VOA Connect Episode 104 – Learn about efforts to harness the amazing power of seaweed, both as a superfood and as a way to clean our oceans. We’ll also journey to New Orleans to discover the healing spirit animating Voodoo practitioners.

We talk to various businesses in New York City about the different ways they are helping their city achieve its goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2030.  

Reporter: Nina Vishneva, Camera: Alexandra Barash, Vladimir Badiko, Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki, VOA Russian Service

The Trump administration is announcing new sanctions on Iran following this week’s missile strikes by the Islamic Republic on U.S. bases in Iraq.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday the new sanctions will target eight senior Iranian officials as well as companies in the steel and other sectors. 

Iran this week launched the strikes in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleiman, the country’s most powerful commander, in Baghdad last week.

 

*This is a developing story. We will update soon with more information.

 

In the pitch black, pre-dawn sky on the outskirts of the Iranian capital Tehran, a tiny fast-moving light can be seen racing up through the trees, as someone films from the ground. Then there is a flash of light as it seems to collide with something in the air.

It is the ill-fated Ukrainian International airliner which had taken off Wednesday just hours after Iran had fired missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq in retaliation for the slaying of its top military man, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Western leaders have said the plane seemed to have been unintentionally brought down by a surface-to-air missile near Tehran. Iran denies that a missile was to blame.

Videos verified by The Associated Press show the final seconds of the jet and what likely brought it down, killing all 176 people on board. 

One video seems to show the impact. Buildings can seen from ground level below the darkened sky as the tiny light arches upward, then the flash. The scene is silent, except for a dog barking nearby. Then 10 seconds later, there is a frightening boom, like loud thunder.

A second video appears to show the plane on fire and crashing. A white blaze plummets downward across the black sky, sometimes letting off sparks. Then it disappears behind trees, and a huge fireball lights up the sky as it hits the earth.

Someone off-camera says in Farsi “The plane has caught fire. Shahriar. Ferdosieh. In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful. God please help us. Call the fire department!” The names are two suburbs of Tehran near the airport.

Another clip, filmed from inside a traveling car at distance, shows a pinpoint fiery light moving at speed. This footage then shows the plane exploding far on the horizon, illuminating the darkened sky.

As part of the verification process, the AP compared buildings in view with map locations and in the precise context of where the jet went off the radar.

Hurricane-force wind gusts and hail the size of baseballs could accompany potent storms that also threaten to spin up tornadoes and drench the South with heavy rains, forecasters said Friday.

The national Storm Prediction Center said more than 18 million people in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma will be at an enhanced risk of storms that could include strong tornadoes and flooding rains. The area includes several major Texas cities including Dallas, Houston and Austin.

In a briefing early Friday, the National Weather Service said the storm could bring wind gusts of up to 80 mph (129 kph) or faster, the speed of a Category 1 hurricane.

Such strong winds are a key concern in an area at greatest risk: A zone that includes parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas, the Norman, Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center warned.

“We could see some very strong tornadoes — possibly those that may stay on the ground for some time — not just the brief spin-up tornadoes,” said Matt Hemingway, a weather service meteorologist in Shreveport.

“All modes of severe weather appear to be in play with this system, including the threat of tornadoes in addition to large hail and damaging winds,” forecasters at the weather service’s Shreveport office said in a briefing on the incoming system.

Wicked weather also will pose a threat to Alabama and Georgia as the system moves eastward on Saturday, forecasters said.

Heavy rains also could cause flooding across the South and part of the Midwest.

The latest forecasts call for up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain in parts of Texas and southeast Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service.

Many streams already are at or near flood levels because of earlier storms, and heavy rains could lead to flash flooding across the region, forecasters said. Parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and southern Illinois were under a flash flood watch on Thursday in anticipation of the drenching rains.
 

About 97% of internet users in Taiwan use Facebook. The island also has Asia’s second highest smartphone penetration after South Korea. Given these statistics, the first announced by Facebook in 2018 and the other by a market research firm, it made sense that a lot of campaigning for Saturday’s presidential election would jump from the streets to the internet.

But the rise of internet campaigning has challenged voters to know what’s true or false, and to follow a growing suite of anti-fake news laws, as politicians allege that mountains of online campaign information are untrue, illegally posted and often planted by Taiwan’s political rival China.

“Beginning from last year we saw that China is using modern technology, in short it’s the social media platforms, to try to interrupt in our discussions on the internet, either through Facebook or through Twitter or even a popular online chat mechanism called Line,” Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told a news conference Thursday. “The fake news situation seems to be quite serious.”

Last year officials passed laws that ban the spread of that information and local media say police are investigating several cases.

Rise of social media

Social media such as Facebook, Line and Twitter appeal to people younger than 40 because those voters tend to trust information received through social media as posted by their friends, said George Hou, a mass communications lecturer at Taiwan-based I-Shou University. They find print and television news too formal as well as subject to manipulation by politicians, he said.

Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen and her chief rival Han Kuo-yu aggressively use Facebook to promote campaign events throughout the day and live broadcast some of them. Tsai’s official Facebook page led Han in followers at 2.6 million as of Jan. 3.

Tsai also worked with a YouTube celebrity who asked her mock pickup lines, effectively freshening up her image before the vote.

“The internet stars are an important point, and they can let people get to know a different side of (the politicians),” Hou said. “Even more so, they let people feel that an authority is close to them, not so high and mighty.”

Glut of ‘fake news’

So-called fake news comes from more than 1,000 venues in China every day, Chen Chih-wei, international affairs deputy director with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, told a news conference Tuesday. A study by the V-Dem Institute at University of Gothenburg in Sweden lists Taiwan as one of the most vulnerable places of more than 200 surveyed worldwide.

China sees Taiwan as part of its territory with no rights to elect its own leaders. The two sides have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s.

Taiwanese officials believe China tries to steer voters toward candidates whom they like. The incumbent has needled China since taking office in 2016 by rejecting its condition that both sides belong to the same country. Her chief opponent advocates dialogue on China’s condition. Taiwanese will also elect a new parliament.

Older voters who are new to social media particularly struggle to know truth from lies, said Wu Yih-hsuan, a 28-year-old Taiwanese doctoral student. His parents, both 64, are dabbling in social media. 

“The young generation joined the social media starting around a decade ago, while the seniors, taking my parents for instance, started to use Line four years ago only,” he said.

Corrections and crackdowns

Officials try to rebut as much fake news as possible, the foreign minister said. They, too, work with Line and Facebook to block fake accounts and remove false news, he said, and sometimes consult a local nonprofit fact-checking service.

The Cabinet tightened two criminal codes in April to ban the spread of fake news, including resending false content. On Dec. 31, parliament passed an anti-infiltration law criminalizing influence from offshore in Taiwan’s elections.

Police detained a National Taiwan University political science professor last month over a 2018 Facebook post criticizing the government-run National Palace Museum, according to local media reports. Someone also posted to Line the false information that Tsai’s party spent the equivalent of NT$30 million to organize an LGBT pride parade in Taipei, according to the website PinkNews.com.
 
“This problem has become quite obvious close to the election,” said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Police probes now risk violating people’s rights to express opinions, he added. “The power to suppress free speech has grown bigger,” Huang said.

But fake news probably has little impact on people’s voting decisions, said Shelley Rigger, a visiting researcher with National Taiwan University’s College of Social Sciences. Most youth are skeptical of what they read and Taiwanese overall have long known that “the PRC is trying to undermine their democracy.”

U.S. President Donald Trump sent a happy birthday message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-Yong said Friday.

Chung, who met Trump in Washington this week, told reporters that he was given a message to pass to North Korea and it was delivered Thursday.

“The day we met was Kim Jong Un’s birthday, and President Trump remembered this and asked me to deliver the message,” Chung said upon arrival back in South Korea.

Kim’s birthday is believed to be Jan. 8, though his secretive regime has never confirmed the date. The U.S. government lists Kim’s birth year as 1984, making him 36 years old this year.

Chung did not say if it was a written message or whether it included anything beyond birthday wishes.

On Wednesday, Chung also met the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun and “reaffirmed close U.S.-ROK coordination on North Korea,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said, using the initials for South Korea’s official name the Republic of Korea.

The two also discussed recent events in the Middle East and their coordination on global security issues.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha will meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in California next week, along with their Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, and North Korea and South Korea-Japan relations will be on the top of the agenda.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday there is an urgent need for practical ways to improve ties with North Korea, adding that he was ready to meet its reclusive leader in North Korea.

The U.S. has deployed tens of thousands of troops across the Middle East region, many of them stationed in countries near Iran. Here is a look at U.S. troops in each country in the region at a time of high tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has accused the government of Nicolás Maduro of trying to bribe lawmakers to vote against his re-election as National Assembly president in an effort to put Maduro loyalists in the parliament and gain control of Venezuela’s last democratic institution.  Guaidó, who last year declared himself Venezuela’s interim president, made the comments in an exclusive interview with VOA. Alvaro Algarra and Adriana Nunez in Caracas contributed to this report by VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit.

The recent launch of ballistic missiles against U.S. military air bases in Iraq, in response to the U.S. killing of top Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, was immediately claimed by the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

This, experts say, highlights a different position assumed by Tehran in carrying out attacks against the U.S. and other adversaries as opposed to relying on its many proxy forces throughout the region to have the luxury of plausible deniability. 

Targeting a high-profile military leader such as Soleimani, who led IRGC’s elite Quds Force, prompted the Iranian leadership to respond to the U.S. at a similar level, experts argue. 

“The IRGC has been in charge of the game when it comes to Iranian security,” said Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington.  

“The IRGC is part of their national security system. They have a Supreme Council of National Security, which includes a representative there and the head of the branches of the military as well as the president and the foreign minister,” she told VOA. 

Slavin added that Iranian leaders “make these decisions jointly, and they reach a consensus on what they think is the appropriate step.” 

The IRGC “chose this tactical attack against U.S. installations in Iraq to be able to calm down its public and to demonstrate that it has indeed retaliated” for the killing of Soleimani, said Cyrus Saify, an Iranian affairs analyst based in Washington. 

He said the IRGC attack was also a move to appeal to hardliners in the Iranian government. 

Previous attacks 

Over the years, Iran has built a significant network of mostly Shiite militias across the Middle East, including in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere. 

In an assessment of the Tuesday attack on U.S. military bases in Iraq, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of IRGC’s aerospace force, spoke at a news conference where he stood behind flags that represent several Iranian proxies, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces and the Palestinian Hamas. 

The slain commander Soleimani was personally involved in founding some of those armed groups, particularly after the Arab Spring uprising in the region and the subsequent rise of the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq. These militias have been instrumental in expanding Iran’s influence and reach in the region. 

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In recent years, Iran has relied on its proxies to carry on its agenda of targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East, experts said. 

In Iraq, for example, military bases housing U.S. troops have been attacked at least 10 times since October, with U.S. officials mostly blaming Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite militias. 

An assault last month on a military base in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk killed an American contractor and wounded several U.S. and Iraqi military personnel, prompting the U.S. to respond by striking five facilities in Iraq and Syria that belonged to the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militia Kataeb Hezbollah. 

Kataeb Hezbollah, which was led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed along with Soleimani in the U.S. airstrike last week, was one of the main Iranian-backed Shiite militias behind the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. 

In September 2019, Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been battling a Saudi-led coalition in the war-ravaged country, claimed responsibility for a drone attack on oil facilities run by state-owned Saudi Aramco. 

Experts said those attacks highlight the serious threats Iran’s proxies could pose in the ongoing tensions between Washington and Tehran. 

Additional responses 

Jason Brodsky, an Iran expert based in Washington, believes that the Iranian missile response against U.S. forces should be measured by phases. 

“The first phase was direct retaliation. The second phase is likely to be indirect retaliation through proxies within its broader Axis of Resistance,” he told VOA. 

Iran and its proxy militia groups in the region refer to their alliance as the “Axis of Resistance.” 

It’s important to pay attention to the messaging of Iran’s supreme leader’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Brodsky said, adding that “in response to Iran’s attack on the airbases in Iraq, [Khamenei] said ‘such military actions are not enough.’ That may be a signal that retribution from Iran-backed militias – not from Iran’s armed forces – in the region could be next.” 

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‘Plausible deniability’ 

Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, said that despite an uncertain calm in tensions between Washington and Tehran following the Iranian missile attack, Iran would likely rely on its proxy militias if it decided to assault U.S. military targets in the future. 

“If [the Iranians] do carry something out next time, my guess would be that instead of doing something like this, where it was Iranian military against U.S. bases in Iraq, they would use their proxies instead so that they have some plausible deniability,” he told VOA. 

“The region is still a flashpoint, although Iran’s proxies in Iraq have announced that they are ceasing, essentially, actions against the U.S., but it might always be something,” Milani said. 

Jesusemen Oni and Niala Mohammed contributed to this report from Washington. 

U.S. and Canadian officials say there is evidence suggesting that an Iranian missile downed the Ukrainian passenger plane near Tehran on Wednesday. Media reports are rife with speculation about the cause of the crash, with a mechanical error all but ruled out. Iranian authorities are in possession of data recorders from the plane that can help determine the cause of the crash that killed more than 80 Iranian citizens. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.

Australia’s bushfires are still raging out of control. Flames have ravaged more than 63,000 square kilometers of land, and current estimates put the animal death toll at an astounding 1.25 billion and climbing. Fire also threatened a local animal sanctuary, and as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, that’s when the community came to the rescue.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to travel to Moscow Saturday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting will likely focus on the Iran crisis, with both Germany and Russia calling for de-escalation following the U.S. targeted killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and the retaliatory airstrikes by Tehran on Western military bases in Iraq. 

The Ukraine conflict is also on the agenda, alongside the future of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, amid strong opposition from the United States.  

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Putin will host Merkel shortly after returning from a trip to the Middle East this week. The Russian president made a rare trip to Damascus, Syria Tuesday, only his second visit since Russia intervened in 2015 to aid President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war. Iran and its proxies have also provided significant support to Assad’s forces.

With its growing entanglement in Middle Eastern affairs, Russia is trying to avert the outbreak of a new conflict in Iran, says analyst Andrew Foxall of policy analyst group The Henry Jackson Society.“

Iran presents President Putin with the opportunity to present himself as a peacemaker rather than a ‘peace-breaker,’” Foxall says. “And in that sense his interests are very firmly aligned with Chancellor Merkel as they both believe in the JCPOA (the 2015 Iran nuclear deal); they both believe that discussion and debate are far more preferable than the conflict and confrontation that is currently taking place between Tehran and Washington.”

Europe and Russia are trying to keep the JCPOA alive. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018, and says the agreement is effectively dead.“

The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China to recognize this reality,” President Trump said Wednesday. “They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal.”

The U.S. and Germany also disagree sharply on Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline under construction from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. Washington has imposed sanctions on companies involved in the project, to the dismay of Berlin and Moscow.  

“Nord Stream 2 is designed to drive a single-source gas artery deep into Europe, and a stake through the heart of European stability and security,” then-U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said during a trip to Lithuania in October. “It would increase Russia’s leverage over Europe’s foreign policy and Europe’s vulnerability to a supply disruption,” he added.

Ukraine is the traditional hub for the transit of Russian gas to Europe and risks losing valuable transit fees. The project has strategic as well as economic value for Russia, argues analyst Foxall.“

What Russia has sought to do over the past few years, if not longer, is drive a wedge in the transatlantic relationship using any tool or instrument that it can identify and Nord Stream 2 does provide Russia with precisely that sort of tool. Nord Stream 2 will undoubtedly be discussed in Moscow and will provide an opportunity for both Merkel and Putin to re-commit themselves to the project and again to argue that it does not undermine European energy security,” Foxall told VOA.

The EU imposed sanctions on Russia following the 2014 forceful annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Some European states, including Italy and Hungary, are pushing for an end to the sanctions. “If he is going to find a weak link from the European Union, it seems to me unlikely that that will be Germany and Chancellor Merkel, who has been at the forefront of arguing for those sanctions,” notes Foxall.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has taken a different line with Moscow to the more hawkish approach of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, agreeing to a series of prisoner exchanges in recent weeks. Germany’s Merkel has offered strong support and Europe hopes it may be the first step in a wider deal to end the Ukraine conflict.

With tensions higher than at any time since the Cold War, her meeting with Putin will be watched closely for any hint of change in East-West relations.
 

A radio station host and manager in the Mexican state of Michoacan who went missing in late November has been found dead, officials said on Thursday, adding to the growing murder toll of journalists as violence escalates across the country.

Local media said he had been shot to death.

Mexico registered 10 killings of journalists in 2019, the same number as the year before and in line with Syria, according to Reporters Without Borders, making Mexico one of the world’s most dangerous places for media workers.

The body of Fidel Avila, of the “Ke Buena” station in the western state of Michoacan’s Huetamo municipality, was found on a highway earlier this week, 40 days after he was last seen at a cultural event in neighboring Guerrero state, Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights said.

“Our condolences to the family and friends of Fidel Avila Gomez, journalist in Michoacan. We deeply lament his murder,” presidential spokesman Jesus Ramirez wrote in a post on Twitter.

Michoacan and Guerrero are two of Mexico’s most violent and lawless states, where rival drug gangs have battled to control smuggling routes.

The president of the Michoacan Association of Journalists, Alvaro Garcia, told local television that criminal activity in the area was at a peak.

“There is always a persistent risk,” he said.

 

Turkey’s defense ministry says four Turkish soldiers have been killed in northeastern Syria.

The ministry said the soldiers were killed in a car bombing attack Wednesday while they were conducting road checks. The Turkish military death toll stands at 20 since October, when Turkey launched an offensive against Syrian Kurdish militants.

Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, terrorists for their links to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey that has killed tens of thousands. The same fighters were the United States’ partners on the ground in fighting the Islamic State group.

Syrian Kurds established an autonomous zone in war-torn Syria’s northeast in 2012. Ankara has repeatedly said it would not allow a “terror corridor” along its borders and conducted two other cross-border military operations in northern Syria to break apart YPG-held territory. On all three offensives, the Turkish military has worked with Syrian opposition fighters, who have been accused of atrocities.

Ankara’s campaign in October – the so-called Olive Branch operation – drew widespread international criticism and the U.S. was seen as abandoning the Kurdish force that had helped fight IS. Two ceasefires, brokered by the U.S. and Russia, required the Kurdish force to withdraw away from the Turkish border for Turkey to halt its offensive. Joint Russian and Turkish patrols were established.

While the Turkish defense ministry did not assign blame for Wednesday’s car bomb attack, it has previously accused the Kurdish militants of similar attacks.

 

The Taliban said Thursday it believes escalating military tensions between the United States and Iran are unlikely to hurt the insurgent group’s negotiations with Washington aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.

The first official reaction from the Taliban comes a day after Tehran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops, though they did not cause any casualties.The attack was a retaliation to Friday’s American airstrike in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad that killed Iranian military commander, Qassem Soleimani.

Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban’s negotiating team, told VOA their meetings with U.S. interlocutors over the past year have brought the two adversaries in the 18-year-old Afghan on the verge of signing a peace deal. He dismissed reported concerns U.S.-Iran tensions threatens the peace initiative.

“The developments will not have negative impact on the peace process because the (U.S.-Taliban) peace agreement is finalized and only remains to be signed (by the two sides),” Shaheen asserted.

The progress, he insisted, has been achieved because both the Taliban and the U.S. agree the Afghan conflict could only be settled through peaceful means.

The Trump administration has been negotiating an agreement with Taliban representatives in a bid to wind down the stalemated Afghan war, America’s longest in the history.

The U.S. is seeking counterterrorism assurances and pressing the Taliban to reduce violence as well as open negotiations with Afghan stakeholders on reaching a power-sharing deal to end decades of hostilities in the country.

American’s renewed conflict with Iran, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has raised concerns Iranian authorities could attempt to derail the U.S.-Taliban peace process by increasing Tehran’s alleged covert military assistance for the insurgents to encourage them to step up attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces.

Pro-Iranian Shi’ite Afghan factions have also denounced the killing of Soleimani.

U.S. chief peace negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad had acknowledged in early September a draft agreement had been reached with the Taliban and it could begin a U.S. troop drawdown process in a few months.

Just days later, however, President Donald Trump temporarily suspended the peace process citing a Taliban attack that killed an American soldier and 11 other people in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The dialogue was resumed early last month only to be paused again after the Taliban staged a major attack on the largest U.S. military base of Bagram.

Khalilzad has demanded the Taliban reduce attacks or observe a brief ceasefire before the talks could be resumed.But the Taliban has refused to cease hostilities until the proposed agreement is singed with the U.S.

Insurgent sources say Khalilzad is currently visiting the Qatari capital of Doha, where he has made informal contacts with Taliban representatives to find out whether they are ready to meet his demand for a ceasefire or reduction in the violence.

Neither Taliban nor U.S. officials have commented on Khalilzad’s presence in the Gulf nation, which has played host to the U.S.-Taliban talks since late 2018.

The standoff over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial deepened as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said there will be “no haggling” with Democrats as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demands for more details and witnesses.

McConnell’s Senate majority has the leverage Republicans need to launch Trump’s trial toward swift acquittal of the charges, but Pelosi’s reluctance to transmit the articles of impeachment leaves the proceedings at a standstill.

What started as a seemingly minor delay over process and procedures is now a high-stakes showdown between two skilled leaders facing off over the rare impeachment trial, only the third in the nation’s history.

“There will be no haggling with the House over Senate procedure,” McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday before meeting with Trump at the White House. “We will not cede our authority to try this impeachment. The House Democrats’ turn is over.”

Trump tweeted Thursday that “Pelosi doesn’t want to hand over The Articles of Impeachment, which were fraudulently produced by corrupt politicians like Shifty Schiff in the first place, because after all of these years of investigations and persecution, they show no crimes and are a joke and a scam!” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., led the House impeachment inquiry.

Three weeks have passed since the House impeached Trump on the charge that he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine’s new leader to investigate Democrats, using as leverage $400 million in military assistance for the U.S. ally as it counters Russia at its border. Trump insists he did nothing wrong, but his defiance of the House Democrats’ investigation led to an additional charge of obstruction of Congress.

Senators from both sides are eager to serve as jurors for Trump’s day in court. The trial will be conducted in the Senate, where Republicans have a thin majority.

But even as McConnell spoke from the Senate floor, Pelosi, D-Calif., was giving no indication of her willingness to agree to his terms. In a closed-door meeting with the House Democratic caucus, she spoke instead about the crisis in the Middle East, with Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, according to several Democrats in the room.

The impeachment timeline is complicating the political calendar, with the weekslong trial now expected to bump into presidential primaries. Several Democratic senators are running for the party nomination.

Returning to Washington from the campaign trail, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told reporters she was confident in Pelosi’s plan.

“I have no doubt that she will get this right,” Warren said. “Some things are more important than politics, and the impeachment of a president is certainly one of those. No one is above the law, not even the president.”

Another 2020 hopeful, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said: “Those articles will come over here for a vote in due time.”

The showdown is expected to be resolved this week, lawmakers said.

Pelosi wants McConnell to “immediately” make public the details of his trial proposal, according to a letter to colleagues. She wants to know how much time will be devoted to the trial and other details about the “arena” before announcing her choice of House managers to try the case in the Senate, according to Democrats familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

“Sadly, Leader McConnell has made clear that his loyalty is to the President and not the Constitution,” Pelosi wrote to colleagues late Tuesday. She said the process he is outlining is “unfair.”

The confrontation over a Senate trial had been building for weeks. But McConnell gained ground when he announced Tuesday that he has support from the majority of senators to start a trial structured like the last one, against President Bill Clinton in 1999. Those proceedings also began without an agreement on witnesses.

“We have the votes,” McConnell told reporters.

It takes 51 votes for agreement on the trial proceedings, and with Republicans holding a 53-47 Senate majority McConnell has a slight advantage if he can hold GOP senators together. Democrats are trying to peel off support from a few Republicans to support their demands.

McConnell, who has resisted calling new witnesses, expects a speedy trial that will end with Trump acquitted of the charges. He complained about Pelosi’s “endless appetite for these cynical games” and said it will be up to senators to decide if they want more testimony.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer promised he would force votes on witnesses, requiring senators to choose whether they want to hear from Trump former national security adviser John Bolton and others.

“When the Senate has votes on witnesses and documents, my Republican colleagues will have to answer to not just the president,” Schumer said. “The American people do not want a cover-up.”

Some Senate Democrats have said the time has come for Pelosi to send the articles so the trial can begin. Pelosi has yet to choose House impeachment managers for the trial, a politically sensitive next step with many lawmakers vying to be candidates. But aides downplayed any riff between the leaders, saying senators are simply eager to have their say on Trump’s impeachment.

Schumer, who talks daily with Pelosi, said the speaker is doing “a very good job and she is seeking to maximize our ability to get facts and evidence.”

Pelosi told House leaders in a private meeting Tuesday that she believed the decision to delay the articles was working as a strategy to apply pressure on the Senate for a more fulsome trial, according to those in that meeting.

“People are united,” said Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson of California about the mood in the House caucus.

Republicans countered that Democrats rushed to impeach and then delayed the process. At their own lunch Wednesday, Republican senators were privately split on next steps, with some seeking ways to compel Pelosi to act while others were content to let impeachment slip.  

 

Iranian investigators said Thursday the crew of a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran’s airport had tried to turn back, and that the pilot made no radio communications about any problems.

The initial report from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization also cited witnesses on the ground and in a passing aircraft as saying the Ukraine International Airlines plane was on fire before it hit the ground.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared Thursday a day of mourning for the 167 passengers and nine crew members who died when the plane bound for Kyiv crashed early Wednesday.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said the dead included 82 Iranians and 63 Canadians along with Ukrainians, Swedes, Afghans, Germans and Britons.

The flag over the Canadian parliament in Ottawa was lowered to half-staff Wednesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the entire country was “shocked and saddened” at one of its worst losses of life in a single day in years.

Trudeau said 138 of the passengers had planned to fly on from Kyiv to Toronto, many of them Iranian students hoping to return to school after a winter break with their families in Iran. He promised to work for a thorough investigation of the crash.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offered his condolences, through a spokesman, to the families of the victims and the various countries from which they came.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also issued a statement of condolence and said Washington is prepared to offer Ukraine “all possible assistance.” He said the U.S. also calls for “complete cooperation with any investigation” into the cause of the crash.

Data recorders found

Iranian investigators said the voice and data recorders from the Boeing 737 aircraft were recovered from the crash site, a swathe of farmland on the outskirts of the Iranian capital.

Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency quoted the head of the nation’s civil aviation agency as saying he did not know which country would get the black boxes for analysis, but that Iran would not hand them over to U.S.-based Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board typically participates in investigations of overseas air crashes when a U.S. airline or plane manufacturer is involved. But given the heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, and the fact that the two sides have no diplomatic relations, it was uncertain whether the NTSB would be involved in the investigation of the UIA crash.

In a statement sent to VOA Ukrainian, the NTSB said it was “monitoring developments surrounding the crash of UIA flight 752” and was “following its standard procedures” for international aviation accident investigations.

“As part of its usual procedures, the NTSB is working with the State Department and other agencies to determine the best course of action,” it said.

“The U.S. has not participated in an accident investigation in Iran since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. So it is very unlikely that the NTSB will be involved,” said Madhu Unnikrishnan, editor of U.S. airline news service Skift Airline Weekly in a VOA Ukrainian interview.

WATCH: Ukraine, Canada Demand Thorough Investigation of Boeing Crash in Iran

Ukraine International Airline President Yevhen Dykhne said, “It was one of the best planes we had, with an amazing, reliable crew.”

The jet was built in 2016. It was a Boeing 737-800 model, a commonly used commercial jet with a single-aisle cabin that is flown by airlines throughout the world. It is an older model than the Boeing 737 MAX, which has been grounded for nearly 10 months following two deadly crashes.

Tatiana Vorozhko of VOA’s Ukrainian Service and Michael Lipin of VOA Persian contributed to this report.

…

TOMERONG, Australia — Residents in the path of wildfires razing southeast Australia were urged to evacuate Thursday if they don’t intend to defend their homes as hot and windy conditions are forecast to escalate the danger over the next two days.

The Rural Fire Service in New South Wales state has told fire-weary community meetings south of Sydney in the coastal towns of Nowra, Narooma and Batemans Bay that northwesterly winds were likely to once again drive blazes toward the coast. Vacationers have retreated to beaches and into the ocean in the area in recent weeks as destructive fires and choking smoke have encroached on the tourist towns, scorching sand dunes in some places.

In neighboring Victoria state, fire-threatened populations were urged to act quickly on evacuation warnings.

“We can’t guarantee your safety and we don’t want to be putting emergency services — whether it be volunteers or paid staff — we do not want to put them in harm’s way because people didn’t follow advice that was given,” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said.

Temperatures in the threatened area were expected to reach into the mid-40s Celsius (more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit) Friday, and conditions remained tinder dry.

“If you can get out, you should get out,” said Andrew Crisp, Victoria’s emergency management commissioner. “Because tomorrow is going to be a dangerous and dynamic day.”

Fire toll: 26 lives, 2,000 homes

The unprecedented fire crisis in southeast Australia that has claimed at least 26 lives since September, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland has focused many Australians on how the nation adapts to climate change. 

Last year was Australia’s hottest and driest on record. The Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate monitoring, Karl Braganza, said while the country’s rainfall was expected to pick up a bit, it wouldn’t be enough to snuff out the blazes anytime soon.

“Unfortunately, we’re not looking at widespread, above-average rainfalls at this stage,” he said. “That’s really what we need to put the fires out fairly quickly. It is going to be a campaign, in terms of the fires. We are not looking at a short and sharp end to the event — it looks like something that we will have to persist with for some time.”

Along a main roadway in southern New South Wales, forests of evergreen eucalyptus trees have taken on a ghostly autumnal appearance, with golden leaves and blackened trunks. The forests appear devoid of any wildlife. Outside, it often smells like a campfire that has been recently snuffed out, and hazy waves of smoke drift past.

In many small towns, most homes appear untouched apart from one or two that have been razed to the ground, sometimes with only a chimney still standing. People have hung signs and banners thanking the volunteer firefighters they call “firies.” There are cars that are nothing more than burned-out chassis and wooden power poles that have been reduced to stumps. Not far from the communities, smoke can be seen rising from hills where the wildfires continue to rage.

Morrison criticized

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under withering criticism at home and abroad for downplaying the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.

Morrison has faced fierce backlash over what many Australians perceive as a slow, detached response to the wildfire crisis. On Thursday, he found himself on the defensive again over an awkward exchange he had with locals on fire-ravaged Kangaroo Island. In a video of his visit to the island, where an outback safari operator and his son were killed in the blazes, Morrison was seen telling locals: “Thankfully, we’ve had no loss of life.”

After he was corrected, he continued: “Yes, two, that’s quite right. I was thinking about firefighters, firstly.”

It was the latest in a string of gaffes for Morrison, who created a public uproar when he took a family vacation to Hawaii in the middle of the disaster. He has tried to strike a more compassionate image since, and earlier this week promised the government would commit an extra 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.4 billion) toward the fire recovery effort.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a very difficult day in the eastern states,” Morrison said during a news conference Thursday. “Once again, I express my sincere condolences and sympathies to the families of all of those who have lost loved ones during the course of this terrible disaster. We will continue to remember them, but also their families in particular in what they need, in supporting them.”

The New South Wales government responded to the crisis Thursday by announcing an additional AU$1 billion ($690 million) to be spent over the next two years on wildfire management and recovery.

The Australian disaster is seen by many as a harbinger for other countries of the future consequences of global warming.

Pope Francis has joined world leaders in expressing solidarity with the Australian people.

“I’d like to ask for you all to pray to the Lord to help the (Australian) people at this difficult moment, with these powerful fires. I’m close to the Australian people,” Francis said at the end of his general audience on Wednesday, drawing applause from congregants.

Beijing should not interpret Taiwan’s elections as representing a win or loss for China, Taiwan’s foreign minister said Thursday, days ahead of a crucial vote overshadowed by Chinese efforts to get the island to accept its rule.

Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections Saturday. Its elections are always closely watched by China, which claims the island as its territory.

Taiwan says it is an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name.

“I just don’t think China should read Taiwan’s election as its own victory or defeat,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told reporters in Taipei. “If China reads too much into our election … there might be a likely scenario that China will engage in military intimidation or diplomatic isolation or using economic measures as punishment against Taiwan.”

President Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking reelection, has repeatedly warned Taiwan’s people to be wary of Chinese attempts to sway the election through disinformation or military intimidation, an accusation China denies.

Wu drew attention to the sailing of China’s new aircraft carrier into the sensitive Taiwan Strait late last year, calling the move a clear evidence of Beijing’s attempts to intimidate voters.

“This is our own election. This is not China’s election. It is Taiwanese people who go to the voting booth to make a judgment on which candidate or political party is better for them,” Wu said. “If China wants to play with democracies in other countries so much, maybe they can try with their own elections at some point.”

China a major election issue

The issue of China has taken center stage in the campaign, especially after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned last year it could attack Taiwan, though said he’d prefer a peaceful “one country, two systems” formula to rule the island.

Taiwan-China ties have soured since Tsai took office in 2016, with China cutting off formal dialogue, flying bomber patrols around Taiwan, and whittling away at Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.

China suspects Tsai of pushing for the island’s formal independence, a red line for Beijing. Tsai says she will maintain the status quo but will defend Taiwan’s democracy and way of life.

In a front-page election advertisement in the mass circulation Liberty Times Thursday, Tsai appealed directly for people to cast their vote against China.

“In the face of China, every ballot has power,” the advertisement read, next to a picture of Tsai wearing a camouflaged military helmet and flak jacket.

Main opponent: Kuomintang

Tsai’s main opponent is Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang party, which ruled China until 1949, when it was forced to flee to Taiwan after losing a civil war with the Communists.

Han says he would reset ties with Beijing to boost Taiwan’s economy, but not compromise on the island’s security or democratic way of life.

Overshadowing the elections have been allegations in Australian media from a self-professed Chinese spy about China’s efforts to influence Taiwan’s politics and support Han, who, along with Beijing, has denounced the accusations as lies.