The U.S. government recorded a $134 billion budget deficit in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

That compared to a budget deficit of $100 billion in the same month last year, according to the Treasury’s monthly budget statement.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a $133 billion deficit for the month.

Unadjusted receipts last month totaled $246 billion, down 3% from October 2018, while unadjusted outlays were $380 billion, a rise of 8% from the same month a year earlier.

The U.S. government’s fiscal year ends in September each year. Fiscal 2019 saw a widening in the deficit to $984 billion, the largest budget deficit in seven years, a result of the Trump administration’s decision to cut taxes and increase government spending.

Those figures reflected the second full budget year under U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, and a time when the country had an expanding tax base with moderate economic growth and an unemployment rate near a 50-year low.

When adjusted for calendar effects, the deficit for October remained at $134 billion compared with an adjusted deficit of $113 billion in October 2018.
 

Republicans contended Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump did not improperly pressure Ukraine to investigate political rivals for political advantage, with Representative Devin Nunes declaring the accusations were based on “zero evidence” and that Democrats “made it up.” 
 
At the urging of Trump, Republican lawmakers mounted a vigorous defense of the president’s actions in dealing with Ukraine over several months, and they asserted that the Democrats’ case for impeachment against Trump was nonexistent. Trump’s political supporters on the House Intelligence Committee focused on the fact that the president released military aid that Ukraine wanted, without opening investigations of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, which Trump had urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to undertake. 
 
The Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against Trump entered a new phase Wednesday as witnesses began testifying publicly after weeks of closed-door testimony.   
 

Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, were the first to testify at the open hearing. Taylor said a member of his staff overheard Trump on a July phone call with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland inquire about “the investigations.” 
 
The call was said to have taken place on July 26 at a restaurant, a day after Trump asked Zelenskiy in a call to investigate a political rival, Biden, a potential rival in the 2020 presidential election, and his son Hunter, at a time when the Trump administration was withholding critical military aid to Ukraine. 
 
“Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine,” Taylor testified. “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden,” for which Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuiliani, was pressing. 
 
Taylor acknowledged under questioning from Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and steadfast Trump supporter, that he met with Zelenskiy three times last summer, but that linkage of U.S. military aid to Ukraine was never mentioned. 
 
The impeachment probe was triggered by a whistleblower complaint related to concerns about the July 25 phone call. 
 
Before Republicans questioned the witnesses, the party took to social media to criticize the hearing. 
 
A tweet from House Oversight Committee Republicans said: 

FACT CHECK: Neither Ambassador Taylor nor George Kent have first-hand knowledge of a quid pro quo from the President.

We must hear from the whistleblower. https://t.co/nXnFytSkrb

— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) November 13, 2019

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California contended, “Both of the Democrats’ star witnesses just admitted that they were NOT on the July 25th call between Presidents Trump and Zelenskiy. Everything they are saying today is 2nd or 3rd or 4th-hand knowledge. Democrats are trying to impeach the president based on a game of telephone.” 
 
In the lead-up to Wednesday’s testimony, a Republican strategy memo circulating at the Capitol outlined four defenses for Trump: that the July 25 call “shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure”; that both Zelenskiy and Trump have subsequently said there was no pressure during the call; that Kyiv was not aware at the time, only later, that U.S. military aid was being withheld; and that Trump eventually released the military aid on September 11 without the investigations of the Bidens being opened. 
 
“These four key points undercut the Democrat impeachment narrative that President Trump leveraged U.S. security assistance and a presidential meeting [with Zelenskiy at the White House] to force Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals,” the memo said. 
 
Trump has described his telephone call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” and he is accusing Democrats of conducting a witch hunt, calling the entire impeachment inquiry a hoax. 
 
Some of Trump’s Republican supporters have said they don’t agree with asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival but they don’t believe it is an impeachable offense that could lead to his removal from office.  
 

Schools in Tehran were ordered to be closed on Wednesday after the Iranian capital was cloaked in dangerously high levels of air pollution, authorities said.
 
Governor Anoushiravan Mohseni-Bandpey said kindergartens, preschools and primary schools would be shut in the city and the counties of Gharchak, Pishva and Varamin.
 
“The air quality index for the city of Tehran still has not passed the unhealthy status for sensitive groups,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.
 
Average concentrations of hazardous airborne particles hit 133 micrograms per cubic meter in the city and were as high as 150 for 10 districts, he said.
 
That is far above the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum of 25 micrograms per cubic meter on average over a 24-hour period.
 
Warnings were issued for children, pregnant women, the elderly and people suffering from cardio-vascular or respiratory diseases to stay indoors.
 
Many people were seen wearing face masks to avoid fumes as they waited for buses on the sides of traffic-choked streets of southern Tehran during morning rush-hour.
 
A layer of thick smog covered Tehran on Tuesday, but it appeared to dissipate in northern areas on Wednesday morning with fewer school buses on the roads.
 
Air pollution was the cause of nearly 30,000 deaths per year in Iranian cities, IRNA reported earlier this year, citing a health ministry official.
 
Each winter, Iran’s sprawling capital suffers some of the worst pollution in the world through thermal inversion — a phenomenon that traps hazardous air over the city.
 
According to a World Bank report last year, most of the pollution in the city of eight million inhabitants is caused by heavy duty vehicles, motorbikes, refineries and power plants.

 

The opposition backed ambassador’s staff attempted to move in to the Venezuelan embassy in Brazil on Wednesday as staff loyal to the Maduro government resisted the change.

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s appointed ambassador, Teresa Belandria, said in a statement that staff members at the embassy “voluntarily” opened its doors early Wednesday to officials working for her.

“Upon entering the headquarters, we could verify that a group of officials was living in the official residence,” said Belandria, who has not moved in to the embassy.

“The violent Right’s matrix about desertions is absolutely false,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza on Twitter. A video posted to Arreaza’s Twitter showed Venezuela’s Chargé d’affaires and staff members disputing Belandria’s claim.

A Brazilian foreign ministry representative was inside the embassy in an attempt to end the impasse.

Brazilian military police surrounded the embassy as demonstrators on both sides gathered to support the Maduro government and opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Dozens of supporters of Brazil’s left-wing Workers Party organized outside the embassy. According to French news agency AFP, the demonstrators yelled “Viva Maduro,” “Drug dealer Guaido” and “Free Lula,” referencing the Brazilian leftist released from jail on Friday.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro accepted Belandria’s credentials as ambassador of Venezuela in June 2019.

Brazil is one of more than 50 countries that recognize the Venezuelan opposition leader Guaidó as the acting president after rejecting Maduro’s 2018 re-election as rigged.

Maduro has emptied the embassies and consulates of countries that recognize his rival. Despite recalling diplomats, the governments have fought over controlling the properties.

Earlier in May, American police forcibly removed protesters that were occupying the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, to allow pro-Guaidó diplomats to enter.

The protesters had been invited by the pro-Maduro diplomats before President Maduro recalled them from the country. The protesters controlled the embassy for about a month.

The embassy drama comes at a time Brazil must balance its relationships with China and Russia, which support Maduro, and the U.S. President Donald Trump, who supports Guaidó.

 

Some 25 people, many members of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party, were charged with murder Wednesday over the brutal killing last month of a university student who criticized the government on social media.

The battered body of 21-year-old Abrar Fahad was found in his dormitory hours after he wrote a post on Facebook slamming Dhaka for signing a water-sharing deal with India.

Police said he was beaten to death by fellow students — many members of the ruling Awami League’s university branch. Others had links to the pro-government Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL).

“Murder charges have been pressed to the court against 25 men,” police spokesman Monirul Islam told AFP.

“According to the CCTV footage, at least 11 were directly involved in beating Fahad to death.”

He said the accused had created an “environment of fear” on campus, with physical abuse and other coercive behavior.

“They were using their political identity as shelter,” he said, referring to their links to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party.

Fahd’s death sparked widespread protests among students in the country, prompting Hsian to promise his killers would be severely punished.

 

The German parliament’s legal affairs committee on Wednesday ousted its chairman, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany, amid anger over a string of provocative comments.

The committee voted 37-6 Wednesday to remove chairman Stephan Brandner, center-left lawmaker Florian Post wrote on Twitter. It is the first time in the parliament’s 70-year history that a committee chairman has been voted out.

Brandner has repeatedly angered lawmakers from other parties over recent months, including with broadsides against opponents and by retweeting a reaction to the killing of two passers-by in a botched attack by a right-wing extremist on a synagogue last month that many considered objectionable.

That was followed by a tweet railing against singer Udo Lindenberg, who is critical of Alternative for Germany, and a decoration Lindenberg received, in which Brandner used the term “Judaslohn” (“blood money”).

Brandner comes from the eastern state of Thuringia, whose regional Alternative for Germany leader, Bjoern Hoecke, is the party’s best-known far-right firebrand.

The general-secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, Paul Ziemiak, tweeted that Brandner, “Hoecke’s Berlin outpost,” had been “unworthy” as chairman and added that “his anti-Semitism is intolerable.”

Brandner has portrayed himself as a victim of absurd accusations. On Wednesday, he accused other parties of “naked hypocrisy” and declared that “this is not a defeat for us.”

The head of Germany’s main Jewish group, Josef Schuster, said the committee had acted responsibly. Brandner, he said, “was no longer tenable in this office and, in our opinion, actually has no place in parliament.”

Alternative for Germany became the biggest opposition party after the country’s 2017 election.

It has dire relations with other parties. Lawmakers so far have voted down four candidates the party put forward to be parliament’s deputy speaker.

The party also chairs the parliament’s budget and tourism committees. They are symbolically important posts, though the occupants don’t get to change government policy.

 

 

Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg left North America on a return trip across the Atlantic on Wednesday, hitching a renewable-energy ride with an Australian family aboard their 48-foot (15-meter) catamaran.

Thunberg tweeted that they set sail from Virginia after the family answered her urgent appeal for a ride back to Europe, where she hopes to arrive in time for the United Nations climate meeting that was moved to Madrid in early December. They left shortly before 8 a.m. She encouraged followers to track their journey online.

Their boat, named La Vagabonde, leaves little to no carbon footprint, using solar panels and hydro-generators for power. It also has a toilet, unlike the boat on which she sailed from the United Kingdom to New York in August. That one had only a bucket.

“There are countless people around the world who don’t have access to a toilet,” she said about the upgrade. “It’s not that important. But it’s nice to have.”

Thunberg spoke with The Associated Press Tuesday inside the tight confines of the boat’s cabin as it was docked in Hampton, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The boat’s owners are Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, an Australian couple who travel the world with their 11-month-old baby, Lenny. The family, which has a large online following, responded to Thunberg’s call on social media for a carbon-free ride to Europe. An expert sailor, Nikki Henderson, also is coming along.

The trip could take two to four weeks, in conditions that could be challenging. November is considered offseason for sailing across the Atlantic. As Thunberg spoke Tuesday, the temperature had dipped into the 30s, with sleet turning to light snow.

But the 16-year-old, who refuses to fly because of the carbon price of plane travel, didn’t seem bothered.

“I’m looking forward to it, just to be able to get away and recap everything and to just be disconnected,” she said.

Thunberg’s nearly three-month trip through North America included her impassioned speech before the United Nations. She joined in climate strike rallies and protests from California to Colorado to North Carolina.

Thunberg has become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists after leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities worldwide.

She’s also drawn criticism from conservative commentators in the U.S. as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. But she brushed off the criticism Tuesday, saying that yes, she IS too young to be doing this.

“It should be the adults who take that responsibility,” Thunberg said. “But it feels like the adults and the people in power today are not.”

When she looks back on her time in the U.S. and Canada, Thunberg said, the things that stick out the most include a glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park that is destined to disappear “no matter what we do.”

A visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where there have been protests over a pipeline, also left an impact.

“I was actually quite surprised to see how bad the indigenous people have been treated,” she said. “They are the ones who are being impacted often the most and first by the climate and ecological crisis. And they are also the ones who are at the front line trying to fight it.”

She also was surprised at how much she was recognized.

“There are always people who come up to me and ask for selfies and so on,” she said. “So, that really gives you an idea of how big the climate movement has reached.”

Israeli forces carried out airstrikes Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, while militants there fired fresh barrages of rockets into Israel.

Palestinian health officials and the militant group Islamic Jihad said the Israeli strikes killed two people, raising the death toll to 12 since the latest round of violence began Tuesday.

The Israeli Defense Forces said militants had fired more than 200 rockets.

The rocket fire began in response to an Israeli airstrike that killed an Islamic Jihad commander in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the commander, Bahaa Abu el-Atta, was responsible for many of the recent rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, and that he had been planning further attacks.

Wednesday brings the start of open hearings in the impeachment inquiry examining the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee is overseeing the probe. After weeks of closed-door depositions involving current and former diplomat and officials, lawmakers and those watching across the country will hear testimony from William Taylor, the current top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, who oversees Ukraine affairs.

Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Taylor, Kent and a third witness set to testify Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, “bring decades of dedicated and exemplary service to our nation, and I believe it is vitally important that the American people and all members of Congress hear in their own words what they experienced and witnessed.”

Both Taylor and Kent have said that Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations of one of Trump’s chief 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, before he would release $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.

But Republicans, according to memos circulating Tuesday to party members ahead of the hearings, plan to sharply question the two officials’ understanding of Trump’s intent in dealing with Ukraine and insist that Trump had a “deep-seated, genuine and reasonable skepticism” about corruption in Ukraine and that his withholding aid was “entirely reasonable.”

In a late July call with Zelenskiy, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader for “a favor,” the investigation of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work at a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won, not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded.

However, a Republican strategy memo circulating at the Capitol building outlined four defenses for Trump: that the July 25 call “shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure,” that both Zelenskiy and Trump have subsequently said there was no pressure during the call, that Kyiv was not aware at the time, only later, that U.S. military aid was being withheld, and that Trump eventually released the military aid on September 11 without the investigations of the Bidens being opened.

“These four key points undercut the Democrat impeachment narrative that President Trump leveraged U.S. security assistance and a presidential meeting (with Zelenskiy at the White House) to force Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals,” the memo said.

Trump continued to rail against the impeachment hearings against him, only the fourth such occurrence in the 243-year history of the U.S.

“A total Impeachment Scam by the Do Nothing Democrats!” Trump said on Twitter.

A total Impeachment Scam by the Do Nothing Democrats! https://t.co/aFTQe293JF

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2019

“Why is such a focus put on 2nd and 3rd hand witnesses, many of whom are Never Trumpers, or whose lawyers are Never Trumpers, when all you have to do is read the phone call (transcript) with the Ukrainian President and see first hand?” Trump said in another tweet.

Why is such a focus put on 2nd and 3rd hand witnesses, many of whom are Never Trumpers, or whose lawyers are Never Trumpers, when all you have to do is read the phone call (transcript) with the Ukrainian President and see first hand? He and others also stated that there was…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2019

Schiff told the 435 members of the House of Representatives that the nationally televised hearings “are intended to bring the facts to light for the American people.”

The committee will also hold three days of hearing next week. Among the witnesses scheduled to appear then are Ambassador Kurt Volker, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Ambassador Gordon Sondland and former National Security Council senior director Fiona Hill.

Republicans claimed in their memo defending Trump, “Democrats want to impeach President Trump because unelected and anonymous bureaucrats disagreed with the president’s decisions and were discomforted by his telephone call with President Zelenskiy. The president works for the American people. And President Trump is doing what Americans elected him to do.”

Taylor, Kent and Yovanovitch are among current and former diplomatic and national security officials who testified behind closed doors in recent weeks.

Transcripts of their depositions detailed how Trump and his aides pressed Ukraine to launch investigations of the Bidens and any Ukraine involvement in the 2016 U.S. election.

In the previous three impeachment efforts targeting U.S. leaders, two presidents (Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago) were impeached but acquitted in Senate trials, while a third president, Richard Nixon, resigned ahead of all-but-certain impeachment in the 1970s.

As Turkey last month announced its military incursion into northeast Syria, Turkish officials said the operation was to “prevent the creation of a terror corridor” along Turkey’s southern border with Syria. Locally, however, their message added a religious zeal to the Muslim nation by depicting the offensive as an Islamic struggle against “infidels.”

Some experts and observers of the country say the government’s religious messaging is a mixture of ideology and political propaganda aimed at promoting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambition to be seen as the leader and protector of the Muslim world.

While announcing the operation on October 9, Erdogan tweeted in English that the operation by the Turkish army and its allied Syrian militants was to “neutralize terror threats” against Turkey by the Kurds and to establish a safe zone for the return of Syrian refugees. In his tweets in Turkish and Arabic, however, he described the forces as “the heroes of the Mohammadian Army” — a term dating back to the Ottoman Empire.

Days into the operation, Erdogan in several public speeches framed it in religious terms, claiming it was to protect the dignity of the ummah, or the Muslim world. During a speech at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) group meeting on October 29, he praised the Turkey-backed Syrian rebels as “jihadists who even intimidate and kill death itself.”

Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish lawmaker at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that Erdogan, since the establishment of the ruling AKP party in 2001, has attempted to portray himself to the West as a liberal democratic reformer while promoting a religious tone at home.    

“Reframing secular policy debates within the rhetoric of political Islam is one of the strategies Erdogan has used to strengthen his ideological hegemony,” said Erdemir, adding that the rhetoric can be used as an effective social engineering tool in the country.

“To this day, he has continued to use Islamist jargon to cater to his loyalists at home and abroad, while deploying a sanitized rhetoric to address his Western audiences,” he told VOA.

On October 25, after Friday’s prayer in an Istanbul mosque, Erdogan gave a speech citing the Quran and telling the worshippers that Allah has promised a victory to Muslims and commanded them to be hard on “infidels.”

Syria operation ordained by God

Citing religion for the offensive against U.S.-backed forces was not limited to Erdogan’s speeches.

Across Turkey’s mosques, the Diyanet, or the directorate of religious affairs, organized calls to prayer and recitation of the “Conquest” chapter in the Quran, broadcasting it over  loudspeakers. Turkish mainstream media, including state-run Anadolu Agency, broadcast Islamic clerics telling followers the northeast Syria operation was ordained by God.

The pro-government media outlet shared dozens of posts allegedly showing Muslims from around the world reciting the “Conquest” chapter of the Quran in support of the Turkish military.

Abdullah Bozkurt, a Turkish author and the director of Nordic Research and Monitoring Network, told VOA that utilizing religious institutions continues to pay off for Erdogan to mobilize his supporters, especially the hard-core religious base that is crucial for his political survival.

Through appealing to religious symbols and Islamic congregations, Bozkurt said, Erdogan sees an opportunity to also gain the sympathy of both Turkish and non-Turkish Muslim diaspora groups in the West.

“This, he thinks, helps him gain leverage and enhance his bargaining power with the Western policymakers. This was often displayed when Erdoğan made trips to the U.S. and European capitals where he had always met with Muslim and religious figures in a town hall meeting to deliver speeches with religious flavors,” he told VOA.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), warned that the continued usage of religion by Turkish officials to justify their policies could spark a set of issues that the Turkish society will likely grapple with for years to come.

“After 16 years of Erdoganism, a whole generation of indoctrinated Turkish schoolchildren and Turkish military officers have fundamentally changed Turkey,” he said, adding that the strategy will likely also affect Turkey’s relations with Western countries that are concerned about the direction Turkey is headed.

“For those who have been watching Erdogan, it’s very worrisome,” Rubin said. He added that the pan-Islamic messaging is often coined with promoting incitement against the West, particularly when interests diverge in developments such as in northeast Syria.

Plotting a divide

The United States and its European allies have criticized Turkey’s operation against the Kurdish forces. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to impose devastating sanctions and the European Union limited arms exports to Turkey in reaction to the offensive.

In return, Turkish officials have accused the West of plotting to divide the Muslim world and spread conflict among Muslim nations to extract their wealth.

During a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, Saturday, Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said their Syria operation thwarted a Western plot to create a “terror state” in northeast Syria by empowering Kurdish forces.

“A group of countries led by Israel wanted to establish a terror state in northern Syria and we foiled their plans,” Cavusoglu said during a joint press conference with Hadi Soleimanpour, an adviser to the Iranian foreign ministry and secretary general of Economic Cooperation Organization.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has made similar remarks, slamming the West, which according to him has “sworn to eliminate Islam and its people from these lands.”

Max Hoffman, a Turkey expert at Washington-based Center for American Progress, charged that Turkish officials’ rhetoric about the West reflects a fundamental change in their view of the U.S. influence in the world.

“More broadly, he and his inner circle believe the world is multipolar and the U.S. is in decline. They want Turkey to be a power in its own right,” Hoffman said, adding this worldview has led Erdogan to adopt a transactional approach toward the U.S. and Europe and cultivate ties with Iran, China and especially Russia.

While Erdogan will likely continue to cultivate religious support, Hoffman said it is unlikely that this policy could cause an “Islamization of Turkey.”

“Erdogan’s goal of raising a ‘pious generation’ is possibly backfiring but, at a minimum, has not been realized. But while society in the aggregate appears to becoming less religious, there is certainly concern in Turkey about small subsets of the population that have become increasingly radical in their religious views. Personally, I doubt Turkish society will move very far in that direction,” he told VOA. 

Sharply at odds with liberal justices, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to abolish protections that permit 660,000 immigrants to work in the U.S., free from the threat of deportation.

That outcome would “destroy lives,” declared Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one the court’s liberals who repeatedly suggested the administration has not adequately justified its decision to end the seven-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Nor has it taken sufficient account of the personal, economic and social disruption that might result, they said.

But there did not appear to be any support among the five conservatives for blocking the administration. The nine-member court’s decision is expected by June, at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign.

President Donald Trump said on Twitter that DACA recipients shouldn’t despair if the justices side with him, pledging that “a deal will be made with the Dems for them to stay!” But Trump’s past promises to work with Democrats on a legislative solution for these immigrants have led nowhere.

The president also said in his tweet that many program participants, brought to the U.S. as children and now here illegally, are “far from ‘angels,’” and he falsely claimed that “some are very tough, hardened criminals.” The program bars anyone with a felony conviction from participating, and serious misdemeanors may also bar eligibility.

Some DACA recipients, commonly known as “Dreamers,” were in the courtroom for the arguments, and many people camped out in front of the court for days for a chance at some of the few seats available.  The term comes from never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act.

The high court arguments did not involve any discussion of individual DACA recipients or Trump’s claims.

Instead the focus was on whether either of two administration rationales for ending DACA, begun under President Barack Obama, was enough.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was a key part of his presidential campaign in 2016, and his administration has pointed to a court ruling striking down the expansion of DACA and creation of similar protections, known as DAPA, for undocumented immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens as reasons to bring the program to a halt.

After lower courts stepped in to keep the program alive, the administration produced a new explanation memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were among the justices who indicated on Tuesday that the administration has provided sufficient reason for doing away with the program. Kavanaugh referred to Nielsen’s memo at one point as “a very considered decision.” Roberts suggested that worries that DACA is not legal might be enough to support ending it.

Roberts, who could hold the pivotal vote on the court, aimed his few questions at lawyers representing DACA recipients and their supporters. He did not seriously question the administration’s argument.

However, justices’ questions don’t always foretell their votes. In June the chief justice surprised many when he cast the deciding vote to prevent the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, despite not voicing much skepticism during arguments in the case.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito raised questions on Tuesday about whether courts should even be reviewing the executive branch’s discretionary decisions.

Sotomayor made the only direct reference to Trump, saying he told DACA recipients “that they were safe under him and that he would find a way to keep them here. And so he hasn’t.”

She also complained that the administration’s rationale has shifted over time and has mainly relied on the view that DACA is illegal, leaving no choice but to end it.

In her most barbed comment, Sotomayor said the administration has failed to plainly say “that this is not about the law. This is about our choice to destroy lives.”

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, representing the administration, did not directly respond to Sotomayor. But near the end of the 80-minute arguments, he asserted that the administration has taken responsibility for its decision and is relying on more than merely its belief that DACA is illegal. The administration has the authority to end DACA, even if it’s legal, because it’s bad policy, he said. “We own this,” Francisco said.

If the court agrees with the administration in the DACA case, Congress could follow up by voting to put the program on surer legal footing. But the absence of comprehensive immigration reform by Congress is what prompted Obama to create DACA in the first place, in 2012, giving people two-year renewable reprieves from the threat of deportation while also allowing them to work.

Young immigrants, civil rights groups, universities and Democratic-led cities and states sued to block the administration. They persuaded courts in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., that the administration had been “arbitrary and capricious” in its actions, in violation of a federal law that requires policy changes to be done in an orderly way.

If the justices sustain the challenges, the administration could try again to end the program. A lawsuit in Texas claiming that DACA is illegal also would be likely to go forward.

Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg will leave North America and begin her return trip across the Atlantic on Wednesday aboard a 48-foot (15-meter) catamaran sailboat whose passengers include an 11-month-old baby.

The boat leaves little to no carbon footprint, boasting solar panels and a hydro-generators for power. It also has a toilet, unlike the boat on which she sailed from the United Kingdom to New York in August. That one only had a bucket.

“There are countless people around the world who don’t have access to a toilet,” she said about the upgrade. “It’s not that important. But it’s nice to have.”

Thunberg spoke Tuesday inside the tight confines of the catamaran, named La Vagabonde, as it was docked in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay’s mouth. She’s hitching a ride to Spain in hopes of attending a United Nations climate meeting in Madrid in early December.

The owners of the boat are Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, an Australian couple who have an 11-month-old son named Lenny. The family, which has a large online following, responded to Thunberg’s call on social media for a carbon-free ride to Europe. An expert sailor, Nikki Henderson, is also coming along.   

The trip could take two to four weeks, and November is considered offseason for sailing across the Atlantic. As Thunberg spoke Tuesday, the temperature had dipped into the 30s as sleet turned into light snow.

But the 16-year-old, who refuses to fly because of the carbon price of plane travel, didn’t seem bothered.

“I’m looking forward to it, just to be able to get away and recap everything and to just be disconnected,” she said.  

Thunberg just finished a nearly three-month trip through North America, where she gave an impassioned speech before the United Nations and took part in climate strike rallies and protests from California to Colorado to North Carolina.   

She’s become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists after leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities worldwide.

She’s also drawn criticism from conservative commentators in the U.S. as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. But she brushed off the criticism during her round of back-to-back interviews in the catamaran on Tuesday, saying that yes, she is too young to be doing this.

“It should be the adults who take that responsibility,” Thunberg said. “But it feels like the adults and the people in power today are not.”

When she looks back on her time in the U.S. and Canada, Thunberg said the things that stick out the most include a glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park that is destined to disappear “no matter what we do.”

A visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where there have been protests over a pipeline, also left an impact.

“I was actually quite surprised to see how bad the indigenous people have been treated,” she said. “They are the ones who are being impacted often the most and first by the climate and ecological crisis. And they are also the ones who are at the front line trying to fight it.”

She also was surprised at how much she was recognized.

“There are always people who come up to me and ask for selfies and so on,” she said. “So, that really gives you an idea of how big the climate movement has reached.”

Colombia’s foreign minister, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, will move to head the Defense Ministry, President Ivan Duque said on Tuesday, where he will focus on everyday security and the fight against armed groups and drug trafficking.

Trujillo will be replaced by Claudia Blum, a former senator and United Nations ambassador, Duque said.

Guillermo Botero resigned as defense minister last week in the midst of mounting political pressure over alleged extrajudicial killings and the deaths of eight children in a military bombing.

“We are pleased that Carlos Holmes Trujillo will take on this new task,” Duque said in a televised statement. “He will be in charge, of course, of confronting organized armed groups in all national territory.”

Trujillo’s experience as mayor of the city of Cali “puts him close to the reality of citizen security,” Duque added.

Trujillo, a former education and interior minister and ambassador to the European Union, has devoted much of his term as the country’s top diplomat to denouncing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a dictator and supporter of terrorism.

Colombia has repeatedly accused Maduro of offering safe haven to dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group, who refused to demobilize under a 2016 peace deal, and guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN).

The fight against those groups would be easier without Maduro as Venezuela’s leader, Trujillo has said.

Trujillo will also focus on fighting drug traffickers, destroying illicit cultivations of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine, and increasing drug seizures, Duque said.

Blum, a native of Cali and the first woman to serve as president of the Colombian Senate, has “ample experience in political and international affairs,” Duque said on Twitter later on Tuesday.

She served as ambassador to the U.N. under former President Alvaro Uribe, Duque’s mentor.

 

Germany has donated $10.9 million to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to provide food aid to communities hard hit by widespread flooding across South Sudan. A WFP official who just returned from Pibor said the flooding is a real emergency that requires an immediate response.

The WFP country director for South Sudan, Matthew Hollingworth, said Germany’s donation will put a major dent in the amount the U.N. agency needs to respond to the humanitarian emergency.

He said the money will pay for life-saving humanitarian and resilience activities, and to respond to ongoing flooding.

“The World Food Program is saying we need $40 million urgently just to meet the next three months. The need of around 750,000 people who need emergency food assistance, that is only for the next three months,” Hollingworth told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program.

Jonglei Hardest Hit by South Sudan Floods

Tens of thousands of people in South Sudan have been affected by flooding, more than a quarter of them in Jonglei state, United Nations officials said in a report released this week.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 223,474 people in eight of South Sudan’s 10 states have been impacted by floods caused by heavy rains.

Heavy rains beginning in July have caused floods that washed away thousands of homes and crops, and have displaced nearly a million people, particularly in the greater Upper Nile and Bahr al Ghazal regions of former Jonglei, Bahr El-Ghazal and former Upper Nile states.

Majai Lul, who lives in Bieh State, said it is hard to get anything done when the entire area is under water. “We cannot move anywhere because the whole area is full of water and even if there is any place where there is food, you cannot go there to bring it,” Lul told South Sudan in Focus.

He said people in his village of Waat are struggling to find higher ground over fears that additional heavy rains are imminent.

“The whole land is full of water and as I speak to you now I am in the water; the water has flooded all our houses,” Lul told VOA.

Last month, the government declared a state of emergency in greater Bahr al-Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile and the Greater Equatoria regions, and it made an urgent appeal for humanitarian intervention. 

Hollingworth said the WFP is ramping up its operations to provide aid to the most flood-affected communities across South Sudan.

“People have lost their homes, they have lost animals, their livestock either drowned, their sheep, their goats, [and in] some cases their cows are drowned if the floods have been particularly high and [it is] very worrying now in areas where floodwater is staying, the pasture land is under water. So even if their animals are safe, where are they going to feed for the next two, three or five weeks?” Hollingworth asked aloud.                                                          

South Sudan Floods Destroy Homes, Health Center

Heavy rains last week destroyed at least 70 homes and the only health center in Raja County in Western Bahr el Ghazal state, relief workers said this week as they struggled to help victims of the flooding.
The health center that was flooded served more than 350 families, and Raja County Commissioner Hassan Jalaab Khadaam said the county does not have the money to repair it.
South Sudan Red Cross state chairman Leon Archangelo said no one died in the flooding a week ago on Tuesday, but warned that…

Hollingworth describes the situation as acute, with many people fleeing to higher ground. “The scale of the crisis is great. There are 31 counties in six of the old states that have been affected, so this not a small flooding operation in one area of the country,” said Hollingworth.

He calls it the worst flooding in 40 years for this part of Africa. The U.N. said in a statement last week that it needs $61 million to save lives and ensure the continuity of response to flood victims in South Sudan.

Hollingworth said the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund is considering providing funds that would help cover food and basic services for flood-affected communities across South Sudan.

For over two decades, the Trump International Hotel and Towers have been a recognizable New York City landmark with its golden facade and luxury interiors. But that look and branding has been getting a makeover. Vladimir Lenski has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

While Democrats and Republicans dominate U.S. political headlines, scores of smaller parties dot America’s landscape and, at times, have a major impact on national, state and local elections.

Some of these parties echo America’s past, like the Prohibition Party, founded in 1869, which has long opposed consuming alcohol.  America’s many minor leftist parties include the Socialist Party USA, founded in the 70s. More recently, the American Solidarity Party, a Catholic party advocating pro-family policies, was founded in 2011.

The 2016 elections saw several third parties attract their highest-ever presidential vote totals at a time when many Americans expressed dissatisfaction with both major party candidates. The Libertarian party, which advocates for lower spending and taxes, saw the biggest leap in support as presidential nominee Gary Johnson received 4.5 million votes, nearly triple his 2012 total.

Similarly, the environment-focused Green Party’s presidential nominee, Jill Stein, received 1.5 million votes in 2016, up from a half million in 2012. Some Democrats accused Stein of siphoning votes from the party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, who lost to Donald Trump. In fact, third party vote totals in several critical battleground states exceeded Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton. Stein has rejected any suggestion she cost Clinton the election, calling it a “pathetic excuse” for Democrats’ poor 2016 showing.

Controversy is not new for the Greens. In 2000, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader received 100,000 votes in Florida, the state that ultimately decided the presidential contest and provoked a furious legal battle that reached the Supreme Court. Nader’s vote total was especially noteworthy, given that Republican George W. Bush ultimately won the state by just 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore.

While the Green Party is often seen as taking away votes from Democrats, some say the Libertarian Party saps votes from Republicans.

Like Republicans, Libertarians argue for slashing the size of government. But the Libertarian Party’s trumpeting of individual freedom extends to hot-button social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, putting them out of sync with socially conservative Republicans.

Tom Ross, a former chairman of the Delaware State Republican Party, claimed that Gary Johnson cost Trump the popular vote in 2016, asserting that 75% of Libertarian voters would otherwise have voted for Trump.  

Johnson and his vice-presidential running mate, Bill Weld, were both former Republican governors with high approval ratings in their respective states. Weld is currently mounting a long-shot bid challenging Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 nomination after defecting from the Libertarian Party.

Small parties have capitalized on disaffection with the major parties. According to a 2018 Gallup Poll, 57 percent of Americans say a third party is needed because Democrats and Republicans do a “poor job.”  

Earlier this month, the Libertarian Party notched victories in a string of local elections, as 21 Libertarian or Libertarian-endorsed candidates were elected to school boards, city councils, and mayorships across the country.

The Green Party, meanwhile, won more than two dozen local contests in 2019. The party says more than 100 Greens hold elected office nationwide.

VOA reached out to several successful third party candidates.

Kathryn Bruner James, who won a seat on the Ferndale, Michigan City Council, ran as a non-partisan but was endorsed by the local Green Party chapter. She will serve a four year term for the city.

Bruner James told VOA she aims to “advance the core values of ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy and nonviolence” – elements listed on the Green Party’s platform.

Four hundred kilometers away from Ferndale, meanwhile, Tipton, Indiana, a Republican stronghold, elected a Democratic Mayor and a Libertarian Party member to the city council last week.

Libertarian Nate Kring beat the Republican incumbent who had been the city’s former mayor and long serving police chief.

Kring began to identify as a Libertarian in 2016, dissatisfied by the Republican Party’s embrace of Trump. On a local level, Kring complained the Tipton Republican Party was not transparent and that Republican elected officials were not enforce the city’s codes and were raising taxes.

Kring said his biggest hurdle as a candidate was convincing people that voting for a him did not mean they were joining the Libertarian Party or that a third party vote was a wasted vote.

As a councilman, Kring sees himself as a problem solver, promising to fairly enforce city laws, collaborate with the county government to “share services and save money” and make the municipal government more transparent.

“The county live streams meetings, but the city doesn’t,” he said.

Indiana has elected 28 Libertarian officials to public office since 1992. The 2019 elections saw Nate Kring and four other Libertarians elected or re-elected in the state.

The 2020 primary season looms for Democrats and Republicans, with most third party candidates getting scant attention by the news media.  Johnson and Stein have both ruled out leading their respective party’s tickets in 2020.

 

A Saudi Arabian court has convicted 38 people of terrorism-related crimes, state-run Al Ekhbariya television reported on Tuesday.

The TV channel said they were charged with financing terrorism and with takfir – the Islamist militant practice of labeling followers of other schools of Islam unbelievers. It said one of them “set up a terrorist organization in prison”.

Ekhbariya did not provide the nationalities or names of those convicted, details about when they were arrested or put on trial, nor what sentences were issued by the specialist criminal court in Riyadh, which was set up to try terrorism cases.

Riyadh has come under mounting international scrutiny over its human rights record since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 and the detention of women’s rights activists who are still on trial.

In April, the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom beheaded 37 men for terrorism crimes. The U.N. human rights chief said most of them were Shi’ites who may not have had fair trials and at least three were minors when sentenced.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia launched a crackdown on dissent, arresting scores of clerics, intellectuals and activists. Some of them have been put on trial for terrorism-related charges.

The kingdom is an absolute monarchy where public protests and political parties are banned.

The Gulf Arab state faced a militant insurgency from 2003 to 2006 in which al-Qaida members staged attacks on residential compounds and government facilities.

The kingdom responded by arresting thousands of suspected militants and launching a media campaign to discredit their ideology.

 

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, agreed with Japanese officials Tuesday that three-way cooperation with South Korea is key to regional security and that an intelligence sharing pact between Tokyo and Seoul should not be scrapped.

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said he told Milley that discord among the three countries would only destabilize the region and benefit North Korea, China and Russia.

“We shared a view that Japan-U.S.-South Korea cooperation is more important now than ever, as we discussed the latest situation related to North Korea, including the North’s latest launch of ballistic missiles,” Motegi said.

He and Milley also agreed on the importance of the Japan-South Korea intelligence sharing pact. Motegi added that Milley promised to convey that message to South Korea during his upcoming visit there.

South Korea has announced plans to scrap the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, amid disputes with Japan over trade and wartime history.

The deal, which is set to expire later this month, symbolizes the Asian neighbors’ security cooperation with Washington in the face of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat and China’s growing influence. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has been exerting last-minute pressure on Japan and South Korea to keep the deal.

Milley also met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Defense Minister Taro Kono, according to the Foreign Ministry and news reports.

Kono said recently that scrapping GSOMIA would send the “wrong signal to nearby countries, especially at a time when cooperation among Japan, the U.S. and South Korea is necessary.” He said “the ball is in South Korea’s court” and urged Seoul to “make a wise decision.”

Japan also appears to be making a last-ditch effort to patch up its relations with South Korea to save the intelligence-sharing agreement.

Kono has expressed a willingness to meet with his South Korean counterpart, Jeong Kyeong-doo, on the sidelines of regional meeting in Thailand later this week.

Separately, Japanese media said Tuesday that Motegi may also meet with his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, at a G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting next week in central Japan.

Relations between Japan and South Korea in recent months have been their lowest in decades.

Japan has denounced South Korean court rulings that ordered Japanese companies to compensate elderly South Koreans for forced labor during World War II, insisting that all compensation issues were settled by a 1965 treaty normalizing relations between the two countries.  

South Korea accuses Tokyo of ignoring its people’s suffering under Japan’s 1910-1945 brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, and criticized Japan of tightening trade controls on key technology exports to South Korea and the downgrading of its trade status as a retaliation to the wartime compensation rulings.

Motegi said Tuesday that South Korea’s decision to scrap GSOMIA in retaliation for Japan’s trade controls was a “complete misjudgment of the current regional security environment and is extremely regrettable.” He said export controls and security issues should not be linked.

 

Danish police have begun carrying out border checks at Denmark’s crossings with Sweden after a series of shootings and explosions around Copenhagen that Danish authorities say were carried out by people from Sweden.
 
Police spokesman Jens Jespersen told The Associated Press on Tuesday that at checks on the Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmo, officers have “a particular focus on cross-border crime involving explosives, weapons and drugs.” He also says authorities are stopping cars to have “a peak at who is inside.”
 
The controls are also being carried out at ferry ports.
 
They follow 13 explosions in Copenhagen since February. A June shooting in the city killed two Swedish citizens. Also, a shooting Saturday in Malmo killed a 15-year-old boy and critically wounded another teenager.

France, Germany, Britain and the European Union say they are “extremely concerned” about Iran’s renewed uranium enrichment activities and what they call “regrettable acceleration of Iran’s disengagement” from commitments it made under the 2015 agreement regarding the country’s nuclear program.

In a joint statement released Monday, the foreign ministers urged Iran to reverse all of the measures it has taken that go against those imposed in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which limited Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran has restarted enrichment at its Fordow facility, exceeded limits on enrichment levels and the amount of enriched material it is allowed to stockpile, while also announcing work on developing more advanced centrifuges.  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the steps are reversible if the other signatories to the agreement help Iran work around U.S. sanctions.

In their statement, France, Germany Britain and the EU said their side has “fully upheld” their commitments under the agreement, including lifting the sanctions they had imposed over fears Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons.  Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

“It is not critical that Iran upholds its JCPOA commitments and works with all JCPOA participants to de-escalate tensions,” the statement said.

The deal originally also included China, Russia and the United States.  U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement last year.

Also Monday, the U.N.’s nuclear monitor said uranium particles have been detected at an undeclared nuclear site in Iran.

In a confidential report obtained by news agencies, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that manmade uranium particles had been discovered, without revealing the location of the undeclared site.

The report also confirmed that Iran is enriching uranium at its underground Fordow facility — a site where, under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, it had agreed not to carry out any enrichment or enrichment-related research.

Over the weekend, Iran began pouring concrete for a second nuclear reactor at its Bushehr power plant, which is monitored by the IAEA.

Iran has said it intends to enrich uranium to 4.5%, slightly above the 3.67% limit allowed under 2015 deal. Enriching to 4.5% is far below the level needed to make a nuclear weapon.