A court in Sudan convicted former President Omar al-Bashir of money laundering and corruption on Saturday, sentencing him to two years in prison.

That’s the first verdict in a series of legal proceedings against al-Bashir, who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and genocide linked to the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.

The verdict came a year after Sudanese protesters first began their revolt against al-Bashir’s three-decade authoritarian rule. During that time, Sudan landed on the U.S. list for sponsoring terrorism, and the economy has been battered by years of mismanagement and American sanctions.

Before the verdict was read, supporters of al-Bashir briefly disrupted the proceedings and were pushed out of the courtroom by security forces.

Al-Bashir, 75, has been in custody since April, when Sudan’s military stepped in and removed him from power after months of nationwide protests. The uprising eventually forced the military into a power-sharing agreement with civilians.

The former strongman was charged earlier this year with money laundering, after millions of U.S. dollars, euros and Sudanese pounds were seized in his home shortly after his ouster.

The Sudanese military has said it would not extradite him to the ICC. The country’s military-civilian transitional government has so far not indicated whether they will hand him over to the The Hague.

The corruption trial is separate from charges against al-Bashir regarding the killing of protesters during the uprising.

Anti-government demonstrations initially erupted last December over steep price rises and shortages, but soon shifted to calls for al-Bashir to step down. Security forces responded with a fierce crackdown that killed dozens of protesters in the months prior his ouster.

Analysts say Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s announced plan to restart peace talks with violent communist rebels, aimed at ending a 50-year conflict after three failed efforts, would earn him a place in history if he succeeds and help bring investment to impoverished, strife-torn parts of the country.

Previous talks broke down when each side accused the other of initiating attacks, sometimes violating cease-fires. The most recent round collapsed in March.

Duterte said December 5 he will send a peace negotiator to the Netherlands to restart talks with Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison, the presidential office website states.
 
A peace deal with the party and its armed unit, the New People’s Army, would boost Duterte’s image as a peacemaker when he steps down in 2022 due to term limits, country analysts believe.
 
“For Duterte, he has two years left in his term and he probably is thinking of a legacy, and one of his legacies would be to end the communist insurgency,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school.

“At least he could say he tried to talk to the reds but it would appear that the reds are unreasonable and he cannot be blamed for using his strong-arm tactics,” he said.
 
Restart to talks
 
Philippine officials and the insurgency may be able to negotiate a peace deal if the government first frees party-backed prisoners and the rebels suspend acts of violence, Araral said.
 

Government attacks on the New People’s Army have reduced the number of combatants to 4,000, down from a peak of some 17,000, domestic media reports say. The party claims about 70,000 members. The New People’s Army may feel “cornered” in parts of the country, Araral said.
 
“There’s enough motivation from both sides to get the peace talks moving forward again,” he said.
 
Fighting such as ambushes on soldiers has killed about 30,000 people over the past five decades. The rebels further frustrate the government with continued requests for prisoner releases followed by new attacks. They sometimes attack construction firms and demand that companies pay taxes.
 
Rebel leaders have said they believe Duterte has not released enough prisoners.
 
Legacy seeker
 
Duterte said via his office website he had tried to negotiate three times with the Communists but “failed.”  He pledged before taking office in 2016 to eradicate a range of criminal activity and prides himself on an understanding of rebel causes because he served for 22 years as mayor in Davao City, near some of their strongholds.
 

Duterte should realize use of force against the New People’s Army does little good because the Communists – initially inspired by former Chinese leader Mao Zedong – have support in poor areas that feel ignored by the state, and can easily recruit new people, analysts say. About one-fifth of Filipinos live in poverty.
 
“They have a quite strong follow among the well-educated youth in a number of universities, and those are going to become the future ideologues of the party, so there is a very important underground of very well-educated scholars and students and other people dealing with these matters,” Enrico Cau, Southeast Asia specialist at the Taiwan Strategy Research Association, told VOA.
 
Duterte had said in March, when he cut off talks most recently, that he would let the next president take up the issue.
 
Now he’s probably thinking now about his “legacy,” said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the Manila-based Bagong Alyansang Makabaya alliance of leftist organizations.
 
“It’s impossible to wipe them out because of the prevailing social conditions, so what we are proposing is that instead of a military solution you undertake a political solution and do this through negotiations, which is more productive than any militarist option,” Reyes said, referring to the advice his group would give Duterte.
 
Investment in conflict zones
 
The National People’s Army operates largely in the Philippine archipelago’s Visayan Islands and in Mindanao, a southern island where Muslim rebels have additional strongholds. Duterte said on December 5 the Bicol region southeast of Manila also “remains a hotbed for communist insurgency.”
 
Poverty persists in many of those spots because of incomplete land reforms, high minimum wages that discourage hiring and a lack of government incentives to seek work in cities, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a study published online. Some farmers live in one-room thatched huts with only dirt roads to move produce to markets.
 
Investors in developing countries often worry about “the risk of asset destruction,” an unavailability of infrastructure, and “abrupt declines in domestic demand” in civil war zones, the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency says in a report posted to its website.
 
Tourism infrastructure is expanding along the Philippine coastlines and near the capital Manila. Factory investors often pick ex-urban Manila because of its advanced infrastructure. The Philippines economy as a whole is expected to grow 6% this year, well above the world average, the Asian Development Bank forecasts.
 
“If there’s insurgency, that hinders development,” Cau said.

An international aid agency says insurgents who kidnapped six humanitarian workers in northeast Nigeria in July claim to have killed four of them.  

Action Against Hunger said Friday the latest claim brings the number of fatalities to five, with the first hostage killed in September.  

The aid agency called for the “immediate release of our staff member, Grace, who remains in captivity.”

The agency said in a statement that in July “an employee of Action Against Hunger, two drivers, and three health ministry personnel were kidnapped while delivering humanitarian aid to extremely vulnerable people in Borno State.”

“Action Against Hunger condemns these latest killings in the strongest terms and deeply regrets that calls for the release of the hostages have not been acted upon,” the group said.   

The militants are believed to be members of the Islamic State in West Africa Province, a splinter group from Boko Haram.

Action Against Hunger says it is currently providing food assistance every month to approximately 300,000 people in northeast Nigeria who have no access to livelihoods and food.   In addition, the group says its teams are reaching thousands more with lifesaving health and nutrition services.

Since the 1970s more than 4 million Vietnamese have immigrated to America. Most of them are on America’s West Coast, but a large group live in Texas and Louisiana in America’s Deep South. That’s where Theresa Nguyen ended up in 1979 when she came here with her family. VOA’s Tra Mi has her story.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped to the highest level for the month of November since record-keeping began in 2015, according to preliminary government data published Friday.

Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest totaled 563 square km (217.38 square miles) in November, 103% more than in the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency INPE.

That would bring total deforestation for the period from January to November to 8,934 square km, 83% more than in the same period in 2018 and an area almost the size of Puerto Rico.

The data released by INPE was collected through the DETER database, a system that publishes alerts on fires and other types of developments affecting the rainforest. The DETER numbers are not considered official deforestation data. That comes from a different system called PRODES, also managed by INPE.

PRODES numbers released last month showed deforestation rose to its highest in more than a decade this year, jumping 30% from 2018 to 9,762 square km. Deforestation usually slows around November and December during the Amazon region’s rainy season. The number for last month was unusually high.

Researchers and environmentalists blame right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for emboldening ranchers and loggers by calling for the Amazon to be developed and for weakening the environmental agency Ibama.

Bolsonaro and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles have said previous governments played a role in deforestation’s increase, saying policies including budget cuts at agencies like Ibama were in place well before the new government took office on Jan. 1.

Brazil’s Environment Ministry had no immediate comment Friday on the DETER data for November.

The United States and China have agreed on the terms of the first phase of a trade deal that would reduce some U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods while boosting Chinese purchases of American farm, energy and manufactured goods and addressing some U.S. complaints about intellectual property practices. 
 
Following are details of the deal released by both sides. The broad outlines were similar to a deal in principle announced by Trump in October that was dominated by increased Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural goods. 
 
Tariffs 
 
The United States will not proceed with 15% tariffs scheduled to go into effect Sunday on nearly $160 billion worth of Chinese goods, including cellphones, laptop computers, toys and clothing. 
 
China canceled its retaliatory tariffs scheduled to take effect that same day, including a 25% tariff on U.S.-made autos. 
 
The United States will cut by half the tariff rate it imposed on September 1 on a $120 billion list of Chinese goods, to 7.5% 
 
U.S. tariffs of 25% on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods will remain unchanged, providing U.S. negotiating leverage for a second phase of negotiations next year. 
 
Trade deficit 
 
U.S. officials say China agreed to increase purchases of American products and services by at least $200 billion over the next two years, with an expectation that the higher purchases will continue after that period. 
 
The purchases include manufactured goods, agricultural goods, energy and services, and are expected to reduce the $419 billion U.S. trade deficit with China, officials said. China bought $130 billion in U.S. goods in 2017, before the trade war began, and $56 billion in services, U.S. data show. 
 
Agriculture 
 
China has agreed to increase purchases of U.S. agriculture products by $32 billion over two years. That would average an annual total of about $40 billion, compared with a baseline of $24 billion in 2017 before the trade war started. 
 
Trump has demanded that China buy $50 billion worth of American farm goods annually. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said China agreed to make its best efforts to increase its purchases by another $5 billion annually to get close to $50 billion. 
 
China has committed to reduce nontariff barriers to agricultural products such as poultry, seafood and feed additives, as well as approval of biotechnology products. 
 
Intellectual property 
 
The deal includes stronger Chinese legal protections for patents, trademarks and copyrights, including improved criminal and civil procedures to combat online infringement and pirated and counterfeit goods. 
 
The deal contains commitments by China to follow through on previous pledges to eliminate any pressure for foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms as a condition of market access, licensing or administrative approvals and to eliminate any government advantages for such transfers. 
 
China also agreed to refrain from directly supporting outbound investment aimed at acquiring foreign technology to meet its industrial plans — transactions already restricted by stronger U.S. security reviews.  

Currency 
 
The currency agreement contains pledges by China to refrain from competitive currency devaluations and to not target its exchange rate for a trade advantage — language that China has accepted for years as part of its commitments to the Group of 20 major economies. 
 
The deal subjects any violations of currency commitments to the agreement’s enforcement mechanism, under which they could incur U.S. tariffs. 
 
A senior Trump administration official said the currency agreement is based on provisions in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal, which require the three countries to disclose monthly data on international reserve balances and intervention in foreign exchange markets, along with quarterly balance-of-payments data and other public reporting to the International Monetary Fund. 
 
Enforcement 
 
Under dispute resolution, there is an arrangement to allow the parties to resolve differences over how the deal is implemented through bilateral consultations, starting at the working level and escalating to top-level officials. If these consultations do not resolve disputes, there is a process for imposing tariffs or other penalties. There was no indication that retaliatory tariffs would be prohibited. 
 
China financial services 
 
U.S. officials said the deal includes improved access to China’s financial services market for U.S. companies, including in banking, insurance, securities and credit rating services. It aims to address several long-standing U.S. complaints about investment barriers in the sector, including foreign equity limitations and discriminatory regulatory requirements. 
 
China, which has pledged for years to open its financial services sector to more foreign competition, said the deal would boost imports of financial services from the United States. 
 
But China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said that not all foreign institutions would be able to tap China’s financial market. “Naturally, entities from countries which are friendly to China will be favored by the Chinese people,” the paper said in a commentary . 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday, after specialists recovered six bodies from White Island where a volcano erupted earlier this week, that the mission was about returning the bodies “to their loved ones.”

“We know that reunion won’t ease that sense of loss, of suffering, because I don’t think anything can, but we felt an enormous sense of duty as New Zealanders to bring their loved ones home,” Ardern told reporters in Whakatane.

Doctors also continued to work to keep alive dozens of survivors with severe burns.

The military team flew into the island via helicopter Friday and wore protective suits to look for the bodies. They were not able to recover the remains of two of the eight people who died in the eruption, but officials said they would return to the island to try again.

“It’s not over yet,” New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush told reporters in Whakatane.

The bodies were taken to the mainland to be identified.

Police said dive teams also searched the waters around the island Friday.

Police Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement told reporters that drones had mapped the locations of the six bodies that were recovered, but the whereabouts of the two other bodies remained unknown. 

The island continued to vent poisonous gas from the volcano’s crater, and scientists said the volcano remained “highly volatile.”

Burn victims

At least 27 survivors of the volcanic eruption suffered burns over more than 71% of their bodies; of that number, 22 were on ventilators because of the severity of their burns.

Specialist medical teams from Australia, Britain and the United States were traveling to New Zealand to help in the burn units. Skin banks were also working to send more tissue to the doctors. Health officials said they needed an extra 1.2 million square centimeters of skin to provide grafts for the victims. The average human body has a range of 16,000 to 18,500 square centimeters of skin, Dr. Matthew Hoffman said in an article on the website WebMD.

Authorities said about 47 people were touring the island at the time of the eruption, including 24 Australians, with the rest from the United States, Britain, Germany, China, Malaysia and New Zealand. Some of the victims were passengers from a cruise ship operated by Royal Caribbean.

Australia sent at least one military aircraft to New Zealand to bring 12 victims back to Australia for treatment.

As anti-government demonstrations engulfed Hong Kong in August, Reuters broke a sensitive story: Beijing had rejected a secret proposal by city leader Carrie Lam to meet several of the protesters’ demands in a bid to defuse the unrest. 
 
The story buttressed a main claim of the protesters: that Beijing is intervening deeply in the affairs of the semiautonomous city. A state-run newspaper denounced the story as “fake” and “shameful.” The article soon became unavailable in mainland China. 
 
It wasn’t the Chinese government that blocked the story. The article was removed by Refinitiv, the financial information provider that distributes Reuters news to investors around the world on Eikon, a trading-and-analytics platform. 
 
The article was one of a growing number of stories that Refinitiv — which until last year was owned by Reuters’ parent company, Thomson Reuters Corp. — has censored in mainland China under pressure from the central government. 

Since August, Refinitiv has blocked more than 200 stories about the Hong Kong protests plus numerous other Reuters articles that could cast Beijing in an unfavorable light. 
 
Internal Refinitiv documents show that over the summer, the company installed an automated filtering system to facilitate the censoring. The system included the creation of a new code to attach to some China stories, called “Restricted News.” 
 
As a result, Refinitiv’s customers in China have been denied access to coverage of one of the biggest news events of the year, including two Reuters reports on downgrades of Hong Kong by credit-rating agencies. Nearly 100 other news providers available on Eikon in China have also been affected by the filtering. 
 
China’s heavy hand 
 
Censorship in China has been intensifying in recent years under President Xi Jinping, and Western businesses have come under rising pressure to block news, speech and products that Beijing sees as politically dangerous. 
 
Refinitiv generates tens of millions of dollars of annual revenue in China. As Reuters reported in June, citing three people familiar with the matter, Refinitiv began the censorship effort earlier this year after a regulator threatened to suspend its Chinese operation. 

Refinitiv has joined a lengthening list of companies complying with Chinese demands. They include hotel giant Marriott International Inc., which last year temporarily shut down its Chinese websites and apologized for, among other things, listing Taiwan as a separate country in a customer questionnaire. 
 
Several U.S. airlines also stopped describing Taiwan as non-Chinese territory on their websites. Beijing considers the self-governed island part of China. The companies have defended their actions. 
 
‘Naked political aggression’ 
 
The censorship has angered the top news and business executives of Reuters and the directors of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Co. Ltd., an independent body tasked with preserving the news agency’s independence. 
 
Speaking to Reuters journalists on a visit to the Singapore newsroom in October, Kim Williams, the Australian media executive who chairs the body, lashed out at Refinitiv, calling its actions “reprehensible” and a capitulation to “naked political aggression” from Beijing. 
 
Editor-in-chief Stephen J. Adler told Reuters journalists in London in November that the censorship was “damaging” the brand. “I don’t approve of it,” he said. 
 
Refinitiv Chief Executive David Craig and Thomson Reuters CEO Jim Smith have held multiple talks, as recently as this week, to try to resolve the issue, said people familiar with the matter. 
 
“We recognize that the processes that were put in place earlier this year need to be improved and are actively working on enhancements,” Refinitiv spokesman Patrick Meyer said of the filtering system in a statement. “As a global business, Refinitiv must comply with the laws and regulations of the countries in which we operate.” 
 
Refinitiv was formed last year when a consortium led by private equity giant Blackstone purchased a 55 percent stake in Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk business, which included the Eikon terminal business, for about $20 billion and rebranded it. 
 
Refinitiv is by far Reuters’ largest client, providing nearly half its revenue. As part of the spin-off deal, Refinitiv agreed to make inflation-adjusted annual payments of $325 million to Reuters over 30 years for news — a reliable income stream that is rare in the media business. 
 
Tiananmen taboo 
 
Reuters reported in June that Refinitiv had blocked several Reuters stories under government pressure. The articles were about the 30th anniversary of the bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. 

According to the people with knowledge of the matter, Refinitiv acted after the Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC, which controls online speech, threatened to suspend the company’s service in China if it didn’t comply. 
 
The CAC did not respond to questions about this article. China’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment. 
 
Refinitiv began ramping up its efforts to purge offending China coverage. Internal Refinitiv documents and emails describe how the company over the summer created an automated filtering system — referred to as the “Strategic China filter” — to block certain stories to Eikon users in mainland China. 
 
In July, Refinitiv’s news platform architecture director requested that a new code be created, called “Restricted News,” that could be added to articles. He asked that it “should be hidden for all users (internal and external),” according to notes of a conference call on July 17 where the code was discussed. 
 
One reason was that Refinitiv didn’t want to give its mainland China customers the ability to disable the filtering. In an email to colleagues, the platform director explained the code: “The flag is to highlight news that requires additional processing, due to Chinese govt restrictions, prior to consumption in China.” 
 
Keyword filter 
 
The filtering system is designed to block stories for readers in mainland China but allow them to be accessed in other markets. It looks for restricted keywords in headlines, such as “Hong Kong” and “protest,” according to a person familiar with the matter. 
 
Reuters found no evidence that Refinitiv has deployed the filtering system in other nations. 
 
Besides Reuters articles, the filtering has also blocked one or more stories from 97 other news providers that are available inside China on the Eikon system — including Xinhua, China’s official state-run news agency. 
 
On December 3, Refinitiv blocked a Xinhua story about a small demonstration in Hong Kong by pro-Beijing residents. They were quoted heatedly denouncing Washington over a new U.S. law that supports Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. 
 
Last weekend, Hong Kong witnessed another huge protest, with turnout estimated at 183,000 by police and four times that by organizers. Citizens of all stripes marched, from students to professionals to the elderly. 
 
Eikon users in mainland China couldn’t read the Reuters story on the mass protest. It was blocked. 

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on Thursday shrugged off the president’s expected impeachment less than a year before Election Day, talking up the campaign’s data collection efforts and declaring that no one in the Democratic field can compete with the incumbent.

With a House impeachment vote expected next week, the campaign stressed that polls indicate impeachment is unpopular with independents, particularly in battleground states. And the campaign declared that Trump may now have a glide path to reelection, though he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots in 2016 and captured Electoral College votes by razor-thin margins in three Rust Belt states.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, was one of several senior campaign officials who briefed reporters Thursday on the state of the campaign. He said that when the reelection team looks at the Democratic field, “We don’t see anyone who can put together the Obama coalition. We’re on offense everywhere, and we’re very excited about that.”

Kushner, who was a Democrat before helping steer his father-in-law’s surprise victory three years ago, added: “I was not a Republican. Now I’m a Republican. I think the Republican Party is growing now that people like me feel comfortable being part of it.”

The strategy laid out is multi-pronged, including a focus on turning out supporters of the president who stayed home during the 2018 midterms; a robust data operation fueled by collecting information at the president’s raucous rallies; a volunteer-heavy and technology-driven organization far more professional than the low-budget 2016 version; and a commitment to expanding possible paths to victory by competing in 17 battleground states, including Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico, where Trump lost last time.

A key to reelection: turning out the 8.8 million voters the campaign has identified as backing the president in 2016 and who still support him, but who did not vote during the midterms because Trump’s name wasn’t on the ballot.

The campaign’s presentation included its fair share of chest-thumping and included the claim that impeachment may be a political win. Trump stands poised to become only the third president to be impeached, and he would be the first impeached president to run for reelection.

“This lit up our base, lit up the people that are supporters of the president. They’re frustrated, they’re upset, and that motivates voters,” said campaign manager Brad Parscale. “They have ignited a flame underneath them.”

Although he declared that Trump did not deserve to be impeached, Parscale said that the proceedings have helped the campaign’s volunteer recruitment and fundraising.

“That has put money in our bank. It has added volunteers to our field program,” Parscale said. “It’s filled up the rallies easier.”

Poll numbers

That stood in stark contrast to the somber tone struck by Democrats, including those running for president, who believe that Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine to investigate a political foe are grounds for impeachment. Democratic lawmakers say they are proceeding with efforts to impeach Trump out of constitutional duty, not political gain.

The president has claimed the opposite, denouncing impeachment as a purely partisan political play.

Although Trump’s approval numbers have remained underwater throughout his presidency, campaign officials said he would achieve reelection in part because even some voters who do not like him personally would support him next year because of his policies and the state of the economy.

National polls have consistently shown Trump trailing most major Democratic candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Polls in battleground states show a much closer race.
 

As Africa’s economies grow and more women enter the work force, #VOAOurVoices’ Ayen, Hayde and Auriane along with a dynamic panel, discuss workplace culture across the continent. Rita Akutwasa, Director of Institute for Social Transformation joins via Skype focusing on challenges faced by market women in Uganda. In-studio guest Kehinde Kenny Ajayi, lead of the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab Youth Employment Research examines policy surrounding maternity leave, childcare and the financial burden of working women. Hellen Fissihaie, CEO of F3 Global shares how women can affectively challenge gender pay gaps. And #WomantoWatch features VOA’s Kadiatou Traore, who shares an experience that led her to empower women in Mali.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump Friday, clearing the way for a vote in the full House that could come as early as next week.

Committee members voted along party lines after it recessed late Thursday after 14 hours of debate. The two articles, accusing Trump of abuse of power and obstructing the congressional investigation, were each approved on a vote of 23 to 17.

The Democratic-controlled committee rebuffed Republican attempts Thursday to weaken or throw out the allegations and instead will vote on sending them to the full House of Representatives for a vote, likely to be held next week.
 
Democratic lawmakers, after hours of at-times rancorous partisan claims and counterclaims with Republicans, rejected the Republican effort to eliminate the impeachment allegation that Trump abused the presidency by pushing Ukraine to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic election rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Flawed case?

Republicans contended that the case against Trump is flawed, that the committee was rushing to judgment without hearing more witnesses. They noted that Trump in September released the $391 million in military aid to Ukraine that Trump had temporarily blocked without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy launching the politically tinged Biden investigation that the U.S. leader wanted.
 
Trump asked Zelenskiy in a late July phone call to “do us a favor” by opening the investigation of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked theory that Ukraine worked to undermine Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
 
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump ally, contended that the “us” in Trump’s request was a reference to the United States, not to a Trump request to benefit himself politically.

But Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, supporting Trump’s impeachment, said that Trump in his call with Zelenskiy “never once uttered the word corruption” to investigate corruption generally in Ukraine. “It was about a smear on Vice President Biden,” Cicilline argued.
 
 

Full House vote

If the full House, as expected, votes to impeach Trump, he would become only the third American leader to be impeached in the country’s 243-year history, setting the stage for a trial in the Republican-majority Senate in January, where his conviction and removal from office remains unlikely.

Trump denies wrongdoing and has ridiculed the impeachment effort. He has repeatedly referred to his discussions with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” and pointed to statements by Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials that they did not feel pressured by Trump to open the investigations in order to get the military assistance it wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said that by withholding the military assistance, Trump “weakens an ally who advances American security interests by fighting an American adversary” and “weakens America. And when the president demands that a foreign government investigate his domestic political rivals, he corrupts our elections.”     
 
The top Republican on the committee, Congressman Doug Collins, said Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since the moment he took office in 2017, and that the facts of the case do not match the allegations they have presented.

“The president did not commit any crimes,” he said. “The president had a longstanding skepticism of foreign aid and a deeply held belief that Ukraine was corrupt, and not a good destination for American taxpayer dollars.”

Senate trial

The final step in the process would be a trial in the Senate, which Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday would occur next month.

McConnell met behind closed doors Thursday with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and said later in an interview with Fox News he would be in “total coordination” with White House lawyers on whether to call witnesses.

McConnell reiterated he hoped the trial would be a “shorter process rather than a lengthy process” with multiple witnessess testifying, an approach preferred by Trump.

“You can certainly make the case for making it shorter rather than longer since it’s such a weak case,” McConnell said.

A conviction in the Senate would lead to Trump’s removal from office, but that is highly unlikely because at least 20 Republicans would have to side with Democrats to meet the required threshold of 67 of the chamber’s 100 members.

Two other U.S. presidents – Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago – were impeached, but both were acquitted in the Senate and remained in office.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce Friday that a near-term trade deal with China has been reached, according to media reports.

Trump approved the first phase of the agreement on Thursday, nudging the two countries closer to the deal Trump initially announced in October.

China has not made any public statements indicating an agreement is imminent, a reminder about whether Washington and Beijing can reach a long-term deal that can survive intense political scrutiny in both countries.

At a regular briefing with reporters Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying limited her remarks about trade only to say how speculation about a deal has helped raise stock prices in the United States, China and Europe.

The proposed agreement would reduce existing tariffs on Chinese imports and waive $160 billon in new levies that are set to take effect on Sunday.

In exchange, the proposal calls for a number of concessions, including a commitment from China to purchase tens of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. farm products.

America’s chief negotiator for peace in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, visited Pakistan on Friday, a day after he briefly suspended peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar in retaliation to this week’s attack by the insurgent group on the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad met Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad and briefed him on the U.S.-Taliban discussions in the Qatari capital of Doha, said a Pakistani statement.

“We hope the U.S.-Taliban negotiations will resume soon,” Qureshi was quoted as saying, apparently in reference to the disrupted talks that had only recently restarted.

Qureshi reaffirmed Pakistan’s resolve to continue to play its “facilitating” role in the Afghan peace process and emphasized again the conflict in the neighboring country had no military solution.

Taliban leaders maintain close contacts with Islamabad, and their families also live in Pakistan among nearly three million Afghan refugees the country still hosts.

Wednesday’s suicide car bomb-and-gun attack on the Bagram base mostly caused Afghan civilian casualties in nearby civilian localities and did not harm U.S. and NATO forces.

The Taliban swiftly took credit for staging the assault.

“When I met the Talibs today, I expressed outrage about yesterday’s attack on Bagram, which recklessly killed two and wounded dozens of civilians. (The) Taliban must show they are willing & able to respond to Afghan desire for peace,” Khalilzad tweeted Thursday after his meeting with insurgent negotiators.

“We’re taking a brief pause for them to consult their leadership on this essential topic,” the Afghan-born U.S. envoy emphasized.

Hours earlier, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen in a his tweet insisted the two sides wrapped up nearly a week of peace negotiations in a “good and positive” atmosphere, and with an agreement to resume the talks after “a few days and internal consultations.”

The negotiations restarted last Saturday, three months after President Donald Trump abruptly suspended the process, citing increased insurgent attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul that killed an American solider, among others.

Insurgent sources said that in the meetings in Qatar over the past six days, Khalilzad and his team pressed the Taliban to reduce violence or declare a cease-fire and enter into intra-Afghan negotiations aimed at finding a political settlement to the war.

Khalilzad is trying to seal a U.S.-Taliban agreement that would lead to Afghan-Taliban negotiations to permanently end decades of hostilities and enable all international forces to leave the country.

Shaheen stated again earlier this week that once a troop-withdrawal agreement is signed between the Taliban and the U.S., insurgents would observe a cease-fire with U.S. and NATO forces to facilitate their departure. A nationwide cease-fire with Afghan security forces, he said, would be on the agenda when Afghan-Taliban negotiations begin.

China’s Foreign Ministry, when asked about the trade deal with the United States, said it is committed to resolving the issues but the deal must be mutually beneficial.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments on Friday at a daily briefing.

The United States and China are coming up against a natural deadline on Dec. 15 when a tariff hike will come into effect.

Washington has set its terms for the first part of the so-called “phased deal”, offering to suspend some tariffs on Chinese goods and cut others in exchange for Beijing buying more American farm goods, U.S. sources have said.

In 2013, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that authorizes the FBI to undertake secret electronic surveillance of terror suspects and foreign spies.

Among other reforms, the bill proposed the creation of a special advocate to represent the interests of surveillance targets before a secret intelligence court in Washington.

But Blumenthal’s legislation never gained traction. While 18 Democrats co-sponsored it, not a single Republican signed on, Blumenthal said Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Justice Department inspector general’s report about the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“Unfortunately, a great many of those proposed reforms did not become law,” Blumenthal said.

In the wake of the report’s release on Monday, Blumenthal has found plenty of unexpected company. Angry at the FBI’s alleged abuse of its authority to monitor former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Republicans are clamoring the loudest for reform.

“I hate to lose the ability of the FISA court, but after your report, I have serious concerns about whether the FISA court can continue unless there is fundamental reform,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

In the case of the Page surveillance warrants in 2016 and 2017, Inspector General Michael Horowitz uncovered a systematic failure that ran up and down the chain of command within the FBI and extended all the way to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

To apply for a surveillance warrant against Page, the FBI used a largely discredited dossier of reports about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, as well as the Trump campaign’s alleged ties. But the bureau failed to disclose to the court that Page worked for the CIA and had been approved to have “operational contact” with Russian intelligence agents.

In January 2017, when the FBI asked the court to renew the Page warrant, it withheld the fact that it had interviewed the source of the so-called Steele dossier, and that the source had denied making statements that the FBI used in its warrant application.

FISA flaws

The inspector general told lawmakers he was “deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors” were made during the Page FISA application process, but added that the problems were not “routine.”

Nevertheless, Republicans considered the report as evidence of rampant abuse. Graham said it underlined a “massive criminal conspiracy to defraud the FISA court.”

“You were able to uncover abuse of power I never believed would actually exist in 2019,” Graham told Horowitz.

Critics say the secretive FISA court effectively serves as a government rubber stamp, routinely approving upward of 97% of applications through a “one-sided” process that leaves little room for challenging the government’s evidence.

“In most cases, including Page’s, there is no entity within the FISA court charged with challenging government claims, or raising potential civil liberties concerns,” Guliani and Newman wrote in the IG report.

Even in criminal cases where the government brings charges with the help of FISA surveillance, defense attorneys are barred from challenging the accuracy of the government’s surveillance applications, they added.

Reform

To enhance accountability, the ACLU recommended that Congress require an impartial adviser charged with raising civil liberties concerns to attend sensitive FISA court cases such as the targeting of political campaigns.

In addition, the group wants criminal defendants to have the ability to review the government’s surveillance application against them, and targets of surveillance to receive notification after the monitoring.

The idea appears to be gaining traction in Congress.

A new bill introduced by two Republican members of the House of Representatives would require the appointment of a FISA court advocate and would require the Justice Department to disclose to the court whether the information used in its FISA application has been verified.

The FBI and the Justice Department are opposed to reforming the FISA court. Brad Wiegmann, a deputy assistant attorney general, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that FISA warrants already receive an “extraordinary” level of scrutiny from the court.

“I think the FISA court operates really well,” Wiegmann said.

In the wake of the IG report, FISA court reform has become a necessity, Graham said.

“To the FISA court, we’re looking to you to take corrective action,” Graham said. “If you take corrective action, that will give us some confidence that you should stick around.  If you don’t, it’s going to be hurtful to the future of the court.”

A divided federal appeals court spent more than three hours Thursday sparring over whether President Donald Trump is illegally profiting from the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel.

The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia asked 15 judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling by a three-judge panel directing a federal judge in Maryland to dismiss their lawsuit against the president.

The two jurisdictions allege Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District Attorney General Karl Racine have argued that hotels in their jurisdictions suffer “competitive injury” because officials hoping to curry favor with the president are more likely to stay at his hotel.

A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit ruled in July that the two jurisdictions lack standing to pursue their claims against the president and granted a rare writ of mandamus, directing U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte to throw out the lawsuit.

The three judges on the panel who ruled in Trump’s favor were all nominated by Republican presidents. But on Thursday, in arguments before the full court, a mix of 15 judges nominated by both Democrats and Republicans got into a spirited debate about Trump’s business interests and whether the panel should have taken the unusual step of overturning Messitte’s ruling allowing the lawsuit to move forward.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hashim Mooppan said the three-judge panel was within its authority to issue its ruling.

“We think it is clear and indisputable that you cannot sue the president of the United States in his official capacity without — at a minimum — having an express statement authorizing such a suit by Congress,” Mooppan said.

Several judges cited the controversy that erupted after a Trump aide said the president planned to hold next year’s Group of Seven world leaders’ meeting at his Doral golf resort in Florida. After intense criticism, Trump reversed the decision and said he would look for another site for the international summit.

Judge James Wynn Jr. grilled Mooppan about whether he was arguing that the judiciary has no remedy when a president violates the emoluments clause and that the president is above the law. Mooppan said Messitte committed “multiple, fundamental errors” in refusing to dismiss the suit.

Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson III defended Trump’s arguments during the hearing, saying the court cannot treat the case as if it’s an “ordinary, run-of-the-mill case.” He said the judiciary is “seeking to assert over the presidency of the United States authority that has never been asserted or claimed before.”

Trump’s lawyers have said Frosh and Racine — both Democrats — lack authority to sue the president in his official capacity. They’ve also argued that the emoluments clause only bars compensation made in connection with services provided in his official capacity or in “an employment-type relationship” with a foreign or domestic government.

The hotel is just blocks from the White House. The iconic Old Post Office quickly became a hot spot for lobbyists and foreign officials after it reopened in 2016 as the Trump International Hotel shortly before Trump was elected.

Frosh and Racine are asking the 4th Circuit to send the case back to lower court for it to proceed to discovery and trial. The court did not give any indication on when it will issue its ruling.

In October, Trump’s company said it is exploring the sale of the hotel after nearly three years of complaints alleging he is profiting off the presidency. The Trump Organization said it will consider offers to buy out the 60-year lease on the hotel.

After the 4th Circuit hearing Thursday, Frosh said the lawsuit filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia could become moot if the Trump Organization sells the lease and Trump “disposes of his interests properly.”

Ninety-eight percent of The Weinstein Co.’s creditors are joining a tentative settlement that plaintiffs say includes $25 million for over two dozen actresses and former employees who claim Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed them, a lawyer said Thursday. 

The attorney, Karen Bitar, provided the estimate to U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer as she said the deal would cover “the overwhelming“ number of individuals and entities potentially owed money. 

Additional money, she said, would be set aside for anyone who did not accept the terms of the settlement. The agreement, which would be limited to $500,000 per person, would require court approval that is unlikely to come before the spring. 

The Weinstein Co. is currently proceeding in bankruptcy court, where any deal would face review. 

Canosa lawsuit

The discussion of the deal revealed by lawyers a day earlier arose during a hearing in Manhattan pertaining to a lawsuit filed against the company and the disgraced movie mogul by former Weinstein consultant Alexandra Canosa. 

Canosa, who has not joined the proposed settlement, has alleged that Weinstein on multiple occasions from 2010 to 2017 raped, sexually abused, intimidated and harassed her during what he maintained were business meetings in New York, Los Angeles, Malaysia and Budapest. 

Scores of women have accused the movie mogul of sexual misconduct. He has denied nonconsensual sex allegations. He faces a January 6 trial on rape and sexual assault charges in state court, where he has pleaded not guilty. 

Engelmayer agreed that depositions needed before a trial in Canosa’s case against Weinstein could wait to be taken until several weeks after his criminal trial ends. The testimony would include questioning of Canosa and Weinstein by lawyers in the case as they prepare to present evidence to a jury. 

‘Most courageous client’

Canosa’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, said outside court that most women who have sued Weinstein were agreeing to settle because the statute of limitations applied to their cases. 

“They’re getting a half-million [dollars] for an out-of-statute case,” he said. 

Canosa, he said, was determined to fight on. At least two other women were doing the same, he added. 

“They assumed we would just go along with the herd,” he said of other lawyers. “She’s the most courageous client I’ve ever had.” 

The Pentagon on Thursday flight-tested a missile that had been banned under a treaty that the United States and Russia abandoned last summer. Some U.S. arms control advocates said the test risks an unnecessary arms race with Moscow.

The prototype missile was configured to be armed with a non-nuclear warhead. The Pentagon declined to disclose specifics beyond saying thew missile was launched from a “static launch stand” at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and landed in the open ocean. The Defense Department said the ballistic missile flew more than 500 miles.

Future of arms control

The test comes amid growing uncertainty about the future of arms control. The last remaining treaty limitation on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons — the New Start treaty of 2010 — is scheduled to expire in February 2021. That treaty can be extended for as long as five years without requiring a renegotiation of its main terms. The Trump administration has indicated little interest in doing so.

The Pentagon declined to reveal the maximum range of the missile tested. Last spring, when U.S. officials disclosed the testing plan, they said it would be roughly 3,000 kilometers to 4,000 kilometers (1,860 miles to 2,480 miles). That is sufficient to reach potential targets in parts of China from a base on Guam, for example. The Pentagon has made no basing decisions and has suggested that it will take at least a few years before such a missile would be ready for deployment.

Under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers (310 miles to 3,417 miles) were prohibited. The Trump administration chose to abandon the INF treaty, saying that while it had adhered to the treaty’s limitations, Russia had violated it by deploying a noncompliant cruise missile aimed at U.S. allies in Europe. Shortly after exiting the treaty in August, the Pentagon flight-tested an INF-range cruise missile.

A request for comment from the Russian Embassy in Washington on Thursday’s test was not immediately answered Thursday.

Esper  takes questions

In a brief appearance before reporters after the test announcement, Defense Secretary Mark Esper was asked whether the Pentagon is considering deploying an INF-range missile to Europe.

“Once we develop intermediate-range missiles, and if my commanders require them, then we will work closely and consult closely with our allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere with regards to any possible deployments,” Esper said.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the Pentagon’s missile project is a mistake.

“This is a reckless and unnecessary escalation that’s going to exacerbate tensions with Russia, China and North Korea — all of whom would be in range of this type of missile if it is ever deployed,” Kimball said. “The other problem for the Defense Department is that there is no NATO or East Asia ally that has yet said they are interested in hosting such a missile because this would put them on the Russian, Chinese or North Korean target list.”