Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Thursday that Mexico’s government doesn’t agree with a U.S. Supreme Court order that would block migrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada from applying for asylum at U.S. borders.

Speaking at President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s daily news conference, Ebrard said that Mexico has a different policy when it comes to asylum seekers and would never implement such a rule.

He also described a Tuesday meeting in Washington about Mexico’s progress in slowing the flow of mostly Central American migrants trying to reach the United States.

Lopez Obrador added that he spoke by phone with President Donald Trump on Wednesday. He said relations between the two countries were very good and Trump recognized Mexico’s efforts.

Mexico cracked down on migrants crossing the country after Trump threatened crippling tariffs on all Mexican imports in late May. Mexico deployed the National Guard to the southern and northern borders and tried to contain migrants to the southern part of the country. 

It also accepted the expansion of the “Remain in Mexico’” policy, under which the U.S. has sent thousands of asylum applicants back across the border to wait in Mexico.

China on Thursday extended the latest gesture of good will in the ongoing trade dispute with the United States, as the world’s two largest economies prepare for high-level trade talks.

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said China was looking into purchasing U.S. agricultural goods such as pork and soybeans.

Gao said China welcomes good will actions from the Trump administration, and that China hopes the two sides will continue to create favorable conditions for the trade negotiations.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was postponing tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods from Oct. 1 to Oct. 15.

He said on Twitter that Chinese Vice Premier Liu He had asked for the delay because of celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1.

Trump’s announcement came after China said earlier Wednesday it is exempting a handful of U.S. products from the next round of its sanctions set to begin Sept. 17. They include shrimp, a cancer-fighting machine, industrial grease and assorted chemicals.

Midlevel negotiators plan to meet later this month to prepare for the first high-level trade talks between the United States and China since July.

The talks are set to open next month in Washington.

The series of tariffs on a large number of products the United States and China buy from each other has rattled investors and made consumers uneasy with the outlook of higher prices.

Trump has long accused China of intellectual property theft and manipulating its currency to make its goods cheaper than American products on the world market.

China says U.S. trade policies are aimed at trying to stifle its ability to compete.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is planning to vote Thursday on a resolution to determine certain parameters for conducting an impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.

The procedural vote would allow the committee’s chairman to designate certain meetings as having the purpose of examining information to determine whether it should recommend articles of impeachment. It would also allow witnesses at such meetings to testify for longer than under usual committee hearing rules.

The resolution would also call for Trump’s legal team to respond in writing to any information presented.

“The adoption of these additional procedures is the next step in that process and will help ensure our impeachment hearings are informative to Congress and the public, while providing the president with the ability to respond to evidence presented against him,” Chairman Jerry Nadler said.

Articles of impeachment would have to be voted on by the full House and it is doubtful the Republican Senate would vote to remove the president from office.

Various legislative committees are looking into a number of matters concerning the president, including his failure to release his tax returns, his payment of hush money to stop embarrassing stories from becoming public, and the spending of taxpayer money at the president’s hotels and properties.
 

This article originated in

The House on Wednesday approved two bills that would forever ban drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and to extend a moratorium on drilling off Florida’s gulf coast.

“We’re striking back this week against the Trump administration and their agenda to drill everywhere, every time, with no exception,” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva said.

The White House has said the president will veto the bills if they pass the Senate and get to his desk.

While the opponents say the bill only limits the nation’s energy industry, the supporters of the bill say they will provide protection for vital water ways and help avoid disasters like the 2010 BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“If we’re learning anything from the past, it’s that when you drill, you spill. No one should be comfortable exposing our shorelines to that risk,” South Carolina Congressman Joe Cunningham said.

But the White House said in a statement that the bills “undermine the Administration’s commitment to a prosperous American economy supported by the responsible use of the Nation’s abundant natural resources.”
 

Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who is credited with helping bring democracy to the small Pacific island nation, has died. He was 78.

Political adviser to the prime minister Lopeti Senituli told The Associated Press that Pohiva died at the Auckland City Hospital about 9 a.m. local time after being medically evacuated to New Zealand a day earlier. Before that, Pohiva had been hospitalized in Tonga for two weeks suffering from pneumonia before his condition turned critical, Senituli said.

Pohiva was an immensely significant figure in Tonga. He was behind the push for democracy and getting away from politics dominated by the royal family, said Graeme Smith, a research fellow in the Department of Pacific Affairs at Australian National University.

Tonga is home to 106,000 people.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is urging the governor of California not to sign a bill that would allow college athletes to be paid.

The NCAA, which regulates all U.S. college student athletes, released a letter Wednesday that said the bill “would erase the critical distinction between college and professional athletics” and would “negatively impact more than 24,000 California student-athletes across three divisions.”

The organization urged California Governor Gavin Newsom to not allow the bill to become law. Newsom has not said whether he will sign the bill.

The bill, known as the Fair Pay to Play Act, would allow student athletes to hire agents and negotiate payments for the use of their name, image or likeness.

While college athletes are often offered extremely lucrative scholarships, the NCAA does not allow them to be paid. The organization says it is studying the issue of paying student athletes and if the policy is to change, it wants the change to happen on a national scale.

The bill has the support of Los Angeles Lakers basketball star LeBron James, who skipped college to be able to play professionally.

But California colleges have sided with the NCAA, saying the passage of the bill should be delayed until the NCAA reaches some conclusions on the issue.
 

Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc will testify next week before a U.S. Senate panel on efforts by social media firms to remove violent content from online platforms, the panel said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Sept. 18 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee follows growing concern in Congress about the use of social media by people committing mass shootings and other violent acts. Last week, the owner of 8chan, an online message board linked to several recent mass shootings, gave a deposition on Capitol Hill.

The hearing “will examine the proliferation of extremism online and explore the effectiveness of industry efforts to remove violent content from online platforms. Witnesses will discuss how technology companies are working with law enforcement when violent or threatening content is identified and the processes for removal of such content,” the committee said.

Facebook’s head of global policy management Monika Bickert, Twitter public policy director Nick Pickles and Google’s global director of information policy Derek Slater are due to testify.

Facebook and Google both confirmed they will participate but declined to comment further. Twitter did not immediately comment.

In May, Facebook said it would temporarily block users who break its rules from broadcasting live video. That followed an international outcry after a gunman killed 51 people in New Zealand and streamed the attack live on his page.

Facebook said it was introducing a “one-strike” policy for use of Facebook Live, a service which lets users broadcast live video. Those who broke the company’s most serious rules anywhere on its site would have their access to make live broadcasts temporarily restricted.

Facebook has come under intense scrutiny in recent years over hate speech, privacy lapses and its dominant market position in social media. The company is trying to address those concerns while averting more strenuous action from regulators.

Growing inequality and climate change will not only derail progress toward global sustainability goals but also will threaten human existence, leading scientists said Wednesday at the United Nations. 

The world is falling off track on ambitious global development goals adopted by U.N. members, a panel of scientists said in an independent assessment report released at U.N. headquarters. 

Member nations unanimously adopted 17 sustainable development goals known as SDGs in 2015, setting out a wide-ranging “to-do” list tackling conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender equality and climate change by 2030. 

The bleak assessment report was released ahead of a 
sustainable-goals summit scheduled at the United Nations this month. 

“Overall, the picture is a sobering one,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, policy chief at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “One element of this is increasing inequality. … Another is the pace at which nature is being degraded by human activity, whether it is climate change or biodiversity loss.” 

The independent panel of scientists investigated the ways 
and systems in which humans and the environment are linked and 
interact, said Peter Messerli of the University of Bern, 
Switzerland, the co-chair of the group of scientists. 

“These systems are on a very worrying trajectory, 
threatening the very existence of humanity,” he told reporters. 
“We have not realized the urgency to act now.” 

‘This has to be corrected’

Countries must put into practice ways to address vast gaps 
in wealth distribution and access to economic opportunities and 
technological advances that undermine innovation and economic 
growth, the report said. 

“Each country has to decide,” Jean-Paul Moatti, chief 
executive of the French Research Institute for Development and 
one of the scientists who compiled the report. 

“This has to be corrected,” he told the Thomson Reuters 
Foundation. 

The report called on nations to focus on food and energy 
production and distribution, consumption and urban growth to 
find ways of building sustainable development. 

The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated 
at $3 trillion a year. 

These are not the first grim predictions made for the fate 
of the goals. Earlier reports have said they were threatened by the persistence of violence, conflict and destabilizing climate 
change. 

Outside assessments have cited nationalism, protectionism 
and a need to obtain more funding, ease national debts, boost 
wages and expand trade. 

U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that John Bolton, dismissed a day earlier as national security adviser, had been a “disaster” on North Korea policy, “out of line” on Venezuela, and did not get along with important administration officials.

Trump said Bolton had made mistakes, including offending North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un by demanding that he follow a “Libyan model” and hand over all his nuclear weapons.

“We were set back very badly when John Bolton talked about the Libyan model … what a disaster,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“He’s using that to make a deal with North Korea? And I don’t blame Kim Jong Un for what he said after that, and he wanted nothing to do with John Bolton. And that’s not a question of being tough. That’s a question of being not smart to say something like that.”

Trump also said he disagreed with Bolton on Venezuela but offered no specifics. “I thought he was way out of line and I think I’ve proven to be right,” the president said.

Trump said Bolton, with his abrasive, hardline approach, “wasn’t getting along with people in the administration that I consider very important.”

“John wasn’t in line with what we were doing,” he added.

Trump said he got along with Bolton and hoped they parted on good terms, but added: “Maybe we have and maybe we haven’t. I have to run the country the way we’re running the country.”

Trump had been growing more impatient with the failure to oust socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro through a U.S.-led campaign of sanctions and diplomacy in which Bolton was a driving force.

Bolton was also a chief architect of the Trump administration’s hardline policy on Iran.

Asked whether he would consider easing sanctions on Iran to secure a meeting with its leader President Hassan Rouhani at this month’s U.N. General Assembly, Trump replied: “We’ll see what happens.” Bolton had opposed such a step.

North Korea

North Korea has denounced Bolton as a “war maniac” and “human scum.” Last year, it threatened to call off a first summit between Kim and Trump after Bolton suggested the Libya model of unilateral disarmament. In the past, Bolton had proposed using military force to overthrow the country’s ruling dynasty.

Trump’s efforts to engage with North Korea nearly fell apart altogether in February after he followed Bolton’s advice at a second summit in Hanoi and handed Kim a piece of paper that called for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States.

Trump announced he had fired Bolton a day after North Korea signaled a new willingness to resume stalled denuclearization talks, but it then proceeded with the latest in a spate of missile test launches.

Analysts say Bolton’s removal could help U.S. efforts to revive the talks, but will not make it easier for Washington to persuade Pyongyang to give up nuclear weapons.

Washington has given no indication that it will soften its demand for North Korea’s ultimate denuclearization, even though with Bolton gone, the risky all-or-nothing gambit is unlikely to be repeated so bluntly.

“This change in personnel could carve out some space for new approaches or thinking about what defines success and how to achieve it,” said Jenny Town at 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea project. “Whether it actually does or whether Bolton’s view was more deeply entrenched in U.S. thinking on this matter is yet to be seen.”

A judge in the trial of Russian theater director Kirill Serebrennikov and his co-defendants wants to send the controversial embezzlement case back to prosecutors.

Judge Irina Akkuratova said at the trial on Wednesday that the texts of the official charges contained “inconsistent and controversial clauses” and therefore she was inclined to send the whole case back to the prosecutor’s office. She made no further comment.

The judge first ordered a new study of evidence in the case in April and then extended the deadline for such a study in June. In August, Akkuratova noted that experts had been unable to establish that state money allocated for Serebrennikov’s projects was misused.

The 50-year-old and his three co-defendants are accused of embezzling up to $2 million in state funds granted from 2011 to 2014 to Seventh Studio, a nonprofit organization established by Serebrennikov.

Serebrennikov’s August 2017 arrest drew international attention and prompted accusations that Russian authorities were targeting cultural figures who are at odds with President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Serebrennikov, who has taken part in anti-government protests and voiced concerns about the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, has denied wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against him as absurd.

Serebrennikov and two co-defendants – producer Yury Itin and former Culture Ministry employee Sofia Apfelbaum – were released from house arrest under an April 8 court decision, but ordered to remain in Moscow.

The other defendant, Aleksei Malobrodsky, is not under house arrest but is also barred from leaving Moscow.

ABUJA, NIGERIA — Damilola Ogunsi, 40, — popularly known by his stage name, the Gold Fish — is an albino on a mission.

As a teenager he suffered intense discrimination, but Ogunsi says acting gave him a voice.

“My journey started when I was a young boy,” he said. “I remember that the first thing my parents told me when I was five years old, they took me to a party, and one way or the other while the party was going on they dropped the mic, and I found my way there, I picked up the mic and started talking and I entertained them a little bit.”

Before his acting career started, Ogunsi worked as a merchant banker for a nearly decade.

Now, he frequently appears on Nigerian movie screens, though Ogunsi says he’s got even bigger dreams.

“In my head, I’m James Bond, I’m Batman, I’m Iron Man,” he said. “Those are the kind of roles I’m dreaming about playing and I’m training myself and working. I’ve started hitting the gym, trying to build my Hollywood body because those are the things I want to do and places I want to go and, eventually, start producing my own films.”

Daily threats

Some two million Nigerians live with albinism, according to the Abuja-based Albino Foundation. Many face discrimination and marginalization on a daily basis.

Although a few like Ogunsi have risen above the societal bias against their condition, the situation is serious, says Demian Ivom of the Albino Foundation.

“There are villages and communities where persons with albinism or children with albinism, once the mother delivers the child with albinism, they’ll be killed. In Abuja here, there are about sixty communities where this is happening,” Ivom said.

Albinism is the partial or complete absence of melanin production in the body. The condition increases the risk of skin cancer.

Support

A foundation was set up in 2006 to combat the stigma and discrimination.

“The Albino Foundation was created to debunk the wrong information that people have about people with albinism and to create an equal opportunity for everybody with albinism to thrive in the society,” said Afam Kasim, spokesperson for the Albino Foundation.

The government adopted a national policy on albinism in 2012 to help albinos enter the Nigerian mainstream and improve their representation in various sectors.

As that effort continues, albinos like Ogunsi are getting ahead.

In Nigeria — where thousands of people living with albinism are discriminated against, body shamed, stigmatized or even killed — one albino is breaking the norm in the country’s movie industry. His popularity is a glimmer of hope to many others, as Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.

VOA’s Russian service and VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

WHITE HOUSE — An Iranian government spokesman says the departure of National Security Adviser John Bolton could allow U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to deal with Iran in a “less biased manner.”

Ali Rabiei said Wednesday that Bolton was a “symbol of America’s hawkish policies” and animosity toward Iran. Officials, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, had repeatedly pointed to Bolton as a figure opposed to dialogue in resolving U.S.-Iran tensions.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that Trump’s firing of Bolton will not change the president’s foreign policy.

“I don’t think any leader around the world should make any assumption that because one of us departs that President Trump’s foreign policy will change in a material way,” Pompeo said less than two hours after Trump announced on Twitter that he had ousted Bolton.

Pompeo appeared on the White House podium along with U.S. Treasury Steven Mnuchin to discuss an executive order strengthening sanctions to combat terrorism.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend the U.K. Parliament less than two months before Britain is to leave the European Union was unlawful, a Scottish court ruled Wednesday, although it didn’t order the suspension to be overturned.

Judges at Scotland’s highest court in Edinburgh said Britain’s Supreme Court must make the final decision. A hearing there is to begin Tuesday.

A group of about 70 lawmakers is challenging the government’s decision to prorogue, or formally shut down, Parliament, for five weeks until Oct. 14, just more than two weeks before Britain is to leave the EU.

Johnson claims he took the action so that he can start afresh on his domestic agenda at a new session of Parliament next month. But the suspension also gives him a respite from rebellious lawmakers as he plots his next move to break the political deadlock and lead Britain out of the EU by Oct. 31.

Opponents argue that Johnson is trying to evade democratic scrutiny.

Last week, a court in Edinburgh rejected the lawmakers’ challenge, saying it was a matter for politicians, not the courts, to decide.

But that was overturned Wednesday on appeal.

Jolyon Maugham, a lawyer who is part of the claim, said: “We believe that the effect of the decision is that Parliament is no longer prorogued.”

“I have never been able to contemplate the possibility that the law could be that our sovereign Parliament might be treated as an inconvenience by the prime minister,” he said. 

China, despite its pressure against Taiwan’s military and foreign relations, is stocking up ways to charm the self-ruled island that it hopes someday to bring under its flag, experts believe.

The Communist government will fulfill a list of incentives announced last year to interest Taiwanese people in investment, work and study in China and may come up with more, scholars in Taipei say. Because incomes are too low to afford housing in some cities, some of Taiwan’s youth may go for China’s slightly higher pay and exposure to its more internationalized economy, they add.

On Sunday, five cities in Fujian province, the part of China geographically closest to Taiwan, announced they would increase the opportunities for Taiwanese youth to come over and start businesses, a channel they described as a “talent exchange,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

“Because of the very large size of mainland China’s economy, and because its economy is actually still growing, plus its internationalization is better than Taiwan’s, these major aspects will attract more Taiwanese to go over to try it out,” said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

Extension of 2018 offers

After the Fujian province case, other government agencies in China may offer incentives to the Taiwanese, said Chao Chien-min, dean of social sciences at Chinese Cultural University in Taipei.

China’s central government announced early last year 31 incentives aimed at drawing people over to work, study and invest. Proposals included tax breaks and special land-use rights. Taiwanese citizens on long stays on the mainland can move in without work visas. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in March this year more incentives were on the way.

Younger Taiwanese will go for it, Chao expects, if economic problems persist at home.

“The impact of course we need to review in the context of Taiwan’s environment because in the recent past the econ situation isn’t quite so good,” Chao said. “Finding work, especially for Ph.D. students, it’s gotten extremely difficult.”

China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s and threatened to take it by force if needed. More than 8 in 10 Taiwanese oppose unification, the Taiwan government’s Mainland Affairs Council found in a survey in January. The council sees China’s incentives as a soft approach to bring the two sides together without the use of force.

Economic benefits

Wages in China average 1.2 to 1.3 times higher than in Taiwan for skilled, non-entry level jobs, a ManpowerGroup Experis official estimated last year. China’s gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of goods and services provided in the country during a given year, grew 6.6% last year compared to the Taiwan’s economy’s 2.8%.

Investments by some of the world’s top multinationals have helped fuel that growth in the much larger China, and Taiwanese employees can get more “exposure” to them in China than at home, Huang said.

Risks for outsiders in China include impacts of Sino-U.S. trade friction on manufacturing along with gaps in China’s legal system, especially protection of copyrights and trademarks.

Unintended soft power

China’s formal incentives will ultimately run out, and there’s no sign Beijing will offer a new batch then, said Joanna Lei, chief executive officer of the Chunghua 21st Century Think Tank in Taiwan.

To pressure Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s government, which opposes unification with China, since 2016 officials in Beijing have passed military jets and ships near the island and scaled back Taiwan-bound tourism, tactics that analysts call “hard power” compared to the economic incentives.

China still has more “soft power” in reserve, Chao said, though it may never use it intentionally.

A growing number of blockbuster films come from China, he said, and Taiwanese cinemagoers will inevitably watch them. Operation Red Sea, a Chinese military film about an evacuation in Yemen, for example found an audience outside China last year.

Universities in China, including some in the international rankings, keep adding students, Chao said. In that way, he said, China has “already raised its soft power by a lot.”

“Taiwan needs to speed up a bit,” said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of the Taipei research organization Polaris Research Institute. Chinese universities have lapped top schools in Taiwan, he said.

“National Taiwan University used to be well ahead of Peking University and National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu (Taiwan) was also well ahead of the Tsinghua University in Beijing,” Liang said, naming flagship campuses on both sides.

Peking University ranks No. 68 and Tsinghua University, in Beijing, at No. 50 on the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

China boasts better R&D “capacity” and a boom in medical research, both with possible appeal to Taiwanese, Liang added.

The Trump administration is ready to open a tent court on the border to help handle tens of thousands of cases of asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico, with hearings held entirely by videoconference.

The court, or “soft-sided” facility as U.S. officials call it, is scheduled to begin operations Monday in Laredo, Texas. Another is expected to open soon in Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

The administration introduced its “Remain in Mexico” policy in San Diego in January and later expanded it to El Paso, but hearings there are conducted inside large buildings with normal courtrooms, and the judge usually appears in person.

The policy, assailed by critics for making families and young children wait in violent Mexico border cities, has become a key piece of the U.S. response to a large increase in asylum-seeking families, especially from Central America.

Mexico allowed for its rapid expansion in a June 7 pact that spared it, at least temporarily, from threats of tariff increases by President Donald Trump.

Expanding the policy

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence agreed Tuesday to expand the policy “to the fullest extent possible,” according to a summary of their meeting provided by the White House.

About 40,000 non-Mexican asylum-seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through clogged U.S. immigration courts, according to the Mexican government. The number soared after the June agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, and the policy was expanded to Laredo and Brownsville.

The Laredo court will manage as many as 300 cases a day, said Alberto Flores, port director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said during a tour for journalists on Tuesday that was streamed by reporter Brenda Camacho of KGNS-TV.

Asylum-seekers have been told to report to Nuevo Laredo on the Mexico side of the border at least four hours before their court times, Flores said during a media tour of the 30,000-square foot (2,787-square-meter) facility.

Few details

Details of how the tent courts will operate have been scarce. Attorneys are still trying to determine how much access they will have and if they will be able to meet privately with clients before a hearing — even though journalists were shown 14 rooms for attorney-client discussions.

There are four courtrooms for initial scheduling hearings, each one designed to seat 50 migrants at a time in rows of benches, with folding tables available if they need to approach the video camera that feeds images to a judge, who will appear on a large screen from another city.

“Everything is going to be virtual,” Flores said.

For substantive hearings that address the merits of an asylum claim and typically last hours, there are 18 small rooms in adjoining shipping containers, each equipped with two chairs, table and screen for the judge to appear remotely.

There’s a children’s waiting area with brightly colored, kid-sized chairs and baby-changing tables near an area with portable toilets.

Migrants who fear persecution in Mexico, in addition to their home country, can make their case to an asylum officer who will interview them from an office in Houston.

Many other migrants are waiting in Mexican border cities just to make their initial claims for asylum at a U.S. border crossing. The Associated Press found about 19,000 names on waiting lists in four cities visited in late July.

The U.S. government does not manage the lists, so there’s no uniform system to prioritize asylum-seekers who may be at a higher risk for extortion, persecution or medical problems. Lawyers along the border say many of their clients have been kidnapped, robbed, or sexually assaulted while they waited for their court date.

Illegal crossings down

Mexico’s immigration crackdown, which includes sending thousands of troops to its borders, has contributed to a sharp drop in illegal crossings. U.S. Border Patrol arrests along the Mexico border in August fell to their lowest level since January, though they are still relatively high.

Pence highlighted the “Remain in Mexico” policy, called “Migrant Protection Protocols” by U.S. officials, during his meeting Tuesday with Mexico’s top diplomat at the White House. He commended Mexico’s “meaningful and unprecedented steps to help curb the flow of illegal immigration.”

“The leaders agreed that while progress has been made, more work remains in order to further reduce the flow of illegal migrants to the United States,” according to the White House summary of the meeting.

Venezuela’s embattled socialist government expressed delight Tuesday over the firing of U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, whose hawkish views and tough rhetoric were constant irritants for the region’s leftist leaders.

Industry Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was a special target of Bolton for his alleged drug involvement in cocaine trafficking, called Bolton the “biggest liar” who caused untold damage to the Venezuelan people.

“The historical truth has vanquished the demons of war!” El Aissami celebrated on Twitter. “The future is ours!”

Another official, referring to the late President Hugo Chavez’s preference for a traditional Venezuelan dessert, was similarly jubilant.

“On days like this, the Comandate would treat himself to some sweet papaya,” said the official, who agreed to discuss Bolton only if not quoted by name because relations between Venezuela and the United States are already tense.

But it wasn’t clear if the U.S. stance on Venezuela might change without Bolton. Some analysts even said Maduro has more to lose from a more diplomatic, less polarizing replacement as the U.S. supports opposition efforts to remove him as president.

“Maduro is likely thinking ‘good riddance’ and that this is sweet revenge for all the macho posturing,” said Chris Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House in London. “But that would be a mistake. Bolton’s strategy was flawed from the beginning and his departure may pave the way to bring in a more professional, effective diplomat that could be a greater threat to Maduro’s autocracy.”

Cuba and Nicaragua also had little liking for Bolton.

In November, Bolton said during an address to veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the communist-ruled island is part of a “troika of tyranny” along with Venezuela and Nicaragua. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez responded by calling Bolton a “pathological liar.”

The tough rhetoric was matched by intense policy pressure.

In the bid to ramp up pressure on Maduro, the U.S. has imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s crucial oil industry as well as threatened to punish companies from third countries that continue to do business with Maduro.

Bolton adopted a similar tack against Nicaragua, where security forces violently repressed anti-government protests that erupted just days after Bolton became national security adviser in April 2018.

The U.S. government targeted key allies of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and pushed its allies to isolate the government from international and regional organizations. At least a half-dozen Nicaraguan officials were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for corruption and human rights violations.

On Cuba, Bolton worked aggressively to roll back the Obama administration’s opening to the island. In a move that shocked even some anti-Castro hardliners, he was instrumental in lifting a two-decade ban on lawsuits against companies that profit from U.S.-linked properties confiscated after Cuba’s 1959 revolution.

There was no immediate official comment in Cuba on Bolton’s departure. But in reporting the firing, state-run TV said his removal was further proof of the “dysfunction” and “contradictions” plaguing the Trump administration.

Fernando Cutz, who worked on Latin American issues at the National Security Council in both the Obama and Trump administrations, said he expects the Trump administration now to focus more on the way Cuba and the U.S. interact and less on actions that hurt the Cuban people.

But he expects more continuity on Venezuela.

“The pressure on Maduro won’t change, though the tactics likely will,” Cutz said. “Depending on who comes in, we’ll likely stop seeing the military intervention rhetoric and start seeing more responsible rhetoric, with a greater focus on a potential solution through dialogue.”

Republican Dan Bishop has won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after a narrow victory in a special election that was watched closely by the country’s major parties for potential signals ahead of next year’s national elections.

Bishop defeated Democratic candidate Dan McCready by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent.

In a sign of the importance of the election, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence both visited North Carolina on the eve of the election to rally support for Bishop.

Trump celebrated the victory Tuesday, along with a Republican win in another special election in North Carolina.

BIG NIGHT FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2019

McCready was the Democratic candidate during the 2018 election when he went up against then-Republican candidate Mark Harris. But the results of that vote were thrown out and a special election ordered after state officials ruled there was an absentee-ballot fraud scheme that benefited Harris.

Democrats made big gains in the 2018 election cycle and retook control of the House of Representatives. The entire House and about one-third of the U.S. Senate will be up for election when the nation also votes for president in 2020.

The recent surge of deadly xenophobic attacks in South Africa is triggering concern in several African countries.  In Nigeria, the deaths have sparked reprisal attacks and calls for an end to the operation of South African businesses in the country. But as Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja, tens of thousands of Nigerian jobs could be at stake