A Chinese national trespassed at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club Wednesday and was arrested when she refused to leave, police said, the second time this year a woman from that country has been charged with illicitly entering the Florida resort.

Jing Lu, 56, was confronted by the private club’s security officers and told to leave, but she returned to take photos, Palm Beach police spokesman Michael Ogrodnick said in an email. Palm Beach officers were called and arrested her. It was determined she had an expired visa, Ogrodnick said.

Lu was charged with loitering and prowling and was being held late Wednesday at the Palm Beach County jail.

The president and his family were not at the club — he held a rally in Michigan on Wednesday as the U.S. House voted to impeach him. The Trumps are expected to arrive at Mar-a-Lago by the weekend and spend the holidays there.

Lu’s arrest is reminiscent of the March arrest of Yujing Zhang, a 33-year-old Shanghai businesswoman, who gained access to Mar-a-Lago while carrying a laptop, phones and other electronic gear. That led to initial speculation that she might be a spy, but she was never charged with espionage and text messages she exchanged with a trip organizer indicated she was a fan of the president and wanted to meet him or his family to discuss possible deals.

Zhang was found guilty in September of trespassing and lying to Secret Service agents and was sentenced last month to time served. She is being held for deportation.

In another Mar-a-Lago trespassing case, a University of Wisconsin student was arrested in November 2018 after he mixed in with guests being admitted to the club. He pleaded guilty in May and received probation.

In both of those cases, Trump and his family were staying at the resort, but none were ever threatened.

With the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway to the west, Mar-a-Lago sits on the Palm Beach barrier island, a 128-room, 62,500-square-foot (5,8000-square-meter) symbol of opulence and power. The Trump family business doubled the initiation fee to $200,000 after the president was elected in 2016. He spends many weekends between November and April there, mingling with the club’s 500 members, who pay $14,000 in annual dues to belong.

Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago from the foundation of the late socialite and cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1985. He and first lady Melania Trump held their 2005 wedding reception inside the 20,000-square-foot (1,860-square-meter) ballroom shortly after its completion.

Federal agencies spent about $3.4 million per Trump visit, much of it on security, according to an analysis of four 2017 trips by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Secret Service doesn’t decide who is invited or welcome at the resort; that responsibility belongs to the club. Agents do screen guests outside the perimeter before they’re screened again inside.

Seven U.S. Democratic presidential candidates are debating again Thursday, offering themselves to U.S. voters as an alternative in next year’s election to President Donald Trump, now newly impeached but undaunted in his quest for a second term in the White House.

The one-time Democratic field of more than two dozen candidates has shrunk, as several candidates have dropped out of the chase for the party’s nomination.

The seven appearing on the debate stage at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles are led by former Vice President Joe Biden, senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. They all met the party’s minimum requirements for enough voter support in polls and substantial fundraising to make the debate stage.

Three others — Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, billionaire activist Tom Steyer, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang — join them. All of the previous debates had at least 10 candidates laying out their positions.

More Democratic candidates who did not qualify for the sixth debate continue to campaign, still hoping to make a connection with voters six weeks before he party’s first nominating contests in the midwestern state of Iowa, and later in the northeastern state of New Hampshire.

One wild-card candidate is a late entrant in the Democratic race — Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire publishing magnate and former New York mayor, who is spending his own money on an expensive television advertising campaign to increase his stature in vote-rich California, the largest U.S. state.  Democrats will cast ballots there in an early March nominating election.

While support for various candidates still in the field has waxed and waned in national polls, there has been one constant — 77-year-old Biden continues to lead the pack, despite frequent verbal gaffes.

Biden, in his third bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, has touted his electoral chances against Trump. He frequently polls ahead of the president in a hypothetical matchup between the two.

Two other septuagenarians, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Warren, a former Harvard law professor, also often poll ahead of Trump, as does 37-year-old Buttigieg. But Biden usually fares better against Trump than the other three, while an occasional poll has Trump winning some of the matchups.

The polls perhaps led Trump to assume Biden would be his 2020 opponent, thus singling out the former president in his monthslong quest to get Ukraine to investigate him and his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Trump has described the request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “perfect,” but it is at the center of the impeachment case against Trump brought by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, which is now heading to the Senate for a trial in January.

Trump remains highly unlikely to be convicted in the Republican-majority Senate and removed from office, but he now is the third U.S. president to be impeached in the nearly two-and-a-half-century history of the United States. All of the Democratic contenders supported Trump’s impeachment.

In previous debates, the Democratic candidates have sparred over the extent to which they would try to change U.S. health care policies if they defeat Trump. Biden has called for incremental changes to the 2010 law approved while he was vice president, which has helped millions of people buy health insurance coverage to pay their medical bills.

Sanders and Warren are pushing for adoption of a government-run insurance program for all Americans, something Biden says would be prohibitively expensive.

Aside from health care, the Democrats are likely to face questions from debate moderators about national security, trade with China and other nations, gun control in the wake of continuing mass shootings in the U.S., race relations, immigration, U.S. relations with long-standing European allies, and contentious dealings with Russia.

Biden could face questions about his son’s lucrative employment at the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, and his own role in helping oust a Ukrainian prosecutor that the U.S. and European allies deemed  weak against corruption.

For a man fixated on the image of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts faces a unique challenge in presiding over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, expected next month.

For only the third time in the nation’s history, the Senate will weigh the evidence generated by the House of Representatives and determine whether to oust a sitting president from office.

As the head of the high court, Roberts, a Republican appointee, has taken pains in recent years to explain that the court is not a partisan bench, but a body of judicial “umpires” calling balls and strikes. 

Projecting an air of independence

However, as he assumes the gavel in January and guides the impeachment trial to what is almost certain to be an acquittal, Roberts must project an air of independence from the Republican majority defending the president.

“He’s undoubtedly going to recognize that any appearance of partiality to one side or the other is going to reflect to some degree on the side’s view of the court of which he’s the head,” said Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri and author of a history of impeachment. “He is going to be particularly interested in preserving the integrity of the court, far more than he is in the outcome of this particular proceeding.”

The historic trial comes at a time when many critics are openly questioning the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. These critics say the high court has become a highly politicized body, with its nine justices, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, often voting on matters of consequence along predictably ideological lines.

Protests grew louder after Kavanaugh appointment

The protests have grown louder since June 2018, when Justice Anthony Kennedy, a crucial swing vote on the court, retired and Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh, a more conservative jurist, as his replacement. With the Kavanaugh appointment – which came amid accusations of sexual assault – the conservatives cemented their hold on the court, spurring Democratic fears that the justices will overturn consequential legal precedents on abortion and gay rights, and rubber-stamp Trump’s controversial policies on a range of issues.

Yet Roberts, a moderate conservative with a proclivity for occasionally crossing party lines, has emerged as something of a “median” justice on the bench. While he voted in favor of Trump’s “travel ban” on several Muslim-majority countries last year, the chief justice angered many on the right when he joined the four liberals this year in rejecting a controversial administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. 

Roberts rebuked Trump

Roberts typically maintains a low profile. Now, with Trump’s impeachment, Roberts is being thrust into the public eye and the awkward position of presiding over the trial of a president who once disparaged him as “an absolute disaster” and with whom he publicly clashed last year.

The quarrel with Trump happened after the president berated a federal judge who had ruled against his asylum policy as an “Obama judge,” referring to former President Barack Obama. That prompted Roberts to issue a rare public rebuke.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement, referring to Trump, Obama and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Trump fired back 

That did not sit well with Trump, who fired back on Twitter that the chief was “wrong.” However, the highly unusual statement underscored the length to which the chief justice has been willing to go to defend the court’s institutional integrity and in the process secure his own legacy.

“I think it shows that Chief Justice Roberts is taking his responsibility as the presiding officer, the chief executive officer of the machinery of the federal judiciary very, very seriously,” said Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

During the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial, Richards served as a clerk to then-Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is Roberts’ predecessor.

Rehnquist role largely ceremonial

Richards said Roberts will likely look to Rehnquist’s performance for clues on how to conduct an impeachment trial.

Rehnquist’s role was largely ceremonial, restricted by Senate rules that permitted a simple majority of senators to override his rulings. On the rare occasion that he did issue a ruling, such as upholding a senator’s objection when a House manager addressed the senators as “jurors,” it was largely inconsequential.

“I think [Roberts] is going to realize, as Chief Justice Rehnquist did before him, that this is a slightly different kind of proceeding from the one that he’s used to presiding over at the court,” Richards said.

Senate no ordinary court

The Constitution gives the Senate the “sole power” to try all impeachments, and designates the chief justice as the presiding judge for presidential impeachment trials.

When the likely Trump trial gets underway, the Senate will be transformed into something of an impeachment court, but it will be very different from an ordinary court, with senators doubling as jurors and judges, and wielding the power to override the presiding judge on any procedural point.

That will limit the chief justice’s authority, something that Roberts will likely welcome, Bowman said.

“Beyond exerting whatever moral suasion he has, he has very little real power,” Bowman said. “And my sense is that he, like Justice Rehnquist, is going to want to keep a low profile.”

On the other hand, if the Senate agrees to new rules allowing witnesses and cross-examinations, Roberts is likely to take on a larger role, Richards said.

“By definition, there is going to be a more active chief justice just because he’s going to have to deal with objections and reluctant witnesses and claims of executive privilege of the sort that just didn’t come up in the Clinton trial,” Richards said.

McConnell says trial is a ‘political process’

That scenario is far from certain. Complicating matters for Roberts, Senate Republicans have dispensed with all pretense that this will be a deliberate judicial process.

“I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There is not anything judicial about it,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

Last week, McConnell, a close Trump ally, said he’ll be coordinating with the White House throughout the trial.

While not illegal, the planned coordination “certainly runs contrary to the tradition that the Senate has tried to uphold of at least appearing to represent a thoughtful deliberative, natural decision,” Bowman said.

It also puts Roberts on the spot, said Jeffrey Tulis, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who has written about impeachment.

Paradoxically, however, the trial may enable the chief justice to burnish his court’s image as an apolitical institution, Tulis said.

“It will reconfirm the view that that guy is a justice, he’s not a politician,” he said.

Members of the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to charge President Donald Trump with two articles of impeachment. As the Senate prepares to address the issue in the new year, public opinion in the U.S. on impeachment remains polarized. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari looks at the factors feeding a deep partisan divide.

Citing 400 years of tradition, Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vasquez on Wednesday challenged the federal ban on cockfighting.

Vasquez signed a bill that seeks to sidestep the ban signed into law by President Donald Trump last year that was set to take effect on Friday.

“This measure is not meant to be a confrontation,” she said. “If they [the federal government] understand this as a conflict, then we ask them to come talk to us. Let’s talk it through. This is an industry that represents the income for thousands of families, and we have to take them into consideration.”

Puerto Rican officials say cockfighting generates an estimated $18 million a year and employs 27,000 people. There are 71 licensed cockpits across the island that are regulated by the Department of Sports and Recreation.

The blood sport was introduced to the island by Spanish colonists 400 years ago. The ban “is an abuse the U.S. government is committing against our culture,” said  cock owner Carlos Junior Aponte Silva.

Animal rights activists say cockfighting is cruel. Owners attach spikes to the birds’ legs to cause more damage to opponents during the 12-minute bouts. Cock deaths during a fight or shortly afterward are common.

Vasquez expects the law she signed to be challenged.

“Obviously, the final decision belongs to the court,” she said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a “biosimilar” medicine — one derived from living sources rather than chemicals — to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally.

The trastuzumab drug has shown “high efficacy” in curing early-stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, WHO said in a statement.

But the annual cost of the original drug is an average of $20,000, “a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in most countries,” the statement added.

However, the biosimilar version of trastuzumab is generally 65 percent cheaper than the original.

“With this WHO listing, and more products expected in the prequalification pipeline, prices should decrease even further,” WHO said.

The cheaper but equally effective biotherapeutic medicines are produced from biological sources such as cells rather than synthesized chemicals.

They are usually manufactured by companies after the patent on the original product has expired.

“WHO prequalification of biosimilar trastuzumab is good news for women everywhere,” said WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Women in many cultures suffer from gender disparity when it comes to accessing health services. In poor countries, there is the added burden of a lack of access to treatment for many, and the high cost of medicines.

“Effective, affordable breast cancer treatment should be a right for all women, not the privilege of a few,” he added.

WHO prequalification 

A few biosimilars of trastuzumab have come on the market in recent years, but none had previously been prequalified by WHO.

WHO prequalification gives countries the assurance that they are purchasing “quality health products.”

“We need to act now and try to avoid more preventable deaths,” said Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director general for Medicines and Health Products.

“The availability of biosimilars has decreased prices, making even innovative treatments more affordable and hopefully available to more people.”
 

The U.S. special envoy leading negotiations with the Taliban met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul on Wednesday, officials said, amid a renewed push to reach an accord with the insurgents.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Ghani discussed several topics including the need for a ceasefire, Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said.

“The president also expressed his concerns about the continued violence by the Taliban,” Seddiqi said.

“The president reiterated that the government and people of Afghanistan want a sustainable peace.”

The U.S. State Department said Khalilzad had met with Afghan leaders to discuss “efforts to finalize a deal with the Taliban.”

“If an agreement can be reached, the process must soon pivot to intra-Afghan negotiations,” a State Department spokesman told AFP, referring to discussions the U.S. wants to see take place between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Khalilzad has spent more than a year leading a push for a deal with the Taliban that would see the U.S. reduce its military footprint in Afghanistan in return for security guarantees from the insurgents.

While U.S.  officials have kept Ghani apprised of developments, the Afghan president has been cut out of negotiations because the Taliban refuse to recognize his authority.

A U.S.-Taliban deal had been all but signed in early September, but President Donald Trump scuttled the agreement at the last minute, citing concerns about ongoing Taliban violence including a Kabul bombing that killed an American soldier.

Talks resumed Dec. 7 amid a reduction in violence in Kabul but were paused following another Taliban attack, this time at Bagram air base north of Kabul.

Talks appear to have resumed again this week in Doha.

Bryan Russell has Down syndrome and does daily speech exercises, putting pens and corks in his mouth to help build up low muscle tone there. He is also waging a long-shot bid to become a national Peruvian lawmaker, going door to door in Lima to ask for votes.

Russell, 27, wants to use his campaign to raise awareness about people with developmental disabilities and he says he represents an alternative to the scourge of corruption in Peru that has brought down presidents and weakened democratic institutions.

“I’m someone clean, honest, transparent,” Russell said in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke while sitting next to Amor, a pet dog he rescued from the street.

The purpose of politicking, he said, is to “break the paradigm” that people with Down syndrome can’t be independent.

Russell may be the first person with Down syndrome to run for public office anywhere, according to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

“We are thrilled that Bryan Russell is running for Congress in Peru,” said Michelle Sie Whitten, president and CEO of the foundation. “As far as we know, he is the first professional who has Down syndrome running for a publicly elected office, and he is showing the world that we need diversity in all areas of society including in our governments.”

In 2013, Angela Bachiller, who has Down syndrome, became a city councilor in Valladolid, Spain. But she didn’t run for election, instead taking over the post after her predecessor resigned because of corruption allegations.

Down syndrome is a genetic abnormality that causes developmental delays and medical conditions such as heart defects and respiratory and hearing problems.

Russell is a candidate for Peru-Nacion, a center-right party that is not widely known and has fared poorly in past elections. However, Russell’s bold campaign ahead of the Jan. 26 parliamentary elections is getting attention. He was invited to speak at a leftist forum where he asked people to fight for people like him, regardless of political leanings.

“I want people with my condition to have a voice,” said Russell, who studied communications at the Peruvian San Ignacio de Loyola University and said his parents encouraged him to find his own way.

“I learned how to read and write, walk, run and eat, basically to respect myself,” the candidate has written.

“Well this is really impressive, because Bryan is changing the history and that is the most important thing,” said Gladys Mujica, Russell’s mother.

Mujica, an English teacher, described her son as a “symbol.”

‘Give him a chance’

Some Peruvians are open to Russell’s campaigning, which consists on a normal day of handing out leaflets while carrying a sign with an image of his face.

“He’s looking to do his best. The ‘normal’ people try to steal from the country. That’s a very big difference,” said Carlos Maza, a retired man who said he would vote for Russell.

“We have to give him a chance,” said Elena Saavedra, a secretary who shook the candidate’s hand.

About 3 million Peruvians have some kind of disability in a country of more than 30 million, according to official figures. There is no data for the number of Peruvians with Down syndrome, though historian Liliana Penaherrera, founder of the Peruvian Society for Down Syndrome, estimates there could be up to 25,000 people with the condition.

Prejudices

People with Down syndrome struggle to overcome prejudices, including a perception that they are basically big children and can’t make their own decisions, said psychologist Patricia Andrade.

As a result, many with Down syndrome live on the margins of society because employers prefer to hire people with other kinds of disabilities, filling a quota of 3% and 5% in workplaces of more than 50 people.

Last year, Peru changed its laws to allow people described as disabled to exercise their rights without the intervention of a representative on their behalf. Previously, they needed a guardian to marry, vote, sign a work contract, acquire a credit card and do other things.

Penaherrera welcomed Russell’s political candidacy, saying it draws attention to people who struggle against discrimination and the invisibility that society forces upon them.

Still, she said, Russell should be held to the same standards as “any other politician” if he gets elected.
 

Fourteen people were killed and 13 were missing after Boko Haram jihadists attacked a fishing village in western Chad on Tuesday, government officials said.

Violence from the Boko Haram insurgency started in Nigeria a decade ago, but has since spread to neighboring countries Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

“There were 14 dead, five wounded and 13 missing in the attack” near the village of Kaiga on the shores of Lake Chad, Imouya Souabebe, the prefect of the region, told AFP on Wednesday.

Kaiga lies in marshland in a remote, sprawling region where the borders of the four countries — Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger — meet.

The village is about 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the border with northeast Nigeria, the springboard for Boko Haram raids and kidnappings in neighboring countries.

“We know that there are always Boko Haram elements moving around the [border] area, so they are behind this attack,” Souabebe said.

“The attackers first came in a small group and then brought in reinforcements to attack the fishermen.”

The region’s governor, Noki Charfadine, gave a toll of at least nine dead.

He said the attack had taken place in a “red zone, where fishing is forbidden.”

Boko Haram launched its armed insurgency in northeastern Nigeria — a campaign that has killed 35,000 people and caused around two million to flee their homes.

The spread of violence to Chad, Cameroon and Niger has prompted the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the jihadists.

Boko Haram has since split in two, with the emergence of a branch allied to the Islamic State (IS) group, known as Islamic State Group in West Africa or ISWAP.

The other faction, loyal to the movement’s historic leader, Abubakar Shekau, is known for targeting civilians, including village attacks and suicide attacks.

The ISWAP, which has about 3,000 men grouped at Lake Chad, has been building its capacity and mainly targets the armed forces of countries in the region.

In Chad, four soldiers were killed by jihadists on December 2 in the attack on one of their positions on the shores of the lake. In recent months, many civilians have been killed or abducted in this area as well, mostly in Chad and Cameroon.

Chinese telecommunications group Huawei is working on a plan to build its own components at a site in Europe, its chairman told AFP, after it was hit by U.S. sanctions.

President Donald Trump has ordered American firms to cease doing business with Huawei, but Liang Hua reiterated denials that the company was a tool of Chinese intelligence.

“We are planning to manufacture our own components at a production site in Europe in the future,” he said in an interview at AFP’s headquarters. “We are conducting a feasibility study to open a factory in Europe for this. The choice of country will depend on that study.”

While there is no timetable for the choice, Liang said “it could happen very quickly.”

The chairman added: “In the area of 5G technology, we are already no longer dependent on the supply of chips and other components from American companies.”

Trump’s offensive has deprived Huawei of access to chips and other technology from U.S. leaders Micron, Qualcomm and Intel, so the company has had to diversify its supply base, notably from elsewhere in Asia.

U.S. intelligence chiefs claim that Huawei cannot be trusted and that its equipment is a threat to U.S. national security — an accusation the company has dismissed.

Trump has offered a series of temporary reprieves for Huawei to allow service providers covering remote rural areas time to comply with the ban.

Spy denial

Liang reiterated Huawei’s denials of the espionage accusation, insisting it had never been asked by the Chinese government to eavesdrop on its customers.

“In the past 30 years we have never been the object of such a request. Even if one was made in the future, we would turn down such a request,” he said.

Chinese law requires individuals and organizations to assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.

Nevertheless, other countries are under pressure from the United States to also act against Huawei.

Australia and Japan have taken steps to bar or tightly restrict the firm’s participation in their rollouts of 5G networks. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson strongly hinted that Britain would follow suit.

Growing market

Against that backdrop, Huawei has stressed a focus on continental Europe, and has announced plans to spend $40 billion on European supplies.

Despite the U.S. pressure and spillover from a Sino-U.S. trade war, Liang said Huawei’s sales were holding up, and the firm is developing its own mobile operating system as it faces up to losing access to Google’s Android.

The group expects to have sold between 245 and 250 million smartphones worldwide this year, he said.

That would exceed last year’s figure of 206 million handsets, according to IDC data.
 

European Union nations say the fish catch quotas they agreed upon for next year means they have made more headway in securing sustainable fishing in their waters — but environmentalists are strongly disputing that claim.

EU fisheries Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said Wednesday after two days of negotiations that almost 100% of EU fish landings from the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea will come from sustainable sources.

After having overfished both regions for years, the EU claims that 2020 will bring in a new era for fisheries.

“Next year, the EU member states fleet will fish at the level that will not hinder the regeneration of the stocks,” Sinkevicius said.

Environmental groups strongly disagree with that claim. They say EU nations have again put the interests of their fishing industry ahead of the health of their waters. Some cod quotas for next year were cut but fishing for several other species can increase.

“The limits agreed by ministers suggest that progress to end overfishing has stalled or even reversed, a disappointing outcome for the year. Overfishing was supposed to become a thing of the past,” said Andrew Clayton of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The boards of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Peugeot on Wednesday signed a binding merger deal creating the world’s fourth-largest auto company with the scale to confront the challenges of stricter emissions regulations and the transition to new driving technologies.

The companies said in a joint statement the new group will be led by PSA’s cost-cutting CEO Carlo Tavares, with Fiat Chrysler’s chairman John Elkann as chairman of the merged company. Fiat Chrysler CEO Mike Manley will stay on, but it was not announced in what capacity.

No name for the new company has been decided, executives said in a conference call, but both Tavares and Manley insisted that it was not a “touchy subject.”

The deal, which was unveiled in October, was announced as a 50-50 merger, but PSA has one extra seat at the board and Tavares at the helm, giving the French carmaker the upper hand in daily management.

The executives said they expect the deal to take 12-15 months to close. It will give birth to a group with revenues of nearly 170 billion euros and producing 8.7 million cars a year – just behind Toyota, Volkswagen and the Renault-Nissan alliance.

The merger is expected to create 3.7 billion euros in annual savings, which will be invested in “the new era of sustainable mobility” and to meet strict new emissions regulations, particularly in Europe.

“‘The merged entity will maneuver with speed and efficiency in an automotive industry undergoing rapid and fundamental changes,” the carmakers said in the joint statement.

New technologies includes electrified engines, autonomous driving and connectivity, part of what Tavares described as `’the transition to a world of clean, safe and sustainable mobility.’’

No plants will be closed under the deal, the companies said. Savings will be achieved by sharing investments in vehicle platforms, engines and new technology, while leveraging scale on purchasing.

But the executives also said there would be cuts. Decisions on where those will come will be made after the deal closes.

“There is room for sharing (a) significant amount of existing platforms and avoiding excess investments for the future,” Tavares said.

Both the Peugeot and Fiat brands are strong on small-car technology, with significant overlap in Europe. Manley said that the convergence of platforms would be “an early target” that will likely take two years to achieve.

The company will be legally based in the Netherlands, and traded in Paris, Milan and New York.

The executives played down the significance of the new entity’s name and headquarters location, but both are symbolic choices that go a long way to signaling who is in the driver’s seat, where engineering and management brains will be based, and the relative importance of each entity in the new company.

The French and Italian governments as well as unions will be on the look-out for the responses, given the national significance of the auto industries to both economies. The French government helped bail out PSA Peugeot in 2014 and owns a 12-percent stake in the French company through the state investment bank.

While the merger of Fiat and Chrysler has been a success, with the Italian-American automaker thriving on the strength of the U.S. market and the executive prowess of longtime CEO Sergio Marchionne, the history of car mergers is littered with failed tie-ups. Most famous among those is the Daimler-Chrysler merger, which foundered on cultural differences between the German and U.S. entities.

Manley said the new name “‘is an exercise we’re embarking on now. We have two very historic companies coming together. … I don’t think it will be a touchy subject, just an interesting process.’”

The new company will start with a strong base in Europe, where PSA is the second-largest carmaker, and while Fiat makes most of its profits in North America and has a strong presence in Latin America. It will be looking to strengthen its position in China, where both PSA and FCA lag.

“That is part of the opportunities,” Tavares said. “‘We are not happy with our performance there. We think we should be doing better in China.’”

Tavares said the deal has the support of its Chinese partner and investor Dongfeng, which ‘”understood what needed to be done.’”

As part of the deal, Dongfeng’s stake in the new company will be diluted from 6.2% to 4.5%, through the sale of 30.7 million shares.

FCA will pay its shareholders a 5.5 billion-euro ($6.1 billion) premium, raising questions about whether the new company will be saddled with too much debt. Analysts estimate that Peugeot is paying a hefty 32% premium to take control of Fiat Chrysler.

Fiat Chrysler has long been looking for an industrial partner to shoulder investment costs as the industry faces a transition to electrified power trains and autonomous driving. A previous deal with French rival Renault last spring fell apart over French government concerns about the role of Renault’s Japanese partner, Nissan.

Tavares said both the French government and unions backed the new deal from the beginning.

Gunmen in Pakistan shot and killed two policemen on Wednesday who were part of the most recent anti-polio drive in the country’s rugged and volatile northwest, officials said.

The gunmen opened fire as the policemen were heading on foot to the town of Lower Dir in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, said local police official Saeedur Rehman. He said the attackers fled the scene and a search was underway to find them.

The policemen were to escort a team of medics going house-to-house to vaccinate children against the crippling disease. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Pakistan regularly carries out anti-polio drives, despite threats from the Taliban who claim the campaign is a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. Polio teams and security forces escorting them are often targeted in deadly attacks.

The latest, three-day anti-polio campaign started Monday. Rehman said that despite Wednesday’s attack, the teams would carry on administering polio drops to children in Lower Dir till the end of the day.

Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio is still endemic; the other two are Afghanistan and Nigeria . So far this year, 94 new polio cases have been reported in Pakistan, compared to only 12 in 2018.

Authorities say the increase in polio cases was mainly because of the parents’ refusal to let their children be vaccinated. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government has deployed additional police forces to guard polio teams and has appealed, with the support of clerics, on the parents to allow their children to get polio drops.

The latest anti-polio campaign was to include 39.5 million children up to five years of age across the entire country. Pakistan has an estimated population of 220 million.

India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed hearing pleas challenging the constitutionality of a new citizenship law that has sparked opposition and massive protests across the country. The court said it would consider the pleas on Jan. 22.

Protests and widespread condemnation have been growing against the Citizenship Amendment Act, with demonstrations erupting in India over the last week.

The new law applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally but can demonstrate religious persecution in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.

Critics say that the new law is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government’s agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims and that it goes against the spirit of the country’s secular constitution. Modi has defended it as a humanitarian gesture.

Its passage last week follows a contentious citizenship registry process in northeastern India’s Assam state intended to weed out people who entered the country illegally.Nearly 2 million people in Assam were excluded from the list, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign. India is building a detention center for some of the tens of thousands of people the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally.Its passage also came as an unprecedented crackdown continued in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority area, which was stripped of special constitutional protections and its statehood in August. Since then, movement and communications have been restricted in the region.

University students across India have been leading a campaign to have the citizenship law overturned.

On Sunday, marches by students at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh descended into chaos when police fired tear gas and beat unarmed protesters with wooden sticks.

Scores of students were injured. Police say they acted with restraint.

The police response to the protests has drawn widespread condemnation. It also has sparked a broader movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Demonstrations have erupted across the country, with thousands rallying in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, authorities tightened security restrictions, implementing a curfew in the northeastern state of Assam, where ongoing protests have disrupted daily life in Gauhati, the state capital. They also restricted assembly in a Muslim neighborhood in New Delhi where demonstrators torched a police booth and several vehicles on Tuesday.

U.S. lawmakers granted formal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians on Tuesday and directed federal officials to acquire land on the tribe’s behalf, following a decades-long struggle by its members scattered across the Northern Plains of the U.S. and Canada.

A provision to recognize the tribe and make it eligible for millions of dollars annually in federal assistance was included in a defense bill approved in the Senate on a vote of 86 to 8. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

Most of the tribe’s more than 5,000 members are in Montana, descendants of Native Americans and early European settlers.

They have a headquarters in Great Falls, Montana but have been without a recognized homeland since the late 1800s, when the tribe’s leader, Chief Little Shell, and his followers in North Dakota broke off treaty negotiations with the U.S. government.

Tribe members later settled in Montana and southern Canada, but they struggled to stay united because they had no land to call their own.

Formal government recognition gives cultural validation to a tribe whose members have long lived on the fringes of society and were sometimes shunned by whites. More practically, it makes its members, many of them poor, eligible for government benefits ranging from education and health care to housing.

“It’s truly amazing. I’m almost speechless that this has finally come to fruition for us,” Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray said. “Besides the dignity part and us fighting for this for over 150 years, it’s going to provide access to services our people have never had access to but have always deserved”

Providing services to the tribal members through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service would cost roughly $40 million over five years, or about $8 million a year, the Congressional Budget Office said in a March report. That figure was based on an enrollment of roughly 2,600 members, a number that Gray said was outdated and too low.

Tribal leaders first petitioned for recognition through the Interior Department in 1978. Members trace their other attempts back to the 1860s, when the Pembina Band of Chippewa signed a treaty with the U.S. government.

Recognition was granted by the state of Montana in 2000, but denied by the U..S. Interior Department in 2009.

Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, said he worked with Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines to convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get language recognizing the tribe into the defense bill.

“There were no deals cut here,” Tester said moments after Tuesday’s vote. “This happened because Leader McConnell made it a priority.”

Daines said the Senate vote marked a “historic day for the state of Montana” and had been one of his main priorities.

Legislation recognizing the tribe was approved by the House last year but later blocked in the Senate.

 Tester said a similar measure was the first piece of legislation he introduced after being first elected in 2006. Daines and Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, Montana’s sole member of the House, also took up the Little Shell’s cause after taking office.

The House passed the defense bill with the Little Shell provision included in a vote last week. It calls on the U.S. Department of the Interior to acquire 200 acres (80 hectares) for the Little Shell’s members that could be used for a tribal government center, health clinic, housing or other purposes.

Gray said the tribe will work in coming months to identify the location of that land. The legislation says is must be within a four-county area of north-central Montana that includes Great Falls.

“It’s going to take some time,” Gray said. “We want to build a nation and you’ve got to get it right.”

As Pyongyang appears to be preparing to launch a long-range missile, experts see an end to a diplomatic process Washington has pursued to denuclearize North Korea.

“I see no signs that the North Koreans are interested in talking to the U.S. at this time,” said Joshua Pollack, a North Korean expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. “They appear to have made their decision.”

On Tuesday, a top U.S. Air Force general said he is expecting North Korea to launch a long-range ballistic missile as a “Christmas gift” to the U.S.

“What I would expect is some type of long-range ballistic missile would be the gift,” said Gen. Charles Brown, commander of Pacific Air Forces and air component commander for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“It’s just a matter of does it come on Christmas Eve? Does it come on Christmas Day? Does it come after the New Year?”  

Earlier this month, North Korea said, “It is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

The statement came as Pyongyang issued a series of warnings demanding that Washington change its stance on denuclearization talks by the end-of-the-year deadline Pyongyang unilaterally imposed on Washington.

Washington and Pyongyang have been locked in their respective positions since talks failed at the Hanoi Summit held in February. There, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un asked U.S. President Donald Trump for sanctions relief. Trump denied the request and asked instead for full denuclearization before granting any relaxation of sanctions.

North Korea has increased provocations by conducting 13 rounds of missile tests since May in an effort to pressure the U.S. to grant sanctions relief.

This month, North Korea conducted two tests within a week that experts think may be related to preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).  

North Korea said it conducted a “crucial test” on Friday at its Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, the site of its long-range missile launch, to “bolster up the reliable strategic nuclear deterrent” against U.S. threats.   

The test comes after another “very important test” North Korea said it carried out on Dec. 7 at the same launching site.  

Experts think North Korea will continue to increase threats that could put an end to diplomacy.

“Pyongyang is expected to move up the escalation ladder in attempts to induce U.S. concessions,” said Bruce Klingner, former CIA deputy division chief of Korea and current senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The regime could incrementally raise tensions with medium- and intermediate-range missile launches or jump to an ICBM or nuclear test.”

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who had negotiated with North Korea extensively, said, “A major military provocation, nuclear test or ICBM launch could well bring the diplomatic process to an abrupt end.”  

If North Korea conducts an ICBM or nuclear weapons test, experts think the U.S. is likely to respond with threats to use force rather than cave in to Pyongyang’s pressure, according to experts.

“There are concerns that Trump could either return to threats of preventive attacks, which could lead to an all-out war on the peninsula, or accept a minimal, poorly crafted deal to maintain the façade of progress with Kim Jong Un,” said Klingner.

Gary Samore, a former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction in the Obama administration, said, “A full long-range missile test is a little dangerous for Kim Jong Un because Trump may overreach and start threatening military actions.”  

Earlier in December, Trump threatened to use force against North Korea if necessary.  He said, “We have the most powerful military we’ve ever had.”  He continued, “And hopefully, we don’t have to use it. But if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”

In response, North Korea’s army chief of staff Pak Jong Chon said, “The use of armed force is not the privilege of the U.S. only.  

While tensions are expected to continue heightening, experts said the only way forward on denuclearization talks is for either Washington or Pyongyang to change position.

“Unless the U.S. or North Korea change their position, there’s no progress on denuclearization,” said Samore.  

Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA, said, “Unless the U.S. puts concessions on the table, it is unlikely that North Korea will come to the negotiating table.”

However, a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Monday the U.N. must maintain sanctions currently in place on North Korea.

“Now is not the time for the U.N. Security Council to consider offering premature sanctions relief,” said the spokesperson. “The DPRK is threatening to conduct an escalated provocation, refusing to meet to discuss denuclearization and continuing to maintain and advance its prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program.”

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official English name.

The statement was made in response to a Chinese and Russian proposal made on Monday for the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions placed on North Korea’s major export commodities including coal, iron, seafood and textiles, and to ease restrictions on North Koreans working overseas whose remittance provide the Kim regime with much needed hard currency. 

The U.N. Security Council ramped up sanctions on North Korea in 2016 in an effort to make the country give up its nuclear weapons program.

Ham Ji-ha contributed to this report.

The sixth and final Democratic presidential debate of the year will be held Dec. 19, 2019, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Only seven of 15 candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump will be on stage this time, as the first primary contests early next year draw closer. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the significance of this debate and the issues young student voters want to hear from the candidates.

The Democratic-controlled House voted Tuesday to pass a $1.4 trillion government-wide spending package, handing President Donald Trump a victory on his U.S.-Mexico border fence while giving Democrats spending increases across a swath of domestic programs.

The hard-fought legislation also funds a record Pentagon budget and is serving as a must-pass legislative locomotive to tow an unusually large haul of unrelated provisions into law, including an expensive repeal of Obama-era taxes on high-cost health plans, help for retired coal miners, and an increase from 18 to 21 in nationwide legal age to buy tobacco products.

The two-bill package, some 2,371 pages long after additional tax provisions were folded in on Tuesday morning, was unveiled Monday afternoon and adopted less than 24 hours later as lawmakers prepared to wrap up reams of unfinished work against a backdrop of Wednesday’s vote on impeaching President Donald Trump.

The House first passed a measure funding domestic programs on a 297-120 vote. But one-third of the Democrats defected on a 280-138 vote on the second bill, which funds the military and the Department of Homeland Security, mostly because it funds Trump’s border wall project.

The spending legislation would forestall a government shutdown this weekend and give Trump steady funding for his U.S.-Mexico border fence, a move that frustrated Hispanic Democrats and party liberals. The year-end package is anchored by a $1.4 trillion spending measure that caps a difficult, months-long battle over spending priorities.

The mammoth measure made public Monday takes a split-the-differences approach that’s a product of divided power in Washington, offering lawmakers of all stripes plenty to vote for — and against. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was a driving force, along with administration pragmatists such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who negotiated the summertime budget deal that it implements.

The White House said Tuesday that Trump will sign the measure.

“The president is poised to sign it and to keep the government open,” said top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.

The bill also offers business-friendly provisions on export financing, flood insurance and immigrant workers.

The roster of add-ons grew over the weekend to include permanent repeal of a tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health insurance benefits and a hard-won provision to finance health care and pension benefits for about 100,000 retired union coal miners threatened by the insolvency of their pension fund. A tax on medical devices and health insurance plans would also be repealed permanently.

Tuesday’s tax breaks increases deficit tab for the package grew as well with the addition of $428 billion in tax cuts over 10 years to repeal the three so-called “Obamacare” taxes and extend expiring tax breaks.

The legislation is laced with provisions reflecting divided power in Washington. Republicans maintained the status quo on several abortion-related battles and on funding for Trump’s border wall. Democrats controlling the House succeeded in winning a 3.1 percent raise for federal civilian employees and the first installment of funding on gun violence research after more than two decades of gun lobby opposition.

Late Monday, negotiators unveiled a scaled-back $39 billion package of additional business tax breaks, renewing tax breaks for craft brewers and distillers, among others. The so-called tax extenders are a creature of Washington, a heavily lobbied menu of arcane tax breaks that are typically tailored to narrow, often parochial interests like renewable energy, capital depreciation rules, and race horse ownership. But a bigger effort to trade refundable tax credits for the working poor for fixes to the 2017 GOP tax bill didn’t pan out.

The sweeping legislation, introduced as two packages for political and tactical purposes, is part of a major final burst of legislation that’s passing Congress this week despite bitter partisan divisions and Wednesday’s likely impeachment of Trump. Thursday promises a vote on a major rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement, while the Senate is about to send Trump the annual defense policy bill for the 59th year in a row.

The core of the spending bill is formed by the 12 annual agency appropriations bills passed by Congress each year. It fills in the details of a bipartisan framework from July that delivered about $100 billion in agency spending increases over the coming two years instead of automatic spending cuts that would have sharply slashed the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

The increase in the tobacco purchasing age to 21 also applies to e-cigarettes and vaping devices and gained momentum after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed on. But anti-smoking activists said the provision didn’t go far enough because it failed to ban flavored vaping products popular with teenagers.

“The evidence is clear that flavored e-cigarettes are driving the youth epidemic,” said Matthew Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “As long as flavored e-cigarettes remain available, kids will find ways to get them and this epidemic will continue.”

Other add-ons include a variety of provisions sought by business and labor interests and their lobbyists in Washington.

For business, there’s a seven-year extension of the charter of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance transactions benefiting U.S. exporters, as well as a renewal of the government’s terrorism risk insurance program. The financially-troubled government flood insurance program would be extended through September, as would several visa programs for both skilled and seasonal workers.

Labor won repeal of the so-called Cadillac tax, a 40% tax on high-cost employer health plans, which was originally intended to curb rapidly growing health care spending. But it disproportionately affected high-end plans won under union contracts, and Democratic labor allies had previously succeeded in temporary repeals.

Democrats controlling the House won increased funding for early childhood education and a variety of other domestic programs. They also won higher Medicaid funding for the cash-poor government of Puerto Rico, which is struggling to recover from hurricane devastation and a resulting economic downturn.

While Republicans touted defense hikes and Democrats reeled off numerous increases for domestic programs, most of the provisions of the spending bill enjoy bipartisan support, including increases for medical research, combating the opioid epidemic, Head Start, and childcare grants to states.

Democrats also secured $425 million for states to upgrade their election systems, and they boosted the U.S. Census budget $1.4 billion above Trump’s request. They won smaller increases for the Environmental Protection Agency, renewable energy programs and affordable housing.

“I am so proud that we are able to do so much good for children and families across the country and around the world,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

The outcome in the latest chapter in the longstanding battle over Trump’s border wall awards Trump with $1.4 billion for new barriers — equal to last year’s appropriation — while preserving Trump’s ability to use his budget powers to tap other accounts for several times that amount. That’s a blow for liberal opponents of the wall but an acceptable trade-off for pragmatic-minded Democrats who wanted to gain $27 billion in increases for domestic programs and avert the threat of simply funding the government on autopilot.

“Many members of the CHC will vote against it,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. “It’s true that there are a lot of good things and Democratic victories in the spending agreement. I think everybody appreciates those. What members of the Hispanic Caucus are concerned with is the wall money, the high level of detention beds, and most of all with the ability of the president to transfer money both to wall and to detention beds in the future.”

The bill also extends a longstanding freeze on lawmakers’ pay despite behind-the-scenes efforts this spring to revive a cost of living hike approved years ago but shelved during the Obama administration.

Because dozens of Democrats oppose the border wall, Pelosi paired money for the Department of Homeland Security with the almost $700 billion Pentagon budget, which won more than enough GOP votes to offset Democratic defections.
 

Victims of a 2018 shooting rampage in Toronto that left two dead and 13 injured are suing the American maker of the pistol used in the attack, holding it responsible for not making guns safer.

The class action, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by AFP, alleges that Smith and Wesson knew that its M&P 40 handgun “was an ultra-hazardous product.”

And it should have known that the weapon might end up being stolen and used to harm or kill innocent people, the suit claims.

Yet the company chose not to incorporate safety features such as fingerprint recognition to prevent unauthorized users, it alleges.

The class action, which must still be certified, is seeking Can$150 million (US$115 million) in damages.

Lead plaintiffs Samantha Price and Skye McLeod said in a statement of claim that they’d gone out for ice cream with friends on the evening of July 22, 2018, when they were confronted by a man opening fire on Toronto’s bustling Danforth Avenue.

Price was struck by a bullet, but survived. McLeod was injured while fleeing. Their friend Reese Fallon, 18, and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis were shot dead.

After an exchange of gunfire with police, the shooter took his own life.

Police still don’t know how he obtained the gun, which had been reported stolen from a Saskatchewan shop in 2015.

But the lawsuit notes that Smith and Wesson was aware that “more than 200,000 firearms” like the one used in the Danforth shooting “were stolen from their owners every year in the United States.”

The company had agreed in 2000 to incorporate smart gun technologies in new models by March 2003 to address this.

The deal, however, collapsed after the United States passed a law in 2005 shielding gun manufacturers and dealers from liability when crimes are committed with their products.

The shield does not apply in Canada.

Remington, Smith and Wesson lawsuits

In March, a Connecticut court ruled that U.S. gunmaker Remington can be sued over the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school in which one of its weapons was used to kill 20 children and six staffers.

That lawsuit alleges that Remington is culpable because it knowingly marketed a military grade weapon that is “grossly unsuited” for civilian use yet had become the gun most used in mass shootings.

In the Canadian case, the plaintiffs say Smith and Wesson should have included safety technology in its .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, which was made available for sale in Canada starting in 2013, “so as to avoid, prevent or deter substantial and foreseeable harm.”

Manufacturers have claimed that the technology is expensive and impractical.

Patrick McLeod, the father of one of the Danforth victims and a former police officer, disagrees.

“I can look at my iPhone and it unlocks. Meanwhile, we’re selling semi-automatic handguns that have no safety devices on them at all,” he told the Globe and Mail.