Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized Monday evening after a fall in the presidential residence, his office said.

Bolsonaro was taken to the armed forces’ hospital in the capital of Brasilia and underwent examinations of his skull that showed no problems, said a statement from the presidency’s communications office.

The president would remain under observation for six to 12 hours, it said.

The statement gave no other details on the incident, but Brazilian media reported that Bolsonaro slipped  in the bathroom and banged his head.

Earlier this month, Bolsonaro reportedly  told advisers that he felt extreme tiredness and asked for his agenda to be reduced through the end of the year.

China held a three-way summit with South Korea and Japan Tuesday aimed at presenting a united front to counter North Korea’s resurgent belligerence.

Premier Li Kequiang welcomed South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the southwestern city of Chengdu, two days ahead of a so-called “Christmas gift” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  Kim is demanding new concessions from the United States by the end of the year in exchange for restarting the stalled negotiations aimed at getting the North to abandon its nuclear program.

In his opening remarks, President Moon said the increased tensions “in no way benefits either of our countries or North Korea.”

The trilateral meeting was also held amid an escalating dispute between Seoul and Tokyo over recent court rulings in South Korea ordering Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who were forced to work in Japanese plants during World War Two.

South Koreans are still bitter over Japan’s brutal military rule of the Korean peninsula that lasted from 1910 until 1945, when Japan surrendered to Allied forces to end the war.  Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were subjected to numerous atrocities during the occupation, including the so-called “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels.

Tokyo says the reparations issue was resolved with a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral relations between the nations.  Tokyo has complained that subsequent South Korean governments have not accepted further Japanese apologies and attempts to make amends.  

The dispute has spilled over into bilateral trade relations, with both nations removing each other from their so-called “white list” of nations enjoying minimal trade restrictions.  

Television stars and local officials have brought holiday cheer to the homeless in the Skid Row section of Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports, the volunteers brightened the holiday for the growing numbers of people facing homelessness.

The State Department has withdrawn the U.S. ambassador to Zambia after he strongly criticized the south African country for jailing a gay couple for having sex.

A State Department spokesperson said Ambassador Daniel Foote’s job in Zambia is “no longer tenable” because Zambian President Edgar Lungu said he no longer wants to work with Foote.

“Despite this action, the United States remains committed to our partnership with the Zambian people,” the spokesperson said, adding that the U.S. “firmly opposes abuses against LGBTI persons. Governments have an obligation to ensure that all people can freely enjoy the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms to which they are entitled.”

Ambassador Foote said last month that he was horrified by the 15-year prison sentence a Zambian court handed out to two men for having sex in what the court said was “against the order of nature.”

When Zambian officials criticized Foote’s reaction, he said all they want are diplomats “with open pocketbooks and closed mouths.”

Zambia has not yet commented on Foote’s withdrawal. The country gets hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid every year.
 

Gov. Ralph Northam’s office said Monday that he will push for legislation replacing Virginia’s statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee housed in the United States Capitol.

The governor filed a drafting request for a bill that would outline the process for removing the statue — one of Virginia’s two in the National Statuary Hall Collection — and selecting a replacement, Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said. The disclosure from Northam’s office came in response to questions about a letter from two Democratic members of Congress that called on Northam to make replacing the statue part of his agenda for the legislative session that begins next month.

“As Virginians, we have a responsibility to not only learn from but also confront our history,” U.S. Reps. Jennifer Wexton and A. Donald McEachin wrote in a letter released Monday. “As part of this responsibility, we must strive for a more complete telling of history by raising up the voices, stories, and memories of minorities and people of color.”

Yarmosky said Northam’s office had previously discussed the issue with McEachin and Wexton’s offices “and we look forward to continuing to work with them and all others who are committed to making Virginia open, inclusive, and equitable.”

She said additional details about the legislation would be announced later.

The National Statuary Hall Collection consists of 100 statues, two each from all 50 states, that honor notable people in their history. Virginia’s other statue is of George Washington.

“Virginia’s decision to donate the statue of Lee was a part of a national effort to rewrite the history of the South’s secession and rehabilitate the image of Confederate leaders,” said a press release from Wexton’s office.

Wexton and McEachin’s letter mentioned a number of Virginians who “would better represent our Commonwealth in the U.S. Capitol,” including civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill and educator and orator Booker T. Washington.

The two noted that other states have recently reconsidered their representation in the collection. Florida, for instance, recently replaced its statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith with one of civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.
 

Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton on Monday sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s North Korea policy, warning that the Asian country posed an “imminent” threat.

“The risk to US forces & our allies is imminent & more effective policy is required before NK has the technology to threaten the American homeland,” tweeted Bolton, who was dismissed in September amid growing disagreements with Trump, particularly regarding his North Korea policy.

The erstwhile adviser, a longtime hawk on North Korea, was openly skeptical of the 2018 summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and encouraged the U.S. president to be cautious.

The denuclearization process has been largely deadlocked since the collapse of a second summit in Hanoi at the start of this year. North Korea promised an ominous “Christmas gift” earlier this month if Washington does not give ground by the end of December.

In an interview with news site Axios published Monday, Bolton also said he thinks the Trump administration does not really intend to stop Pyongyang from becoming a legitimate nuclear power capable of firing missiles at other countries, otherwise “it would be pursuing a different course.”

“The idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,” he said.

Should North Korea conduct a major test or make some other significant provocation after the ultimatum expires, Bolton said he hopes Washington will acknowledge its mistake and say, “We’ve tried. The policy’s failed.”

The U.S. should then work with allies to show that “when we say it’s unacceptable, we’re going to demonstrate we will not accept it,” he added.

Bolton also criticized Trump for saying the North Korean short-range missile tests don’t bother him.

“When the president says, ‘Well, I’m not worried about short-range missiles,’ he’s saying, ‘I’m not worried about the potential risk to American troops deployed in the region or our treaty allies, South Korea and Japan,’” he charged.

“We’re not nearly three years into the administration with no visible progress toward getting North Korea to make the strategic decision to stop pursuing deliverable weapons,” Bolton said, noting that “time is on the side of the proliferator.”
 

Before Sim Ark gave birth to her second child, she didn’t think much about what a workplace needed to accommodate a new mother.

Now that she’s a working mother rather than a stay-at-home mom as she was with her first child, Sim Ark knows.

“I want to have a daycare facility right in my workplace so that I can visit my baby while working,” said Sim Ark, 29, who works at the You Li International factory in Bavet city, in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng province.

Three months after giving birth to her son Ham Ya Oudom, after many calls from factory administrators, Sim Ark returned to work. She didn’t want to risk losing her job.

Her absence from home during the day meant the baby switched from breastfeeding to bottle-fed meals of infant formula. At night, he switched back to breast milk unless Sim Ark found herself working overtime, which she says causes her milk to dry up.

Everyone in Sim Ark’s house — Phing Tithya, her husband, 29; Sim Lat, her sister, 40; and So Yam, her mother, 80 — knows how to mix breast-milk substitute (BMS) with boiled water or bottled mineral water to feed Ham Ya Oudom, a healthy, hungry baby who is happy except when he wakes up. Then, unless one of his adults carries him on a walk around the house or the village, he cries.

Although Sim Ark and other garment workers would like to be able to breastfeed their children until they are at least 6 months old, as doctors recommend, they don’t know how to raise the issue with their employers.

“I’m not sure how it look like if we had [a daycare facility in a factory]. Maybe a family member could come and help [in the facility] to look after the baby,” Sim Ark said, only to add, “then nobody would be available to do the work at home.”  

Worrying change

The change in Ham Ya Oudom’s routine when his mother returned to work helps explain why the rate of breastfeeding is declining in Cambodia, a change that worries child development experts.

In 2010, 74% of Cambodia’s infants younger than 6 months were breastfed. By 2014, the most recent year available, Cambodia had gone from having one of the highest rates of breastfeeding to a middling 65%, according to the latest available government data confirmed by UNICEF.

It is “a drastic decline,” said Cristian Munduate, a UNICEF representative in Cambodia, who described breastfeeding as “the best practice for a child during its first 6 months of life — the first natural vaccine that a child receives.”

Appropriate breastfeeding practices could prevent an estimated 823,000 child deaths every year worldwide, according to UNICEF, and breastfeeding contributes to improved cognitive development, school achievement and future earning potential, according to research published in the medical journal The Lancet. 

The current rate of breastfeeding is estimated to cost about $1 million a year in treating children with diarrhea and pneumonia and mothers with type II diabetes, according to a report by Alive & Thrive, a global initiative to ensure mother and infant health. Breastfeeding alleviates all three conditions.

The Alive & Thrive report suggests Cambodia stands to lose $83 million a year because of future cognitive losses associated with inadequate breastfeeding.

Law vs. reality

Several factors contributed to Cambodia’s declining rate of breastfeeding. Among them, according to UNICEF, are the lack of peer and government support for breastfeeding, the difficulty of juggling infant care with a job, and the aggressive marketing of infant formula.

With about 2.4 million women ages 15 to 34 participating in the country’s labor force, Cambodia has a law guaranteeing many women the opportunity to breastfeed, Munduate said.

Yet law and reality have yet to mesh, as Lim Buyheak, 35, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Vietnam National University, knows.

She has breastfed her daughter Heng Vichetsoma since she was born five months ago. She bought an electronic breast milk pumping kit for $145 and attempted to use it to pump and store her breast milk. Pumping turned out to be so difficult, she gave up. She now works on her thesis from home just to be able to breastfeed her daughter.

With like-minded young mothers, Lim Buyheak formed a Facebook group in November. It now has about 160 members who promote breastfeeding and support each other.
 
“When I breastfeed in public, I feel like I am odd,” Lim Buyheak told VOA by phone. “For instance, when I was at the AEON, everyone takes out feeding bottles to feed the baby, and I hold my shirt to the side to breastfeed” at the upscale Phnom Penh shopping mall.

“At first, I felt a little bit shy as well,” she said. “Now I feel very good to have support from my friends.”

Sim Ark and Phing Tithya, a baker in Sneang village, Svay Ta Yean commune, have two boys: Ham Yarith is 5 years old, and Ham Ya Oudom is 5 months old.

Sim Ark’s unmarried sister Sim Lat cares for the boys while their parents work.

Although Sim Ark’s factory allows postpartum mothers one hour a day for breastfeeding, her job is 20 kilometers from home, a 30-minute motor scooter ride away. She’s not alone in leaving her children with relatives.

In another household, Ouk Sokha, 58, sings lullabies to lull her 10-week-old grandson to sleep. Ouk Sokha has tended 11 grandchildren over the past eight years as her five daughters and one son have left their babies with her along with cans of baby formula and feeding bottles.

“I want my daughter to have the opportunity to earn money,” Ouk Sokha said. “If she had to breastfeed, there was no way she could go to work.”

As a young mother, Ouk Sokha breastfed each baby while working in the family’s rice fields.

“In my generation, we all breastfed,” she said. “Feeding [their infants] with baby formula is more preferable now.”

Rocking the baby’s bamboo cradle, Ouk Sokha said she fed her grandson five bottles of formula per day.

On average, the 10-week-old baby consumes seven cans of infant formula per month. Each can costs about $12. The

Baba Ram Dass, the 1960s counterculture spiritual leader who experimented with LSD and traveled to India to find enlightenment, returning to share it with Americans, has died. He was 88.

Dass’ foundation, Love Serve Remember, announced late Sunday that the author and spiritual leader died peacefully at his home earlier in the day. No cause of death was given.

He had suffered a severe stroke in 1997 that left him paralyzed on the right side and, for a time, unable to speak. More recently, he underwent hip surgery after he was injured in a fall in November 2008, according to his website.

“I had really thought about checking out, but your love and your prayers convinced me not to do it. … It’s just beautiful,” he told followers in a videotaped message at the time from his hospital bed in Hawaii.

Over the years, Ram Dass – born Richard Alpert – associated with the likes of Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg. He wrote about his experiences with drugs, set up projects to help prisoners and those facing terminal illness and sought to enlighten others about the universal struggle with aging.

But he was best known for the 1971 book “Be Here Now,” written after his trip to India. The spiritual primer found its way into thousands of backpacks around the world.

“I want to share with you the parts of the internal journey that never get written up in the mass media,” he wrote. “I’m not interested in what you read in the Saturday Evening Post about LSD. This is the story of what goes on inside a human being who is undergoing all these experiences.”

Among his other books were “How Can I Help?” and “Compassion in Action” and “Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying.”

“In the ’60s, I was an uncle for a movement,” he told The Associated Press in 1998. “I was always showing people where they could go. I went east, and then there was a big movement east.”

Now, he said, “the baby boomers are getting old – and I’m learning how to get old for them. That’s my role.”

The Boston-born son of a prominent attorney, Ram Dass entered the public sphere in the early 1960s as a young Harvard psychology professor. Alpert, as he was then known, earned a doctorate at Stanford University.

He and Leary, a Harvard colleague, began a series of experiments with hallucinogenic mushrooms and LSD, giving the drugs to prisoners, philosophers and students to study their effects.

Ram Dass later wrote that he tried psilocybin, the compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, in Leary’s living room.

“I peered into the semidarkness and recognized none other than myself in cap and gown and hood,” he wrote. “It was as if that part of me, which was a Harvard professor, had separated or dissociated itself from me.”

The experiments got him and Leary kicked out of Harvard in 1963.

“It was a little too sensational,” Ram Dass said in 1998. “We were the starters of it.”

He and Leary retreated to an upstate New York mansion that drew Beat Generation figures Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.

By the late 1960s, LSD and other hallucinogens had become part of pop culture and a rite of passage for many young Americans.

But Alpert eventually sought a way to reach a state of enlightenment without drugs. Following Ginsberg’s advice, he headed to India in 1967, where he met the man who became his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

There, his guru introduced him to yoga, meditation, Buddhism and Sufism, and gave him the name Ram Dass, Hindi for “servant of God.” (He is often called Baba Ram Dass; “baba” is an honorary title.)

Ram Dass wrote “Be Here Now” when he returned to the United States. Around the same time, he told The New York Times that he had turned away from drugs, saying: “I don’t want to break the law, since that leads to fear and paranoia.”

In 1974, Ram Dass founded the Hanuman Foundation, which set up programs such as the Prison Ashram Project to introduce inmates to spirituality. He also helped create the Seva Foundation, which works to prevent blindness and helps community groups in developing countries. His Love Serve Remember Foundation is dedication to preserving his teachings and those of Neem Karoli Baba.

Ram Dass lived for many years in the quiet town of San Anselmo, California, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of San Francisco, surrounded by the markers of his life straddling East and West: Japanese prints and statues of Buddha, seashells from the South Pacific and a well-used player piano.

In later years, he moved to Woodside, California. More recently, he was based in Maui.

He said his 1997 stroke brought physical and spiritual suffering, but that he came to see the suffering as a source of insight that he could share with others facing their own battles with illness and aging.

“It’s brought out new aspects of myself and aspects of my relationship to the world,” he said in 1998. The stroke has gotten me into a stage of life – this is a stage close to death, a stage which is inward.”

After regaining his speech, Ram Dass returned to the lecture circuit, starting by touring Northern California sharing tales of what he called his state of “heavy grace.”

“All illnesses are part of the passing show,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. “You are not just your body. You are the witness of your body.”

He had a falling out with Leary in the 1970s after rumors surfaced that the latter, jailed on drug and prison-break charges, offered to provide authorities with information on others involved in the drug culture in exchange for a lighter sentence.

But the pair had reconciled in the years before Leary’s death in 1996, joking back and forth and praising one another as they made joint appearances at lectures. When Leary was on his deathbed, Ram Dass came to visit after Leary asked for advice on how best to let go of life.

“The mythic level that Timothy and I lived at was that we were adventurers,” he said in the 2014 documentary, “Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary.”

Although speaking of Leary, Ram Dass added an epithet that also could be his own: “If you have identified with your soul when you are alive, death is just another moment.”

A chat app that quickly became popular in the United Arab Emirates for communicating with friends and family is actually a spying tool used by the government to track its users, according to a newspaper report.

The government uses ToTok to track conversations, locations, images and other data of those who install the app on their phones, The New York Times reported, citing U.S. officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment and the newspaper’s own investigation.

The Emirates has long blocked Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook’s WhatsApp and other calling apps. Emirati media has been playing up ToTok as an alternative for expatriates living in the country to call home to their loved ones for free.

New program popular

The Times says ToTok is a few months old and has been downloaded millions of times, with most of its users in the Emirates, a U.S.-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.

Government surveillance in the Emirates is prolific, and the Emirates long has been suspected of using so-called “zero day” exploits to target human rights activists and others.

Zero days exploits can be expensive to obtain on the black market because they represent software vulnerabilities for which fixes have yet to be developed.

The Times described ToTok as a way to give the government free access to personal information, as millions of users are willingly downloading and installing the app on their phones and blindly giving permission to enable features.

Local information requested

As with many apps, ToTok requests location information, purportedly to provide accurate weather forecasts, according to the Times. It also requests access to a phone’s contacts, supposedly to help users connect with friends. The app also has access to microphones, cameras, calendar and other data.

A security expert who said he analyzed the app for the Times, Patrick Wardle, said that ToTok “does what it claims to do” as a communications app, which is the “genius” of the app if it is being used as a spy tool. “No exploits, no backdoors, no malware, he wrote in  a blog post. The app is able to gain insights on users through common functions.

No response from ToTok

In a blog post Monday, ToTok did not respond directly to Sunday’s Times report, but said that with “reference to the rumors circulated today about ToTok,” the one goal of the app’s creators was to create a reliable, easy-to-use communications platform.

The post said ToTok had high-security standards to protect user data and a privacy framework that complied with local and international legal requirements.

ToTok said the app was temporarily unavailable in the app stores from Google and Apple due to a “technical issue.”

The Times says that a “technical analysis” and interviews with experts show that the company behind ToTok, Breej Holding, is probably affiliated with DarkMatter, an Emirati cybersecurity company that has hired former CIA and National Security Agency analysts and has close business ties to the Emirati government.

Emails sent to ToTok through its website and to the Emirates embassy in Washington were not immediately returned.

As the earth heats up, weather and climate patterns are changing dramatically around the globe. Africa felt the effects of those changes in 2019, experiencing cyclones, droughts and unstoppable rains that jeopardized livelihoods. From Nairobi, Rael Ombuor reports on what lies ahead for the continent.

Iran began new operations on Monday at a heavy water nuclear reactor, the head of the country’s nuclear agency said. The move was designed to intensify pressure on Europe to find an effective way around U.S. sanctions that block Tehran’s oil sales abroad.
                   
Starting up the Arak heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit doesn’t violate Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But it does inch Tehran’s program closer toward weapons-grade levels.
                   
Ali Akbar Salehi explained to state TV that the secondary circuit transfers heat to the reactor’s cooling system. He said the entire reactor system will go online in 2021.
                   
Heavy water helps cool reactors, producing plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
                   
Britain is helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces. London has filled the role left after the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal last year.
                   
Tehran has slowly stepped up violations of the nuclear deal to pressure world powers to provide more incentives to make up for the U.S. withdrawal from the deal. American economic sanctions are having a crushing effect on Iran’s economy.
                   
On Sunday, Adm. Ali Shamkhani of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council warned that his country will take another step in “lowering its commitment to the deal, if Europe does not implement its commitments.”
                   
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said last month that Iran breached another limit of the nuclear deal by stockpiling more heavy water than the accord allowed.
                   
Also in November, Washington renewed sanctions waivers that allow Russia and other European nations to conduct civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran, specifically the redesign work to continue at the Arak reactor and at the Fordo uranium enrichment facility. Both sites are monitored by the IAEA.

Algeria’s powerful army chief Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah, who was instrumental in bringing down long-time president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has died of a heart attack, state media reported on Monday.

The 79-year-old’s death comes at a time of mass protests across Africa’s largest country, with many Algerians demanding that the ruling elite relinquish power and the influential military step back from politics.

Gaed Salah’s departure may not signify major changes to Algeria’s economic and political policies, however, with the country’s senior generals united over the handling of the protests.

“The army hierarchy is unified and it will move on after Gaed Salah as it did before him. Algeria’s army is a single block, not under the influence of one general but with consensus as its engine,” said a retired general who asked not to be named.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced a three-day mourning period and said the head of land forces, General Said Chengriha, would take over as acting chief of staff of the
military.

Gaed Salah’s death comes less than a week after Tebboune was inaugurated following an election that the army had pushed for as the only way to resolve the crisis over the mass protests. Demonstrators opposed the vote and official figures showed only 40% of the electorate cast ballots.

The authorities have so far rejected any systematic attempt to crush the protests with violence, allowing them to continue each week but stepping up the police presence in recent months and detaining many demonstrators.

“He kept his promise to save the blood of Algerians during a tough period,” Islam Benatia, a prominent figure in the protest movement, said on Facebook.

‘Civilian, not military state’

The army’s central role in Algerian politics was underlined last week when Tebboune’s first act after being sworn in was to embrace Gaed Salah and present him with an order of merit. Weeks after mass protests erupted early this year, Gaed Salah’s televised speech urging president Bouteflika to quit swiftly led to the veteran leader’s resignation.

The army then backed a series of arrests of Bouteflika allies and senior businessmen in an anti-corruption campaign that was widely seen as a purge of the military’s rivals within the ruling system.

But it was not enough to appease the protesters, many of whom had begun calling for Gaed Salah’s resignation. One constant chant throughout the protests has been for “A civilian state, not a military state”.

The army has been central to Algerian politics since it won independence from France in 1962 following a guerrilla war against the colonial power. Most of the country’s leaders since that period, including Gaed Salah and the new acting army chief Chengriha, have been veterans of that struggle.

Algeria’s most powerful figure

Gaed Salah received military training in the Soviet Union and became head of Algeria’s land forces in 1994, early in the civil war between the state and Islamist insurgents that killed 200,000 people.

Bouteflika appointed him army chief a decade later. In the past 15 years he consolidated the military’s power in the ruling elite, helping Bouteflika face down the once-dominant intelligence service.

As Bouteflika and his allies were ousted this year, the army’s central role became more pronounced and Gaed Salah emerged as the most powerful figure in the country. He pushed hard for this month’s election to replace Bouteflika, a vote that the protesters rejected as a charade designed to keep the ruling elite in place, but was seen by the army as necessary to restore constitutional rule.

“Thank God we have a president now. Imagine what would have happened if there was no president,” said another retired general.

Gaed Salah’s funeral will take place on Tuesday, a day on which students have been staging weekly protests for much of the year.

A British supermarket chain has launched an investigation after a six-year old girl found a handwritten message in a package of Christmas cards produced in a Chinese factory allegedly written by prisoners who are used as forced labor. Officials of the Tesco chain said they have suspended the production of the charity Christmas card in the Shanghai facility after the note was discovered and are investigating what is behind it. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

The U.S. military has announced that a U.S. service member was killed in action Monday in Afghanistan.

In making the announcement, the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan did not provide further details on where and how the casualty occurred.

The Taliban, in a statement sent to journalists, claimed the U.S. casualty occurred in the volatile northern Kunduz province.

The insurgent group said it targeted Afghan and American soldiers with a roadside bomb as they tried to conduct a joint raid against Taliban positions in the Char Dara district.

The Taliban controls most of Char Dara while the Afghan government controls the district headquarters. The insurgents hotly contest many districts in Kunduz, which has twice briefly fallen to the Taliban in recent years.

The Taliban claimed another U.S. soldier along with an Afghan commando were seriously wounded in the blast. Taliban claims are difficult to verify from independent sources and are often exaggerated.

Monday’s fatality brings the number of American soldiers killed this year in Afghanistan to at least 19.

The 18-year-old Afghan war, America’s longest, is said to have cost Washington nearly $1 trillion and the lives of around 2,300 U.S. service members.

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea are holding a trilateral summit in China this week amid feuds over trade, military maneuverings and historical animosities. Most striking has been a complex dispute between Seoul and Tokyo, while Beijing has recently sought to tone down its disagreements with its two neighbors.

Economic cooperation and the North Korean nuclear threat are the main issues binding the Northeast Asian troika. While no major breakthroughs are expected at the meetings, the opportunity for face-to-face discussions between the sometimes-mutual antagonists is alone considered significant. Below is a look at the current state of relations among the three.

Japan-South Korea

Tensions rooted in South Korean resentment over Japan’s 20th century colonial occupation spiked this year to a level unseen in decades as they traded blows over wartime history, trade and military-to-military cooperation.

The countries managed to strike a fragile truce in November after intervention by the United States, which was concerned about the growing rift between its two key Asian allies. Seoul then walked back a declaration to terminate a bilateral military intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, an important symbol of their three-way security cooperation driven by the nuclear threat from North Korea and China’s growing regional clout.

Tokyo, in turn, agreed to resume discussions with Seoul on their dispute over Japan’s tightened controls on exports of key chemicals used by major South Korean companies to make computer chips and smartphone displays. Japan’s controls were widely seen as retaliation for South Korean court rulings that called for Japanese companies to offer reparations to aging South Korean plaintiffs for their World War II forced labor. Last Friday, Japan announced that it will ease export restrictions on one of the chemicals.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold a one-on-one meeting on Christmas Eve on the sidelines of the trilateral summit.

“Considering the recent difficulties in bilateral relations, holding the meeting itself has a large meaning,” Kim Hyun-chong, deputy chief of South Korea’s presidential National Security Office, said in a briefing in Seoul. “We hope that … the meeting will help keep the momentum of dialogue alive and provide an opportunity for improvement in South Korea-Japan relations.”

China-South Korea

South Korea’s relations with China, its biggest trading partner, have been strained over Seoul’s decision to host a U.S. anti-missile system that Beijing perceives as a security threat.

China says the real purpose of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system placed in southern South Korea is to peer deep into its territory, rather than to warn of North Korean missile launches.

China retaliated by restricting Chinese tour group visits to South Korea, boycotting South Korean television shows and other cultural products, and wrecking the Chinese business operations of major South Korean retailer Lotte, which provided the land for the missile system.

While Beijing’s fury appears to have subsided, there’s also uneasiness in Seoul over increasing Chinese and Russia air patrols over waters between South Korea and Japan. Experts say those are designed to test the strength of security cooperation between the U.S. allies.

South Korea has been eager to arrange a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping next year. Han Jung-woo, a spokesman for Moon, said the president plans to use his one-on-one meeting with Xi in China on Monday to “discuss ways to develop South Korea-China ties and facilitate bilateral exchanges and cooperation and also exchange deep views over the political situation of the Korean Peninsula.”

Japan-China

China’s relations with Japan had been more acrimonious than with any other foreign state, but have in recent years undergone a remarkable transformation, partly as a result of the U.S.-China tariff war.

Planning is underway for a state visit by Xi to Japan in the spring, made possible by the temporary shelving of contentious political issues and Beijing’s desire to exploit regional dissatisfaction with Washington over its trade policies.

“At this juncture, it is common sense for China to improve relations with its neighbors Japan and South Korea,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University.

However, some in Japan oppose Xi coming at a time when more than a dozen Japanese citizens have been arrested on spying allegations in China and Chinese naval and coast guard ships routinely violate Japanese waters around disputed East China Sea islands.

Japan also considers China’s growing maritime activity in regional seas and the upgrading of its military as a threat along with North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Tokyo has responded by upgrading its own defense capabilities and working with Chinese rival India, as well as with Southeast Asian countries and Australia.

Israel says it will allow Christians from Hamas-ruled Gaza to visit the West Bank and the holy city of Bethlehem and Gaza during Christmas.

“Entry permits for Jerusalem and for the West Bank will be issued in accordance with security assessments and without regard to age,” the Israeli military liaison to the Palestinians announced Sunday.

It had been unclear how many Christians from Gaza, if any, would be permitted to enter Israel during the holiday.

Gaza’s Christian community is tiny, about 1,000 among a population of 2 million. Most are Greek Orthodox.

Israel considers Hamas a terrorist group and has fought two wars against Gaza in the last 10 years.

Hamas militants continue to fire rockets into Israel.

Croatia’s conservative president trailed her leftist rival in Sunday’s election, but garnered enough votes to force a runoff early next year.

With nearly 98% of the votes counted, former prime minister and leader of the Social Democrats Zoran Milanovic was leading with nearly 30% of the vote, followed by President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic with about 27%.

Milanovic and Kitarovic will face each other on January 5.

Croatia’s presidency is largely ceremonial but retaining the presidency is important to Kitarovic’s ruling Croatian Democratic Union party because the country is set to take over the European Union’s rotating presidency in February.

In that capacity, the Croatian leader will oversee Britain’s exit from the bloc and the post-Brexit trade talks that will determine the union’s future.
 

While the international attention on China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang has focused mainly on ethnic and religious issues, Beijing’s economic development plans in the strategic region also play a key role in shaping the conflict, some experts and observers say.

Home to more than 11 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, Xinjiang covers an area of 1.66 million square kilometers that accounts for one-sixth of China’s land mass. Its oil, natural gas and coal reserves make up more than 20% of China’s energy reserves, turning the region into a national powerhouse.

The government in Beijing since 2017 has launched a major campaign of mass surveillance and the detention of over one million Uighurs and other Turkic minorities in the so-called “re-education” camps.   

Darren Byler, a Seattle-based anthropologist at the University of Washington who studies the Uighurs, charged that Chinese government’s economic development programs in Xinjiang to access natural resources have allowed a huge influx of majority Han migrants to the region. This has triggered more conflict with Uighurs who fear a demographic change in their land.

The programs, such as the Open up the Northwest Campaign in the 1990s, and the larger scale Open up the West Campaign in the 2000s, allowed Han corporate farmers to claim Uighur land and expand industrial scale agriculture in the Uighur-majority region, Byler told VOA.

“In general, Uighurs were excluded from the most lucrative jobs in these new industries by state-authorized job discrimination. Uighurs saw the cost of living begin to rise because of the new forms of wealth in the region. Many had a difficult time entering the new market economy. This is at the heart of the conflict between Uighurs and the Chinese state,” said Byler.

Xinjiang over the last 70 years has experienced a rapid demographic shift. The proportion of Han in the region has risen from nearly 9% in 1945 to about 40% today while the Uighur population has decreased from over 75% to only about 45%.

Some experts say the geopolitical position of Xinjiang as China’s bridge to central and south Asia is yet another motive behind Beijing’s ambition to control the region and prevent any room for possible dissent.

Belt and Road Initiative

Xinjiang in the northeast borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The region is at the heart of the $1 trillion infrastructure development and investments scheme, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that was introduced in 2013 by China’s President Xi Jinping to connect China with over 150 countries throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and Americas.

According to Sean Roberts, a professor of international development at George Washington University, Uighur’s attachment to their traditional lands and ways of life is seen by China’s Communist Party (CCP) as a risk to the successful implementation of the BRI.

“The intention to make Xinjiang a central part of BRI created a new urgency in the CCP to prevent further Uighur dissent in the region. In many ways, what we are seeing today is an attempt to entirely eliminate any possible Uighur dissent to the transformation of their homeland that the BRI will inevitably facilitate,” Roberts told VOA.

Xinjiang for decades has witnessed violent conflict centered around Uighurs’ aspiration for independence and China’s efforts to crush it. In 1955, Beijing recognized Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region but the move failed to bring a lasting stability.

‘Three evils’

Chinese authorities, who have rejected international accusations of human rights abuses in the region, say their measures are necessary to combat the “three evils” of “ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorism.”

They say the alleged mass detention camps are nothing but a “vocational training” program aimed at teaching the people new skills and manners.

Shohrat Zakir, Xinjiang’s governor, in a press conference earlier this month said all the people in the camps have been released after “graduating.” He claimed the Chinese government courses helped the people to improve the quality of their lives and find stable jobs.

However, some watchdog organizations say they are finding new evidence suggesting that people held in the camps are exposed to forced labor.

Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told VOA that China’s claims about the graduated detainees does not mean a change in its policy towards Uighurs but rather “a second phase, and a long-term plan to deepen social control through various forms of coercive labor.”

“I am not at all sure that they have in fact all ‘graduated’, but ‘graduating’ means that they might now go from their cell to a factory instead of a classroom,” Zenz said.

Push to low-wage jobs

According to James Millward, a Xinjiang researcher and professor of history at Georgetown University, mounting evidence on the coerced labor shows Uighurs are being pushed out of the private economy to low-wage factories such as cotton and making clothes. The move, he said, will likely serve the needs of Han businesses from eastern China.

“The forced labor is probably a way to recoup some of the billions of yuan that have been spent on building the camps, hiring security personnel, and the great cost to the local economy of interning a large percentage of the local population, an especially acute problem in southern Xinjiang,” Millward added.
 

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Sunday ahead of a midnight deadline to name an interim prime minister.

Anti-government rallies have rocked Baghdad and the Shi’ite-majority South since October, protesting against corruption, poor services, and a lack of jobs. Protesters have called for an end to the political system imposed after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s resigned Friday. President Barham Salih and parliament have since missed several deadlines to appoint a new prime minister. Mahdi and his government had agreed to stay on in a caretaker role until a new prime minister is approved.

But Mahdi’s resignation failed to satisfy anti-government protesters who have said it is not enough for a new prime minister to take over — they are demanding changes to the entire political system, which they call corrupt, inept, and say it does little to help impoverished Iraqis despite the nation’s oil wealth.

Protesters on Sunday decried the likely pick for the new interim prime minister, former higher education minister Qusay al-Suhail, who is opposed by critics for his ties to Iran. Demonstrators categorically reject his candidacy along with any other potential contenders who have been part of the government since 2003.

At least 460 people have died and tens of thousands of others have been wounded since the demonstrations erupted in October in Baghdad and in Shi’ite-majority areas in southern Iraq.

Among the protesters rallying in India against a controversial new citizenship law that critics call anti-Muslim are thousands of female students and conservative Muslim women who seldom appear in public places.  The law has excluded Muslims from six religious groups who will get expedited citizenship if they fled persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. At a university in the Indian capital which has been at the forefront of protests, Anjana Pasricha talks to women to find out why they have emerged on the streets.