Author: Ohart

Jordan’s King Abdullah visits one of two small parcels of land which, until recently, was leased to Israel as part of the neighbors’ 1994 peace agreement. Jordan’s decision not to renew the lease was made at a time of brewing tensions between the peace partners. Jordanians blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for antagonizing the relationship, with action against Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque and the detention of Jordanian citizens, among others.
 
During Monday’s visit to Baqura, a 81-hectare enclave along the Jordan River in Jordan’s north, King Abdullah tweeted that “Jordan’s sovereignty over its territory is above all other considerations.” Jordan announced last year that it would not renew its peace treaty annexes with Israel on Baqura and al-Ghamr that gave Israeli farmers free access to the Jordan’s sovereign land. The decision is now in effect.

Jordanian political analyst Osama al-Sharif says the move is “absolutely within Jordan’s rights” under the deal. Still, he says the country’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has underscored Jordan’s commitment to the peace treaty.
Israel’s foreign ministry expressed regret over the move, but says Jordan will allow farmers to harvest their remaining wheat and other crops.  Israeli Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel described the relations to Reuters as: “We are not on a honeymoon but rather in a period of ongoing arguments.”  He says the Israeli government, however, should have tried earlier to convince Jordan to extend the deal.

Al Sharif sees Israeli Prime Netanyahu as responsible for whittling away at Israel’s relationship with Jordan — only one of its two Arab peace partners.

“It’s not Jordan that has been trying to wriggle out of its commitments under the peace treaty,” said Al Sharif. “It’s Israel and the continuation of the building of settlements, Netanyahu’s threat to annex the Jordan Valley and most Israeli settlements in the West Bank, contrary to the Jordan’s position that demands the two-state solution. So, relations after 25 years are not at their best. It also underlines the fact that we have a very frigid peace between Jordan and Israel and the culprit in all of this has always been Benjamin Netanyahu.”

 “Not allowing Israel to continue to utilize the two pieces of land or doing Netanyahu any favors was not only logical, but became an urgent public demand,” among Jordanians, Jawad Anani, a lead negotiator for the 1994 peace treaty, told The Washington Post.

Many Jordanians blame Netanyahu for ruining peace chances between Israel and the Palestinians.  Al-Sharif says almost daily incursions at the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, where Jordan has a special role as custodian, and other actions by Netanyahu’s government – that Palestinians see as provocative – have soured ties.

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Iraqi officials expressed “deep regret” on Monday at the death of protesters during weeks of unrest but defended Baghdad’s handling of the situation.

Nearly 300 people have been killed in Iraq since the protests against political corruption, unemployment and poor public services began on Oct. 1.

At a U.N. review of member states’ human rights records in Geneva, diplomats from several countries accused the Iraqi government of using excessive force.

Justice Minister Farooq Amin Othman acknowledged there had been “individual violations” by members of the law enforcement agencies but said they were being investigated.

“…We would like to express our deep regret for the number of people killed,” he told international diplomats gathered at what the U.N calls the Universal Periodic Review.

“Our constitution guarantees peaceful assembly and the objective of our authorities is to protect the protesters,” he said.

Other Iraqi officials said plans were under way to free detained protesters and for electoral reform, both of which were among a package of reforms urged by the United Nations.

‘Unlawful, Indiscriminate and Excessive’ Force

But diplomats from several countries including the United States issued stinging criticisms.

“We recommend that Iraq immediately cease using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators, particularly the unlawful use of tear gas canisters and live ammunition, and hold accountable, in a transparent manner, those responsible for this violence,” Daniel Kronenfeld, Human Rights Counselor at the U.S. Mission in Geneva.

The Netherlands called the use of force “unlawful, indiscriminate and excessive”. Germany expressed deep concern and urged immediate steps to prevent further loss of life.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq released a set of recommendations on Sunday, including the release of peaceful protesters and investigations into deaths.

Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussain Mahmood Alkhateeb, said the plan envisaged by Baghdad to address unrest was already being implemented and went “wider” than the U.N. proposals.

“No demonstrator will stay in prison unless there is a criminal investigation against them,” he told Reuters.

Asked whether Iraq would consider trying Islamic State fighters on their own soil, as France and the United States has urged, he said: “Iraq believes that countries should take their nationals and this is a policy we are committed to.”

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The Ukrainian military and Russia-backed separatist rebels have completed a pullback of troops and weapons from an area in eastern Ukraine embroiled in a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people, officials said Monday.

The disengagement near Petrivske that began Saturday followed a recent similar withdrawal in another section of the frontline, where separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014. Ukraine’s military said Ukrainian forces completed the pullback in Petrivske at midday Monday.

The disengagement of forces in eastern Ukraine was seen as a key step to pave the way for a summit of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany on ending the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed plans for holding the summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call Monday, according to the Kremlin.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the summit could be held before the year’s end but wouldn’t comment on a possible date.

“The summit should produce new positive results,” Ushakov said at a briefing. “It’s necessary to take the first steps toward the implementation of the agreement reached in Minsk.”

Germany and France sponsored a 2015 agreement signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk that envisaged broad autonomy for the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine and an amnesty for the rebels — provisions that were never implemented because they were resented by many in Ukraine.

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A plan by President Sebastian Pinera to draft a new constitution for Chile was criticized Monday by the opposition and even his own political ranks.

The proposal unveiled Sunday by Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel is one of a series of measures aimed at quelling weeks of protests by Chileans over economic inequality and other grievances.

It calls for a new charter to be drafted by a “constituent congress” and then put to a plebiscite, Blumel said.  

But the opposition said the proposed process was inadequate, partly because it would rely on current legislators who are viewed with suspicion by protesters. They also said the plebiscite should occur at the beginning of the process, so people’s views could be considered.

“The citizenry is demanding something different,” opposition Sen. Felipe Harboe said. He said people want a “constituent assembly” or some other form of direct participation in writing any constitution.

“Parliamentarians don’t have credibility today,” said Sen. Manuel Jose Ossandon, who is part of Pinera’s governing coalition. “The parliament doesn’t have credibility to do something without the more active participation of the community.”

Karla Rubilar, the government spokeswoman, on Monday rejected the call for a constituent assembly, which would involve the election of a group of citizens to draft the new constitution.

Students in Chile began protesting nearly a month ago over a subway fare hike. But demonstrations quickly blew up into a huge protest movement demanding improvements in basic services and benefits, including pensions, health and education. Chile is one of Latin America’s richest, but most socially unequal countries.

While most protests have been peaceful, at least 20 people have died in clashes between protesters and police.

A key demand of demonstrators has been to throw out the constitution that was drafted in 1980 during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The constitution is the legal basis for the market-driven system that protesters say favors Chile’s affluent minority.

The public health care system is bogged down with months-long waiting times, and those seeking higher education are often saddled with crushing student debt.

Pinera has responded with a series of proposals over the weeks, including an increase in the basic monthly pension of $146, a cut to the salaries of legislators, and a tax hike for people who earn more than $11,000 a month.

But anger in the streets still boils. Protests continued Monday in the capital of Santiago, ahead of a national strike called for Tuesday.

“We’ve seen that, in general, the government arrives late and with a weak response to societal demands,” said Claudia Heiss, a professor at the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Chile, who considers this an opportunity for the government to react in a more convincing way.

Marcelo Mella, an analyst at the University of Santiago, said it is doubtful sectors of the opposition will accept the government’s plan as a legitimate procedure.

Given the low levels of approval for Congress and the government, “legitimacy (of the process) is a very scarce commodity within the political class,” Mella said.

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Authorities declared a state of emergency across a broad swath of Australia’s east coast on Monday, urging residents in high risk areas to evacuate ahead of looming “catastrophic” fire conditions.

Bushfires burning across New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland states have already killed three people and destroyed more than 150 homes. Officials expect adverse heat and wind conditions to peak at unprecedented levels on Tuesday.

Bushfires are a common and deadly threat in Australia’s hot, dry summers but the current severe outbreak, well before the summer peak, has caught many by surprise.

“Everybody has to be on alert no matter where you are and everybody has to be assume the worst and we cannot allow complacency to creep in,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

The country’s most populous city has been designated at “catastrophic fire danger” for Tuesday, when temperatures as high as 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) are forecast to combine with powerful winds for potentially deadly conditions. It is the first time Sydney has been rated at that level since new fire danger ratings were introduced in 2009.

Home to more than 5 million people, Sydney is ringed by large areas of bushland, much of which remains tinder dry following little rain across the country’s east coast in recent months.

“Tomorrow is about protecting life, protecting property and ensuring everybody is safe as possible,” Berejiklian said.

Lawmakers said the statewide state of emergency – giving firefighters broad powers to control government resources, force evacuations, close roads and shut down utilities – would remain in place for seven days.

On Monday afternoon, the fire service authorized use of the Standard Emergency Warning Signal, an alarm and verbal warning that will be played on radio and television stations every hour.

NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons urged people to evacuate before conditions worsened, warning that new fires can begin up to 20km (12 miles) ahead of established fires.

“Relocate while things are calm without the pressure or anxiety of fires bearing down the back door,” he said.

Authorities stressed that even fireproofed homes will not be able to withstand catastrophic conditions, which Fitzsimmons described as “when lives are lost, it’s where people die.”

More than 100 schools will be closed on Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, rescue services were moving large animals from high risk areas, while health officials warned that air quality across NSW will worsen as winds blow smoke from the current mid-north coast bushfires south.

The fires have already had a devastating impact on Australia’s wildlife, with about 350 koalas feared dead in a major habitat.

Climate change debate

Australia’s worst bushfires on record destroyed thousands of homes in Victoria in February 2009, killing 173 people and injuring 414 on a day the media dubbed “Black Saturday.”

The current fires, however, come weeks ahead of the southern hemisphere summer, sharpening attention on the policies of Australia’s conservative government to address climate change.

Environmental activists and opposition lawmakers have used the fires to call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a supporter of the coal industry, to strengthen the country’s emissions targets.

Morrison declined to answer questions about whether the fires were linked to climate change when he visited fire-hit areas in the north of NSW over the weekend.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack on Monday accused climate activists of politicizing a tragedy at the expense of people in the danger zones.

“What we are doing is taking real and meaningful action to reduce global emissions without shutting down all our industries,” McCormack told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

“They don’t need the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time, when they’re trying to save their homes.”

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The United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq warned Sunday of the need for timely, tangible results in the government’s response to protests that began in early October, and offered a roadmap to address some of the demonstrators’ demands.

The U.N. office issued a statement saying that within a week the government should release all protesters who have been detained since October 1 and accelerate efforts to identify and prosecute those responsible for using excessive force against protesters.

It said there should be public calls for those in the region and elsewhere in the world with influence in Iraq to respect the country’s sovereignty and not interfere with its internal affairs.

UNAMI also called for the finalization of a framework for electoral reform and for anti-corruption action by the country’s political leadership within the next two weeks.  It further said that within three months, a constitutional review committee should continue its work on potential amendments.

The United States supported the U.N.’s proposals.

A White House statement late Sunday cited serious concerns about attacks against protesters and internet blackouts.

“Despite being targeted with lethal violence and denied access to the Internet, the Iraqi people have made their voices heard, calling for elections and election reforms,” said the White House press secretary.

Iraq’s Human Rights Commission says at least 319 people have been killed since the protests began.

Demonstrators have complained about corruption, lack of basic services and job opportunities, as well electricity outages.  Iraqi leaders have proposed some reforms but those have largely been rejected by the protesters who say they want Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and others to resign.

Abdul-Mahdi met Sunday with President Barham Salih and Parliament Speaker Mohammed Halbousi.

A statement from the prime minister’s office said the officials reaffirmed the need to avoid violence against peaceful demonstrations and to have strict accountability for excessive violence by members of the security forces.  It also said they discussed the need for electoral reforms that reduce the chances of party monopolies and give greater opportunities for young people to join parliament and its decision-making.

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A Hong Kong police officer shot at masked protesters on Monday morning, hitting at least one in the torso, as anger sparked by the recent death of a student spilled into the rush hour commute.

The shooting, which was broadcast live on Facebook, is the latest escalation in more than five months of seething pro-democracy protests that have engulfed the international financial hub and battered its reputation.

Footage showed a police officer drawing his sidearm in the district of Sai Wan Ho as he tried to detain a masked person at a junction that had been blocked by protesters.

Another unarmed masked individual then approached the officer and was shot in the chest area, quickly falling to the ground, clutching their left side.

Seconds later, two more live rounds were fired as the officer scuffled with another masked protester who fell to the ground. Both were detained by officers.

Hong Kong police said live rounds were fired and that one person was struck.

Hong Kong Protesters Vandalize Subway Station, Storm Mall

Police made arrests across Hong Kong amid anger over demonstrator’s death and arrest of pro-democracy lawmakers

A pool of blood could be seen near the first individual whose body initially appeared limp, although the person was later filmed conscious and even trying to make a run for it.

The second man was conscious, shouting his name to reporters as he was handcuffed.

Hospital authorities said three people were admitted from the incident, one with a gunshot wound.

Commuter chaos

Hong Kong has been upended by 24 consecutive weeks of huge and increasingly violent rallies, but Beijing has refused to give in to a movement calling for greater democratic rights and police accountability.

Tensions have soared in recent days following the death on Friday of a 22-year-old student who succumbed to injuries sustained from a fall in the vicinity of a police clearance operation the weekend before.

The city has seen four days of violent protests since Alex Chow’s death as well as tens of thousands attending peaceful mass vigils.

Using online messaging forums, activists had called for a general strike on Monday morning.

Flashmob protests sprung up in multiple districts during the commuter period, with small groups of masked protesters targeting subway stations and building barricades on road junctions.

Even before the shooting in Sai Wan Ho, tear gas had been fired in at least two other locations.

One video circulated by protesters on messaging channels from Kwai Fong district showed a police officer trying to drive his motorbike multiple times into protesters who had gathered on a road.

Unpopular police force

Monday’s shooting is the third time protesters have been shot with live rounds by police. The two previous instances last month came as protesters attacked police officers and the victims, both teenagers, survived their wounds.

With no political solution on the table, officers have been left to battle violent protesters and are now loathed by large chunks of the deeply polarized population.

Immediately after Monday’s shooting, crowds of locals gathered to hurl insults at officers who responded with pepper spray and made multiple arrests.

Police have defended their tactics as a proportionate response to protesters who have embraced throwing bricks and petrol bombs as well as vandalizing pro-China businesses and beating opponents.

But an independent inquiry into the police has become a core demand of the protest movement, with public anger fueled by weekly videos of controversial police tactics and aggressive interactions with locals.

In one incident which sparked uproar, a police officer on Friday evening shouting at protesters that he and his colleagues were “opening a bottle of champagne” after the death of the student.

The force said the officer was later reprimanded for his language.

Both Beijing and Hong Kong’s unelected leader Carrie Lam have rejected an independent inquiry, saying the city’s current police watchdog is up to the task.

But last week, in an embarrassing setback, an international panel of experts appointed by authorities to advise the watchdog said it did not currently have the capability or resources to carry out such a huge probe.

The watchdog is due to release a report in early 2020 and in a statement on Monday said the panel’s views should not have been published on Twitter by one of its members.

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Voters are going to the polls Sunday in Romania for the country’s presidential election.

Analysts say incumbent Klaus Iohannis will likely be returned to office in a runoff vote.

Centrist liberal Iohannis, unlike some other Eastern European leaders, has not embraced nationalism.

Polls indicate he will receive 40% of the votes Sunday.

His toughest competition is expected to come from former Prime Minister Viorica Dancilla, leader of the Social Democrats.

If no one receives 50% of Sunday’s ballots, there will be a second round of voting November 24.    

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Britain’s biggest political parties are accusing each other of financial recklessness as they vie to win voters’ trust on the economy ahead of Britain’s Dec. 12 election.
 
The main opposition Labour Party accused the governing Conservatives on Sunday of spreading fake news with an eye-catching claim that Labour spending pledges will cost 1.2 trillion pounds ($1.5 trillion) over five years.
 
The figure is based on assuming a Labour government would implement every policy it has adopted in principle. Labour says not all those pledges will be in its official election platform.
 
Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell said the Conservative figure was “an incompetent mish-mash of debunked estimates and bad maths.”
 
Treasury chief Sajid Javid stood by the estimate, saying Labour’s proposals were “absolutely reckless.”

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Jordan’s king announced Sunday that two pieces of land leased by Israel would be returned to the “full sovereignty” of Jordan as the two countries marked a chilly 25th anniversary of their landmark peace agreement.

Israel has controlled the agricultural lands for over 70 years and had been permitted to lease the areas under the 1994 peace agreement, with the assumption that the arrangement would be extended once again. Even amid mistrust and a looming deadline, Israel was hoping a solution could be found. But King Abdullah II’s announcement to parliament seemed to put an end to that and Jordan is set to reclaim full control of the areas this week.

“I announce the end of the annex of the two areas, Ghumar and Al-Baqoura, in the peace treaty and impose our full sovereignty on every inch of them,” he said.

It marked a new blow to relations that began with great optimism but have steadily deteriorated. Following up on a historic interim peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians a year earlier, Israel’s then-prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin and the late King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace agreement on Oct. 26, 1994 with President Bill Clinton in attendance and all three leaders delivered moving speeches promising warm relations and a better future. It was only the second peace deal between Israel and an Arab country, following Egypt.

The accord remains a vital strategic asset for both countries, who maintain tight security cooperation and joint economic projects. But with little progress toward a Palestinian state, the close contact hasn’t trickled down to the average citizen _ especially in Jordan, where most people have Palestinian roots. Israeli policies in east Jerusalem, where Jordan has custodial rights over Muslim holy sites, have also raised tensions.

Last year, Jordan chose not to renew a clause of the peace treaty that granted Israel use of two enclaves inside Jordanian territory, called Tsofar and Naharayim in Hebrew.

Naharayim, located along the Jordan River in northern Israel, has become a popular tourist site. It includes a small park and picnic area, the ruins of a historic power station and the “Island of Peace,” where Israelis can briefly enter Jordanian territory without having to show their passports.

The site has a painful history. In 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire at an Israeli crowd, killing seven schoolgirls on a class trip. After the shooting, King Hussein traveled to Israel to ask forgiveness from the girls’ families. Twenty years after his death, Hussein remains a beloved figure in Israel for what was seen as a courageous act.

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A U.N. agency is urging the Iraqi government to address the grievances of its people or risk that the ongoing deadly protests across the country could spiral even further out of control.

Since anti-government protests began Oct. 1, the U.N. Human Rights Office has documented 269 deaths and at least 8,000 injuries, including among members of the Iraqi security forces.  The agency blames the majority of these casualties on the use of live ammunition by security forces and private armed militia groups.

U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville says his agency also is following up on reports of multiple arrests of demonstrators and activists.  He says protesters and volunteers providing assistance during the demonstrations reportedly have been abducted by unknown perpetrators.  

“We are also disturbed by the statement by the High Judicial Council in Iraq that the Federal Anti-terrorism Law would be applicable against those resorting to violence, sabotaging public property and using firearms against security forces.  Our concern is centered on the fact that these are acts of terrorism, which may be punishable by death,” Colville said.

The agency is calling on the government to investigate the whereabouts of the people who have gone missing, to promptly investigate the killings and to prosecute all those responsible for these crimes.

Colville says tensions are running very high. He says the relatives and friends of people who have been killed, abducted and otherwise abused are angry.  Unless their grievances are resolved, he told VOA. He said the protests and violence in the country could spiral out of control.

“The way the security forces are reacting because they are not abiding by the kind of guidelines set down internationally, which are very much designed not only to save life and stop injuries, but exactly this—to stop tension [from] getting extreme because of deaths.  It is a sort of vicious circle of people getting killed and injured.  That’s leading to more anger and more demonstrations, more deaths, more injuries and so on.  And we are in that cycle in Iraq,” Colville said.  

To get out of this deteriorating cycle, Colville said the Iraqi authorities must control the security forces and engage in a meaningful dialogue with the public.  He said the government must listen and take stock of its many grievances and work with civil society to reach a sustainable resolution.
 

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Hundreds of pilgrims Saturday from India’s minority Sikh community crossed the international border with Pakistan without a visa for the first time in 72 years to pay homage to one of their holiest shrines.

The rare instance of cooperation to facilitate the religious journey comes amid a sharp deterioration in already tense ties between the nuclear-armed rival countries sparked by recent Indian actions in the disputed Kashmir region. Both India and Pakistan control portions of the Himalayan territory but claim it in its entirety.

Indian pilgrims, including senior politicians and officials, traveled through a newly established 4.1-kilometer cross-border corridor, featuring fenced-off sides and leading straight to the shrine in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur in Punjab province.

Known as the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, the temple is believed to have been built on the site where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, spent last 18 years of his life before he died there in the 16th century.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated the border corridor, just in time for the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s birth on November 12.

“I congratulate you and I am happy to be with you today to see that for the first time people can now come from India [through the corridor] to pay the homage,” Khan told thousands of Sikh devotees inside the newly built sprawling complex around the temple.

The “historic” opening of the Kartarpur corridor, he said, is a testimony to Pakistan’s commitment to regional peace. “We believe the road to prosperity of the region and a bright future for our coming generation lies in peace,” the Pakistani leader asserted.  

Khan went on to urge Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to work for a negotiated settlement to the Kashmir dispute so the two countries can jointly fight poverty and bring regional prosperity to their two nations.

“I asked Modi, ‘Why can’t we resolve this issue?’ What is happening in Kashmir is beyond territorial issue, it’s about human rights … They are being treated like animals. If PM Modi is listening to me, then I would say that peace prevails through justice. Give justice to the people of Kashmir,” he said.

Former Indian Sikh prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was among the first pilgrims to cross over into Pakistan to pay respect to the shrine.

“I hope India and Pakistan relations improve enormously as a result of this beginning. It is a big moment,” Singh told reporters.  

Traditionally strained bilateral relations plunged to historic lows last August when New Delhi ended the special constitutional autonomy for Indian-administered Muslim-majority Kashmir region and bifurcated it into two union territories.

Indian authorities simultaneously imposed a security lockdown and a communications blackout, though it has since been partially eased.

Islamabad rejected the move as a violation of longstanding United Nations resolutions that describe Kashmir as a disputed territory. Pakistan also downgraded diplomatic ties with India.  

The territorial dispute has sparked two of the three wars the neighbors have fought since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

The minority Sikh community in India has demanded access to the shrine for decades. But bilateral tensions blocked progress until last year when Pakistan itself offered to open the Kartarpur crossing.

A large number of devotees from countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain also come to Kartarpur through regular entry points and airports in Pakistan to attend the event. Foreign diplomats based in Islamabad also were flown to Kartarpur to witness the inaugural ceremony.

Saturday was the first time since 1947 — when British India was divided into the two separate states of India and Pakistan — that Indian Sikh devotees were able to cross the border and undertake a visa-free visit to the shrine.

Until now, pilgrims had to go through a drawn-out visa process, often hampered by mutual tensions, and undertake a long journey through Pakistan to reach the temple.

Earlier in the morning, Prime Minister Modi, while inaugurating his side of the corridor, flagged off hundreds of pilgrims from the Indian border city of Gurdaspur.

The United States welcomed the opening of the Kartarpur border crossing as an “impressive project” and congratulated both India and Pakistan on this initiative.

“We see this as a positive example of neighbors working together for mutual benefit. The newly opened corridor is a step toward promoting greater religious freedom,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus noted in a video message she released via Twitter.

The border corridor, under a bilateral pact, would give year-round visa-free access to about 5,000 Indian Sikhs each day to the temple, arriving in the morning and returning in the evening.

Pakistan has constructed a road and a bridge over the Ravi River, along with dozens of fully equipped immigration reception centers for pilgrims. Officials said the dining area near the shrine can host more than 2,500 pilgrims simultaneously, where they will be served free food during Guru Nanak’s birth celebrations.

Pakistani officials say the massive construction effort has turned the temple into the world’s largest Sikh Gurdwara complex. Already built, or under construction, are a new courtyard, dormitories, locker rooms, a library, a museum, and an embankment to protect the shrine from floods — all in consultation with experts from the Sikh community, the officials noted.

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Are the West’s secrets safe in the hands of Britain’s politicians?

It is a question Britain’s intelligence officers are asking themselves — so, too, their counterparts in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing relationship that includes the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It’s a tie-up that’s been called the most successful espionage alliance in history.

Not since the 1970s, when some British MI5 officers thought Labour Party leader Harold Wilson, who won four general elections, and his most trusted advisers were KGB assets have Britain’s spooks been so uneasy about their political masters. The worries about Wilson and his aides at that time provoked treasonous plots by conservative-leaning rogue elements of the security agencies, which even drew in members of Britain’s royal family.

As Britain heads into its most consequential election possibly in the last 100 years, a vote that will determine whether Britain will leave the European Union or not, fears are mounting within the country’s security circles that Britons can’t trust their own leaders. This includes both those at the top of the country’s main opposition Labour Party as well as among the ruling Conservatives, a party once synonymous with Queen and Country.

For the past year, a former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, Richard Dearlove, has led a chorus of intelligence warnings about Jeremy Corbyn, widely seen as Labour’s most leftwing leader since the 1920s, and his clique of advisers. Last month, Dearlove said in a TV interview he was “troubled” by Corbyn’s “past associations,” sparking a furious reaction from senior Labour lawmakers, who warned of ‘deep state’ meddling.

Britain’s Conservative-leaning newspapers have taken up the warnings, with The Sun newspaper headlining midweek: “Intelligence Services and Foreign Office ‘Fear Jeremy Corbyn Would Risk National Security’ if He Wins Election.”

Former intelligence chiefs and government insiders say the flow of secret information Britain is supplied from the “Five Eyes” network could start drying up because of a lack of trust by Western partners in Corbyn and his advisers.

Writing in The Times newspaper, retired Labour politician Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary, dismissed allegations of “deep state” interference and warned Western security agencies could “lessen intelligence co-operation with us,” if Corbyn wins the election. He warned Britain’s spooks also would be chary of disclosing some of their most sensitive information with a Downing Street occupied by Corbyn.

“This would not be any ‘deep-state conspiracy,’ but the human reaction of people who give their careers to keep us safe, sometimes at serious personal risk to their own lives,” Straw said.

A former defense secretary, John Hutton, who served in Labour governments, has underscored that a Corbyn premiership would affect the ‘Five Eyes’ espionage alliance and “place a major question mark over the continued operation of a vital source of intelligence.”

At the very least, Corbyn has a radical and what critics say is an anti-Western world-view, notably out of step, they add, with Labour’s previously more centrist leaders. He’s been a long-standing critic of NATO and has called for it to be disbanded, decrying it as an “instrument of Cold War manipulation.” He also has been an opponent of Britain possessing nuclear weapons. He’s voted as a lawmaker against every military action proposed by the government of the day, including intervention in Kosovo.

Corbyn dubs as “friends” Hamas and Hezbollah, and at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign he spoke at official commemorations to honor the Irish republican dead. And he was on the board of a far-left Labour publication that praised the IRA’s 1984 Brighton bombing, which nearly killed then prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In an editorial, the publication said, “It certainly appears to be the case that the British only sit up and take notice [of Ireland] when they are bombed into it.”

Last year, he provoked fury in the House of Commons when he questioned the British government’s blaming of the Kremlin for the Novichok poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English cathedral town of Salisbury. Corbyn argued Russia should be involved in the investigation.

Dearlove accuses Corbyn of giving aid and comfort to Britain’s enemies. “He has enthusiastically associated himself with groups and interests which I would not say were the friends of the British nation,” Britain’s former top spy said last month.

The alarm of the security establishment is wider than just Corbyn, though, when it comes to the current top echelons of the Labour Party.  Seamus Milne, the Labour leader’s director of strategy and his closest adviser, has been an outspoken critic of Western policies throughout a long career as a columnist at the Guardian newspaper. He has argued Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea was “clearly defensive” and the consequence of a NATO manipulated breakup of the Soviet Union.

That insight earned Milne the rebuke of a fellow Guardian contributor, Oliver Bullough, an author of several books on Russia, who accused Milne of living in a “parallel universe.” He noted “the destruction of the USSR was not some Versailles-style treaty imposed from outside. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus did it themselves.”

Conservative lawmaker Bob Seely, a former British army officer and member of the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee, has accused Milne of echoing Kremlin propaganda. In 2014, Milne participated in a conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he conducted an onstage discussion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Some British intelligence insiders say in the event of a Labour election win, the heads of Britain’s security agencies likely would insist on withholding the most sensitive information from Milne, as well as another Corbyn policy adviser, Andrew Murray, a former member of the Communist Party, and regular contributor to Britain’s Communist newspaper, the Morning Star.

Speaking to VOA recently, Norman Roule, who was in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations for 34 years, and served as a division chief and chief of station, says “the U.S. intelligence relationship with the British is the closest on the planet.” He added: “We share so much information with each other, and it’s shared so deeply and immediately that if we have a difference of views, it’s usually because one of us hasn’t gotten around to seeing the other’s file yet,” he added.

Roule said the intelligence agencies would try to remain constant in their work regardless of who was in Downing Street. “You know we don’t really pay attention to what the policymakers argue about and would try to ignore policy differences that creep up and sooner or later the politicians will move on,” he added.

Other U.S. intelligence officials are less sanguine. One former top level CIA official told VOA: “If we have doubts or fears, we will avoid uploading especially sensitive data — some officers will just take it upon themselves to do it, whether there is an order from on high or not.”

Dearlove and other members of Britain’s security establishment have dismissed the idea of a “deep state” working against a Labour government, saying every government of whatever stripe has been loyally served by the British intelligence community.

But it isn’t only Labour that is prompting the anxiety of both British and other Western intelligence agencies. The Conservatives, too, are a cause for unease. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was blocked by his predecessor in Downing Street, Theresa May, from seeing top secret information when he served as foreign secretary on the grounds he couldn’t be trusted because of his tendency to be indiscrete.

As London mayor previously, he had let slip confidential information before it was due to be made public, angering May, who was then Home Secretary. The BBC reported that when Johnson became Foreign Secretary, Downing Street would sometimes convene smaller meetings, or ‘pre-meets,’ to discuss especially sensitive matters so as to exclude Johnson.

Additionally, Johnson’s Conservative Party has accepted large donations from London-based Russian oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin and Russia’s FSB security agency, according to a still-under-wraps cross-party parliamentary committee report. Last week, Downing Street prompted a political outcry by deciding to delay the publication of the report until after next month’s general election.

Downing Street has been accused of sitting on the report detailing the security threat posed by Russia to Britain. The 50-page dossier examines allegations that a Kremlin-sponsored influence campaign may have distorted the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum. The report raises concerns about the flow into the Conservative Party of Russian money from oligarchs linked to the Kremlin, along with a high level of Russian infiltration into the higher ranks of British politics, business, high society and the legal profession.

Members of the cross-party intelligence and security committee said they expected Johnson to approve publication ahead of the election. Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general who chairs the committee, said the report “comments directly on what has been seen as a perceived threat to our democratic processes.”

…

U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly worried Islamic State fighters captured as the terror group’s caliphate collapsed in Syria will find their way back to the battlefield.

The concern, they say, is most acute for the approximately 2,000 foreign fighters who are being kept in a state of limbo, held in makeshift prisons run by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as their home countries refuse to take them back.

“We’ve gotten kind of fatalistic about this,” Russell Travers, acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said Friday.

“There’s a growing likelihood that eventually we could see many of these foreign fighters again when they’ve broken out of prison or been released,” he told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The greatest midterm concern is the retention of those prisoners and not bolstering the [Islamic State] ranks and not seeing a foreign fighter outflow from Syria.”

For months, U.S. officials at the State Department and the Pentagon have urged countries, especially those who joined the coalition to defeat IS, to repatriate and prosecute their citizens or residents who left to fight for the self-declared caliphate.

But those pleas have largely gone nowhere, as European countries especially have raised concerns, arguing their legal systems will not allow for the successful prosecution of IS fighters whose alleged crimes were committed thousands of kilometers away.

Turkish incursions

Making matters more precarious, Turkey’s incursions into northeast Syria last month forced the main U.S. partner on the ground, the mostly Kurdish SDF, to pull guards from the prisons to fight Turkish-backed forces.

Kurdish officials also said they were forced to evacuate some prisons and move captured IS fighters to makeshift facilities after some areas came under attack.

In the process, about 100 prisoners escaped. And there are fears that if Turkish forces drive deeper into Syrian territory, eventually there may not be anyone left to keep the remaining IS detainees under lock and key.

The question is a critical one for U.S. counterterrorism officials, who believe there are likely a total of 15,000 IS fighters in SDF custody, thousands more than suggested by previous estimates from U.S. military or diplomatic officials.

Should a significant portion get free, it could significantly alter the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, home now to at least 14,000 IS fighters.

“We think it’s substantially higher than that,” Travers said, adding, “That number is going to do nothing but grow.”

“There are already no-go areas at night. We see ISIS flags and we see small areas in which Sharia is being implemented,” he added, using an acronym for the terror group. “The insurgency is alive and kicking.”

The United States is not alone in its concern.

Voicing alarm

Officials from Iraqi Kurdistan have likewise been voicing alarm at the developments in Syria, worried that they could give the Islamic State insurgency a significant boost and give hope and inspiration to IS family members languishing in displaced-person camps across Syria and Iraq.

“These camps are a breeding ground. It’s a ticking time bomb,” said Bayan Sami Rahman, the Kurdistan Regional Government representative to the U.S.

“You have children growing up in this kind of atmosphere where the parents are unrepentant ISIS fighters, the mother and the father,” she told VOA. “I’m worried that in 10 years’ time, you and I will be having a conversation about a 5-year-old, who, by then, is 15 in these camps. And what will his mindset be?”

According to U.S. counterterrorism officials, the answer could come down, in part, to how IS decides to operate.

For now, officials say the terror group has played to expectations, rallying support around its new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, after a U.S. raid killed former caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

As for who is #Qurashi? “We’re not at a point of having confirmation” says #NCTC acting Dir Travers, adding Hajji ‘Abdallah was seen as a “logical choice” to take over if/when Abu Bakr al #Baghdadi died

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 8, 2019

What comes next, though, may not be so easy to predict.

“ISIS is a learning organization,” said Travers of the National Counterterrorism Center. “In my own mind, I wonder if they would be content with conducting a prolonged insurgency and staying underground to avoid the kind of pressure they absorbed from the coalition.

“The more we draw down [U.S. forces], the more we siphon resources off to other very high-priority threats, the greater the likelihood we’re not going to understand that dynamic,” he said.

…

Since the start of the impeachment inquiry six weeks ago, more than a dozen current and former Trump administration officials have refused to testify before House of Representatives investigators, raising questions about Congress’ ability to summon key witnesses. 
 
In the latest instance, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney failed to show up for a scheduled deposition on Friday, despite a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee.
 
Lawmakers’ strongest investigative tool is the subpoena — a legal order to appear before a congressional committee. But Congress has had mixed success over the years in utilizing this mechanism to compel testimony. 
 
While Mulvaney, a former Republican House member, is unlikely to cooperate, more than a dozen other officials have stepped forward, in many cases after being subpoenaed. 
 
With the testimony of these officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon and other evidence, House Democrats appear confident they have enough to build a case that Trump abused his power when he pressed the president of Ukraine over the summer to investigate Trump’s political rivals while military aid to Ukraine was withheld. 
 
Here are four things you need to know about congressional subpoenas:  

What is a congressional subpoena? 
 
A congressional subpoena is similar to a grand jury subpoena, a legal order issued to a recalcitrant witness to produce testimony and documents in connection with an investigation. Witnesses — private citizens and government officials alike — are typically requested to provide information on a voluntary basis. When they refuse to do so, congressional committees can serve them with subpoenas to compel their compliance. 
 
What is the source of Congress’ subpoena power? 
 
While there are no constitutional provisions that explicitly give Congress the authority to investigate the executive branch and issue subpoenas, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to imply a power to conduct such investigations, according to Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and author of “How to Read the Constitution.” 
 
“It’s implied in its power to make laws and its power to impeach,” Wehle said of Congress’ power to investigate. “It has to find facts in order to legislate and decide whether to take impeachment action.” 
 
As part of that broad authority, congressional committees can first ask witnesses to testify and produce documents and then subpoena them if they refuse to cooperate. 
 
Can subpoenas be ignored? 
 
Every recipient of a congressional subpoena has a legal obligation to comply. “There is no blanket immunity from having to show up,” Wehle said. 
 
However, while private citizens can find it hard to defy a congressional subpoena, administration officials unwilling to testify possess an oft-used evasive tool: executive privilege. 
 
“That is a constitutionally recognized doctrine which basically safeguards the communications of the president and senior officials and others that work in the executive branch,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. 
 
Nearly as many officials have simply ignored subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry as have complied, while a former deputy national security adviser, Charles Kupperman, has asked a federal judge to rule on whom he should obey: the White House or Congress.  

“A private citizen cannot sue Congress and try to avoid coming in when they’re served with a lawful subpoena,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said after Kupperman failed to show up for his scheduled deposition on Oct. 28. 
 
How does Congress enforce subpoenas? Are there penalties for noncompliance? 
 
Congress has a couple of mechanisms to enforce subpoenas issued to executive branch officials.It can petition a federal court and try to convince a judge that the executive branch official is legally obligated to comply. Alternatively, it can ask the Justice Department to bring contempt-of-Congress charges against the defiant party, although Democratic investigators likely would get a cool reception from Attorney General William Barr, a strong proponent of executive power. 

In theory, there is a third way for lawmakers to gain compliance: sending the House sergeant at arms to arrest anyone who refuses to comply. But that’s an option that hasn’t been in use since the early days of the American republic.

Members of Congress have floated various ideas about how to strengthen compliance over the years, including requiring courts to expedite subpoena enforcement lawsuits brought by Congress.

But, said von Spakovsky, Congress is unlikely to go down that route.

“This boils down to a basic constitutional fight, a political fight that involves the separation of powers between the congressional branch and the executive branch. Sometimes the executive branch wins. Sometimes the Congress wins,” he said.

…

The Libyan civil war has found a new battlefield: the halls of Washington. The eight-year conflict shows little sign of ending, and the warring governments are stepping up their efforts to influence policymakers in the United States.

Crucial to these efforts, and the Libyan conflict as a whole, is the country’s oil output. Production currently stands at more than a million barrels a day, and the revenue is crucial to all aspects of the conflict. It funds the weapons, the militias, and the lawyers lobbying officials in the United States.

Most of the oil is shipped to Western Europe, where Libyan oil retains an “outsized significance to the European market,” according to Dr. Cullen Hendrix, professor at the University of Denver and nonresident senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Under army’s control

Most of the oil facilities are located in territory controlled by the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, even as the revenue generated goes to Libya’s state-owned oil company, the NOC. The oil funds are then distributed through Libya’s central bank, which supplies only the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The LNA, representing the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR), is currently sieging the GNA’s capital of Tripoli. The U.N. estimates more than 1,000 people have been killed in the seven-month siege alone.

The siege is symptomatic of the international nature of the conflict. Foreign drones dot the air, Turkish and Emirati-made armored personnel carriers bring fighters to the battlefield, and recent reports indicate that Russian and Sudanese mercenaries now are fighting for the LNA.

While the United States officially backs the GNA, it is largely uninvolved outside counterterrorism efforts. Libya’s rival governments are seeking to change that.

In the past year, the rival governments of Libya penned millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with government relations firms in the United States. The U.N.-backed GNA hired Mercury Public Affairs for $2 million a year, not including a $500,000 initial payment. The contract came shortly after President Donald Trump called LNA chief Haftar.

Mercury’s activities are extensive. Its contract details its services as lobbying Congress and the executive branch, identifying interest groups, public relations and international affairs. According to records from the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Mercury contacted congressional offices over 380 times, press agencies upward of 110 times and the White House deputy chief of staff.

These contacts included requests to secure interviews for the Government of National Accord’s deputy prime minister, largely with major press organizations.

Oil exports

The GNA enlisted further help to lobby on behalf of Libya’s oil exports, hiring the international law firm Gerstman Schwartz in August of this year. Gerstman’s efforts are centered on modifying the sanctions surrounding a fund built up by oil exports that is earmarked for Libya’s reconstruction.

The windfall from the export revenue will be crucial to rebuilding efforts, but current sanctions don’t allow the funds to collect any interest. As a result, banks are siphoning money through fees, draining a fund that would be best used in the extensive rebuild Libya will have to undergo after the conflict is resolved.

In September, Tripoli retained another firm, Gotham Government Relations, where Gerstman and Schwartz are partners. According to the contract, Gotham will “highlight the [GNA]’s contributions to combating terrorism; counsel GNA regarding outreach to U.S. and foreign think tanks; and prepare reports on Haftar’s human rights violations and crimes against the Libyan people.”

The contract is worth $1.5 million for the year.

On the other side of the conflict is the Libyan National Army and its nominal government, the eastern-based House of Representatives. In May the two signed a new contract with Linden Strategies after parting ways with the firm Dickens & Madson.

Ari Ben Menashe, the president of Dickens & Madson, described his role as “arranging meetings” between Haftar and officials in Russia and the United States. Menashe “advised Haftar against” the siege of Tripoli, and said he dedicated his time to mediation efforts. The eastern-based government paid handsomely for Dickens & Madson’s services, with a contract totaling $6 million.

Trip to U.S.

Since then, Linden has taken the torch and organized a trip for representatives of the eastern government to the United States. In conjunction with this trip, Linden contacted members of Congress, officials at the State and Defense departments, the National Security Council and the White House.

The Libyan delegation met with these same officials. During these meetings, Linden did not press for U.S. intervention, though it did welcome “continued cooperation” in fighting terrorist elements in Libya, such as Islamic State and al-Qaida. The fees for this agreement reached $5.4 million.

If officials in the U.S. choose to put Washington’s formidable clout to use, these millions of dollars in lobbying contracts will be money well spent.

…

A student at a Hong Kong university who fell during protests earlier this week died Friday, the first student death in months of anti-government demonstrations in the Chinese-ruled city that is likely to be a trigger for fresh unrest.

Chow Tsz-lok, 22, an undergraduate student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, died of injuries sustained early Monday. The circumstances of how he was injured were unclear, but authorities said he was believed to have fallen from the third to the second floor in a parking garage when police dispersed crowds in a district east of the Kowloon Peninsula.

Chow’s death is expected to spark fresh protests and fuel anger and resentment against the police, who are already under pressure amid accusations of excessive force as the city grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.

Demonstrators had thronged the hospital this week to pray for Chow, leaving flowers and hundreds of get-well messages on walls and notice boards inside the building. Students also staged rallies at universities across the former British colony.

“Wake up soon. Remember we need to meet under the LegCo,” said one message, referring to the territory’s Legislative Council, one of the targets of the protest rallies. “There are still lots of things for you to experience in your life.”

Another read: “Please add oil and stay well,” a slogan meaning “keep your strength up” that has become a rallying cry of the protest movement.

Leading the protests

Students and young people have been at the forefront of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since June to press for greater democracy, among other demands, and rally against perceived Chinese meddling in the Asian financial hub.

The protests, ignited by a now-scrapped extradition bill for people to be sent to mainland China for trial, have evolved into wider calls for democracy, posing one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took charge in 2012.

Protesters have thrown petrol bombs and vandalized banks, stores and metro stations, while police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and, in some cases, live ammunition in scenes of chaos.

In June, Marco Leung, 35, fell to his death from construction scaffolding after unfurling banners against the extradition bill. Several young people who have taken their own lives in recent months have been linked to the protests.

Graduation day

Chow, an active netball and basketball player according to his university peers, had been studying a two-year undergraduate degree in computer science.

Chow’s death came on graduation day for many students at his university, located in the city’s Clear Water Bay district.

Hundreds of students, some in their black graduation gowns and many wearing now banned face masks, held a silent gathering in the main piazza of the campus after receiving their degrees. Some were in tears.

They later moved to a stage where the graduation ceremonies had been held. Chanting “Stand with Hong Kong” and “Five demands and not one less,” they spray painted Chow’s name and pinned photos and signs of him on nearby walls.

“I can’t put a smile on my face thinking about what has happened,” said Chen, a female graduate in biochemistry, who was wearing a formal gown and holding bouquets of flowers.

A memorial at the carpark where Chow fell and a vigil on campus are planned by students for Friday night.

Hong Kong’s government said in a statement that it expressed “great sorrow and regret” and that the crime unit was conducting a “comprehensive investigation” into Chow’s death.

Further rallies

At a separate event, around 1,000 people rallied in the city’s main financial district to protest against alleged police brutality and actions. Many held white flowers in memory of Chow.

“I am very sad over Chow’s death. If we don’t come out now, more people might need to sacrifice (themselves) in the future,” said Peggy, an 18-year-old university student at the University of Hong Kong.

High school pupils are also planning a rally in the eastern district of Kwun Tong, they said in advertisements before Chow’s death.

Protests scheduled over the weekend include “Shopping Sunday” centered on prominent shopping malls, some of which have previously descended into chaos as riot police stormed areas crowded with families and children.

Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded a shopping mall in running clashes with police that saw a man slash people with a knife and bite off part of the ear of a local politician.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, allowing it colonial freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and the right to protest.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

…

U.S.-Chinese trade contracted again in October, despite optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.

Chinese imports of U.S. goods fell 14.3% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion, customs data showed Friday. Exports to the United States sank 16.2% to $35.8 billion.

President Donald Trump announced a tentative deal Oct. 12 and suspended a planned tariff hike on Chinese imports. But details have yet to be agreed on and earlier penalties stayed in place. That is depressing trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.

Beijing announced Thursday the two sides agreed to a gradual reduction in punitive tariffs if talks on the “Phase 1” deal make progress. However, there has been no sign of progress on major disputes about China’s trade surplus and technology ambitions.

Optimism about the talks “could improve the climate for exports in the coming months by improving global sentiment and trade. But we remain cautious,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics in a report.

“It is unlikely that the bulk of existing tariffs will be removed soon,” Kuijs said. He said a “substantial gap” in perceptions about what each side is gaining means “there is a substantial risk of re-escalation of tensions in 2020.”

China’s global exports declined 0.9% to $212.9 billion, a slight improvement over September’s 3% contraction. Imports tumbled 6.4% to $170.1 billion, adding to signs Chinese demand also is cooling.

…

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck northwestern Iran early Friday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 300 others, officials said.

The temblor struck Tark county in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m., Iran’s seismological center said. The area is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran.

More than 40 aftershocks rattled the rural region nestled in the Alborz Mountains, and residents rushed out of their homes in fear. The quake injured at least 312 people, state television reported, though only 13 needed to be hospitalized. It described many of the injuries happening when people fled in panic.

The head of Iran’s emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, gave the casualty figures to state television. There were no immediate video or images broadcast from the area.

Rescuers have been dispatched to the region, officials said. State TV reported the earthquake destroyed 30 homes at its epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.

Iran sits on major seismic faults and experiences one earthquake a day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people.

A magnitude 7 earthquake that struck western Iran in 2017 killed more than 600 people and injured more than 9,000.

…

When billboards in Chinese start appearing, along with Korean and Japanese grocery stores and restaurants that span tastes from almost all of Asia, they are signs that you have entered California’s San Gabriel Valley.

For some people, it is a bedroom community of Los Angeles. For others, the Asian enclave is a home away from home.

Known to the locals as the “SGV,” San Gabriel Valley spans 36 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles, with close to half a million Asians living there. Nine cities in the area are majority-Asian.

They include the city of Walnut, where Mike Chou’s family settled in 1989 when they immigrated from Taiwan. Walnut already had an established Chinese community.

“My parents, they didn’t speak English at the time, so it’s made it easier for them to kind of get around,” said Chou, who was 5 when his family arrived in the United States. “It’s so close to all the shopping. It’s so close to the (Chinese) grocery stores. It made fitting in there a lot easier.”

Chinese arrived in 1970s

According to the 2019 San Gabriel Valley Economic Forecast and Regional Overview Report, the SGV has a large ethnic Chinese population that started in the 1970s, with a flood of immigrants from Taiwan.

Chou is now a real estate agent with an 80% Asian clientele — half of them Chinese. Speaking fluent Mandarin and English, Chou has been so successful in real estate that he now leads a multilingual team of agents, including Roxane Sheng, who immigrated to the United States from China in 2005 for graduate school and stayed.

“Most of my clients are Mandarin-speaking Chinese,” Sheng said. “But they’re either living here and work here, or study here. Or they come to United States just to reinvest, to buy investment property. But they still go back to China and live there.”

In the past 10 to 15 years, Chou said people from mainland China have become the new immigrants to the SGV.

WATCH: California’s San Gabriel Valley a Mecca for Asian Americans

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Mild climate, lots of land

Sheng said the area’s mild climate and the relatively close distance to China make Southern California attractive to Chinese homebuyers. A common language is another attraction.

“Everyone speaks Mandarin.” Sheng said. “They can walk into a bank, post office, grocery stores — they can do everything without speaking English.”

For immigrants who largely lived in expensive high-rise apartments in China, the San Gabriel Valley offers an additional perk.

“We have plenty of single-family homes,” Sheng explained. “They just find a house. They get the land. They get the yard, and they have no neighbors up or down below them. And home prices are still cheaper if they move from Beijing or Shanghai.”

Beyond Chinese

Immigrants from other Southeast Asian countries also live in the region.

Annie Xu, another agent on Chou’s real estate team, was raised in the Philippines of ethnic Chinese parents. She speaks Tagalog, Hokkien, Mandarin and English.

“I’ve been doing real estate for three years, because I used to be a stay-at-home mom,” said Xu, who came to the U.S. with her husband. “And then when my youngest turned 2, I decided that I want to do something. Real estate is a business that you don’t need a lot of startup costs.”

As a real estate agent, she has worked with immigrants from China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

One of her clients is Shabana Khan, a half-Pakistani Indian immigrant seeking a house with a yard. Khan moved to the San Gabriel Valley from New York.

“New York has the vibe of the energy and stuff, but you can get it here, too,” Khan said. “But as soon as you have kids, I think California is the best place to settle down. San Gabriel Valley is amazing. You have so many different cultures within Asia.”

Many immigrants, some undocumented

South Asians are among the fastest-growing Asian American groups in the SGV, according to a 2018 report by the civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.

Using numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, Advancing Justice also found that more than 67% of Asian Americans in the SGV are immigrants, including an estimated 58,000 people who are undocumented. Close to a third in the region are low income, according to the report.

“Some of them just immigrated here, and they haven’t found a stable job. Or their English is not good enough that they have to compromise for a job that’s not ideal for them,” Sheng said.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, the report found that San Gabriel Valley’s Asian population continues to grow.

“You have a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are in Chinese. And some of the workers, they only speak Chinese, so they don’t speak English. It makes it easy if you’re an immigrant to come here and just kind of feel very much at home,” Chou said.

…

Several senior U.S. diplomats, including former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, are key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Trump is accused of having withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine until that country’s new president agreed to investigate one of Trump’s political opponents, former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden. As transcripts from diplomats’ closed-door Capitol Hill hearings are released, many are questioning why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not shield or even support Yovanovitch from an administration campaign that led to her eventual ouster.

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch told lawmakers in sworn testimony she was shocked to get a phone call in the middle of the night, telling her to leave her post and take the next plane home.

WATCH: Cindy Saine’s video report

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She said she was told she had done nothing wrong but was in immediate diplomatic trouble, not from unrest in Ukraine, but from a potential tweet by President Trump undermining her.

A transcript of her deposition was released this week. She outlined her 33 years as a Foreign Service officer, serving under six presidents. She said U.S. diplomats frequently put themselves in harm’s way, believing that in return, their government will protect them if they come under attack. However, she said this basic understanding no longer holds true.

Testimony: US Former Ambassador to Ukraine Advised to Tweet Support for Trump

Marie Yovanovitch said she was never disloyal to Trump in newly released testimony to lawmakers

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended her early recall on ABC News “This Week,” saying she is still a diplomat in good standing.

“Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. When a president loses confidence in an ambassador, it is not in that ambassador, the State Department, or America’s interest for them to continue to stay in their post,” he said.

However, another career diplomat, former U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy, told VOA that Pompeo’s lack of support for Yovanovitch is extraordinary.

 “She is one of the most straight-arrow, dedicated professionals I know. And the fact that she didn’t even get a hearing or any direct communication with the secretary of state,” Kennedy said.

Yovanovitch testified that U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland had advised her to tweet out her support of Trump to save her job. Unthinkable, former Ambassador Kennedy said.

“We support, of course, the policy of the administration which we serve, we are obligated to support that policy publicly, that’s our job,” she said. ” But again, we, the career diplomats, as other public servants, they pledged their support to the Constitution, not to any particular person.”

Some former diplomats say confidence in Pompeo has taken a hit at the State Department, and they fear it has already hurt recruitment efforts.

WATCH: What does Quid Pro Quo Mean?

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…

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova is clear. There is nothing the Kremlin can do about Russian military contractors operating in Africa.

During one of her weekly press briefings shortly after news broke that more than two dozen Russians had been killed in Libya, I pressed her about whether the Kremlin endorsed their presence.

And if it did not, what would be done to prevent Russian veterans pursing freelance foreign policies.

“I have no detailed information about what soldiers you are talking about,” she said. She added there is nothing the Kremlin can do to stop Russian military outfits waging secret wars overseas. It is reminiscent of 2014 when the Kremlin presumably could do nothing about the so-called “little green men” who miraculously appeared in Crimea but paved the way for the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. 

“We have no laws to stop this,” Zakharova said, throwing her arms wide open.

No socializing

Afterward, I talked with her deputy who, before taking up his role at the foreign ministry in Moscow, had been Russia’s press attaché in Berlin, and someone who I thought therefore might be open to some sociable contact with reporters. I sent a follow-up email and suggested lunch.

He has not replied.

That is par for the course. Russian officials are wary nowadays of socializing with foreign journalists, especially from international public broadcasters, deemed to be what the Russian government has labeled “foreign agents.” VOA, BBC, France 24, Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle are all in the frame.

On the margins of a press conference the other day a soberly suited man who said he was a lawyer but who I assumed was some kind of spook, asked me who I worked for and finding out, declared, “Oh, we are enemies then.” I responded, “No. I am just a reporter.”

Some old guard Kremlin-types will flout what appears to be a general ban on socializing with foreign reporters, but on the whole, we are given a wide berth outside the confines of stilted formal meetings. The one exception is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He is been known to drink with foreign journalists in hotel bars, but only on overseas trips. Despite his mien, akin to that of an undertaker, he is said to have an uproarious sense of humor.

Lavrov on Wednesday came out formally against banning foreign international public broadcasters from working in Russia, something being proposed by lawmakers who have accused the broadcasters of breaking legislation covering election reporting.

Difficult to pin down

Even securing a formal meeting with some officials can be an uphill struggle. Take Boris Titov, the presidential commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights. His role is to defend business interests and to act not only as a liaison between the Kremlin and Russia’s entrepreneurs but to promote their views.

Recently, I requested an interview with Titov to discuss how Western sanctions are impacting Russian business. I wanted to ask him also about whether Russian entrepreneurs who took advantage of a tax amnesty offered by President Vladimir Putin may now feel cheated.

Putin had promised Russians repatriating assets held overseas that they would not face unpaid taxes. And they have not, but some declarations apparently are being used as evidence in fraud cases. Last week, financier Andrey Kakovkin, who had recently returned to Russia assuming all would be well, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony for embezzlement of $157,000.

I still have not heard back from Titov.

Trolls and bots

Shunning foreign journalists does not help the Kremlin get its spin on the news. But then it prefers apparently to do that unfiltered via trolls and bots, and through the assistance of oligarchs like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Putin, whose soldiers were the ones killed in Libya fighting on the side of Gadhafi-era renegade general Khalifa Haftar.

Seven more Wagner Group soldiers are believed to have been killed in Mozambique last month.

Prigozhin seemingly hasn’t been deterred by the indictment filed against him last year by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller for overseeing a troll factory that spearheaded alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Prigozhin mocked the Mueller indictment, telling the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti: “The Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

Last week, Facebook revealed that Prigozhin was behind a network of 200 fake accounts pumping out disinformation to assist local political clients of the Kremlin in eight African countries. The countries were Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan, and Libya.

“While many of Prigozhin’s activities in Africa are known, we provide evidence that he is engaged in social media activities in several African countries to a much wider extent than we have previously known,” tweeted Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which partnered with Facebook on the investigation.

According to Facebook, the most recent of the Prigozhin-tied disinformation campaigns was launched in Mozambique last September, just weeks before the country held presidential and parliamentary polls. The content supported the incumbent president and sought to tarnish the opposition.

Boosting defenses

Hardly a day goes by now without some announcement from the Kremlin of a test firing of this or that new missile, a military exercise here or there or the launching of a new warship or development of a fresh weapon system. On Wednesday, President Putin assured military commanders that Russia won’t stop boosting its defensive capabilities with state-of-the-art weaponry.

“Hypersonic, laser and other state-of-the-art weapon systems, which no other country possesses, will be put in service,” Putin told the military commanders. But he added these new generation weapons “are no excuse for Russia to threaten anybody.”

Some Western military analysts say quite a lot of smoke and mirrors may be involved when it comes to the military buildup — at least when it comes to the Russian Navy. Writing in the National Interest, a U.S. magazine focused on international affairs, academic Robert Farley noted: “The Russian Navy inherited a massive, modern fleet of surface ships and submarines. Most of these disappeared in short order, as Russia was incapable of maintaining such a flotilla. The remaining major units of the Russian Navy are very old, and in questionable states of repair.”

Most of the holdouts from the Soviet Navy are approaching the end of their useful lifespans, according to Farley, author of “The Battleship Book” and a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College. “The Russian national security state thrives on the announcement of big projects, but not so much on their fulfillment.”

There is a tremendous buildup of frustration among the young in Moscow and St. Petersburg — and further afield, too — at how difficult it has become to get visas to travel to the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Outward-looking and curious about the wider world, they are exactly the same as their peers in other Central European countries — aspirational, increasingly multilingual and determined to carve out their own paths without larger forces getting in the way.

Partly thanks to cycles of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and consular officials, most countries have fewer staff around to handle visa applications and so the wait for the application process to conclude just gets longer. And the rise of international suspicions and tensions has only added difficulties to the visa process, unless you are an oligarch or rich, of course.

On his departure, outgoing U.S. envoy Jon Huntsman publicly lamented the visa problems — while complaining, too, about Russian blocks on issuing visas for Westerners. Like his predecessors, Huntsman argues that people-to-people contacts will be crucial in breaking down suspicions.
 

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Melania Trump is visiting a Boston hospital’s cuddling program that aims to help infants born dependent on drugs or alcohol.

The first lady’s stop Wednesday at Boston Medical Center is part of her “Be Best” initiative.

The hospital developed the program to nurture babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The hospital also works with expectant mothers who misuse drugs or alcohol.

Mrs. Trump told hospital administrators she hopes her visit will focus more attention on their work.

She was joined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

Dozens of workers at the hospital gathered outside to protest the first lady’s visit.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley says the Trump administration’s tough stance on immigration is discouraging people from seeking health care for fear of arrest and deportation.

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French actress Catherine Deneuve, 76, was admitted to hospital in Paris after suffering a “limited” stroke, French media reported.

“Catherine Deneuve has suffered a very limited and therefore reversible ischemic stroke. Happily, her motor control has not been affected. She will need a few days’ rest,” French news wire AFP and French daily Le Parisien reported, quoting from a Deneuve family statement.

A spokeswoman for Deneuve declined to comment.

Nicknamed the “Ice Maiden” because of her exquisite, fragile beauty and detached manner, Deneuve became France’s leading screen actress and a top international star in the 1960s.

She won fame for her portrayal of an umbrella seller’s daughter in Jacques Demy’s 1963 musical “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg” (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) for which she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1965, she triumphed as a frigid, schizophrenic woman in Polish director Roman Polanski’s harrowing “Repulsion” and in 1968, she was nominated for a BAFTA Best Actress award for her role in “Belle de Jour.” In 1993, she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in “Indochine.”

Often described as the embodiment of French womanhood, Deneuve is a fixture at Paris fashion shows and is known for her biting wit.

Last year, she and 99 other French women denounced a backlash against men following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, saying the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment amounted to “puritanism.”

Deneuve remained active as an actress in recent years and was working on a film this month.

“Either you do cinema or you don’t,” she told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview in September.

“My mother will turn 108 in a few days. My sisters and I have her genes,” she added.
 

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Voting in U.S. state and local elections on Tuesday showed no evidence of successful tampering by any foreign government, the Justice Department and six U.S. security agencies said.

But Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries of the United States will seek to meddle in U.S. elections moving forward, including through social media manipulation and cyberattacks, the agencies said.

“While at this time we have no evidence of a compromise or disruption to election infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, we continue to vigilantly monitor any threats to U.S. elections,” a joint statement, signed by the heads of each agency, said.

The agencies have increased efforts to protect elections and a new position was created within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to focus solely on U.S. election security.

A January 2017 assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election and its goals included aiding President Donald Trump.

National security experts have said they believe foreign governments will again target the 2020 presidential election in an effort to influence U.S. voters.

In February 2018, the Justice Department created the first ever Cyber Digital Task Force with the mission of protecting future U.S. elections from foreign interference.

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From ex-prostitutes making jewelry out of bullet casing to drones delivering blood, rising numbers of businesses with a mission to help address social problems are emerging in Ethiopia as the economy opens up.

An estimated 55,000 social enterprises operate in Ethiopia, the second-most populous country in Africa and fastest growing economy in the region where about a quarter of 109 million people live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

But the number of ventures set up to do good is on the rise since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came in 18 months ago and vowed to open the economy to private investment, raising hopes of official recognition for the sector and easier access to funds.

Kibret Abebe, one of Ethiopia’s best-known social entrepreneurs, said the sector would be boosted as Ethiopia hosts the 12th annual Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) this week, the first developing country to do so.

“The economy is opening up and we are seeing more social enterprises in Ethiopia,” said Abebe, first president of Social Enterprise Ethiopia, which was set up last year to advance firms set up to do good that re-invest their profits into their work.

“Scaling up has been a nightmare in Ethiopia and it’s been hard to collaborate with the government but I’m optimistic this will change as we have a lot of social problems to fix.”

Ethiopia’s Education Minister Tilaye Gete said hosting SEWF, attended by more than 1,200 delegates from 50 or so countries, was a sign of change under Ahmed, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.

“This is reflective of the overall change in leadership and mindset across the country,” said Gete as he officially opened the three-day conference.

Abebe, an anaesthetist, was a trailblazer for social enterprise in Ethiopia when he sold his house to set up TEBITA Ambulance more than a decade ago after seeing how many road accident victims struggled to get transport to medical help.

TEBITA now runs a fleet of 20 ambulances and a college training paramedics, funding its work by charging patients for journeys, offering training, as well as providing emergency services for the national football team.

Health to Housing

Abebe said TEBITA was one of thousands of social enterprises in Ethiopia aiming to help the most needy, with newcomers focused on agriculture, education, health, housing and IT.

For example Maisha Technologies PLC is a tech-based social enterprise testing advanced drones to deliver blood to health centers in rural areas where half of maternal deaths occur.

HelloSolar aims to provide rural communities without electricity with off-grid energy and affordable payment plans.

Abebe said young people – with 43% of the population aged 15 or under – were playing a key role in advancing new social enterprises, many with tech solutions and hoping to create jobs for the future.

A 2016 survey by the British Council – which co-hosts SEWF with local partners – estimated the number of social enterprises in Ethiopia and found about half were led by people aged under 35 while women led more than a quarter of social enterprises.

But these firms reported numerous challenges, including the lack of a policy framework with no distinct formal legal form or recognized means to register as social enterprises in Ethiopia.

The biggest barrier, however, was found to be financial – accessing capital or obtaining grants – so it was critical to find a revenue stream and one strong enough to support growth.

Ellilta Products, for example, was set up 2012 to support sister organization, Ellilta Women at Risk (EWAR), founded in 1995 to help break the generational cycle of prostitution.

Headquartered on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ellilta Products’ workforce of about 55 includes former prostitutes making jewelry from bullet casing and scarves and soaps that are sold locally and overseas to fund the work of EWAR.

EWAR workers visit red light areas in Addis Ababa to encourage women to join a year-long rehabilitation program of counselling and training while their children go to school.

Ellilta Products’ General Manager Emnet Mersha Seyoum said so far EWAR has rescued around 1,000 women, with a success rate of 90% not returning to prostitution.

Anchilu Alemu, aged about 50, said she was rescued nine years ago after 18 years as a prostitute and this has given her and her daughter a new life. She makes scarves at Ellilta and her daughter went to college and is now married with a child.

“Before prostitution was the only way I could make money. This saved me,” she said as she pulled at a spool of yarn.

Seyoum said it had been hard to get funding in Ethiopia as the government did not recognize or understand social enterprises but she hoped this would change under Ahmed and with the SEWF in Addis, attended by 1,200 people from 58 nations.

“Ideally in the future we want to scale up to grow tenfold so that we can provide jobs to all of the women that we rescue,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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