The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Monday that destroying arch-rival Israel has become an “achievable goal” thanks to his country’s technological advances.

“This sinister regime must be wiped off the map and this is no longer… a dream (but) it is an achievable goal,” Major General Hossein Salami said, quoted by the Guards’ Sepah news site.

Four decades on from Iran’s Islamic revolution, “we have managed to obtain the capacity to destroy the imposter Zionist regime”, he said.

Salami’s comments, while not unusual for Iranian officials, come amid particularly heightened international tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and a series of incidents that have raised fears of a confrontation between Tehran and its other main regional rival, Riyadh.

The United States, which withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018, has imposed a campaign of “maximum pressure” — with vocal support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The comments by the commander of Iran’s ideological army were given prominent coverage by the Tasnim and Fars news agencies, close to ultra-conservative political factions.

The official IRNA agency also carried his remarks, but placed more emphasis on his assertion that Iran was growing stronger and would finally beat its foes despite “hostility” towards it.

In contrast, foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi in a tweet wished “Happy (Jewish) New Year to our Jewish compatriots and to all true followers of great prophet Moses (PBUH)”, an acronym for ‘peace be upon him.’

Mousavi’s greeting was written in Persian, English and Hebrew.

Iran only has a few thousand Jews left compared to between 80,000 and 100,000 before its 1979 revolution.

The country has been consistently hostile towards Israel since its revolution, and Tehran openly supports anti-Israeli armed groups including Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

‘Cancerous tumour’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken opponent of any rapprochement between Tehran and the West, has charged that “Iran calls for Israel’s destruction and they work for its destruction each day, every day, relentlessly.”

He welcomed his ally U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in May 2018 to pull out of the landmark nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers, arguing the deal would “enable Iran to threaten Israel’s survival.”

Israel considers Iran its archfoe and has carried out hundreds of strikes in neighboring Syria against what it says are military targets of Iran and its Lebanese military ally Hezbollah.

It has vowed to keep Iran from entrenching itself militarily in the war-torn neighboring Arab state.

In June 2018, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed Tehran’s long-held position that Israel is “a malignant cancerous tumour that must be removed and eradicated.”

But he has also said that Tehran has never called for the Jews to be “thrown into the sea”, unlike Arab leaders such as the late president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Iranian generals routinely express the desire to destroy Israel or claim to be able to wipe out Tel Aviv.

However, official discourse in recent years has generally taken care to clarify that the Jewish state will cease to exist because of its own “arrogance”, not because of an attack by Iran.

When election results confirmed that an Arab alliance had emerged as the third largest bloc in Israel’s parliament, its leader Ayman Odeh reached for the Old Testament, tweeting in Hebrew from Psalm 118 that the stone which was rejected had become the cornerstone.

His message: The Arab community, long shunted to the margins of Israeli society, is going to use its newfound influence to set the country on a more equitable path.

The results left the two biggest parties deadlocked, but marked a victory for the Arab bloc and put Odeh in a strong position to become the first Arab opposition leader, an official role that would allow him to receive high-level security briefings and meet visiting heads of state. Outraged at what they see as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist policies and incitement, most of the bloc recommended his opponent, former army chief Benny Gantz, as prime minister, the first time Arab parties have backed an Israeli candidate since 1992. 

The potential for newfound influence has forced Arab citizens to confront a dilemma going back to Israel’s founding: Working within the system might secure social gains for the marginalized community, but risks legitimizing a state that many feel relegates them to second-class status and oppresses their Palestinian brethren in the occupied territories.

“We truly want to support Gantz,” said Abed Abed, a food wholesaler in the Arab town of Nazareth in northern Israel. “But at the same time we are Arabs, and the people in Gaza and the West Bank are our brothers. If Gantz goes to war in Gaza tomorrow, then we can’t be part of it. So we’re in big trouble.”

Israel’s Arab citizens make up 20% of the population of 9 million and are descended from Palestinians who remained in Israel following the 1948 war that surrounded its creation. They have citizenship and the right to vote, they speak Hebrew and attend Israeli universities, and have increased their presence in a wide array of professions, from medicine to tech startups.

‘Second-class citizens’

But they still face widespread discrimination, particularly when it comes to housing, and accuse Israeli authorities of ignoring crime in their communities, contributing to soaring homicide rates. They also have close family ties to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and largely identify with the Palestinian cause. 
 
That has led many Israelis to view them as a fifth column allied with the country’s enemies, fears Netanyahu has repeatedly exploited to whip up his right-wing base in election campaigns.

The Joint List of Arab parties has vowed to use its political influence to address day-to-day struggles while remaining outside any government. No Arab party has ever sat in an Israeli government, and none of Israel’s main parties have invited them to do so.

The issues Arab leaders face, and the limited means available to address them, were on display Wednesday in the northern town of Shefa Amr, known in Hebrew as Shfaram, where Israeli forces demolished two homes that had been built without permits. That ignited clashes between local youth and Israeli police, who detained around a dozen people.

“They consider us second-class citizens,” said Sabri Hamdi, one of several angry residents who gathered outside the police station. “They want us to despair and leave the country, but we will not.”

Aida Touma-Sliman, an Arab lawmaker from Odeh’s party, arrived shortly after the clashes ended. The crowd outside the police station parted to let her through, and she met with Israeli officers inside to press for the release of the detainees. After about 15 minutes, she emerged with what she said was a commitment from the police to process the cases quickly.

“Change is not going to happen in a few days. It’s a long battle,” she told The Associated Press. “We gained three seats but the political situation in Israel hasn’t changed. The racism is still there.”

Rights groups say systematic discrimination in planning and approvals has restricted the growth of Arab communities for decades, forcing those with growing families to build without permits and leaving them vulnerable to home demolitions.

Odeh listed housing equity among the Joint List’s top demands in a New York Times op-ed in which he endorsed Gantz while refusing to join his government. 
 
He called for more resources for law enforcement, better access to hospitals, a rise in pensions for all Israelis and programs to combat domestic violence. He also called on the next government to revive the peace process with the Palestinians and to repeal a controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people.

“Arab Palestinian citizens can no longer be rejected or ignored,” Odeh wrote. “The only future for this country is a shared future.”

Pre-election poll

A poll carried out by the Israel Democracy Institute at the start of the year, before Israel’s unprecedented back-to-back elections, found that 76% of Arab citizens were in favor of their parties joining an Israeli government and 65% were proud to be Israeli, the highest rate recorded since 2003. The nonpartisan think tank polled 536 Arab citizens, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

It also found that 58% of Arab citizens were dissatisfied with their leaders, something the pollsters attributed in part to their prioritizing the Palestinian cause over domestic issues. But for many Arab citizens, the two are inseparable.

“Domestic concerns cannot be separated from the general political oppression exercised over the Palestinians,” says Nijmeh Ali, a political analyst at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank. To do so is an attempt to undermine the political legitimacy of Arab leaders and “depoliticize” what is seen as institutionalized discrimination, she said.

The dilemma over how much to engage in politics continues to divide Arab citizens. The three lawmakers from the hard-line nationalist Balad party, which is part of the Joint List, refused to endorse Gantz.

“It’s clear that Palestinians inside [Israel] want more influence,” said Heba Yazbak, a newly elected Balad lawmaker who recently completed a Ph.D. in sociology at Tel Aviv University. “But if you ask any Palestinian in this country if they want us, as the Arab parties, to join a government of occupation, a government whose budget is devoted to the occupation, to besieging Gaza, the answer will be no.” 
 

A Uighur scholar imprisoned in China since 2014 was jointly awarded a top European human rights prize on Monday, an accolade likely to draw the ire of Beijing.

Ilham Tohti, 49, is serving a life sentence on charges of separatism for advocating the rights of Uighurs, a Muslim minority in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China.

The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, named after the Czech ex-president, dissident and writer, was awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to Tohti and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), a group created in 2003 to help foster postwar reconciliation in the Balkans.

Rights groups say the Uighurs have suffered a severe crackdown that has seen millions interned in re-education camps whose existence China denied until recently.

Earlier this month, the prosecutor’s office in Xinjiang said one in five arrests made in China in 2017 took place in the region, even though it represents just two percent of the country’s population.

Beijing had already slammed the PACE last month for nominating Tohti for the Vaclav Havel prize, saying it was effectively “supporting terrorism”.

“Today’s prize honors one person, but it also recognizes a whole population in giving the entire Uighur people a voice,” said Enver Can of the Ilham Tohti Initiative, which received the award on Tohti’s behalf, according to a Twitter post by the PACE.

The YIHR’s prize was accepted by Ivan Djuric of YIHR Serbia, who warned about the growing danger from a resurgence in nationalist parties and policies in a region where ethnic divisions have often flared into violence.

“Don’t play deaf to the sound of war drums from the Balkans… “We’re not strangers, we’re Europeans,” the council tweeted, quoting Djuric.

Liliane Maury Pasquier, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said on Twitter, “In honoring them [both prize winners], we also send a message of hope to the millions of people they represent and for whom they work: human rights have no frontiers.”

 

 

 

Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker says he’s hit the $1.7 million fundraising goal he set for his campaign about a week ago, ensuring he has enough money to continue his White House bid.

Booker says on his website he’s “proud of this grassroots team — thank you.”

The New Jersey senator had said on Sept. 21 that if he failed to raise the money by Monday he’d end his 2020 bid. The plea prompted support from politicians including former rival New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand  and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who hopped on an all-staff phone call Sunday to encourage Booker’s team.
 
Booker’s campaign manager said the money would go toward ballot access and hiring staff, among other things.
 
Booker raised $4.5 million during the second quarter but spent nearly $1 million more than that.

 

 

An expert monitoring a fast-moving glacier on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif says a small section has picked up speed and could break off in the coming days.

 
Fabrizio Troilo, a glaciologist with the Safe Mountain Foundation, said Monday that the piece — measuring some 27,000 cubic meters (953,390 cubic feet) — is moving at 60 centimeters (23.6 inches) a day.
 
That is about twice as fast as a massive 250,000-cubic-meter (8,827,683-cubic feet) chunk that also risks breaking off from the Planpincieux glacier.
 
Troilo said the smaller piece “could collapse in the next days or week,” but that such collapses are annual events and would have no impact on the rest of the valley.
 
Experts say the increased melting rate has been linked to climate change.

 

 

Along the shores of Lake Malawi, poverty and food shortages are chronic problems, due to declining fish catches in the lake. Women facing hunger, or trying to feed their families, sometimes resort to having sex with fishermen in order to get something to eat. 

Women carrying buckets each morning to buy fish at Lake Malawi is a common sight in the Makawa area.  

A less fortunate common sight is many of the women paying for the fish with sex. 

Cecelia Iman is secretary of the Village Beach Committee, responsible for taking care of lake resources in the area.

“[The practice] really happens here. Most fishermen came to the lake with a mission that they will find women right here. But the relationships do not last, they only bring problems to village women,” Iman said.

The women are lured into transactional sex when they don’t have enough money to buy fish, or when they accept an overture from fishermen, say local officials.

“For example, one can have MK 2,000 but want go to the lake to buy some fish and there, one fisherman offers her free fish. Taking into account that she didn’t eat last night together with her child, she would end up accepting the offer which would end into something,” Iman said.

The practice has brought a lot of misery to the women.

Iman says, “If the prevalence of HIV infection is increasing in our area, it is largely because of fishermen. Women are too desperate for fish. And also most of the fishermen are just impregnating the women then run away, leaving them struggle taking care of babies.”

Although transactional sex between women and fishermen in Lake Malawi is rampant, stigma and discrimination make it difficult to identify those involved.

One villager, Laika Atibu, told VOA she can’t allow fishermen to seduce her with fish.

“I don’t allow that. I try my best to do some piece work to raise money to buy fish. Because I fear, if I do this, I can contract HIV. And If I contract HIV, who can feed my children because I am the only parent to take care of them,” Atibu explained.

Fishermen distance themselves from the matter.

Yalid Nkhoma says using fish as a lure is tantamount to abuse of women.

He says, “We don’t do that. If a woman doesn’t have enough money to buy fish, we don’t ask to do anything with her,” Nkhoma said.

Different research shows that sex for fish in Malawi is more common between December and March because it is a period when the country is hard-hit with food shortages.

To curb the problem, community leaders have introduced economic empowerment initiatives for women, including a loan program, to ensure they have their own sources of income and don’t have rely on the fishermen to stave off hunger. 

Along the shores of Lake Malawi, poverty and food shortages are chronic problems, due to a declining fish catches in the lake. Women facing hunger, or trying to feed their families, sometimes resort to having sex with fishermen in order to get something to eat. Lameck Masina has the story from the town of Mangochi.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter turns 95 on October 1st, and even now has lived longer than any president in U.S. history. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, Carter reaches the historic milestone while engaging with new, and younger audiences, as he continues to work toward lifelong goals.

A regional Chinese diplomat has rebuked the United States for being “ignorant” about his country’s ongoing key economic contributions and cooperation with Afghanistan.

Arrangements are being worked out to enhance the cooperation with Kabul even under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Yao Jing, the Chinese ambassador to neighboring Pakistan told VOA.

He hailed Saturday’s successful Afghan presidential election, saying China hopes they will boost peace-building efforts in a country wrecked by years of conflicts.

“We hope that with the election in Afghanistan, with the peace development moving forward in Afghanistan, Afghans will finally achieve a peaceful period, achieve the stability,” said the Chinese diplomat, who served in Kabul prior to his posting in Islamabad.

Earlier this month, U.S. officials and lawmakers during a congressional hearing in Washington sharply criticized China for its lack of economic assistance to Afghan rebuilding efforts.

“I think it’s fair to say that China has not contributed to the economic development of Afghanistan. We have not seen any substantial assistance from China,” Alice Wells, U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, told lawmakers.

Wells, however, acknowledged that Beijing has worked with Washington on a way forward on peace as have other countries, including Russia and immediate neighbors of Afghanistan.

“She is a little ignorant about what China’s cooperation with Afghanistan is,” ambassador Yao said when asked to comment on the remarks made by Wells.

He recounted that Beijing late last year established a trade corridor with Kabul, which Afghan officials say have enabled local traders to directly export thousands of tons of pine nuts to the Chinese market annually, bringing much-needed dollars. Yao said a cargo train was also started in 2016 from eastern China to Afghanistan’s landlocked northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

China is also working on infrastructure projects, including the road linking Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and the road between the central Afghan city of Bamiyan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Chinese companies, Yao, said are also helping in establishing transmission lines and other infrastructure being developed under the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project linking Central Asia to energy-starved South Asia nations through Afghanistan.

Ambassador Yao noted that China and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding on BRI cooperation, identifying several major projects of connectivity.

“But the only problem is that the security situation pose a little challenge. So, that is why China and Pakistan and all the regional countries, we are working so hard trying to support or facilitate peace in Afghanistan,” he said.  

For her part, Ambassador Wells told U.S. lawmakers that China’s BRI is a “slogan” and “not any reality” in Afghanistan. “They have just tried to lockdown lucrative mining contracts but not following through with investment or real resources,” she noted.

Wells said that Washington continues to warn its partners, including the Afghan government about “falling prey to predatory loans or loans that are designed to benefit only the Chinese State.”

U.S. officials are generally critical of BRI for “known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and a lack of transparency.” The projects aims to link China by sea and land through an infrastructure network with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But Yao rejected those concerns and cited the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of BRI, which has brought around $20 billion in Chinese investment to Pakistan within the past six years. It has helped Islamabad build roads and power plants, helping the country overcome its crippling electricity shortages, improve its transportation network and operationalize the strategic deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

 

Clashes between two Turkish-backed rebel groups in the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin have left at least two fighters dead and about a dozen wounded, according to reports Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor group that has researchers across Syria, reported that fierce fighting between the al-Majd Legion and al-Sham Legion in Afrin erupted Saturday night following a disagreement over property.

“Our sources have confirmed that the infighting erupted after a dispute over the ownership of a house just outside of Afrin,” Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told VOA.

Local news said the disputed house belonged to a Kurdish civilian that armed groups reportedly had seized months ago.

Frequent clashes

Armed confrontations among Syrian rebel factions have reportedly increased since Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels took control of Afrin after a two-month-long military campaign that ousted the Kurdish People Protection Units (YPG) from the region in March 2018, rights groups said.

“This is not the first time that such clashes take place over property and revenue-sharing among rebel groups,” the Syrian Observatory added.

Infighting among rebel groups has become a common issue in the region.

 “There is almost one occurrence like this one on a daily basis,” said Mohammed Billo, a journalist from Afrin.

“Usually when fighting gets out of control, Turkish military interferes to stop it,” he told VOA.

Some rights groups have also voiced concerns about growing violations against civilians in recent months in Afrin.

“Local sources in Afrin reported at least 110 abuses that appear to amount to instances of arbitrary detention, torture and abductions of civilians by pro-Turkey armed groups,” Amnesty International said in a report released in May.

YPG attacks

Since their ouster from Afrin in March 2018, Kurdish fighters affiliated with the YPG have occasionally carried out attacks against Turkish military and Syrian rebel forces in the Kurdish-majority region.

Last week, YPG fighters claimed responsibility for an attack on a Turkish military outpost in Afrin that killed two Turkish soldiers and wounded another.  

Ankara views the YPG as part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a three-decade war with Turkish armed forces for greater Kurdish rights in Turkey. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.  

Turkey has repeatedly threatened to invade other YPG-held areas in northern Syria, despite a recent agreement with the United States to establish a safe zone along Syria’s border with Turkey.

The two countries have begun joint patrols along parts of the border, but Turkish officials continue their objection over Washington’s support for the YPG, which has been a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

 

About 350,000 treasure hunters from all over the world, have been scouting out a large area in the Rocky Mountains stretching from Northern New Mexico to Montana, looking for a hidden treasure. As the story goes, all one needs to do to find the loot, is to decipher the nine clues in a poem written by wealthy art collector and entrepreneur Forrest Fenn, who says he collected and hid the treasure years ago. Its lore became wildly popular after he had written a book called “The Thrill of the Chase,” talking about his life and the treasure.  While many believe the treasure is real, others think it’s a hoax. VOA’s Penelope Poulou visited the area and spoke with Fenn about the meaning of it all

Yemen’s rebels Sunday claimed they launched a major attack on the border of Saudi Arabia, releasing video purporting to show captive Saudi soldiers and equipment.

The images of the attack released by the rebels, known as Houthis, show armored vehicles with stenciled Saudi markings, arms and ammunition the rebels claim they seized.

The video also shows fighting in a mountainous area, with Houthi fighters apparently attacking Saudi troops in armored vehicles.

It shows what appear to be corpses and wounded in Saudi military uniforms. Several troops identified themselves as Saudis.

The kingdom did not immediately acknowledge the attack. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Houthis on behalf of an internationally recognized Yemeni government since 2015.

In the past, the Houthis have claimed that they occupied Saudi villages after cross-border attacks, but often they enter a village, raise a banner, then pull out.

They have also held Saudi soldiers and officers captive in the past, using them as bargaining chips. Usually, they force the soldier to show his ID and speak on camera as proof. This time they did not show IDs.

Yahia Sarie, a spokesman for Houthi forces, claimed in a news conference Sunday the rebels took captive more than 2,000 troops, without offering evidence.

He also alleged that “three brigades have fallen,” and that the Houthis “liberated 350 kilometers square (135 square miles).”

Yemeni military officials said Sunday the soldiers the Houthis claimed they captured were fighters recruited informally by the Saudi-led coalition to fight inside Saudi Arabian borders. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.

Yemen’s stalemated war has killed tens of thousands of people, badly damaged Yemen’s infrastructure and crippled its health system.

House Democrats are planning a rapid start to their push for impeachment of President Donald Trump, with hearings and depositions starting this week.

Democratic leaders have instructed committees to move quickly — and not to lose momentum — after revelations that Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his potential 2020 Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and his family. The action is beginning even though lawmakers left town Friday for a two-week recess.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says his committee is moving “expeditiously” on hearings and subpoenas. That committee, as well as the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have scheduled depositions starting this week for State Department officials linked to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

A look at next steps as Democrats march toward an impeachment vote:

A BUSY RECESS

Members of the House Intelligence Committee have been told to be prepared to return to Washington during the break. California Rep. Jackie Speier said she has already canceled some of her previous commitments.

“We’re expected to be here,” Speier said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told the Democrats they need to “strike while the iron is hot” on impeachment, sending the committees into overdrive. Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat, said a plan is “being formed very rapidly.”

“What I know for sure is that momentum will not slow,” Himes said.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., said they will have to “work harder” and “sleep less.”

LONG WITNESS LIST, QUICK TIMELINE

Schiff’s committee has been negotiating to interview the whistleblower who began the firestorm by reporting to the inspector general for the intelligence community that Trump had urged the investigations on a July phone call with Zelenskiy.

Schiff told ABC’s “This Week” that his panel had reached agreement to hear from the whistleblower, who would testify “very soon.” Schiff said the exact date would depend in part on how quickly acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire completes the security clearance process for the whistleblower’s lawyers. “We’ll keep obviously riding shotgun to make sure the acting director doesn’t delay in that clearance process,” Schiff said.

The complaint from the whistleblower, whose identity is not publicly known, was released last week after Maguire withheld it from Congress for weeks. In the complaint, the whistleblower said White House officials moved to “lock down” the details of Trump’s call by putting all the records of it on a separate computer system.

The inspector general who handled that complaint, Michael Atkinson, is slated to testify to the Intelligence Committee in private on Friday, according to a person familiar with the committee who was spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Lawmakers on the committee say they also want to speak to White House aides who were present for the call and to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who urged the investigations. Giuliani told ABC on Sunday that he “wouldn’t cooperate” with Schiff, but if Trump “decides that he wants me to testify, of course I’ll testify.” Schiff says he hasn’t decided whether he wants to hear from Giuliani.

Democrats say they hope to finish the investigation in a matter of weeks — perhaps even before Thanksgiving.

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT

Once the committees have finished their own investigations, the committees will submit their findings to the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the impeachment process.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said the Intelligence Committee will be the “star of the show” as it investigates Trump’s activities related to Ukraine. Articles of impeachment would be drafted by the Judiciary Committee and, if adopted, sent to the House floor.

The Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has said he wants resolution on impeachment by the end of the year. Jayapal said that deadline “absolutely” stands, and that the plan is to be done before January, or “perhaps sooner.”

REPUBLICAN RESISTANCE

Republicans have focused their ire about impeachment on the Democrats, criticizing the probes as a rerun of a two-year investigation into Russian election interference in the 2016 election.

California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said Democrats “don’t want answers, they want a public spectacle.”

“They have been trying to reverse the results of the 2016 election since President Trump took office,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

SLOWER SENATE

If the House votes to approve charges against Trump, the Republican-led Senate would then hold a trial.

Some Senate Republicans have expressed concerns about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine, but there are few signs that there would be enough discontent to convict the president, who still has strong support in the GOP ranks. If Trump were impeached, it would take a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict him and remove him from office. A memorandum from Senate Republicans circulated over the weekend acknowledged it would be hard for McConnell to block an impeachment trial, but he could deflect any House-approved impeachment articles to a committee.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has said his committee will investigate the Ukraine matter but “don’t expect us to move at light speed — that will probably happen in the House.”

A NOD TO HISTORY

Trump would join a rare group if the House moves forward toward impeachment. Only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Both won acquittal in the Senate.

President Richard Nixon, who faced impeachment proceedings, resigned from office in 1974.

Afghan officials are counting votes after Saturday’s presidential election that was held amid repeated threats by the Taliban and fear of post-election chaos. Better performance by electoral and security authorities notwithstanding, fears remain that disagreements on the result might engulf the country into a destabilizing fight for power. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports from Kabul

The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says it has reached an agreement to hear from a whistleblower whose whose complaint that has sparked an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

“We are taking all the precautions we can to … allow that testimony to go forward in a way that protects the whistleblower’s identity,” Adam Schiff told the ABC news show “This Week.” With the president issuing threats … you can imagine the security concerns here.”

The whistleblower alleges that Trump, in a July 25 phone call, sought help from the new president of Ukraine in digging up incriminating information about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that would hurt Biden’s prospects of winning the Democratic presidential nomination and challenging Trump in 2020.

President Donald Trump, who has released a rough transcript of the phone call, has insisted he did nothing wrong and has continued to defend himself via Twitter.  Has he called the impeachment inquiry launched by Democrats in the House of Representatives “the greatest scam in the history of American politics.”

His adviser, Stephen Miller, told “Fox News Sunday” that the whistleblower’s behavior was “close to a spy” and said Trump himself was the true whistleblower for revealing alleged corruption by the Bidens.

As vice president, Biden and other Western leaders pressured Ukraine to get rid of the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was seen as not tough enough on corruption.

Trump has claimed Biden was seeking to protect his son but that allegation has been debunked.

The whistleblower’s complaint also said the White House tried to “lock down” the information to prevent its public disclosure. Efforts to hide the information allegedly included the removal of the transcript of the call from the computer system that is typically used for such records of calls with foreign leaders and loading it into a separate electronic system that is used only for classified information that is of an “especially sensitive nature.”

White House officials have stressed that the whistleblower didn’t have first hand information to make the allegations.
 
The complaint noted that a White House official described that as an abuse of the secure system because there was nothing “remotely sensitive” on the phone call from a national security perspective.
 
On Thursday, before leaving New York where he attended the U.N. General Assembly, Trump told a crowd of staff from the United States Mission to the U.N. that he wants to know who provided information to the whistleblower. He said that whomever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days,” spies were dealt with differently,” according to The New York Times newspaper.

 

Pope Francis on Sunday decried “the culture of comfort” that leads to indifference in the face of a global migration and refugee crisis.

The pope who has made caring for migrants a hallmark of his papacy spoke during a Mass for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees.

“We cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to ‘our group,’” Francis said. “We cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond.”

The pontiff has often spoken of the need to be welcoming to migrants, traveling to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 on his first trip as pope to comfort refugees. His message found political resistance in Italy’s previous populist government, during which the former hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, campaigned to prevent the arrival in Italy of migrants rescued at sea by humanitarian groups.

During his homily Sunday, the pope also noted the weapons that fuel wars are often produced and sold in other regions “which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated buy these conflicts.”

Many migrants and refugees from conflicts throughout the world attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, which closed with the unveiling of a bronze statue by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz depicting migrants packed on a boat.

“This statue depicts a group of migrants from various cultures and over different historic periods. I wanted this artistic work here in St. Peter’s Square to remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality,” Francis said.

During the Mass, a multiethnic chorus sang and the incense burned came from a refugee camp in southern Ethiopia, where refugees are rekindling a 600-year-old tradition of collecting incense. The Vatican said the incense “reminds us that refugees can also thrive, not just survive.”

 

Thousands of protesters jammed a central Moscow square on September 29 as opposition groups sought to regain momentum following a summer of demonstrations that targeted both local elections but also Russia’s broader political system.

The rally was the first major effort by liberal political groups and allied parties since elections earlier in the month that ended up being a catalyst for the biggest wave of sustained anti-government rallies in nearly a decade.

Instead of elections, the Moscow event was focused on “political repression,” as activists demanded that authorities halt a campaign of raids and arrests targeting anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny and his network of supporters nationwide.

Activists were rallying against harsh police tactics used in earlier demonstrations as well as what many Muscovites say were harsh jail sentences handed down against those detained by police.

Under a cold rain on September 29 , demonstrators walked through metal detectors installed along Sakharov Boulevard before gathering under umbrellas and flags of political parties near a sound stage where leaders were expected to speak.

The rally was authorized by the Moscow mayor’s office, meaning mass detentions by police were less likely.

The nongovernmental organization White Counter estimated about 9,000 people were in attendance at the start of the rally.

In a video posted online ahead of time, Lyubov Sobol, a human rights lawyer and Navalny supporter who was a key organizer of the summer rallies, accused the Russian government of pursuing “political cases” to “frighten the opposition.”

Harsh Crackdown

During the near-weekly rallies held in the Russian capital in July and August, more than 3,000 people were detained and many were beaten as police in some cases used force to disperse crowds. The harsh crackdown sparked condemnation from human rights groups and Western governments.

The protests were among the largest in Moscow since a wave of demonstrations in 2011-12 sparked by anger over evidence of electoral fraud and dismay at Putin’s return to the Kremlin for a third presidential term.

Moscow, along with many regions and municipalities across Russia, held local and regional elections on September 8 — a test for the Kremlin-allied United Russia party ahead of parliamentary elections in 2021.

Despite the exclusion of dozens of opposition and independent candidates, the September 8 elections delivered a stinging setback to United Russia, which lost 13 seats in the 45-member city council in Moscow.

That outcome was credited in part to Navalny’s so-called Smart Voting strategy, under which he urged Russians to back candidates with the best chance of beating United Russia politicians — all of whom ran as independents in Moscow apparently to hide their affiliation with the party.

Never very popular, United Russia has seen its support fall further amid economic uncertainty and political fallout over moves such as raising the retirement age and hiking the VAT tax rate.

Other unpopular initiatives have included a program to tax long-distance trucking, and crackdowns on protests in many cities over local issues such as waste dumps and construction.

Putin’s ratings have also suffered.

Outside of Moscow, United Russia held its own, winning all regional governorships contested on September 8.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities have used a mix of tactics in an effort to quash the protest sentiment that erupted during summer and prevent it from spreading.

Seven people detained during the protests have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to five years, but prosecutors and courts — widely believed to answer to the Kremlin — have relented to pressure in some cases.

Strong winds and heavy snow caused power outages and temporary road closures in northwestern Montana as a wintry storm threatened to drop several feet of snow in some areas of the northern Rocky Mountains.

The National Weather Service in Great Falls reported 16 inches (41 centimeters) of snow had fallen near Marias Pass just south of Glacier National Park by early Saturday afternoon. The area is forecast to see a total of up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) by the time the storm winds down Sunday night, said meteorologist Megan Syner.

Gusty winds Saturday knocked down trees and damaged power lines, causing scattered outages in northwestern Montana and along the Rocky Mountain Front. Up to 30 large trees were down on the east side of Flathead Lake, the Missoulian reported.

Emergency travel only was recommended in some areas along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountain Front and treacherous travel was reported around the region, including over Rogers Pass on Montana Highway 200 northwest of Helena, Syner said.

Following the storm, temperatures are expected to drop into the teens and 20s (around minus 13 Celsius) across much of western and central Montana overnight Monday.

The weekend storm system was also bringing strong winds and snow to the mountains of northern Washington and northern Idaho.

Homeless shelters in Spokane, Washington, were relaxing their entrance policies and the city was preparing a backup shelter, if needed.

Dave Wall, a Union Gospel Mission spokesman, said the shelter’s director and Spokane’s mayor agreed the mission would not enforce its drug and alcohol policies while temperatures were below freezing, as long as patrons weren’t acting unsafe, The Spokesman Review reported.

LG Electronics said this year it would cut smartphone production at home in South Korea and move it to Vietnam, according to Korean news reports. Meanwhile in Vietnam, the domestic conglomerate Vingroup is hawking its four Vsmart phone models to a growing domestic middle class, sending what the Vietnam Investment Review calls “ripples” through the market.

These vignettes suggest that Vietnam is no longer just a world-renowned hot spot for making shoes, garments and textiles for export. The Southeast Asian country that has attracted investment in export manufacturing because of cheap labor is shifting toward higher-value goods, a boon to the economy and a challenge to China’s status as the go-to country for making items such as consumer electronics.

“The structure of exports has already seen a big transformation in terms of value adding,” market research firm IHS Markit’s Asia-Pacific chief economist Rajiv Biswas said, comparing 2010 to 2019.

Investment in factories that make phones, computers and accessories such as earphones is leading Vietnam’s climb up the value chain, analysts say. Exports of phones, the top grossing export type, totaled $45.1 billion in 2017 and the category of computers plus other electronic goods took third place after textiles at $25.9 billion.

Electronics overall make up Vietnam’s top export category, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates says. 

“There has already been a shift toward higher value adding in electronics,” Biswas said.

How Vietnam is adding value

When Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in 2007, textiles, garments and footwear commanded the largest share of exports, said Maxfield Brown, senior associate with Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City. But electronics began to take off around that time, he said.

Labor in Vietnam costs 50% of what employers pay in China, the consultancy says. That edge has helped Vietnam turn itself from a war-torn country in the 1970s to one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies today.

Universities and company training programs have raised the skills of Vietnamese workers to where they can make parts for electronics as well assemble finished goods, analysts in the country say. China traditionally leads in workforce education.

Now Vietnam is a “clear leader as an alternative” in electronics, Biswas said, especially as China loses competitiveness to the Sino-U.S. trade war.

Vietnam’s growing middle class helps it move up the value chain, too, he said. If per capita GDP, which was $2,587 last year, eventually reaches $5,000, automotive purchases will rise and attract automotive factories, Biswas said. Their cars could sell to some of Vietnam’s 95.5 million people as well as overseas. Investors that make automotive peripherals such as tires and leather seats would come in behind the manufacturers of vehicles, Biswas said.

One third of Vietnamese will be middle class or higher by next year, the Boston Consulting Group forecasts.

Who’s who in electronics

For now, analysts agree, electronics is the top source of higher-value exports in Vietnam.

“What I’m starting to see is a specialization between different countries in particular industries, and I think that Vietnam has now become pretty widely recognized as an electronics production hub, and I would imagine that in the coming years it will continue to double down on that industry so that local companies can participate more and more,” Brown said.

LG plans to move smartphone production to the Vietnamese port city of Haiphong after losing money for 15 straight quarters, Korean news outlet Hankyoreh said in April. LG declined comment for this report.

The electronics giant would follow Korean peer Samsung Electronics, which has allocated more than $17 billion to its Vietnam factories and R&D. Samsung is Vietnam’s largest exporter. It joins microprocessor developer Intel as one of the first major foreign tech firms to locate in Vietnam.

Vingroup started selling Vsmart phones in December and has earned a name for specs that are “quite good” compared to other low-end devices, said Thanh Vo, senior market analyst with the tech research firm IDC.

The tech sector still has room to grow into higher-end gear, Biswas said.

Government refocus

The Vietnamese government encourages foreign factory investment by working on its legal framework, improving infrastructure and developing a “quality” workforce, the state Foreign Investment Agency says on its website. In 2011 Vietnam began encouraging development of industries that support the tech sector.

But Vietnam is holding back incentives to lower-end manufacturers now, a sign that it prefers higher-value ones, said Frederick Burke, partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City.

“They see the world beating a path to their door and they don’t have to give away the barn,” Burke said. “I think they’re not giving away a lot of incentives for lower-end manufacturing and that’s how they’re trying to boost in the higher-end area.”

Up and down the continent, African politics sees more than its share of chaos and corruption. Africans use colorful terms and phrases to describe the unfolding developments and, sometimes, make fun of them. A new online Dictionary of African Politics, published by Oxford University Press, tries to define these words.

In Nigeria, for instance, the term “zoning” has nothing to do with buildings or real estate. It describes power sharing between the north and south.

In Kenya, a “three-piece suit” refers to a party asking voters to back its full slate of candidates, for president, governor and member of parliament.

Oxford student Sa’eed Husaini, one of the dictionary’s authors, said he and his colleagues thought the project would “give us an opportunity to basically shine a light on the diversity of words and diversity of meanings that are part of African politics. … There is a lot of meaning that is being generated, a lot of new content words, like ‘stomach infrastructure,’ that “will help us understand how Africa conducts contemporary politics.”

The term “stomach infrastructure” was coined by a politician in the 2015 elections in Nigeria. He promised people rice and chicken over development and won that election.

In Benin, switching of parties by politicians is called “transhumance,” which is the act of moving animals from one grazing ground to another.

In Ghana, supporting the president of one party and a member of parliament from another party is called “skirt and blouse” voting.

Another Kenyan term is “negotiated democracy,” which means the arranged sharing of power between communities BEFORE an election takes place.

Kimani Njogu, an African linguist, said people create and use such terms everywhere, acts of what he called “semantic expansion.”

“It brings in a certain playfulness in our politics, certain humor, ingenuity, relaxation of atmosphere, normalization of the politics, so that it’s not seen to be too removed from the day-to-day experiences of people,” Njogu said.

Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has seen this type of language throughout his long career.

“It’s not that they are being simplistic about complex issues,” Odinga said. “It’s just that they want to make it light. Sometimes you should crack a joke about those issues, but I think it’s a way of expression that in one hand tells you it’s not right, but also with a light touch. I think that’s part of the African culture.”

The Oxford dictionary covers 350 words commonly used in Africa since the introduction of multiparty democracy more than three decades ago.

Njogu said the dictionary would change over time, as old expressions lose their usefulness and people create new ones to comment on their politics.