The United States rejected a request by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit Iran’s United Nations ambassador in a New York hospital where he is being treated for cancer, the U.S. State Department and Iranian U.N. mission said on Friday.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Zarif’s request would be granted if Iran released one of several American citizens it had detained.
In July the United States imposed tight travel restrictions on Zarif before a visit that month to the United Nations, as well as on Iranian diplomats and their families living in New York, which Zarif described as “basically inhuman.”
Unless they receive prior approval from Washington, they are only allowed to travel within a small area of Manhattan, Queens and to and from John F. Kennedy airport.
FILE – Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi speaks to the media outside Security Council chambers at the U.N. headquarters in New York, June 24, 2019.
Iran’s U.N. mission spokesman Alireza Miryousefi said Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi was being treated for cancer in a hospital not far away in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood. Zarif is in New York for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
“Iran has wrongfully detained several U.S. citizens for years, to the pain of their families and friends they cannot freely visit,” the State Department spokesperson said. “We have relayed to the Iranian mission that the travel request will be granted if Iran releases a U.S. citizen.”
The United States and Iran are at odds over a host of issues, including the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, U.S. accusations — denied by Tehran — that Iran attacked two Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 and Iran’s detention of U.S. citizens on what the United States regards as spurious grounds.
U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook speaks to VOA Persian service reporter.
Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, on Monday said that if Iran wanted to show good faith, it should release the U.S. citizens it has detained, including Xiyue Wang, a U.S. citizen and Princeton University graduate student who was detained in Iran in 2016.
At a news conference in New York on Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran was open to talking about prisoner swaps but that the ball was in Washington’s court after Iran’s release of a Lebanese man with U.S. permanent residency in June.
The United States deported an Iranian woman who pleaded guilty to exporting restricted U.S. technology to Iran on Tuesday. During a visit to New York in April, Zarif specifically mentioned the woman’s case when talking about possible prisoner swaps.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday declined to discuss the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian prisoner swap after the woman’s deportation.
Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69.
Wilson’s died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium.
The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential aide Scooter B. Libby for lying to investigators and justice obstruction.
President Donald Trump pardoned Libby in 2018.
Plame, who is running as a Democrat for Congress — in part as a Trump adversary — called Wilson “a true American hero, a patriot, and had the heart of a lion.” Plame and Wilson moved to Santa Fe in 2007 to raise twin children and divorced in 2017.
In 2002, Wilson traveled as a diplomat to the African country of Niger to investigate allegations that Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium, which could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
Wife’s identity revealed
Plame’s identity with the CIA was revealed in a newspaper column days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the Bush administration twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. Wilson later accused administration officials and political operatives of putting his family at risk.
A Connecticut native and graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Wilson’s career with the Foreign Service included posts in a handful of African nations.
He was the senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad during the first Gulf War and was the last American official to meet with Saddam before Desert Storm.
Wilson drew intense criticism from Republican lawmakers over his statements regarding Iraq in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion. A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 pointed to inconsistences.
Wilson dismissed those claims, later authoring the book “The Politics of Truth.”
In a 2003 interview with PBS, he said that the post-9/11 security mission went astray with the full invasion of Iraq.
“The national security objective for the United States was clear: It was disarmament of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “We should have pursued that objective. We did not need to engage in an invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in order to achieve that objective.”
Mourners gathered at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday to pay their respects to former President Jacques Chirac, whose death unleashed a flood of tributes to a charismatic but complex giant of French politics.
Chirac, president from 1995 to 2007, died Thursday at age 86 after years of deteriorating health since suffering a stroke in 2005.
Ahead of a national day of mourning announced for Monday, the French presidency threw open the doors of the Elysee Palace for people wanting to sign a book of condolences.
“I express my admiration and tenderness for the last of the great presidents,” read one tribute. “Thank you for fighting, thank you for this freedom and good spirits.”
In a televised address Thursday night, President Emmanuel Macron praised “a man whom we loved as much as he loved us.”
Chirac is also to be given the honor of a public memorial ceremony on Sunday as well as a mass on Monday, which will be attended by Macron and foreign dignitaries including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
A minute of silence will also be observed Monday at public institutions, schools and football matches.
Schools have also been urged to dedicate class time on Monday “to evoke the former head of state’s memory,” with the education ministry saying it will propose potential discussion themes for teachers.
And the Quai Branly museum of indigenous art founded by Chirac, who had a deep appreciation of Asian cultures, said it would offer free admission until Oct. 11.
French newspapers splashed his portrait across their front pages and dedicated most of their editions to the former president’s life — Le Parisien had an exhaustive 35 pages plus a 12-page special insert.
People line up to sign a condolence book for the late French President Jacques Chirac, Sept. 27, 2019, in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace in Paris.
Everyman charm
Even Chirac’s opponents hailed his charm and qualities as a political fighter, as well as how he stood up to Washington in 2003 by opposing the Iraq War.
He was also lauded for acknowledging France’s responsibility for the wartime deportation of Jews, slashing road deaths with the introduction of speed cameras, and standing up to the increasingly popular far right under Jean-Marie Le Pen.
But some questioned how much he had actually achieved during a long period in office — his career shadowed by a graft conviction while mayor of Paris, from 1977 to 1995.
He contested the ruling but did not appeal it, saying the French people “know who I am: an honest man” who worked only for “the grandeur of France and for peace.”
And it hardly dented the popularity of the beer- and saucisse-loving charmer, whose extramarital affairs were an open secret.
He had barely been seen in public in recent years, after suffering a stroke in 2005 and undergoing kidney surgery in December 2013.
He will be buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris next to his daughter Laurence, who died in 2016 after a lifelong battle with anorexia.
He is survived by Bernadette, his wife of more than six decades; his daughter Claude, who served as his confidante and adviser; and a grandson, Martin.
People gather to pay tribute to the late former French President Jacques Chirac in Nice, France, Sept. 27, 2019.
‘Embodied’ France
The centre-right Chirac succeeded his longtime political rival, Socialist Francois Mitterrand, in 1995 after two previously unsuccessful bids to secure the Elysee.
“As a leader who was able to represent the nation in its diversity and complexity … President Chirac embodied a certain idea of France,” Macron said Thursday.
His death garnered an outpouring of tributes from world leaders, the latest from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lauded “an old friend of the Chinese people.”
Lebanon has also declared a day of mourning Monday, noting the close ties between Chirac and the family of former Premier Rafiq Hariri — whose family provided Chirac and his wife with a sumptuous Paris apartment for several years after he left office.
A surge in brutal attacks by armed groups in northwest Nigeria is sending thousands of refugees fleeing to Niger, the United Nations refugee agency says.
More than 40,000 Nigerians have fled to Niger over the last 10 months, creating a new humanitarian emergency along the two countries’ border, the UNHCR reports. It added that on Sept. 11 alone, more than 2,500 civilians targeted by armed groups in Nigeria fled for their lives.
The agency says it has received frequent reports of kidnappings, torture, extortion, murder, sexual violence, and destruction of houses and property.
UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch tells VOA the armed groups responsible for the violence are not linked to the Islamic mlitant group Boko Haram.
“[Refugees] tell us, these groups are really well organized and well armed, and they kind of operate at will,” Baloch said. “They go from house to house, villages to villages, killing people, destroying property and then getting away with these horrible acts.”
While the identity of the armed groups is unknown, Baloch says they include bandits and other criminal elements. He says some attackers have taken people hostage, holding them for ransom.
Media reports suggest ethnic conflict between Fulani traditional herders and Hausa farmers plays a role in the violence.
The conflict has caused the deaths of more than 4,000 people since 2011, and Nigerian security experts report the Fulani-Hausa conflict is expected to claim more lives this year than Boko Haram aggression.
Aid is being rushed to the Niger border and emergency staff is responding to the humanitarian needs, Baloch says, adding that the UNHCR is working with local authorities to relocate refugees from the border to safer places inland.
U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter again Friday to lash out at the media and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as a formal impeachment inquiry moved forward in Congress over allegations Trump solicited Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential rival of Trump’s in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s main target was Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who presided over Thursday’s questioning of the acting director of national intelligence about the handling of a whistleblower complaint.
At the center of the complaint is a July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which the whistleblower alleges:
— Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was at one time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
— Trump suggested multiple times that Zelenskiy meet with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr about the investigation.
— White House officials secured all records of the phone call in a separate electronic system used to store classified and sensitive information, a move denounced by Democrats as a cover-up.
Normally, such an “urgent” complaint would have been forwarded to congressional intelligence committees within two weeks. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, missed a Sept. 2 deadline, defying congressional demands for the document and a subpoena for his testimony.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire takes his seat before testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 26, 2019.
Congress finally received the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 25. The next day, Maguire appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in a public hearing. He testified that he took the complaint to White House lawyers, then Justice Department lawyers, who advised it was not urgent enough to send to Congress. Maguire refused to acknowledge whether he spoke to Trump about the whistleblower’s complaint.
Protected by law
Federal law protects government workers from retribution if they report wrongdoing by government officials. Such whistleblowers are granted anonymity for their protection.
Video has surfaced of Trump attacking the whistleblower’s sources. Speaking at a closed-door event at the U.S. Mission to the U.N on Thursday, Trump described the sources as “close to a spy,” suggesting it was an act of treason, punishable by death.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., leads other House Democrats to discuss H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which passed in the House but is being held up in the Senate, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 27, 2019.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she was concerned about Trump’s remarks, promising that the impeachment committees would ensure there was no retaliation for people who came forward with information. She did not set out a timeline for the impeachment process, although she told MSNBC “it doesn’t have to drag on.”
Trump maintained he had a “perfect conversation” with his Ukrainian counterpart and was just trying to get his government to investigate corruption. The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, which shows Trump raising the issue of investigating the Bidens. The call took place while U.S. military aid to Ukraine was suspended by Trump.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives began the formal process of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump this week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the first step in the impeachment process Tuesday, following reports that a whistleblower filed a complaint alleging Trump sought foreign interference into the 2020 election.
What triggered House Democrats to begin a formal impeachment inquiry?
Investigations into Trump’s administration and his campaign’s actions during the 2016 presidential election were already underway in six House committees at the beginning of this week. Many House Democrats already backed impeachment, but until this week opposition leaders had resisted calls for launching the impeachment inquiry. They believed such an inquiry had no chance of passing the Republican-led Senate and could end up hurting Democrats in the 2020 election.
The new whistleblower report appears to have dramatically shifted the politics of the issue.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reads a statement announcing a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 24, 2019.
Several additional House Democrats came forward in support of an impeachment inquiry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday the House would embark on the first step of the impeachment process to determine if Trump had committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the U.S. Constitution lays out as the standard for removing a president from office.
What do we know about the whistleblower?
The whistleblower remains anonymous under laws protecting government workers who expose wrongdoing. But he or she is a U.S. government employee who had knowledge of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and spoke to other U.S. officials who shared similar concerns over the legality of the president’s actions. Although the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of the Zelenskiy phone call, an independent investigator for the U.S. government found the allegations were credible.
The New York Times has reported the whistleblower is a CIA employee who has spent some time working in the White House during the Trump administration.
The complaint alleges a number of offenses on the part of Trump and U.S. officials. The most serious of the allegations is that Trump implied congressionally-approved U.S. aid to Ukraine was contingent upon Zelenskiy’s government providing information on the son of 2020 presidential election rival, Joe Biden. The complaint also alleges White House officials were aware of the gravity of Trump’s actions and covered up records of the phone call.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump is seen during a phone call at the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, June 27, 2017.
How was the whistleblower complaint handled by the government?
Democrats are pledging to investigate both the allegations in the complaint as well as how the Trump administration handled it.
Under the whistleblower process, the complaint was summarized in a letter that was addressed to senior lawmakers in the House and Senate committees, which oversee the intelligence community. That August 12 letter was sent to the inspector general at the CIA, which worked to try to substantiate some of the allegations. But instead of sending the letter on to the lawmakers in Congress after two weeks, as required by law, Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, instead held it from lawmakers while he consulted with the White House and the Department of Justice about the allegations.
Democratic lawmakers argue Trump administration officials tried to keep the allegations from reaching Congress, violating the procedure for dealing with such issues.
Maguire told members of Congress Thursday he had acted lawfully in initially blocking the release of the complaint due to concerns about executive privilege, a legal right of the U.S. presidency to keep some conversations and documents private.
What do we know about the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call?
The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy Wednesday. In a memo reconstructed from the work of White House note takers, Trump asks Zelenskiy to investigate business dealings of former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter.
A White House-provided rough transcript of President Donald Trump’s July 25, 2019, telephone conversation with Ukraine’s newly-elected president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, released Sept. 25, 2019.
Trump also reminds the Ukrainian president that “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.” Trump ordered a freeze on $400 million of congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine just a few days before that phone call. Trump said this week the order was part of an effort to combat corruption.
Congressional Democrats say the memo is clear evidence of the president proposing a so-called “quid pro quo,” an exchange of one favor for another. But the president’s allies on Capitol Hill said the memo completely exonerated him.
What will happen next in the U.S. Congress?
The House committees investigating the president’s actions will begin building a case that could lead to the drafting of articles of impeachment.
Articles are formal charges against the president that are voted on by the entire U.S. House of Representatives.
Impeachment is a two-step process. If the House votes on and passes the articles, the president is considered impeached and the case moves to the U.S. Senate for a process that is similar to a court trial. If a two-thirds super majority of the U.S. Senate votes to convict, the president is removed from office.
Only two U.S. presidents have been impeached by the U.S. House – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. The U.S. Senate has never voted to remove a president from office.
How soon can we expect a vote on impeachment?
Pelosi has cautioned that there should be a careful gathering of facts so that lawmakers do not rush to judgement. But many House Democrats want to see the vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year. The 2020 presidential election gets fully underway with the Iowa caucuses in February. Many Democrats believe it would be politically risky to have an impeachment vote occurring at the same time.
As of Friday, 225 House Democrats and one independent member of the U.S. House of Representatives support impeachment or an impeachment inquiry. Until articles of impeachment are drafted, it is unknown how many members would vote in support of impeaching Trump.
The head of Zimbabwe’s Doctors Association has left the country for urgent medical treatment in South Africa after being held captivity, during which his medical team says he was poisoned. Police tried to block his departure even though he had a court order allowing him to leave. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare for VOA News.
Losing a job is seldom a good thing. Repeatedly losing that job on the same day sounds nightmarish. Get ready to feel sorry for a person who does not exist. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi plugs us in to an alternate reality created to help managers hone skills at performing an unpleasant but sometimes necessary task.
Health experts warn we are due for a cataclysmic pandemic — they just don’t know when it will happen.
The warning was delivered this week to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly by a special global health monitoring group that said the next pandemic could traverse the world in 36 hours, killing up to 80 million and causing devastating economic loss.
The group, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, operates independently of the World Health Organization and the World Bank, the entities that created it last year with a mandate to issue an annual assessment. The first report was grim.
A health worker vaccinates a child against malaria in Ndhiwa, Homabay County, western Kenya, Sept. 13, 2019, during the launch of a malaria vaccination campaign in the country.
Lack of medical care a threat
Despite remarkable gains in medicine, politics and social issues keep those in rich countries as well as poor ones from desperately needed medical care, and this threatens the entire world.
Medical achievements of the past several decades are remarkable. AIDS once meant enduring a horrible death, but now treatment has changed that and research on a vaccine is promising.
Moreover, there’s talk about ending malaria, a disease that kills half a million people each year, most of them children.
Scientists are also closing in on Ebola. A vaccine and two new drugs to treat those infected are saving lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola used to kill up to 90% of its victims. Now, it’s been reversed.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a member of the board, says with a low viral load, someone infected with the Ebola virus now has a 90% chance of surviving.
This report warns that the world is woefully unprepared for the next pandemic. So unprepared that the next pandemic could kill up to 80 million people and cause enormous economic suffering.
FILE – Gro Harlem Brundtland is a former prime minister of Norway and a former head of the World Health Organization.
The report is intended for political leaders. One of the board’s co-chairs is both a doctor and a politician. Gro Harlem Brundtland is a former prime minister of Norway and a former head of the World Health Organization. She likens health to a military threat in response to which an entire government comes together.
“This has to be the same in global health security,” Brundtland said.
Fauci just returned from a trip to East Africa to assess progress against an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I was clearly impressed at the capabilities of the Congolese who are administering the care here, as well as the preparedness of the Rwandans and the Ugandans, in case cases spill over the border,” he said.
The board cited stigma as a problem that makes it more difficult to stop the spread of disease. Diseases like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola and others carry such a stigma that those who are infected often don’t seek treatment. Political leaders can create policies to erase stigma, the board said.
The report cited poverty and lack of clean water and sanitation as incubators for infectious disease. Political leaders can fund cleaning up polluted water and improving hygiene.
“We need to have a stronger preparedness across the board to avoid unnecessary loss of life and large economic losses,” Brundtland warned.
The monitoring group also cited prolonged conflict and forced migration as risk factors for the spread of disease. It urged countries to establish emergency preparedness from the local level on up, to build trust and to work cooperatively to improve responses to serious threats and ensure health of the world’s 7.7 billion people.
An Iranian woman sentenced in the United States for violating sanctions against Tehran was released and has returned home, her lawyer told AFP Thursday, following her country’s unsuccessful attempt at a prisoner swap.
A judge in Minneapolis sentenced Negar Ghodskani to 27 months in prison Tuesday, but determined the time she had spent in custody in Australia and the United States was enough to fulfill her punishment.
Ghodskani “is now free in Iran with her family,” her lawyer Robert Richman said in an email.
Arrested in Australia
A legal resident of Australia, Ghodskani was arrested in Adelaide in 2017 after U.S. prosecutors said she sought U.S. digital communications technology by presenting herself as an employee of a Malaysian company.
U.S. prosecutors said she in fact was sending the technology to Iranian company Fanamoj, which works in public broadcasting.
After extradition to the United States, she confessed to participation in a conspiracy to illegally export technology to Iran in breach of sanctions, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth while in Australian custody. Her son was sent to Iran to live with his father.
FILE – Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif talks to journalists during a press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sept. 6, 2019
Prisoner swap offered
Her case was raised by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in April, who floated a potential prisoner swap for a British-Iranian mother being held in Tehran.
He suggested exchanging Ghodskani for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition.
Both women have been separated from their young children while being detained.
The United States is pressing other countries to join its proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam Brownback calls “the most significant” new human rights initiative in a generation.
“We’re going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against religious persecution around the world,” Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier this week. “We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution come down.”
Brownback’s remarks came at a Monday press conference following the “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” a U.S.-sponsored event on the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event, President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.
The president’s chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early 2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S. senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as Religion News Service has pointed out.
Brownback spoke with VOA after the news conference about what his brief entails — “fighting for religious freedom all around the world for all faiths all the time,” as well as for “people of no faith.”
“We’ll stand up and we’ll do something,” Brownback said of the Trump administration, saying it employs tools ranging from private diplomacy to public designations and “sanctions against countries that persecute people for their faith.”
FILE – Rohingya refugees gather to mark the second anniversary of the exodus at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2019.
Government restrictions on religion have “increased markedly around the world,” according to the Pew Research Center, which began tracking the issue in 2007. The Washington-based center reported this summer that “52 countries, including some in very populous countries such as China, Indonesia and Russia, impose either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of restrictions on religion, up from 40 in 2007.” It found increases in the number of states enacting restrictive laws and policies, as well as in religion-related hostilities and violence against individuals.
“Approximately 80% of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted or even banned,” Trump said Monday, using a State Department figure extrapolated from Pew’s research.
Pew does not attempt to calculate the share of people around the world who are affected by such restrictions, a spokeswoman for the center told VOA.
Brownback told VOA that he sees religious freedom, enshrined in both the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution, as a harbinger of whether other rights are respected or not.
“When you’re willing to protect a person’s religious freedom, you generally are willing to protect the rest of their rights,” the diplomat said. “If you’re willing to persecute a person for their religious beliefs, you’re generally willing to persecute on a number of other rights.”
Brownback said the United Arab Emirates, while “certainly not perfect,” was a model of religious freedom. “They allow faiths to practice. They allow people to build” houses of worship. “And you have this robust, dynamic, growing economy and a lot of other things moving forward.”
He added that he’s “very hopeful” about Algeria and Sudan, African countries where “there are new governments coming in” to replace oppressive regimes.
The U.S. is supporting “better security at religious institutions, where we see a lot of them destroyed around the world, people killed at these houses of worship,” Brownback said at the press conference. He noted that he’s co-hosting a conference in Morocco next week on preserving religious heritage sites.
The Trump administration, which has strong support among evangelical Christians, has been criticized for favoring certain faith groups over others.
“President Trump was elected on the promise of a ‘complete and utter shutdown’ of Muslim immigration to the U.S.,” Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads the Interfaith Alliance, told USA Today. “Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly to redefine ‘religious freedom’ as a license to discriminate.”
The alliance promotes the separation of church and state.
The role of faith-based initiatives in U.S. foreign policy has risen during the last two decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to scholar Lee Marsden, noting a strong interest in curbing radical Islam after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks in September 2001.
The Trump administration is proposing to accept a maximum of 18,000 refugees in the coming year, in what would be the lowest refugee ceiling in the country’s history, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.
If the government follows through, 2020 will be the third year of significant cuts to refugee resettlement under President Donald Trump.
For now, however, the latest figure remains a proposal.
The final decision, in the form of a “presidential determination,” will be made in the coming weeks after the required consultations with Congress, a senior administration official told reporters in a phone briefing organized by the White House on Thursday.
In fiscal 2018, the first full year of the Trump administration, the ceiling was set at 45,000, and 22,491 refugees were admitted.
In fiscal 2019, the ceiling was 30,000. With only three full days remaining in the fiscal year, the U.S. is close to the limit, with 29,972 refugees admitted, according to State Department data.
Prior to Trump’s election, the refugee ceiling average was 60,000 to 70,000 every year.
The proposed ceiling is one of three fundamental changes to the resettlement program announced Thursday.
President Donald Trump tweeted, June 17, 2019, that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin removing millions of people who are in the country illegally.
Trump also issued an executive order that will require state and local governments to “consent” to accept refugees for resettlement.
While not a widespread issue, the order would allow states like Tennessee, which unsuccessfully sued the federal government to stop resettlement, to potentially prevent willing nonprofit organizations in the state from accepting refugees.
Additionally, the U.S. State Department is creating new categories — a procedure used rarely to meet specific needs, usually for a specific region.
For fiscal 2020, however, the total will include up to 5,000 refugees persecuted on account of their religious beliefs; 4,000 spots for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. during its operations in the country; and up to 1,500 of what the White House called “legitimate refugees” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Those specific allocations would allow for a maximum of 7,500 refugees who fall outside those categories.
A Jewish civil rights group has added dozens of new entries to its online database of hateful symbols, slogans and memes that white supremacists have adopted and spread.
The “OK” hand gesture is one of the images that the Anti-Defamation League has added to its hate symbols database. Online trolls have used the gesture to dupe viewers into perceiving it as a “white power” symbol, but the ADL says far-right extremists also are using it as a sincere expression of white supremacy.
The database additions also include “Happy Merchant,” an anti-Semitic meme that depicts a stereotypical image of a Jewish man rubbing his hands together.
ADL launched the database in 2000 to help law enforcement officers and others recognize signs of extremist activity. It has grown to nearly 200 entries.
The fate of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency of France may lie in the fate of his planned overhaul of the retirement system, which has already prompted strikes and protests.
Knowing that it’s not going to be the easiest of sells following the yellow vest movement that brought France to a near-standstill last winter, Macron is embarking Thursday on a “Tour de France” of meetings to try to convince skeptical workers that reform is exactly what France’s stretched and hugely complicated pension system needs to survive into the long-term.
Here’s a look at the planned changes, and why they are generating debate:
France old-age pension system
The country’s retirement system has its roots in 1673 and the reign King Louis XIV. Initially for royal marines, the system swelled to include civil servants in the wake of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Military personnel were added in 1831, followed by others over the decades to come, before employees in the private sector were finally added in 1930.
Now, all French retirees receive a state pension. The average French pension this year stands at 1,400 euros per month ($1,500 per month) once taxes are deducted. But that average masks an array of different pension regimes. In total, there are 42 pension regimes.
So many special regimes
The easy bit: Employees from the private sector are affiliated to the overall system. The account for around 7 of 10 workers.
The more complicated bit: many professions have a special pension regime. Some workers like train workers and air crews allow early retirements, others, like lawyers and doctors, pay less tax.
Civil servants also have a separate pension scheme.
Over the last three decades, governments have made changes but each reform has been met with massive demonstrations. None of the changes managed to simplify the system.
Macron’s grand plan
Macron wants to simplify the system and replace it with a unified scheme, so that all French workers have the same pension rights.
He promises that the overhaul will make the system fairer.
He also wants to make the French pension system, which is projected to be in deficit in the coming years, more sustainable.
However, unions argue that the new system will require people to work longer and reduce pensions. Strikes have already taken place and more are expected over the coming months.
The government has promised the legal retirement age of 62 won’t change, but new financial conditions may encourage people to work longer.
Macron’s government said some specific measures would be maintained to allow military and police officers to retire earlier. Very arduous jobs would also be taken into account to allow workers to retire earlier.
What’s next?
The government has opened three-month talks with unions, employer groups and professional organizations. Ordinary citizens are also being invited to give their opinion on a dedicated website and in public meetings — the first one taking place in the southern town of Rodez Thursday in the presence of Macron.
The government says that what finally emerges will take into account the outcomes of the current debate.
The bill is expected to be debated by lawmakers next summer. The government has said that the changes will only apply on people born after 1963 and will enter progressively into force between 2025 and 2040.
Scores of protesters chanted slogans outside a stadium in Hong Kong where embattled city leader Carrie Lam held a town hall session on Thursday aimed at cooling down months of demonstrations for greater democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
The community dialogue with 150 participants, selected randomly from over 20,000 applicants, was the first since massive protests began in June sparked by an extradition bill that the government has now promised to withdraw.
Protesters have refused to stop demonstrating until other demands including direct elections for the city’s leaders and police accountability are met.
Riot police carried equipment including shields, pepper spray and tear gas canisters into Queen Elizabeth Stadium in the Wan Chai area. Authorities also set up X-ray machines and metal detectors to ensure participants did not bring banned items inside such as umbrellas, helmets and gas masks — gear used by protesters.
Protesters gather outside Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong, Sept. 26, 2019, chanting slogans outside the venue as embattled leader Carrie Lam began a town hall session aimed at cooling down months of pro-democracy demonstrations.
The security measures came as hundreds of students and others formed human chains at roads near the stadium, chanting slogans expressing their demands. Some protesters later marched outside the stadium and continued chanting slogans as the dialogue began.
In her opening remarks, Lam expressed hope that the two-hour dialogue would help bring change for a better Hong Kong. The session, broadcast live, was the first in a series of dialogues toward reconciliation, she said.
Critics called the dialogue a political show to appease protesters before major rallies planned this weekend ahead of China’s National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.
“This is not just a PR show but aimed to bring change” so Hong Kong can be a better country, Lam said. She said the dialogue was to identify deep-seated economic and social problems that contributed to the protests, now entering a fourth month.
The protests have turned increasingly violent in recent weeks as demonstrators lobbed gasoline bombs at government buildings, vandalized public facilities and set street fires, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannons. More than 1,500 people, including children as young as 12, have been detained.
The extradition bill, which would have allowed some criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial, is viewed by many as an example of growing Chinese interference in the city’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework introduced when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, center on the stage, attends a community dialogue at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong, Sept. 26, 2019.
Many protesters say the dialogue is meaningless if the government refuses to accept their remaining demands.
“To Hong Kong people, it’s a joke,” said Bonnie Leung of the Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized several massive rallies. “If she really wants to communicate with Hong Kong people, all she has to do is to open her door, we are right outside.”
The Front has received police approval for a rally on Saturday and has applied for another major march on Oct. 1. Police banned the last two rallies planned by the group, but protesters turned up anyway and the peaceful gatherings later degenerated into chaos.
China has accused the U.S. and other foreign powers of being behind the riots.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang warned on Thursday warned the U.S. Congress to halt work on a bill that proposes economic sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials found to have suppressed democracy in Hong Kong.
The foreign affairs committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate approved the Hong Kong Human Rights Acts on Wednesday, setting the stage for votes in both chambers.
Geng said at a daily briefing in Beijing that the move was an endorsement of Hong Kong’s radical forces, and accused Washington of seeking to “mess up Hong Kong and contain China’s development.”
“We will forcefully fight back against any U.S. attempt to harm China’s interests,” he said.
It’s been a bad year for dengue fever, a painful, debilitating virus that is surging in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other nations. There is no cure for dengue, which is spread by mosquitos. However, scientists are enlisting a bacteria in the fight against dengue because they think will make it harder for mosquitos to spread the often deadly dengue virus. VOA’s Jim Randle has our story.
In an earlier time, boxes on wheels raced on American streets. Now, an energy drink company sponsors motorless, homemade car races around the world. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on this bumpy ride through Jordan.
Faith Aweko of Uganda describes herself as a “waste-preneur.” She has come up with an innovative way to transform discarded plastic bags into backpacks for everyday use. Halima Athumani reports from the town of Mpigi.
Israel’s president has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to form a new government after last week’s deadlocked elections that have paralyzed the country.
The office of President Reuven Rivlin made the announcement after meeting Wednesday with Netanyahu and his primary challenger, Benny Gantz.
Rivlin has the responsibility of selecting the candidate he believes has the best chance of forming a coalition government after neither Netanyahu nor Gantz captured the required support of the parliamentary majority.
Rivlin mediated two previous meetings this week between the politicians, hoping to reach a deal between Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party and Gantz’s centrist and liberal Blue and White alliance.
FILE – Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz delivers a statement in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 19, 2019.
The talks ended, though, because of disagreements over who should lead a new unity government.
Gantz has said he would not participate in a Netanyahu-led government because of the prime minister’s legal problems.
Netanyahu is desperate to remain as prime minister amid an ongoing corruption investigation against him. The country’s attorney general recommends charging Netanyahu fraud, bribery and breach of trust stemming from a number of scandals.
Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, is scheduled to appear before the attorney general next week, after which a decision on the charges is expected.
Final election results announced Wednesday show the Blue and White won 33 seats in the 120-seat parliament, one more than the Likud’s 32 seats. Even with the support of other allies, both parties remain short of the required 61-seat majority.
Israeli law gives the president’s first choice to form a government six weeks to achieve the task. If he fails, the president can task another candidate. A second failure could enable a majority of parliament to nominate a third person as prime minister. Yet another failure would force Israel to hold its third election in less than a year.
