The director of a prestigious research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology resigned Saturday, and the school’s president ordered an independent investigation amid an uproar over the lab’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab, resigned from both the lab and from his position as a professor at the Cambridge school, university President L. Rafael Reif said. The resignation was first reported by The New York Times.
Ito’s resignation comes after The New Yorker reported late Friday that Media Lab had a more extensive fundraising relationship with Epstein than it previously acknowledged and tried to conceal the extent of the relationship.
FILE – Financier Jeffrey Epstein looks on during a bail hearing in his sex trafficking case, in this court sketch in New York, July 15, 2019.
Epstein suicide
Epstein killed himself in jail Aug. 10 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Federal prosecutors in New York had charged the 66-year-old with sex trafficking and conspiracy, alleging he sexually abused girls over several years in the early 2000s.
In a letter to the MIT community Saturday, Reif called the allegations in The New Yorker “deeply disturbing.”
“Because the accusations in the story are extremely serious, they demand an immediate, thorough and independent investigation,” Reif wrote. “This morning, I asked MIT’s General Counsel to engage a prominent law firm to design and conduct this process.”
Reif said last month that the university took about $800,000 from Epstein over 20 years. That announcement followed the resignation of two prominent researchers from Media Lab over revelations the lab and Ito took money from Epstein after he served time a decade ago for sex offenses involving underage girls.
The New Yorker reports Epstein arranged at least $7.5 million in donations, including $2 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and $5.5 million from investor Leon Black.
Although MIT listed Epstein as “disqualified” in its donor database, the Media Lab did not stop taking gifts from him and labeled his donations as anonymous, The New Yorker reported, citing emails and other documents it obtained.
Last week, Ito said Epstein gave him $525,000 for the Media Lab and another $1.2 million for his own investment funds.
Florida deal
Epstein’s July 6 arrest drew national attention, particularly focusing on a deal that allowed him to plead guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida and avoid more serious federal charges.
Epstein was a wealth manager who hobnobbed with the rich, famous and influential, including presidents and a prince.
He owned a private island in the Caribbean, homes in Paris and New York City, a New Mexico ranch and a fleet of high-price cars.
Phone and email messages seeking comment were left for Ito and Media Lab representatives Saturday.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is expected to file for bankruptcy after settlement talks over the nation’s deadly overdose crisis hit an impasse, attorneys general involved in the talks said Saturday.
The breakdown puts the first federal trial over the opioid epidemic on track to begin next month, likely without Purdue, and sets the stage for a complex legal drama involving nearly every state and hundreds of local governments.
Purdue, the family that owns the company and a group of state attorneys general had been trying for months to find a way to avoid trial and determine Purdue’s responsibility for a crisis that has cost 400,000 American lives in the past two decades.
Family rejects two offers
An email from the attorneys general of Tennessee and North Carolina, obtained by The Associated Press, said that Purdue and the Sackler family had rejected two offers from the states over how payments under any settlement would be handled and that the family declined to offer counterproposals.
“As a result, the negotiations are at an impasse, and we expect Purdue to file for bankruptcy protection imminently,” Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein wrote in their message, which was sent to update attorneys general throughout the country on the status of the talks.
Purdue spokeswoman Josephine Martin said, “Purdue declines to comment on that in its entirety.”
FILE – Purdue Pharma offices in Stamford, Conn., May 8, 2007.
Bankruptcy case
A failure in negotiations sets up one of the most tangled bankruptcy cases in the nation’s history. It would leave virtually every state and some 2,000 local governments that have sued Purdue to battle it out in bankruptcy court for the company’s remaining assets. Purdue threatened to file for bankruptcy earlier this year and was holding off while negotiations continued.
It’s not entirely clear what a breakdown in settlement talks with Purdue means for the Sackler family, which is being sued separately by at least 17 states.
Those lawsuits are likely to continue but face a significant hurdle because it’s believed the family — major donors to museums and other cultural institutions around the world — has transferred most of its multibillion-dollar fortune overseas.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who was one of the four state attorneys general negotiating with Purdue and the Sacklers, said Saturday he intends to sue the Sackler family, as other states have.
“I think they are a group of sanctimonious billionaires who lied and cheated so they could make a handsome profit,” he said. “I truly believe that they have blood on their hands.”
A gate protects the entrance of the Rooksnest estate near Lambourn, England, Aug. 6, 2019. The manor is the domain of Theresa Sackler, widow of one of Purdue Pharma’s founders and, until 2018, a member of the company’s board of directors.
In March, Purdue and members of the Sackler family reached a $270 million settlement with Oklahoma to avoid a trial on the toll of opioids there. The Sacklers could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.
Under one earlier proposed settlement, Purdue would enter a structured bankruptcy that could be worth $10 billion to $12 billion over time. Included in the total would be $3 billion from the Sackler family, which would give up its control of Purdue and contribute up to $1.5 billion more by selling another company it owns, Cambridge, England-based Mundipharma.
Shapiro said the attorneys general believed what Purdue and the Sacklers were offering would not have been worth the reported $10 billion to $12 billion.
In their latest offers, the states also sought more assurances that the $4.5 billion from the Sacklers would actually be paid, according to the message circulated Saturday: “The Sacklers refused to budge.”
Nearly 2,000 lawsuits
In their message, Tennessee’s Slatery and North Carolina’s Stein said the states have already begun preparations for handling bankruptcy proceedings.
“Like you, we plan to continue our work to ensure that the Sacklers, Purdue and other drug companies pay for drug addiction treatment and other remedies to help clean up the mess we allege they created,” they wrote.
The nearly 2,000 lawsuits filed by city and county governments — as well as unions, hospitals, Native American tribes and lawyers representing babies who were born in opioid withdrawal — have been consolidated under a single federal judge in Cleveland.
Most of those lawsuits also name other opioid makers, distributors and pharmacies in addition to Purdue, some of which have been pursuing their own settlements.
Purdue also faces hundreds of other lawsuits filed in state courts and had sought a wide-ranging deal to settle all cases against it.
Maker of OxyContin
The company has been the most popular target of state and local governments because of its OxyContin, the prescription painkiller many of the government claims point to as the drug that gave rise to the opioid epidemic. The lawsuits claim the company aggressively sold OxyContin and marketed it as a drug with a low risk of addiction despite knowing that wasn’t true.
The impasse in the talks comes about six weeks before the scheduled start of the first federal trial under the Cleveland litigation, overseen by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster. That trial will hear claims about the toll the opioid epidemic has taken on two Ohio counties, Cuyahoga and Summit.
A bankruptcy filing by Purdue would most certainly remove the company from that trial.
The bankruptcy judge would have wide discretion on how to proceed. That could include allowing the claims against other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies to move ahead while Purdue’s cases are handled separately. Three other manufacturers have settled with the two Ohio counties to avoid the initial trial.
“Grandpa Wong” holds a cane above his head as he pleads with riot police to stop firing tear gas — an 85-year-old shielding protesters on the front lines of Hong Kong’s fight for democracy.
Despite his age, Wong is a regular sight at Hong Kong’s street battles, hobbling toward police lines, placing himself in between riot officers and hardcore protesters, hoping to de-escalate what have now become near daily clashes.
“I’d rather they kill the elderly than hit the youngsters,” he told AFP during a recent series of skirmishes in the shopping district of Causeway Bay, a gas mask dangling from his chin.
“We’re old now, but the children are the future of Hong Kong,” he added.
“Grandpa Wong,” center left, 85, shields protesters from the police by stepping between them along with other “silver hair” volunteers in the Tung Chung district in Hong Kong, Sept. 7, 2019.
Youth lead, but all march
The three months of huge, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese city are overwhelmingly youth-led.
Research by academics has shown that half of those on the streets are between 20 and 30 years old, while 77 percent have degrees.
But the movement maintains widespread support across the public with lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers and civil servants all holding recent solidarity rallies, even as the violence escalates.
Groups of elderly people — dubbed “silver hairs” — have also marched.
But Wong and his friend “Grandpa Chan,” a comparatively spry 73-year-old, are among the most pro-active of this older generation.
The two are part of a group called “Protect the Children,” made up of mostly senior citizens and volunteers.
Almost every weekend, they come out to try to mediate between police and demonstrators, as well as buy protesters time when the cops start to charge.
A pair of swimming goggles dangle from the neck of “Grandpa Wong,” 85, as he rides an MTR train to the Tung Chung district in Hong Kong, Sept. 7, 2019.
‘Stay peaceful’
As another volley of tear gas bounded down a boulevard in Causeway Bay, a street lined with luxury malls and fashion retailers, Chan gripped Wong’s hand tightly, stopping his old comrade from rushing back into the crossfire.
“If we die, we die together,” yelled Chan, who eschews helmets and instead always wears an eye-catching red hat daubed with slogans.
While “Protect the Children” turn up primarily to defend the youth, Wong said he tries to warn protesters not to provoke police.
“It’s wrong to throw stones, that’s why the police beat them up,” he lamented. “I hope that police won’t hit them and the children won’t throw stuff back.”
“Everyone should stay peaceful to protect the core values of Hong Kong,” he added.
As Hong Kong’s summer of rage has worn on, the violence on both sides has only escalated.
Each weekend has brought increasingly violent bouts, with a minority of black-clad protesters using molotovs, slingshots and bricks.
Police have also upped their violence, deploying water cannons and resorting to tear gas and rubber bullets with renewed ferocity.
More than 1,100 people have been arrested, ranging from children as young as 12 to a man in his mid-70s. Many are facing charges of rioting, which carry 10 years in jail.
“Grandpa Wong,” center, 85, leans on his walking stick with other “silver hair” volunteers after intervening in a confrontation between protesters and riot police in the Tung Chung district in Hong Kong, Sept. 7, 2019.
Fears have risen for the fate for one veteran protester Alexandra Wong, known as “Grandma Wong,” who attended dozens of protests waving a large British flag.
She lives in Shenzhen, a city across the border on the Chinese mainland but has not been seen at the protests since mid-August when she appeared in videos looking injured after clashes with police inside a subway station.
‘Let the elderly look after you’
Grandpa Wong says he understands why youngsters feel they have no choice but to protest.
He has watched over the decades as mainland China has grown more wealthy and powerful while remaining avowedly authoritarian.
“If the Chinese Communist Party comes to Hong Kong, Hong Kong will become Guangzhou,” Wong sighed, referring to a nearby mainland city.
“The authorities can lock you up whenever they want,” he said.
Hong Kong’s protests were sparked by a controversial bill that would allow extradition to China, raising concerns over unfair trials given the mainland’s record of rights abuses.
But it soon morphed into a wider movement calling for democratic reform and police accountability.
“Grandpa Wong,” 85, speaks with a riot police officer along with other “silver hair” volunteers in the Tung Chung district in Hong Kong, Sept. 7, 2019.
Roy Chan, who organizes the “Protect the Children” group, says he respects what the elderly citizens do but is disappointed they feel they need to come out.
“They should have a good life at home during the last years of their lives,” he said. “But they are in a war and protecting the youth.”
Grandpa Wong’s presence at the Causeway Bay protest came to an end as riot police eventually cleared the usually bustling shopping district.
But the next day he was right back at it, this time at a protest near the city’s airport.
“Go home kiddos,” he hollered, brimming with renewed energy. “Let the elderly look after you.”
This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. Some information is from Reuters and RFE. VOA Ukrainian’s Tatiana Vorozhko contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON – Ukrainian security officials have a launched an investigation into “subversive” activities by one of the Eastern European country’s defense contractors over plans to supply military hardware to neighboring Russia.
Ukraine’s main government agency for counterintelligence and counterterrorism, the SBU, confirmed Thursday that Motor Sich, the country’s largest manufacturer of engines for missiles and military aircraft, was under investigation for preparing an illegal export shipment of military or dual-use equipment to Russia, with whom Ukraine is at war. The news was first reported by RFE.
SBU officers raided Motor Sich headquarters and seized its shares in 2018 when the defense firm, then valued at nearly $500 million, was in the process of being sold to a Chinese company.
That Chinese aeronautical firm, Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, renewed efforts to acquire a controlling share of Motor Sich in June, drawing scrutiny from Kyiv’s Anti-Monopoly Committee.
The prospective sale also drew the attention of White House officials, who told Ukrainian media ahead of White House national security adviser John Bolton’s late-August visit to Kyiv that Motor Sich should not be handed over to a “potential enemy.”
As Ukraine’s antitrust agency began reviewing the proposed China deal, the U.S.-government-run Overseas Private Investment Corp., an agency that provides financial support for American companies looking to invest in emerging markets, said it would consider backing a U.S. private-sector bid for Motor Sich.
FILE – White House national security adviser John Bolton meets with journalists in London, Aug.12, 2019.
Bolton has aimed to scuttle Beijing’s acquisition of Motor Sich “on grounds that it will give Beijing vital defense technology,” The Wall Street Journal reported before Bolton’s Kyiv trip.
Aid withheld
Bolton, it was widely reported, used the Kyiv visit to warn pro-Western Ukraine, which the White House views as a geopolitical ally against an increasingly assertive Russia, to avoid being lured into China’s orbit by what he called Beijing’s “debt diplomacy.”
A day after Bolton concluded his Kyiv visit by announcing stepped-up military assistance to Ukraine, President Donald Trump issued a contradictory directive, calling for a suspension and review of a $250 million military aid package to Kyiv.
Later that day, Pentagon officials confirmed that they had already conducted an audit and fully supported allocation of the funding to Ukraine.
The ongoing White House delay has since sparked an outcry from a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, who issued a letter to Trump demanding that he release the funds.
Falling under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the funds, the lawmakers wrote, “help Ukraine develop the independent military capabilities and skills necessary to fend off the Kremlin’s continued onslaughts within its territory.”
Asked for a response, a senior Trump administration official told VOA’s Ukrainian service, “We can confirm the letter from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus has been received and is going through the normal process for correspondence at OMB.”
The senior administration official failed to confirm whether the $250 million in question was currently under active review.
Op-ed on White House action
On Friday, The Washington Post published an editorial slamming the Trump White House for withholding the military aid over what it called explicitly political purposes.
FILE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a meeting with law enforcement officers in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 23, 2019.
“We’re reliably told that the president … is attempting to force [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden,” the Post editorial states. “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”
In August, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, told The New York Timesthat he traveled to Europe to ask Zelenskiy aide Andriy Yermak to investigate Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Hunter Biden is former Vice President Biden’s son.
Giuliani’s office did not respond to VOA’s requests for comment.
Budgetary issues ‘being sorted out’
George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told VOA that although he was optimistic U.S. funding would continue, “I think there are some issues about the U.S. budgetary process being sorted out right now.”
“The U.S. has contributed over $1.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine`s defense since Russians invaded Donbass in 2014,” Kent said. “And I think we will work very closely together with Ukrainians to ensure that we support Ukraine`s abilities to defend itself effectively, and it has been the case the last five years, and it will also be the case going forward.”
Earlier this week, two senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that chances were the money would be allocated as usual, but that the determination would not be made until a policy review was completed and Trump made a decision.
Bidi Bidi refugee camp is home to nearly a quarter-million South Sudanese who fled the violence of civil war in their home country. Its progressive policies allow refugees to live, farm and work together while they wait to return to their home country. But, as conditions are slow to improve in South Sudan, many refugees are opting to stay.
U.S. Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Chris Van Hollen visited the camp recently. The two lawmakers were touring several refugee settlements throughout Uganda last month, including Bidi Bidi — one of the world’s largest.
Speaking by phone, Senator Van Hollen called the settlements an “important model” that other countries should consider when housing the displaced.
Commandant Nabugere Michael Joel, an official at Bidi Bidi, takes questions from a recent U.S. delegation that included Senator Chris Coons and Senator Chris Van Hollen. Bidi Bidi Camp, August 13, 2019. (I. Godfrey/CARE)
“Obviously a key ingredient to the success of that model has been significant international support,” he said.
When Bidi Bidi was opened in 2016, it was a rural piece of land in northern Uganda, where South Sudanese refugees, mostly women and children, fled to avoid violence during their country’s civil war.
As is often the case, tensions are common between refugees and the local population, who feel that the refugees are taking resources that might have been available for them.
But, Uganda decided to do something different, earmarking a percentage of the country’s international funding to go toward local amenities. Refugee families were given plots of land to build family-style clusters of homes with room to grow their own fruits and vegetables. As a result, a small-scale economy began to flourish in the camp, with some refugees starting their own businesses.
Last year, following a peace deal between warring South Sudan leaders, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he hoped the refugees would begin returning home.
But, that’s not the case.
According to a new report published this week by several humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, refugees — especially women — are hesitant to return home. They fear the peace won’t last.
Grace is a South Sudanese refugee who has been in Uganda for almost four years. She says it’s not safe enough for her to return home. Bidi Bidi Camp, Aug. 13, 2019 (Courtesy – J. Estey/CARE)
As a result, settlement official Michael Joelle says Bidi Bidi has reached capacity, and refugees are being turned away and settlements are feeling the strain.
“Before the 2016 emergency, we were offering a plot of 50 by 100, so the number has been decreasing as the number of refugees increase,” said Joelle.
The situation has become more dire after international donors suspended their funding earlier this year after it was reported that funds for refugees in Uganda had been mismanaged.
Grace, a refugee at Bidi Bidi, fled her home country with her children four years ago. Her husband finally joined the family last year.
The former teacher said she doesn’t see herself moving back to South Sudan anytime soon.
“Even we’re receiving bad news, so and so has been killed, so and so has been raped, so many things are happening.”
Winston Churchill’s grandson, who was expelled midweek from the Conservative party for voting to delay Brexit, launched Saturday a scathing attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote a biography of his grandfather, saying he should stop comparing himself to Britain’s iconic wartime leader as he’s “nothing like” him.
“Winston Churchill was like Winston Churchill because of his experiences in life. Boris Johnson’s experience in life is telling a lot of porkies [lies] about the EU in Brussels and then becoming prime minister,” Nicholas Soames told Britain’s The Times newspaper.
Soames was among 21 Conservative rebels who were expelled from the party for voting to stop Johnson taking Britain out of the EU by October 31, something Johnson has pledged to do “no ifs or buts.”
In the interview, Soames, a former defense minister, said he could see no “helpful analogy” between his grandfather and Johnson. “I don’t think anyone has called Boris a diplomat or statesman. We all know the pluses and minuses, everyone he has worked for says the same thing: he writes beautifully [but he’s] deeply unreliable.”
Johnson’s Brexit options are shrinking fast. He has lost every single vote he’s brought as prime minister before the House of Commons in the face of a Conservative party split and the united efforts of the country’s opposition parties to thwart him.
On Monday party rebels again will join with opposition parties to block him from calling an election before they’ve ensured he can’t take Britain out of the European Union without a deal agreed upon with Brussels.
FILE – Member of Parliament Nicholas Soames walks in Westminster, London, Britain, Sept. 3, 2019.
Limited options
In effect, his opponents are trapping him in Downing Street as his hardline Brexit strategy appeared to be in tatters. Johnson now has no majority in the House of Commons, thanks to defections and the mass expulsion of party rebels.
Last week, his election bid was rebuffed when he failed to secure the backing of two-thirds of the Home of Commons. His second bid will get a similar dismissal, according to lawmakers and analysts. With his options limited, Johnson is now saying he will ignore legislation passed midweek requiring him to ask Brussels for a Brexit delay to allow further negotiations to take place between Britain and EU leaders.
The Conservative rebels and opposition parties argue that the economic impact of a so-called no-deal Brexit would be devastating for livelihoods and jobs.
Johnson also wrote to Conservative lawmakers on Friday, telling them: “They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do.” He told reporters earlier he won’t comply and seek yet another deadline extension from Brussels, as the incoming law, which will receive the Queen’s assent on Monday, compels him to do, if no agreement with Brussels is in place by October 19.
Asked if he would obey the new law requiring him to write to EU leaders, Johnson responded: “I will not. I don’t want a delay.”
His defiance is prompting growing alarm that Britain’s political crisis is deepening and risks a tumultuous clash between the government and the courts, along with a rebellion by top civil servants and an even bigger split in Conservative ranks.
David Lidington, the de facto deputy prime minister under Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, warned Saturday it would set a “dangerous precedent,” if Johnson chose to break the law. “It is such a fundamental principle that we are governed by the rule of law that I hope no party would question it,” he told the BBC.
A former senior legal official went further, warning Johnson he risked being jailed, if he refuses to obey the law. Kenneth MacDonald, who was the country’s top prosecutor between 2003 and 2008, said if the courts were asked to issue an injunction ordering that “the law should be followed,” a refusal to obey “could find that person in prison.” He added that would not be “an extreme outcome” as it is “convention” that individuals who refuse to “purge their contempt” are sent to prison.
FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks out 10 Downing Street, in London, Britain, Sept. 5, 2019.
Warning shots
The warning was echoed by a former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, another Conservative rebel. If he refuses to obey the law he will be “sent to prison for contempt,” he said, while accusing Johnson of acting like a “spoiled child having a tantrum.” A former Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, told Sky News he doubted it would get as far as that because civil servants likely would rebel and refuse to co-operate with a prime minister who was willfully breaking the law.
Johnson broke off early on Saturday from a social visit with his partner, Carrie Symonds, to the Queen at the monarch’s Scottish residence, Balmoral, to plot his next moves. On his visit to Scotland, Johnson ramped up the pressure on opposition parties to agree to an early election, goading them by accusing them of cowardice. “I have never known an opposition in the history of democracy that has refused to have an election,” he said. “I think that obviously they don’t trust the people, they don’t think that the people will vote for them, so they are refusing to have an election.”
But Downing Street aides admit the unity of the opposition parties — as well as the size of the Conservative rebellion — had surprised Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, who miscalculated the reaction of the leader of the main opposition party, Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn.
“The plan was to use the threat of suspending parliament to force the rebels out into the open early,” an aide said. “We always knew they would try and force a Brexit delay on us. But the expectation was that Corbyn could be goaded into welcoming an election. That was a serious miscalculation on our part,“ he added.
The turbulence of the last week — which saw the British parliament break convention and initiate legislation — is unnerving the cabinet, too.
On Friday, some current cabinet ministers expressed major reservations about Johnson’s bellicose approach with much of the blame for the government’s lose of control being focused on the 47-year-old Dominic Cummings, a controversial figure who’s been compared to the former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, for his ‘slash-and-burn tactics.”
Cummings, the chief strategist for the Brexit campaign during the 2016 referendum on EU membership, told government advisers Friday they should hold their nerve, saying if they thought last week was chaos, it was “only just the beginning.” Cummings has made no secret of his wish to rip up the map of British politics and re-draw it, starting with a populist remake of the Conservative party.
A former cabinet minister, David Gauke, one of the expelled Conservative rebels, said Johnson and Cummings want “to rebadge the Conservative party as the Brexit Party.”
“I can see nothing incompatible about being a Conservative MP and not wanting to crash the country into a brick wall, but it appears that it is no longer the case,” he said in a newspaper interview. The risk is that Johnson will end up alienating millions of pragmatically-inclined, traditional Conservative voters, he says.
Officials in Afghanistan Saturday announced that security forces have recaptured a key northeastern district from the Taliban after five years, as heavy clashes raged in provinces elsewhere in Afghanistan.
The Taliban has intensified attacks even as its representatives are engaged in a fresh round of peace negotiations with the United States in Qatar for ending the 18-year-old Afghan war, America’s longest overseas military intervention.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said the fighting for renewed control over Wardoj in Badakhshan province killed about 100 Taliban insurgents, including their key commanders. It claimed Afghan security forces “carried out this operation successfully without sustaining any losses.”
The ministry asserted in its statement that the Taliban’s so-called shadow governor, Qari Fasihuddin, was among the dead. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied government claims, telling VOA that fighting was still raging in the district and rejected as “enemy propaganda” the claim that Fasihuddin had been killed. It was not possible to verify from independent sources claims made by either side.
Badakhshan borders three neighbors of Afghanistan, including China, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
The Taliban has, meanwhile, continued attacks in surrounding provinces of Kunduz, Takhar and Baghlan, overrunning new territory and killing scores of government forces.
Afghan security forces take position during a battle with Taliban insurgents in Kunduz province, Afghanistan, Sept. 1, 2019.
Mujahid said in a statement Saturday that Taliban fighters have besieged Qala Zal district center in Kunduz a day after capturing nearby Khanabad district. He said the insurgents have also made advances in Baghlan’s capital, Pul-e-Khumri, tightening days of siege around the city.
Afghan officials have so far not offered any comments on Taliban battlefield claims.
Heavy fighting, meanwhile, has been raging in western Farah province near the Iranian border. Both Afghan officials and the Taliban have made conflicting claims about the ongoing fighting in the provincial capital, also named Farah.
On Thursday, a Taliban suicide car bomber attacked a foreign military convoy in the national capital of Kabul, killing more than a dozen people. An American soldier and a Romanian soldier were also among the dead, bringing the total number of U.S. military fatalities this year to 16.
Controversy over prospective peace deal
Taliban and American negotiators say they have drafted a framework agreement after nearly yearlong negotiations that could lead to withdrawal of all U.S.-led NATO troops from Afghanistan in return for guarantees the Islamic insurgents will not allow transnational militant groups to use the country again for international terrorism.
The Taliban said Friday its negotiators have over the past two days held fresh meetings in Qatar with U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad accompanied by American commander of international forces, Army General Scott Miller, in Afghanistan.
FILE – U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad attends Afghan peace talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, July 8, 2019.
“Both meetings were positive and resulted in good progress,” said insurgent political spokesman Suhail Shaheen without discussing further details.
Shaheen told VOA “not a single soldier” from U.S. and NATO missions will stay in the country under the withdrawal timetable outlined in the framework agreement with American negotiators. In return, he said, the Taliban has promised not to allow anyone to use Afghan soil against other countries. Shaheen, however, would not disclose the deadline for foreign troops to leave Afghanistan.
Khalilzad told an Afghan television station earlier this week the deal finalized with the Taliban “in principle” will have to be approved by U.S. President Donald Trump before it is signed. The document, he said, would require 5,000 American troops to leave five Afghan bases within 135 days.
However, the Afghan-born American diplomat would not say when the residual roughly 8,600-member U.S. military force will withdraw from the country. He stressed that the Taliban will also be required to participate in intra-Afghan negotiations over a permanent ceasefire and the political future of the turmoil-hit country.
The Afghan government, however, has expressed serious reservations and concerns over the perspective U.S.-Taliban deal after Khalilzad discussed its “key details” with President Ashraf Ghani during his visit to Kabul earlier this week.
Presidential aide Waheed Omar told reporters Friday the government believes the framework agreement does not effectively bind the Taliban to abide by their commitments. He said Afghanistan needs a permanent, not temporary, peace to avert another war in the country. Omar did not elaborate further.
A high-level U.S. defense delegation is scheduled to visit Pakistan and Afghanistan next week. Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, made the announcement Thursday evening at the Pakistani embassy in Washington. Schriver, appointed to his current position by President Donald Trump in January 2018, attended the embassy’s annual celebration of Pakistan’s Defense Day.
Shriver said his intent “and our team’s intent, is to be aspirational,” saying the parties will be “talking about where we can go in the future, how we can strengthen and improve cooperation, all the challenges notwithstanding.”
Shriver cited Pakistan’s contribution in several of the U.S.-led security initiatives, citing “the very important work in trying to achieve peace in Afghanistan,” as well as Pakistan’s participation in a maritime security initiative known as Combined Task Force 150, a multi-nation effort led by the United States designed to “deter, disrupt and defeat attempts by international terrorist organizations” that seek to use the maritime domain as venues for attack or as a means to transport personnel, weapons and other materials. CTF 150 is based in Bahrain.
Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, is seen in an official U.S. Defense Department photo.
While U.S. and Pakistan relations, including, if not especially, military relations, have been turbulent in recent years, both sides seemed ready to look at the positive as Schriver announced his plans to visit Islamabad. Shriver cited “the shared sacrifices we’ve made as our two countries have been involved in the long war on terror,” adding “we have strong foundation for this relationship” and “we jealously guard our special role in this relationship between our defense establishments and our militaries; we think it is one of the strongest pillars in the foundation for this relationship.”
Schriver described ongoing negotiations with the Taliban as being “at a critical junction,” stating “we’re hopeful but we have not crossed the finish line yet,” adding “we appreciate everything Pakistan has done to get us to this point.”
For his part, Pakistani ambassador to the United States Asad M. Khan told VOA that “this will be the highest exchange on the defense side after the prime minister’s visit, it is significant; as the assistant secretary himself said, defense is a key pillar of the relationship; I’m sure his visit will provide a good opportunity to both sides to review where we stand on the defense relationship and what more can be done.” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan paid a high-profile visit to Washington and met with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in July. Asked if Schriver would be meeting with Khan while in Islamabad, Khan replied that “I still don’t have all the details of the program; he’s an important visitor, we will try to get as many meetings as we can.”
FILE – President Donald Trump gestures as he greets Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan as he arrives at the White House, in Washington, July 22, 2019.
Nolan Peterson, an incoming visiting fellow in unconventional warfare at the Heritage Foundation whose exclusive interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Afghanistan and Iran was published in The Daily Signal on Friday, told VOA in a phone interview that Schriver’s trip signals U.S. intention to stay engaged and maintain a strategic interest in the region even as talks are ongoing that could result in significant U.S. troop drawdown from Afghanistan.
That interest, he said, also has to do with “not letting China have free reign” in the region as the latter seeks to deepen its footprint through the “One Belt, One Road” economic and strategic initiative.
Peterson also pointed out that although the United States has not openly taken sides on the tension between Pakistan and India surrounding the Kashmir region, Pakistan “is going to be excited about having any U.S. visits,” which he thinks will “certainly play in their favor.” “Anytime a visiting U.S. official arrives in a country, countries like to use that as evidence that they’re being supported by the U.S.”
Ultimately, U.S. official visits to foreign capitals are designed to “keep us engaged and show the countries that we care,” Peterson said.
Pentagon officials told VOA that in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Schriver will also be visiting Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on his trip next week.
Meanwhile, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Friday announced that China’s foreign minister Wang Yi will lead a delegation to Islamabad from September 7-10 for the third trilateral dialogue between China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as visits to Pakistan and Nepal. Wang’s visit, the spokesperson said, is designed to further solidify bilateral friendship and mutual trust, and tighten the shared “common fate” between the two countries, including pushing for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to move forward “in a high quality manner.”
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is planning to vote to determine the parameters for conducting an impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.
Politico first reported the development, saying its report was based on “multiple sources briefed on the discussions.”
The committee is expected to vote on the details next week.
A draft of the resolution is expected to be released Monday morning, according to Politico.
The article said Democrats are “hopeful that explicitly defining their impeachment inquiry will heighten their leverage to compel testimony from witnesses.”
It is doubtful, however, that the probe will lead to any charges against the president.
Articles of impeachment would have to be voted on by the full House and it is doubtful that the Republican Senate would vote to remove the president from office.
Various legislative committees are looking into a number of matters concerning the president, including his failure to release his tax returns, his payment of hush money to stop embarrassing stories becoming public, and the spending of taxpayer money at the president’s hotels and properties.
The announcement of John Lansing’s resignation as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media is renewing questions about the mission and direction of the broadcasters it oversees.
The USAGM directly manages five international news entities, including Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Combined, the USAGM broadcasters transmit in 61 languages and have an unduplicated weekly audience of 345 million.
Lansing, 62, a veteran cable TV executive, was named CEO of USAGM in 2015 and has now served under two presidents. He will formally leave the agency at the end of September and start in mid-October as CEO of the domestic National Public Radio network.
“John Lansing is going to leave behind a really remarkable legacy,” said Amanda Bennett, director of the Voice of America. “He really focused USAGM on issues of a free and independent press. That’s going to be his legacy. That, and his sunny disposition.”
Michael Pack (Manifoldproductions.com)
Trump nominee
President Donald Trump has nominated documentary filmmaker Michael Pack to replace Lansing. Pack, a senior fellow and former president at the Claremont Institute in California, has collaborated on film projects with former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon.
Pack’s name was sent to the Senate in January but has been stuck in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Efforts to reach committee Chairman Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, and ranking member Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, were unsuccessful.
Pack could become the CEO in one of two ways: by Senate approval or appointment by the advisory Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan panel that includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pack’s nomination sparked debate about Trump’s intentions for the agency, as has the president’s own words and repeated criticism of the U.S. media.
On Twitter last November, Trump complained about unfair coverage by CNN and mused, “Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”
A few days later, Bennett published an op-ed in The Washington Post stating that such a network already existed: VOA.
Under VOA’s charter, its journalists are required to report “accurate, objective and comprehensive” news. Other legal provisions, collectively known as the “firewall,” protect VOA journalists from political interference in their work.
“Whoever the next CEO is, they need to look at the history of the agency,” said Danforth Austin, a former reporter and executive at The Wall Street Journal who served as VOA director from 2006 to 2011.
Changed focus
Austin said that during WWII, and then the Cold War, VOA and the other U.S.-funded news entities were largely a propaganda tool. But from the 1960s on, they transformed into solid journalistic organizations with a mandate to provide balanced and independent news.
“There are all kinds of different groups with different ideas of what we should or shouldn’t be broadcasting,” Austin said. “I recall getting calls from the State Department saying, ‘You can’t do that!’ I would always politely suggest they call the secretary of state and hang up the phone.”
“Propaganda or news, you have to decide, ‘What’s the most effective approach?’ ” he added.
FILE – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., walks through the Hall of Columns at the Capitol as House Democratic chairs gather for a meeting with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in Washington, March 27, 2019.
Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Although he has no vote in the Senate, his committee wields influence on Capitol Hill over USAGM.
Engel praised Lansing on Friday for putting the USAGM’s networks “ … on a path toward becoming modern, effective news organizations providing unbiased information in some of the world’s most closed media spaces.”
But he said that if the Senate does not confirm Pack in a timely manner, the BBG should exercise its power and appoint someone.
“The existing Board of Governors retains the power to name a replacement. I urge the board to do so immediately, as we can’t predict when the Senate may act on the president’s nominee. This is too important a job to be left vacant for even a day,” he added.
The USAGM has its share of critics. Engel’s predecessor, former Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican, has called it a “broken agency.” Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state, said the agency was “practically defunct in terms of its capacity to tell a message around the world.”
Bennett and Austin attributed audience growth under Lansing to a focus on independent and unbiased news coverage. In 2018, its audience expanded 24%, a record.
“Sixty percent of our audience around the world believes us and trusts us,” Bennett said. “John’s focus on editorial independence is what must carry on if we’re not to squander that trust built up over the years.”
Eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and experiencing contractions, a Salvadoran woman who had crossed the Rio Grande and was apprehended by the Border Patrol was forced to go back to Mexico.
Agents took her to the hospital, where doctors gave her medication to stop the contractions. And then, according to the woman and her lawyer, she was almost immediately sent back to Mexico.
There, she joined the more than 38,000 people forced to wait across the border for immigration court hearings under a rapidly expanding Trump administration policy. And her plight highlights the health risks and perils presented by the “Remain in Mexico” program.
The woman was waiting Thursday with her 3-year-old daughter in a makeshift tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, next to an international bridge, due to give birth any day, said her attorney, Jodi Goodwin.
“She’s concerned about having the baby in the street or having to have the baby in a shelter,” Goodwin said.
A group of Mexican asylum-seekers wait near the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico, Aug. 30, 2019. Pregnant women face special hazards in Mexico because places where migrants wait often don’t have access to medical care.
Pregnant women face special hazards in Mexico because places where migrants wait to enter the U.S. often don’t have access to regular meals, clean water and medical care.
Many shelters at the Mexico border are at or above capacity, and some families have been sleeping in tents or on blankets in the blistering summer heat. Reports have abounded of migrants being attacked or kidnapped in Mexican border cities, especially in Tamaulipas state across from South Texas, where the Salvadoran mother is waiting for a November court date.
The Associated Press is not identifying the woman from El Salvador because she fears for her safety.
The U.S. government does not automatically exempt pregnant women from the “Remain in Mexico” program. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the woman’s case.
The program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, was instituted by the U.S. and Mexico as a way of deterring migrants from crossing the border to seek asylum. Mexico has cooperated with the expansion of the program at the behest of President Donald Trump, who threatened crippling tariffs in June if Mexico did not do more to stop migrants.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said people in “vulnerable populations” may be exempt from being sent to Mexico. But pregnant women are not necessarily considered vulnerable by CBP, a subsidiary of the department.
“In some cases, pregnancy may not be observable or disclosed, and may not in and of itself disqualify an individual from being amenable for the program,” CBP said in a statement. “Agents and officers would consider pregnancy, when other associated factors exist, to determine amenability for the program.”
Migrants, many who were returned to Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program, wait in line to get a meal in an encampment near the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico, Aug. 30, 2019.
Goodwin provided copies of the 28-year-old woman’s immigration paperwork and the bracelet from when she was admitted to Valley Regional Medical Center.
“In this particular case, this woman was actually taken to the hospital by CBP,” she said. “There’s no way that CBP could suggest that her pregnancy wasn’t known.”
The paperwork instructs her to return to Brownsville on Nov. 14 for a court hearing.
The U.S. government is establishing temporary tent courtrooms in Brownsville and Laredo, Texas, where immigration judges from around the U.S. will hear migrants’ cases by video. The hearings will start in those cities later this month.
The woman’s notice lists her address as a migrant shelter in Matamoros several miles from the primary international bridge near the camp where she is staying. Goodwin says she has never been to that shelter.
There are at least six cases of pregnant women border-wide who have been sent back to Mexico, according to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general demanding an investigation into the issue. Goodwin also represents a woman from Peru who was seven months pregnant when border agents allowed her to enter, only to send her back to Mexico the next day.
Mexico offers limited health coverage to people regardless of nationality that includes some of the screenings a pregnant woman needs, said Lina Villa, a Mexico-based health official for Doctors Without Borders. But many migrants don’t know that they can get that coverage, she said.
As their deliveries near, many migrant women aren’t sure whether they’ll have access to a hospital and if they will need surgery, Villa said. They are worried about their child being born in Mexico instead of the U.S. and what that might mean for their prospects of eventually entering the U.S., she said.
“It’s a very, very difficult group of people that needs a lot of help, and they don’t get enough,” she said.
Britain’s bedeviling Brexit dilemma intensified Friday, as opposition parties refused to support Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call for an election until he secures a delay to Britain’s exit from the European Union — something he vows he’ll never do.
Johnson insists Britain must leave the EU in 55 days, and says an election is the only way to break the deadlock that has seen lawmakers repeatedly reject the divorce deal on offer, but also block attempts to leave the EU without one.
He wants to go to the public on Oct. 15, two weeks before the scheduled Brexit day of Oct. 31, but needs the support of two-thirds of lawmakers to trigger a snap election.
Johnson lost a vote on the same question this week, but he plans to try again Monday.
Standoff
After discussions Friday, lawmakers from several opposition parties said they would not back an election unless the government asked the EU to postpone Brexit, removing the risk the U.K. could crash out without a deal. Johnson says he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit.
Anti Brexit campaigner Gina Miller speaks to the media outside the High Court in London, Sept. 6, 2019. The High Court has rejected a claim that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is acting unlawfully.
Parliament is trying to force his hand, passing an opposition-backed law that would compel Johnson’s Conservative government to seek a three-month Brexit postponement if no divorce deal is agreed by Oct. 19.
The legislation was approved Friday by the unelected House of Lords, after gaining backing from the elected House of Commons earlier this week. It will become law within days once it gets the formality of royal assent.
But pro-EU lawmakers want to hold off on triggering an election until the Brexit delay has actually been secured, fearing Johnson will try to wriggle out of the commitment.
“I do not trust the prime minister to do his duty,” said Liz Saville Roberts, leader in Parliament of the Welsh party Plaid Cymru.
She said lawmakers needed to be sitting in Parliament in late October, rather than on the election campaign trail, to ensure Britain does not crash out of the EU. That makes an election before November unlikely.
“We need to make sure that we get past the 31st of October,” she said.
Risky plan
Blocking an election is a risky strategy for the opposition, which could be accused of denying the public its say.
The Conservative Party on Friday tweeted a mocked-up image of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in a chicken suit, and Johnson said he had “never known an opposition in the history of democracy that’s refused to have an election.”
“I think obviously they don’t trust the people, they don’t think that the people will vote for them, so they’re refusing to have an election,” he said.
Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “An early general election is now a question of when' notif’ — but Johnson mustn’t be allowed to dictate the timing as a device to avoid scrutiny and force through a ‘no deal’ Brexit.”
Johnson’s options are unclear if he loses Monday’s vote. He could call a no-confidence vote in his own government, which would only need a simple majority to pass. He could try to change the law that governs how elections can be triggered. He could even resign.
In short, it’s a complicated mess.
Johnson became prime minister in July after promising Conservatives that he would complete Brexit and break the impasse that has paralyzed Britain’s politics since voters decided in June 2016 to leave the bloc and which brought down his predecessor, Theresa May.
After only six weeks in office, however, his plans are in crisis. The EU refuses to renegotiate the deal it struck with May, which has been rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament.
Opposition in courts
Johnson’s push to leave the EU at the end of next month, come what may, is facing opposition in the courts as well as in Parliament. Most economists say a no-deal Brexit would cause severe economic disruption and plunge the U.K. into recession.
Johnson enraged his opponents by announcing he would suspend Parliament at some point next week until Oct. 14, leaving just over two weeks to the deadline. Critics accused him of subverting democracy and carrying out a “coup.”
Transparency campaigner Gina Miller took the government to court, arguing the suspension was an “unlawful abuse of power.”
On Friday, a panel of three High Court judges ruled against her, but said the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has set a hearing for Sept. 17.
Outside court, Miller said she was disappointed with the ruling but would not give up.
“We need to protect our institutions,” she said.” It is not right that they should be shut down or bullied, especially at this momentous time in our history.”
‘Quite a mess’
Johnson insists he wants to secure a divorce deal, and his chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, was in Brussels Friday for talks with EU officials. But the bloc says Britain has made no concrete proposals for changes to May’s rejected deal.
EU officials say it seems increasingly likely Britain will depart without an agreement.
“The situation in Britain is quite a mess now and we don’t know what is happening there,” said Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
“It seems very obvious that we are not getting Brexit with an agreement,” he said.
House Democrats are demanding information on the use of taxpayer money at President Donald Trump’s hotels and properties, including during Vice President Pence’s trip this week to Doonbeg, Ireland. The push is part of an expanded effort this fall to investigate the president’s financial entanglements and business practices.
The House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees announced Friday that they sent a series of letters regarding “multiple efforts” by the president, vice president, and other Trump administration officials to spend taxpayer money at properties owned by Trump. They say the spending could violate the Constitution and bolster the case for Trump’s impeachment.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the spending is “of grave concern” to his committee, which is investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment to the full House. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said that his panel “does not believe that U.S. taxpayer funds should be used to personally enrich President Trump, his family, and his companies.”
FILE – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, prepares for a television interview at the Capitol in Washington, July 26, 2019.
The letters come after Pence stayed at Trump’s resort in Doonbeg , Ireland, this week. Doonbeg is on the other side of Ireland from Dublin, where he had meetings. The Democrats also sent letters to the White House and Secret Service about Trump’s suggestion earlier this month that his Miami-area golf course host next year’s Group of Seven summit with foreign leaders. The Democrats say those instances, among others, could violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans the president from taking gifts from foreign governments.
The push comes as Democrats are trying to keep public attention on their investigations of Trump. They have spent much of the year probing episodes detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which did not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. But lawmakers say they think the American public may have even more interest in Trump profiting off of his presidency as they weigh whether to move forward on impeachment.
“We have been focused on the Mueller report and that is a very small part of the overall picture,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary panel. “We must get America focused on the ongoing violations against basic Constitutional principles.”
In addition to looking at Trump’s use of his properties, two House committees are continuing to investigate his relationship with banks with which he did business. And the Judiciary panel is also expected to investigate hush money payments that Trump paid to kill potentially embarrassing stories.
Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, another Democrat on the Judiciary panel, says he believes that the misuse of public funds or financial corruption make Americans especially angry. And while people have heard a lot about the Mueller report, he says they may know less about the emoluments clause.
“I think you’ll see a lot more of that in the coming months,” Cicilline said.
Many attending U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s college lecture Friday in his home state of Kansas listened for clues about whether he might run for the Senate next year, though it could be many months before anyone finds out.
Three Democrats and four Republicans are already actively running for the seat held by Republican Senator Pat Roberts, who isn’t seeking a fifth term, and several others are expected to join them. Weeks after Pompeo said a run is “off the table,” though, he is still creating a buzz and looming over the race, as only he has enough name recognition and support among Kansas conservatives to afford to wait until next June’s filing deadline to decide.
If he does run, Pompeo would enter the race as the favorite.
“It’s the Pompeo decision, and then everything else trickles down,” said Joe Kildea, a vice president for the conservative interest group Club for Growth.
Other candidates don’t have the luxury of waiting and the field is likely to grow, with GOP Representative Roger Marshall of western Kansas expected to announce his candidacy Saturday at the state fair.
FILE – Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, right , Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, speaks Nov. 5, 2015, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Pompeo wasn’t expected to directly address the speculation about his interest in running during his speech Friday at Kansas State University, but that hasn’t stopped others from suggesting he’s the person for the job. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell identified Pompeo as his preferred candidate shortly after Roberts announced in January that he wasn’t seeking re-election.
The GOP hasn’t lost a Senate race in Kansas since 1932, but many Republicans worry about a repeat of the governor’s race last year. Kris Kobach, a nationally known advocate of tough immigration policies, narrowly won a crowded primary, alienated moderates and lost to Democrat Laura Kelly. He launched his Senate campaign in July.
For Kobach’s GOP detractors, Pompeo would solve their perceived problems. His entry would likely clear most of the Republican field, and GOP leaders believe Pompeo would have no trouble winning in November 2020, making it easier for Republicans to retain their Senate majority.
And WDAF-TV reported that Kansas’ other senator, Republican Jerry Moran, told reporters Wednesday at a Kansas City-area event that he didn’t know Pompeo’s current thinking “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he entered that race.”
Fellow Republicans concede that Pompeo, a former congressman and CIA director, has reasons not to run, including the prestige that comes with being the nation’s top diplomat. He’s currently dealing with weighty issues such as new sanctions on Iran from the Trump administration, a tariff war with China and questions about whether hopes for nuclear talks with North Korea are fading.
“I think he can’t say that he’s wanting to run for Senate now,” said Tim Shallenburger, a former two-term state treasurer and Kansas Republican Party chairman. “He’s got to wait, and I think he can afford to wait.”
FILE – Then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is pictured in Lenexa, Kan., June 8, 2017.
Kobach, who served as Kansas’ secretary of state but first built his national profile on immigration issues, has argued that as a Senate nominee, he’d benefit from the higher turnout that normally comes with a presidential election year and a greater focus on issues such as immigration. Some local Republican leaders agree and feel less anxious about Kobach’s possible nomination victory.
Other GOP candidates include Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle; Dave Lindstrom, a Kansas City-area businessman and former Kansas City Chiefs player; and Bryan Pruitt, a conservative gay commentator. Also, Marshall has been flirting with running for months, and other potential Republican candidates include Alan Cobb, president and CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, and Matt Schlapp, the American Conservative Union’s president.
The Democratic candidates with active campaigns are former federal prosecutor Barry Grissom, former Representative Nancy Boyda, and Usha Reddi, a city commissioner in the northeast Kansas city of Manhattan.
Don Alexander, a manufacturing firm owner who is the GOP chairman in Neosho County in southeastern Kansas, said it’s early to be trying to size up the race, almost 11 months before the August 2020 primary. He said he and other Republicans trust Pompeo to “know where he’s needed most.”
President’s support seen
“I’m sure the president doesn’t want him to leave,” said Helen Van Etten, a Republican National Committee member from Topeka.
But Van Etten said comments from Pompeo that he’ll stay on as secretary of state as long as Trump will have him leave an “open door” for a Senate bid.
Some Republicans, such as Alexander, take Pompeo at his word that he won’t run. Others, including Shallenburger, read Pompeo’s statements as meaning he isn’t interested right now but that he may reconsider if he doesn’t like how the race develops.
“He can announce on the filing deadline and cause most of the people in there to get out,” Shallenburger said.
VOA Connect Episode 86 – Choosing to be childless is a growing trend in the United States. We also explore the world of vintage drag race cars, and head to New York, where visually impaired people can get a ride though a park on a tandem bike.
Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African nation of Zimbabwe for 37 years following the end of white minority rule in 1980, has died. He was 95 years old. Some hailed Mugabe as a liberation hero, but others say he destroyed the economy of what was once Africa’s breadbasket, rigged elections and terrorized his people for decades. VOA’s Anita Powell looks at his life and legacy.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation when he first came to power in a nation divided by nearly a century of white colonial rule.
Nearly four decades later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.
Mugabe, was ultimately ousted by his own armed forces in November 2017.
He demonstrated his tenacity — some might say stubbornness — to the last, refusing to accept his expulsion from his own ZANU-PF party and clinging on for a week until parliament started to impeach him after the de facto coup.
His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. For Mugabe, it was an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and left him a broken man.
Confined for the remaining years of his life between Singapore where he was receiving medical treatment and his sprawling “Blue Roof” mansion in Harare, an ailing Mugabe could only observe from afar the political stage where he once strode tall. He was bitter to the end over the manner of his exit.
On the eve of the July 2018 election, the first without him, he told reporters he would vote for the opposition, something unthinkable only a few months before.
FILE – Grace Marufu, bride of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe waves at guests, Aug. 17, 1996, after their wedding ceremony at the Kutama Catholic mission, 42 miles, (80kms) west of Harare.
Took power in 1980
Educated and urbane, Mugabe took power in 1980 after seven years of a liberation bush war and — until the army’s takeover — was the only leader Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, knew since independence from Britain.
But as the economy imploded starting from 2000 and his mental and physical health waned, Mugabe found fewer people to trust as he seemingly smoothed a path to succession for his wife, Grace, four decades his junior and known to her critics as “Gucci Grace” for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping.
“It’s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife,” Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of Zimbabwe’s influential liberation war veterans, told Reuters after Mugabe’s removal.
‘A jewel’
Born on Feb. 21, 1924, on a Roman Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa’s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Founding Father Hailed as Hero and Villain, Dies at 95 video player.
WATCH: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Founding Father Hailed as Hero and Villain, Dies at 95
Returning to then-Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics but was jailed for a decade four years later for opposing white rule.
When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral, a decision by the government of white-minority leader Ian Smith that historians say played a part in explaining Mugabe’s subsequent bitterness.
After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the “thinking man’s guerrilla” on account of his seven degrees, three of them earned behind bars.
Later, as he crushed his political enemies, he boasted of another qualification: “a degree in violence.”
FILE – Patriotic Front leader Robert Mugabe, right, gives a press conference in Geneva, Oct. 29, 1976.
After the war ended in 1980, Mugabe was elected the nation’s first black prime minister.
“You have inherited a jewel in Africa. Don’t tarnish it,” Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere told him during the independence celebrations in Harare.
At first, reconciliation
Initially, Mugabe offered forgiveness and reconciliation to old foreign and domestic adversaries, including Smith, who remained on his farm and continued to receive a government pension.
In his early years, he presided over a booming economy, spending money on roads and dams and expanding schooling for black Zimbabweans as part of a wholesale dismantling of the racial discrimination of colonial days.
With black and white tension easing, by the mid-1980s many whites who had fled to Britain or South Africa, then still under the yoke of apartheid, were trying to come home.
Owen Maseko’s painting of the 1987 Unity Accord between Robert Mugabe (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo (ZAPU) which brought the ZANU-PF party into existence. The painting shows a bloodied Nkomo bending over the accord, while Mugabe is the other individual at the table.
No challengers
But it was not long before Mugabe began to suppress challengers, including liberation war rival Joshua Nkomo.
Faced with a revolt in the mid-1980s in the western province of Matabeleland that he blamed on Nkomo, Mugabe sent in North Korean-trained army units, provoking an international outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians.
Human rights groups say 20,000 people died, most of them from the minority Ndebele tribe from which Nkomo’s partisans were largely drawn. The discovery of mass graves prompted accusations of genocide.
After two terms as prime minister, Mugabe tightened his grip on power by changing the constitution, and he became president in 1987. His first wife, Sally, who had been seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him, died in 1992.
A turning point came at the end of the decade when Mugabe, by now a leader unaccustomed to accommodating the will of the people, suffered his first major defeat at the hands of voters, in a referendum on another constitution. He blamed his loss on the white minority, chastising them as “enemies of Zimbabwe.”
Days later, a groundswell of black anger at the slow pace of land reform started boiling over and gangs of black Zimbabweans calling themselves war veterans started to overrun white-owned farms.
FILE – A Zimbabwean farm laborer shows the scars of an attack on him by so-called “war veterans” supporting President Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe’s response was uncompromising, labeling the invasions a correction of colonial injustices.
“Perhaps we made a mistake by not finishing the war in the trenches,” he said in 2000. “If the settlers had been defeated through the barrel of a gun, perhaps we would not be having the same problems.”
The farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa’s most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation.
The economy shrank by more than a third from 2000 to 2008, sending unemployment above 80%. Several million Zimbabweans fled, mostly to South Africa.
Brushing aside criticism, Mugabe portrayed himself as a radical African nationalist competing against racist and imperialist forces in Washington and London.
FILE – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, left, shakes hands with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, May 22, 2013, after he signed the new constitution into law in Harare.
Rock bottom
The country hit rock bottom in 2008, when 500 billion percent inflation drove people to support the challenge of Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Facing defeat in a presidential run-off, Mugabe resorted to violence, forcing Tsvangirai to withdraw after scores of his supporters were killed by ZANU-PF thugs.
South Africa, Zimbabwe’s neighbor to the south, squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mugabe’s grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service.
As old age crept in and rumors of cancer intensified, his animosity towards Tsvangirai eased and the two men enjoyed weekly meetings over tea and scones, in a nod to Mugabe’s affection for British traditions.
On the eve of the 2013 election, Mugabe dismissed cries of autocracy and likened dealing with Tsvangirai to sparring in the ring.
“Although we boxed each other, it’s not as hostile as before,” he told reporters.
Even as he spoke, Mugabe’s agents were busy finalizing plans to engineer an election victory through manipulation of the voters’ roll, according to the Tsvangirai camp.
It was typical of Mugabe’s ability to outthink — and if necessary outfight — his opponents, a trait that drew grudging respect from even his sternest critics.
Writing in a 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, then-U.S. ambassador to Harare Christopher Dell reflected the views of many: “To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician.”
Robert Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 and ruled with an iron fist until his own army ended his almost four decade rule, has died. He was 95.
Mugabe died in Singapore, where he has often received medical treatment in recent years, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
His death was confirmed by Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe (1/2)
On leading Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation.
But later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.
Mugabe was forced to resign in November 2017 after an army coup.
His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. Mugabe denounced his removal as an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and it left him a broken man.
In November, Mnangagwa said Mugabe was no longer able to walk when he had been admitted to a hospital in Singapore, without saying what treatment Mugabe had been undergoing.
Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent private media reports that he had prostate cancer.
Technology firms and academics have joined together to launch a “deepfake challenge” to improve tools to detect videos and other media manipulated by artificial intelligence.
The initiative announced Thursday includes $10 million from Facebook and aims to curb what is seen as a major threat to the integrity of online information.
The effort is being supported by Microsoft and the industry-backed Partnership on AI and includes academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, University of Oxford, University of California-Berkeley, University of Maryland and University at Albany.
Tool to detect altered video
It represents a broad effort to combat the dissemination of manipulated video or audio as part of a misinformation campaign.
“The goal of the challenge is to produce technology that everyone can use to better detect when AI has been used to alter a video in order to mislead the viewer,” said Facebook chief technical officer Mike Schroepfer.
Schroepfer said deepfake techniques, which present realistic AI-generated videos of people doing and saying fictional things, “have significant implications for determining the legitimacy of information presented online. Yet the industry doesn’t have a great data set or benchmark for detecting them.”
The challenge is the first project of a committee on AI and media integrity created by the Partnership on AI, a group whose mission is to promote beneficial uses of artificial intelligence and is backed by Apple, Amazon, IBM and other tech firms and non-governmental organizations.
A woman in Washington views a manipulated video, Jan. 24, 2019, that changes what is said by President Donald Trump and former president Barack Obama, illustrating how “deepfake” technology can deceive viewers.
Threat to democracy
Terah Lyons, executive director of the Partnership, said the new project is part of an effort to stem AI-generated fakes, which “have significant, global implications for the legitimacy of information online, the quality of public discourse, the safeguarding of human rights and civil liberties, and the health of democratic institutions.”
Facebook said it was offering funds for research collaborations and prizes for the challenge, and would also enter the competition, but not accept any of the prize money.
Oxford professor Philip Torr, one of the academics participating, said new tools are “urgently needed to detect these types of manipulated media.
“Manipulated media being put out on the internet, to create bogus conspiracy theories and to manipulate people for political gain, is becoming an issue of global importance, as it is a fundamental threat to democracy,” Torr said in a statement.
President Donald Trump is continuing his run of recognizing American sports greats with the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Trump has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to pro-basketball great Jerry West, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, during a White House ceremony.
Trump says West “richly deserved” the medal for his years as a player, general manager and supporter of the nation’s war veterans.
The 81-year-old West noted his humble beginnings growing up in West Virginia and where sports has taken him, saying “it never ceases to amaze me the places you can go in this world chasing a basketball.”
Last month, Trump awarded the medal to 91-year-old basketball great Bob Cousy. Earlier this year, golfer Tiger Woods received the same honor.
