Crammed with Chinese restaurants, Turkish carryouts and Tunisian bakeries, Avenue de Flandre in northern Paris is, in many ways, the face of today’s France. Sub-Saharan African and East Asian workers staff the markets lining the grimy artery, a haphazard match of needs and chance.

But for some sectors, that may soon change.

Earlier this week, French authorities announced the country’s first foreign worker quotas for non-European Union immigrants to fill key labor gaps in areas such as construction — a road few other European counterparts have gone down. But the message wrapped in a broader immigration package is a familiar one in a region grappling with populist claims of runaway migration and a surging far right.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, in announcing the quota system, said France needed to “take back control” of its immigration policy.

“Taking back control of our migration policy means fighting back against abuses of the right of asylum, against irregular migration,” Philippe said, as he outlined a raft of measures Wednesday that included delaying access to health care for new asylum-seekers and dismantling Paris-area squatter camps.

Support for quotas

A newly released Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting poll found most French support the quota measures, even as they give the centrist government’s overall immigration policy a thumbs-down. Far-left parties slam them as overly harsh; those to the right say they’re not tough enough.

And with France’s far-right National Rally party polling strongly, many see the bigger aim as political.

“They’re trying to appeal to right-wing voters” ahead of next year’s local elections and 2022 presidential ones, said Olivia Sundberg Diez, a migration policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center. But, she added, “it’s very hard to beat the far right at their own game. If you try, you are setting yourself up for criticism on both sides.”

French authorities moved quickly to make good on one of the announced measures, dismantling a northern Paris squatter camp hours after Philippe spoke, and busing migrants to temporary shelters.

Not easy to implement

The quotas might be trickier to implement. The government’s plan remains sketchy, with little regional precedence. Only a few European countries, including Germany, Britain and Hungary, have adopted similar initiatives, or used EU “blue cards” — the region’s answer to the U.S. green card.

“Quotas have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is it’s a clear signal that migration is under control,” said Jean-Christophe Dumont, Immigration Division head for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He said the government was right in trying to reform the labor migration system.

But, Dumont added, “it’s extremely difficult, based on economic indicators or theory, to estimate what will be the needs in specific occupations for the next 12 months.”

The quotas are aimed to supplement roughly 33,000 higher-skilled workers who come to France annually. But employers today are struggling to fill a raft of lower-level jobs, including those in construction, bakeries and health care. Done right, analyst Sundberg said, setting migration targets rather than ceilings can be useful to fill jobs in an increasingly aging Europe.

But she said the labor quotas would affect only a small slice of France’s overall migrant population, while raising key questions, including what will happen to the migrants when their contracts are over.

“Whether it will actually happen and what impact it will have is very unclear,” she said.

More asylum-seekers

The government’s announcement comes as France has seen a steady increase in asylum-seekers, up 22% in 2018, to reach nearly 123,000. While the numbers are modest compared with the country’s population of 67 million, the message of out-of-control migration resonates, particularly in the wake of Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis.

Indeed, recent polls put the far-right National Rally neck and neck with French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist La Republique en Marche party in the next presidential elections, with a significantly higher score than the 2017 race, when National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen placed second.

But French charity Secours Catholique is seeing another phenomenon; illegal immigrants now account for more than 40 percent of the destitute people it receives. It blames the uptick on increasingly tougher migration policies by recent governments.

Secours Catholique President Veronique Fayet dismissed the newly announced government measures, including the delay in accessing health care, as “a publicity stunt.”

“With the motive that some people are defrauding and profiting from the system,” she said of French authorities, “they’re stigmatizing and fragilizing an entire population.”

Anti-immigrant attitudes are sharpening in Europe, experts say, seen not only with gains by far-right parties in Germany and elsewhere, but also the controversial naming in Brussels of a new “European way of life” commissioner.

“For the moment, it looks like the name is there to stay,” Sundberg, of the European Policy Center, said. “Which I think is an unfortunate signaling of the direction European migration policy will take.”

A source has told The Associated Press that a former Venezuelan spymaster is being re-arrested in Madrid and is likely to be extradited to the United States to be tried on drug smuggling and other charges.

The arrest of Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal, who was for over a decade the eyes and ears in Venezuela’s military of late President Hugo Chavez, comes after Spain’s National Court reversed an earlier ruling that threw out the U.S. arrest warrant.

The source was familiar with the situation but spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

Prosecutors appealed a mid-September decision by the Spanish National Court rejecting the extradition request finding that it was politically motivated, as Carvajal claimed.

Officials in more than a dozen Asian and Pacific nations are struggling to move forward with a major regional trade pact, days after India announced that it was not willing to sign on.

The news threw the future of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a deal seven years in the making and now involving 15 nations, into serious doubt, even as negotiators insisted that the agreement was still viable.

The pact, known as RCEP, would include the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations other than India (Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, Philippines and Myanmar) as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. 

As trade pacts go, RCEP can be seen as very wide, though perhaps not particularly deep. With Indian participation, it would have covered countries with more than half of the world’s population and about one-third of its economic output. However, even with the final details of the proposed agreement still under discussion, it is clear that compared with other major free trade deals, RCEP is far less ambitious.

“On paper, it’s bigger but generally regarded as a much less ambitious agreement than most,” said William Reinsch, a senior adviser and holder of the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s not going to be full free trade. There’s going to be lots of exceptions. Lots of things are not going to be covered.”

The deal also says nothing about workers’ rights or liberalizing economic policies in countries — like China — that give domestic firms regulatory forbearance and financial assistance that most developed Western economies believe translate into unfair competitive advantages. 

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Monday that his country would not be a party to the deal, he cited his reluctance to expose his domestic businesses to cheap Chinese imports and the lack of specific provisions in the draft agreement on trade in services. Modi’s decision came after years of negotiations in which India was frequently the lone holdout on elements of the agreement supported by the remaining participants.

Complications

India’s decision to step away from the deal complicates matters in multiple ways.

From a purely practical standpoint, India is one of the largest economies in the region and has historically been very reluctant to allow foreign competitors to sell products in its domestic markets. The lure of access to India’s 1.4 billion consumers was a major driver of interest in the deal, making it attractive to countries like Japan, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, which already have free trade agreements with each other through participation in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

However, while he called India’s decision “disappointing” and said that the “door remains firmly open” to its future participation in the agreement, Australian Trade, Tourism and Investment Minister Simon Birmingham insisted in an interview with Bloomberg this week that RCEP “still remains very commercially viable and beneficial.”

From a political standpoint, India’s exit from the treaty makes China, already the largest economy involved in the deal by a large margin, even more of a dominant player in the negotiations. 

“There’s concern that in the absence of India, it’s going to be perceived as too much of a Chinese agreement,” said Reinsch. “It will basically be China and a whole bunch of smaller economies. People would like to have India in the mix as a sort of counterweight.”

U.S. perspective

Meanwhile, free trade advocates in the U.S. are watching in frustration. Regardless of whether the deal is ultimately successful, the fact that it is China and not the U.S. that is spearheading the push for a regional agreement is seen by many as an abdication of America’s global influence.

The current debate about RCEP comes less than three years after President Donald Trump began his first term with the announcement that the U.S. would be pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the expansive trade deal brokered by the U.S., which ultimately became the CPTPP.

“From a U.S. perspective, it’s just tremendously disappointing to be looking at it from the outside as CPTPP and now RCEP get concluded,” said Jake Colvin, vice president for global trade and innovation at the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington. “From a U.S. business perspective, it’s frustrating not to be part of these kinds of regional deals, which are as much political as economic.”

Colvin added, “The reality is that TPP was always as much of a political as an economic agreement for the United States. And I think the same holds true for RCEP. This is great optics for China. They get to tout their contribution to supporting an open-rules-based trading system, and then still get to keep some of their discriminatory practices that freeze out many of the companies that we represent.”

U.N. rights experts say Egypt’s ex-President Mohamed Morsi endured “brutal” prison conditions that contributed to his death in custody. 
 
They also warn that thousands more prisoners are “at severe risk” from “gross violations” in Egyptian prisons.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was from the Islamist, now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. He was ousted by the military in 2013, after protests. He’d been jailed for six years until his death in a Cairo court while on trial. 
 
Friday’s statement by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says the experts concluded that conditions Morsi endured “could amount to a state-sanctioned arbitrary killing.”

They say he was in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, was denied medical care, lost vision in one eye and suffered recurrent diabetic comas. 
 

Juul Labs said Thursday it will halt sales of its best-selling, mint-flavored electronic cigarettes as it struggles to survive a nationwide backlash against vaping. 
 
The voluntary step comes days after new government research showed that Juul is the top brand among high schoolers who use e-cigarettes and that many prefer mint. 
 
“These results are unacceptable and that is why we must reset the vapor category in the U.S.,” said the company’s CEO K.C. Crosthwaite, in a statement.

Underage vaping has reached what health officials call epidemic levels. In the latest government survey, 1 in 4 high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the previous month, despite federal law banning sales to those under 18.

Under fire for its alleged role in sparking the vaping trend among teens, Juul has made a series of concessions to try and weather a crackdown from local, state and federal officials. It stopped selling popular fruit and dessert flavors in stores last year, and last month, stopped selling them online, too.

Earlier, the company replaced its CEO and pledged to stop advertising its products.

After halting mint sales, Juul will only sell menthol and tobacco flavors. Mint and menthol accounted for nearly 60% of the company’s retail sales in the past year, according to data compiled by Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog.

Fruit, candy, dessert and other flavored e-cigarettes have been targeted because of their appeal to underage users. Federal health officials are expected to soon release plans for removing most vaping flavors from the market.

Lawsuits

In September, President Donald Trump said the flavor ban would include mint and menthol flavors. However, no details have yet been released, leading anti-vaping advocates to worry that the administration is backing away from its original plan.

Flavors are banned for traditional cigarettes in the U.S., except for menthol.

Juul is the best-selling e-cigarette brand in the U.S., but has been besieged by legal troubles, including multiple investigations by Congress, federal agencies and several state attorneys general. The company is also being sued by adults and underage Juul users who claim they became addicted to nicotine through the company’s products.

E-cigarettes typically heat a solution that contains nicotine, which makes cigarettes and e-cigarettes addictive. They have been sold in the U.S. for more than a decade and are often pitched as a lower-risk nicotine source for adult smokers.
 

South Sudan’s president and chief rebel leader met in Uganda Thursday and agreed to postpone the formation of a unity government for another 100 days. This is the third such delay in South Sudan’s peace process, and some analysts believe that even with the delay, the sides will not be able to bridge the differences that are holding them up.
                                                       
At the meeting in Entebbe, the two South Sudanese leaders once again asked regional bloc IGAD if they could delay forming a unity government.

The meeting, attended by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, opposition leader Riek Machar and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, noted that critical tasks related to security arrangements and governance have not been completed.

Sam Kutesa, Uganda’s minister for foreign affairs, summarized what has been agreed to.

“The meeting agreed to extend the pre-transitional period for 100 days effective from the 12th of November 2019, and to review progress after 50 days from that date. And a report be submitted to the heads of state and parties,” Kutesa said.

The two warring factions in September 2018 signed a peace deal that was overseen by the United Nations, the United States and regional governments.

The parties also agreed to establish a mechanism for the guarantors and the parties to supervise implementation of the pact.

The agreement calls for creation of a unified national army, as well as a transitional unity government.

Political analyst Tolit Charles Atiya said the process needs financial support and more involvement from South Sudan’s political stakeholders.

“They need to get a clear fiscal policy to stabilize it. The transitional government, if it is anything to go by for now, it should be expanded to include professional groups, membership groups, the church, the women’s league. And you know, women and children have taken the biggest brunt and this is something that needs to come to the table,” Tolit said.

The civil conflict that erupted in December 2013 has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 4 million.

Ter Manyang Gatwech, a South Sudanese refugee leader in Uganda, says he and fellow refugees are skeptical the delay announced Thursday will result in real progress.

“In Uganda here, we have almost nearly a million, for the refugees. But these people here, they need to understand these 100 days. But with the South Sudanese people, it is just a waste of time. To me, nothing will be done after 100 days.”

The new deadline for forming a transitional government is Feb. 20 of next year.

 

Join Ayen Bior, Auriane Itangishaka and Hayde Adams FitzPatrick for the season two premiere of #VOAOurVoices. The team returns, together with producer Abby Sun and digital producer Tatenda Gumbo, to chronicle their travel to South Sudan,Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. Watch as they discuss their experiences, coverage, and stories shared with countless women in east and west Africa. In our #WomentoWatch segment, we flip the script and highlight the inspiring story of a group of teens from Kakuma refugee camp.

A student at a Hong Kong university who fell during protests earlier this week died Friday, the first student death in months of anti-government demonstrations in the Chinese-ruled city that is likely to be a trigger for fresh unrest.

Chow Tsz-lok, 22, an undergraduate student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, died of injuries sustained early Monday. The circumstances of how he was injured were unclear, but authorities said he was believed to have fallen from the third to the second floor in a parking garage when police dispersed crowds in a district east of the Kowloon Peninsula.

Chow’s death is expected to spark fresh protests and fuel anger and resentment against the police, who are already under pressure amid accusations of excessive force as the city grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.

Demonstrators had thronged the hospital this week to pray for Chow, leaving flowers and hundreds of get-well messages on walls and notice boards inside the building. Students also staged rallies at universities across the former British colony.

“Wake up soon. Remember we need to meet under the LegCo,” said one message, referring to the territory’s Legislative Council, one of the targets of the protest rallies. “There are still lots of things for you to experience in your life.”

Another read: “Please add oil and stay well,” a slogan meaning “keep your strength up” that has become a rallying cry of the protest movement.

Leading the protests

Students and young people have been at the forefront of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since June to press for greater democracy, among other demands, and rally against perceived Chinese meddling in the Asian financial hub.

The protests, ignited by a now-scrapped extradition bill for people to be sent to mainland China for trial, have evolved into wider calls for democracy, posing one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took charge in 2012.

Protesters have thrown petrol bombs and vandalized banks, stores and metro stations, while police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and, in some cases, live ammunition in scenes of chaos.

In June, Marco Leung, 35, fell to his death from construction scaffolding after unfurling banners against the extradition bill. Several young people who have taken their own lives in recent months have been linked to the protests.

Graduation day

Chow, an active netball and basketball player according to his university peers, had been studying a two-year undergraduate degree in computer science.

Chow’s death came on graduation day for many students at his university, located in the city’s Clear Water Bay district.

Hundreds of students, some in their black graduation gowns and many wearing now banned face masks, held a silent gathering in the main piazza of the campus after receiving their degrees. Some were in tears.

They later moved to a stage where the graduation ceremonies had been held. Chanting “Stand with Hong Kong” and “Five demands and not one less,” they spray painted Chow’s name and pinned photos and signs of him on nearby walls.

“I can’t put a smile on my face thinking about what has happened,” said Chen, a female graduate in biochemistry, who was wearing a formal gown and holding bouquets of flowers.

A memorial at the carpark where Chow fell and a vigil on campus are planned by students for Friday night.

Hong Kong’s government said in a statement that it expressed “great sorrow and regret” and that the crime unit was conducting a “comprehensive investigation” into Chow’s death.

Further rallies

At a separate event, around 1,000 people rallied in the city’s main financial district to protest against alleged police brutality and actions. Many held white flowers in memory of Chow.

“I am very sad over Chow’s death. If we don’t come out now, more people might need to sacrifice (themselves) in the future,” said Peggy, an 18-year-old university student at the University of Hong Kong.

High school pupils are also planning a rally in the eastern district of Kwun Tong, they said in advertisements before Chow’s death.

Protests scheduled over the weekend include “Shopping Sunday” centered on prominent shopping malls, some of which have previously descended into chaos as riot police stormed areas crowded with families and children.

Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded a shopping mall in running clashes with police that saw a man slash people with a knife and bite off part of the ear of a local politician.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, allowing it colonial freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and the right to protest.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

U.S.-Chinese trade contracted again in October, despite optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.

Chinese imports of U.S. goods fell 14.3% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion, customs data showed Friday. Exports to the United States sank 16.2% to $35.8 billion.

President Donald Trump announced a tentative deal Oct. 12 and suspended a planned tariff hike on Chinese imports. But details have yet to be agreed on and earlier penalties stayed in place. That is depressing trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.

Beijing announced Thursday the two sides agreed to a gradual reduction in punitive tariffs if talks on the “Phase 1” deal make progress. However, there has been no sign of progress on major disputes about China’s trade surplus and technology ambitions.

Optimism about the talks “could improve the climate for exports in the coming months by improving global sentiment and trade. But we remain cautious,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics in a report.

“It is unlikely that the bulk of existing tariffs will be removed soon,” Kuijs said. He said a “substantial gap” in perceptions about what each side is gaining means “there is a substantial risk of re-escalation of tensions in 2020.”

China’s global exports declined 0.9% to $212.9 billion, a slight improvement over September’s 3% contraction. Imports tumbled 6.4% to $170.1 billion, adding to signs Chinese demand also is cooling.

Twitter has suspended the accounts of a prominent U.S.-based Iranian opposition group and several of its supporters for alleged violations of the company’s rules, marking the company’s latest intervention in a bitter online feud between Iranian government opponents and supporters.

The account of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), a nonprofit group that supports what it calls the Iranian people’s “struggle for democratic change” and a “non-nuclear government,” was suspended Wednesday and remained blocked a day later. It had more than 6,000 followers before the suspension.

OIAC found itself suspended from Twitter just as it began hosting a Wednesday briefing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington to discuss what it called an “increase in domestic suppression and regional aggression by Tehran.”

Republican Senators Ted Cruz and John Boozman attended the event.

OIAC is allied to exiled Iranian dissident movement Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which leads the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and advocates the “overthrow of religious dictatorship” in Iran. Islamist clerics have led the nation since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Photos of our Senate event today, Nov 6, 2019. Thanks to @SenTedCruz@JohnBoozman#FreeIranpic.twitter.com/fRTzreCkE2

— IAC Texas (@IAC_TX) November 6, 2019

Speaking to VOA Persian, OIAC board member Alex Arzabak said the group’s social media team first noticed the suspension of their account as they were preparing to tweet about Wednesday’s event. They instead shared images from the event on a smaller account run by the group’s Texas affiliate. Arzabak said it was the first time OIAC’s main Twitter account has been suspended.

Two San Francisco-based supporters of OIAC and MEK told VOA Persian that their Twitter accounts also had been suspended Wednesday. The account of Peymaneh Shafi, an IT engineer, remained blocked Thursday, while the account of her friend Shanaz, who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons, was suspended for part of Thursday until being unblocked in the afternoon, local time.

Arzabak and the two women said they received no warning of the account suspensions from Twitter and were unaware of violating any Twitter rules. They also said they suspected their accounts were the target of complaints by the Iranian government or its supporters, who may have reported those accounts to Twitter in order to trigger the suspensions. Twitter enables its users to file complaints about other users’ accounts anonymously.

Pro-Iranian government Twitter users often have criticized MEK supporters on the social media platform, accusing them of spreading lies and engaging in other manipulative behavior. Pro-MEK Twitter users, in turn, have accused Iranian government supporters of slandering them and trying to silence their voices.

In June, Twitter announced the removal of 4,779 accounts that it said originated in Iran and were engaged in a coordinated, government-backed effort to abuse its service and undermine “healthy discourse.” It said 2,865 of those accounts “employed a range of false personas to target conversations about political and social issues in Iran and globally.”

Twitter declined a VOA Persian request to comment on its latest suspensions of the pro-MEK accounts or what rules they allegedly violated. The company’s terms of service prohibit several types of user behavior, including engaging in spam. 

“There is a misunderstanding with Twitter,” OIAC’s Arzabak said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We plan to contact Twitter about the suspension. When they hear our concerns, I’m sure they will help,” he said.

Speaking to VOA Persian Thursday, Shafi said she sent Twitter a request to unblock her account but received a reply notifying her that she had violated Twitter rules and would be permanently banned.

“I used Twitter mainly to campaign against executions and unjust treatment of dissidents in Iran,” Shafi said, adding: “I’m not going to be quiet about this.”

Shanaz sent VOA Persian a screen shot of a Twitter notice that she said she received Wednesday, showing that she also had been “permanently suspended” because of “multiple or repeat violations of our rules.”

She later shared a screen shot of another Twitter message that she said she received Thursday, saying the company decided to unsuspend her account after reviewing her appeal.

A VOA Persian review of Shanaz’s tweets shortly after her account was unblocked found that she had posted an average of about 100 tweets a day in the previous five days, almost all of them retweets of posts by other pro-MEK users, media outlets, and a variety of U.S. officials, lawmakers and analysts. Several of the pro-MEK users whom she retweeted also had been suspended from Twitter on Wednesday before being re-instated by late Thursday.

“Twitter’s algorithm on spam or whatever criteria they used to suspend me is not perfect and needs more work,” Shanaz said, after her account was unblocked.

In an online note about suspended accounts, Twitter said most of them are suspended “because they are spammy, or just plain fake, and they introduce security risks for Twitter and all of our users.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes a real person’s account gets suspended by mistake, and in those cases we’ll work with the person to make sure the account is unsuspended,” the note added.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

After a meeting in Washington this week, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan committed to reach an agreement over the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam by next January. Before the meeting, the foreign ministers met President Donald Trump at the White House. Trump has taken an interest in the conflict after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asked him to mediate. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story.

Nov. 8, 2018, a day that residents of the small town of Paradise in northern California will never forget. Paradise and adjacent areas caught fire. The raging blaze killed 84 people and displaced more than 50,000. Chico, a neighboring city became home to thousands of these displaced persons. VOA’s Nukhbat Malik has the story of how one Pakistani-American woman and the city’s Muslim community stepped up to help.
 

Another Democrat may soon be joining the 2020 race for the White House.

Former New York City Mayor and billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg is expected to file paperwork to run in the Alabama Democratic primary — a state which has an early deadline for qualifying for the ballot.

Bloomberg has not made a final decision. But staffers say he is “increasingly concerned” that the current crop of Democratic contenders “is not well positioned” to beat U.S. President Donald Trump next November.

“If Mike runs, he would offer a new choice to Democrats, built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building businesses from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist,” Bloomberg spokesman Howard Wolfson said.

Bloomberg is a Republican turned Independent who endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.

He was New York mayor from 2002 until 2013 and is familiar with fellow New Yorker Trump, whom Bloomberg regards as a “dangerous demagogue” who exaggerates his business success.

Bloomberg heads up a financial services empire whose holdings include television and radio networks and magazines focusing on financial advice.

If he enters the race, he would likely join the Democratic field as a moderate. 

Of the top four candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are liberal progressives. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg are both considered to be more to the center.
 

Sudan’s Forces for Freedom and Change Coalition (FFC) is urging the country’s government to hand over former President Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 
 
The coalition, which represents several civilian and rebel groups, played a key role in Bashir’s ouster last April. A top FFC official is asking the judiciary to start the legal process required for transferring Bashir to the ICC to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Sudan’s Darfur region. 
 
FFC member Ibrahim Al Sheikh said at a news conference this week in Khartoum that now that a chief justice had been appointed in Sudan, the FFC wanted to see Bashir and other members of his government tried in court, and that they didn’t mind if that court was the International Criminal Court. 

No reservations
 
“Bashir and everyone who has committed any form of crime in this country should get a fair penalty. All members of the Forces for Freedom and Change Coalition have agreed that he should be handed over to the ICC, and we don’t have any reservations on this issue,” said Sheikh.  

In 2009 and 2010, the ICC issued two arrest warrants against Bashir for his alleged crimes in Darfur. Armed groups there launched a rebellion against the Sudanese government in 2003. ICC prosecutors said Bashir, using local militias, was responsible for a campaign of murder, pillaging, torture, rape and genocide aimed at civilians in ethnic groups perceived to be close to the armed groups.
 
Before his ouster, Bashir made several trips to friendly countries without being arrested. 
 
Sheikh said many Sudanese whose family members were killed during Bashir’s time in office, including those who were gunned down during recent protests across the country, have been waiting patiently to see the former president and others face justice. 
 
“We want to see that al-Bashir and all elements of the previous regime are convicted for their crimes. Every single offense should be accounted for,” Sheikh said. 

Bashir’s defense
 
Zain Al Abdeen Mohammed, one of more than 100 attorneys defending Bashir in his ongoing trial in Sudan, said his client remained innocent until proven guilty by a Sudanese court, and that since Sudan is not a signatory to the treaty on the ICC, Bashir should stay in Sudan. 
 
“There is no legal argument to take my president or any Sudanese citizen, even if he is a guard, to the International Criminal Court under the Article 11, [which] states that only signatories to the treaty can be convicted by the ICC. Sudan is not a signatory to the ICC,” Mohammed told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus on Thursday. 
 
A court in Khartoum is trying Bashir on the far less serious charges of processing foreign currency and corruption. A verdict on those charges is expected in about a month. 
 
Mohammed argued that even if Sudan were to ratify the ICC statute today, crimes committed before the ratification date should not be tried in The Hague. He said the Sudanese Penal Code Act 2009 as amended states that no single Sudanese should be tried outside the country’s judicial system. 
 
Mohammed said Sudan’s court system was fully capable of carrying out justice regarding the former president. 
 
“If there is anyone who seeks justice, we have a competent judiciary system in this country. We have a chief justice, an attorney general and the whole judicial system. We should trust our Sudanese judiciary,” Mohammed told VOA. 

FLORIDA, NEW YORK — A 14-ton Norway spruce that was once small enough to be displayed on a coffee table has been harvested to become New York’s famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

Carol Schultz bought the sapling for the 1959 Christmas season. After displaying it in her home in the village of Florida, New York, she planted it in her front yard.

In 2010, Schultz and her companion Richard O’Donnell went on Rockefeller Center’s website and made the tree’s bid for stardom.

Earlier this year, they learned it had been chosen. 
 
It was cut on Thursday and lifted by crane onto a flatbed truck.

It will arrive on Saturday at Rockefeller Center, where it will be hoisted and surrounded by scaffolding for the decoration process.

The lighting ceremony is Dec. 4. 
 

A judge Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests.

New York state Judge Saliann Scarpulla imposed the penalty in connection with a lawsuit brought against Trump by the New York attorney general’s office over the handling of the Trump Foundation’s assets.

Among other things, the judge ruled that Trump improperly allowed his presidential campaign staff to work with the foundation in holding a fundraiser for veterans’ charities in the run-up to the 2016 Iowa caucuses. The event was designed “to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign,” Scarpulla said.

Last month, Trump’s lawyers and the attorney general’s office reached agreements to dissolve the foundation and distribute about $1.7 million in remaining funds to other nonprofits.

As part of those agreements, made public Thursday, Trump admitted personally misusing foundation funds. He and the attorney general’s office further agreed to leave it up to the judge to decide what penalty he should pay.

The settlement was an about-face for Trump. He and his lawyers have blasted the lawsuit as politically motivated, and he tweeted, “I won’t settle this case!” when it was filed in June 2018.

Trump’s fine and the charity’s funds will be split evenly among eight organizations, including City Meals-on-Wheels, the United Negro College Fund and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Attorney General Letitia James welcomed the resolution of the case as a “major victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those who would abuse charities for personal gain.”

“No one is above the law – not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the President of the United States,” said James, a Democrat.

The president admitted, among other things, to improperly arranging for the charity to pay $10,000 for a 6-foot portrait of him. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 in foundation funds that he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.

Trump also agreed to restrictions on his involvement in other charitable organizations. His three eldest children, who were members of the foundation’s board, must undergo mandatory training on the duties of those who run charities.

Charities are barred from getting involved in political campaigns, but in weighing the Iowa fundraiser, Scarpulla gave Trump credit for making good on his pledge to give $2.8 million of the money raised to veterans’ organizations.

Instead of fining him that amount, as the attorney general’s office wanted, the judge trimmed it to $2 million and rejected a demand for punitive damages and interest.

The Trump Foundation said it was pleased by those decisions, claiming that the judge “recognized that every penny ever raised by the Trump Foundation has gone to help those most in need.”

Trump Foundation lawyer Alan Futerfas said the nonprofit has distributed approximately $19 million over the past decade, including $8.25 million of the president’s own money, to hundreds of charitable organizations.

At the time of the Iowa fundraiser, Trump was feuding with then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and refusing to participate in the network’s final Republican presidential primary debate before the Iowa caucuses.

Instead, he held a rally at the same time as the debate at which he called on people to donate to veterans’ charities. The foundation acted as a pass-through for those contributions.

James said the evidence of banned coordination between campaign officials and the foundation included emails exchanged with then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

In one email, a Trump company vice president asked Lewandowski for guidance on precisely how to distribute the money raised.

Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.

In addition, the foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.

As part of the settlement, Donald Trump Jr. reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the cost of the portrait.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that a lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of the NATO military alliance, insisting in an interview published Thursday that the European Union must step up and start acting as a strategic world power.

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told The Economist magazine. He said the United States under President Donald Trump appears to be “turning its back on us,” notably by pulling troops out of northeast Syria without notice.

Trump surprised his NATO partners with last month’s troop withdrawal. NATO plays no role in Syria, apart from helping the coalition fighting the Islamic State extremist group. But the move was seen by Turkey, another NATO ally, as a green light to invade the region.

Trump also wrong-footed the allies by announcing a troop draw-down in Afghanistan and then declaring that peace talks with the Taliban were cancelled after a bomb attack killed a U.S. soldier. NATO has played a major security role in the country since 2003, but its future there is now unclear.

Beyond that, the U.S. leader publicly berated other leaders at a May 2017 summit for failing to boost their military budgets. Trump’s preoccupation with defense spending has been a constant theme since he came to office in 2016 and is expected to feature at the next NATO summit, in London on Dec. 3-4.

Macron said that the European members of the 29-nation alliance “should reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States.”

More broadly, Trump’s trade tariffs against the EU also have rankled European members of NATO. And his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement particularly annoyed Macron.

In the interview, Macron said that Trump “doesn’t share our idea of the European project.” He added that Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice” and must start thinking like a geopolitical power, otherwise it will “no longer be in control of our destiny.”

NATO did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that the allies “are doing more together than we have done for many years.”

“NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense in decades – the biggest adaptation of our alliance since the end of the Cold War,” Stoltenberg told reporters on Oct. 24. “The U.S. is not decreasing its presence in Europe but actually increasing its presence in Europe.”

The United States is the biggest and most influential member of NATO. It spends more on its defense budget than all the others combined.

 

SIDI KACEM, Morocco – Ivanka Trump says families, communities and countries flourish when women are invested in and included in the economy.
 
President Donald Trump’s daughter and White House adviser saw real life examples in Morocco on Thursday when she met four women who are benefiting from changes that allow them to own land.
 
Ivanka Trump spearheads a U.S. drive to help women in developing countries with skills training, access to capital and land ownership.
 
One of the women, Aicha Bourkib, embraced Ivanka Trump and kissed her hands as the group met in an olive grove. The 59-year-old housewife and mother of four cultivates olive trees and vegetables on land she recently bought.
 
Bourkib also has two cows and wants to create a dairy cooperative in her village.

  

 

A Hong Kong lawmaker criticized the conviction Thursday of a teenager for carrying a laser pointer, saying it could pave the way for more prosecutions of anti-government protesters amid months of unrest in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Local broadcaster RTHK said a court found a 16-year-old male student guilty of possessing the laser pointer and a modified umbrella – deemed to be offensive weapons. He was detained Sept. 21 near the site of a planned protest for democracy reforms.

The court reportedly ruled the youth had intended to use the laser pointer to cause harm to police by shining it in their eyes. He remained in custody until sentencing on Nov. 25.

While there has been controversy in the past over the use of laser pointers, legislator James To said the court’s ruling was the first to designate the tool as a weapon since protests broke out in June.

“I do not think this is a fair conviction and it may lead to police abuse in prosecution of possession of laser pointer without good evidence of the intention for hurting people,” To, who is also a lawyer, told The Associated Press.

“This case can also create a precedent of more people being prosecuted for carrying ordinary objects like laser pointers and umbrellas,” he said.

The offense carries a jail term of up to three years, but To said the court can impose a lighter sentence, such as placing him on probation or community service, since he is a juvenile.

Young people have been at the forefront of the protests sparked by a now-shelved China extradition bill, viewed as a sign of creeping interference by Beijing on Hong Kong’s judicial freedoms and other rights guaranteed when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

The movement has since expanded to include other demands including direct elections for the city’s leaders and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality against protesters.

Earlier Thursday, hundreds of masked students disrupted graduation ceremonies at two Hong Kong universities, shouting slogans and booing when the Chinese national anthem was played.

At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, graduates in ceremonial gowns along with masks and hard hats chanted pro-democracy and anti-police slogans while some sprayed graffiti on walls. A Mandarin-speaking man brandished a knife and started singing the national anthem before he was led away by security guards, local media said.

Most graduates held a hand with five open fingers aloft to mark the protesters’ five demands when they went on stage to receive their scrolls. They also wore masks in a snub of a government ban last month on the wearing of facial coverings at rallies.

The scene was repeated at the University of Science and Technology, where a group of black-clad protesters took to the stage with banners and shouted slogans before the ceremony started and when the national anthem was played, as others booed.

Anger against police intensified after a University of Science and Technology student fell off a carpark building early Monday after police fired tear gas during clashes. The 22-year-old student remained in critical condition and police are investigating exactly what happened.

More than 3,300 people have been detained amid mounting violence, and Beijing has indicated it will tighten its grip on the territory to quell the unrest.

 

Washington and Beijing have agreed to gradually cancel tariff hikes as their trade negotiations progress, a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

Gao Feng, the Commerce Ministry spokesman, said Thursday that envoys had “agreed to a phased cancellation of tariff increases depending on the progress of negotiations.”

He told reporters that if both sides reach a first phase agreement, then based on that deal they will cancel imposed tariffs proportionately.

Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed last month to resume trade talks aimed at resolving a more than year-long dispute over technology and industrial policy. As part of that truce, they halted further tariff hikes.

But both sides have imposed billions of dollars’ worth of punitive tariffs on each other’s exports and reports have said China wants to have those rolled back as part of any agreement.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said earlier this week that any Phase 1 agreement would be general and cover trade in specific areas such as soybeans and liquefied natural gas. More complicated issues would be tackled in later rounds of negotiations, he said.

Ross, who is traveling in Asia, did not directly say if rolling back tariffs was a possibility in the Phase 1 talks.