On National Religious Freedom Day, Jan. 16, the U.S. government released what it refers to as an updated guidance that lays out what President Donald Trump calls the “right to pray.” White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

Japanese environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi, who has said he will take paternity leave in a rare move for a Japanese man, announced on Friday the birth of his first child: a boy.

Koizumi, son of charismatic former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and seen as a future leader himself, said on Wednesday he was planning to take two weeks of leave over three months, in an effort to become a role model for Japan’s working fathers.

But some lawmakers have criticized his interest in taking parental leave, saying he should prioritize his public duties.

The telegenic Koizumi, popularly known as Shinjiro to distinguish him from his father, grabbed headlines in the summer of 2019 with news he was marrying Christel Takigawa, a French-Japanese television personality, and that they were expecting a child. Soon after, he was named environment minister.

Koizumi told reporters he had come straight from the hospital and had been by his wife’s side for the birth. “As a father I’m really happy that a healthy boy was safely born,” a tired but happy Koizumi told a news conference. “Both of them are doing well, that’s the most important thing.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to encourage more men to take paternity leave, and for businesses to allow a better work-life balance, as part of his “Womenomics” program of bolstering women’s employment.

While Japan’s parental leave policies are among the world’s most generous, providing men and women with partially paid leave of up to a year, or longer if there is no public child care, just 6% of eligible fathers take child care leave, and most of them for less than a week, according to government data.

‘Follow his example’

Koizumi acknowledged that he had heard comments both for and against his decision.

“I’ll keep a priority on policy and on managing anything unexpected that comes up, while also carving out time for child care,” he said.

The reaction on the streets of central Tokyo was supportive. “I think it’s a wonderful thing,” said Hitoshi Aoki, a 35-year-old company employee. “It is a very new and good thing for someone who has authority to take initiative with his action.”

Kotaro Suzuki, a 22-year-old university student, said: “I hope my boss would say ‘OK’ when I request to take (paternity leave). I wish our society becomes like that.”

Cabinet ministers also lauded Koizumi’s decision, with Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura – a father of three daughters – hoping it would have a positive social impact. “I hope he can take as much time as possible. It’ll be really good if many more men follow his example and take time
off.”

Koizumi seemed to still be adjusting to his new role. “I don’t really feel like a father yet, but that should come soon. I want to be a father like my dad was,” he was quoted by NHK television as saying.

Shinjiro’s father divorced his mother when she was pregnant with their third son and never remarried. He told the couple when they announced their marriage that everybody “should try matrimony once.”

 

The legal team of Nissan’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn issued a statement Friday refuting the latest allegations by the Japanese automaker against the fugitive businessman.

Nissan Motor Co. on Thursday filed a new set of allegations to the Tokyo Stock Exchange against Ghosn, who skipped bail and fled to Lebanon earlier this month, saying he could not get a fair trial in Japan.

The lawyers said that Nissan’s complaints were biased and that it never questioned Ghosn about them. They also said Nissan never tried to interview Ghosn or Greg Kelly, another former executive facing charges of financial misconduct, or “bothered to solicit their knowledge of the facts.”

His lawyers also complained that Latham & Watkins, which conducted the investigation, had long been Nissan’s outside counsel.

Nissan confirmed both were true, but denied there was any conflict of interest.

Ghosn’s legal team also complained that Nissan waited for months to investigate Ghosn’s successor, former Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa, and only after Kelly publicly raised concerns.

Saikawa resigned last year over allegations about dubious income. He has not been charged.

“This report confirms that Nissan’s investigation was biased, lacked integrity and independence, and was designed and executed for the predetermined purpose of taking out Carlos Ghosn,” Frank Pasquier and the other lawyers said in a statement.

Both Ghosn and Kelly say they are innocent.

Ghosn was charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for personal gain. He says the compensation was never decided on or paid, and the payments were for legitimate business.

Kelly is accused of helping Ghosn underreport his income.

Yokohama-based Nissan says Ghosn “single-handedly” decided on his compensation. It has promised to beef up corporate governance since the arrest of Ghosn in November 2018.

Japan and Lebanon do not have an extradition treaty. Experts say it is virtually impossible to continue Ghosn’s trial in Japan. Kelly and Nissan as a company are still expected to stand trial.

Ukraine has asked the FBI in the United States for help  investigating a suspected cyberattack by Russian military hackers on Burisma, an energy company caught up in the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Ukrainian interior ministry on Thursday also announced an investigation into the possible illegal surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch, formerly the American ambassador to Kiev, following the release of text messages this week by the U.S. Congress as part of the impeachment case.

The FBI said it had visited the home and business of Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut who sent the text messages to Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, that suggested Hyde had Yovanovitch under surveillance. The FBI declined to give further details.

Hyde was not immediately available for comment but on Twitter he has said he has never been to Kiev and that he made up the story about keeping watch on Yovanovitch to fool Parnas.

The FBI declined to comment on Ukraine’s request for help after California-based cybersecurity company Area 1 Security on Monday identified the hacking of Burisma Holdings and linked it to Russia’s Main Directorate of Military Intelligence, or GRU.

Burisma was at the center of attempts by Trump in July to persuade Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential contender, and his son, Hunter, who used to have a seat on the Ukrainian company’s board.

There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, who reject Trump’s allegations of corruption.

Trump’s efforts have led to him being impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The president, who denies wrongdoing, faces a trial in the U.S. Senate next week.

The same hacking group, known as “Fancy Bear” or “APT28” by cybersecurity researchers, breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016 in what U.S. investigators described as part of an operation to disrupt that year’s election.

Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment about Area 1 Security’s assertions.

“It is noted that the hacking attack was probably committed by the Russian special services,” Ukrainian interior ministry official Artem Minyailo said at a briefing.

Minyailo said Ukraine had asked the FBI and Area 1 Security for assistance regarding information that hackers stole personal employee data and emails from executives at Burisma and other companies. These other companies included the media production company of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he said.

“The national police has initiated the creation of a joint  international investigation team, to which FBI representatives have already been invited by the ministry,” Minyailo said.

Yovanovitch surveillance probe

It was not clear what data the hackers wanted to steal, Area 1 said. Breaching Burisma could yield communications from, to or about Hunter Biden, who served as a director between 2014 and 2019.

A source close to Burisma told Reuters earlier this week the company’s website had been subject to multiple break-in attempts over the past six months but did not provide further details.

Ukrainian officials said they were also probing allegations that Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, was subject to illegal surveillance before Trump fired her in May.

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN on Thursday he had sent a letter to the State Department seeking an immediate briefing.

A former senior security official with the U.S. State Department told Reuters he did not regard the Hyde text messages as constituting an actual threat to Yovanovitch.

“I would have trouble going to a U.S. Attorney and saying, ‘I want an arrest warrant for this person or I want to open an investigation,’” said the former senior security official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

“I might send somebody to talk with them and say, you know, ‘You have any intent to harm her?’ and if he says no and there’s no other evidence to the contrary … that’s probably as far as I would go.”

A week ago, koalas at an Australian wildlife park were in the path of raging bushfires. On Friday, they were soaking wet and being carried to safety from flash floods.

Months of drought that have contributed to Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season have this week given way to huge downpours in some of the blaze-ravaged areas.

At the Australian Reptile Park on the nation’s east coast near Sydney, heavy rains on Friday morning sent torrents of water through its bushland setting.

Images released by the park showed soaking wet koalas clinging to gum trees, and a zoo keeper carrying two of the marsupials to safety through rushing waters.

Water levels in the lagoon for the park’s alligators also rose up close to the top of the fence.

A zoo keeper is seen leaning over the fence and trying to push an alligator back down with a broom as it stretches up in an apparent bid to escape.

“This is incredible, just last week, we were having daily meetings to discuss the imminent threat of bushfires,” park director Tim Faulkner said.

“Today, we’ve had the whole team out there, drenched, acting fast to secure the safety of our animals and defend the park from the onslaught of water.

“We haven’t seen flooding like this at the park for over 15 years.”

The bushfires, which began in September, have claimed 28 lives and are estimated to have killed more than a billion animals across eastern and southern Australia.

The wet weather this week has given exhausted firefighters a huge boost, helping to reduce or contain some blazes.

But dozens of fires remain out of control, and authorities have warned the crisis could worsen again with Australia only half way through its summer.

“The contrast between the current bushfire crisis and this sudden flooding is striking,” Faulkner said.

“But we are well-aware that a huge part of Australia is still burning, and millions of animals are still under threat.”

The Pentagon is rejecting accusations that military leadership “incentivized lying” to portray a more optimistic picture of U.S. efforts in the nearly two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

“The idea that there was some … effort to hide the truth or the reality on the ground just doesn’t hold water,” chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters Thursday.

“This idea that there were somehow misstatements or lies, I don’t think that really gels,” he added.

Hoffman’s response took aim at comments by U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, who testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“We have incentivized lying to Congress,” Sopko told lawmakers. “The whole incentive is to show success and to ignore the failure. And when there’s too much failure, classify it or don’t report it.”

Lawmakers created the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, in 2008 and it has been producing quarterly reports on U.S. reconstruction efforts ever since.

Many of the reports have been critical of U.S. efforts, criticism that gained momentum following the release late last year of the Afghanistan Papers — a collection of previously undisclosed SIGAR interviews and notes obtained by The Washington Post.

Hoffman said Thursday that much of the material Sopko cited had been shared willingly, with the understanding it would be shared with Congress.

He also made no apology for how defense officials shared information with the public outside the SIGAR process.

“We have people who are working incredibly hard on incredibly difficult projects, and when they’re asked to take on a difficult task, they look for ways to make it happen,” he said. “If our people are being too forward leaning and trying to be optimistic about what we think we can accomplish, and to be honest and open with the Congress, we’ll continue to do that.”

2020 marks the beginning of a promising decade for Africa, according to African experts and global policymakers who gathered this week for the release of the Brookings Institution’s annual publication on Africa. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on some of the six key priorities, including climate change, regional integration, and the need to develop the energy and private sectors.

Ukrainian authorities say they have opened an investigation into whether Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, was illegally spied on before U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly recalled her from her post last year. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the State Department have not replied to repeated requests for comment on the alleged surveillance and potential physical threats to the 33-year career diplomat. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.

Virginia on Wednesday moved to the brink of becoming the crucial 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in what was seen as a momentous victory for the women’s rights movement even though it is far from certain the measure will ever be added to the U.S. Constitution.

The state House and Senate approved the proposed amendment with bipartisan support, well over a generation after Congress sent the ERA to the states for ratification in 1972. Each chamber now must pass the other’s resolution, but final passage is considered all but certain.

Amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by three-quarters of the states, or 38. But whether this one will go on to become the 28th Amendment may have to be decided in court because the deadline set by Congress for ratification of the ERA ran out in 1982 and because five states that approved it in the 1970s have since rescinded their support.

Still, the twin votes carried symbolic weight and showed how much once-solidly conservative Virginia, a place that defeated the ERA time and again, has changed.

Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a sponsor of the House ERA measure, told her colleagues they were taking “the vote of a lifetime.”

“One hundred and sixty million women and girls across this country are waiting and will forever be changed by what happens in this body here today,” she said.

ERA supporters had lined up hours in advance to get seats in the gallery. Among those who crowded in was Donna Granski, 73, who wore a purple, white and yellow sash covered in ERA buttons, some from her “antique” collection. Granksi said she was shocked when she moved to Virginia in the late ’70s and learned it hadn’t ratified the ERA. She had been pushing for it ever since.

“We feel like we are marching up to the peak of the mountain,” she said.

ERA advocates say it would enshrine equality for women in the Constitution, offering stronger protections in sex discrimination cases. They also argue the ERA would give Congress firmer ground to pass anti-discrimination laws.

Opponents warn it would erode commonsense protections for women, such as workplace accommodations during pregnancy. They also worry it could be used by abortion-rights supporters to quash abortion restrictions on the grounds they discriminate against women.

Virginia has undergone seismic political shifts in recent years because of increasing diversity and the growing activism and political power of women. Democrats retook control of the legislature in November’s elections and made passing the ERA a top priority after Republicans blocked it for years.

The ERA had passed the Virginia Senate in previous years with bipartisan support but had never before made it to the House for a floor vote.

It passed there on a 59-41 vote presided over by Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the first female House speaker in the chamber’s 400-year history. Spectators in the gallery erupted in the cheers as she announced the outcome. The Senate then passed it 28-12.

Republican Del. Margaret Ransone, who voted against the ERA, emphasized the missed deadline and said: “I wish I could say that this dedication and hard work has not all been for nothing.”

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department issued a legal memo contending that because the deadline has expired, it is too late for states to ratify the ERA now. The only option now for ERA supporters is to try to begin the ratification process all over again in Congress, according to the memo.

The National Archives, which certifies the ratification of constitutional amendments, said it will abide by that opinion  “unless otherwise directed by a final court order.”

At least two lawsuits have already been filed, one  of them brought last month by Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota to block the amendment and another  filed last week to clear a path for its adoption. In the meantime, congressional Democrats are working to pass a measure removing the deadline.

Among those disagreeing with the Justice Department opinion is Erwin Chemerinsky, a prominent constitutional law scholar and dean of the Berkeley School of Law. He said Congress can set a deadline and change one, too.

Douglas Johnson, senior policy adviser with the anti-abortion group National Right to Life, endorsed the Justice Department position and said that if the ERA were to be reintroduced, abortion opponents would probably seek to revise it to specify it could not be used to overturn state restrictions on abortion.

There is precedent for Congress to impose deadlines on the ratification process. But no deadline was set in the case of the 27th Amendment, which is aimed at restricting members of Congress from raising their own pay. It was ratified in 1992, or 203 years after it was submitted to Congress in 1789.

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority and former president of the National Organization for Women, said it was “tragic” that a generation of women missed out on the protections the ERA would have offered.

But Smeal, who was a leader in the push for the ERA in the ’70s and ’80s, said the long fight has prompted women to run for political office, where they have increasingly made gains across the country.

“Every time they make us fight more, we get stronger,” she said.

 

 

  

Juliana Desmond is a sculptor. She also has a passion for chocolate. During many of her travels to Mexico,Desmond became inspired to shape and form chocolate that looks like art.

A court in Bangladesh’s capital issued arrest warrants Thursday for a prominent editor and nine other newspaper employees in a case involving the death of a teenager who was electrocuted during a party celebrating the anniversary of one of its popular magazines.  

The Dhaka court issued the warrants for the arrest of Matiur Rahman and other employees at the Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo after a police investigator submitted a report on the death of Naimul Abrar Rahat, 14.  

Omar Faruk Asif, his father’s lawyer, said the investigator told the court that the death occurred because of negligence, and the court accepted the findings and issued the arrest orders.  

Rahat was electrocuted when he touched a wire behind the stage during the celebration on November 1 of the anniversary of Prothom Alo’s youth magazine, Kishor Alo. His father accused Rahman and other employees of negligence resulting in the death.  

After being injured, the boy was taken to a distant hospital that had a prior arrangement with the newspaper, despite there being a well-known hospital nearby, his father said in the complaint. He said the boy might have survived had the authorities taken him to the closer hospital.

Rahman’s office declined to comment on the arrest warrants.

Prothom Alo is an influential newspaper with wide reach among Bangladesh’s growing middle class.

Since the program was initiated nearly a decade ago, recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, have not been eligible for federal financial aid because they are not American citizens. But just last year, a small university in Virginia successfully pushed to be included on a list of a small number of American schools offering a private scholarship to help DACA students pay for their tuition. VOA’s Esha Sarai went to Marymount University to find out more

Millions of children in Sudan go to work each day instead of to school, in part because of widespread poverty, and in part because the education system does not have the resources to accommodate them. Naba Mohiedeen reports from Khartoum.

The U.S. Senate is expected to approve a North American trade agreement Thursday.

If the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is approved as expected, it will be sent to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

The USMCA would replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade agreement, known as NAFTA.

The legislation includes new rules on auto manufacturing, e-commerce and labor provisions.

The measure was passed in December by the House of Representatives, where it received bipartisan support after Democrats secured amendments to its enforcement, environment, pharmaceutical and worker provisions.

The USMCA has been delayed in the Senate due to political wrangling over the chamber’s impeachment trial of President Trump.

The deal will not be fully implemented until it is ratified by Canada, whose House of Commons is expected to vote on it later this month.
 

A judge in bankruptcy court has ruled in favor of a law school graduate who asked to have more than $220,000 in student debt erased.

The case is notable because student debt is commonly thought to be unforgivable in bankruptcy cases, a lament of many students who leave college saying they are too financially burdened to advance the milestones of adulthood, like buying property or having children.

Students Drowning in ‘Insane’ Debt Delay Life Goals

Mentioning the words “student debt” to millennials and younger people is like dropping a match on a trail of gasoline.”Our total debt for credit cards and student loans combined is almost $150,000,” said Matt Porter, 31, who lives in Lowell, Massachusetts, with his fiancee.

But borrower Kevin J. Rosenberg, 46, of Beacon, N.Y., asked the court to forgive his student debt because repaying the loans was impossible and created an undue hardship, the legal test of whether a debtor should be forgiven.

The average loan debt for law school graduates in 2012 was between $84,600 and $122,158, according to the American Bar Association. Almost 70% of law school graduates in 2016 left with student debt, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

ECMC — a nonprofit organization headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota — argued that Rosenberg did not meet the undue hardship standard. They cited his age (45), health, lack of dependents, two degrees, and law licenses in New York and New Jersey in their legal brief.“

Shortly after starting his first job as an associate attorney at a law firm, [Rosenberg] decided that practicing law was not for him, because he disliked working in an office and did not find the work interesting,” New Jersey attorney Kenneth Baum, who represented ECMC, wrote in his court brief. 

“Thus, after leaving that job after only 2½ months, [Rosenberg], with the exception of a brief period of working as a part-time contract attorney on a project basis – which [he] likened to working as a paralegal – has not sought any employment in the legal profession and has no intention of ever doing so, despite the fact that opportunities abound for Plaintiff to make a very respectable living in the legal profession,” Baum wrote.

Rosenberg did not return calls or email to VOA, but was quoted in Yahoo Finance on January 12, saying, “First of all, I realized the whole job is sitting in the office by yourself. You can’t be creative at all, but also that you either help people out or you make a good living — you can’t do both. And I kind of had a problem with that.” 

Judge Cecelia G. Morris, chief U.S. Bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of New York, agreed with Rosenberg. She used the student-debt test case, Brunner v N.Y. State Higher Education Services Corp., from 1987 differently than other decisions. “

Brunner has received a lot of criticism for creating too high of a burden for most bankruptcy petitioners to meet,” Morris wrote. For Brunner, who filed for bankruptcy within a year of graduation, “the test is difficult to meet,” she wrote. “

However, for a multitude of petitioners like Mr. Rosenberg, who have been out of school and struggling with student loan debt for many years, the test itself is fairly straightforward and simple,” she said.

Rosenberg was relieved of his debt.

Student-loan experts say that most students are under the impression that student debt cannot be relieved in bankruptcy court. Some get bad advice from attorneys who also believe student debt cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy court. “

You can’t discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy: That was the prevailing wisdom,” said Jason Iuliano, an expert in student debt and assistant professor of law at Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia.

But Iuliano, whose own student debt was hundreds of thousands of dollars after receiving degrees from Harvard University and Princeton University, dove into the caseload and found that wasn’t true. “

What I found when I actually went in and collected the cases was a lot of folks actually do meet the [undue hardship] test,” he said. “About 40% of the student loan debtors in bankruptcy … are successful in getting a discharge of some sort. And that struck me as really important.”

Iuliano said about 250,000 student debtors file for bankruptcy each year. But only about 500 of them take a necessary additional legal action to address college-loan specific debt. Only 1% end up going in front of a judge. 

“A lot more people should be filing and trying to prove undue hardship, because they would be successful if they actually came before a judge,” Iuliano advised.

Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, celebrated the decision, but said student debt that impacts low-income and minority borrowers more than any others should be addressed long before debtors end up with interest-bloated loans. 

“My initial thought was, ‘This is great, good for him.’ We’ve always supported student-loan disposal of both state and federal loans,” Harrington said. “But, there still is a need for Congress to do something about it.”

Among students in the Class of 2016, 70% borrowed an average of $30,000, Harrington said.

“People are really struggling under this debt for a very long time. Your payment return is 20 to 25 years, and that’s as long as some people’s mortgages,” she said.

“Part of the conversation is changing in judicial chambers because everyone is realizing what a crisis this is, seeing how it effects students’ lives,” Harrington added. “How much help have you given them?”

Rosenberg’s case and Judge Morris’ decision have ramped up that conversation, Iuliano said. 

The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins Thursday with preliminary proceedings, including House lawmakers who will act as prosecutors presenting the articles of impeachment to the Senators who will serve as the jury.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be sworn in for his role in overseeing the process, and then will swear in the 100 members of the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the final step Thursday will be to notify the White House and “summon the president to answer the articles and send his counsel.”

The main portion of the trial will begin Tuesday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the articles of impeachment at a ceremony Wednesday, moving the process forward after delaying for about a month as House Democrats tried to get Senate leaders to agree to allow testimony from new witnesses during the trial.

McConnell has resisted calling witnesses, saying that decision would come later in the trial.

The Democratic-led House also voted Wednesday to formally choose the seven impeachment managers who will serve as prosecutors arguing Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress. They include House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, Congresswoman Val Demmings, Congressman Jason Crow and Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia.

As Pelosi announced the impeachment managers at a morning news conference, Trump tweeted the impeachment was “another Con job by the Do Nothing Democrats.”

A senior administration official told reporters the White House is ready for the trial “because the facts overwhelmingly show that the president did nothing wrong.”

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham also reiterated Trump’s defense that he has done nothing wrong.

“He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated,” Grisham said.

Trump is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, as Trump withheld $391 million in military aid that he later released.  The president is also accused of subsequently obstructing a congressional probe into his actions.

No matter what rules are in place for the Senate trial, Trump seems to be safe from the prospect of being convicted and removed from office.

His Republican Party holds a 53-47 majority in the chamber, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning if all Democrats voted to convict, then 20 Republicans would have to also vote that way for Trump to be convicted and removed from office.

This is the third time in the country’s 244-year history a U.S. president has been impeached and targeted for removal from office.

Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials. A fourth president, Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment in a political corruption scandal.

Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer who worked to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, told the New York Times and the U.S.-based cable news network MSNBC that Trump was aware of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine.

Trump “knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas told Rachel Maddow in an interview broadcast Wednesday night.

The Times quoted him as saying, “I am betting my whole life that Trump knew exactly everything that was going on that Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine.”

Previously, Trump has denied sending Giuliani to Ukraine to look for dirt on Biden, the former vice president and a rival in the 2020 presidential election.

But Parnas told Maddow that Trump “was aware of all my movements.”

“I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president,” Parnas said.  “I was on the ground doing their work.”

Parnas said his function in working with Giuliani was to meet with senior Ukrainian officials in a search for evidence of corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked for Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. Trump allegedly withheld aid to Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelenskiy committed to investigating the Bidens, and those allegations are at the center of his impeachment by the House of Representatives.

In a tweet later Wednesday night, Katherine Faulders, White House and Capitol Hill reporter for ABC News, said she asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the interview with Parnas. He texted, “None he’s a very sad situation.”

Asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the ongoing Parnas interview and he texted me “None he’s a very sad situation.”

— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) January 16, 2020

“I mean they have no reason to speak to me,” Parnas told Maddow. “Why would President Zelenskiy’s inner circle or (Interior Minister Arsen) Avakov or all these people or (former) President (Petro) Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me. And that’s the secret they’re trying to keep.”

He added that Trump’s interest in Ukraine was never about rooting out government corruption but was “all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.”

When Maddow asked Parnas about Trump’s claim that he does not know him, Parnas said, “He lied,” adding that he was with Giuliani four or five days a week in Ukraine during which Trump was in constant contact with Giuliani.

Parnas said he wants “to get the truth out … it’s important for our country, it’s important for me … a lot of things are being said that are not accurate.”

Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, have been indicted on charges of making illegal contributions to the Trump campaign. Both have pleaded not guilty. 

The United States and China agreed to a ‘Phase 1’ trade deal on Wednesday that includes the protection of intellectual property rights and agricultural policy.

Both countries say they plan to continue working on issues.  “

The parties intend to continue implementation and improvement of existing mechanisms for bilateral communication on agricultural policy,” according to the

The new U.S.-China trade agreement includes provisions that are aimed at curbing forced technology transfers, in which companies hand over technical know-how to foreign partners. For many high-tech businesses, the intellectual property behind their products represents the bulk of their companies’ value.  To learn more about the risks of IP theft, Elizabeth Lee recently visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where companies talked about the risks to their technology secrets.

While most European countries have been reluctant to take back their citizens who joined the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria and Iraq, the government of Kosovo has taken a different path by repatriating dozens of its people with plans to reintegrate them into society. 

Some experts say Kosovo’s proactive approach, supported by a national action plan that addresses key components from detention to counseling to rehabilitation, is a unique example with considerable success in facing the dilemma of IS foreign fighters. 

“Kosovo is a small country with a very well-established social structure,” said David L. Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. “So, there is a system in place for managing their returns. That’s why the government of Kosovo is better suited to accept returns than larger countries in Europe where returnees could simply become absorbed into the local population and commit crimes either in their home countries or go to other battlefields.” 

Kosovo is a predominantly Muslim nation in the central Balkan Peninsula with an estimated population of 1.9 million. Between 2012 and 2015, an estimated 355 Kosovars went to Syria to join IS and other Sunni militant groups, making up the highest per capita share of foreign fighters in Syria. 

Pristina last April brought home from Syria 110 of its citizens, consisting of 74 children, 32 women and four men. The total number of adult returnees has reportedly since reached about 250, with another 98 killed in Syria and dozens of others remaining unaccounted for. 

Leonora’s story 

Leonora is one of the IS women who was repatriated along with her four children from the Kurdish-controlled al-Hol camp in northeast Syria on April 20, 2019. 

Leonora did not want her real name used, to protect her identity and those of her children. She told VOA that the government had put her under house arrest while her court process was continuing. A court in November officially accused her of membership in a terrorist organization but has yet to indict her. 

“We didn’t think we would ever come back. For us, everything was over and we thought we were going to be there all our lives,” said Leonora, speaking of her living conditions in the overcrowded al-Hol camp. She said that when the Pristina officials decided to take them home, “it felt like we were born again.” 

Under Kosovo’s reintegration policies, Leonora is allowed to go out, with certain limitations and strict monitoring. Her children are already back in school in the hope of starting a new, normal life. 

“I am just happy that my kids are in time to go to school now and haven’t lost a year. That’s why I’m so happy,” she told VOA. 

Now 25 years old, the Kosovar woman had just finished high school and was planning to go to college when her husband arranged for them to move out of the country in mid-2014. Leonora told VOA she was unaware that her husband had Syria in mind when the couple and their children flew on one-way tickets from Adem Jashari International Airport in Pristina to Istanbul en route to the IS self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria on August 2014. 

“It was a war zone and I didn’t agree to go. But everything was complicated because he didn’t make it clear to me that we were going to Syria,” she told VOA. “From here, we actually headed for [Turkey], to which I agreed to go, but at the last moment after we arrived in Turkey, he decided we would go to Syria.” 

Husband killed 

At the beginning of their stay in Syria, when IS was still in control of large swaths of land and had resources to pay salaries to its fighters, the family enjoyed a “comfortable life,” according to her. But things changed 2½ years later when her husband was killed on the battlefield as IS started losing ground to the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. 

“Sometimes we were left homeless and sometimes two or three families lived in one house, each in a room,” she said. “Our payment was decreasing day by day. The last few months were the worst. It was terrible.” 

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces declared IS defeated in March 2019. The forces still hold about 2,000 alleged foreign fighters and close to 14,000 foreign women and children in camps. 

Kosovo officials in the past have said they considered the women and children to be “innocent victims,” lured by their husbands to the conflict zone. Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj in May said that his government was taking full responsibility for its citizens, though “everybody who returns will be subject to the law.” 

Upon the return of its citizens, the Kosovar government allowed all the children to go home while the women were put under house arrest during their trials. 

20 indictments 

Astrit Dibra from Kosovo’s Special Prosecution Office told VOA that 20 of the women returnees have so far been indicted. Eighteen of the women were charged with “organizing and participating in a terrorist group,” with the rest charged with  “joining or participating in foreign military or police, external paramilitary or para-police formations, in group or individually, outside the territory of the Republic of Kosovo.” 

A majority of the men, about 85, have been prosecuted. 

The government last year created the Division for Prevention and Reintegration, a cross-ministry agency assigned to support the repatriated women and children. Through reintegration program, the women and children are given special educational classes and are provided with food and clothing vouchers. Those in prison are put under deradicalization programs. 

According to Kujtim Bytyqi, a Kosovo-based expert, the Kosovar government felt empowered to return its citizens from Syria because of  its relatively small and homogeneous population. 

“They are just Kosovar citizens, very well-integrated, because they were born here and their parents were born here. And it is a very small society, if I can say, so the government has very close cooperation with their families, their neighbors and their community,” Bytyqi told VOA. 

European countries 

Addressing why other European countries are less willing to take back their citizens, Bytyqi charged that “foreign fighters from EU countries are usually people who are citizens of that country, but their origin in most of the cases is some other countries. But in the case of Kosovo, they are just Kosovar Albanians who don’t have dual citizenship.” 

Based on government documents, Bytyqi has found that at least five returnees have been involved in planning domestic attacks. While the government integration effort has been largely effective, he warned that “a small number of returnees remain highly radicalized and are both willing and determined to attack at home.” 

Paul McCarthy, the Europe regional director at the International Republican Institute, told VOA that Kosovar officials need to address the fundamental issues that forced many of their citizens into radicalization. 

While some citizens joined IS for ideological reasons, many others left Kosovo because of a deep feeling of injustice and lack of economic opportunities, he argued. 

“It is extremely important, when we’re looking at the deradicalization process, also to look at strengthening Kosovo’s governmental institutions, as well to respond to their citizens and to listen to their grievances. One of the sources of radicalization is a feeling that institutions and society as a whole are not responding to an individual’s needs,” he said.