Brazil’s mining regulator on Tuesday blasted iron ore miner Vale SA for failing to disclose problems with a mining dam before a deadly collapse in January, saying this kept the agency from taking actions that could have saved lives.
The dam in Brumadinho collapsed and flooded a nearby company cafeteria and the surrounding countryside with mining waste, killing more than 250 people. It was Vale’s second deadly dam collapse in less than four years.
The regulator’s report on its probe into the disaster is the latest blow to the reputation of Vale, which is under criminal investigation over accusations that top executives ignored warning signs about the dam.
Based on the report’s findings, ANM will now assess the iron ore miner with 24 new fines. Officials said that the amount of each fine is capped at around 6,000 reais ($1,500) under Brazilian law.
The report detailed several problems that it said Vale should have reported.
The first occurred in June 2018, seven months before the disaster, when the company installed horizontal drainage pipes and discovered sediment in the drainage water. This worrying sign should have been reported immediately, ANM officials told reporters in a briefing.
Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil, Jan. 28, 2019.
“The serious fact is that when there is sediment it must be reported. Period. It wasn’t. If it had been communicated, the area would immediately have been submitted to daily inspections,” said ANM head Victor Bicca. “But we didn’t know what was happening.”
Vale said in a statement it would analyze the report but it was unable to comment on technical decisions taken by its “geotechnical team” at the time.
The miner said it is providing all information on the history of the dam’s condition to authorities, adding that various investigations were pending into the cause of the dam burst.
Several ANM directors said if Vale had properly reported drainage, water pressure and other issues at the dam, it would have been classified as “emergency level 1,” bringing a higher level of scrutiny including daily inspections.
They said those inspections could have uncovered further problems, ultimately leading to evacuation, which would have saved lives.
Because problems were not disclosed, the dam was not given high priority, since it was not actively receiving more mining waste, director Tasso Mendonca said. He said the dam was “a bit forgotten.”
“It’s a kind of negligence, perhaps not intentional,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to tap Steve Biegun, the special representative for North Korea, as deputy secretary of state could spur Washington’s denuclearization talks with Pyongyang, said experts.
“[Biegun’s] in a position now where he will have much more influence, and he will be able to guide things from a senior level at the State Department to really help shape policy, even more than as … a special representative for North Korea,” said David Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
David Maxwell – “He’s in a position…North Korea” audio player.
The White House announced Trump has nominated Biegun for the No. 2 spot at the State Department on Thursday, and soon after announced the Biegun nomination had been sent to the Senate.
If the Senate approves his nomination, Biegun will replace John Sullivan, who was nominated to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Russia. Biegun would then be the second highest-ranking official at the State Department after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
If Pompeo steps down from his post to run for a Senate seat as widely speculated, then Biegun would serve as acting secretary of state.
As the deputy secretary, Biegun will continue in his role of overseeing diplomacy with North Korea, a senior U.S. official said.
Experts think Biegun’s nomination signals the Trump administration’s effort to elevate the significance of engaging in talks with North Korea.
“Making him the deputy secretary of state raises his stature and so it naturally raises the level of working level negotiations that he will continue to lead,” said Maxwell.
David Maxwell – “Making him…to lead” audio player.
Joseph DeTrani, who served as the Special Envoy for the six-party denuclearization talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration, said, “I think that means the president and our secretary of state are putting more attention to the issue of North Korea.”
Joseph DeTrani – “I think…North Korea” audio player.
Biegun has been leading working-level talks with North Korea since his appointment as the special representative for North Korea in August 2018. Progress in the talks between Washington and North Korea have been slow due to their differences over the process of denuclearization and sanctions relief.
Working-level talks resumed in Stockholm in early October after months of stalled negotiations since the breakdown of the second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi in February. But the Stockholm talks fell apart after North Korea walked away from the negotiating table.
Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said no matter who leads diplomatic efforts for the U.S, North Korea will not give up nuclear weapons.
“Kim is not testing all these missiles and quietly working on improving his nuclear weapons because he wants to give everything away,” said Manning.
North Korea conducted what it called “super-large multiple rocket launchers” on Friday in its 12th missile test since May. The short-range missiles that North Korea has been testing this summer are considered more advanced than those tested prior to its diplomatic outreach toward the U.S. in 2018.
Manning thinks Biegun’s nomination could suggest that the Trump administration anticipates the talks with North Korea will continue to make slow progress.
“There may be a subtle message in his promotion to deputy secretary – which I think will be a great benefit to the Department of State – which is that they don’t expect the North Korea diplomacy to move very quickly,” said Manning.
Robert Manning – “There may be…quickly” audio player.
However, Maxwell thinks Biegun will be able to create the right conditions for diplomacy to induce North Korea to denuclearize.
“If anyone can create the conditions, the diplomatic conditions for Kim Jong Un to make the right strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons, it’s Steve Biegun,” said Maxwell, adding, “the ball is in Kim Jong Un’s court.”
Biegun’s nomination comes with a wide-ranging support from former U.S. officials and North Korea experts, according to the endorsement list issued by the State Department on Thursday.
Ashton Carter, who served as secretary of defense under the Obama administration, said “Steve Biegun is a man of integrity and breadth of vision who has always represented the best of American policymaking.”
Joel Wit, senior fellow at the Stimson Center who was involved in past negotiations with the North Koreans while at the State Department, said, “I fully support Stephen Biegun’s nomination. As special representative for North Korea, Steve has carried out his duties with great skill and determination, ably representing U.S. interests with the North Koreans, working closely with our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan, and seeking to build support from other important countries, China and Russia, for American policy. I believe these same diplomatic skills make Steve the right choice to be our new Deputy Secretary of State.”
Previously, Biegun served as executive secretary of the National Security Council and chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Prior to serving as Trump’s North Korea envoy, Biegun worked as vice president of international governmental relations for Ford Motor Company.
North Korea on Tuesday lashed out at the United States for mentioning Pyongyang in its annual report on state sponsors of terrorism, saying the report is an example of Washington’s “hostile policy” that is limiting chances for dialogue.
The U.S. State Department on Friday published its 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism. Though the report scaled back its criticism of North Korea from the previous year, it mentioned that the U.S. re-designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terror in 2017.
North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the report as a “grave politically motivated provocation,” according to a statement in the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“This proves once again that the U.S. preoccupied with inveterate repugnancy toward (North Korea) is invariably seeking its hostile policy towards the latter,” the statement said.
FILE – People watch a TV showing a file image of an unspecified North Korean missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Oct. 31, 2019.
North Korea last month walked away from working-level nuclear talks, blaming the United States for not offering enough concessions. It has since threatened to resume nuclear or long-range missile tests.
The North Korean statement on Tuesday said it is an “insult” that the U.S. would issue the terrorism report, especially while U.S.-North Korea dialogue “is at a stalemate.”
“The channel of the dialogue between the DPRK and the U.S. is more and more narrowing due to such attitude and stand of the U.S.,” the North Korean foreign ministry said, using an abbreviation for the country’s official name.
North Korea was originally designated as a state sponsor of terror in 1988, following its involvement in the bombing of a Korean Airlines passenger flight a year earlier. The U.S. removed North Korea from the list in 2008 during a period of dialogue.
FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives at Haneda international airport in Tokyo, March 15, 2017.
In 2017, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson re-designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism during a period of heightened tensions.
“The Secretary determined that the DPRK government repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, as the DPRK was implicated in assassinations on foreign soil,” the latest State Department report said.
The North Korean entry contained less than half as many words as the previous year’s report. It also removed descriptions of North Korea’s “dangerous and malicious behavior.”
But North Korea still took issue with its inclusion on the state sponsors of terrorism list, which imposes unilateral sanctions.
“This is an insult to and perfidy against the DPRK, dialogue partner,” North Korea’s foreign ministry insisted.
North Korea is looking for sanctions relief and other concessions from the United States. It has given Washington until the end of the year to change its approach, after which it has warned of “dangerous” consequences.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump have met three times since last June. Though they have agreed to “work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the two sides have not been able to agree on the first steps toward doing so.
Newly-announced U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s construction sector have drawn a skeptical response from some Iran analysts who foresee the measures doing only limited harm to one of its top industries.
In an Oct. 31 announcement, the Trump administration said it had imposed sanctions on Iran’s construction sector for being controlled “directly or indirectly” by the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military branch designated by U.S. officials as a terrorist organization earlier this year.
FILE – Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi speaks at a media conference in Tehran, Iran, May 28, 2019.
Iran sees itself as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of terrorism. In a Saturday statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi denounced the U.S. sanctions on the nation’s construction industry as “economic terrorism” and said they reflected “weakness” and “failure in (American) diplomacy.”
IRGC-controlled companies such as Khatam al-Anbiya dominate Iran’s construction sector. Previous U.S. administrations sanctioned Khatam al-Anbiya in 2007 and four of its affiliates in 2010.
A State Department fact sheet said the new sanctions target international transactions with Iranian construction companies involving four specific commodities and products: raw and semi-finished metals, graphite, coal, and software for integrating industrial purposes.
“If you look at this designation of Iran’s construction sector, it is very limited,” said Saeed Ghasseminejad, a researcher on Iran’s economy and financial markets at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Speaking to VOA Persian, Ghasseminejad said Iranian construction companies typically produce their own basic commodities such as steel and cement rather than relying on certain imports targeted by the new U.S. sanctions. He said Iran also commonly imports other construction commodities and products not targeted by the sanctions, such Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), a thermoplastic, and tiles used in upper- and middle-class homes.
“So there still are items that can be designated which are not,” he said.
Ghasseminejad also noted that many Iranian construction companies linked to Iran’s Islamist rulers have not faced the type of specific U.S. sanctions previously applied to IRGC-controlled Khatam al-Anbiya and its affiliates. He said other organizations involved in construction and controlled by IRGC or by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have a big share of the construction market, such as the Mostazafan Foundation and Astan Quds Razavi, two charitable trusts led by Khamenei appointees.
FILE – Laborers work at the construction site of a building in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 20, 2016.
Iran also has an unknown number of private construction companies, some of which have connections to Iranian government bodies, according to Ghasseminejad.
“There still is a lot to sanction in the construction sector,” said Ghasseminejad. “The Trump administration should designate the whole sector by saying that any kinds of dealings with it are prohibited.”
FDD has said such a step is necessary not only because of IRGC dominance of the construction industry but also because it supplies key products for Iran’s missile program.
Campaign of ‘maximum pressure’
Trump has been tightening U.S. sanctions against Iran since last year as part of his campaign of “maximum pressure” on the Islamic republic to end its missile and other perceived malign activities.
Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the Belgium-based International Crisis Group said previous rounds of sanctions imposed by Trump and his predecessors have weakened Iran’s economy and its construction sector to the point where the new sanctions are unlikely to hurt the sector much further.
“The important point here is because of the economic downturn in Iran, generally there is a slowdown in the construction business, and as a result, Iran needs less raw material than before,” Vaez told VOA Persian. “There is less demand for new construction than in the past, and as such, whatever impacts the previous U.S. sanctions had on the construction sector in Iran, I think they already have been felt and absorbed in the sector.”
Data published by the Statistical Center of Iran show the nation’s construction sector contributed 2.9% to gross domestic product for the last Persian year that ended in March, around the same level as in the previous two years. Prior to that, the contribution of construction to Iran’s GDP had been on a steady decline from a level of 5% in the year that ended March 2012.
Ownership and activities
Another factor that could limit the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s construction sector is a lack of information available to U.S. authorities regarding the ownership and activities of many companies.
In messages sent to VOA Persian, economist Mahdi Ghodsi of the Vienna Institute of International Economic Studies said he found only 144 large Iranian construction companies registered in Orbis, a Moody’s Analytics database of financial statements of companies around the world. He said that the estimated turnover of 113 of those companies amounted to 0.5% of Iran’s GDP, only a small part of the total construction activity in the country.
FILE – Residential towers are under construction on the northwestern edge of Tehran, Iran, July 6, 2019.
“The rest of the construction sector in Iran is not transparent. The reason could be simply to avoid the sanctions radar of the U.S. Treasury,” Ghodsi wrote.
Further complicating the challenge of sanctioning Iranian construction companies is their involvement in reconstruction efforts in war-torn Syria and in other projects in Iraq, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“Most of the Iranian companies engaged in these kinds of activities do not publicize them,” said Vaez. “Sometimes they use shell companies so that you don’t know that a particular company is of Iranian origin. At the end of the day, this is a very elaborate game of cat and mouse, with the Iranians trying to obfuscate and operate in the shadows, and the U.S. Treasury trying to spotlight and designate them.”
Ghasseminejad said the new U.S. sanctions also may not do much to stop the activities of Chinese and other foreign construction companies in Iran.
“Since the entire Iranian construction sector has not been designated, the pressure on foreign companies to leave the Iranian market has not been that big,” Ghasseminejad said. “If the U.S. actually sanctions the whole industry, and enforces that policy, it will impact the presence in Iran of foreign firms that bring investment, equipment and expertise, and it will impact one of Iran’s few economic sectors that exports services to other countries, where they go and build things.”
As the US House of Representatives continues to march forward with an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, voters are speaking out in the political battleground state of Wisconsin. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Madison
Iran’s nuclear chief announced Monday the country is operating dozens of advanced centrifuges in a move that further goes against the 2015 agreement the country signed with a group of world powers.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said told state television Monday that Iran was operating the IR-6 centrifuges, which allow the processing of uranium much faster than the IR-1 centrifuges Iran was allowed to used under the nuclear deal.
Salehi also said Iran was working on the development of even faster centrifuges.
The 2015 agreement called for Iran to limit its nuclear activity in response to allegations it was working on a nuclear weapons program. Iran said its nuclear work was solely for peaceful purposes, but agreed to the conditions in exchange for badly needed relief from economic sanctions.
Since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement last year, Iran has taken several steps back from its commitments, including exceeding limits on the amount of enriched material it is allowed to stockpile and the level to which it is allowed to enrich uranium.
Iran has complained the other signatories, particularly European nations, have not done enough to help it achieve sanctions relief after the United States imposed new sanctions.
Pakistan has closed its consular office in Afghanistan’s capital, citing unspecified security reasons.
Pakistan said the Kabul office will be closed until further notice.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said Afghanistan’s charge d’affaires has been summoned to “convey serious concerns over the safety and security” about its diplomats in Kabul.
Pakistan said in a statement that its embassy staff members had been “obstructed on the road and the embassy vehicles were also hit by motorcycles while going towards the embassy.”
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been tense.
Kabul allege that leaders and fighters of the Afghan Taliban use sanctuaries on Pakistani soil to direct insurgent attacks against local and international forces, a charge Pakistan denies.
Smuggling gangs in Mexico are cutting through the “virtually impenetrable” wall President Donald Trump is building along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep migrants and drugs out of the country, but Trump says he is not concerned.
“We have a very powerful wall,” Trump told reporters Saturday at the White House. “But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything, in all fairness. But we have a lot of people watching. You know cutting, cutting is one thing, but it’s easily fixed. One of the reasons we did it the way we did it, it’s very easily fixed. You put the chunk back in.”
Trump offered his thoughts after The Washington Post disclosed that gangs have repeatedly sawed through the border wall in recent months using a reciprocating saw, a popular household tool that sells for as little as $100 at hardware stores.
When equipped with specialized blades, the saws can cut through the steel-and-concrete bollards within minutes, according to border agents.
FILE – People walk along a border wall in El Paso, Texas, July 17, 2019.
Once bases of the bollards have been cut, smugglers have been able to push them aside, creating a space wide enough for migrants and smugglers to enter. It has not been disclosed how many times the breaches have occurred.
One of Trump’s favorite 2016 election campaign themes was that he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration – and that Mexico would pay for it.
But with his 2020 re-election bid a year away, the wall remains a work in progress. Trump long ago abandoned efforts to get Mexico to pay for it, but also never won congressional approval of the tens of billion of dollars that would be required to build it.
New bollard-style U.S.-Mexico border fencing is seen in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, as pictured from Ascension, Mexico, Aug. 28, 2019.
Trump instead declared a national emergency at the southern border and, over the objection of critics in Congress, transferred money from other projects to fund wall construction.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that overall $9.8 billion has been secured in the last three years to build more than 800 kilometers of a “new border wall system.”
To date, however, no “new wall” — an extension to an existing barrier — has been built.
But about 90 kilometers of replacement barrier and 14 kilometers of new secondary barriers have been constructed.
The White House on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s bid to get Ukraine to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, saying the request did not amount to an impeachable offense.
“Nothing would lead to a high crime or misdemeanor,” one of Trump’s top aides, Kellyanne Conway, told CNN. She was referring to the standard for impeaching a U.S. president days after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved proceedings for the impeachment inquiry targeting Trump over his actions related to Ukraine.
FILE – Then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden attend an NCAA basketball game between Georgetown University and Duke University in Washington, Jan. 30, 2010.
But Conway said she did not know whether Trump had initially conditioned release of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv investigating Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, as well as a debunked political theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, had hacked into Democratic National Committee computers to try to help defeat Trump in the 2016 election.
“I feel comfortable in saying that [Trump] never mentioned a quid pro quo or 2020” in a late July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Conway said.
“Let’s be honest …,” she added, “what is not there [in the phone call between the two leaders] is holding up the aid. They got that aid.”
Democrats contested White House assertions. “The Congress appropriated money for foreign aid for Ukraine, and the president illegally withheld that money,” Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC.
Trump said on Twitter, “Many people listened to my phone call with the Ukrainian President while it was being made. I never heard any complaints. The reason is that it was totally appropriate, I say perfect. Republicans have never been more unified, and my Republican Approval Rating is now 95%!”
Many people listened to my phone call with the Ukrainian President while it was being made. I never heard any complaints. The reason is that it was totally appropriate, I say perfect. Republicans have never been more unified, and my Republican Approval Rating is now 95%!
On CNN, Conway said Trump has “great faith” in the U.S. intelligence community. But she declined to say whether Trump believes its conclusion that Moscow, and not Ukraine, meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.
Several Trump administration national security and diplomatic officials have told impeachment investigators in the House that Trump had temporarily withheld release of the money that Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russians separatists in the eastern part of the country in an effort to pressure Ukraine to open the investigations to help him politically.
But Conway dismissed the accounts of the witnesses, saying it was “inappropriate to cherry pick 10 hours of testimony.”
Soliciting and receiving foreign contributions in an election is illegal under U.S. campaign finance law.
Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether it was appropriate for Trump to ask a foreign country to investigate an American citizen, Biden, Conway said, “That’s a very simplified version of what happened.”
FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Oct. 23, 2019.
Conway said, “Joe Biden is not insulated from his past actions,” when as second in command under former President Barack Obama, he, along with European leaders, pressed Ukraine to oust a prosecutor they believed was not investigating high-level corruption in the eastern European country.
Neither of the Bidens has been implicated in any wrongdoing. The younger Biden, however, has acknowledged that he used “poor judgment” in accepting the position on the Burisma board, which he left months ago, because it has caused his father political problems as he tries to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination to face Trump in the 2020 election that is a year from Sunday.
FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York.
Trump has repeatedly said there was no quid pro quo even as he asked the Ukrainian leader for “a favor” in the form of politically-related investigations.
The impeachment inquiry in the House was touched off by the account of a whistleblower, identified in news reports as a Central Intelligence Agency official who formerly worked in the White House, who was troubled by Trump’s request to Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son.
“The Whistleblower got it sooo wrong that HE must come forward,” Trump said Sunday on Twitter. However, the general thrust of the whistleblower’s account was verified by a rough transcript of the Trump-Zelenskiy call released in September by the White House and subsequent testimony to the impeachment investigators.
“The Fake News Media knows who he is but, being an arm of the Democrat Party, don’t want to reveal him because there would be hell to pay,” Trump said. “Reveal the Whistleblower and end the Impeachment Hoax!”
The Whistleblower got it sooo wrong that HE must come forward. The Fake News Media knows who he is but, being an arm of the Democrat Party, don’t want to reveal him because there would be hell to pay. Reveal the Whistleblower and end the Impeachment Hoax!
CBS reported the whistleblower has offered to answer written questions posed by Republican lawmakers without having to go through the House Intelligence Committee’s Democratic majority, according to the whistleblower’s attorney. Republicans have argued that Trump is entitled to confront his accuser.
If the full House, on a simple-majority vote, approves articles of impeachment against Trump in the coming weeks, a trial would be held in the Republican-majority Senate, where a two-thirds vote would be needed to convict him and remove him from office. With the votes of at least 20 Republican senators needed to turn against Trump to oust him, his conviction remains unlikely.
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it was expelling El Salvador’s diplomats from the country, in response to the Central American country’s decision to expel diplomats representing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In a statement, the ministry said it would give the diplomats 48 hours to leave. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s government does not recognize Maduro as legitimate and said on Saturday it would receive a new diplomatic corps representing opposition leader Juan Guaido.
Guaido, who presides over the opposition-controlled National Assembly, in January invoked the South American country’s constitution to assume an interim presidency, arguing Maduro stole the 2018 election. He has been recognized by dozens of Western countries, including the United States.
The Salvadoran move came less than a week after the U.S. government extended temporary protections for Salvadorans living in the United States by an extra year.
“Salvadoran authorities are breathing oxygen into the failing U.S. strategy of intervention and economic blockade against the people of Venezuela,” Venezuela’s ministry said.
“Bukele is officially assuming the sad role of a pawn of U.S. foreign policy.”
Maduro, a socialist, calls Guaido a U.S. puppet seeking to oust him in a coup, and blames U.S. sanctions for a hyperinflationary economic collapse that has led to a humanitarian crisis in the once-prosperous OPEC nation, prompting millions to emigrate.
While most of Venezuela’s neighbors recognize Guaido and have called on Maduro to step down, Maduro has remained in power thanks to the backing of the armed forces and allies including Russia, China and Cuba.
Firefighters began to get the upper hand on a destructive wildfire in a Southern California farming region Saturday, taking advantage of lighter winds as authorities let some evacuated residents return home.
The Maria Fire erupted Thursday near Santa Paula, about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and it has since charred 9,400 acres (3,800 hectares) of dry brush and chaparral, officials said.
Firefighters have scrambled to protect tens of millions of dollars’ worth of citrus and avocado crops in harm’s way, as well as oil industry infrastructure.
The blaze, which was 20% contained Saturday, is the most pressing emergency facing California firefighters, with several other blazes in the state largely contained.
More than 10,000 people were under evacuation orders at the height of the blaze.
Evacuation orders lifted
But authorities allowed people in two residential areas to return home Saturday and they had plans to further lift evacuation orders, said Ventura County Fire Captain Brian McGrath.
“We’re taking advantage of the good weather we have right now,” McGrath said by phone.
The fire has destroyed three structures but has not caused any injuries, he said.
Southern California Edison has told state authorities that 13 minutes before the fire started, it began to re-energize a circuit near where flames first erupted, said a spokesman for the utility, Ron Gales.
Southern California Edison had shut off power in the area because of concerns that an electrical mishap could spark a wildfire. The utility and fire officials have said the cause of the blaze is still under investigation.
Dry winds, but they’re weak
On Friday evening, moist breezes from the Pacific Ocean aided firefighters battling the Maria Fire. By Saturday morning conditions were dry again, although winds were relatively weak, said National Weather Service meteorologist Lisa Phillips.
The Maria Fire erupted after fierce Santa Ana desert gusts howled across much of Southern California. Santa Ana winds and similar gusts in Northern California have intensified a number of wildfires in the state this fall.
The state’s largest blaze, the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, was 72% contained Saturday after burning nearly 80,000 acres and destroying more than 370 structures since it started on Oct. 23, officials said.
The song “Baby Shark” blared over loudspeakers and a wave of red washed across this politically blue capital Saturday as Nationals fans rejoiced at a parade marking Washington’s first World Series victory since 1924.
“They say good things come to those who wait. Ninety-five years is a pretty long wait,” Nationals owner Ted Lerner told the cheering crowd. “But I’ll tell you, this is worth the wait.”
As buses carrying the players and team officials wended their way along the parade route, pitcher Max Scherzer at one point hoisted the World Series trophy to the cheers of the crowd.
At a rally just blocks from the Capitol, Scherzer said that early in the season his teammates battled hard to “stay in the fight.” And then, after backup outfielder Gerardo Parra joined the team, he said, they started dancing and having fun. And they started hitting. “Never in this town have you seen a team compete with so much heart and so much fight,” he said.
And then the Nats danced.
With the Capitol in the background, the Washington Nationals celebrate the team’s World Series baseball championship over the Houston Astros, with their fans in Washington, Nov. 2, 2019.
‘I trusted these guys’
Team officials, Nationals manager Dave Martinez and several players thanked the fans for their support through the best of times and staying with them even after a dismal 19-31 start to the season. “I created the circle of trust and I trusted these guys,” Martinez said.
The camaraderie among the players was a theme heard throughout the rally. “It took all 25 of us. Every single day we were pulling for each other,” said pitcher Stephen Strasburg, named the World Series’ Most Valuable Player.
Veteran slugger Howie Kendrick, 36, said that when he came to the Nationals in 2017, “I was thinking about retiring. This city taught me to love baseball again.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser declared D.C. the “District of Champions.” The Capitals won Stanley Cup in 2018, the Mystics won the WNBA championship this year, and now the Nationals are baseball’s best.
The Nationals won the best-of-seven series against the Houston Astros, with the clincher coming on the road Wednesday night.
“I just wish they could have won in D.C.,” said Ronald Saunders of Washington, who came with a Little League team that was marching in the parade.
Nick Hashimoto of Dulles, Virginia, was among those who arrived at 5 a.m. to snag a front-row spot for the parade. He brought his own baby shark toy in honor of Parra’s walk-up song, which began as a parental tribute to the musical taste of his 2-year-old daughter and ended up as a rallying cry that united fans at Nationals Park and his teammates.
As “Baby Shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo” played on a crisp morning, early risers joined in with the trademark response — arms extended in a chomping motion. Chants of “Let’s go, Nats!” resonated from the crowd hours before the rally.
Washington Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo shows off the World Series trophy to cheering fans during a parade to celebrate the team’s World Series baseball championship over the Houston Astros, Nov. 2, 2019, in Washington.
‘Fight Finished’
A packed crowd lined the parade route. Cheers went up and fans waved red streamers, hand towels and signs that said “Fight Finished” as the players rode by on the open tops of double-decker buses. General Manager Mike Rizzo, a cigar in his mouth, jumped off with the World Series trophy to show the fans lining the barricades and slap high-fives.
“We know what this title means to D.C., a true baseball town, from the Senators to the Grays and now the Nationals,” Bowser said at the rally. “By finishing the fight you have brought a tremendous amount of joy to our town and inspired a new generation of players and Nationals fans.”
Bowser added: “We are deeply proud of you and I think we should do it again next year. What do you think?” Then she started a chant of “Back to back! Back to back!”
Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez celebrates with fans during a parade to celebrate the team’s World Series baseball championship over the Houston Astros, Nov. 2, 2019, in Washington.
Martinez said he liked to hear the mayor pushing for back-to-back championships and said: “I get it. I’m all in. But let me enjoy this one first. I don’t know if my heart can take any more of this right now. I need to just step back and enjoy this.”
Martinez, who underwent a heart procedure recently, said that during the series, as things heated up, players and fans shouted at him to watch out for his heart. “All this right here has cured my heart,” he said.
And as the “Baby Shark” theme played once more, team owner Lerner told the team’s veterans, “From now on, you can call me `Grandpa Shark.’ ”
Thousands of Lebanese flocked together Saturday in Tripoli to keep a protest movement alive in a city dubbed “the bride of the revolution.”
Despite its reputation for conservatism, impoverished Tripoli has emerged as a festive nerve center of anti-graft demonstrations across Lebanon since Oct. 17.
The movement has lost momentum in Beirut since the government resigned this week, but in the Sunni-majority city of Tripoli late Saturday, it was still going strong.
In the main square, protesters waved Lebanese flags and held aloft mobile phones as lights, before bellowing out the national anthem in unison, an AFP reporter said.
‘Everyone’ urged to go
“Everyone means everyone,” one poster read, reiterating a common slogan calling for all political leaders from across the sectarian spectrum to step down.
Many people had journeyed from other parts of the country to join in.
Ragheed Chehayeb, 38, said he had driven in from the central town of Aley.
“I came to Tripoli to stand by their side because they’re the only ones continuing the revolution,” he said.
Leila Fadl, 50, said she had traveled from the Shiite town of Nabatiyeh south of Beirut to show her support.
“We feel the demands are the same, the suffering is the same,” she said.
More than half of Tripoli residents live at or below the poverty line, and 26 percent suffer from extreme poverty, a U.N. study found in 2015.
Future uncertain
On Tuesday, embattled Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his cabinet would step down.
But it was still unclear what a new government would look like and whether it would meet protesters’ demands that it include independent experts.
Roads and banks have reopened after nearly two weeks of nationwide paralysis.
Fahmy Karame, 49, called for a “rapid solution to the economic crisis.”
“We’re waiting for a government of technocrats,” he said.
FILE – Lebanese protesters hold a candlelight vigil during anti-government demonstrations in Beirut, Oct. 31, 2019.
In Beirut, hundreds protested Saturday evening after a day of rain.
“Down with the rule of the central bank,” they shouted at the tops of their lungs, clapping their hands near the institution’s headquarters.
Economic growth in Lebanon has stalled in recent years in the wake of repeated political crises, compounded by an eight-year civil war in neighboring Syria.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, federal president of Germany, was in Boston at the end of October to conclude a yearlong diplomatic initiative Germany launched to strengthen ties with the United States.
In remarks delivered at the re-opening of Goethe-Institut Boston on October 31, Steinmeier stressed the longstanding bond between the two countries and urged the two sides to focus less on “what separates us” and more on “what unites us.”
The Goethe-Institut, named after Germany’s most famous poet (and one-time diplomat) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a German government-supported cultural institution active worldwide. It has offices and a presence in 10 cities in the United States.
“I have come here as Federal President to raise our sights away from the day-to-day emphasis on tweets and tirades and beyond the indignation that is often both predictable and ineffective,” Steinmeier said, in what seemed to be references to U.S. President Donald Trump’s usage of Twitter to communicate his thoughts and feelings.
“I want to expand our horizons so that we can look back on our shared history and at things that will hopefully connect us in the future, things for which we need one another,” Steinmeier continued.
FILE – U.S. President John F. Kennedy, left, waves to a crowd of more than 300,000 gathered to hear him declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” “I am a Berliner,” in front of Schoeneberg City Hall, West Berlin, June 26, 1963.
Germany’s troubled history
The German federal president emphasized in his speech that “the great question of our day” is “the fight to uphold democracy and freedom,” adding “there can be no democracy without America.”
Recalling his country’s own history, Steinmeier admitted that “democracy did not come easily to us Germans,” he said. “After the disasters in our history,” he said, referring to the period of Nazi Germany that became synonymous with inhumanity, the German people “relearned it [democracy] with, and thanks to, America,” he said.
Even as Steinmeier juxtaposed the black-and-white images of John F. Kennedy standing in front of Schöneberg Town Hall uttering “Ich bin ein Berliner” with colored images of Ronald Reagan urging then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” while standing at Brandenburg Gate, realpolitik, or politics based on practical objectives rather than on ideals, intruded on the call for unity and international liberal democracy.
FILE – A worker puts a cap on a pipe at the construction site of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, near the town of Kingisepp, Leningrad region, Russia, June 5, 2019.
Realpolitik intrude
The controversial Russian-German gas pipeline construction, known as Nord Stream 2, is set to advance to scheduled completion early next year, despite strong protests by the U.S., which is concerned that it would hurt Ukraine and Poland, Washington’s close allies in the region.
And a research professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College published an opinion piece in the Newsweek magazine with the headline: “Germany’s refusal to ban China’s Huawei from 5G is dangerous for the West.” In the article, the author warned that decisions to allow China’s telecom company, enmeshed in troubles in North America, to gain a foothold in Germany carry consequences equal to “nothing less than an abdication of German leadership in Europe.”
According to Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “broadly speaking, German leaders share U.S. concerns about Russia and China.” That said, “there’s always been a strain of anti-Americanism in Germany society, particularly among more pacifist, left-wing elements,” she noted in a written interview with VOA, though “at the end of the day, NATO and the transatlantic relationship have been and remain a central pillar of German foreign and security policy.”
Affinity for Americans
Daniel S. Hamilton, an expert on transatlantic relations at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA that German public opinion surveys consistently record “deep popular distrust of President Trump, yet still strong affinity for American society and American popular culture.”
As Hamilton sees it, tariffs levied on German and European products by the Trump administration and threats of additional tariffs on autos and auto parts “central to Germany’s manufacturing economy” couldn’t help but generate resentment among Germans.
In a sign that at least certain areas of U.S.-German relations are moving forward and not backward, the two countries’ military leaders recently signed an agreement aimed at achieving an unprecedented level of interoperability within the next seven years, premised on the belief that their joint ground forces are instrumental in keeping peace in Europe, as reported by Defense News.
Speaking in Boston, German Federal President Steinmeier vowed that Germany’s efforts to continue its alliance with the U.S. are set “in stone” far beyond a single Deutschlandjahr USA, that is, a year dedicated to German-American friendship described as Wunderbar Together.
A controversial fraud case against Russia’s leading theater and movie director, Kirill Serebrennikov, was relaunched Friday by prosecutors in Moscow after a string of small legal wins this year upset their case.
The 50-year-old Serebrennikov and three co-defendants are accused of embezzling up to $2 million in public money from a theater project, an accusation they deny and describe as absurd.
The director, who last month received a major arts award from the French government, has been involved in anti-government protests, has warned about the growing influence of the Orthodox Church on Russian society and politics, and he protested arts censorship in Russia.
He denies any wrongdoing, and his supporters, including actors Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss, say the charges are politically motivated and fit a pattern of authorities retaliating against dissenting artists.
The relaunch of the prosecution came as another Moscow court Friday approved the Justice Ministry’s branding of opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation as “a foreign agent.” Observers see this as a prelude to a possible closing of Navalny’s foundation, which has embarrassed Kremlin figures with investigative reports highlighting their extraordinary wealth and extensive property ownership.
FILE – Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, standing, is seen at the office of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in Moscow, March 18, 2018.
Another legal victory
As the preliminary hearing unfolded, attorneys for Serebrennikov and his fellow defendants scored another small legal win Friday when the judge, Olesya Mendeleeva, declined a request by prosecutors for a travel ban on all the defendants. When the charges were first laid out in 2017, Serebrennikov and his co-accused were placed under house arrest, but a court freed them on bail last April, allowing them to work and communicate freely as long as they remained in Moscow.
His freedom allowed him to personally receive last month the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French envoy, Sylvie Bermann, at the French Embassy in the Russian capital. She described Serebrennikov as “a key figure in Russian culture” and said his prominence went well beyond Russia’s borders.
On Friday, prosecutors said the film director could evade justice without some travel restrictions being imposed, but the defense stressed that would block Serebrennikov and the others — producer Yury Itin, former Culture Ministry employee Sofia Apfelbaum and theater director Aleksei Malobrodsky — from continuing with their work. The judge said prosecutors had offered no evidence that any of the accused posed flight risks.
Former head of Moscow’s Gogol Center theater, Alexei Malobrodsky, and general director of Serebrennikov’s “Seventh Studio” company, Yury Itin attend a court hearing in Moscow, May 21, 2018.
Case returned to prosecutors
Serebrennikov, artistic director of the Moscow Gogol Center Theater, and his co-defendants are accused of embezzling state funds allocated by the government for the development and popularization of modern art. Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court decided in mid-September to return the case to prosecutors more than two years after the defendants’ arrest because of inconsistencies in the charges.
Last month, the Moscow City Court overturned that ruling and ordered the Meshchansky court to retry the case. Some of Russia’s most famous actors and directors have rallied around the award-winning film and theater director, who faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. Chulpan Khamatova, an actress known in the West for the 2003 movie Good Bye, Lenin!, has said, “A political motive for these charges is the only motive I can see.”
Serebrennikov moved to Moscow from his native Rostov-on-Don in 2012, having been invited to manage the Gogol Center in the city’s rundown Basmanny district. The avant-garde and controversial performances staged soon drew international attention. Serebrennikov’s own plays poked fun at Putin and mocked the ruling elite, even so Russia’s power brokers appeared able to accept the theatrical ridicule until around 2014. In the wake of the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, state funding for the center’s Platforma festival started to disappear.
FILE – Holding a sign with the name of the banned director, Kirill Serebrennikov, are president of the Cannes Film Festival Pierre Lescure, producer Ilya Stewart, actors Roman Bilyk, Irina Starshenbaum and Teo Yoo, festival director Thierry Fremaux, actor Charles-Evrard Tchekhoff and cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants at the premiere of the film ‘Leto’ at the 71st international film festival, Cannes, France, May 9, 2018.
Serebrennikov also became more outspoken in his criticism of Putin’s government, and he focused many of his complaints on the Russian Orthodox Church, criticizing it among other things for its opposition to the rights of the LGBT community.
In 2016, he directed a powerful movie, The Student, a critique of the church, which portrayed a teenager becoming a fanatical Orthodox Christian. Under house arrest, he still managed to complete a new film, Leto, and directed from afar operas performed in Zurich and Hamburg, overseeing rehearsals with directions sent on USB sticks.
In his first play after being released from house arrest, he had an actor speak the line, “Democracy is just a short break between one dictatorship and the other.” According to local media reports, one of Putin’s spiritual advisers, Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, complained to the Russian leader shortly before Serebrennikov’s arrest about The Student. The cleric has denied the reports.
Citing a rise in ethnic and racial violence in many parts of the world, the State Department is mobilizing U.S. partners to combat white supremacist and other extremist groups.
Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, said Friday the “world saw a rise in racially or ethnically motivated terrorism” in 2018, calling the development a “disturbing trend.”
“Our role is mobilizing international partners to confront the international dimensions of this threat,” Sales said at the launch of the State Department’s 2018 Country Report on Terrorism.
FILE – Hezbollah security forces stand guard as their leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah speaks via a video link on a screen in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 10, 2019.
Sponsors of terrorism
The report called Iran “the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism,” saying the Iranian regime, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, spends nearly $1 billion a year to support terrorist groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah.
“Many European countries also saw a rise in racially, ethnically, ideologically or politically motivated terrorist activity and plotting, including against religious and other minorities,” the report said.
For example, the report noted an estimated 2,000 “Islamist extremists” and 1,000 “white supremacist and leftist violent extremists” in Sweden. A 2018 assessment by the Swedish Security Services called the extremists’ presence a “new normal.”
Cross-border links
Echoing recent assessments by the FBI and other security officials, Sales said that white supremacists and other extremists increasingly communicate with like-minded cohorts across international borders.
“We know that they are, in a sense, learning from their jihadist predecessors, in terms of their ability to raise money and move money, in terms of their ability to radicalize and recruit,” Sales said.
U.S. law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about such cross-border links between extremists. In some cases, right-wing extremists have traveled to Ukraine to fight on either side of the five-year conflict in the east of the country.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 30, 2019, during a hearing on domestic terrorism.
The links between U.S. extremist groups and their foreign counterparts appear to be more ideological than operational. But what worries the FBI is the inspiration white supremacists can draw from violent groups overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday.
“I think you’re onto a trend that we’re watching very carefully,” Wray said.
“We have seen some connection between U.S.-based neo-Nazis and overseas analogues,” he said. “Probably a more prevalent phenomenon that we see right now is racially motivated violent extremists here who are inspired by what they see overseas.”
The rise of violent groups on the right has started a debate among policymakers over whether some outfits should be designated as terrorist organizations.
No domestic terrorism penalty
The problem is that while “material support” for international terrorism is a chargeable offense, there are no penalties for domestic terrorism.
One proposed solution is to pass a law that would allow prosecutors to bring domestic terrorism charges against defendants. Another is to add overseas white supremacist groups to the State Department’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Sales deferred a question about terrorism designations to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
Asked whether a proposed law on “domestic terrorism” will help the FBI, Wray said, “Certainly we can always use more tools. Our folks at the FBI, just like (federal prosecutors), work with [the motto] ‘Don’t Give Up,’ and so they find workarounds.”
A senior Russian diplomat says Moscow and Washington are running out of time to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty.
Vladimir Leontyev, deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s arms control department, said Friday that “it’s clear that we won’t be able to produce a full-fledged replacement” to the New START treaty that expires in 2021. He said that Russia-U.S. talks over the past year have shown that “there are issues that require very serious examination on expert level.”
Leontyev said Russia’s prospective Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile and Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle fall under the pact, but other new weapons announced by President Vladimir Putin don’t, including the Poseidon nuclear-armed underwater drone, the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile and the Kinzhal hypersonic missile.
He said the U.S. sees things differently, raising the need for new, complex talks.
China will “improve” the way Hong Kong’s leader and other officials are appointed and replaced, a Chinese official said Friday.
Shen Chunyao, the director of the Hong Kong, Macau and Basic Law Commission, also told reporters Communist Party officials decided this week that the Hong Kong legal system will be improved to “safeguard national security.”
“We absolutely will not permit any behavior encouraging separatism or endangering national security and will resolutely guard against and contain the interference of foreign powers in the affairs of Hong Kong and Macao and their carrying out acts of separatism, subversion, infiltration and sabotage,” Shen said.
Shen’s statement comes after five months of anti-government protests over China’s meddling with the freedoms guaranteed to the city when it returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
The demonstrations started after a proposed extradition bill that could have led to Hong Kong citizens facing torture and unfair trials in mainland Chinese courts.
The extradition legislation was eventually withdrawn but authorities have rejected calls for Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to resign and for an independent inquiry into the handling of the protests by the police. Since then, protesters have broadened their demands to include greater democracy.
Police struggled Friday to contain thousands of Algerian demonstrators surging through the streets of the capital to protest plans for next month’s presidential election and celebrate the 65th anniversary of the start of Algeria’s war for independence from France.
Waving Algerian and banned Berber flags, demonstrators urged each other to remain peaceful as police tried to push them off sidewalks or clear them out of a central square. It was the 37th such gathering since their pro-democracy movement began in February and changed Algeria’s political landscape .
Thousands of people came from other towns to join the protest in Algiers, some demonstrating peacefully in the streets overnight. In their homes, many residents banged on pots and pans to show support. The visitors then rested with friends or family, or in their cars, and reconvened Friday morning to march through the capital.
The protesters’ anger focuses on the Dec. 12 presidential election, to replace longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika after he was pushed out in April. The pro-democracy protesters fear the vote will be manipulated by the country’s long-despised power structure.
They want an eventual election and brand-new leadership, but don’t want a vote organized by existing authorities, seen as corrupt and out of touch.
“Dump the generals in the garbage!” shouted some demonstrators, referring notably to powerful army chief Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah. Gaid Salah helped push out the previous president, but demonstrators increasingly see him as part of the system they want to change.
The war anniversary drew larger-than-usual crowds to Friday’s protest, where people repeatedly chanted “Independence! Independence!”
The war that began Nov. 1, 1954 over France’s most treasured colony took six years and left scars on the countries’ relations that remain to this day.
A former top White House official who raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine to investigate his political rivals testified behind closed doors Thursday in the House impeachment investigation.
Tim Morrison, the first White House political appointee to testify, was the National Security Council’s top adviser for Russian and European affairs until he stepped down Wednesday. A senior administration official said Morrison had “decided to pursue other opportunities.” The official, who was not authorized to discuss Morrison’s job and spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said Morrison had been considering leaving the administration for “some time.”
Morrison did not respond to reporters’ questions as he arrived on Capitol Hill. He was expected to be asked by investigators to explain the “sinking feeling” that he reportedly got when Trump demanded that Ukraine’s president investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and interfere in the 2016 election.
FILE – Former national security adviser John Bolton speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Sept. 30, 2019.
Morrison, a national security hawk brought on board by then-national security adviser John Bolton, has been featured prominently in previous testimony from diplomat William Taylor. It was Morrison who first alerted Taylor to concerns about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In fact, Morrison’s name appeared more than a dozen times in testimony by Taylor, who told impeachment investigators that Trump was withholding military aid unless Zelenskiy went public with a promise to investigate Trump’s political rival Biden and Biden’s son Hunter. Taylor’s testimony contradicted Trump’s repeated denials that there was any quid pro quo.
Morrison and Taylor spoke at least five times in the weeks following the July phone call as the defense expert and the diplomat discussed the Trump administration’s actions toward Ukraine, according to Taylor’s testimony.
As the security funds for Ukraine were being withheld, Morrison told the diplomat, the president “doesn’t want to provide any assistance at all.”
FILE – U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, center, arrives for an interview with the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 17, 2019.
Their concerns deepened when Morrison relayed on Sept. 7 the conversation he had with Ambassador Gordon Sondland a day earlier that gave him that “sinking feeling.” In it, Sondland explained that Trump said he was not asking for a quid pro quo but insisted that Zelenskiy “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference,” Taylor testified last week.
Morrison told Bolton and the NSC lawyers of this call between Trump and Sondland, according to Taylor’s testimony.
The spotlight has been on Morrison since August, when a government whistleblower said multiple U.S. officials had said Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
Morrison was brought on board to address arms control matters and later shifted into a role as a top Russia and Europe adviser. It was then that he stepped into the thick of an in-house squabble about the activities of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who had been conversing with Ukrainian leaders outside traditional U.S. diplomatic circles.
The impeachment probe has been denounced by the Republican president, who has directed his staff not to testify.
Regardless of what he says, GOP lawmakers will be hard-pressed to dismiss Morrison, formerly a longtime Republican staffer at the House Armed Services Committee. He’s been bouncing around Washington in Republican positions for two decades, having worked for Representative Mark Kennedy, R-Minn., and Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and as a GOP senior staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, including nearly four years when it was chaired by Representative Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.
Agreement on Giuliani
Morrison told people after Bolton was forced out of his job that the national security adviser had tried to stop Giuliani’s diplomatic dealings with Ukraine and that Morrison agreed, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss Morrison’s role in the impeachment inquiry and spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The official said Morrison told people that with the appointment of Robert O’Brien as Bolton’s successor, his own future work at the NSC was in a “holding pattern.”
Bolton brought Morrison into the NSC in July 2018 as senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefense. Morrison, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from George Washington University, keeps nuclear strategist Herman Kahn’s seminal volume on thermonuclear warfare on a table in his office.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Bolton and Morrison are like-minded. Kimball said both have been known for calling up GOP congressional offices to warn them against saying anything about arms control that didn’t align with their views.
“Just as John Bolton reportedly did, I would be shocked if Morrison did not regard Giuliani’s activities as being out of bounds,” said Kimball, who has been on opposite sides of arms control debates with Morrison for more than a decade.
Nigeria accounts for the highest cancer mortality rate in Africa according to the World Health Organization. Low awareness, late detection and high cost of treatment are major factors contributing to increasing cancer mortality in the west African nation. But in October, also world cancer awareness month, several non-profits in Nigeria are taking information about the disease to the streets and sponsoring underprivileged patients for treatments. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
Chief U.S. peace negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad is back in Afghanistan and held fresh meetings with Afghan leaders on the fate of two Western hostages held by the Taliban and efforts aimed at restarting stalled peace talks with the insurgent group, sources said.
Insurgent sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have also confirmed to VOA that “(a) prisoners’ (swap) deal is underway” with Khalilzad’s team and “is in the final stages.” But when approached for comment, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA, “So far I have no information about this issue.”
An Afghan government source confirmed to VOA Thursday the American envoy met with President Ashraf Ghani after arriving in Kabul the previous day from Pakistan. The discussions between the two, said the source, focused on American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, the two hostages being held by the Taliban for more than three years.
FILE – A photo combination if images taken from video released June 21, 2017, by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, shows kidnapped Australian Timothy Weeks, top, and American Kevin King.
U.S. officials have not confirmed or released any details of the Khalilzad-Ghani meeting, but U.S. sources have said, “Getting hostages back is always at the forefront of our policy” of seeking Afghan peace and reconciliation.
King and Weeks were teaching at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul before they were kidnapped at gunpoint near the campus in August 2016.
Khalilzad also met with Ghani on Sunday in the Afghan capital prior to the brief stop in Pakistan. In a post-meeting news conference, a senior Afghan official confirmed the U.S. envoy sought cooperation in securing the release of the American professor, who is said to be suffering from serious health problems, and his Australian colleague. National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, however, refused to discuss further details.
The Taliban has long demanded the release of around a dozen high-profile prisoners held in Afghan jails in exchange for freeing King and Weeks. The insurgent detainees include death row prisoner Anas Haqqani, a younger brother of Taliban deputy chief Sirajuddin Haqqani, and their uncle, Mali Khan.
Khalilzad traveled to Pakistan on Monday and discussed “the current status of the Afghan peace process” with leaders in the neighboring country, said the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. He also underscored the importance of reducing violence in Afghanistan, it said.
Afghan officials allege Pakistan shelters Taliban leaders on its soil, charges Islamabad rejects. Pakistani officials maintain their country still hosts around 3 million Afghan refugees and do not rule out the possibility of insurgents hiding among them.
The U.S. Afghan reconciliation envoy’s back-and-forth visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan have fueled speculation a prisoner swap could soon materialize to pave the way for the resumption of peace talks involving the United States and the Taliban.
U.S. President Donald Trump canceled the negotiations, citing continued Taliban attacks in Kabul, including one that killed an American soldier.
The U.N. General Assembly designated Oct. 31 as World Cities Day. This year’s theme focuses on innovations and better life for future generations. Part of that involves ranking cities on their livability. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi looks at why Karachi, Pakistan, ranks near the bottom.
A rocket struck near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone on Wednesday, killing at least one Iraqi guard.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for firing into the heavily fortified area of the Iraqi capital, home to government buildings and Western embassies.
The rocket fire came as tens of thousands of people massed in central Baghdad for another night of anti-government protests that began a week ago.
Students take part in an anti-government protest in Basra, Iraq, Oct. 30, 2019.
Officials said at least two people were killed and more than 100 wounded earlier Wednesday. Doctors said most of those hurt were hit in the head by tear gas canisters fired by security police.
The Iraqi Human Rights Commission said more than 100 people have been killed and thousands have been wounded in cities across the country in the latest round of demonstrations demanding the government resign. Nearly 150 died in marches earlier this month.
Students and other protesters are angry at alleged corruption, a slow economy and poor government services despite Iraq’s oil wealth.
A move in parliament to approve a bill to cancel privileges and bonuses for senior politicians, including the president, prime minister and Cabinet ministers, has done little to calm the marchers.
The United States, the United Nations and Amnesty International have called for restraint by both sides.
School districts and parents revived litigation Wednesday that accuses the state of failing to provide a sound education to vulnerable children from minority communities, non-English speaking households, impoverished families and students with disabilities.
Two groups of plaintiffs filed motions in state district court to ensure compliance with a district judge’s ruling that found lawmakers and state education officials were failing their constitutional obligations to ensure an adequate education.
Since that ruling, the Democrat-led Legislature and first-year Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham have authorized a nearly half-billion dollar increase in annual spending on public education. They raised teacher salaries, channeled money toward at-risk students and extended academic calendars.
Gail Evans, a lead attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty that represents parents of public-school children and school districts from suburban Rio Rancho to the rural town of Cuba, said much of the new state spending has been soaked up by mandated teacher salary increases, while administrative requirements hobbled efforts to extend the school year at many schools.
The center says the state did not come up with a transformative education plan to truly help vulnerable student groups — and that a court-ordered plan is needed.
“We’re concerned about these ongoing half-measures,” she said. “They are clearly not in compliance with their constitutional obligation.”
In a statement, Public Education Secretary Ryan Stewart said the state is rolling out major investments aimed at “closing the opportunity gap between at-risk students and their peers,” describing extended learning programs that extend the school year and community school programming that can include more school counselors, teaching assistants and after-school programs.
“We recognize the urgency of making sure all students receive he education they deserve,” Stewart said.
New Mexico is one of several states where courts have been called upon to shore up funding for public schools, amid frustration with elected officials over the quality of education and state budget priorities.
Attorneys used several years of data on the educational outcomes of students in New Mexico to build their case. Many of those outcomes — reading and math scores along with graduation rates and the need for remedial courses — were defined as dismal by Judge Sarah Singleton. Singleton, who oversaw a weekslong trial in the case, died in July. The case has been reassigned to district Judge Matthew Wilson.
Attorneys for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, representing additional plaintiffs in the case, said no laws have been passed to improve attention to students with disabilities, another focus of the lawsuit. The group is asking for further court proceedings to assess compliance with Singleton’s ruling. That could include legal discovery and depositions of state officials.
“It’s not clear that the money is going to reach the students it was designed to reach,” MALDEF attorney Ernest Herrera said of new state educational spending.
China’s direct investment in the U.S. has slowed to a trickle, dropping by 80% from 2016 to 2018, according to New York-based research provider Rhodium Group.
Among the hardest-hit sectors are real estate and hospitality, with Chinese investors no longer scrambling to buy prime properties in cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Chinese real estate investment in the U.S. tripled from 2015 to 2016, reaching a record $16.5 billion. In contrast, not one real estate and hospitality investment reached more than $100 million during 2018, the Rhodium Group found.
Chinese developer Oceanwide Holdings’ U.S. footprint includes prime properties in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Construction reportedly has been suspended on one of the towers at the San Francisco Oceanwide Center, while construction has come to a standstill at the Los Angeles Oceanwide Plaza.
“The skylines are no longer filled with cranes, really supplied by Chinese investments coming over here in the downtown region,” said Stephen Cheung, president of World Trade Center Los Angeles and executive vice president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.
“What we’re worried about [is] the construction that’s already here that cannot be finished because of the financing situations,” Cheung said.
Construction work stalled
The billion-dollar Oceanwide Plaza is located in a prized location near the Los Angeles convention center and the complex where the Lakers and Clippers play basketball. Construction stalled in January for the condo, hotel and retail space, and Cheung said he has seen very little activity since then.
The standstill at Oceanwide Plaza is but one sign of a sharp drop in capital flowing from China at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Overall, direct foreign investment between the two superpowers peaked in 2016 to a record $60 billion, then dropped drastically, according to the Rhodium Group.
One reason for the decline is a change in China’s monetary policy.
“There were the currency controls out of China, where a lot of companies were parking money. I think it was probably to get money out of China into a safe investment. And at the end of the day, the Chinese cracked down,” said Dale Goldsmith, a land use lawyer and managing partner at Armbruster Goldsmith & Delvac LLP.
“The Chinese companies couldn’t get the money out of China even though they committed to certain projects. So certain projects here we’ve seen stalled,” Cheung said.
Another reason for the drop in direct Chinese investment is increased vigilance by a federal watchdog organization, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The Rhodium Group estimates the committee’s scrutiny has led Chinese investors to abandon more than $2.5 billion in U.S. deals.
A relatively strong U.S. economy is another factor.
“The dollar has been very strong, making investment a lot less attractive for the Chinese and in the states. On top of it, you’d have skyrocketing construction costs,” Goldsmith said.
To top it all off, a trade war persists between the U.S. and China, sowing uncertainty in an already challenging investment climate.
“As the tension is escalating, I think a lot of the Chinese companies are wary in terms of whether they should enter the U.S. market,” Cheung added.
Southeast Asia gains
The trade war is creating another trend: to avoid high tariffs, international companies are moving manufacturing out of China and into Southeast Asian countries.
In some countries, such as Vietnam, the trade war is creating new wealth.
To offset a potentially negative impact of the trade war in a country such as Indonesia, Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, a research associate at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance in Jakarta, advised in an op-ed he co-authored in that Indonesia increase its direct foreign investment.
In Los Angeles, Cheung said he is seeing a “massive influx” of interests from Southeast Asian countries.
“Vietnam is now looking very carefully into the Los Angeles region, given the Southern California region has such a large Vietnamese population,” he said. “We’re also working with our partners in Singapore and Indonesia and Thailand to really expand those opportunities, because we have been dependent on China for such a long time.
“We really have to look for alternate solutions as this trade war continues, that trade tension continues, and investment is slowing down significantly,” Cheung added.
So long as economic tensions remain high between Washington and Beijing, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities will have to look elsewhere for investment capital.
