Despite Washington’s efforts to maintain a dialog with Pyongyang, chances for a diplomatic breakthrough leading to the denuclearization of North Korea are fading away, said experts, as the two nations remain locked in their position.

“At some point, there needs to be a determination that diplomacy is yielding diminishing returns,” said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

After almost two years of diplomacy, North Korea has been repeating an ultimatum more frequently that the United States has until the end of this year to present a new proposal for denuclearization. As the Pyongyang-imposed deadline approaches, the regime has increased threats to change Washington’s stance.

Washington has been demanding North Korea conduct full denuclearization. Pyongyang wants the U.S. to relax sanctions and cease regularly held joint military exercises with South Korea, which it claims as a threat against its regime, before denuclearizing. Those positions have remained unchanged for months, despite the publicly affectionate relationship between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Christopher Ford, assistant secretary of state for International Security and Nonproliferation, said on Monday that the U.S. is still seeking “the final and fully verified denuclearization” of North Korea.

On Tuesday, Ri Thae Song, North Korea’s vice minister of Foreign Affairs, released a statement, reminding the U.S. that “drawing nearer is the year-end time limit the DPRK set for the U.S.” to change its position. The DPRK stands for North Korea’s official English name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Song said, “The U.S. is keen on earning time needed for it, talking about the ‘sustained and substantial dialogue,’” but “far from acting in response to the measures taken by the DPRK first.”

He continued, “What is left to be done now is the U.S. option and it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get,” presumably referring to more missile tests.

The statement follows a test of two projectiles North Korea conducted on Thanksgiving Thursday.  Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Friday it tested a “super large multiple rocket launcher.”  It is North Korea’s 13th missile test since May.

In response, the U.S. on Monday called on North Korea to “avoid provocations” and “return to sustained and substantial negotiations to do its part to achieve complete denuclearization,” in an email message that a State Department spokesperson sent to VOA’s Korean Service.

Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. has “the most powerful military” and “

Despite the lack of progress made on reaching a denuclearization deal, experts think talks could continue if Trump feels they could serve his political future and because North Korea does not want to end diplomacy despite threats it raised.

“President Trump has a large personal investment in his North Korean policy and his bromance with Kim Jong Un,” said Manning.  “I think it would be difficult in an election year to admit failure of a signature policy. As long as talks or talks about talks are going on, Trump will continue to say his policy is working.”

Gause said, “What North Korea doesn’t want to do is step over any red line that’s going to slam the door shut on relations, potential diplomatic relations with the United States.”

He continued, “I suspect they will try to keep their tests to short-range and maybe medium range tests. But if they start to get into ICBM [Intercontinental Ballistic Missile] tests and another nuclear test, then that means North Korea probably has made the calculation that the Trump administration cannot be dealt with.” 

Baik Sung-won and Kim Young-gyo of VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report.

Unknown gunmen have killed a Japanese aid worker and his five colleagues in eastern Afghanistan.

Officials said the deadly shooting took place Wednesday morning in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.

A provincial government spokesman told VOA that slain Dr. Tetus Nakamura and members of the Japan Medical Services (JMS) non-governmental organization were traveling to a project site when they came under attack.

Attaullah Khogyani said that Nakamura, the head of the non-governmental organization, was “seriously” wounded and taken to a city hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. His Afghan driver and several security guards were among those killed, he added.

The Taliban in a brief statement denied involvement in the attack that killed the 73-year-old Japanese medical doctor and his colleagues.  Both Taliban insurgents and militants linked to the Afghan branch of Islamic State terrorist group operate in Nangarhar.

Eyewitnesses told VOA at least three assailants took part in the attack and managed to flee.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently awarded Dr. Nakamura honorary citizenship of Afghanistan for a decade long service as the head of the Japanese charity in Nangarhar. He had arrived in the country after his Japanese predecessor was abducted and killed.

Wednesday’s attack comes more than a week after a U.S. national working for the United Nations was killed in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

No one claimed responsibility for the November 24 attack.

U.S. health officials say the progress in the Trump administration’s goal of wiping out the HIV epidemic by 2030 has stalled.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 38,000 new cases of HIV occur every year. HIV is the virus that can lead to AIDS.

The CDC’s report says white Americans at risk of contracting HIV are up to seven times more likely than blacks and Hispanics to receive a drug called PrEP, which has been shown to cut the risk of getting HIV through sex by as much as 99%.

But the CDC says less than half of at-risk whites use the PrEP, which requires a doctor’s prescription.

The CDC says 40% of HIV infections involve people who don’t know they have the virus. It urges everyone to get tested and those who test positive to take daily medication to control the virus.

Human health is paying the price of the world’s failure to curb global warming, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, urging governments at U.N. climate talks to cut climate-changing emissions faster and provide funds to address growing threats.

Those range from lung and heart problems caused by toxic air to deaths in storms and wildfires, and the expansion of dengue, malaria, cholera and other diseases spread by mosquitoes and contaminated water.

“The cost of not taking enough action at the climate summit … is paid by my lungs and your lungs,” said Maria Neira, director of the department of environment, climate change and health at the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. agency.

The causes of climate change and air pollution overlap, she added, calling for societies to “decarbonize,” including by ditching coal as a source of power and heat, and ending subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

According to the WHO, the burning of oil, gas and coal is responsible for two-thirds of the outdoor air pollution that causes about 4 million premature deaths each year.

More intense and longer heat waves are another growing health problem in many parts of the world.

A study published in the journal Nature on Monday found extreme heat in the United States from 1969-1988 caused an increase in deliveries of babies on the day it hit and the day after, with those births happening up to two weeks before they were due.

Such early births can potentially harm children’s later development, researchers said.

At the Madrid climate talks Tuesday, activists and aid agencies cited a rise in hospital emissions linked to smoke from Australia’s recent bushfires.

In southern African countries hit by Cyclone Idai this year, they said, people are struggling to feed their families after fields and homes were destroyed.

To deal with the rising human and financial health costs of climate change, health services and related institutions need a boost in funding — currently sorely lacking, the WHO said.

On Tuesday, it released a report highlighting how countries are increasingly prioritizing dealing with climate change threats to health.

Half of about 100 nations surveyed said they had developed a national strategy or plan to tackle the risks.

Paying for improvements

But only about 38% had finances in place to even partially implement their plans, and fewer than 10% had the money to put them fully into practice, the report showed.

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO’s coordinator for climate change and health, said all countries surveyed — from Europe to the Americas, Africa and Asia — are struggling to finance measures such as protecting hospitals from weather disasters and ramping up disease surveillance.

In richer countries, the difficulty lies in securing allocations from national budgets due to competing priorities.

Poorer nations, on the other hand, need international climate finance to help them cope, but are struggling to access it because of a lack of information, capacity and connections.

As a result, less than half a percent of international climate finance has gone to projects to head off climate risks to health, Campbell-Lendrum said.

“These countries are exposed, they are vulnerable and they are unsupported,” he added.

Smart hospitals

The WHO plans to help developing countries put together projects to bolster their health systems that can secure backing from international climate funds, he added.

One of the biggest potential sources of finance, the Green Climate Fund, has identified health and well being as a priority area but has yet to approve any projects with that focus, Campbell-Lendrum noted.

Things that could be financed might include “smart hospitals” — now being tested in the Caribbean — built to withstand strong winds and floods while also harvesting rainwater and running on solar power.

Off-grid renewable energy projects also can cut emissions from health facilities and make them more resilient in disasters when electricity networks go down, Campbell-Lendrum said.

He noted that the mental health impacts of climate change had “shot up the agenda.”

The effects can range from the trauma of going through disasters to the shock of being made homeless, or young people feeling anxious and frustrated about climate change.

Once a “hidden issue,” it is “the one that we have heard the most about in the past four to five months,” he told journalists in Madrid.
 

Martin Scorsese’s sprawling crime epic “The Irishman” has been named best picture by the National Board of Review.

The awards, announced Tuesday by the National Board of Review, handed Netflix its second major honor in Hollywood’s quickening awards season. On Monday evening, Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” won best feature at the IFP Gotham Awards, which honor independent film. Both movies are widely expected to eventually reap numerous nominations at the Oscars, with either potentially landing Netflix its first best-picture win.

“The Irishman” also took best adapted screenplay, for Steven Zaillian’s script, and an icon award for Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

The board, as it typically does, otherwise spread its awards around to help fill its annual gala with stars. Quentin Tarantino took best director for “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” Best actress went to Renee Zellweger for her performance as Judy Garland in “Judy.” Adam Sandler won best actor for Josh and Benny Safdie’s upcoming New York thriller “Uncut Gems.”

Brad Pitt, widely seen as the Oscar front-runner for his co-leading performance in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” won best supporting actor. The National Board of Review also threw its support behind Clint Eastwood’s upcoming docudrama on the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, “Richard Jewell,” giving it best supporting actress for Kathy Bates and breakthrough performance for Paul Walter Hauser.

The picks by the National Board of Review, a long-running organization comprised of academics and film professionals, have in recent years seldom lined up with eventual Academy Awards winners. But its best-feature choice last year, “Green Book,” went on to triumph at the Oscars.

Other awards included: best ensemble to Rian Johnson’s whodunit “Knives Out”; best screenplay to “Uncut Gems”; best documentary to “Maiden,” about a historic all-woman sailing crew; best foreign language film to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite”; best animated film to “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”; best directorial debut to Melina Matsoukas (“Queen & Slim”); and Roger Deakins (“1917”) for outstanding achievement in cinematography.

The board additionally bestowed its freedom of expression award on both the Death Row drama “Just Mercy” and the Syrian war documentary “For Sama.”

The awards will be handed out in a ceremony in New York on January 8, hosted by Willie Geist.

The presidents of South America’s Mercosur trade bloc meet on Wednesday under the cloud of tariffs restored by U.S. President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum imports from its two largest members, Brazil and Argentina.

Hobbled by political differences and government changeovers, the four-nation common market is not expected to take a joint stance against Trump’s surprise move on Monday, which shocked South American officials and left them scrambling for answers.

Argentine Production Minister Dante Sica said on Tuesday that Argentina and Brazil will hold a bilateral meeting at the summit to discuss the U.S. tariffs.

But Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri has less than a week left in office and his left-leaning Peronist successor, Alberto Fernandez, has sparred openly with Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, who called the incoming leader a “redbandit.”

Uruguay, where conservative President-elect Luis Lacalle Pou will take office in March, will be represented at the Mercosur summit by Vice President Lucia Topolansky.

Given the changeovers, the summit will not be able to agree on the main item on the agenda, reducing a common external tariff that has been in place for more than two decades and Brazil is pushing to lower, a senior Brazilian diplomat said.

Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, head of regional negotiations at Brazil’s foreign ministry, told Reuters that any decision would have to wait for the new Argentine government to lay out its policies.

On Thursday, the leaders of the four nations, including Paraguayan President Mario Abdo, will formally sign Mercosur’s free trade accord with the European Union, completed in June after 20 years of negotiations.

The agreement, currently undergoing legal scrubbing and translation into two dozen languages, must still be ratified by the legislatures of the Mercosur and EU member states.

The question is whether Fernandez, a protectionist, will try once in office to reopen the deal, as he has said he intends to do, to re-negotiate parts that do not suit Argentina.

The U.S. pullout from Syria and Turkey’s offensive into Syria has shaken the already unstable region, and minority religious groups in the region are particularly worried about a possible resurgence of Islamic State. For VOA, Stella Grigoryan recently spoke with members of an Armenian community in the Kurdish-majority city about their security concerns in a story narrated by Anna Rice.

The U.N.’s trade and development agency estimates that Europe, led by the Netherlands, leads the world in readiness for online shopping.

UNCTAD’s annual business-to-consumer e-commerce index ranked the United States again in the teens, at 13th — largely because of its relatively low share of people using the internet compared to other developed countries.

Russia ranked 40th and China 56th, while Hong Kong came in at No. 15.

The agency said Tuesday over 80% of internet users in six European countries shop online, versus under 10% in some poorer countries.

The rankings are based on use of the internet as well as access to secure internet servers, reliable postal services, and financial institution or mobile-money-service providers.
UNCTAD called the report provisional, cautioning that some data dates to 2017.
 

A federal appeals court in New York has upheld the legality of congressional subpoenas seeking President Donald Trump’s banking records but said sensitive personal information should be protected.      

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
       
The decision came after The House Financial Services and Intelligence committees asked Deutsche Bank and Capital One to turn over records related to Trump’s business ventures as they investigate “foreign influence in the U.S. political process.”
       
Trump and three of his children challenged the subpoenas.
       
A judge had ruled that the subpoenas were legitimate.
       
The 2nd Circuit agreed though it said the lower court should implement a procedure protecting sensitive personal information. It also gave litigants a limited chance to object to disclosure of certain documents.

 

Eleven North Korean defectors detained in Vietnam are asking the South Korean government to provide asylum in Seoul so they can avoid being deported to North Korea, according to a South Korean activist group.

Peter Jung, head of Justice for North Korea, a human rights group based in Seoul, told VOA’s Korean Service that one of the defectors who had a cellphone contacted the South Korean Embassy in Vietnam asking for help.

“The embassy told them it will take appropriate measures to help them,” said Jung. “But the defectors have not heard from the embassy” since Friday.

Eight women ranging in age from early 20s to 50s, and three men in their 20s crossed the Chinese border into Vietnam on Nov. 23. Vietnamese border guards detained them two days later in the city of Lang Son.

The defectors faced repatriation to North Korea. After several of the women fainted, the Vietnamese government decided against forcibly sending them to China, according to Jung. Currently, Vietnam is detaining all the defectors.

“Please take us,” said one of the women, pleading to the South Korean government in a video clip Jung sent to VOA.

In a separate video clip sent by Jung, another woman who was nursing people who appeared to be ill, said, “We are fleeing with patients like this. Please help us.”

The South Korean Foreign Ministry told VOA it is aware of the asylum-seekers.

“We are working and negotiating with the relevant country (Vietnam),” said a South Korean Ministry spokesperson.

VOA tried to contact the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry for comment but received no response.

If the 11 defectors are sent to China, they would most likely be deported back to North Korea, where they could face severe punishment such as forced labor, torture and even execution. China has a history of repatriating North Korean defectors.

North Koreans seeking asylum in South Korea often cross North Korea’s northern border into China. From China, they travel to a third country to enter South Korea because China expanded its crackdown of North Korean defectors earlier this year.

In April, Vietnam sent three North Korean defectors who crossed the Chinese border into Vietnam back to China.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said China should not send North Korean defectors home.

“If you take a look at the ‘Report of the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea,’ North Korean defectors can be tortured and executed” by their government,  he said.

China joined the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol in 1982, which defines the rights of a refugee, as well as the responsibilities of countries that provide asylum.

China, however, does not follow the U.N.’s definition of a refugee and does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees but as illegal economic migrants.

The estimated number of North Korean refugees in China range from approximately 30,000 to 50,000, according to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

About 771 North Korean defectors entered South Korea this year as of September. There are 33,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, according to the South’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North.

Christy Lee contributed to this report which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.

 

Jewish groups expressed outrage on Tuesday at an oversized urn placed in front of the German parliament that those behind it claim contains Holocaust victims’ remains and is meant to highlight the dangers of far-right extremism.
                   
The International Auschwitz Committee condemned the action by the Center for Political Beauty, which unveiled the urn near the Reichstag building Monday, calling it a “pillar of resistance.”
                   
“Auschwitz survivors are aghast at this installation, which hurts their feelings and the eternal peace of the dead of their murdered relatives,” the organization said.
                   
The Center for Political Beauty, a Germany-based activist group known for provocative stunts, said the urn contained victims’ remains that it had unearthed from 23 locations near Nazi death and concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Ukraine. Soil the group said contained the remains could be seen in the transparent orange urn, which is about the size of an oil drum, set atop a metal pillar.
                   
The group defended its installation, saying it did not open any gravesites. “We only looked for earth-covered human remains that were hidden by the Nazis in the surroundings of the former death camps.”
                   
The group, whose members consider themselves political artists, said its actions aim to show that in Germany “the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and cowardice.”
                   
The urn serves as a warning in times of growing far-right extremism of how conservative forces in Germany helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler’s fascists to come to power in 1933, the group said.
                   
Six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, many of them transported from around Europe to be killed in the death camps like Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka that the Germans established in occupied Poland.
                   
“Some of the survivors told me: `My beloved family members were carted so much across Europe during the deportations – why can’t they just be left in peace now?” Christoph Heubner from the Auschwitz Committee told The Associated Press.
                   
Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said moving the remains of the dead is forbidden according to Jewish law.
                   
“The human remains of Holocaust victims are especially holy and require the greatest care and sensitivity,” Schudrich told the AP. “According to Jewish tradition, they should remain in their original grave and certainly should not be used for any other purpose, even a purpose which some may think is worthy.”
                   
Germany’s leading Jewish group, the Central Council of Jews, said that while it welcomed political action against far-right extremism, even in provocative ways, the latest stunt by the Center for Political Beauty was “problematic.”
                   
“If the ashes are indeed from Shoah victims, then the peace of the dead was disturbed,” the council’s president, Josef Schuster, told the AP.
                   
“It would therefore be welcome if during the dismantling of the `resistance pillar’ the advice of a rabbi would be considered to at least ensure a respectful … handling of the ashes.”
                   
It isn’t the first time the activists have irritated Jewish groups with their installations. Two years ago, they erected a Holocaust memorial outside the home of a nationalist politician who suggested Germany should end the decades-long tradition of acknowledging and atoning for its Nazi past. Critics said the memorial was about political activism and not about the victims of the Holocaust.
                   
On Tuesday morning, police examined the urn near the Reichstag building and took photos after receiving complaints.
                   
Julien Sauter, a 17-year-old student who was on a school trip to Berlin with his high school class from Stuttgart, dismissed the notion of the urn as a legitimate art installation.
                   
“You can’t excuse everything by calling it art,” Sauter said. “Especially not when it’s such a sensitive topic.”

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the FBI he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed” at the way James Comey was fired as FBI director, according to records released Monday.

Rosenstein was interviewed by FBI agents several weeks after Comey’s firing as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. An FBI summary of that interview was among roughly 300 pages of documents released as part of public records lawsuits brought by BuzzFeed News and CNN.

The records also include summaries of FBI interviews of key Trump associates, including Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski and Michael Cohen. They provide additional insight into Mueller’s two-year investigation, which shadowed the first part of Trump’s presidency and preceded an ongoing impeachment inquiry centered on his efforts to press Ukraine for investigations of political rival Joe Biden.

Hicks described efforts to prepare for media scrutiny of a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and the president’s oldest son. Lewandowski told investigators the president prodded him to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make an announcement that the scope of the Russia investigation had been limited to future election interference.

And Cohen, who is now serving a three-year prison sentence for campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, told investigators he advised Trump’s personal lawyer that there was more detail about a proposed deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow than what he had shared with lawmakers. He said he “vaguely recalled” telling Jay Sekulow about a call he had “with a woman from the Kremlin,” and said Sekulow’s response was in line with “so what” and the deal never happened, according to the FBI document.

Sekulow told The Associated Press on Monday night that Cohen’s statements were false and that Cohen never told him anything about any call with a woman from Russia.

Rosenstein, who left his Justice Department post last spring, was interviewed about his role in Comey’s May 2017 firing. Rosenstein wrote a memo harshly criticizing Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a document held up by the White House as justification for his firing.

Rosenstein said he was asked during a White House meeting one day before Comey’s firing to produce a memo laying out his concerns with the FBI chief. He said he knew when he left the office that day that Comey would be fired, though he said he did not expect for his memo to be immediately released, and was surprised by the portrayal in the media that the termination was his idea instead of the White House’s, according to the FBI document.

Rosenstein said he expected Comey would be contacted by either Trump or Sessions so a meeting could be scheduled and he could be fired in person. Comey instead learned of his firing from television while speaking with agents in Los Angeles.When he learned of how Comey was fired, he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed. It was also humiliating for Comey,” an FBI agent wrote of Rosenstein’s reaction.

At one point during the interview, as Rosenstein was describing how he had “always liked Jim Comey” but disagreed with his decisions in the Clinton case, the deputy attorney general “paused a moment, appearing to have been overcome by emotion, but quickly recovered and apologized,” according to the FBI.

North Korea issued its latest warning Tuesday that its end-of-year deadline for the United States to offer concessions in nuclear talks is approaching.

In a statement carried by state media, Ri Thae Song, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs handling U.S. affairs, said it is “entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

Ri also criticized U.S. efforts to conduct more talks with North Korea, saying such dialogue is only a “foolish trick” for political purposes.

The negotiations have been stalled since February with North Korea seeking sanctions relief before giving up any of its nuclear capability, a path the United States has so far rejected.

Tuesday’s warning was the latest in veiled statements made by North Korean officials ahead of the deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un.

Last week, North Korea conducted its fourth launch this year of what it called a “super-large, multiple-rocket launch system,” and warned it may soon launch a “real ballistic missile” in the vicinity of Japan.

North Korea last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017, and conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.

In April 2018, Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests, saying North Korea “no longer need(s)” those tests.

Recently, North Korean officials have issued reminders that North Korea’s pause on ICBM and nuclear tests was self-imposed and can be reversed.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee is expected to publicly release Tuesday a report on its findings and recommendations in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told MSNBC late Monday that the panel was “putting the finishing touches” on the report.  He also said the committee would vote Tuesday night on formally submitting it to the Judiciary Committee, whose members will decide whether to draw up articles of impeachment against Trump.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to start its own impeachment hearings Wednesday, and will do so without a Trump lawyer present.

The president said he would not be sending representation “because the whole thing is a hoax.”

Trump also criticized Democrats for holding the hearing at the time he will be attending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s leaders’ summit in London.

“Just landed in the United Kingdom, heading to London for NATO meetings tomorrow,” Trump tweeted late Monday.  “Prior to landing I read the Republicans Report on the Impeachment Hoax.  Great job!  Radical Left has NO CASE.  Read the transcripts.  Shouldn’t even be allowed.  Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?”

Wednesday’s hearing will focus on the constitutional grounds surrounding impeaching a president with four legal scholars appearing as witnesses.  The Judiciary Committee announced Monday a witness list of law professors Noah Feldman of Harvard University, Pamela Karlan of Stanford University, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.

Trump also pointed to fresh comments by Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskiy claiming that he never spoke with the U.S. president “from the position of a quid pro quo.”

Zelenskiy also told reporters for four magazines (Time, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and Gazeta Wyborcza) that at a time Ukraine is at war with Russia, the United States, as Kyiv’s strategic partner, should not have been blocking military aid.

“I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo,” said Zelenskiy.

Trump seized on that comment as further vindication from Democrats’ allegations that Trump withheld support to Ukraine until the country helped dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, now a leading contender to challenge Trump in next year’s election.

Zelenskiy “just came out a little while ago and he said, ‘President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong’ and that should end everything,” the U.S. president said Monday. 

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in a letter to Nadler late Sunday, said the Trump administration “cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings.”

Cipollone said he will reply by the end of the week on whether the White House would appear at future hearings.

Nadler assured Trump and his counsel in his invitation letter last week that he “remains committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”

The Judiciary Committee chairman added the president has the “opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process.”

Possible charges that could lead to Trump’s impeachment include bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump is accused of holding up nearly $400 million in badly-needed military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Zelenskiy’s public commitment to investigate Biden for alleged corruption.

Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to hold up U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine, unless the government fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.

Trump also insists it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of Democrats.

No evidence against the Bidens has ever surfaced and the charge against Ukraine was based on a debunked conspiracy theory that originated in Russia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey on Monday to stop holding up support for a NATO defense plan for the Baltics and Poland, as Ankara presses the alliance to support its fight against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of the NATO summit, Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labeling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse.

He called on Ankara to focus on the larger challenges facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The message to Turkey … is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” Esper said as he flew to London.

“Alliance unity, alliance readiness, means that you focus on the bigger issues — the bigger issue being the readiness of the (NATO) alliance. And not everybody’s willing to sign up to their agenda. Not everybody sees the threats that they see.”

NATO envoys need formal approval by all 29 members for the plan to improve the defense of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against any threat from neighboring Russia.

The dispute, as NATO prepares to hold its 70th anniversary summit, is a sign of deep divisions between Ankara and Washington over everything from the war in Syria to Turkey’s growing defense relationship with Russia.

Turkey wants NATO to formally recognize the YPG militia, the main component of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as terrorists and is infuriated that its allies have given the militia support.

Ankara has blamed Washington for the current impasse, saying it was caused by the U.S. withdrawal of support from a separate defense plan for Turkey, covering any possible attack from the south where it borders Syria.

Asked whether Washington might agree to branding the YPG as terrorists in order to break the deadlock, Esper said: “I wouldn’t support that.”

“We’re going to stick to our positions, and I think NATO will as well,” Esper said.

The issue is the latest source of friction between the NATO allies, which have also been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of advanced Russian air defenses, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO defenses and pose a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Washington said in July it was removing Turkey from the F-35 program and has warned of possible U.S. sanctions.

Two U.S. senators pressed the Trump administration on Monday to impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian missile defense system and said the failure to do so sent a “terrible signal.”

 

The United States on Monday called recent violence in Nassiriya, Iraq in which at least 29 people died “shocking and abhorrent,” calling on the Iraqi government to investigate and punish those responsible for the “excessive” use of force.

Iraqi security forces opened fire on demonstrators who had blocked a bridge and later gathered outside a police station in the southern city, killing at least 29 people. Police and medical sources said dozens more were wounded.

Iraqi forces have killed over 400 people, mostly young, unarmed protesters, since mass anti-government protests broke out on Oct. 1. More than a dozen members of the security forces have also died in clashes.

“The use of excessive force over the weekend in Nassiriya was shocking and abhorrent,” David Schenker, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told reporters.

“We call on the Government of Iraq to respect the rights of the Iraqi people and urge the government to investigate and hold accountable those who attempt to brutally silence peaceful protesters,” he added.

The unrest is Iraq’s biggest challenge since Islamic State militants seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014.

It pits mostly young, disaffected Shi’ite protesters against a Shi’ite-dominated government that is backed by Iran and has been accused of squandering Iraq’s oil wealth while infrastructure and living standards deteriorate.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi announced on Friday he would resign after a call by Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for parliament to consider withdrawing its support for his government to stem the violence. Parliament voted to accept the resignation on Sunday.

Joe Biden took in more than $15 million for his White House run over the past two months, a sum that shows the former vice president’s fundraising operation has rebounded slightly after a lackluster summer in which he trailed his leading rivals.

Biden’s campaign would not say exactly how much he has raised since the end of September. But with roughly one month left before the next reporting deadline, campaign manager Greg Schultz said in a memo provided to The Associated Press that Biden has already surpassed the $15.6 million he raised across July, August and September.

The improvement comes at a costly juncture in the Democratic primary, as candidates sprint to get their message out and mobilize supporters ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses in February.

Schultz said online fundraising helped fuel the increase, which he attributed to discredited attacks that President Donald Trump has made against Biden and his son over their past dealings in Ukraine.

Trump has sought to implicate Biden and his son Hunter in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading U.S. diplomatic dealings with Kyiv under President Barack Obama. Although the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.

“His campaign and special interest groups have spent millions of dollars airing ads to spread those same lies,” Schultz wrote. “This groundswell of support shows us — and Trump, and reporters, and anyone else watching — that his whole scheme is backfiring.”

The fundraising uptick, however, doesn’t offer a complete picture. A more telling sum at this stage of the race would be how much cash Biden has on hand.

The $9 million he reported in the bank at the end of September trailed Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg — all of whom reported having at least twice that amount.

Yet for anxious Biden allies it shows renewed signs of vigor at a time when many have fretted about whether his campaign could hold on until Southern states, where Biden enjoys more support, hold their contests later in the year.

Schultz said the revenue bump will give the campaign “the resources we need to knock more doors, make more calls, and build more support in the caucus rooms and in the ballot box.”

“The resources are important, but the timing really couldn’t be better,” he wrote.

An airstrike that hit a civilian area in a southern neighborhood of the Libyan capital killed at least four children, the country’s health ministry said Monday.

Tripoli has been the scene of fighting since April between the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, and an array of militias loosely allied with the U.N.-supported but weak government, which holds Tripoli.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the Sunday airstrike on the al-Sawani neighborhood, about 30 kilometers, or 18 miles, from the city center, but the Libyan interior ministry blamed the Libyan National Army. The force did not return calls seeking comment.

The health ministry spokesman, Malek Merset, who said a fifth child was wounded in the attack, shared graphic photographs of lifeless bodies and an image of a wounded child, purportedly from the attack.

The fighting for Tripoli has killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands. It has stalled in recent months, with both sides dug in and shelling one another along the city’s southern reaches.

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war that ousted and killed long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It is now split into rival governments — the U.N.-supported government based in Tripoli, which controls some of the country’s west, and the east-based government aligned with Hifter that controls the east. Each is backed by militias and armed groups fighting over resources and territory.

Action by Libyan parliament

In a political development, the Libyan parliament, which is based in the east and affiliated with the east-based government, on Monday called on the U.N. to withdraw its recognition of the Tripoli-based government.

The move appeared prompted by the parliament’s outrage over a maritime and security cooperation deal last week between the Tripoli-based government and Turkey.

The parliament has denounced the agreement, signed by Libya’s Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as a “flagrant breach” of the country’s security and sovereignty. It said the deal grants the Turkish government the right to use Libyan airspace and waters as well as build military bases on Libyan soil.

The parliament speaker, Ogila Saleh, said in a four-page letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the agreement amounts to Turkish “occupation of Libyan territory and the violation of its sovereignty.” Saleh also said the deal ignores the fact that Turkey has no maritime border with Libya, but that Greece and Cyprus have them.

Greece and Cyprus, along with Egypt, which backs Hifter, have criticized the agreement, calling it a serious breach of international law.

The Turkey-Libya deal has also added tension to an ongoing dispute with Greece, Cyprus and Egypt over oil-and-gas drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Greece plans to raise the issue of the deal at NATO’s summit in London, which starts Tuesday.
 

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock ended his Democratic presidential campaign Monday, becoming the third Western governor boasting executive experience and a Washington-outsider appeal to flame out in the contest.

The campaigns of Bullock, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper failed to gain momentum in a D.C.-centric race in which former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dominated the polls for most of the past few months.

Bullock, a 53-year-old two-term governor and former attorney general, had the textbook resume for primary success in past presidential elections. He’s a former labor lawyer and a gun owner whose governing record included expanding Medicaid in a red state. He touted across-the-aisle appeal, arguing he was the best bet to defeat President Donald Trump because he was the only Democratic candidate to win in a state that Trump won in 2016.

But instead of following Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on the path from the governor’s mansion to the White House, Bullock sputtered. The crowded 2020 race has centered on national debates around Trump and impeachment, and the Democratic National Committee imposed tougher polling and fundraising thresholds to make the debate stage. Those thresholds favored those with national name recognition and established online networks, making it tough for Bullock and other newcomers to the national scene to get a toehold.

Bullock was also hobbled by his late start, announcing his candidacy in May and joining nearly two dozen other Democratic candidates competing for attention and campaign donations.

He struggled to raise money and register in the polls, managing to meet qualification thresholds for only one DNC debate, in July.

“While there were many obstacles we could not have anticipated when entering this race, it has become clear that in this moment, I won’t be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowded field of candidates,” Bullock said in a statement Monday.

The governor said that he ran to win back places Democrats have lost and end the influence of “dark money” in politics. Those concerns have not changed, he said, but he leaves the race “filled with gratitude and optimism, inspired and energized by the good people I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the course of the campaign.”

Bullock flew to Iowa and notified his staff in person on Sunday that he was dropping out.

Unlike Hickenlooper, who dropped out in August to instead run for Senate, or Inslee, who decided to instead seek reelection, Bullock did not announce plans for another campaign.

Term limit laws prevent him from running for governor again in 2020, and he has repeatedly brushed off Democratic hopes that he’d instead run for Senate against first-term Republican Steve Daines. Bullock has said that he has no interest in the Senate seat and that there are already strong candidates running against Daines.

Bullock’s spokeswoman, Galia Slayen, reiterated that Monday.

“While he plans to work hard to elect Democrats in the state and across the country in 2020, it will be in his capacity as a governor and a senior voice in the Democratic Party — not as a candidate for U.S. Senate,” Slayen said in a statement.

Bullock had been exploring a presidential run since 2017, but he said he couldn’t announce his candidacy until he had finished his work in Helena, where the state legislature was meeting.

He staked his presidential campaign on Iowa, and he made repeated trips to the state to campaign alongside prominent state Attorney General Tom Miller, the first statewide elected official in Iowa to endorse a 2020 candidate.

Bullock stuck strictly to his campaign message of needing to win back rural Trump voters, noting he won reelection the day that Trump carried his state by 20 percentage points. He also touted his history as a crusader to eliminate the influence of anonymous and foreign money in elections.

But he remained at the bottom of the polls and unfamiliar to many voters. His biggest national exposure appeared to come when he didn’t make the cut for the first debate, resulting in a slate of news stories and an appearance on “The Late Night with Stephen Colbert.”

Bullock was Montana’s attorney general for a term before he became governor in 2013. Before that, he worked as an assistant attorney general, as an attorney in private practice in Helena and for law firms in New York and Washington, D.C.

 

 

U.S. President Donald Trump is in London this week to attend the NATO summit as his impeachment fight back home enters a new phase.  

“It will never end, because they want to do what they want to do,” Trump said to reporters as he left the White House, referring to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

With Democrats beginning hearings on drafting the articles of impeachment Wednesday, many leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are well aware of the pressures Trump is facing at home.

Impeachment hearings “eat up a considerable amount of time” for the president and his closest advisers, said Gary Schmitt, resident scholar in strategic studies and American institutions at the American Enterprise Institute. “You’ll see a very distracted president for sure,” Schmitt said.

However, Trump’s impeachment will not likely impact discussions among NATO member countries whose leaders “probably anticipate that the president will be impeached but won’t be removed from office,” said Schmitt.

“They know that at least for the next year they’ll be dealing with President Trump and his administration so they’ll plan accordingly,” he said.

This is not the first time Trump will be facing world leaders under the threat of impeachment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formal House impeachment inquiry against the president on Sept. 24, the same day Trump gave a speech in front of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Echoes of Nixon

Trump is not the first U.S. president to attend a NATO meeting as his impeachment looms. In June 1974, Richard Nixon was in Brussels attending a summit commemorating NATO’s 25th anniversary as the House Judiciary Committee was concluding its impeachment inquiry. Nixon stepped down a few weeks later.

When Trump meets leaders at NATO’s gathering to celebrate its 70th year, he will do so “with the confidence he will likely survive Nixon’s fate,” said Derek Chollet, Executive Vice President for Security and Defense Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Chollet added that as Nixon did in 1974, Trump will strive to project a sense of normalcy in the summit. “As Congress debates his future, Trump will still have extra incentive to show that he’s in command,” he said.

The parallel between Trump and Nixon doesn’t end with impeachment.

The 1974 summit was also a period in which the Europeans worried about the United States withdrawing from Europe, said Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow in the Europe Program at Chatham House.

Kundnani added that Europeans in general are hoping that Trump won’t stay in office, but they are aware enough of the process to know that Republicans are unlikely to convict in the Senate.

“The hope is more that Trump won’t be re-elected, rather than that he will be convicted and removed from office before the election,” Kundnani said. “I don’t think it will particularly affect the way that the NATO summit functions.”

Bilateral meetings

On the sidelines of the summit, Trump is expected to hold bilateral meetings, including with French President Emmanuel Macron who has been advocating “strategic autonomy” for NATO members, stressing that amidst concerns of U.S. commitment to the alliance, Europeans must not rely too much on American security guarantees.

Macron sharply criticized Trump after he withdrew American forces from northeastern Syria in October without consulting NATO allies, saying that the decision represents the “brain-death of NATO.”