of the demonstrators may still try to push forward.
Protesters react as tear gas is released by police during a faceoff at the entrance to a village at Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019.
Seven weeks of protests
Hong Kong has been wracked by protests for seven weeks, as opposition to an extradition bill has morphed into demands for the resignation of the city’s leader and an investigation into whether police have used excessive force in quelling the protests.
Underlying the movement is a broader push for full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The city’s leader is chosen by a committee dominated by a pro-Beijing establishment, rather than by direct elections.
In denying the march, police cited escalating violence in clashes with protesters that have broken out after past marches and rallies.
“The police must prevent aggressive protesters from exploiting a peaceful procession to cause troubles and violent clashes,” said Superintendent Louis Lau of the police public relations branch.
The police had denied permission for Saturday’s march in Yuen Long, where a mob apparently targeting demonstrators had beat people brutally in a train station the previous weekend.
Ghost paper money usually tossed at funerals is left by protesters at the entrance to a village in Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019.
Protests into the night
Protesters and police faced off in the streets well into the night, as they’ve done repeatedly during the summer’s pro-democracy protests.
Police said that protesters removed fences from roads to make their own roadblocks and charged police lines with metal poles. One group surrounded and vandalized a police vehicle, causing danger to officers on board, a police news release said.
Officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators threw bricks and other objects and ducked behind makeshift shields.v Later, police wearing helmets charged into the train station where a few hundred protesters had taken refuge from the tear gas. Some officers swung their batons at demonstrators, while others appeared to be urging their colleagues to hang back. For the second week in a row, blood was splattered on the station floor.
Police said in a statement they arrested 11 men, between the ages of 18 and 68, for offenses including unlawful assembly, possession of offensive weapon and assault. At least four officers were injured.
The Hospital Authority said 24 people were taken to five hospitals. As of Sunday morning, eight remained hospitalized, two in serious condition.
Riot police block a road into Yuen Long district in Hong Kong, July 27, 2019. Hong Kong police on Saturday fired tear gas and swung batons at protesters who defied warnings not to march in a neighborhood where earlier a mob brutally attacked people.
Police criticized
Amnesty International, the human rights group, called the police response heavy-handed and unacceptable.
“While police must be able to defend themselves, there were repeated instances today where police officers were the aggressors,” Man-kei Tam, the director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, said in a news release.
Police said they had to use what they termed “appropriate force” because of the bricks and other objects thrown at them, including glass bottles with a suspected corrosive fluid inside.
When Ugnius Zilinskas came to Kenyon College in Ohio to play on the basketball team, he was welcomed with open arms.
“They kind of take you as a family member,” said the student from Kedainiai, Lithuania.
Zilinskas, a junior, is one of roughly 27,000 foreign students who play on U.S. college sports teams, out of more than 1 million foreign students who attend school in the U.S. Stars like basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon of Nigeria and soccer player Christine Sinclair of Canada began as international students at American colleges before competing professionally in the United States.
Zilinskas was welcomed by Kenyon College, a Division III National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school in Gambier, Ohio. He has played basketball since he was a child in his home country and understood the ladder of college sports. But if a student comes to study in the U.S. with no knowledge of college sports, the system can seem complicated.
Here’s a breakdown.
FILE – The NCAA logo is seen at center court in Pittsburgh, Pa., March 18, 2015.
The basics
The NCAA is one of three major associations that govern college and university athletics:
These nonprofit organizations determine student eligibility, establish sport guidelines, and oversee competition among schools across North America. For instance, the NCAA issues rules that define a foul in basketball, as well as prohibiting NCAA student athletes from endorsing commercial products.
The NCAA generates billions of dollars through media rights, ticket sales, merchandise and membership fees. The revenue goes to athletic scholarships, NCAA employee salaries, and to run competitions like March Madness, a wildly popular tournament broadcast across the country.
NCAA college athletes are banned from being paid to play while enrolled in schools to ensure amateur competition in college. Critics say the big sports associations use favors, trips, free meals and gear to compensate players in other ways. Not everyone considers these actions amateur, while others say the players deserve to be paid outright for their talent and skills.
Schools are sorted into divisions: Division I schools, such as the University of Virginia and University of Michigan, generally have large student populations and many teams. The University of Virginia, for example, has more than 16,000 undergraduate students. Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, a Division II school, has a little more than 6,000 undergraduate students. Kenyon College, a Division III school, has nearly 2,000 students.
Division I and Division II institutions are highly competitive with robust athletic programs and may have athletic budgets of millions of dollars to pay for athletic scholarships, coaches, sport facilities, athletes’ medical needs and transportation.
Division I provides the largest athletic scholarships. Athletes who receive athletic scholarships in soccer or basketball, for example, may get some or all tuition waved in addition to some room and board. Division III focuses on academics and offers merit scholarships or financial aid, not athletic scholarships.
Zilinskas said a benefit of competing in college sports was playing basketball while fully engaging in his studies.
The National Junior College Administration (NJCAA) operates differently and only at two-year colleges, organizing its member institutions into three divisions. Division I members, such Bismarck State College’s basketball team in North Dakota, offer larger athletic scholarships than Division II. Member institutions decide the division in which it wants to compete.
For similar reasons as the NCAA and NAIA, NJCAA Division III members do not provide athletic scholarships to their students.
Getting ready to compete
How do students get eligibility to play at U.S. schools?
Student athletes register through the NCAA Eligibility Center online. The $150 fee can be waived for students with financial needs. School transcripts, SAT or ACT scores and country-specific documents are required in English and according to the American grading system. (The NCAA offers country-specific information on its website.)
Students must also prove their amateur status.
Once eligibility is established and a U.S. college or university offers a student athlete a scholarship, they sign a National Letter of Intent to attend and compete for one academic year.
The application process to an NCAA Division III institution is less formal. A student does not need to register officially through the NCAA. Instead, grade and credit regulations are set by each school. Students should contact the team’s coach for school-specific requirements. Again, NCAA III does not offer student sports scholarships.
The process for international student athletes interested in competing on an NAIA or NJCAA Division I or Division II are similar.
While Zilinskas had hoped to play basketball at a Division I school, that dream seemed impossible after he suffered an injury.
“No one takes a player that cannot run and sits on the bench the whole year,” Zilinskas said. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m packing my stuff, I’m going home.’ But then Kenyon gave me good financial aid. And I’m still here.”
“I would say that international students, if they’re really into athletics or doing some sports they should definitely try to do something with sports. … School is not everything, so there is a lot of different paths to go,” he said. “You can find a lot of different groups of people and academic sides and sports sides, music whatever. Meeting new people — that’s really big.”
More information about competing through the NCAA, NAIA or NJCAA can be found on the associations’ websites.
Canned soup, canned tuna, and pasta, among other things — everything you’ll find in an average American pantry, yet these little pantries are not in someone’s home but in the streets, open and accessible to anyone who needs them. Free Little Pantry is behind this initiative, a grassroots organization that was founded Arkansas two years ago, but has spread across the country. For VOA, Nataliya Leonova visited a few of these little pantries in the Washington area. Anna Rice narrates her story.
