Author: Ohart

The leaders of South Sudan and Sudan have agreed to reopen border areas between their countries in a bid to boost trade and the free movement of people.

The agreement between new Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, reached late Thursday, is significant because several border areas remain closed, including Heglig in South Sudan’s former Unity State, Kafiakinji in Raja in South Sudan, and El-Khurasana in Sudan’s Western Kordofan state.

South Sudan’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Deng Dau Deng, said he and Sudan’s foreign minister, Asma Mohamed Abdalla, touched on the disputed, oil-producing region of Abyei during their talks.  

“Of course the issue of Abyei is a fundamental issue because we want a final status on the resolution on the conflict of Abyei. The current government in Khartoum and the sovereign council and the Cabinet are very open in addressing the issues that are outstanding between South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan,” said Dau.

Dau said Hamdok also met with the leaders of various Sudanese rebel groups during a two-day visit to Juba that ended Friday and reaffirmed his government’s commitment to ending hostilities with the rebel groups.

A Sudanese government delegation and the rebel groups signed a declaration of principles in Juba and agreed to hold peace talks next month. Dau said part of the reason for Hamdok’s visit to Juba was to cement that process.

“To show the commitment of the Sovereign Council and the Cabinet itself, so there was no new position from him. It’s only to reaffirm both the sovereign Council and the Cabinet [are in support of the peace process],” Dau told VOA.

Despite Sudan’s 21-year civil war, which led to South Sudan’s independence, Sudanese Foreign Minister Abdalla said Sudanese and South Sudanese are still “brothers and sisters.”

“We have been one country and now we are two countries but we are still one nation and we hope to develop our relations. We would like also to take the opportunity of the positive atmosphere between the two countries to further our cooperation and make sure that all the issues between our two countries will be solved,” Abdalla told VOA.

Abdalla said the post-Comprehensive Peace Agreement issues that remain unresolved since South Sudan became independent in 2011 will be dealt with in the atmosphere of political cooperation that exists between the two countries.  

South Sudan’s foreign affairs minister, Awut Deng Acuil, said both countries must focus on ensuring peace and stability for their people.

“I think time has come for us in the two countries to silence the guns. The war is no more option for our people. We need to have peace and sustainable peace in the two countries,” said Deng.

Hamdok told reporters upon his arrival in Juba on Thursday he was looking forward to a strategic partnership with South Sudan, adding “the sky is the limit” for that relationship.

“We hope to have very prosperous relationship that will address issues of trade, border issue, oil, free movement of our people between the two countries and all these agendas,” said Hamdok.

South Sudan Vice President James Wani Igga sounded equally optimistic about the South Sudan/Sudan relationship now that former longtime Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is out of power.

“I believe he [Hamdok] is going to come up with very strong effective policies and especially our border relations and especially the trade between the two countries and especially the issue of the oil and we are really one people, two countries,” said Igga.

This was Hamdok’s first visit to South Sudan since being sworn in as Sudan’s prime minister on August 21.  

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The Ukrainian president’s envoy for peace talks with Russia-backed separatists expressed concern Friday that the leaders of France and Germany will push Ukraine to make unacceptable concessions to Russia.

Ukraine and Russia have been locked in a bitter standoff since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine. Hopes for a solution to the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 13,000 lives, were revived after political novice Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected Ukrainian president in April.

But his envoy, Leonid Kuchma, told The Associated Press he is concerned that France and Germany, who are mediating the talks, will push Zelenskiy to make trade-offs, such as approving a plan for the separatists to hold local elections in the areas they control without any oversight by the Ukrainian government.

“I don’t have a lot of hope,” Kuchma said when asked about a much-anticipated meeting of Zelenskiy with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany. “Zelenskiy will have a very hard time — it will be one against three people.”

As the first step toward seeking a solution to the conflict, Zelenskiy negotiated a major prisoner exchange with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which 35 people from both sides were released and flown home Saturday. Some of the prisoners had been incarcerated in Russia for five years. European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the prisoner swap as a “sign of hope” for implementing the peace accords.

Kuchma, Ukraine’s president between 1994 and 2005, said Friday that Ukraine is being asked to agree to “all the demands that Moscow is making,” including giving wide powers to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine is committed to the peace accords it signed with separatists in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in 2015, Kuchma said, but he insisted that Russia should pressure separatists to lay down their arms and allow Ukrainian troops to take control of the border first, before a political solution is discussed.

“Let’s comply with the Minsk accords,” Kuchma said. “Security comes first. You need to pull out the troops, pull out the heavy weaponry, give us back the border and then we will hold a free election.”

…

Renan Toussaint in Port au Prince, Jean Robert Philippe and Jacquelin Belizaire in Washington contributed to this report

WASHINGTON / PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – Haitian Senator Willot Joseph, a member of the ruling PHTK party (Pati Ayisyen Tet Kale), admitted Friday that he accepted a $100,000 bribe from Prime Minister-Designate Fritz William Michel in exchange for a yes vote on his nomination.

The stunning admission was made during an interview with Haitian news site Gazette Haiti.

Parlement/Corruption/ Affaire 100 000 us:- Le Sénateur Wilot Joseph dont le nom est cité dans ce scandale n’y voit aucun inconvénient. Pour le Sénateur qui répondait à un Journaliste de RCH 2000, il n’est pas question de refuser de l’argent en ces temps si durs. pic.twitter.com/oo9GzeAXEE

— Gazette Haiti (@GazetteHaiti) September 13, 2019

“I don’t have any problem with [accepting] money that comes my way without having to sign for it, or any kind of paper trail. I take it and I don’t have to be hypocrite [about it] with anyone,” Joseph said.

The senator criticized his colleagues who denied taking bribes after a public accusation made by Senator Saurel Jacinthe on Wednesday, as the Senate was preparing to vote on the prime minister’s nomination. The vote was postponed without setting a new date.

“They are slick, I don’t see anything wrong with receiving money during difficult times,” Joseph said.  

The allegation

Opposition Senator Saurel Jacinthe told reporters Wednesday, ahead of the Senate vote, that Senate President Carl Murat Cantave personally came to his home to offer him $100,000 in exchange for a yes vote. He also named several other colleagues whom he alleges were offered bribes and accepted.  

“Mr. Cantave, the president of the Senate, came to my home and offered me money,” he told reporters, flanked by opposition colleagues.

“The prime minister [-designate] went to [Wilfrid] Gelain’s home with 500,000 U.S. dollars in hand. He offered [Senator] Kedlaire [Augustin] $100,000 yesterday but he refused to take it. Then this morning he [Augustin] accepted.  He gave Jackito [Senator Jacques Sauveur Jean] – who was not present, so he held it [the money] for him — and gave it to him this morning, $100,000 U.S. dollars. He gave Gelain $100,000 U.S. Dieudonne (Luma Etienne) signed a paper accepting 100,000 U.S. dollars,” Sorel said.

Denials

Cantave denied the allegation on Twitter, saying, “For the sake of history and the truth, I never offered money to Senator #Saurel Jacinthe who is delusional. I am a proud and arrogant man. If the senator has proof [photos or sound], may he show them. The nation can not take this drama. “

Pour l’histoire et la vérité, à aucun moment je n’ai offert de l’argent au Sénateur #Saurel Jacinthe qui est entrain de divaguer. Je suis un homme fier et arrogant.

Si le Sénateur a une preuve (images-sons) qu’il la montre. La nation ne peut plus vivre ces spectacles.#Haiti

— Carl Murat CANTAVE (@CarlMCantave) September 12, 2019

In an interview with VOA Creole Thursday, Senator Cantave said he did not want to discuss the allegation.

Senator Augustin was also pressed about the bribery allegations in an interview Friday morning with local radio station Vision 2000. He responded that even if he was aware of bribes, he would not publicly acknowledge it. Asked if he personally has ever accepted money in exchange for a vote, he claimed there wasn’t a single lawmaker who had rejected such an offer.

Senator Dieudonne Luma Etienne told VOA Creole she was stunned to be named in the bribery allegation.

“During the GPRD [Groupe des Parlementaires Pour Le Renforcement de la Democratie] political bloc meeting of which I am a member — there were four of us present — and we were debating our position on the nominee. Money was never part of the discussion. I never saw, nor heard money discussed,” she said. “I am the daughter of farmers. I’ve made many sacrifices. I have never chosen to make money the easy way. I’ve worked hard and struggled to make a name for myself in society. So there’s no way today I’d be willing to tarnish my reputation for something like this.”

Against the law

Bribery is illegal in Haiti, a semi-presidential republic. The president is the head of state, while the prime minister is the head of government. Although the president is a publicly elected official, the prime minister is nominated by the president and must be a member of the ruling party of the National Assembly. The prime minister-designate must be approved by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate before taking office. The prime minister oversees the Cabinet and assures it performs its duties in accordance with the law. He also, in concert with the president, oversees national defense matters.

Call for probe

In an interview with VOA Creole, pro-government Senator Ronald Lareche called for an investigation.

“The senator [Jacinthe] has made this allegation more than once and said he has convincing proof. When we’re talking about a $100,000 American dollar bribe and [consider] the people offered money — it comes to about $2 million dollars [in Haitian money].  Where did this money come from? So I think there has to be an investigation,” Lareche said. “I don’t have any proof as to whether it is true or not but my colleague claims to have video, so we’re waiting to see.”

Neither the Prime Minister-Designate, Fritz William Michel, nor President Jovenel Moise have commented on the bribery allegation.

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U.S. President Donald Trump has arrived in Baltimore, the eastern U.S., majority-black city he recently called a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

Trump was there Thursday to address Republican congressional leaders attending an annual retreat.

Before he left the White House, Trump ignored a reporter’s question about what he would say to the residents of the city, instead saying only that it was going to be “a very successful evening.”

Ahead of the president’s visit, activist groups planned to protest “racism, white supremacy, war, bigotry and climate change,” organizers told The Baltimore Sun.

On Thursday, several hundred protesters lined the route Trump’s motorcade took to the city’s Inner Harbor area, where Trump was to speak.

Trump has denied charges of racism on his attacks on the city and its congressman, Elijah Cummings.

“There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know, that Elijah Cummings has done a terrible job for the people of his district, and of Baltimore itself,” he tweeted in July.

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With a go-ahead from the Supreme Court, the Trump administration Thursday began enforcing a new rule denying asylum to most migrants arriving at the southern border — a move that spread despair among those fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands. 
  
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security agency that manages asylum cases said the policy would be effective retroactive to July 16, when the rule was announced. 
  
The new policy would deny refuge to anyone at the U.S.-Mexico border who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without first seeking asylum there. 
 
The Supreme Court cleared the way, for now, to enforce it while legal challenges move forward. 

Previous asylum request is key
 
Migrants who make their way to the U.S. overland from places like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador would be largely ineligible, along with asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and South America who try to get in by way of the U.S.-Mexico border. 
 
Asylum seekers must pass an initial screening called a “credible fear” interview, a hurdle that most clear. Under the new policy, they would fail the test unless they sought asylum in at least one country they traveled through and were denied. They would be placed in fast-track deportation proceedings and flown to their home countries at U.S. expense. 
 
“Our Supreme Court is sentencing people to death. There are no safeguards, no institutions to stop this cruelty,” the immigration-assistance group Al Otro Lado said in a statement. 
 
The Mexican government likewise called the high court’s action “astonishing.” The effects of the new policy could fall heavily on Mexico, leaving the country with tens of thousands of poor and desperate migrants with no hope of getting into the U.S.  

Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan called the Supreme Court’s go-ahead a “big victory” in the Trump administration’s attempt to curb the flow of migrants. 
 
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in statement the policy was important. 
  
“Until Congress can act with durable, lasting solutions, the rule will help reduce a major ‘pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable the administration to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey,” said Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 
  
The American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is representing immigrant advocacy groups in the case, Lee Gelernt, said: “This is just a temporary step, and we’re hopeful we’ll prevail at the end of the day. The lives of thousands of families are at stake.” 

…

Jewish settlement construction in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has spiked since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, according to official data obtained by The Associated Press.

The data also showed strong evidence of decades of systematic discrimination, illustrated by a huge gap in the number of construction permits granted to Jewish and Palestinian residents.

The expansion of the settlements in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized along with the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, threatens to further complicate one of the thorniest issues in the conflict.

The refusal to grant permits to Palestinian residents has confined them to crowded, poorly served neighborhoods, with around half the population believed to be at risk of having their homes demolished.

Peace Now

The data was acquired and analyzed by the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, which says it only obtained the figures after a two-year battle with the municipality. It says the numbers show that while Palestinians make up more than 60% of the population in east Jerusalem, they have received only 30% of the building permits issued since 1991.

The fate of the city, which is home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is at the heart of the decades-old conflict. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state, while Israel views the entire city as its unified capital. Tensions have soared since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and moved the U.S. Embassy there, breaking with a longstanding international consensus that the city’s fate should be decided in negotiations.

Trump has argued that his recognition does not preclude a final settlement. But the Palestinians and rights groups say his unbridled support for Israel’s nationalist government has given it a free pass to tighten its grip on war-won lands sought by the Palestinians.

Peace Now found that in the first two years of Trump’s presidency, authorities approved 1,861 housing units in east Jerusalem settlements, a 60% increase from the 1,162 approved in the previous two years. The figures show that 1,081 permits for settler housing were issued in 2017 alone, the highest annual number since 2000. A total of 1,233 housing units were approved for Palestinians in 2017 and 2018, according to Peace Now.

The data did not include the number of Jewish and Palestinian applications, or the rates of approval, though many Palestinians acknowledge not applying because they say it is nearly impossible to get a permit.

Spokesmen for the Israeli government and the municipality did not respond to requests for comment.

Arduous process

The figures are for construction permits issued by the municipality, the final step of a costly bureaucratic process that can take years to complete. The figures show that since 1991, the municipality has issued 21,834 permits for housing units in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and 9,536 for Palestinian neighborhoods.

Hagit Ofran, an expert on settlements who collected and analyzed the data, says the discrepancy in permits dates to 1967, when Israel expanded the city’s municipal boundaries to take in large areas of open land that were then earmarked for Jewish settlements. At the same time, city planners set the boundaries of Palestinian neighborhoods, preventing them from expanding.

“In the planning vision of Jerusalem, there was no planning for the expansion of Palestinian neighborhoods,” she said, adding that the government has initiated almost no construction in those neighborhoods, placing the burden of planning and permits entirely on the residents themselves.

Today, about 215,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem, mostly in built-up areas that Israel considers to be neighborhoods of its capital. Most of east Jerusalem’s 340,000 Palestinian residents are crammed into increasingly overcrowded neighborhoods where there is little room to build.

Palestinians say the expense and difficulty of obtaining permits forces them to build illegally. Peace Now estimates that of the 40,000 housing units in Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, half have been built without permits.

“When you build illegally, without a permit, there’s always a chance your house will be demolished,” Ofran said.

B’Tselem, another Israeli rights group, says at least 112 housing units in east Jerusalem were demolished in the first seven months of 2019 — more than in any full year since at least 2004.

‘I’ll die before I ever get a permit’

On a hot, sunny day earlier this week, Jamil Masalmeh, 59, used a crowbar and power tools to destroy an apartment he had added to his home in the Silwan neighborhood years earlier. When he failed to secure a permit, municipal authorities gave him the option of demolishing it himself or paying more than $20,000 for the city to do it.

He says he began trying to get a permit 20 years ago, when he built the extension, which consisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen, for his growing family. Eight years ago, the authorities forced him to dismantle it, but he built it again, hoping to eventually get a permit.

“Every time they tell me to get something different. Get this document or that document, get whatever we tell you to, and then in the end, they say you can’t build on this land. Why? There’s no answer,” he said. “I’ll die before I ever get a permit.”

Promoting Jewish settlement

 Every Israeli government since 1967 has actively promoted settlement construction, including during the peace process with the Palestinians.

But settlement approvals have accelerated in east Jerusalem and the West Bank since Trump took office, as Israel has encountered little if any resistance from a friendly White House. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex the Jordan Valley, which makes up about a quarter of the West Bank, and other settlements there if his party wins next week’s elections.

The Palestinians cut off all ties with the Trump administration after the Jerusalem decision and have rejected a peace plan the president has promised to release, saying the administration is marching in lockstep with Israel’s right-wing government. The Palestinians and much of the international community have long seen settlements as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. Israel says the settlement issue should be resolved in negotiations and blames the lack of progress on Palestinian intransigence.

With peace efforts stalled and little hope for an independent state anytime soon, the Palestinians who remain in east Jerusalem are left to endure its crowded conditions and an uncertain future.

“If you want to travel, it’s a problem. If you want to stay home, it’s a problem. If you want to work, it’s a problem. If you want to build, it’s a problem,” Masalmeh said. “Everything’s a problem.”
 

…

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

Iran says it has sold oil on a tanker near Syria’s coast to a private company in defiance of U.S. efforts to stop such a sale, fueling debate among observers about whether the ship has offloaded any crude.

In a tweet posted Wednesday, Iranian Ambassador to Britain Hamid Baeidinejad said his nation’s tanker had sold its oil at sea to the unnamed private company “despite numerous American threats.”

U.S. ally Britain had seized the tanker July 4 under its former name of Grace 1 in the waters of the British territory of Gibraltar, on suspicion the tanker planned to deliver Iranian oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions on the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Gibraltar allowed the tanker, under its new name of Adrian Darya 1, to leave its waters Aug. 18 after saying British authorities had received written assurances that Iran would not deliver the oil to Syria.

Iranian officials denied providing such assurances, and the Adrian Darya 1 sailed toward the Syrian coast before turning off its transponder Sept. 2. The Trump administration, which unilaterally banned all Iranian oil exports in May to pressure Tehran to stop perceived malign behaviors, appealed unsuccessfully to Britain not to release the tanker and later sanctioned the vessel Aug. 30.

در جلسه امروز با وزیر خارجه انگلیس، تاکیدگردیدکه اقدام مقامات انگلیس علیه نفتکش حامل نفت ایران خلاف حقوق بین الملل بود.تحریمهای اتحادیه اروپا قابل تعمیم به کشورهای ثالث نیست.علیرغم تهدیدات بیشمار آمریکا،نفتکش نفت خود را در دریا به یک ‌شرکت خصوصی فروخت و تعهدی را هم نقض نکرده است.

— Hamid Baeidinejad (@baeidinejad) September 11, 2019

In his tweet, Baeidinejad said Iran believes EU sanctions “cannot be extended to third countries.” He posted his comments after being summoned a day earlier by British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab, who issued a statement condemning Iran for “breaching assurances” about the tanker. Raab said it was “clear … that the oil has been transferred to Syria and Assad’s murderous regime.”

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman backed up Britain’s accusation that Iran “reneged on its assurances” regarding the tanker in a Tuesday statement reported by Reuters.

In a Wednesday report, Iranian state news agency IRNA also quoted Iranian Ambassador Baeidinejad as saying the new private owner of the tanker’s 2.1 million barrels of oil will choose the destination of the crude, without elaborating.

Earlier, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency had quoted foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as telling state media Sunday that the tanker had “docked on the Mediterranean coast and unloaded its cargo,” without specifying the date or other details.

Long story, short: The #AdrianDarya1 sailed into Syrian waters, anchored off the coast of Tartous and is just parked there, still holding 2.1 million barrels of Iranian oil she picked up FIVE MONTHS AGO. Both Baniyas and Tartous accept maximum 16m vessel depth. She‘s 22m deep. https://t.co/4wwOByTgHI

— TankerTrackers.com, Inc.⚓️? (@TankerTrackers) September 11, 2019

TankerTrackers.com, one of the few companies monitoring global oil shipments, disputed that contention, tweeting that satellite imagery showed the Adrian Darya 1 remained anchored off the Syrian port of Tartous Wednesday with all of its oil still on board.

Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, dismissed the significance of Iran’s assertion that it has sold the oil to a private company.

“The reported monetary transaction has no relevance because a buyer has not shown up and won’t do so, as the whole world is watching this now,” Madani told VOA Persian. “It’s all talk until the oil actually has been discharged from that vessel,” he added.

U.S. officials repeatedly have warned the international shipping industry that Washington will aggressively enforce U.S. secondary sanctions against anyone doing business with sanctioned Iranian parties and cargo.

Reid I’Anson, a Houston-based global energy economist for French intelligence company Kpler, said he believed Iran has offloaded at least some of the oil from Adrian Darya 1.

“We assume the tanker discharged oil after it went dark (by turning off its transponder) because a ship costs money to keep floating and it’s not going to sit there for a week and do nothing,” I’Anson said in a Wednesday interview with VOA Persian. “It could have transferred oil at a port or done a partial ship-to-ship (STS) transfer anytime after Sept. 2 with a component vessel that also could have turned off its transponder.”

I’Anson also said the Iranian tanker may have transferred oil to vessels bound for Turkey or Syria, with both nations having been Iran’s only major oil customers in the region.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a VOA Persian request for comment on Iran’s assertion that it has sold the tanker’s oil to a private company.

…

Some Rwandans who used to be wildlife poachers have turned into conservationists. For VOA, reporter Eugene Uwimana has more from the Gorilla Guardians Village, located near Volcanoes National Park in Northern Rwanda
 

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Surfing is an ancient Polynesian art that became a craze in the U.S. and Australia in the 1950s. In the U.S., California and Hawaii were ground zero for surf culture, and surf-based movies and music are still a thing. And these days, people aren’t the only ones surfing. Khrystyna Shevchenko visited a unique surfing school. Anna Rice narrates her story.
 

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After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush encouraged a reeling nation to light candles in honor of the victims.

Elaine Greene and two friends joined the hordes in a candlelight vigil, but not before she stopped to grab an old flag that was behind her Maine home’s front door.

With tears in her eyes, she raised the flag tentatively.

Motorists honked their approval.

The simple act has played out weekly ever since, through snow and ice, sickness and health, over 18 years. And it’s playing out for a final time Wednesday.

Dubbed the “Freeport flag ladies,” the trio is reluctantly giving in to age and ending the Main Street tradition. Greene is the youngest at 74 and battles Crohn’s disease. Carmen Footer, 77, recently recovered from open heart surgery. JoAnn Miller, 83, has foot problems.

“It was up to me to call it, and I called it,” Greene said.

Greene described their calling as a mission of love, gratitude and patriotism, and it went far beyond waving their flags on a street corner near L.L. Bean. They mailed care packages to military personnel deployed overseas in the war on terrorism. They greeted military personnel at airports. They visited the wounded. And they attended funerals.

They saw people at their worst while dealing with loss. And they witnessed how tragedy can also bring out the best in many people, Greene said.

Over the years, their work became their lives. They appeared alongside presidents. They spoke to schoolchildren. The home that the three share is full of patriotic memorabilia and letters from military personnel. It’s been years since they dressed in anything other than red, white and blue.

Greene, whose glasses are red, white and blue, said she wouldn’t change a thing. After all, she said, the flag waving was the answer to a prayer.

After 9/11, she knew the nation had come under an attack unlike anything since Pearl Harbor. She said she wanted to do something to help, and something told her to grab that flag behind the door.

She remains in awe that a simple gesture grew into something big.

“You can either bring a light into the room, or walk into a room that’s dark and keep it dark,” she said. “I prefer to bring a light into the room. It takes only but a little match to do that. You don’t have to have a great big idea. You just have to be sincere.”
 

…

Facing growing competition from less expensive smartphone providers, Apple introduced its new versions of its iconic iPhone Tuesday at its annual product launch event in California.  Along with their latest upgrades and new offerings, Apple also caught the attention of both consumers and critics for something they didn’t do.  VOA’s Richard Green has more on the tech giant’s newest strategy

…

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shuffled his Cabinet on Wednesday, adding two women and the son of a former leader to freshen his image but maintaining continuity on U.S.-oriented trade and security policies.

Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s postwar history, kept key positions in the hands of close allies at a time when he is locked in a bitter trade dispute with South Korea and as he tries to fine-tune a trade deal with Washington.

Taro Kono, who had been foreign minister, was appointed defense minister, while Toshimitsu Motegi, minister in charge of economic policy, is now foreign minister. Finance Minister Taro Aso kept his job.  
 
Yet with just two years left on his party leadership, Abe also sought to add some new faces and keep potential challengers close.

Getting the greatest attention was the new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, the 38-year-old son of popular former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He was the only appointment in his 30s in a lineup dominated by men in their 50s and older.

Expectations in the Japanese public have been high for years that the younger Koizumi is destined to be Japan’s leader. Koizumi has tended to keep a distance from Abe, although both hold the conservative pro-U.S. policies of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.   
 
Abe told reporters that he was proud of his choices as people, mostly veterans, who will tackle reforms to keep Japan competitive in the “new era” of globalization.

On Koizumi, he said: “I have big hopes he will take up challenges with innovative ideas fitting of someone from the younger generation.”  
 
Yu Uchiyama, professor of political science at the University of Tokyo, said the appointments, besides Koizumi, showed Abe chose those who were very close to him.

“Abe wanted the popular Koizumi under his control,” Uchiyama said. “This is a big step for Koizumi toward becoming future prime minister, but he will also be tested for the first time in a major way.”

Also in the limelight are two new female ministers, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi and Seiko Hashimoto, a former Olympian speedskater who was appointed minister in charge of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
 
Women in the Cabinet tend to get attention in Japan, which is criticized as lagging in promoting females in both the private sector and politics.

The nationally circulated Asahi newspaper said the Cabinet appointments showed Abe was building his successors but, at the same time, having candidates competing with each other in an effort to maintain his influence.

“A strategy to create a post-Abe fight,” a front-page headline said.  
 
By rewarding various politicians with posts, Abe has avoided a “lame duck” syndrome, in which he would be powerless during what’s remaining of his party leadership, said political analyst Masatoshi Honda.

Until he came to power in 2012, Japan tended to have a “revolving door” of one leader toppled after another, partly because of recurring corruption scandals. Abe also served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007.

…

Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who helped launch China’s online retailing boom, stepped down as chairman of the world’s biggest e-commerce company Tuesday at a time when its fast-changing industry faces uncertainty amid a U.S.-Chinese tariff war.

Ma, one of China’s wealthiest and best-known entrepreneurs, gave up his post on his 55th birthday as part of a succession announced a year ago. He will stay on as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company’s board of directors.

Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 to connect Chinese exporters to American retailers.

The company has shifted focus to serving China’s growing consumer market and expanded into online banking, entertainment and cloud computing. Domestic businesses accounted for 66% of its $16.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in June.

Chinese retailing faces uncertainty amid a tariff war that has raised the cost of U.S. imports.

Growth in online sales decelerated to 17.8% in the first half of 2019 amid slowing Chinese economic growth, down from 2018’s full-year rate of 23.9%.

Alibaba says its revenue rose 42% over a year earlier in the quarter ending in June to $16.7 billion and profit rose 145% to $3.1 billion. Still, that was off slightly from 2018’s full-year revenue growth of 51%.

The total amount of goods sold across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms rose 25% last year to $853 billion. By comparison, the biggest U.S. e-commerce company, Amazon.com Inc., reported total sales of $277 billion.

Alibaba’s deputy chairman, Joe Tsai, told reporters in May the company is “on the right side” of issues in U.S.-Chinese trade talks. Tsai said Alibaba stands to benefit from Beijing’s promise to increase imports and a growing consumer market.

Alibaba is one of a group of companies including Tencent Holding Ltd., a games and social media giant, search engine Baidu.com Inc. and e-commerce rival JD.com that have revolutionized shopping, entertainment and consumer services in China.

Alibaba was founded at a time when few Chinese were online. As internet use spread, the company expanded into consumer-focused retailing and services. Few Chinese used credit cards, so Alibaba created the Alipay online payments system.

Ma, known in Chinese as Ma Yun, appears regularly on television. At an annual Alibaba employee festival in Hanzhou, he has sung pop songs in costumes that have included blond wigs and leather jackets. He pokes fun at his own appearance, saying his oversize head and angular features make him look like the alien in director Steven Spielberg’s movie “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.”

The company’s $25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 was the biggest to date by a Chinese company.

The Hurun Report, which follows China’s wealth, estimates Ma’s fortune at $38 billion.

In 2015, Ma bought the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s biggest English-language newspaper.

Ma’s successor as chairman is CEO Daniel Zhang, a former accountant and 12-year veteran of Alibaba. He previously was president of its consumer-focused Tmall.com business unit.

Alibaba’s e-commerce business spans platforms including business-to-business Alibaba.com, which links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers of goods from furniture to medical technology, and Tmall, with online shops for popular brands.

Alipay became a freestanding financial company, Ant Financial, in 2014. Alibaba also set up its own film studio and invested in logistics and delivery services.

Ma faced controversy when it disclosed in 2011 that Alibaba transferred control over Alipay to a company he controlled without immediately informing shareholders including Yahoo Inc. and Japan’s Softback.

Alibaba said the move was required to comply with Chinese regulations, but some financial analysts said the company was paid too little for a valuable asset. The dispute was later resolved by Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank.

Corporate governance specialists have questioned the Alibaba Partnership, which gives Ma and a group of executives more control over the company than shareholders.

Ma has said that ensures Alibaba focuses on long-term development instead of responding to pressure from financial markets.

…

The prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia Saturday has prompted hopes that Moscow and Kyiv are ready for serious talks to end a more than five-year war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a Moscow-fomented conflict that’s claimed more than 13,000 lives.

As the exchange unfolded, which included the release by Russia of 24 sailors captured in a naval clash last November, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, “Russia and Ukraine just swapped large numbers of prisoners. Very good news, perhaps a first giant step to peace. Congratulations to both countries!”

That view was shared by the man who engineered the swap, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who hailed the exchange as “the first step to end the war.” And various other Western leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, joined the chorus lauding the exchange of 70 prisoners in all as a positive move.

For the families of those exchanged, there was relief.

Russia had threatened to incarcerate the sailors for up to six years, saying their patrol boats had trespassed into Russian territory by crossing its borders to enter the Sea of Azov, just off Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Ukraine and other countries that don’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea say the sailors were in international waters, and an international maritime court ordered Moscow to free the men, an instruction ignored until Saturday.

Others among the 35 Ukrainian detainees had been held for years, including Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker who was serving a 20-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony on charges of “terrorism.”

On their arrival at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport, where they were greeted by relatives and Zelenskiy, there was euphoria.

“Hell has ended. Everyone is alive, and that is the main thing,” said Vyacheslav Zinchenko, one of the sailors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not greet in Moscow the 35 Russians released by Kyiv.

Since his surprise election earlier this year, Zelenskiy, a political novice and former television comic, has been urging Putin to join a new round of peace talks involving Trump and other Western leaders.

In a video statement released in July to coincide with a one-day EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, Zelenskiy appealed to Putin directly.

“We need to talk. We do. Let’s do it,” he said, looking directly into the camera.

Last month, it was announced the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany would meet to discuss the Donbas conflict. But in an interview in July with VOA’s Ukrainian Service, Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations, cautioned against optimism.

“Unfortunately, we’ve really not heard much news from Russia. They are still saying that everything is Ukraine’s responsibility, that Ukraine needs to negotiate with the two so-called separatist ‘People’s Republic’ that they created in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the Kremlin-backed, self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

‘Sinister’ exchange

While some are seizing on the prisoner exchange as the possible start of something new, for others it has triggered worries that Putin is using Ukraine to toy with the West. Skeptics argue that Putin isn’t serious about ending a conflict of his own making and has every reason to nurture it as a way to disrupt Ukraine and continue to punish the country for its popular Maidan uprising in 2014, which forced Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, out of power.

They highlight the imbalance in the prisoner swap — seeing Putin’s approach to it as displaying a sinister cynicism. While the released Ukrainians had been held on trumped-up charges, their Russian and pro-Moscow separatist counterparts weren’t innocent. They included Volodymyr Tsemakh, who commanded a Russian separatist air defense unit close to where Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, enroute to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, was shot down in 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.

The Dutch government has been left fuming, saying it “seriously regrets that under pressure from the Russian Federation, Tsemakh was included in this prisoner swap.”

Ukrainian politicians had pleaded with Zelenskiy not to release Tsemakh, but his freedom apparently was the price the Ukrainian leader was forced to pay for the prisoner exchange.

Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said the Netherlands was “deeply disappointed” by the release, but added Ukraine had delayed the prisoner exchange to let Dutch investigators question Tsemakh before he was freed.

According to Marcel Van Herpen, author of the book “Putin’s Wars,” and a director at the Cicero Foundation research group, Tsemakh’s release could be a complicating factor for the MH17 trial, which starts in March 2020 in The Hague.

“Of course we are all happy they and the others are free,” tweeted self-exiled Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. “But this is not justice. Putin takes innocent hostages to use as bargaining chips. He is rewarded and praised for exchanging them for Russian spies & criminals, encouraging further terrorist acts.”

Kasparov and other skeptics worry that amid heightened talk of efforts to normalize relations with Putin, the West will fall into the pattern of giving ground to Putin.

“New talk of a ‘peace process’ is a joke when Putin could end the conflict instantly, just as he began it. ‘Use force, then negotiate’ works well for him,” Kasparov tweeted.

Michael Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is cautious about interpreting “this as a step toward ending the war.” He noted, “August was one of the bloodiest months in the Donbas in a long time. More importantly, no country is incentivizing Putin to “de-escalate.” Other analysts fear the swap makes Russia appear reasonable when it was the aggressor state.

Willem Aldershoff, a former senior EU diplomat, worries that Western leaders keen for a reset in relations with Moscow will “be less confrontational with Putin” and “will use this ‘new Russian flexibility’ to pressure Zelenskiy to make compromises that aren’t in Ukraine’s best interests.

…

A lawyer for Michael Flynn accused federal prosecutors of misconduct on Tuesday as a judge set a December sentencing hearing for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
 
The arguments from Flynn attorney Sidney Powell were the latest in a series of aggressive attacks on the foundations of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. They represented yet another step in Flynn’s evolution from a model cooperator he was the first and only White House official to cut a deal with prosecutors to a defendant whose newly combative and unremorseful stance may cost him a chance at the probation sentence prosecutors had previously recommended.   
 
Even as U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan set a Dec. 18 sentencing date for Flynn, Powell made clear that she considered the case far from resolved. Though she said she was not seeking to have Flynn’s guilty plea thrown out, she contended the “entire prosecution should be dismissed because of egregious government misconduct.”

“There is far more at stake here than sentencing,” Powell said. She later accused the government of “being too busy working on what they wanted to accomplish in convicting Mr. Flynn” to seek truth or justice.

Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack, a member of Mueller’s team, strongly denied the accusations and said the government had given Flynn’s team more than 22,000 pages of documents. He said the information Powell was seeking either had no bearing on the case against Flynn, or was material that Flynn had been made aware of before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Asked by Sullivan if the government stands by its recommendation that Flynn should be spared prison time for his cooperation, Van Grack said the government would file new documents on that question _ suggesting prosecutors may reverse course and ask for him to spend at least some time behind bars.

If the Dec. 18 sentencing date holds, it will be his second sentencing hearing on that exact date in as many years.

Flynn was supposed to be sentenced last December for lying to the FBI about his December 2016 conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But that sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn asked that he be allowed to continue cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of earning credit toward a lighter punishment.

Flynn changed lawyers and hired a new legal team led by Powell, a conservative commentator and former federal prosecutor who has been an outspoken critic of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In court Tuesday, she unloaded on Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
 
She accused Peter Strzok, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn at the White House about his interactions with the ambassador, of being “impaired” by bias. She said she had not received copies of Strzok’s derogatory text messages about Trump that led to his removal from Mueller’s team and ultimately his firing from the FBI.
 
But Van Grack said Flynn was told before his first guilty plea in December 2017 that the communications existed and went ahead with the plea anyway.
 
Powell also said the government had not produced evidence that she said could demonstrate that Flynn was not an agent of the Russian government. But Van Grack noted that that allegation was never part of the case.

“The government has not alleged in any filing in this court or before the court that the defendant is an agent of Russia,” he said. “That is not part of the case.”

Instead, he added, the prosecution is all about whether Flynn lied to the FBI during a January 2017 interview at the White House about having discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
 
Mueller’s investigation, which produced charges against a half dozen Trump aides and associates, ended last spring with a report to the Justice Department. The report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but did identify multiple instances in which the president sought to influence the investigation. 

…

New satellite images published Monday by the European Space Agency show an increase in air pollution in the Brazilian Amazon while fires burned in the region last month.

Several maps showed more carbon monoxide and other pollutants in August than in the previous month, when there were fewer fires.

The agency said fires released carbon dioxide once stored in the Amazon forests back into the atmosphere, potentially having an impact on the global climate and health.

Burning continues in the Amazon despite a 60-day ban on land-clearing fires that was announced last month by President Jair Bolsonaro.

Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research showed the number of fires in all of Brazil has surpassed 100,000 so far this year, up 45 percent compared to the same period in 2018.

Renata Libonati, a professor in the department of meteorology at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, said that aside from gases, the burning of forests also released particles into the atmosphere, which can lead to an increase in respiratory problems, especially among young children and the elderly.

Particles can be transported by winds in cities that are not immediately close to where the fires are taking place.

“The impact of the fires go far beyond where the forests are burning,” Libonati told The Associated Press.

The lack of rain during the current dry season in the Amazon region makes things worse, she said, as rain can help stop the progress of particle pollution.

…

Barcelona could cut deaths from air pollution and improve quality of life by implementing in full a plan to calm traffic and free up space for residents, researchers said Monday.

The compact Spanish city is home to more than 1.6 million people and is plagued by contaminants and noise largely due to heavy density of traffic, as well as lack of greenery.

A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), published in the journal Environment International, found the city of Barcelona could prevent 667 premature deaths every year if it created 503 “superblocks” as first proposed.

The superblocks — which keep cars out of designated areas in the city and develop public space in streets — have been complex to roll out, with only six put in place so far.

“What we want to show with this study is that we have to go back and put the citizen at the center of … urban plans, because the health impacts are quite considerable,” said lead author and ISGlobal researcher Natalie Mueller.

As a city with the highest traffic density in Europe, Barcelona also needed to make it easier for people to commute in from the wider metropolitan area by public transport, she added.

The projected reduction in deaths from the superblocks plan would be achieved mainly as a result of a 24% decrease in air pollution from nitrogen oxide (NO2), along with lower traffic noise and urban heat, the study said.

Data released Friday from the Barcelona Public Health Agency showed air pollution accounted for 351 premature deaths in the city in 2018, around the same as in 2017.

Motor vehicles generated the main pollutant, with almost half the city’s population regularly exposed to NO2 levels above the safe limit set by the World Health Organization, the city council said.

From January 2020, Barcelona will implement low-emission zones on weekdays, keeping 125,000 vehicles out of the city.

The city council will also declare a climate emergency including a package of urgent measures to cut down on private vehicle use and boost public transport, among other actions.

It has already extended cycle paths and upgraded its shared bike scheme, while shrinking on-street parking.

‘Courage’ needed

Barcelona City Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it aimed to start drafting plans for three new superblocks shortly, as well as launching public consultations for others.

The ISGlobal study found that, besides reducing deaths, a full roll-out of the superblocks project would increase life expectancy by almost 200 days on average per inhabitant, and generate an annual economic saving of 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion).

The superblocks have sparked opposition in some local areas, notably among small traders who fear they could deter customers.

But Mueller said the concept was similar to banning smoking in bars and restaurants, which was initially unpopular but quickly accepted once people realized the benefits.

“Even if they don’t see it in the beginning, often in the end they are quite happy,” she said, noting the need for “courage” in public policy making.

…

The American Medical Association on Monday urged Americans to stop using electronic cigarettes of any sort until scientists have a better handle on the cause of 450 lung illnesses and at least five deaths related to the use of the products.

The AMA, one of the nation’s most influential physician groups, also called on doctors to inform patients about the dangers of e-cigarettes, including toxins and carcinogens, and swiftly report any suspected cases of lung illness associated with e-cigarette use to their state or local health department.

The recommendation followed advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday for people to consider not using e-cigarette products while it investigates the cause of the spate of severe lung illnesses associated with vaping.

Many, but not all, of the cases have involved those who used the devices to vaporize oils containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of cannabis.

CDC officials said some laboratories have identified vitamin E acetate in product samples and are investigating that as a possible cause of the illnesses.

Public health experts have not found any evidence of infectious diseases and believe the lung illnesses are probably associated with a chemical exposure.

Megan Constantino, 36, from St. Petersburg, Florida, quit vaping six days ago after hearing reports of the illnesses and deaths related to vaping.

“It scared me into quitting,” she said.

Like many users of vaping pens, Constantino picked up the device after quitting cigarette smoking three years ago, and said, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

She added, “I threw the last cartridge away. I took a picture of it and I literally cried.”

Constantino said many people who vape have been “on pins and needles” for the investigation results, and she is concerned that the reports of a link to vaping THC may give people an excuse to ignore the warnings.

E-cigarettes are generally thought to be safer than traditional cigarettes, which kill up to half of all lifetime users, the World Health Organization says. But the long-term health effects of vaping are largely unknown.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has faced mounting pressure to curb a huge spike in teenage use of e-cigarettes, a trend that coincided with the rising popularity of Juul e-cigarettes.

“We must not stand by while e-cigarettes continue to go unregulated. We urge the FDA to speed up the regulation of e-cigarettes and remove all unregulated products from the market,” AMA president Dr. Patrice Harris, said in a statement.

Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, which advocates for cigarette smokers to switch to nicotine-based vaping devices, said the AMA should be “ashamed of themselves for playing politics with people’s health and protecting the profits of drug dealers.”

He criticized the AMA for “fearmongering about nicotine vaping products” while not mentioning “the very real risks of vaping illicit THC products.”

Juul Labs declined to comment. Altria Group Inc owns a 35 percent stake in Juul.

…

Officials in northern Burkina Faso say at least 29 people were killed in two separate incidents Sunday. 

Government spokesman Remis Dandjinou said, in a statement, at least 15 people were killed when a truck carrying people and goods “rode over an improvised explosive device in the Barsalogho area.” 

Fourteen people were killed when a food convoy of trucks came under attack in Sanmatenga province, according to the spokesman. 

The French news agency AFP reports that locals sources said many of the dead in the convoy were the drivers of the vehicles carrying provisions for people displaced by fighting. 

“Military reinforcements have been deployed and a thorough search in under way,” said Dandjinou. 

Millions of people in Burkina Faso are facing an unprecedented humanitarian emergency because of growing hunger, instability and displacement,  the World Food Program warned recently. 

The United Nations reports escalating fighting, some fueled by ethnic and religious beliefs, has forced more than 237,000 people to flee their homes.  

Jihadists have frequently launched attacks on Burkina’s military. 

A former French colony, Burkina Faso in one of the poorest countries in the world.

…

Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of  secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.

The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.

Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.

Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula. 

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.

“Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.

“The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.

State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue. 

…

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Sunday replaced the energy minister with one of his sons, state media said, in a major shakeup as the OPEC kingpin reels from low oil prices.

The appointment of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, half-brother to de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, marks the first time a royal family member has been put in charge of the all-important Energy Ministry.

He replaces veteran official Khalid al-Falih as the world’s top crude exporter accelerates preparations for a much-anticipated stock listing of state-owned oil giant Aramco, expected to be the world’s biggest.

“Khalid al-Falih has been removed from his position,” the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing a royal decree.

“His royal highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman is appointed minister of energy.”

Since his appointment as oil minister in 2016, Falih has been the face of Saudi energy policy but the veteran technocrat had seen his portfolio shrink in recent weeks.

His ouster comes just days after he was removed as chairman of Aramco and replaced by Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the kingdom’s vast Public Investment Fund.

Falih’s powers were diminished last month when the world’s top oil exporter announced the creation of a new ministry of industry and mineral resources, separating it from his energy ministry.

It was widely speculated that top officials were dissatisfied with Falih as oil prices sagged ahead of the Aramco IPO.

Economic uncertainty fanned, by an ongoing US-China trade war, has dragged Brent crude prices to around $60 a barrel in recent weeks, well below the $85 mark that experts say is needed to balance the Saudi budget.

‘Seasoned veteran’

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members are scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to review their strategy on limiting production to halt a slide in prices.

Cartel kingpin Saudi Arabia, which pumps around a third of OPEC’s oil, has resorted to massive production cuts to lift prices since the market crash in mid-2014.

It was unclear whether there would be a change in policy under Prince Abdulaziz, who joined the oil ministry in the 1980s and has held a variety of senior roles.

“Prince Abdulaziz is a very seasoned veteran of Saudi and OPEC policy making,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told Bloomberg News.

“He won’t have a learning curve. I don’t expect any big rupture in current Saudi oil policy.”

His appointment further concentrates power within the king’s family. His other son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, controls the major levers of power and is heir to the Arab world’s most powerful throne.

A younger son, Prince Khalid bin Salman, is deputy defense minister.

Aramco is stepping up efforts to float around five percent of the company, seeking to raise up to $100 billion based on a $2 trillion valuation of the whole firm.

But low oil prices have left some investors in doubt that Aramco is really worth that much.

Failure to reach a $2 trillion valuation as desired by Saudi rulers is widely considered the reason the IPO, earlier scheduled for 2018, was delayed.

The planned IPO forms the cornerstone of a reform program envisaged by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to wean the Saudi economy off its reliance on oil.

Saudi Aramco has not announced where the listing will be held, but London, New York and Hong Kong have all vied for a slice of the much-touted IPO.

…

Top oil producers will consider fresh output cuts at a meeting this week, but analysts are doubtful they will succeed in bolstering crude prices dented by the U.S.-China trade war.

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members want to halt a slide in prices that has continued despite previous production cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.

Analysts say the OPEC+ group’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which monitors a supply cut deal reached last year, has limited options when it meets in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

UAE Energy Minister Suheil al-Mazrouei said Sunday the group would do “whatever necessary” to rebalance the crude market, but admitted that the issue was not entirely in the hands of the world’s top producers.

Speaking at a press conference in Abu Dhabi ahead of the World Energy Congress, to start Monday, he said the oil market is no longer governed by supply and demand but is being influenced more by U.S.-China trade tensions and geopolitical factors.

The minister said that although further cuts will be considered at Thursday’s meeting, they may not be the best way to boost declining prices.

“Anything that the group sees that will balance the market, we are committed to discuss it and hopefully go and do whatever necessary,” he said.

“But I wouldn’t suggest to jump to cuts every time that we have an issue on trade tensions.”

While cuts could help prices, they could also mean producers lose further market share, analysts say.

“OPEC has traditionally resorted to production cuts in order to shore up the prices,” said M. R. Raghu, head of research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz).

“However, this has come at the cost of reduction in OPEC’s global crude market share from a peak of 35 percent in 2012 to 30 percent as of July 2019,” he told AFP.

The 24-nation OPEC+ group, dominated by the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC production giant Russia, agreed to reduce output in December 2018.

That came as a faltering global economy and a boom in US shale oil threatened to create a global glut in supply.

Previous supply cuts have mostly succeeded in bolstering prices.

But this time, the market has continued to slide — even after OPEC+ agreed in June to extend by nine months an earlier deal slashing output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd).

 Trade war

The new factor is the trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies, whose tit-for-tat tariffs have created fears of a global recession that will undermine demand for oil.

Saudi economist Fadhl al-Bouenain said the oil market has become “highly sensitive to the US-China trade war”.

“What is happening to oil prices is outside the control of OPEC and certainly stronger than its capability,” Bouenain told AFP.

“Accordingly, I think OPEC+ will not resort to new production cuts” because that would further blunt the group’s already shrunken market share, he said.

European benchmark Brent was selling at $61.54 per barrel Friday, in contrast with more than $75 this time last year but up from around $50 at the end of December 2018.

The deliberations also coincide with stymied production from Iran and Venezuela and slower growth in U.S. output, meaning that supplies are not excessively high.

“US shale output growth does not have the same momentum as in previous cycles, and OPEC production is at a 15-year low, having fallen by 2.7 million barrels per day over the past nine months,” Standard Chartered said in a commentary last month.

“We think that the oil policy options for key producers are limited, for the moment,” the investment bank said.

No decisions will be taken at Thursday’s meeting, but it should produce recommendations ahead of an OPEC+ ministerial meeting in Vienna in December.

Rapidan Energy Group said the alliance might need to cut output by an additional one million bpd to stabilise the market.

But the problem will be deciding which member countries will shoulder the burden of any new cuts.

Saudi Arabia, which is the de facto leader of OPEC and pumps about a third of the cartel’s oil, took on more than its fair share last time around.

It has also undergone a major shake-up in its oil sector, announcing the replacement of energy minister Khalid al-Falih with Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in the early hours of Sunday morning ahead of a much-anticipated stock listing of state oil giant Aramco.

Bouenain said he believes that Riyadh is likely to resist taking on further cuts, given the impact on the kingdom’s revenues.

Raghu said that “without a favorable resolution to the dispute, OPEC’s production cuts will not result in a sizeable uptick of oil prices.”

…

Turkish and U.S. troops conducted their first joint ground patrol in northeastern Syria Sunday as part of a planned so-called “safe zone” that Ankara has been pressing for in the volatile region.

Turkey hopes the buffer zone, which it says should be at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep, will keep Syrian Kurdish fighters, considered a threat by Turkey but U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group, away from its border.

Associated Press journalists in the town of Tal Abyad saw about a dozen Turkish armored vehicles with the country’s red flag standing along the border after crossing into Syria, and American vehicles about a mile away waiting. The two sides then came together in a joint patrol with American vehicles leading the convoy.

At least two helicopters hovered overhead. The Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the start of the joint patrols and said unmanned aerial vehicles were also being used.

Washington has in the last years frequently found itself trying to forestall violence between its NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish fighters it partnered with along the border to clear of IS militants.

An initial agreement between Washington and Ankara last month averted threats of a Turkish attack. But details of the deal are still being worked out in separate talks with Ankara and the Kurdish-led forces in Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

Turkey, which has carried out several incursions into Syria in the course of the country’s civil war in an effort to curb the expanding influence of the Kurdish forces, carried out joint patrols with U.S. troops in the northern town of Manbij last year.

Sunday’s joint patrol is the first one taking place east of the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops have more presence, and as part of the safe zone that is being set up.

Anadolu Agency said six Turkish armored vehicles crossed into Syria on Sunday from the border town of Akcakale, opposite from Syria’s Tal Abyad, and joined U.S. vehicles for their first joint patrol of an area east of the Euphrates river.

AP reporters in Tal Abyad said the patrol was headed to a Kurdish-controlled base apparently to inspect it, apparently to ensure that trenches and sand berms had been removed. U.S. troops had inspected the base on Saturday during patrols with the SDF during which some of the berms Turkey had complained about were removed.

For Turkey, a “safe zone” is important because it is hoping some of the Syrian refugees it has been hosting for years could be resettled there, although it is not clear how that would work.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey could “open its gates” and allow Syrian refugees in the country to move toward Western countries if a safe zone is not created and Turkey is left to shoulder the refugee burden alone. Turkey hosts 3.6 million refugees from Syria.

Rather than calling it a safe zone, Washington and the Kurdish-led forces have said a “security mechanism” is taking shape to diffuse tensions in northeastern Syria

…

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. Some information is from Reuters and RFE. VOA Ukrainian’s Tatiana Vorozhko contributed reporting. 

WASHINGTON – Ukrainian security officials have a launched an investigation into “subversive” activities by one of the Eastern European country’s defense contractors over plans to supply military hardware to neighboring Russia. 
 
Ukraine’s main government agency for counterintelligence and counterterrorism, the SBU, confirmed Thursday that Motor Sich, the country’s largest manufacturer of engines for missiles and military aircraft, was under investigation for preparing an illegal export shipment of military or dual-use equipment to Russia, with whom Ukraine is at war. The news was first reported by RFE. 
 
SBU officers raided Motor Sich headquarters and seized its shares in 2018 when the defense firm, then valued at nearly $500 million, was in the process of being sold to a Chinese company. 
 
That Chinese aeronautical firm, Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, renewed efforts to acquire a controlling share of Motor Sich in June, drawing scrutiny from Kyiv’s Anti-Monopoly Committee. 
 
The prospective sale also drew the attention of White House officials, who told Ukrainian media ahead of White House national security adviser John Bolton’s late-August visit to Kyiv that Motor Sich should not be handed over to a “potential enemy.” 
 
As Ukraine’s antitrust agency began reviewing the proposed China deal, the U.S.-government-run Overseas Private Investment Corp., an agency that provides financial support for American companies looking to invest in emerging markets, said it would consider backing a U.S. private-sector bid for Motor Sich.  

Bolton has aimed to scuttle Beijing’s acquisition of Motor Sich “on grounds that it will give Beijing vital defense technology,” The Wall Street Journal reported before Bolton’s Kyiv trip.
 
Aid withheld 

Bolton, it was widely reported, used the Kyiv visit to warn pro-Western Ukraine, which the White House views as a geopolitical ally against an increasingly assertive Russia, to avoid being lured into China’s orbit by what he called Beijing’s “debt diplomacy.” 
 
A day after Bolton concluded his Kyiv visit by announcing stepped-up military assistance to Ukraine, President Donald Trump issued a contradictory directive, calling for a suspension and review of a $250 million military aid package to Kyiv.

Later that day, Pentagon officials confirmed that they had already conducted an audit and fully supported allocation of the funding to Ukraine. 

The ongoing White House delay has since sparked an outcry from a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, who issued a letter to Trump demanding that he release the funds. 
 
Falling under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the funds, the lawmakers wrote, “help Ukraine develop the independent military capabilities and skills necessary to fend off the Kremlin’s continued onslaughts within its territory.” 
 
Asked for a response, a senior Trump administration official told VOA’s Ukrainian service, “We can confirm the letter from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus has been received and is going through the normal process for correspondence at OMB.” 
 
The senior administration official failed to confirm whether the $250 million in question was currently under active review. 
 
Op-ed on White House action 
 
On Friday, The Washington Post published an editorial slamming the Trump White House for withholding the military aid over what it called explicitly political purposes. 

“We’re reliably told that the president … is attempting to force [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden,” the Post editorial states. “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.” 
 
In August, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, told The New York Times that he traveled to Europe to ask Zelenskiy aide Andriy Yermak to investigate Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Hunter Biden is former Vice President Biden’s son. 
 
Giuliani’s office did not respond to VOA’s requests for comment. 

Budgetary issues ‘being sorted out’

George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told VOA that although he was optimistic U.S. funding would continue, “I think there are some issues about the U.S. budgetary process being sorted out right now.” 
 
“The U.S. has contributed over $1.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine`s defense since Russians invaded Donbass in 2014,” Kent said. “And I think we will work very closely together with Ukrainians to ensure that we support Ukraine`s abilities to defend itself effectively, and it has been the case the last five years, and it will also be the case going forward.” 
 
Earlier this week, two senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that chances were the money would be allocated as usual, but that the determination would not be made until a policy review was completed and Trump made a decision. 
 
The federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30. 

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Bidi Bidi refugee camp is home to nearly a quarter-million South Sudanese who fled the violence of civil war in their home country. Its progressive policies allow refugees to live, farm and work together while they wait to return to their home country. But, as conditions are slow to improve in South Sudan, many refugees are opting to stay.

U.S. Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Chris Van Hollen visited the camp recently. The two lawmakers were touring several refugee settlements throughout Uganda last month, including Bidi Bidi — one of the world’s largest.

Speaking by phone, Senator Van Hollen called the settlements an “important model” that other countries should consider when housing the displaced.

 
“Obviously a key ingredient to the success of that model has been significant international support,” he said.

When Bidi Bidi was opened in 2016, it was a rural piece of land in northern Uganda, where South Sudanese refugees, mostly women and children, fled to avoid violence during their country’s civil war.
 
As is often the case, tensions are common between refugees and the local population, who feel that the refugees are taking resources that might have been available for them.

But, Uganda decided to do something different, earmarking a percentage of the country’s international funding to go toward local amenities. Refugee families were given plots of land to build family-style clusters of homes with room to grow their own fruits and vegetables. As a result, a small-scale economy began to flourish in the camp, with some refugees starting their own businesses.

Last year, following a peace deal between warring South Sudan leaders, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he hoped the refugees would begin returning home.
 
But, that’s not the case.
 
According to a new report published this week by several humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, refugees — especially women — are hesitant to return home. They fear the peace won’t last.

 As a result, settlement official Michael Joelle says Bidi Bidi has reached capacity, and refugees are being turned away and settlements are feeling the strain.
 
“Before the 2016 emergency, we were offering a plot of 50 by 100, so the number has been decreasing as the number of refugees increase,” said Joelle.
 
The situation has become more dire after international donors suspended their funding earlier this year after it was reported that funds for refugees in Uganda had been mismanaged.

Grace, a refugee at Bidi Bidi, fled her home country with her children four years ago. Her husband finally joined the family last year.

The former teacher said she doesn’t see herself moving back to South Sudan anytime soon.   
 
“Even we’re receiving bad news, so and so has been killed, so and so has been raped, so many things are happening.”

…

Winston Churchill’s grandson, who was expelled midweek from the Conservative party for voting to delay Brexit, launched Saturday a scathing attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote a biography of his grandfather, saying he should stop comparing himself to Britain’s iconic wartime leader as he’s “nothing like” him.

“Winston Churchill was like Winston Churchill because of his experiences in life. Boris Johnson’s experience in life is telling a lot of porkies [lies] about the EU in Brussels and then becoming prime minister,” Nicholas Soames told Britain’s The Times newspaper.

Soames was among 21 Conservative rebels who were expelled from the party for voting to stop Johnson taking Britain out of the EU by October 31, something Johnson has pledged to do “no ifs or buts.”

In the interview, Soames, a former defense minister, said he could see no “helpful analogy” between his grandfather and Johnson. “I don’t think anyone has called Boris a diplomat or statesman. We all know the pluses and minuses, everyone he has worked for says the same thing: he writes beautifully [but he’s] deeply unreliable.”

Johnson’s Brexit options are shrinking fast. He has lost every single vote he’s brought as prime minister before the House of Commons in the face of a Conservative party split and the united efforts of the country’s opposition parties to thwart him.

On Monday party rebels again will join with opposition parties to block him from calling an election before they’ve ensured he can’t take Britain out of the European Union without a deal agreed upon with Brussels.

Limited options

In effect, his opponents are trapping him in Downing Street as his hardline Brexit strategy appeared to be in tatters. Johnson now has no majority in the House of Commons, thanks to defections and the mass expulsion of party rebels.

Last week, his election bid was rebuffed when he failed to secure the backing of two-thirds of the Home of Commons. His second bid will get a similar dismissal, according to lawmakers and analysts. With his options limited, Johnson is now saying he will ignore legislation passed midweek requiring him to ask Brussels for a Brexit delay to allow further negotiations to take place between Britain and EU leaders.

The Conservative rebels and opposition parties argue that the economic impact of a so-called no-deal Brexit would be devastating for livelihoods and jobs.

Johnson also wrote to Conservative lawmakers on Friday, telling them: “They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do.” He told reporters earlier he won’t comply and seek yet another deadline extension from Brussels, as the incoming law, which will receive the Queen’s assent on Monday, compels him to do, if no agreement with Brussels is in place by October 19.

Asked if he would obey the new law requiring him to write to EU leaders, Johnson responded: “I will not. I don’t want a delay.”

His defiance is prompting growing alarm that Britain’s political crisis is deepening and risks a tumultuous clash between the government and the courts, along with a rebellion by top civil servants and an even bigger split in Conservative ranks.  

David Lidington, the de facto deputy prime minister under Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, warned Saturday it would set a “dangerous precedent,” if Johnson chose to break the law. “It is such a fundamental principle that we are governed by the rule of law that I hope no party would question it,” he told the BBC.

A former senior legal official went further, warning Johnson he risked being jailed, if he refuses to obey the law. Kenneth MacDonald, who was the country’s top prosecutor between 2003 and 2008, said if the courts were asked to issue an injunction ordering that “the law should be followed,” a refusal to obey “could find that person in prison.” He added that would not be “an extreme outcome” as it is “convention” that individuals who refuse to “purge their contempt” are sent to prison.

Warning shots

The warning was echoed by a former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, another Conservative rebel. If he refuses to obey the law he will be “sent to prison for contempt,” he said, while accusing Johnson of acting like a “spoiled child having a tantrum.” A former Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, told Sky News he doubted it would get as far as that because civil servants likely would rebel and refuse to co-operate with a prime minister who was willfully breaking the law.

Johnson broke off early on Saturday from a social visit with his partner, Carrie Symonds, to the Queen at the monarch’s Scottish residence, Balmoral, to plot his next moves. On his visit to Scotland, Johnson ramped up the pressure on opposition parties to agree to an early election, goading them by accusing them of cowardice. “I have never known an opposition in the history of democracy that has refused to have an election,” he said. “I think that obviously they don’t trust the people, they don’t think that the people will vote for them, so they are refusing to have an election.”

But Downing Street aides admit the unity of the opposition parties — as well as the size of the Conservative rebellion — had surprised Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, who miscalculated the reaction of the leader of the main opposition party, Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn.

“The plan was to use the threat of suspending parliament to force the rebels out into the open early,” an aide said. “We always knew they would try and force a Brexit delay on us. But the expectation was that Corbyn could be goaded into welcoming an election. That was a serious miscalculation on our part,“ he added.

The turbulence of the last week — which saw the British parliament break convention and initiate legislation — is unnerving the cabinet, too.

Will Boris Johnson’s Election Gamble Pay Off?

With British politics being turned upside down by Brexit , few pollsters are ready to hazard a firm prediction of an election win for Johnson — consensus suggests a hung parliament

Collision course

On Friday, some current cabinet ministers expressed major reservations about Johnson’s bellicose approach with much of the blame for the government’s lose of control being focused on the 47-year-old Dominic Cummings, a controversial figure who’s been compared to the former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, for his ‘slash-and-burn tactics.”

Cummings, the chief strategist for the Brexit campaign during the 2016 referendum on EU membership, told government advisers Friday they should hold their nerve, saying if they thought last week was chaos, it was “only just the beginning.” Cummings has made no secret of his wish to rip up the map of British politics and re-draw it, starting with a populist remake of the Conservative party.

A former cabinet minister, David Gauke, one of the expelled Conservative rebels, said Johnson and Cummings want “to rebadge the Conservative party as the Brexit Party.”

“I can see nothing incompatible about being a Conservative MP and not wanting to crash the country into a brick wall, but it appears that it is no longer the case,” he said in a newspaper interview. The risk is that Johnson will end up alienating millions of pragmatically-inclined, traditional Conservative voters, he says.

…