An area in northwestern Pakistan known for militant activities and the Taliban’s presence holds a special election Saturday. The vote is part of an effort that began last year to merge the former lawless tribal belt into a neighboring province. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports on how the change is impacting the region.
As Libya’s two rival governments fight for control of the capital, Tripoli, airstrikes and artillery fire continue to batter the city. Nearly 1,100 people have died and more than 100,000 have been displaced by the war. As VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Tripoli, officials say if the fighting does not slow down, the country is headed toward “disaster.”
The governor of Puerto Rico is not backing down despite massive street protests in the capital, San Juan, demanding his resignation. Thousands of people have taken to the streets after Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism published nearly 900 pages of leaked text messages in which Gov. Ricardo Rossello used homophobic and misogynistic language. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the governor said in a statement Thursday that his commitment to Puerto Rico is stronger than ever.
House lawmakers voted Wednesday to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
In a vote that mostly followed party lines, House members passed the Raise The Wage Act, the first minimum wage increase since 2009. The measure has not yet come up in the Senate. The bill would more than double the national minimum wage over the next 6 years, a marked increase from the current $7.25 federal minimum wage.
The bill would also raise the minimum wage for tipped employees to the same level from the current $2.13 an hour.
In the 231-to-199 vote, three Republican representatives joined the majority and voted for the bill, while six Democrats voted against it.
“This is about workers, it’s about their economic and financial security and today is a bright day because it affects so many people in our country,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at a news conference.
Skepticism
While the vote was nearly unanimous by Democrats, some members were skeptical.
Democrats Tom O’Halleran of Arizona and Stephanie Murphy of Florida introduced an amendment that would mandate the Government Accountability Office to track the bill’s effects and report to the House before the entire wage increase is implemented. It passed 248-181.
Republican lawmakers voiced sharp opposition, arguing it will stifle economic growth.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said that the bill would “eviscerate millions of American jobs,” referencing a report by the Congressional Budget Office that projected between 1 million and 3 million Americans could lose their jobs if the bill were to become law.
The CBO also predicted that the bill would give over 30 million Americans raises, lifting 1 million from poverty.
In the Republican-controlled Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell questioned why the Senate would “depress the economy at a time of economic boom,” in an interview with the Fox Business Network, indicating that he would not bring the bill for a vote.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that China’s mistreatment of its Uighur Muslim minority had created one of the most significant human rights crises in contemporary world history.
Speaking at a conference on religious freedom in Washington, Pompeo said, “China is home to one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and that “it is truly the stain of the century.”
The nation’s top diplomat also accused Chinese government officials of intimidating countries to keep them from attending the conference and said the U.S. had “taken note” of the countries that succumbed to China. While not naming them, Pompeo urged the countries to “find the courage” to stand up to China.
Pompeo said earlier this week that representatives of more than 100 countries would attend the three-day conference that ends Thursday, but a State Department spokesman could not confirm the number.
“We know the Chinese government called countries specifically to discourage participation,” the spokesman said, but “we cannot prove the exact number they successfully impacted.”
The Chinese government has dismissed accusations it violated rights to religious freedom. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a Beijing news briefing Thursday that “this situation of so-called religious persecution does not exist.”
Lu also said China “demand[s] that the United States correctly view China’s religious policies and the status of religious freedom in China, and stop using the issue of religion to interfere in other countries’ affairs.”
U.N. experts and activists contend China has placed at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs in detention centers. Nearly two dozen countries on the U.N. Human Rights Council earlier this month called on China to stop its persecution of Uighurs in the country’s western Xinjiang region.
The U.S. has been considering sanctions against Chinese officials over their policies in Xinjiang but has yet to impose them amid Chinese threats of retaliation.
U.S.-China relations are already tense because of a trade war between the world powers.
Pence offers solidarity
Vice President Mike Pence also addressed the conference, telling attendees that U.S. trade talks with China would not influence America’s commitment to religious freedom in the East Asian country.
“Whatever comes of our negotiations with Beijing, you can be assured that the American people will stand in solidarity with people of all faiths in the People’s Republic of China,” he said.
Pence, offering rare criticism of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, also called on the kingdom to release jailed blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for insulting Islam.
Pence also demanded the release of detained religious dissidents in Eritrea, Mauritania and Pakistan and vowed the U.S. would press for religious freedom in North Korea amid efforts to denuclearize the country.
Anti-corruption officials in Pakistan have arrested former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for allegedly evading an ongoing investigation into corruption charges against him.
The former Pakistani leader is the latest in a series of high-profile opposition politicians targeted under the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan who accuses his predecessors of corruption and stashing away billions of dollars to foreign bank accounts.
Abbasi together with several members of his opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) was on his way to address a news conference in the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday, when he was taken into custody by a team of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the state anti-corruption body.
Authorities later took the former prime minister to Islamabad, where he will appear before an anti-corruption court on Friday, said NAB officials. Abbasi served as prime minister from August 2017 to May 2018.
NAB officials explained that the arrest stemmed from a case related to the award of a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) import contract when Abbasi was serving as the federal minister for petroleum and natural resources. They said Abbasi had been repeatedly summoned for questioning sessions, including one on Thursday, but he did not appear.
The arrest came just weeks after the country’s former president, Asif Ali Zardari, the head of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, was arrested in connection of multiple cases of corruption and money laundering against him.
Abbasi’s predecessor and party chief, Nawaz Sharif, is currently serving a seven-year jail term after he was convicted of corruption last year.
Sharif’s brother and the current party chief, Shahbaz Sharif, denounced Abbasi’s arrest. He alleged in a statement that “the institution of NAB has become Imran Khan’s puppet but such cheap tactics cannot waiver our resolve.”
Opposition parties reject allegations against their leaders and dismiss the accountability campaign as politically motivated to divert public attention from struggling economy, soaring inflation and ballooning deficits. Khan’s ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party denies the charges.
Khan defeated the PML-N in last year’s national elections, promising to crackdown on rampant corruption and improve the crisis-ridden national economy.
Setting aside their usual bickering, South Korean liberal and conservative parties on Thursday vowed to cooperate to help the Seoul government prevail in an escalating trade row with Japan.
After a meeting between the parties’ leaders and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at Seoul’s presidential office, they announced plans to create a pan-national'' emergency body to respond to tighter Japanese trade controls on certain technology exports to South Korea.<br />unjust economic retaliation” that would seriously harm bilateral relations and cooperation.
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The meeting came amid growing concerns in South Korea that Japan's trade curbs, which could possibly be expanded to hundreds of trade items in coming weeks, would rattle its export-dependent economy.<br />
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South Korean political leaders urged Japan to immediately withdraw the measures they described as
The leaders of conservative parties also called for Moon to take more aggressive diplomatic steps, such as pushing for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe or sending a special envoy to Japan.
Earlier on Thursday, South Korea’s central bank lowered its policy rate for the first time in three years to combat a faltering economy that faces further risks created by the trade row with Japan.
“Japan’s export restriction measures are an unjust economic retaliation that violates the order of free trade and seriously damages friendly and mutually beneficial relationships between South Korea and Japan,” the South Korean parties and presidential Blue House said in a joint statement after the meeting.
Moon during the meeting said that a united front between the government and political parties would “send a good message to Japan and increase the negotiation leverage of our government and companies.”
Hwang Kyo-ahn, leader of the conservative Liberty Korea Party, called for Moon to push for a quick meeting with Abe or send high-level special envoys to Tokyo and Washington, a treaty ally with both Asian nations, to help resolve the standoff.
“The government doesn’t have concrete plans and is just appealing to the emotions of our people with words. However, words and emotions cannot solve this problem,” Hwang said. “Core issues should be resolved between the leaders of both countries … I think the president should solve this with a top-down approach.”
The dispute erupted earlier this month when Tokyo tightened controls on the exports of photoresists and two other chemicals to South Korean companies that use them to produce semiconductors and display screens for smartphones and TVs.
Seoul has accused Tokyo of weaponizing trade to retaliate against South Korean court rulings calling for Japanese companies to compensate aging South Korean plaintiffs for forced labor during World War II, and plans to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization.
Tokyo said the issue has nothing to do with historical issues between the countries and says the materials affected by the export controls can be sent only to trustworthy trading partners. Without presenting specific examples, it has questioned Seoul’s credibility in controlling the exports of arms and items that can be used both for civilian and military purposes.
South Korea has rejected the Japanese claims and proposed an inquiry by the United Nations Security Council or another international body on the export controls of both countries.
South Korea is also bracing for the possibility that Japan will take further steps by removing it from a 27-country “whitelist” receiving preferential treatment in trade.
Its removal from the list would require Japanese companies to apply for case-by-case approvals for exports to South Korea of hundreds of items deemed sensitive, not just the three materials affected by the trade curbs that took effect July 4. It will also allow Japanese authorities to restrict any export to South Korea when they believe there are security concerns.
“The Japanese government should immediately withdraw its economic retaliation measure and clearly understand that additional measures such as the removal from the whitelist would threaten South Korea-Japan relations and the security cooperation in Northeast Asia,” said Choi Do-ja, spokeswoman of the conservative Bareun Mirae Party.
The U.K. will plunge into recession if it leaves the European Union without a divorce deal, with the pound plunging in value and the economy shrinking by 2% in a year, Britain’s official economic watchdog said Thursday.
The Office for Budget Responsibility made its assessment as chances of an economically disruptive no-deal Brexit appear to be rising. Both men vying to take over next week as Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, say they will lead the U.K. out of the bloc, with or without an agreement on terms.
They claim that Britain can withstand any resulting turbulence, but most economists predict the economic shock would be severe.
The OBR, which provides the U.K. government with independent economic forecasts, said a no-deal Brexit would see “heightened uncertainty and declining confidence deter investment, while higher trade barriers with the EU weigh on exports.”
It predicted GDP would fall by 2% by the end of 2020 in a no-deal scenario, and borrowing would be around 30 billion pounds ($37 billion) a year higher from 2020-21 than it forecast in March.
Britain is due to leave the EU on Oct. 31, but Parliament has repeatedly rejected the divorce deal truck between Prime Minister Theresa May and the bloc. Johnson and Hunt, who are vying to replace May as Conservative party leader and prime minister, both say they will leave without an agreement if the EU won’t renegotiate.
The bloc insists it won’t change the 585-page withdrawal agreement, which sets out the terms of Britain’s departure and includes a transition period of almost two years to allow both sides to adjust to their new relationship.
“This document is the only way to leave the EU in an orderly manner,” EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told the BBC in an interview broadcast Thursday.
Three years after British voters narrowly chose to leave the 28-nation EU, it remains stuck in limbo. May announced her resignation last month after failing to win Parliament’s approval for her Brexit deal.
Her successor is being chosen by members of the Conservative Party, most of whom are strongly in favor of Brexit and prepared to accept the risks of leaving without a deal. Johnson is the strong favorite to win the contest when the result is announced Tuesday.
He claims that Britain can flourish outside the EU if it has enough optimism and “mojo,” and says a no-deal Brexit will be “vanishingly inexpensive” if the country prepares properly.
Many others are less sanguine.
Treasury chief Philip Hammond, who has warned about the perils of a no-deal Brexit _ and is likely to be fired by the next prime minister _ said “I greatly fear the impact on our economy and our public finances of a no-deal Brexit.
He said the OBR forecast was based on the “most benign version” of a no-deal Brexit, and in all likelihood “the hit would be much greater, the impact would be much harder.”
Meanwhile, the relationship between the British government and the EU has been frayed by years of testy negotiations and allegations of ill-will on both sides.
EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans told a BBC documentary that the British lacked a plan and were “running around like idiots” during the Brexit negotiations. He cited a catchphrase from the classic British sitcom “Dads’ Army”: “Don’t panic!”
Junior U.K. Brexit minister Martin Callanan accused Timmermans of spreading “childish insults” about the British negotiating stance. Quoting another famous riposte from “Dad’s Army,” he said Timmermans was a “stupid boy.”
Iranian state television said Thursday forces from the country’s Revolutionary Guard seized a foreign tanker accused of smuggling oil.
The report said the vessel was intercepted Sunday in a section of the Strait of Hormuz south of Iran’s Larak Island with 12 crew members on board.
It said the tanker was involved in smuggling one million liters of fuel, but did not give details about its country of origin.
The seizure comes after the Panamanian-flagged tanker MT Riah, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, disappeared from ship tracking maps in Iranian territorial waters on July 14.
The Revolutionary Guard said it received a distress call from the vessel, which was “later seized with the order from the court as we found out that it was smuggling fuel,” a report said. It said Iranian smugglers intended to transport the fuel to foreign customers.
The seizure comes amid heightened U.S.-Iran tensions, which began to escalate when President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 deal with Iran and world powers last year and imposed stiff sanctions on Iran, including on its oil exports.
Iran has recently exceeded uranium production and enrichment limits in violation of the agreement in an effort to pressure Europe to offer more favorable terms to allow it to sell its crude oil abroad.
The U.S. has also deployed thousands of additional troops, nuclear-capable bombers and fighter jets to the Middle East.
Veiled attacks on oil tankers and Iran’s downing of a U.S. military surveillance drone have further fueled concerns of a military conflict in the Persian Gulf region.
An unnamed U.S. defense official told Associated Press earlier this week the U.S. “has suspicions” Iran seized the tanker MT Riah when it turned off its tracker.
A Republican senator blocked a bipartisan bill that would have made sure that a fund providing compensation to 9/11 workers would remain viable until 2090.
Rand Paul of Kentucky questioned the bill’s 70-year time frame and said any new spending should be offset by corresponding cuts so the U.S. government’s $22 trillion debt does not continue to grow.
“It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in the country,” Paul said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “And, therefore, any new spending … should be offset by cutting spending that’s less valuable. We need to at the very least have this debate.”
Presidential hopeful New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had offered the bill for unanimous consent, which would have fast-tracked its approval.
Under Senate rules, an objection from a single senator can block a measure offered via unanimous consent, which is what Paul did.
A spokesperson for Paul later told The Hill that Paul “is not blocking anything,” adding that he is “simply seeking to pay for it.”
The bill, which easily passed in the House last month, would extend though 2092 a victims compensation fund, essentially making it permanent.
More than $7 billion was placed in a fund to compensate firefighters, construction crews, police and other emergency workers who rushed into the debris of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 — inhaling dust, smoke, chemicals and other hazardous substances.
Many are suffering from breathing problems, digestive disorders, and lung and other cancers.
The Justice Department has warned that the fund is running out of money because there was no mechanism in Congress to make sure that does not happen before the entire program is set to expire next year.
Benefit payments have been slashed and about 21,000 claims are still awaiting a decision.
Gillibrand said she was “deeply disappointed” by Paul’s action.
“Enough of the political games. Our 9/11 first responders and our entire nation are watching to see if this body actually cares. Do we care about the men and women who answer the call of duty?” she asked in an emotionally charged speech.
“Thousands of those men and women have died,” she said. Others still have to “face the terrifying reality that they are going to die because of what they did on 9/11 and the months thereafter.”
Gillibrand and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up the bill for a vote before Congress goes on its August recess.
The Democratic-controlled House voted Wednesday to hold two top Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas related to a decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The House voted 230-198 to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt. The vote, a political blow to the Trump administration, is largely symbolic because the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute the two men.
The action marks an escalation of Democratic efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the inner workings of the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump abandoned the citizenship question last week after the Supreme Court said the administration’s justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.” Trump directed agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases.
The White House called the vote “ridiculous” and “yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.”
The Justice and Commerce departments have produced more than 31,000 pages of documents to the House regarding the census issue, and senior officials from both agencies, including Ross, have spoken on the record about the matter, the White House said, adding that Democrats continue to demand documents that the White House contends are subject to executive privilege.
“House Democrats know they have no legal right to these documents, but their shameful and cynical politics know no bounds,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said the contempt vote was an important step to assert Congress’ constitutional authority to serve as a check on executive power.
“Holding any secretary in criminal contempt of Congress is a serious and sober matter — one that I have done everything in my power to avoid,” Cummings said during House debate. “But in the case of the attorney general and Secretary Ross, they blatantly obstructed our ability to do congressional oversight into the real reason Secretary Ross was trying for the first time in 70 years to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.”
While Ross and other officials have claimed the sole reason they wanted to add the citizenship question was to enforce the Voting Rights Act, “we now know that claim was nothing but a pretext,” Cummings said. “The Supreme Court said that.”
At the direction of Barr and Ross, “the departments of Justice and Commerce have been engaged in a campaign to subvert our laws and the process Congress put in place to maintain the integrity of the census,” Cummings said.
The contempt resolution “is about protecting our democracy, protecting the integrity of this body. It’s bigger than the census,” he said.
Ross called the vote a public relations “stunt” that further demonstrates Democrats’ “unending quest to generate headlines instead of operating in good faith with our department.”
Democrats prefer to “play political games rather than help lead the country” and “have made every attempt to ascribe evil motivations to everyday functions of government,” Ross said.
Ross told the oversight committee that the March 2018 decision to add the question was based on a Justice Department request to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.
Democrats disputed that, citing documents unearthed last month suggesting that a push to draw legislative districts in overtly partisan and racist ways was the real reason the administration wanted to include the question.
Democrats feared that adding the question would reduce participation in immigrant-heavy communities and result in a severe undercount of minority voters. They have pressed for specific documents to determine Ross’ motivation and contend the administration has declined to provide the material despite repeated requests.
“The real issue we should be debating” is why Democrats are afraid to ask how many citizens live in the United States, said Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican. Contrary to Democrats’ claims, Ross and other officials have cooperated with the oversight panel and provided thousands of documents, Comer said.
“If the Democrats can’t impeach President Trump, they will instead hold his Cabinet in contempt of Congress,” he said. “This is just another episode in political theater.”
In a letter late Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Barr and Ross asked Democrats to postpone the vote, saying they have shown a “clear record of cooperation” with Congress. The contempt vote “is both unnecessarily undermining” relations between the two branches and “degrading” Congress’ “own institutional integrity,” they wrote.
Trump has pledged to “fight all the subpoenas” issued by Congress and says he won’t work on legislative priorities, such as infrastructure, until Congress halts investigations of his administration.
Congress is heading for a showdown with President Donald Trump after the House voted Wednesday to block his administration from selling billions of dollars in weapons and maintenance support to Saudi Arabia.
Trump, who has sought to forge closer ties with Riyadh, has pledged to veto the resolutions of disapproval that passed the Democratic-led House largely along party lines. Two of the resolutions passed with 238 votes, while a third was approved with 237. Each of the measures garnered just four Republican backers.
The Senate cleared the resolutions last month, but like the House, fell well short of a veto-proof majority. Overturning a president’s veto requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.
Heightened Middle East tensions
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the Trump administration of circumventing Congress and the law to move ahead with the arms sale. He called the resolutions “extraordinary but necessary” to stop “a phony emergency to override the authority of Congress.”
The votes came against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Middle East, with much of the focus on Iran. Tehran is pushing the limits on its nuclear program after Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal more than a year ago. Iran has inched its uranium production and enrichment over the limits of the accord, trying to put more pressure on Europe to offer it better terms and allow it to sell its crude oil abroad.
The White House has declared stopping the sale would send a signal that the United States doesn’t stand by its partners and allies, particularly at a time when threats against them are increasing.
But opposition among members of Congress to the Trump administration’s alliance with the Saudis has been building, fueled by the high civilian casualties in the Saudi-led war in Yemen — a military campaign the U.S. is assisting — and the killing of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
Estimated $8 billion in arms
The arms package, worth an estimated $8 billion, includes thousands of precision-guided munitions, other bombs and ammunition, and aircraft maintenance support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had cited Iranian aggression when declaring an emergency to approve the weapons sales in May. The Saudis have recently faced a number of attacks from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“Right now, as I speak, Iran is stretching its tentacles of terror across the Middle East,” said the Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who pushed for the resolutions to be rejected. “If we allow them to succeed, terrorism will flourish, instability will reign and the security of our allies like Israel will be threatened.”
Bypassing Congress
Critics of the sale also had denounced the White House for bypassing congressional review of the arms sales, which was done by invoking an emergency loophole in the Arms Export Control Act.
Pompeo had informed Congress that he had made the determination “that an emergency exists which requires the immediate sale” of the weapons “in order to deter further the malign influence of the government of Iran throughout the Middle East region.”
The law requires Congress to be notified of potential arms sales, giving the body the opportunity to block the sale. But the law also allows the president to waive that review process by declaring an emergency that requires the sale be made “in the national security interests of the United States.”
Engel said there was no emergency, arguing that two months after Pompeo’s notification not a single weapon has been shipped and many of them haven’t even been built.
“What kind of emergency requires weapons that will be built months and months down the road?” Engel said.
PARIS — French prosecutors want Air France to stand trial for manslaughter in the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed all 228 people aboard, a judicial official said Wednesday.
Prosecutors also have asked that the case against Airbus, maker of the doomed aircraft, be dropped for lack of evidence. The official wasn’t authorized to speak about the case and asked to remain anonymous.
Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro for Paris but crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009. The Accident Investigation Bureau found that external speed sensors were frozen and produced irregular readings on the aircraft, which went into an aerodynamic stall.
A plethora of problems appear to have doomed the flight as it traveled through turbulence. The captain was on a rest break when the emergency arose, the autopilot disengaged and the co-pilots struggled to fly the aircraft manually.
In their final summing up on Friday of the investigation, prosecutors cited negligence and insufficient training that led to chaos in the cockpit.
Airbus had warned pilots a year earlier about possible incorrect speed readings from the plane’s external sensors, known as Pitot tubes, but changed them only after the crash.
A report last year that was part of the judicial investigation blamed the Flight 447 pilots for failing to apply correct procedures, thus losing control of the aircraft.
A victims group, AF 447 Victim Solidarity, contested the 2018 report, saying it freed Airbus of all responsibility in the accident.
STATE DEPARTMENT — “My father is a fixer, a bridge-builder, a connector. He knows that a better future is one where Han Chinese and Uighur children are in school together, are friends together and have the same opportunities,” said Jewher Ilham, who pleaded for the release of her father, prominent jailed Uighur scholar and economist Ilham Tohti.
She also petitioned Chinese authorities to release all Uighur girls from so-called re-education camps before Beijing hosts the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Tohti has been serving a life sentence on separatism-related charges since 2014. Chinese authorities accused him of encouraging terrorism and advocating separatism in his lectures, articles and comments to foreign media.
The scholar and economist founded the website Uyghur Online, which is aimed at promoting understanding between Uighurs and Han Chinese. He also has been outspoken about Beijing’s treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs in the far-western Xinjiang region.
“I have not spoken to him since 2014, and I have not seen him since we were separated at the airport in 2013. We were on our way to Indiana University, where my father was supposed to start a yearlong residency,” Jewher Ilham told participants of the second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, hosted by the U.S. State Department on Tuesday.
U.S. lawmakers’ push
The appeal came amid a renewed push from American lawmakers urging China to change how it treats Uighurs in Xinjiang.
“The violations [in Xinjiang] are of such scale, are so big, and the commercial interests are so significant that it sometimes tempers our values in terms of how we should act,” said Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Tuesday at the ministerial.
“Unless we are willing to speak out against the violations of religious freedom in China, we lose all moral authority to talk about it any other place in the world,” added Pelosi.
The House speaker also called for U.S. sanctions against Chinese Communist Party leaders in Xinjiang, who are responsible for the re-education camps.
More than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in re-education camps that critics say are aimed at destroying indigenous culture and religious beliefs.
American officials say the United States has stressed to Chinese authorities the importance of differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism. They say Tohti’s arrest “silenced an important Uighur voice that peacefully promoted harmony and understanding among China’s ethnic groups, particularly Uighurs.”
In January 2019, Tohti was nominated by a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize.
China rejected the nomination, calling Tohti a separatist.
“Ilham Tohti is convicted of dismembering the nation. What he did was meant to split the country, stoke hatred and justify violence and terrorism, which cannot be condoned in any country. The international community should have a clear understanding of this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said this year.
After months of on-again, off-again talks, Sudan’s military and opposition leaders have signed a power-sharing deal that rotates control of an executive council, but leaves other key details to be determined.
Under the deal, the 11-member Sovereign Council, the top level of government, will be made up of five civilians, five military officials, and one additional civilian to be selected by the 10 members.
Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Transitional Military Council, will head the council for 21 months. A representative of the Forces for Freedom and Change Coalition then will head the council for the next 18 months. The transitional government will last for 39 months before a regular government is formed.
The agreement stipulates that a Council of Ministers, which shall not exceed 20 people, shall be appointed by a civilian prime minister and that a legislative body will be formed within three months of the beginning of the transition.
The more contentious details over a constitutional agreement that would spell out the division of powers has yet to be worked out.
Omer Ismail, a senior adviser at the Washington, D.C.-based Enough Project, says those missing parts are important.
“It is not there; it was postponed for 90 days. Instead of talking about that, and talking about it as an important institution, they are spelling out their reservations,” Ismail told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.
But Mohammed Hassan Labat, the African Union’s special envoy to Sudan, believes the agreement paves the way for a constitutional deal.
“This agreement opens a new era and eases the ground for the next level, and the parties shall be able to revise and amend the constitutional declaration before the transitional period,” Labat said.
‘Great moment’
An emotional Mahamood Direr, the Ethiopian envoy to Sudan who helped mediate the deal, shed tears after the signing ceremony, describing how the Sudanese people have been waiting patiently to see the fruits of their revolution.
“It is a great moment that the people of the Sudan have reached this historic moment, the gallant army of the Sudan, the Transitional Military Council and, of course, the revolutionary, youth, intellectuals, pioneers who have taken to the streets. God bless the Sudan and God bless Africa,” Direr said.
Mohammed Hamdan Himetti, the deputy head of the Transitional Military Council who signed the agreement on behalf of the military junta, also praised the protesters for demanding change in Sudan.
“This agreement is a fruit of efforts of all Sudanese people who have waited for so long to witness, which shall bring them freedom, peace and justice. I salute all martyrs of the December revolution; I salute their mothers and all Sudanese women and youth,” Himetti said.
Commission of inquiry
A commission of inquiry will be created to investigate the deaths of protesters, according to the agreement.
In June, Sudanese security forces killed dozens when they stormed a site outside the Defense Ministry where protesters were demanding the military hand over power to civilians. The military seized control of Sudan after ousting president Omar al-Bashir in April, following months of mass protests against his rule.
Umaima Faruq, a third-year student of engineering at Sudan University, said the power-sharing agreement means a lot to her and millions of other Sudanese.
“It is a big day for Sudanese people, especially the youth. It is my priority for me this day to be here and witness this historical day,” Faruq, 26, told South Sudan in Focus.
Labat said the parties will hold more talks Friday to discuss the roles and responsibilities of the Sovereign Council and the Council of Ministers, whose duties include appointing the head of the judiciary, the chief justice, and state governors.
Bolivia, which has one of South America’s highest rates of women being killed because of their gender, has declared femicide a national priority and will step up efforts to tackle growing violence, a top government rights official said on Tuesday.
Since January authorities have recorded 73 femicides – the killing of a woman by a man due to her gender – in the highest toll since 2013. The murders amount to one woman killed every two days.
“In terms of the femicide rate, Bolivia is in the top rankings,” said Tania Sanchez, head of the Plurinational Service for Women and Ending Patriarchy at Bolivia’s justice ministry, despite legal protections being in place.
A 2013 law defined femicide as a specific crime and provided tougher sentences for convicted offenders.
“We are not indifferent,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The national priority is the lives of women, of all ages, and for that reason the president has raised this issue of femicide as the most extreme form (of violence),” Sanchez said.
Emergency Plan
The latest femicide victim was 26-year-old mother Mery Vila, killed last week by her partner who beat her on the head with a hammer.
This week, the government announced a 10-point “emergency plan.”
Worldwide, a third of all women experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives, according to the U.N. In Bolivia, violence against women is driven by entrenched machismo culture, which tends to blame victims and even condones it.
According to a 2016 national government survey, seven of every 10 women in Bolivia said they had suffered some type of violence inflicted by a partner.
Sanchez said the new plan “takes into account prevention, as well as care to victims and punishing violence, macho violence.”
A commission will also look at increasing government spending on gender violence and prevention, and evaluate various initiatives’ success.
“Funding is insufficient. There’s a great need in the regions,” Sanchez said.
Other measures include obligatory training courses for civil servants and public sector employees on gender violence and prevention.
School and university teachers will also receive training about “the psychological, sexual and physical violence” women and girls face.
The commission will also consider if femicide should be regarded as a crime of lesser humanity.
Widespread Gender Violence
Latin America and the Caribbean have the world’s highest rates of femicide, according to the United Nations.
Some 15 other countries in the region have introduced laws against femicide in recent years.
Victims of femicides in Bolivia and across the region often die at the hands of current or former boyfriends and husbands with a history of domestic abuse, experts say.
“We believe that this increase (in femicides) is related to a patriarchal system that appropriates the bodies and lives of women,” said Violeta Dominguez, head of U.N. Women in Bolivia.
Femicide cases in Bolivia often go unpunished, with victims’ families struggling for justice, Sanchez said.
Of 627 cases recorded since 2013, 288 remain open without a conviction, which Sanchez called “alarming.”
Bolivian President Evo Morales posted on Twitter on Monday “It’s time to end impunity, and tackle problems as a society.”
An FBI analysis of crudely made pipe bombs mailed to prominently critics of President Donald Trump has concluded they wouldn’t have worked, according to a report made public Tuesday.
The January report on the analysis was filed in Manhattan federal court, where U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff is scheduled to sentence Cesar Sayoc in September after the Florida man pleaded guilty to explosives-related charges in the scary episode weeks before midterm elections last year.
Sayoc, 57, faces a mandatory 10-year prison term and up to life. Sayoc has repeatedly said he never intended to injure anyone, a claim that his lawyers will likely argue was supported by the report.
The FBI said the devices wouldn’t have functioned because of their design, though it couldn’t be determined whether that was from poor design or the intent of the builder.
It said the fuzing system for each device lacked the proper components and assembly to enable it to function as a method of initiation for an explosive.
It also said the devices contained small fragments of broken glass, fragmentation often added to explosives to injure or kill people nearby.
Whether the devices might have exploded became a major focal point of recent hearings when Sayoc asserted that they could not and prosecutors seemed to leave the question open.
Sarah Baumbartel, an assistant federal defender, declined comment, though the issue was likely to be addressed when his lawyers submit written sentencing arguments next week.
In a letter to the judge several months ago, Sayoc wrote: “Under no circumstances my intent was to hurt or harm anyone. The intention was to only intimidate and scare.”
Sayoc admitted sending 16 rudimentary bombs – none of which detonated – to targets including Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, several members of Congress, former President Barack Obama and actor Robert De Niro. Devices were also mailed to CNN offices in New York and Atlanta.
The bombs began turning up over a five-day stretch weeks before the midterms. They were mailed to addresses in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, California, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia.
Sayoc was arrested in late October at a Florida auto parts store. He had been living in a van plastered with Trump stickers and images of Trump opponents with crosshairs over their faces.
Country singer Luke Combs was just 6 years old when his mom and grandmother snuck him into his first concert by hiding him in the backseat of their car so he could go see Vince Gill play at a minor league baseball stadium.
It came full circle for the singer-songwriter from North Carolina when Gill came out to formally induct Combs, 29, into the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday night in Nashville, Tennessee.
Combs, who has taken country music by storm in the last two years with hit after hit off his debut major label record, told reporters backstage before the induction that he actually didn’t get to see Gill finish that performance 23 years ago.
“I actually missed my favorite song that night because I started crying because there was thunder in the background, so we ended up leaving early,” Combs said. “I am looking forward to saying hello to him.”
Combs sang two of his hits before Gill and ’90s country star Joe Diffie joined several other Opry members on stage for the induction into the country music institution. Gill praised Combs’ top-notch vocals before joking about Combs’ first introduction to his music.
“I obviously didn’t ruin him,” Gill said.
The Opry induction is just the latest accomplishment for the singer since releasing his double-platinum album, “This One’s For You,” in 2017. It produced five No. 1 country hits, including the four-times platinum “Hurricane” and the three-times platinum “When It Rains It Pours.”
That album, and the deluxe reissue, has been No. 1 on Billboard’s country album chart for a total 41 non-consecutive weeks and his follow-up EP “The Prequel,” also has been sitting in the top five of that chart as well for several weeks.
Combs had the most popular country album in 2018 and he is currently the leader in country album consumption through the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen Music.
“If people remember anything about what I’ve done, and I think I tell it to the crowd a lot too, is that if I can do this, you can do anything,” Combs said. “I am the proof that you can do anything that you set your mind to.”
Combs came to Nashville just about five years ago and started posting videos of his songs on social media and tried to shop his songs around on Music Row. In a few short years, he’s picked up new artist awards from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association and multiple awards from at the Billboard Music Awards. He was also nominated for the all-genre best new artist category at this year’s Grammy Awards, but lost to Dua Lipa.
The bearded and burly singer-songwriter, who wears the same type of fishing shirt every night on stage, said that all the recent success and attention has been a bit of an adjustment.
“The hardest part has definitely been, you know, getting used to the fame part of it,” Combs said. “I’m just not a really flashy-like guy.”
All he wanted was to write songs and sing and at the end of the day, that’s what the Opry induction really came down to, he said.
“I’ll have the opportunity to continue to share my songs with people for the rest of my life,” he said.
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra rejected the demand of a regional governor on Tuesday to cancel within 72 hours the construction permit for a copper mining project that has led to protests.
Residents from the area bordering Southern Copper Corp.’s $1.4 billion Tia Maria copper mine project in the south of Peru, which is the second largest copper producer in the world, began protesting on Monday with a blockade of a portion of Peru’s main coastal highway.
Officials from the southern region of Arequipa said the government had not taken into account the community’s concern that the mining operation would contaminate its water sources and land when it granted a construction permit on July 9.
Arequipa Governor Elmer Caceres called on Vizcarra to cancel the construction permit within three days.
“You cannot cancel [a construction permit]. We have to talk,” Vizcarra said in a public appearance in Lima, responding to a reporter’s question about Caceres’ request.
Vizcarra said the government approved the project when legal requirements were met and that Southern Copper said it would not begin construction until it gains more support from people who live in the area.
Caceres said the community plans to continue its protest while perusing a legal plan to challenge the permit, but did not offer details.
Demonstrations have previously derailed the project when at least six protesters were killed in clashes with police in 2011 and 2015.
John Paul Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court for nearly 35 years and became its leading liberal, has died. He was 99.
Stevens’ influence was felt on issues including abortion rights, protecting consumers and placing limits on the death penalty. He led the high court’s decision to allow terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay to plead for their freedom in U.S. courts.
As a federal appeals court judge in Chicago, Stevens was considered a moderate when Republican President Gerald Ford nominated him. On the Supreme Court he became known as an independent thinker and a voice for ordinary people against powerful interests.
He retired in June 2010 at age 90, the second oldest justice in the court’s history.