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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday that Japan cannot give South Korean exports preferential treatment because the country is not abiding by an agreement regarding wartime issues that Japan insists have been resolved.
 
Abe was objecting to criticism over escalating tensions between the two neighbors amid disputes over Koreans forced to work as laborers during World War II.

He was defending a decision announced Monday to impose restrictions on Japan’s exports of semiconductor-related materials to South Korea. As of Thursday, exports of some materials used in manufacturing computer parts, including fluorinated polyimides used for displays, must apply for approval for each contract.

We did not intertwine historical issues with trade issues,'' Abe said.The issue of former Korean laborers is not about a historical issue but about whether to keep the promise between countries under international law … and what to do when the promise is broken.”

Abe made the comment when asked about diplomacy during a party leaders’ debate ahead of Tuesday’s start of official campaigning for the July 21 Upper House elections.
 
Relations between the two main U.S. allies in East Asia have rapidly soured since South Korea’s top court in October ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. to pay 100 million won ($88,000) each to four plaintiffs forced to work for the company during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. South Korea’s top court ordered the seizure of local assets of the company after it refused to pay the compensation. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also has refused an order by South Korea’s Supreme Court to financially compensate 10 Koreans for forced labor during Japan’s colonial era.

Abe said each country bears a responsibility to carry out export controls for national security reasons. “Within that obligation, if another country fails to keep its promise, we cannot give it preferential treatment like before,” he said.

Abe and other officials have offered conflicting explanations for the move, citing both a lack of trust and unspecified security concerns.
 
On Tuesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga cited national security concerns and lack of trust'' after exchanges with Seoul for Japan's export control measures on South Korea.  <br />
 <br />
Japan is a major supplier of materials used to make the computer chips that run most devices, including Apple iPhones and laptop computers. Tokyo's decision is also expected to affect exports calledresists” that are used for making semiconductors, and hydrogen fluoride used for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and polymers such as nylon and Teflon.

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In the United States, the Everglades National Park has been on the U.N.’s ‘World Heritage in Danger’ list since 2010. UNESCO is meeting this week and is expected to keep the troubled wetland on that list, despite decades of restoration efforts. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.

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With cellphones becoming more sophisticated, internet becoming faster, and VR headsets becoming cheaper, we are at the precipice of a whole new virtual world.  Deana Mitchell talks to an expert who breaks down what this all means in, well—in reality.

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European Union (EU) leaders have chosen the new heads of the 28-nation bloc’s institutions for at least the next five years, breaking a three-day deadlock triggered by deep EU divisions.

European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen was named president of the European Commission and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as the council president.

French monetary expert Christine Legarde was appointed chief of the European Central Bank and Spanish Acting Foreign Minister Josep Borrell was selected as the EU’s foreign affairs chief.

Lawmakers are set to choose the president of the European Parliament on Wednesday in Strasbourg.

The selections capped days of talks aimed at finding a compromise on who should be appointed to the coveted positions.

EU leaders were challenged with naming new leaders who represent the bloc’s political affiliations, population size and the EU’s various regions.

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Hundreds of Israelis are protesting across the country against alleged police brutality against the country’s Ethiopian community following the killing of an Ethiopian Israeli teen by an off-duty police officer.
 
Demonstrators blocked a main highway in central Tel Aviv and major thoroughfares around the country on Tuesday. They have been voicing frustration over perceived systemic discrimination against the community’s roughly 150,000 members. Police say officers arrested at least three protesters at a demonstration outside Haifa that turned violent.
 
On Sunday, an off-duty police officer shot and killed Ethiopian Israeli teen Solomon Teka. Police said the officer was arrested and placed by a court in protective custody.
 
Thousands of people attended Teka’s funeral at a cemetery near Haifa on Tuesday.

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Col. Turki al Maliki, spokesman for Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, said that a Houthi drone struck the Abha Airport for the third time in less than a month, wounding nine people in an attack during the early hours of the morning Tuesday. 

Amateur video shows taxi drivers surveying damage to vehicles outside the main airport terminal building.

Saudi media quoted al Maliki as saying that nine civilians were wounded in the drone attack, which he called a “terrorist act.” Maliki also stated that the attack on a civilian target might qualify as a “war crime.”

It was the third Houthi drone attack on Abha Airport in less than a month.

Drone targets pipeline 

A drone attack on Saudi oil pumping stations in May temporarily shut down the Yanbaw oil pipeline to the Red Sea.

Yemen’s Houthis also claimed responsibility for that attack, although U.S. military sources think the drones used in the attack might have come from Iraq, rather than Yemen.

“Beginning of escalation”

Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, said he thinks attacks on Saudi targets, like the ones on Abha Airport, are “clearly related to the situation with Iran,” and he argues they are more likely to escalate than to taper off given the current tensions between Washington and Tehran.

“I think this is the beginning of escalation,” Khashan said. “The Iranians are increasing their enrichment of uranium and … I am bracing for further developments and further military action in the region. The Iranians operate under the assumption that the Trump Administration does not want war, [that] Trump is focused on the economy and on getting re-elected. So, the Iranians calculation may be that they will do anything in order to derail his efforts.”

Khashan went on to underscore that the “Houthi attacks on Saudi airspace and Abha and Jizan Airports point to the frailty of Saudi defenses,” despite the country’s hefty military budget.

“Raises the stakes”

Washington-based Gulf analyst Theodore Karasik tells VOA that attempts by Houthi drones to hit southern Saudi Arabia are becoming a daily occurrence and the “threat to civil aviation … raises the stakes dramatically.”

Karasik notes that U.N. Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths is currently visiting the UAE, after a trip to Moscow, and he says there is “a growing consensus that the threat must be dealt with quickly.”

‘Saudi TV indicated the kingdom “may respond to the Houthi attack” on Abha Airport, but it provided no further details.

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Despite rising incidence of far-right violence in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Justice Department continue to deprioritize investigating the violence and prosecuting its perpetrators, according to a report released Monday.

While a handful of high-profile cases are sometimes designated as acts of “domestic terrorism” and receive the law enforcement agencies’ full investigative attention, the overwhelming majority are treated as hate crimes, gang violence and run-of-the-mill homicides, pushing them down the agencies’ list of priorities, the report says.

The report was prepared by the Brennan Center for Justice a nonpartisan law and policy institute at New York University School of Law.

Labels matter

The label the FBI chooses to characterize an act of violence is important in determining the amount of resources devoted to the case and how wide an investigative net is cast, according to the report. Investigating terrorism currently tops the FBI’s list of eight priorities and is well resourced. Hate crimes rank fifth while gang violence comes in sixth.

“Under current Justice Department policies, how far-right violence targeting people based on race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability gets categorized is often arbitrary,” report authors Michael German and Emmanuel Mauleon write in “Fighting Far-Right Violence and Hate Crimes.” “But it has significant consequences for how federal officials label these crimes in public statements, how they prioritize and track them, and whether they will investigate and prosecute them.”

The report follows a string of high-profile far-right attacks that have highlighted the problem of right wing violence in the United States. Last October, white supremacist Robert Bowers burst into a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue, gunning down 11 worshippers and wounding six others. In April, another far-right extremist, John T. Earnest, walked into a San Diego synagogue, shooting four people, one fatally, just weeks after setting fire to a nearby mosque.

Yet the FBI doesn’t keep track of the casualties, which serves to keep analysts and policymakers in the dark about the extent of the problem and how best to tackle it.

“It’s astonishing that with the FBI transitioning into an intelligence agency (in the post-9/11 era), it doesn’t know how many people white supremacists kill across this country every year,” said German, a former FBI undercover agent.

The FBI publishes an annual tally of hate crimes by race, religion, gender and a host of other categories. Last year, the bureau reported a total of more than 7,000 hate crimes in 2017.

Handing off hate crimes

The Brennan Center report also criticized the Justice Department for deferring the vast majority of hate crime investigations to state and local authorities who “are often ill-equipped or unwilling to properly respond to these crimes.” The report recommended that the FBI “treat all hate crime cases where deadly violence is involved among its top investigative priorities.”

The Justice Department prosecutes about 25 hate crime cases a year.

Asked for comment on the report, a Justice Department spokeswoman cited recent statements by top Justice officials that prosecuting hate crimes and domestic terrorism remains a top priority for the Justice Department.

“Anyone who commits a crime motivated by hatred for the race, color, religion, national origin or other protected trait of any person should be on notice: The United States government will use its enormous power to bring perpetrators to justice, and we will continue to do so for as long as it takes to rid our nation of these vile and monstrous crimes,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said in a statement Friday after a federal judge imposed a life sentence on James Alex Fields Jr., who drove his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, murdering a civil rights activist.

The FBI did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the report.

In May, Mike McGarrity, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, told U.S. lawmakers that the bureau doesn’t “differentiate between a domestic attack we’re trying to stop or an international terrorism attack.”

“It’s a terrorist attack we’re trying to stop,” McGarrity testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security.

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Cattleman Laurentino Cortizo was sworn in as Panama’s president Monday, saying he will work during his five-year term to boost the economy and bring transparency in contracting for public works projects.
 
The 66-year-old won an election two weeks ago that was the tightest in Panama’s recent history, triumphing with only 31 percent of the vote as the candidate of the Democratic Revolutionary Party.
 
Cortizo, who succeeds Juan Carlos Varela, said he would stoke the economy by pushing for public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects and also address corruption in government contracting.
 
“We have monumental challenges,” Cortizo said. “We’re coming off a decade lost to corruption. There’s no place for indifference in the country.”
 
Noting that some 700,000 of Panama’s 4 million citizens live in poverty, Cortizo said, “What a tremendous responsibility we have to those who have been left behind.”
 
Cortizo inherits a slowing economy and growing frustration among Panamanians about official corruption. The economy grew 3.7% last year and unemployment reached 6%.
 
The new president said he would create next week a Unit for the Competitiveness of International Services to make sure Panama is the top business services and logistics center in Latin America.
 
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the presidents of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic were among those at the ceremony. Ross said he had met with Cortizo on Sunday and discussed a desire to grow their economies together.
 
Cortizo also said he would work to repair Panama’s image as a fiscal haven that has not effectively cooperated in the fight against money laundering.
 
“This is a new beginning … (to) rescue Panama,” he said after being sworn in by the new leader of congress at a Panama City convention center. “Our country has been disrespected and mistreated. … It stops here! It stops today!”
 
Some analysts said the new president will have to focus on an internal cleanup regarding recurring scandals, some of them of international scope, such as a regionwide bribery case involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
 
“If Cortizo wants to improve Panama’s international reputation, he will have to attack corruption at home,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialoge in Washington. “If he has success on that internal front, that will help repair the Panama’s image.”
 
Cortizo sent a strong message on corruption, savaging previous administrations in particular.
 
“We come from a lost decade … of corruption, of improvisation, of stealing money from Panamanians,” he said, though his party, which was last in power a decade ago, has also been implicated in scandal.

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The battle for Tripoli may have hit a turning point over the weekend with the capture of a key town. But with the future of the country at stake, fighting between the warring parties is likely to escalate, as VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Libya. 
 

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The women mountaineers of Africa are reaching for new heights, following in the footsteps of the first black African woman to scale Mount Everest. Now four other South Africans are training to become the first all-female African team to climb the world’s tallest peak.

Deshun Deysel, Lisa Gering, Tumi Mphahlele and Alda Waddell are training on the sandstone cliffs of South Africa’s Drankensberg Mountains. They hope that next year, they can become the first team of African women to conquer Mount Everest.

Their inspiration

The women are inspired by South African business executive Saray Khumalo, who in May became the first black African woman to climb the world’s highest mountain, which stands at 8,848 meters tall.

Africa has few mountains to practice on, but Khumalo says that is not a problem.

“What excites me even more is that those coming behind us, behind me, effectively won’t have to struggle as much as I have had, you know,” she said. “Even though we’re not born in a place where there’re mountains, there’s ice and snow and more. So, when the ladies go next year, I think it’s going to open up even more doors.”

Each team member does her own intensive mental and physical training along with group sessions to prepare for the difficult climb.

Alda Waddell explains:

“There’s different elements that you need to train for. It is the technical, the equipment that you need to understand. It is the physical that you need to be able to do. And then also the cold. You need to be able to manage the cold. And then lastly, it’s the altitude,” she said.

Levels of experience

The women have different levels of experience in mountaineering.

In 1996, Deshun Deysel became the first black South African woman to set foot on Mount Everest.

While she wasn’t able to reach the summit, since then she’s scaled mountains on five continents.

“When I first started high-altitude climbing there was so few women in the mountains,” she said. “If I look around now, especially in the South African climbing community, that number definitely increased and because of that we have a greater pool of women to choose from. So why not have an all-female team?”

As South African women entrepreneurs, the team sees parallels with running a business in a male-dominated world and climbing the world’s tallest mountain.

They want their attempt to scale Mount Everest to inspire more African women to reach for the top.

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Africa’s women mountaineers are reaching new heights.  In May, South African businesswoman Saray Khumalo became the first black African woman to summit Mount Everest. Now four other South Africans are preparing to become the first all-women African team to climb the world’s tallest peak. Marize de Klerk reports from Waterval Boven, South Africa.

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The third meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has drawn praise as well as criticism.  Critics say Trump is showering attention on a dictator without getting any concessions on the North Korean nuclear development, while others see it as a ray of hope for a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula.  VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, stepping across the border during a meeting at the demilitarized zone with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

After shaking hands with Kim at the Panmunjom border village, Trump walked across the military demarcation line separating the two Koreas. Kim and Trump then crossed the border back into South Korea. 

“Good to see you again,” Kim told Trump. “I never expected to see you in this place.” 

“Stepping across that line was a great honor,” said Trump, who invited Kim to the United States for another meeting.

Trump on Saturday had said the meeting would only last two minutes. However, Trump’s private talks with Kim lasted about 50 minutes, turning into an impromptu summit.

When Trump emerged from the meeting, he announced he and Kim had agreed to form teams to restart working level talks. 

“They will meet over the next few weeks and they’re going to start a process and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “Speed is not the object…we want a really comprehensive, good deal.” 

Leaving South Korea after a wonderful meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2019

It is the third meeting between Kim and Trump, following meetings in Singapore last June and in Vietnam in February. Though the DMZ summit raises hopes of revived nuclear talks, it’s not clear how much progress was made.

Nuclear progress?

Trump announced his negotiating team would continue to be led by Steve Biegun, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea. He said that North Korea “was also putting someone in charge who we know and who we like,” though he didn’t elaborate.

After the Singapore summit, Trump also announced his deputies would soon start working level negotiations. But those talks soon broke down over disagreements about how to pace sanctions relief with North Korea’s steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons. 

“It’s where we were about 15 months ago,” says Vipin Narang, a nuclear expert and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “One step forward, two steps back. But this is one step forward.” 

“Given where we were last week, it’s not nothing,” he added. 

The disagreements between the U.S. and North Korea remain vast. Not only has North Korea not provided a list of its nuclear sites, Washington and Pyongyang have not even agreed on what the idea of denuclearization means. 

In recent weeks, North Korea expressed increasing levels of anger at the U.S. refusal to relax sanctions. Trump prefers a “big deal” under which North Korea commits to completely abandoning his nuclear weapons before relaxing any sanctions.

In their public comments Sunday, neither Trump nor Kim gave any indication of softening their stances.

“There was no sign that the two sides were prepared to address the underlying substantive problems, like differences over sanctions relief, that have made diplomacy so difficult,” says Mintaro Oba, a former State Department official and Korea specialist.  

“Unless the working-level negotiators have a mandate to try new, more constructive approaches to these problems, it’s hard to see what they can achieve,” he adds.

U.S. officials have given mixed signals about whether they are open to an incremental approach, whereby Pyongyang would give up its nuclear program in stages in exchange for reciprocal steps by Washington.

Building trust or theatrics?

Trump visited the DMZ with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Though the three leaders did not make any public statement together, they briefly appeared together before Trump and Kim met for private talks.

At an earlier military briefing with Moon at a DMZ lookout point, Trump said the demilitarized zone used to be “very, very dangerous…but after our first summit, all the danger went away.” 

Trump also defended his North Korea policy and blasted media that have questioned whether he should meet with Kim, given that talks with North Korea are stalled.  

“I say that for the press, they have no appreciation for what we’ve done,” Trump said.

While many warn the latest summit risked normalizing friendly relations with a brutal dictator, South Korea’s President Moon said the meeting was an important step toward building trust with North Korea.

“We have taken one big step forward,” Moon said. “The…Korean people have been given hope thanks to today.”

But Bonnie Glaser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that for Trump, stepping inside North Korea might not signify any change in policy.

Trump, she said, delights in doing things no president has done before.”

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The Senate’s top Democrat called on the U.S. government Sunday to step up its efforts to investigate the deaths of Americans who traveled to the Dominican Republic and is asking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get involved.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the agency should step in to lend investigative support to the FBI and local law enforcement officials after at least eight Americans died in the Dominican Republic this year. Family members of the tourists have called on authorities to investigate whether there’s any connection between the deaths and have raised the possibility the deaths may have been caused by adulterated alcohol or misused pesticides.

The ATF – the agency primarily investigates firearms-related crimes but is also charged with regulating alcohol and tobacco – is uniquely positioned to provide technical and forensic expertise in the investigation, Schumer said. The agency also has offices in the Caribbean.

“Given that we still have a whole lot of questions and very few answers into just what, if anything, is cause for the recent spate of sicknesses and several deaths of Americans in the Dominican Republic, the feds should double their efforts on helping get to the bottom of things,” Schumer said in a statement to The Associated Press.

An ATF spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Francisco Javier Garcia, the tourism minister in the Dominican Republic, said earlier this month that the deaths are not part of any mysterious wave of fatalities but instead are a statistically normal phenomenon that has been lumped together by the U.S. media. He said autopsies show the tourists died of natural causes.

Five of the autopsies were complete as of last week, while three were undergoing further toxicological analysis with the help from the FBI because of the circumstances of the deaths.

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Israel’s prime minister says the Palestinians are “determined to continue the conflict at any price.”

Speaking at his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu was referring to the Palestinian leadership’s rejection of last week’s Mideast peace conference in Bahrain aimed at providing economic assistance.

Netanyahu says while Israel welcomed the U.S.’s $50 billion Palestinian development plan, the Palestinians themselves denounced it and even arrested a Palestinian businessman who participated in it.

Netanyahu says, “This is not how those who want to promote peace act.”

Palestinian forces have since released businessman Saleh Abu Mayala.

The Palestinian Authority accuses the Trump administration of being biased toward Israel and has boycotted it since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017. They accuse the U.S. of trying to replace Palestinian statehood with money.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday appealed a U.S. judge’s ruling that blocked his administration from using $2.5 billion in funds intended for anti-drug activities to construct a wall along the southern border with Mexico. 

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers said in a court filing that they were formally appealing Friday’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

“We’re immediately appealing it, and we think we’ll win the appeal,” Trump said during a press conference Saturday at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in Japan. 

“There was no reason that that should’ve happened,” Trump said. 

Trump says construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico 
border is needed to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs, but he has so far been unable to get congressional approval for such a project. 

Judge Blocks Plans to Build Part of Southern Border Wall

A federal judge blocked on Friday President Donald Trump from building sections of his long-sought border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr., immediately halted the administration’s efforts to redirect military-designated funds for wall construction. His order applies to two high-priority projects to replace 51 miles (82 kilometers) of fence in two areas on the Mexican border.

Gilliam issued the ruling after hearing arguments last week in two cases.

In February, the Trump administration declared a national 
emergency to reprogram $6.7 billion in funds that Congress had allocated for other purposes to build the wall, which groups and states including California had challenged. 

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, Calif., said in a pair of court decisions that the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer Defense Department funds intended for anti-drug activities was unlawful. 

One of Gilliam’s rulings was in a lawsuit filed by California on behalf of 20 states, while the other was in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in coordination with the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition. 

“These rulings critically stop President Trump’s illegal 
money grab to divert $2.5 billion of unauthorized funding for 
his pet project,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra 
said in a statement late Friday. “All President Trump has 
succeeded in building is a constitutional crisis, threatening 
immediate harm to our state.” 

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A leader in the fight for health benefits for emergency personnel who responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. has died.

Former New York City Police detective Luis Alvarez died from colorectal cancer Saturday, his family announced in a post On Facebook.

The 53-year-old Alvarez appeared with American comedian and political activist Jon Stewart before a House Judiciary subcommittee on June 11 to appeal for an extension of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.

A frail Alvarez told the panel, “This fund is not a ticket to paradise, it’s to provide our families with care.” He went on to say “You all said you would never forget. Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t.”

Alvarez was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. His illness was traced to the three months he spent searching for survivors in the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center’s twin towers that were destroyed in the terrorist attacks.

He was admitted to a hospice on Long Island, New York within a few days of his testimony in Washington.

Legislation to replenish the $7.3 billion compensation fund that provides health benefits to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders passed the full committee unanimously.

The federal government opened the fund in 2011 to compensate responders and their families for deaths and illnesses that were linked to exposure to toxins. Current projections indicate the fund will be depleted at the end of 2020.

Other responders who spent weeks at the site have also been diagnosed with A variety of cancers and other illnesses.

The World Trade Center Health Program, a separate program associated with a fund run by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said more than 12,000 related cases of cancer had also been diagnosed as of May.

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Since Portugal’s colony of Macau reverted to Chinese control in 1999, it has become known for operating the world’s most profitable gaming industry and a go-along, get-along attitude toward Beijing.

However, the continuing protests in Hong Kong over a controversial extradition bill may be triggering some small change of political attitudes in Macau, 65 kilometers (40.4 miles) away by ferry. Hong Kong businesses closed to support protests, so did some Macau shops, for example.

Jose Pereira Coutinho, president of the pro-democracy New Hope party in Macau, and one of the most influential members of its legislative assembly, told VOA that despite the different legal systems in Macau and Hong Kong, the two Special Administrative Regions of China “are highly similar in the ways of life and their societies in general. We always reflect on what happens in Hong Kong. The recent protests there … are a lesson for the Macau government to not step into a wrong decision, so that the mistakes would not happen … in Macau.”

His is not the only voice hinting at change.

‘One citizen, one photo’ protest

Macau Concealers, a pro-democracy newspaper, organized a “one citizen, one photo” event that asked people to submit photos of themselves holding protest signs.

Jia Lu, a Macanese journalist, said in his commentary on the Hong Kong protest: “Liberty is never free bread to be taken for granted. Today, as long as you are a human, there is no reason to be silent.”

Some Macau activists traveled across the Pearl River estuary to join the Hong Kong protests.

Macanese reporter Jiajun Chen posted on Facebook during the first week of protests that he was injured by the hot chili spray the Hong Kong police used to control protesters as he covered the crowds. Then, while receiving first aid at the scene, he received another stinging dose from the Hong Kong police. Chen said his press pass was visible during both sprays.

“We are just so used to complaining, often in private, but rarely take action,” Di Ng, 27, a Macanese independent filmmaker, told VOA in a phone interview.

“Macau is a very traditional society largely controlled by different she tuan,” he said. She tuan are foundations and associations organized according to industries, interests, family ties and social identities.

“The elderly get to organize the social order, and they are usually pro-[Beijing]. Even youngsters who want to speak out are discouraged by this social structure.”

“Only after coming to Taiwan did I realize that the definition of a modern society should include democracy, not just fancy mega-casinos and free cash from the government,” said Ng, who is now doing graduate work in film at Taipei’s National Taiwan University of Arts.

Macau vs Hong Kong

Meng U Ieong, an assistant professor from the department of government and public administration in University of Macau, cautioned that the values of modern Western democracies are less popular in Macau than they are in Hong Kong, even though Macau was a Portuguese colony for 442 years, or 286 longer years than Hong Kong was under British rule.

“The social mobilization mechanism is very different between Hong Kong and Macau,” he told VOA in an email.

He pointed to the large-scale protest in Macau in 2014 that halted a controversial pension plan for retired officials as the kind of event used as evidence that Macanese will take to the streets only for pocketbook issues.

Abstract “social issues which do not relate to very specific and tangible interests,” such as the extradition bill upsetting Hong Kong, are unlikely to generate protests in Macau, according to Ieong. 

Since 2008, Macau’s government has given an annual cash handout to residents. For 2018, all local permanent residents received a cash handout of 10,000 patacas, or about $1,245. Nonpermanent residents received 6,000 patacas.

This largesse is because of Macau’s gaming industry. Its revenues overtook those from the Las Vegas Strip in 2007, according to Reuters.

In 2018, the “Vegas of China” tallied $38 billion, according to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, the haul was $6.6 billion in 2018, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

For both Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, and Macau, the changeover from European colony to Chinese territory came with the concept of “one country, two systems.” Communist Party reformer Deng Xiaoping designed the concept as a way to gather Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan into China, while preserving their political and economic systems. 

Taiwan remains independent. Hong Kong has met Beijing’s tightening controls with protests, including the most recent, and largest, ones over a proposed law that would allow extradition for trial in China. The law is backed by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who is closely aligned with Beijing and who has apologized for the current controversy.

In 2014, Beijing’s interference with the selection of candidates for the chief executive position spawned the Occupy Central or Umbrella Movement. It focused on demands for universal suffrage, which is a long-term goal of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

Success story

Macau, however, emerged as the “one country, two systems” success story. Unlike Hong Kong, with its global reputation as a business center bound by the rule of law, Macau largely depends on gaming and has shown little resistance to Beijing’s influence, according to a recent Foreign Policy article.

“There is stronger Chinese influence [in Macau]. Plus, we usually just see things in economic terms, unlike Hong Kongers who uphold the value of democracy that they inherited from the British,” said a 17-year-old Macanese student. A freshman at a Los Angeles area college, she asked to remain anonymous because she was in Hong Kong attending orientation for non-U.S. students when the protests erupted.

Eilo Yu, an associate professor in the department of government and public administration at University of Macau, expects the Hong Kong protests to influence Macau’s August vote for its chief executive.

“If Mr. Ho Iat Seng, whom I believe will be the only candidate, cannot manage well in responding [to the protest], this will hurt his legitimacy in ruling when he becomes the CE,” Yu said to VOA in an email. “The current situation may be good to his campaign [in] that he need not make a firm statement for a possible extradition between Mainland and Macao. However, if Carrie Lam is going to resign during the Macau election, Ho will be questioned and pressured on his possible resignation when his performance” disappoints Macao citizens.

“We were known for being silent,” said Ng, the filmmaker. “But with the Hong Kongers setting the example, things might be different in the future.”

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VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman in Osaka, Japan, and Dorian Jones in Istanbul contributed to this report.

U.S. President Donald Trump praised Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the two met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan, calling him a “friend of mine” who has done a “spectacular job.”

Trump said Saturday he appreciated Saudi Arabia’s purchase of U.S. military equipment and said the prince has worked to open up his country with economic and social reforms.

The U.S. president declined to respond to questions from the media on whether he would raise the issue of the death last year of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi prince has faced international scrutiny since Khashoggi was killed in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul last year.

Following their working breakfast on Saturday, the White House said the two leaders had a productive meeting, discussing the growing threat from Iran, the need to ensure stability in global oil markets and the importance of human rights issues.
 

Trump is set to meet later Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to restart trade negotiations between the countries that broke off last month.

Trump, asked by VOA News during his meeting Friday at the summit with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro whether he expects Xi to put a trade deal offer on the table Saturday, replied: “We’ll see what happens tomorrow. It’ll be a very exciting day, I’m sure, for a lot of people, including the world. … It’s going to come out hopefully well for both countries and ultimately it will work out.”

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said this week that Trump did not agree to any preconditions for the high-stakes meeting with Xi and was maintaining his threat to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods. 
 
Trump has threatened another $325 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which would cover just about everything China exports to the U.S. that is not already covered by the current 25% tariff on $250 billion in Chinese imports.  
  
China has slapped its own tariffs on U.S. products, including those produced by already financially strapped American farmers.  
  
The chief of staff to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, said Friday that the “best-case scenario” for Saturday’s talks would be a resumption of trade negotiations between the United States and China. 
 
Eleven rounds of previous talks have failed to ease U.S. concerns about China’s massive trade surplus and China’s acquisition of U.S. technology. 
 
The latest round of talks broke down in May, when Washington accused Beijing of going back on its pledge to change Chinese laws to enact economic reforms. 
 
Neither the United Sates nor China has indicated it will back down from previous positions that led to the current stalemate.  
  

Trump is also scheduled to meet Saturday with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting is seen as the last chance to avoid a rupture in ties between the NATO allies over Turkey’s procurement of Russia’s S-400 missile system.
 
Before leaving for Japan, Erdogan played down the threat of sanctions. “I don’t know if NATO countries began to impose sanctions on each other. I did not receive this impression during my contact with Trump,” he said Wednesday to reporters. 
 
The Turkish president told the Nikkei Asian Review, in an interview published Wednesday, that he was expecting a breakthrough with Trump. 
 
“I believe my meeting with U.S. President Trump during the G-20 summit will be important for eliminating the deadlock in our bilateral relations and strengthening our cooperation,” he said. 

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Political unease over the White House’s tough talk against Iran is reviving questions about President Donald Trump’s ability to order military strikes without approval from Congress.

The Senate fell short Friday, in a 50-40 vote, on an amendment to a sweeping Defense bill that would require congressional support before Trump acts. It didn’t reach the 60-vote threshold needed for passage. But lawmakers said the majority showing sent a strong message that Trump cannot continue relying on the nearly 2-decade-old war authorizations Congress approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The House is expected to take up the issue next month.

“A congressional vote is a pretty good signal of what our constituents are telling us — that another war in the Middle East would be a disaster right now, we don’t want the president to just do it on a whim,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a co-author of the measure with Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. “My gut tells me that the White House is realizing this is deeply unpopular with the American public.”

The effort in the Senate signals discomfort with Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Four Republicans joined most Democrats in supporting the amendment, but it faces steep resistance from the White House and the Pentagon wrote a letter opposing it.

McConnell: ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it nothing more than another example of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which he explained as whatever the president’s for “they seem to be against.”

McConnell said putting restrictions on the White House would “hamstring” the president’s ability to respond militarily at a time of escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran.

“They have gratuitously chosen to make him the enemy,” McConnell said. “Rather than work with the president to deter our actual enemy, they have chosen to make him the enemy.”

Trump: No congressional approval needed

Trump’s approach to the standoff with Iran and his assertion earlier this week that he doesn’t need congressional approval to engage militarily has only sparked fresh questions and hardened views in Congress.

Trump tweeted last week that the U.S. came within minutes of striking Iran in response to its shooting down of an unmanned U.S. drone until he told the military to stand down. He said he was concerned over an Iranian casualty count estimated at 150.

“We’ve been keeping Congress abreast of what we’re doing … and I think it’s something they appreciate,” Trump told The Hill website. “I do like keeping them abreast, but I don’t have to do it legally.”

As the popular Defense bill was making its way through the Senate, Democrats vowed to hold back their support unless McConnell agreed to debate the war powers. The defense bill was roundly approved Thursday on a vote of 86-8.

Schumer urges Congress to act

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York assembled his caucus earlier this week. In a series of closed-door meetings he argued that Congress had ceded too much authority to presidents of both parties, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private sessions. Schumer said the amendment would prohibit funds to be used for hostilities with Iran without the OK of Congress.

Schumer also said that the American people are worried that U.S. and Iran are on a dangerous collision course and that even though Trump campaigned on not wanting to get the U.S. embroiled in wars he “may bumble us into one.”

“It is high time that Congress re-establishes itself as this nation’s decider of war and peace,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Romney counters

To counter the Democrats’ effort, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah pushed forward an alternative to Udall’s amendment that reaffirmed the U.S. can defend itself and respond to any attacks. But Romney said his version is not an authorization to use force against Iran.

“I fully concur with my Senate colleagues who desire to reassert our constitutional role,” Romney said on the Senate floor. But he warned that the Udall amendment goes too far. “The president should not have his hands tied.”

The debate over whether the legislative or executive branch has sole power over war-making depends on how one interprets the Constitution, experts said.

In recent years, the U.S. military has been deployed under old war authorizations passed in 2001 and 2002 for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some lawmakers have pushed to pass new war powers acts, but none have materialized, though the House last week voted to sunset those authorizations.

Pompeo lists Iran’s aggressions

In ticking off a list of Iranian acts of “unprovoked aggression,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently asserted that a late May car bombing of a U.S. convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan, was among a series of threats or attacks by Iran and its proxies against American and allies interests. At the time, the Taliban claimed credit for the attack, with no public word of Iranian involvement.

Pompeo’s inclusion of the Afghanistan attack in his list of six Iranian incidents raised eyebrows in Congress. Pompeo and other administration officials have suggested that they would be legally justified in taking military action against Iran under the 2001 authorization.

That law gave President George W. Bush authority to retaliate against al-Qaida and the Taliban for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It has subsequently been used to allow military force against extremists elsewhere, from the Philippines to Syria.

The Senate amendment addressed the question about how much Congress can restrict the president, said Scott R. Anderson, a legal expert at Brookings Institution.

“If they actually pass it, it would be very substantive because it would be putting limits on the president that have never been there before,” Anderson said.

Even though the measure failed to reach the 60 votes needed, the House will likely try to attach its own limits on military action in Iran with its Defense bill next month. 
 

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