Author: Worldnews

Women are slowly moving into Afghanistan’s male-dominated restaurant industry. And one entirely women-run restaurant in central Afghanistan’s Bamyan province is attracting food lovers from the region. VOA’s Zafar Bamyani gives us a taste of the restaurant in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard

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Germs are everywhere. How can you reduce the risk of viral infection? Here are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself.

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Human rights groups have strongly criticized Italy for extending a deal with Libya that facilitates the return of migrants to detention centers, where these migrants say torture and rape are commonplace. The European Union has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Libya to boost its coastguard capabilities and clamp down on human smuggling – but critics say the money is ending up with criminal gangs. More from Henry Ridgwell

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The focus of the 2020 presidential election campaign has now moved on to the New Hampshire Democratic primary after confusion over the delayed results from the Iowa caucuses made it difficult for the leading presidential candidates to capitalize on any momentum. New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday will be the second state contest for the contenders seeking their party’s presidential nomination, but as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the race remains very unsettled.

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One of the last survivors of Hollywood’s golden age, movie legend Kirk Douglas, has died.

His son, actor Michael Douglas, announced his father’s death Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles. He was 103 years old.

The son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants, Douglas appeared in 90 films over a 60-year career.

He worked a number of different jobs to pay for his college education and to study at New York’s American Academy for Dramatic Arts.

Douglas appeared in his first film in 1946 following a brief career on Broadway and serving in the Navy in World War II. His title role in 1949’s The Champion, playing a merciless boxer who refused to let anyone get in his way, cemented his stardom and brought his first Oscar nomination.

Tall with a strong handsome face and a cleft in his chin that became his trademark, Douglas became a major star in the 1950s and 1960s — earning two more Oscar nominations for The Bad and the Beautiful and as painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life.

Appearing in 1959’s Spartacus, Douglas hired screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted in Hollywood for alleged communist activities, forcing him to write under pseudonyms and forgoing credit for his work.

Douglas openly defied the blacklist by hiring Trumbo and allowing him to write the script for Spartacus under his own name, openly and without fear.

Douglas suffered a major stroke in 1995 that nearly killed him. But he recovered enough to write his best-selling autobiography The Ragman’s Son, write fiction, and make occasional film and stage appearances, including his critically acclaimed one-man autobiographical show Before I Forget.

Despite his screen image as powerful, tough and ruthless, those who knew Douglas off-screen called him a gentle, compassionate and charitable man who loved children and donated millions to various charities.

“My mother said to me, ‘You must take care of other people,’ ” he once said. “That stayed with me.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s acquittal Wednesday on impeachment charges is a watershed moment in his presidency, exonerating him of wrongdoing just nine months ahead of next November’s national election when he is seeking a second term in the White House. He was found not guilty on the first charge of abuse of power, 52-48; and found not guilty on a second charge of obstruction of Congress, 53-47.

Trump’s acquittal likely will have huge long-term implications on politics and the balance of power in Washington with the president’s hand strengthened heading into the campaign season. Only one Republican, Senator Mitt Romney, the losing 2012 Republican presidential candidate, voted to convict the Republican Trump on the first charge of abuse of power, assailing his conduct as “wrong, egregiously wrong”. On the second charge of obstruction of Congress, Romney voted not guilty.

Lone Republican Senator Speaks Out in Support of Trump’s Impeachment Conviction

Senator Mitt Romney says he would vote to convict President Donald Trump of abusing his presidential power, even as the full Senate was set to exonerate Trump on two articles of impeachment

Trump is in a position now to make use of Wednesday’s acquittal to his advantage ahead of the election, even as a collection of national polls shows he remains an unpopular president with a job approval rating in the mid-40% range in a politically divided country.

“It’s amazing what I’ve done,” he wrote on Twitter as his impeachment trial neared the end, “the most of any President in the first three years (by far), considering that for three years I’ve been under phony political investigations and the Impeachment Hoax! KEEP AMERICA GREAT!”

It’s amazing what I’ve done, the most of any President in the first three years (by far), considering that for three years I’ve been under phony political investigations and the Impeachment Hoax! KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020

Power of the presidency

Trump now is the third U.S. president in the country’s 244-year history to have faced impeachment charges, but been acquitted in Senate trials to remain in office, after Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago. Trump is the first, however, who has been cleared and then faces a re-election campaign to remain as the U.S. leader. An array of Democratic challengers, none of whom has yet to emerge from a large field of candidates as the clear choice of Democratic voters, is vying to be his opponent.

There possibly is a new etched-in-stone understanding of the power of the U.S. presidency, as evidenced by Trump’s exoneration on two articles of impeachment, that he abused the power of the presidency by seeking help from Ukraine to investigate a political foe and then obstructed congressional efforts to investigate him.

At the outset of the trial, Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat prosecuting the case against Trump, laid out the stakes.

“Our relationship with Ukraine will survive,” he said. “But if we are to decide here that a president of the United States can simply say that, ‘Under Article 2 [of the Constitution], I can do whatever I want, and I don’t have to treat a political branch of government like it exists,’ that will be an unending injury to this country. Ukraine will survive, and so will we, but that will be an unending injury to this country, because the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.”

But as the trial wound down, one of Trump’s impeachment defense lawyers, noted criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, argued to the 100 senators acting as jurors for an expansive view of U.S. presidential power. He said that even if Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine to benefit himself politically, it was not an impeachable offense, a viewpoint disputed by U.S. constitutional scholars.

But Dershowitz’s view, since Trump has been acquitted, could effectively become the standard by which the actions of future presidents are judged.“

If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz argued. He later said his comment had been misconstrued and that he did not mean to contend that U.S. presidents always have unlimited power.

However, another Trump lawyer, deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, said a president asking Russia and China to look into his political opponents, as Trump has done, does not violate U.S. campaign finance laws making it illegal to accept or solicit a “thing of value” from foreign governments.“

Mere information is not something that would violate the campaign finance laws,” Philbin said. “If there is credible information, credible information of wrongdoing by someone who is running for a public office, it’s not campaign interference for credible information about wrongdoing to be brought to light.”

Interpreting Trump’s words

During the weeks of the impeachment investigation in the House of Representatives late last year and the trial in the Senate the last two weeks, there was little dispute of what Trump did, rather the interpretation of it.

In a phone call last July 25, he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to “do us a favor,” to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to undermine his campaign. At the same time, Trump was blocking release of $391 million of military aid Kyiv wanted to help it fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

No one in the public knew about Trump’s request for the Ukraine investigations to benefit himself politically until a still-unidentified government intelligence worker familiar with the call between the two leaders filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump had sought help from a foreign government to help him in the 2020 election.

What’s in the Whistleblower Complaint?

The whistleblower complaint alleged President Donald Trump sought Ukrainian help with his 2020 reelection bid

T

Trump adamantly and repeatedly insisted there was no link between the two elements central to his impeachment, denying that he was demanding a reciprocal quid pro quo deal with Kyiv, the military assistance in exchange for the Biden investigations. He claimed the “us” in his request to Zelenskiy referred to the United States, not him personally.

He described his request to Zelenskiy for the Biden investigations as “perfect.” His Republican defenders said that Trump wanted corruption, broadly speaking, investigated in Ukraine, not just the Bidens, although Trump never raised the issue of corruption generally in the phone call with Zelenskiy, according to a rough transcript of the call released by the White House. Trump supporters also noted that the president released the aid after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy opening any investigations of the Bidens, proof, they say, that the president had not carried out a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine.

But Democratic lawmakers in both the House of Representatives and Senate contended that Trump, despite his denials, had engaged in a deal with Ukraine, seeking to help himself politically while endangering the national security of the United States by denying an ally, Ukraine, vital military aid in its fight against Russia. It was a sentiment that only one Republican, Romney, now a senator from the western state of Utah after losing the 2012 presidential contest, agreed with.

Through weeks of testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, however, a string of government officials, some of them appointed by Trump, said they came to understand that Trump wanted announcement of the Biden investigations before the military aid would be released. But, as Trump’s Republican defenders often noted, they had not talked directly with Trump and only assumed he wanted the investigations before the Ukraine assistance would be released.

That evidentiary shortcoming possibly changed, however, in the last two weeks as news surfaced of a claim in a new book by former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. In his as-yet unpublished manuscript, Bolton said that Trump told him directly last August that he wanted the Biden investigations before he would release the aid. A month later, Trump ousted Bolton from his key White House position as the two feuded over a host of foreign policy issues.

Republicans Defeat Call for Witnesses in Trump Trial

The Republican-majority U.S. Senate defeated a Democratic attempt Friday to call new witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. The defeat all but brings deliberations in the trial to a close, with senators expected to acquit Trump of two charges, including allegations he abused the power of his office by leveraging U.S. aid to Ukraine to benefit his own personal political interests. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.

White House Objects to Bolton Book, Says It Can’t Be Published in Current Form

Letter to former national security adviser says book manuscript appears to contain ‘significant amounts of classified information,’ some considered top secret

Trump denied Bolton’s Ukraine claim, but House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against the president fought to have Bolton testify at the Senate trial. Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, said the trial could not be considered fair without testimony and Ukraine-related documents they wanted to subpoena from the White House, the State Department and the Defense Department.

Trump assailed his one-time security aide and complained again about the Democrats’ conduct of the impeachment investigation and trial.

“No matter how many witnesses you give the Democrats, no matter how much information is given, like the quickly produced Transcripts, it will NEVER be enough for them,” Trump tweeted. “They will always scream UNFAIR. The Impeachment Hoax is just another political CON JOB!”

No matter how many witnesses you give the Democrats, no matter how much information is given, like the quickly produced Transcripts, it will NEVER be enough for them. They will always scream UNFAIR. The Impeachment Hoax is just another political CON JOB!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2020

But Schiff needed the votes of four Republican senators to join with 47 Democrats in the 100-member Senate for a simple majority calling Bolton as a witness. In the end, all but two senators of the 53-seat Senate Republican majority stood with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a staunch Trump ally, and voted against hearing witnesses, including Bolton.

With that large hurdle cleared, McConnell moved toward the final stages of the trial on the two impeachment articles, reaching the conclusion with Trump’s acquittal on Wednesday.
 

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US President Donald Trump gave the third State of the Union address of his presidency Tuesday, just hours ahead of the close of his impeachment trial when the Republican-majority US Senate is expected to acquit him of charges he abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress’ efforts to investigate him. In the annual speech informing the US Congress on upcoming policy priorities, Trump primarily focused on domestic achievements aimed at appealing to voters in the presidential election. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.

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Solar power is making a strong showing in Vietnam after years of shuttling from one extreme to the other, with the nation looking sometimes like it would revert to coal, and other times like it would invest in renewable energy.

By the end of last year Vietnam had surpassed Malaysia and Thailand to reach the largest installed capacity of solar power in Southeast Asia, with 44% of the total capacity, according to figures from Wood Mackenzie, a firm that sells consulting services in the energy industry.

The figures show that Vietnam is serious about solar power, an issue that had been up for debate for years. Solar supporters were encouraged to see the government offer a high feed in tariff (FIT), a fee pioneered in Germany to let solar panel owners sell power to the grid. This helped push Vietnam to reach 5.5 gigawatts of solar capacity last year.

Vietnam is also planning to construct more power plants fed with coal, casting doubt on the goal of more clean energy. Public resistance to coal appears to have shelved some of the construction, at least for now.

“FITs have proven to be an effective policy tool to induce rapid growth in renewables, and Vietnam’s build is another example of that,” Rishab Shrestha, a solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said. He added that “project economics will continue to remain attractive in large parts of Vietnam.”

Like other nations, Vietnam has yet to deal with some of the potential drawbacks of solar power, such as how to dispose of photo voltaic panels responsibly. The panels contain toxic chemicals like lead and cannot be recycled easily.

However solar and other renewable power, such as from wind, remains one of the cleanest options for Vietnam at the moment. It joins a growing global trend, from California, which enacted a law this year to require all new homes come with solar panels, to India, where railways are switching to solar power.

Next, Vietnam will have to decide how much it will pay for solar power. The tariff used to be more than nine U.S. cents per kilowatt hour but that price expired in June. Investors are waiting on a decision, which is being jointly prepared by three ministries, the Office of the Government, and the state power utility, according to Duane Morris Vietnam LLC, a law firm that advises clients on solar power. As part of the process, Vietnam Electricity, the state utility, sent a letter to the trade ministry with recommendations on how to set the tariff and who would be eligible.

“The submission letter is not very clear,” said Oliver Massmann, general director of Duane Morris Vietnam LLC, in a blog post.

However he predicts that the government will settle on a tariff of just over seven U.S. cents per kilowatt hour for ground-mounted solar power projects, and a slightly higher tariff for floating solar power projects. Vietnam is pushing investors to provide power more affordably as consumption needs rise in the fast-growing economy.

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With many Chinese cities on a virtual lockdown and businesses closed until next week at the earliest, there are growing concerns about coronavirus’s impact on the global economy. On Tuesday, automaker Hyundai Motor said  it will suspend production in South Korea, its biggest manufacturing base, becoming the first major automaker to do so outside China due to disruption in the supply of parts resulting from the coronavirus outbreak. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.

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The latest round of talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan in Washington has stretched into its fourth day as the parties struggle to reach a comprehensive agreement on the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD), a massive hydropower dam project on Ethiopia’s Blue Nile River.
 
The White House released a statement saying President Donald Trump spoke with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Friday, and he “expressed optimism that an agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was near and would benefit all parties involved.”
 
The tripartite meeting hosted by the U.S. Treasury is the parties’ last-ditch attempt to resolve the question of the operation of the dam, particularly the filling of its reservoir, an issue that has triggered concerns of a “water war” between Egypt and Ethiopia.
 
The meeting was scheduled for January 28-29 but has continued until January 31 without an agreement on the numbers for filling of the reservoir.
 
Ethiopia and Egypt have been negotiating for years, but several technical sticking points remain, including the duration and rate at which Ethiopia will draw water out of the Nile and the quantity of water that will be retained. Cairo fears Ethiopia’s plans to rapidly fill the reservoir could threaten Egypt’s source of fresh water.      
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The technical details of how, when, and where the water will flow are a life-and-death matter for each party,” said Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Bruton added that the situation is complicated by “international organizations and mediating third party countries, which all come with their own interests and agendas.”
 
With the Trump administration’s urging, last November the parties agreed to hold four technical governmental meetings at the level of water ministers with the World Bank and the United States attending as observers. They agreed to a deadline of January 15, 2020, for reaching an accord. When they failed to reach an agreement, the parties agreed to another round of talks this week.
 
The main issue has been a lack of consensus, said Mirette Mabrouk, director of the Egypt Program at the Middle East Institute. “Ethiopia’s priority has been to complete the dam and Egypt’s priority has been to ensure that its near sole source of water is not decimated,” Mabrouk said.
 
A flexible treaty
 
In previous statements, the ministers have recognized that flexibility in trans-boundary water management is essential considering the constantly changing levels of the Nile.
 
They have agreed that guidelines for the filling and operation of the GERD “may be adjusted by the three countries, in accordance with the hydrological conditions in the given year.”
 
However, competing hydrological and political interests have hindered negotiations.
 
The director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, Aaron Salzberg said that parties are striving for an agreement that is “easily codified in terms of numbers” –how fast you can fill, how much water is released.”   At the same time, he says, the agreement must establish a joint decision-making process that allows flexibility in responding to changing conditions, but not one that may be “too open to interpretation and set the stage for conflict down the line.”
 
This is not something that should be forced, Salzberg added.   “The parties themselves must drive the process. This is an agreement that will need to last multiple lifetimes,” he said.
 
 

Mediation?
 
On their first Washington meeting on November 6, the foreign ministers agreed that if a deal is not reached by January 15, 2020, Article 10 of the 2015 Declaration of Principles will be invoked.
 
Article 10 of the declaration, signed in Khartoum, addresses the peaceful settlement of disputes. It states that “if the parties involved do not succeed in solving the dispute through talks or negotiations, they can ask for mediation or refer the matter to their heads of states or prime ministers.”
 
Egypt has long-sought external mediation, while Ethiopia wants to keep the negotiations on a tripartite level. But earlier this month Ethiopian Prime Minister Ahmed said he has asked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene. Ramaphosa has accepted the task.
 
Under the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Egypt and Sudan, signed before Egypt began constructing the Aswan High Dam, Egypt can take up to 55.5 billion cubic meters of water from the Nile each year, and Sudan can take up to 18.5 billion. Ethiopia was not part of that agreement.   
 
US involvement
 
U.S. involvement in the dam issue came about after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi last year requested that President Trump help mediate the conflict. A senior Trump administration official confirmed that the president had offered “the good offices of Mnuchin” to lead the effort and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has played the role of host and observer in negotiations since last November.
 
Trump appears to have sustained his interest on the negotiations and has even gone so far as inviting the ministers to impromptu meetings at the Oval Office on November 6 and January 14.

Just had a meeting with top representatives from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan to help solve their long running dispute on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, one of the largest in the world, currently being built. The meeting went well and discussions will continue during the day! pic.twitter.com/MsWuEBgZxK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2019

 
After the last meeting, the White House released a statement that Trump emphasized to the foreign and water resources ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that the United States “wants to see all of these countries thrive and expressed hope that each country will take this opportunity to work together so that future generations may succeed and benefit from critical water resources.”
 
The U.S. Treasury has not released a statement on the latest round of negotiations and it is unclear what the next steps would be for the parties.

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Two people are being held in custody after a black vehicle breached two security checkpoints at U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to media reports on Friday hours ahead of the
president’s planned trip there.

The vehicle was heading to the property’s main entrance, NBC News said, citing the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office.

Florida Highway Patrol officers were pursuing the vehicle before it went past the two checkpoints, according to NBC
affiliate WTVJ TV in Miramar, Florida. Trump was scheduled to leave Washington for his resort later
on Friday afternoon.

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Winning a party’s presidential nomination is like the children’s board game Chutes and Ladders spiced up with momentum, math and money.

In the delegate game, it costs millions to win a nomination and the stakes are huge, but the strategy is the same: Get to the finish line aided by ladders that give you a shortcut to victory while avoiding slipping down slides that put victory farther out of reach.

The race for the Democratic nomination starts out like a sporting event and finishes more like an accountant’s ledger.

Here are the game’s basic instructions:

THE DELEGATES

The only way to win the nomination is to gather a majority of delegates to the party’s national convention this summer. For the Democrats, this year’s only true contested primary, there will be 3,979 pledged delegates voting on the first ballot. There are also 770 superdelegates, though new rules will probably keep them from voting on the first ballot. More on superdelegates later.

The Democratic National Committee says the magic number to win the nomination on the first ballot is 1991 delegates.

These delegates will be pledged to the candidates who win them in primaries or caucuses. There is no rule that requires these delegates to vote for their candidate. However, they sign a pledge to reflect the will of the voters, and the campaigns can approve or reject them, so their loyalty has never been an issue, at least in the past.

About two-thirds of the pledged delegates will be awarded based on election results in individual congressional districts. The rest will be awarded based on statewide results. Every state awards delegates proportionally. Democrats banned winner-take-all primaries years ago.

But there’s a complication.

THE THRESHOLD

This is the biggest pitfall, especially for marginal candidates. At the same time, it boosts top-tier hopefuls.

Winning delegates isn’t simple math. For Democrats, delegates get awarded proportionally to the share of the vote. But the catch is the minimum threshold.

A candidate needs to receive at least 15% of the vote just to get a delegate, and there’s no rounding up. A candidate with 14.99% gets zero delegates.

The threshold applies on both the district and state levels.

The minimum threshold eliminates candidates who can’t win in November, according to the Brookings Institution’s Elaine Kamarck, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee who wrote the book “Primary Politics.”

The threshold gives an extra boost to candidates who make the cut. Once the initial votes are tallied, all the votes for candidates who didn’t make the cut are removed, and the percentages are recalculated.

For example, if Candidate A wins 20 votes out of 100 cast, Candidate A gets 20% of the vote. However, if 30 votes went to candidates who didn’t meet the threshold, those 30 votes are removed, and now Candidate A has 29% of the remaining votes.

That’s enough math for now. Let’s turn to the calendar.

TIMING

The race starts on the first Monday in February with the Iowa caucuses and then moves to the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary. These are February’s early four.

February isn’t really about delegates. Those four states award less than 4% of the delegates to the convention but are crucial because this is when momentum matters more than math.

Those first four contests are “more of a campaign for publicity, looking like a winner,” said University of Arizona political scientist Barbara Norrander. “The dynamic changes with Super Tuesday.”

March 3 — Super Tuesday — is the monster date on the primary calendar with 34% of pledged delegates at stake in 14 states, American Samoa and a group of expats called Democrats Abroad. Nearly half of Super Tuesday delegates come from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Michael Bloomberg is skipping the February contests, spending big and jumping right to Super Tuesday’s delegate bonanza. Rudy Giuliani tried a similar tactic, with less money, in the 2008 Republican primary. He failed, as have others.

“After Super Tuesday, the only thing that matters is delegates,” said Josh Darr, a Louisiana State University political scientist.

Then the votes come in a big crunch. Voters award an additional 1,100 delegates on March 10 and March 17. By the end of St. Patrick’s Day, more than 61% of the delegates will have been won.

By that time, a clear front-runner will have probably emerged, and it will be difficult for anyone else to catch up. Remember, Democrats award delegates proportionally, so a front-runner with a lead of 100 or 200 delegates would have to completely flop in the late primaries for anyone else to catch.

This is how Barack Obama held off Hillary Clinton in 2008. Clinton won some big states late in the primary calendar, but she gained only a handful of delegates because she had to split them with Obama.

At this stage of the process, the big question will be whether the front-runner is winning a majority of the delegates — enough to clinch the nomination and avoid a contested convention.

St. Patrick’s Day also is the first date in which President Donald Trump can accumulate enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

SUPERDELEGATES

One of the biggest changes this year is that superdelegates — senators, members of Congress, governors, party officials — are staying on the sidelines, at least at first. Bernie Sanders pushed through this change after losing the nomination to Clinton in 2016. Sanders and other advocates saw superdelegates as undemocratic, even though they never changed the outcome of the primaries.

“We haven’t really seen a nomination contest where the Democratic Party voters prefer one candidate, and the superdelegates tip it to someone else,” University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said.

Under the new rules, superdelegates won’t be able to vote on the first ballot unless the leader has such a big lead in the delegate count that their votes cannot change the outcome.

However, if no candidate wins a majority of the delegates on the first ballot — something that hasn’t happened since the 1950s — the superdelegates would play a huge role in deciding the nominee.

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A U.S. law firm that was hired for $12.5 million by a top official in Nicolas Maduro’s government has decided to dump the controversial Venezuelan client amid a major outcry by critics who accused it of carrying water for a socialist “dictator,” The Associated Press has learned.

The AP reported Monday that Foley & Lardner had agreed to represent Maduro’s Inspector General Reinaldo Munoz. Filings with the Justice Department showed Foley & Lardner, which has offices in Washington, in turn paid $2 million to hire influential lobbyist Robert Stryk to help its client ease U.S. sanctions on Maduro’s government and engage the Trump administration in direct talks.

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott immediately decried the move, saying in a letter to the firm that he would urge his Senate colleagues to follow his lead and boycott the firm until it cut ties with the “dangerous dictator.”

Three people familiar with the matter said Thursday that Foley was withdrawing from the case. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Foley’s communications director, Dan Farrell, declined to comment.

“I hope the last few days will serve as a lesson to any other lobbying firms, consultants or organizations that if you support Maduro and his gang of thugs I won’t stay quiet,” Scott said in an emailed statement to AP.

A senior Venezuelan government official said the reversal wouldn’t discourage the Maduro government from seeking honest dialogue with the Trump administration. The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The outreach by Maduro’s government came as criticism has also been directed at U.S. support for opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom the U.S. and about 60 other nations recognize as Venezuela’s rightful president.

A year into the U.S.-backed campaign to oust Maduro, the embattled leader has successfully beaten back a coup attempt, mass protests and punishing U.S. sanctions that have cut off his government’s access to Western banks.

Randy Brinson, a conservative activist from Alabama who has teamed up recently with an evangelical Venezuelan pastor to deliver humanitarian aid to the country, said regular Venezuelans would suffer the consequences of possible dialogue with Maduro being stymied.

“It is unfortunate that the outreach has become so politicized,” said Brinson.

Brinson said he met with Munoz on two occasions recently and considers him an “invaluable” ally in the humanitarian relief effort brokered between the Maduro government and pastor Javier Bertucci, a former presidential candidate.

Stryk, a winemaker and former Republican aide who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Yountville, California, is one of the top lobbyists in Trump’s Washington.

A former unpaid Trump campaign adviser on the West Coast, his firm, Sonoran Policy Group, had no reported lobbying from 2013 to 2016 but has billed more than $10.5 million to foreign clients since the start of 2017.

Like Venezuela, many of the clients have bruised reputations in Washington or are under U.S. sanctions, such as the governments of Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior, which signed a $5.4 million contract in May 2017.

Munoz’s contract with Foley, for a flat fee of $12.5 million, extended until May 10. Stryk’s share of the deal, as a consultant, was $2 million.

Foley said in its filing that it received slightly more than $3 million in initial payments on behalf of Munoz from what appear to be two Hong Kong-registered companies. Its work was also to include discussions with officials at the U.S. Treasury Department and other U.S. agencies regarding sanctions against the Maduro government.

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The border was drawn in 1921, splitting communities and sometimes property, as the British government sought to create a home for the majority Protestant population of Northern Ireland at a time when the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland won its independence.

Today, that 310-mile (500-kilometer) frontier is largely invisible. The only way motorists know they have crossed into Northern Ireland is from the speed limit signs, which use miles per hour measurements, rather than the metric system used in the south. Keen observers might notice a slight change in the pavement as well.

As Brexit takes effect Friday, residents on both sides of the border are concerned about protecting the relative peace and prosperity after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That accord helped end three decades of sectarian violence between paramilitary groups that wanted to reunify Ireland and those who insisted the six counties of Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK.

Lisa Partridge, a 28-year-old tour operator raised in a British military family, remembers how it was “completely normal to check under the family car for a bomb every morning before you went to school.”

“Nobody would want to go back to that life,” she said.

Central to the deal was the fact that both the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland were EU members, which allowed authorities to tear down hated border posts that had slowed the passage of people and goods as police and soldiers tried to halt the flow of arms and militants. With the end of onerous border controls, trade flowed freely between north and south spurring economic development in both communities.

The British and Irish governments have promised to preserve those gains, but people on both sides of the border are concerned that Brexit may re-ignite tensions.

“Who’s to know what way it’s going to go?” said Gary Ferguson, 27, as he milked the cows on his father’s farm. “It’ll make us or break us.”

Signs of the conflict, known here as “The Troubles,” are still evident, even if rust and moss have softened their hard edges.

In the village of Belcoo in Northern Ireland, an old railway bridge blown up by the British army sits partially submerged in the river that separates Northern Ireland from the town of Blacklion in the Irish Republic. An old customs post splits the small village of Pettigo between north and south. In Belfast, “peace walls” still seek to prevent violence by separating Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods.

To ensure there would be no hard border between north and south, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to different rules for trade between Northern Ireland and the EU than those that apply to the rest of the UK.

Unionists see this as weakening the ties between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., raising concerns that the reunification of Ireland is now more likely.

In Portadown, the Protestant Orange Order still holds weekly protests to assert its British identity.

“This is Britain. (It) says so on the map,” said David Reid, 33, walking in Belfast with his 1-year-old son in the shadow of a peace wall that separates his Protestant community from a Catholic one. “Me personally, it just doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you’re down in Ireland.”

On the other side of the border in Castlefinn, in Ireland’s County Donegal, Tom Murray runs three pharmacies and says his primary goal is to protect the economic gains of the last two decades.

“I think Ireland should always be a united country and should be free of the shackles of Britain,” said Murray, 46. “But at the same time, we have to accept that there’s 1 million people living a mile away who identify as British. I think we have to protect their identity, their culture, their Britishness every bit as much as we have to protect my Irishness. Otherwise it just won’t work.”

Gerry Storey, 83, of the Holy Family Boxing Club in Belfast has been working to bridge the divide by bringing Protestant and Catholic youths together in the boxing ring.

“When you come in here, you don’t talk politics. You don’t swear. And there’s no football jerseys,” Storey said. “In here everybody is treated fairly and squarely. And it doesn’t care who or what you are.”

Ferguson, a fifth-generation Protestant dairy farmer in Stewartstown, Northern Ireland, agrees: “Irish, British, it doesn’t matter.”

“As long as the farming stays OK, that’s all,” he said. “And no wars start.”
 

…

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s contentious interview with an American news broadcaster, and apparent retaliation afterwards, once again raises concerns that attacks on the media by President Donald Trump’s administration undermine the critical role of a free press in a democracy.  Administration critics say these attacks also reinforce anti-press policies by autocratic governments abroad.  VOA’s Brian Padden reports on the controversial dispute and its aftermath.

…

The 100 senators weighing if U.S. President Donald Trump should be removed from office finally got the opportunity to ask their own questions Wednesday. In the first of two days of a new phase of the Senate impeachment trial, senators followed up with House impeachment managers and the president’s own defense on a range of legal issues relating to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
 

…

For the foreign students on lockdown in China where a deadly flulike coronavirus has emerged, days are marked by fear, frustration and boredom.

“I wear a mask all the time,” said Redwan Mohamed Nur, an accounting student who told VOA he is one of 14 Somalis at Wuhan University and among 5,000 Africans studying in China. 

“I [am] so scared that I didn’t dare to open the window because I’m afraid the wind would blow the virus in.”

Wuhan is home to dozens of universities and colleges. On Jan. 23, China closed off Wuhan, the center of a deadly outbreak of the coronavirus; 16 cities are locked down, more than 6,000 cases worldwide have been confirmed and at least 132 people are dead.

Stuck in his dorm, he said he has left only once, and that was to walk to where school authorities distribute food to foreign students every other day. Elsewhere in China, foreign students stay indoors, worried of exposure to the coronavirus.

Nur says the Somalis are a tight knit community. Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdi, one of four Somali students at China University of Geosciences, is studying petroleum engineering. 

“You can get infected without showing the symptoms,” he said. “Therefore you are safe to be indoors.” But he has run out of food and is planning to go out to find an open supermarket.

Yassin Abdi Said, a Somali student living in Wuhan, told VOA the Somalis were remaining calm, but “the situation in Wuhan is very, very dangerous. The city is on lockdown, most shops are closed. Authorities are not allowing anyone to go out or come in.”

Indonesian students — Yuliannova Lestari Chaniago, Patmawaty Taibe and Gerard Ertandy — sent VOA a message from Wuhan’s Central China Normal University, saying they asked their government to evacuate them immediately to their home country.

In Jakarta, the Indonesian Air Force has said they have three airplanes to help evacuate Indonesians from Wuhan, but are waiting for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a decision. Wuhan is home to 102 Indonesians, most of them students.

“We — Yuli, Eva and Gerald — are asking to be evacuated immediately from the city of Wuhan as this city is no longer healthy for us,” said Yuliannova Lestari Chaniago, 26, an international relations student.

Chaniago said she’d received a week’s allowance from Indonesia’s embassy in Beijing, but added that shops and drugstores are closed. She and her friends are surviving on homemade chicken soup. 

“We understand that it’s hard for supplies to be sent in as the city is still in lockdown,” she said. “But we are puzzled as how to survive and protect ourselves from getting infected while at the same time being in the center of the outbreak, without enough food, water and medications.”

She said she and her friends are wearing two masks at once.

“There are masks handed out by the campus to survive, but they’re too thin,” she said. “It’s not the prescribed masks to prevent (the spread of) the virus.”

At the Hubei University of Technology in Wuhan, “They have closed the dormitory doors so that nobody can go out,” Yusuf Abdullah, a Bangladeshi student told VOA. “If you order the food in the canteen, they will cook it for you and then they’ll send. But you can’t go outside.”  

Abdullah said the Bangladeshi Embassy had opened a chat group on the Chinese WeChat platform to share information and concerns. On the group chat, Abdullah told VOA that participants asked the embassy to “evacuate us as soon as possible.”

Sithu Htun is one of 57 students, and three parents, living in isolation in the international students’ dormitory on the Wuhan University campus. All the students all are scholars under the educational and cultural exchange program between China and Myanmar.

The environmental engineering graduate student at the Wuhan University of Technology said everyone was in good health but worried about the supply of food and medicines. He told VOA that the Myanmar Embassy keeps in touch with them about possible evacuation.

He said it would be great if developed countries offered assistance to evacuate them, as Japan and U.S. sent aircraft to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan. He said Burmese students are helping each other avoid feeling depressed about negative comments on social media that reflect a widespread distrust of China among Burmese. 

“My parents are very worried about my safety because I am an only child, an only son,” said Keat Pocheang, 24, a Cambodian student at Wuhan University. “They video call me about 10 times a day.” He said he is “disappointed” that his government has not taken steps to evacuate its nationals.

Another Cambodian student, Tang Chivhour, 20, a native of Phnom Penh, is a student at Hubei University in Wuhan. He has lived in China for three years and speaks fluent Chinese. For the past week, Tang Chivhor said boredom has been the biggest challenge. 

“I have a few Korean friends who are stuck here. So, I hang out with them, chatting and reading together.”

Shipon Hussein, a Bangladeshi doctoral student studying at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said university authorities are not allowing outside people to enter foreign students’ residential quarters. 

“There has been talk about evacuation process,” he said. He added he knew some Bangladeshi students stranded in Wuhan “wanted to go back to Bangladesh.”

In China’s capital, Francisco Sithoi Jr., 22, a Mozambican student at the Beijing University of Technology, echoed what students trapped in Wuhan said, that it was becoming hard for him to get the food he needed, having to “go from supermarket to supermarket.”

Jannatun Nahar, a Bangla student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, echoed that the university officials were “taking care of us” and offering free meals and basic items like sanitizer. And while she, too, feels isolated, she says, she doesn’t want to go home.

“I don’t want to go back … because in my country, the population density is huge,” she said. “If the virus is in my body … if I come back to my country, it might effect my family, my relatives, my country. In my personal opinion, I want to stay in China, I don’t want to spread the virus in my country.”

Reporters from VOA’s Bangla, Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Portuguese and Somali services contributed to this report, which was written in the Mandarin service.

…

The death of American basketball great Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter in a Calabasas, California, helicopter crash, Jan. 26, 2020, sent shockwaves throughout the world, especially in Africa where many looked up to him.  VOA spoke with fans in Kenya and a basketball official in Ivory Coast about the NBA star’s sudden death.  Salem Solomon has the story.

…

Authorities in Bangladesh in partnership with the United Nations will expand educational programs for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya children living in refugee camps who are currently receiving only basic lessons, officials said Wednesday.
    
The children, who fled with their families from neighboring Myanmar to the camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, now attend about 1,500 learning centers run by UNICEF that provide basic education, drawing and other fun activities. Under the new program starting in April, they will receive a formal education using a Myanmar curriculum from grade 6 to 9, the U.N. said in a statement.
    
Mahbub Alam Talukder, Bangladesh’s refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner, said the government agreed in principle with a proposal from the U.N. that the Rohingya children be provided with a Myanmar education.
    
“They will be taught in Myanmar’s language, they will follow Myanmar’s curriculum, there is no chance to study in formal Bangladeshi schools or to read books in the Bengali language,” he said by phone. “There’s no scope for them to stay here in Bangladesh for long, so through this approach they will be able to adapt to Myanmar’s society when they go back.”
    
The U.N. said initially 10,000 Rohingya children will be enrolled in a pilot program using the Myanmar curriculum, which will allow them to fit into the Buddhist-majority nation’s national educational system when they return to their homeland.
    
The decision was hailed by human rights groups and the United Nations.
    
‘We believe this is a positive step and a clear indication of the commitment by the government of Bangladesh to ensure access to learning for Rohingya children and adolescents, as well as to equip them with the right skills and capacities for their future and return to Myanmar when the conditions allow,” the U.N. said.
    
About 400,000 Rohingya children currently live in the refugee camps, and global rights groups have been demanding that the Bangladesh government allow them to have a formal education.
    
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar’s military launched what it called clearance operations in Rakhine state in response to an attack by an insurgent group. Security forces have been accused of committing mass rapes, killings and burning thousands of homes. In total, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees currently live in Bangladesh.
    
Myanmar’s government has long considered the Rohingya to be migrants from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights including education.

…

President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pompeo’s battle with National Public Radio and tweeted out more media criticism, one target familiar and the other less so.

Trump introduced Pompeo at an East Room announcement of the administration’s Mideast peace plan, saying it was “very impressive” that he got a standing ovation from the White House workers and guests.

“That reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you,” the president said. “I think you did a good job on her, actually.”

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly angered Pompeo with a short interview Friday, then he reportedly berated her afterward in his office. The State Department then notified NPR reporter Michele Kelemen on Monday that she would not be allowed on Pompeo’s upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia.

John Lansing, NPR’s president and chief executive officer, wrote to Pompeo on Tuesday, seeking an explanation for why Kelemen had been left off the trip.

Without an answer by Wednesday, when the trip is scheduled to depart, NPR “will have no choice but to conclude that Ms. Kelemen was removed from the trip in retaliation for the content of NPR’s reporting,” Lansing wrote.

There was no immediate response from the State Department to requests for comment.

Earlier Tuesday, the president tweeted an insult at CNN’s Don Lemon, who received some criticism in conservative media for hosting a segment over the weekend where two of his guests made fun of the “rube demo” that backed Trump.

Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!). https://t.co/iQXCc7lvCt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020

Trump also tweeted criticism of his favorite network, Fox News Channel, for “trying to be ‘politically correct’ ” by having a Democratic senator discuss impeachment on the network. He also said Fox’s Chris Wallace, who on Monday challenged a Fox contributor for not having her facts straight in a discussion about impeachment witnesses, shouldn’t be on the network.

…..So, what the hell has happened to @FoxNews. Only I know! Chris Wallace and others should be on Fake News CNN or MSDNC. How’s Shep Smith doing? Watch, this will be the beginning of the end for Fox, just like the other two which are dying in the ratings. Social Media is great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020

“What the hell has happened to Fox News?” Trump tweeted. “Only I know!”

…

A U.N. report says Islamic State militants in Iraq are often not getting fair trials and the judicial processes in the country are not up to international standards.  The report, jointly published by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and the U.N. Human Rights Office, is based on hundreds of trials monitored between May 2018 and October 2019. 

The report says those responsible for widespread atrocities in Iraq must be held accountable.  At the same time, it says it is important that those accused of crimes be given a fair trial.  It says justice must be seen to be done.

U.N. human rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence says the report is based on independent monitoring of 794 criminal trials of suspected Islamic State militants who were prosecuted under Iraq’s anti-terrorism laws.  

“Prosecutions under the anti-terrorism legal framework mainly focused on membership of a terrorist organization, without distinguishing between those who participated in violence, committed international crimes, and those who joined ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] for survival and/or through coercion,” said Laurence.

The report notes trials of IS defendants generally are conducted in an orderly, organized manner and judges are prepared with investigation files.  However, it says defendants are placed at a serious disadvantage because they have limited access to lawyers and usually are unable to challenge the evidence presented by the prosecution.

Laurence tells VOA Iraq’s judicial system is unfairly applied to all defendants even in cases where the death sentence is imposed.  He cites one case that UNAMI observed in a court in Baghdad in which the defendant was sentenced to death.

“The court appointed the defense lawyer on the day of the trial itself,” he said. “He had not seen his client and had not had access to the court files before the hearing and during the course of the trial remained silent.”  

Of the 794 criminal trials monitored by the U.N., Laurence notes 109 defendants were sentenced to death.  

The report expresses grave concern at the court’s over-reliance on extracting confessions and frequent allegations of torture.  It says these actions violate the human rights of defendants and strip Iraq’s judicial system of any semblance of fairness.  

…

U.S. health officials are expanding their checks of international travelers for signs of a worrisome new virus from China, even as they say the risk to Americans so far is very low.

For “the individual American, this should not be an impact on their day-to-day life,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters Tuesday.

So far, there are five confirmed cases of this new virus in the U.S., and no sign that they have spread the respiratory illness to anyone around them.

While reports from China suggest that people there may have spread the illness before showing symptoms, there is no evidence of that in the U.S., stressed Dr. Robert Redfield.

And while some other viruses are known to occasionally spread before symptoms are obvious — such as the flu — health officials say that’s far less of a concern than the obviously contagious patients.

The CDC already has been checking arrivals at five U.S. airports that once had direct flights from the hardest-hit section of China. While China has instituted broad travel bans, people who had been in other parts of China still may be arriving via other countries.

The CDC is now beefing up screening at 15 more “quarantine stations” around the country, airports and other places where health workers regularly check arriving travelers for signs of illness.

But travelers may not be sick right then, CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier said. The screenings also are an opportunity to educate travelers that if they develop symptoms — such as fever or a cough — after returning from the outbreak zone, they should contact their doctor, she said. That’s exactly what the first two U.S. patients did.

…

Puerto Rico opened only 20% of its public schools on Tuesday following a strong earthquake that delayed the start of classes by nearly three weeks as fears linger over the safety of students.

Only 177 schools were certified to open after engineers inspected them for damage caused by the magnitude-6.4 earthquake that killed one person and damaged hundreds of homes on Jan. 7. But the inspections were not to determine whether a school could withstand another strong earthquake or had structural shortcomings such as short columns that make it vulnerable to collapse, further worrying parents.

“Of course I am afraid,” said 38-year-old Marien Santos, who attended an open house Monday at her son’s Ramon Vila Mayo high school in the suburb of Rio Piedras where officials gave her a copy of the inspection report and evacuation plans.

Her concerns were echoed by the director of the school, Elisa Delgado. While she believes engineers did a thorough inspection of the school, built in the early 1900s, they warned her not to use the main entrance in an evacuation because it leads to an area filled with gas lines. The problem is that the other exits are too narrow to handle the school’s 450 students, she told The Associated Press.

“It’s not ideal,” she said.

Overall, engineers have inspected 561 of the island’s 856 public schools, finding at least 50 too unsafe to reopen, leaving some 240,000 students out of school for now. Ongoing tremors also are forcing crews to automatically re-inspect schools following any quake of 3.0 magnitude or higher, according to Puerto Rico’s Infrastructure Financing Authority.

Since the 6.4 quake, there have been several strong aftershocks, including a 5.9 magnitude one that hit Jan. 11 and a 5.0 that struck Saturday. The biggest quake flattened the top two floors of a three-story school in the southern coastal city of Guanica on Jan. 7, two days before classes were scheduled to start.

Overall, experts say that some 500 public schools in Puerto Rico were built before 1987 and don’t meet new construction codes. A plan to retrofit all schools that need it, an estimated 756 buildings, would cost up to $2.5 billion, officials have said, noting those are preliminary figures.

Education Secretary Eligio Hernandez noted that another 51 schools are scheduled to start classes on Feb. 3 and that his department is reviewing recommendations on how best to proceed with the other schools.

“The Department of Education is going to take the time it needs and will take all necessary actions so that parents … feel satisfied,” he told reporters Monday.

Alternatives for students

Gov. Wanda Vazquez said Tuesday that her administration is still trying to find appropriate options for the roughly 28,000 students who have been unable to return to schools.

“It’s not that easy,” she said, adding that holding classes outdoors under tarps poses problems including how bathrooms, meals and transportation will be handled. She said hotels and convention centers in the area are being considered.

Meanwhile, Elba Aponte, president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Teachers, told the AP that she has received complaints and pictures from parents and school employees of at least 10 schools that have reopened but that they feel are still unsafe.

Most of the pictures are of cracks in the walls and roofs of those schools, she said.

“Their concerns are quite valid,” Aponte said, adding that she would share them with the island’s education secretary.

Meanwhile, school and government officials are trying to figure out what to do with the roughly 240,000 students who aren’t able to go to school yet, either because their building was deemed unsafe or has not yet been inspected. No schools in the island’s southern and southwest region will reopen for now, officials say.

Options include placing students in other schools with revised schedules or holding classes in refurbished trailers or outdoors under tarps, Aponte said as she lamented the situation.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “If there was one place where they could feel safe, it was at school.”
 

…

The pressure on Britain’s disgraced Prince Andrew increased Tuesday after the revelation by U.S. authorities that he has failed to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation into his ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Lawyer Lisa Bloom, who represents five of Epstein’s alleged sexual trafficking victims, said Tuesday that it’s time for Andrew “to stop playing games and to come forward to do the right thing and answer questions.”

Bloom said her clients were “outraged and disappointed at Prince Andrew’s behavior.”

Andrew remained out of the public eye Tuesday. Buckingham Palace and his legal team maintained a “no comment” policy one day after U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Andrew has provided “zero cooperation” to the FBI and the U.S. prosecutors seeking to speak with him about Epstein.

The statement Monday by Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was the first official confirmation that the leading U.S. law enforcement agency had sought — and failed — to obtain evidence from Andrew, third child of Queen Elizabeth II, despite his pledge in November that he would cooperate with legitimate law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. decision to make the 59-year-old prince’s silence public may be part of a strategy to increase public calls for him to cooperate.

Andrew is being sought for questioning as a witness who may be able to shed light on the illegal activities of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in August while awaiting trial on sexually abusing teenage girls. There’s no indication that U.S. officials are pursuing criminal charges against the prince.

The FBI only has limited ways to try to convince Andrew to give evidence.

U.S. officials have not provided details, so it’s not clear if the FBI made an informal request through Andrew’s lawyers or went through formal police channels, which if successful would have led to an interview conducted by U.K. police, possibly with an FBI agent present.

“They can’t compel him to do any of those things,” said British lawyer Ben Keith, a specialist in extradition and law enforcement. “The next stage after that is to issue a formal Mutual Legal Assistance Request, which would go through the Foreign Office and be dealt with in the court system.”

That could lead, Keith said, to the prince giving evidence via video link to U.S. investigators.

Andrew has been accused by a woman who says that she had several sexual encounters with the prince at Epstein’s behest, starting when she was 17.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre says after meeting Epstein as a teenager in Florida in 2000, he flew her around the world and pressured her into having sex with numerous older men, including Andrew, two senior U.S. politicians, a noted academic, and the attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is now part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team.

Giuffre has said she had sex with Andrew three times, including once in London in 2001 at the home of Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre claims that she was paid by Epstein for her sexual encounters.

Andrew and Dershowitz have denied any wrongdoing. But the royal family forced Andrew to step down from his royal duties and charity patronages in November after giving a disastrous television interview in which he defended his friendship with Epstein and failed to express sympathy for the girls and women who Epstein abused.

Andrew is also being pursued by several lawyers representing Epstein victims who are pushing civil suits against Epstein’s estate.

Those lawyers could choose to bring their request to a British high court, seeking to have an examiner take a statement from Andrew or pursue other ways to obtain his evidence. So far they are only making public calls for him to make himself available and threatening to subpoena Andrew if he travels to the U.S.

The complex legal situation may make Andrew reluctant to visit the U.S., where his evidence is sought on both criminal and civil cases, but lawyers say it’s unlikely to restrict his travel to other countries.

New York criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby says it’s unlikely the prince will ever voluntarily agree to an interview and said the FBI doesn’t have the means to force him to.

“The likelihood of him participating is very, very small,” Kuby said. “Why would he? The last time Prince Andrew spoke on the relevant topic he was yanked from public life and universally ridiculed.”

Andrew, eighth in line to the throne, has been seen at occasional royal family events since November but has not commented on Epstein since his TV interview backfired.

…

As North Korea returns to self-reliance to maintain its faltering state-run economy, experts said sanctioning the financial lifelines of regime leaders might put added pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.

“Washington and its allies should be calibrating sanctions that target the regime/party elites’ financial lifeline,” said Matthew Ha, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “The critical entity that would affect change amongst North Korea’s leadership are banks and financial institutions.”

Ever since leader Kim Jong Un said at a party meeting in December that North Korea must cope with sanctions with self-reliance, Pyongyang has been mobilizing to reinforce self-sufficiency.

“There is no need to hesitate with any expectation of the U.S. lifting of sanctions,” said Kim. He urged the nation to make a “frontal breakthrough to foil the enemies’ sanctions and blockade by dint of self-reliance.”

Self-reliance, or Juche, is North Korea’s official ideology. It calls on the regime to be self-sufficient economically, and politically independent of foreign reliance by mobilizing its people socially to work for the regime, forcing them to put their own interests behind that of the country.

North Korea’s official newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday issued a report calling upon citizens to revive the “spirit of self-reliance” to “build a powerful and prosperous country of Juche on this land.” 

Bradley Babson, a former World Bank adviser and an advisory council member of the Korea Economic Institute of America, said North Korea has been complaining about sanctions because they restrict the regime from fully operating its state-controlled industries.

Sanctions “are really constraining the ability of the state to function in the state-directed economy in the way they would like to,” said Babson. “And that’s why they complain about sanctions. I think they’re complaining that the state really has to give ground to the private sector in order to survive.” 

According to Babson, sanctions are keeping North Korea from operating its import-dependent state enterprises at the full capacity needed to be successful domestically and earn foreign exchange abroad.

‘Maximum pressure’

International sanctions placed on North Korea, particularly those issued since 2016, restrict the regime from importing the fuel needed to run its domestic industries.

Sanctions also ban the regime from exporting commodities such as coal, iron ore, textile, and seafood that brought in foreign income that could support its nuclear weapons program.

While these sanctions restricted North Korea from running its state-controlled industries, experts told VOA Korean the sanctions fail to put enough pressure on Pyongyang’s party leaders who still make money for the country by running operations abroad.

“When we talk about sanctions pressure, we really need to be targeting where strategic decisions can be made to really adjust the calculus of [the regime’s] leaders,” said Ha. “In a dictatorship, it’s the elites that are going to be more likely to make a change in decision.” 

Ha said sanctions should target North Korea’s overseas bank accounts that its regime leaders maintain to run overseas operations to bring in foreign revenue.

“There are [local overseas] middlemen that are literally pushing the money through for a lot of [North Korean] individuals and the companies that they run to help provide financial revenue for the regime,” said Ha. 

Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based attorney who helped draft the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement and Policy Enforcement Act in 2016, said, “Maximum pressure will really be maximum pressure when there are nine-digit penalties against Chinese banks that’s laundering North Korean money.” 

Targeting financial lifelines of the regime’s elites, comprised of government and military officials, would likely pressure Kim, because he needs their loyalty to stay in power, according to Ha.

“He must keep his people happy, especially the elites,” said Ha. “He needs to be able to gain the loyalty of elites. I think if they see their situation compromised, it’ll be a problem.” 

On Jan. 14, the U.S. Treasury Department issued new sanctions on two North Korean entities that it said continue to export laborers overseas, undermining U.N. resolutions including the one passed in 2017 requiring all North Korean workers return by a Dec. 22, 2019, deadline.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Ha. He added that one of the sanctioned entities, Namgang Trading Corporation, “is likely run by a [North Korean] government official who is helping finance the government, the regime needs.” 

‘Hostile policy’

After President Donald Trump denied Kim’s request to lift sanctions at the Hanoi Summit in February, North Korea resumed missile tests in May and continued until December in apparent protest against sanctions that it described as “hostile policy.” And sanctions are a major reason denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang have remained stalled since the working-level talks in Stockholm broke down in October.

Babson said U.N. sanctions restricting “the oil imports have really negatively affected things like fertilizer production and industries that are very dependent on oil, not only the power sector but in other industries.”

He added, “So their effort to substitute for imported oil with gasification of coal which they have in abundance [has] been one of the responses” to deal with sanctions. 

As if to emphasize his regime’s utilization of coal, Kim visited several North Korean factories, including a fertilizer factory under construction north of Pyongyang in Sunchon after announcing the return to Juche. 

Kim also showed Pyongyang could tap tourism to create a foreign income flow, especially from China, by visiting the hot spring resort in Yangdok in December, just before it opened for tourists a month later. The sanctions do not ban making money from tourism.

But the outbreak of coronavirus in China forced North Korea to shut its borders to Chinese tourists. 

Virus-Related Tourism Ban Could Hurt North Korea’s Economy

North Korea, hit by sanctions, has increasingly relied on Chinese tourists

Experts said even though North Korea tries to sustain its economy through self-reliance, there is little prospect that its efforts will succeed.

Troy Stangarone, senior director of the Korea Economic Institute, said a new mountain resort North Korea opened in Samjiyon County in December has been “a showpiece” to stress that “the regime can be self-reliant domestically.”

However, he continued, “Even North Korea has hinted that the human cost has been enormous to complete the project, suggesting that it is far from a sign of success.”

Babson said, “The senior leadership has come to understand that without trade and investment, you can’t do that all on your own.”

Unenthusiastic public

Another complication comes from the North Korean people who are unenthusiastic about the return to Juche when many have been earning money in private markets after losing jobs at state-run factories.

“People don’t really particularly like being told they have to go back into forced labor, type of a mobilized labor, to get the economy moving, when they’d rather make money on their own,” he said. 

In this sense, Babson thinks what the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith called “the invisible hand,” an unfettered market force and self-interest that help a country reach an optimum level of economic prosperity, has been at play in North Korea. Smith is often called the father of modern economics.

“The incentive to create private wealth through private initiative has been growing in North Korea and in that sense, ‘the invisible hand’ is at work,” said Babson. 

Babson added that the growth of the market and the desire of people to seek their own economic interest have undermined the old concept of self-reliance.

“That concept really has been undermined by the growth of the market economy,” said Babson. “People feel that they’re able to pursue individual interest on [seeking] economic benefit even if it doesn’t benefit the whole. So there’s a breakdown in the understanding of what it means to be self-reliant.” 

However, with recent resurgence toward self-reliance, the regime is seemingly trying to reverse the course of its economy.

Stanton said, “With North Korea, the argument is two steps forward and one step backward, or one step forward and two steps back.” 

Pyongyang is also apparently facing how to reposition self-reliance in a modernized economy.

“There is a real dilemma for the government and for public policy about how [to] integrate the concept of self-reliance in the modern and the way the economy and society have developed since the famine [of 1990s] and the breakdown of the old model,” Babson said.

This report originated with VOA’s Korean Service.
 

…

The 2020 U.S. presidential campaign gets under way for real on Monday, Feb. 3, when voters in the Midwestern state of Iowa gather in schools, libraries and private homes to participate in the Iowa caucuses.

Iowa does not always determine the eventual party nominees, but the caucus vote does play a key role in shaping the primary races and weeding out contenders with little support.

Here are 10 things people should know about the Iowa caucuses.

What are the Iowa caucuses?

Once every four years, Iowa seizes the national political spotlight with its caucus vote. Party activists head out to local schools and other locations to express their preference for the various Democratic and Republican candidates running for president. The process can take hours, and the results are eventually used to award convention delegates to candidates who do well.

How do the caucuses work?

Upon arrival at the caucus site, Democrats taking part elect a local chairperson and form groups supporting the various candidates. After an initial round of voting, candidates who do not have at least 15% support among those at the caucus site are considered no longer viable. Their supporters are free to go to another candidate, and caucus-goers who support other candidates are free to try and persuade them. After this “realignment” process is complete, a final vote tally is taken and reported to the state party. The caucus results ultimately are used to allocate delegates to the national nominating convention in July committed to those candidates who draw the most support.

Why are the caucuses so important?

Iowa only sends 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer, so its real significance has to do with the fact it is the first voting test in the presidential primaries and can make or break presidential campaigns. The top finishers usually go on to be competitive in the New Hampshire primary the following week and other contests in the coming weeks. Those who finish poorly often see their funding dry up and are forced to leave the race.

Do caucus winners always win their party’s nomination?

Since 1972, the winner of the Iowa Democratic caucuses has gone on to win the party’s presidential nomination seven out of 10 times. Jimmy Carter got a big boost by finishing second to “uncommitted” in the 1976 caucus voting, and Barack Obama used his victory in 2008 to demonstrate he was a serious threat to favorite Hillary Clinton. But winning in Iowa does not guarantee success in the primary race. Past Democratic winners have included local favorite Sen. Tom Harkin in 1992, Congressman Dick Gephardt in 1988 and Ed Muskie in 1972, none of whom won the nomination. On the Republican side, Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000 got a huge boost in momentum from winning the caucuses, and eventually went on to win the party nomination.

Who are some of the recent winners, and how did they fare in later primaries?

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won the caucuses in 2016 over Donald Trump, while Democrat Hillary Clinton narrowly prevailed over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders is one of the top Democratic contenders again this year. In 2012, former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum won a razor-thin victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, only to see Romney eventually claim the Republican nomination. Romney was defeated by Obama in the general election.

Why doesn’t Iowa hold a presidential primary like most other states?

Iowa is one of only a handful of states that still prefers to hold time-consuming caucus meetings to begin the process of selecting national convention delegates. Nevada, Kansas, North Dakota and Wyoming are the others. Iowa has traditionally preferred the caucus model since it became a state in 1846. But several states in recent years have moved away from caucus votes to primaries, where voters simply show up at a polling place and cast a ballot. Primary elections draw a wider cross section of voters compared to caucuses, which are usually attended by the more motivated and committed voters. Caucuses also last hours, compared to the more traditional act of voting at the polls or submitting an early vote by mail.

Are Republicans holding caucuses in Iowa, as well?

They are, even though Trump is a heavy favorite. The Republican caucuses function more simply than the Democratic ones. Voters simply show up at their local caucus locations and cast a vote and leave.

Iowa Democrats have announced changes to the caucuses this year. What are they?

In the past, Democrats would only announce the total number of delegates each candidate has won at the end of voting. This year, after pressure from Sanders supporters to be more transparent, Democrats have decided to also announce the raw vote totals from the first round of voting in the various caucuses, and from the final round of voting after caucus-goers are permitted to realign behind other candidates

Who decided Iowa should go first?  

Iowa began this tradition of holding the first caucuses for Democrats in 1972 and for Republicans in 1976. It has become a point of pride for Iowa to host the first caucuses and for New Hampshire to hold the first presidential primary. New Hampshire’s tradition goes back to 1916 and took on added significance beginning in 1952. Both states have a long-standing pact that they will remain the first contests to the exclusion of all other states, and for the most part, political leaders in both parties have supported them over the years.

Who is going to win in Iowa this year?

Recent state and national polls show Sanders is surging. He is hoping for a breakthrough in a top tier of candidates that includes former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In addition, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar is hoping for a strong showing to break into the top tier. But in the final run-up to the vote, Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet have been limited in their ability to campaign in Iowa because as sitting U.S. senators, they are required to attend Trump’s impeachment trial.

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