President Donald Trump is suggesting the United States start manipulating its currency to match the “big currency manipulation game” he accuses China and Europe of playing.

“We should match or continue being the dummies who sit back and politely watch as other countries continue to play their games as they have for many years!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Countries that manipulate currency sell their own currency and buy foreign money, intending to artificially drive down the value of their own money. The intention is to make their exports cheaper and more competitive on the world market, giving their products an unfair advantage.

Trump constantly accused China of such action during his 2016 presidential campaign.

But since Trump took office, the Treasury Department has found that no country can be labeled a currency manipulator. Eight countries are on the manipulator watch list, including China, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
 

Pakistani counterterrorism officials have registered 23 cases related to terrorism financing against more than a dozen people, including Hafiz Saeed, a central figure in the Mumbai attacks of 2008 that killed more than 170 people.

Counter Terror Department (CTD) Punjab said in a statement the individuals were using various charities and trusts to raise funds to finance terrorism.

Saeed and the other individuals are said to be from the leadership of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), which are all organizations banned by the U.N. The U.N. sanctions committee considers the three groups, founded by Saeed, to be aliases of one another, with the latter two formed to bypass a ban Pakistan imposed on LeT in 2002.

Saeed has been sanctioned by both the United Nations and the U.S. for his role in the Mumbai attacks.

The crackdown is seen as a response to the pressure the country is facing from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international terrorism financing watchdog that last year placed Pakistan on its “gray list” of countries. Such countries, the FATF warns, lack adequate controls over money laundering and terrorism.

FATF warning

After its latest review in May, the group issued a stern warning to the country.

“The FATF expresses concern that not only did Pakistan fail to complete its action plan items with January deadlines, it also failed to complete its action plan items due May 2019. The FATF strongly urges Pakistan to swiftly complete its action plan by October 2019, when the last set of action plan items are set to expire,” said a statement published on the FATF website.

The consequences of inaction could be a continuation on the gray list or a downgrade to what is known as the “black list.”

The lists are akin to a credit rating system, warning international banks and investors to be wary of a country’s compliance with international terror financing laws. Placement on the lists can add to the cost of doing business internationally, and could hamper the growth of Pakistan’s already faltering economy.

The country has recently negotiated a three-year, $6 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund to help it get through a balance-of-payments crisis that sent its currency plummeting to historic lows last week.

During negotiations, IMF demanded action on “anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism efforts,” according to a statement by Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, who led an IMF mission to the country in April and May.

The move against Saeed and LeT, a long-standing demand of the United States, is also considered to be timed to help a visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Washington, expected later this month.

“When Imran Khan goes to the U.S., the first request they will make is for the U.S. to lift restrictions on giving money to Pakistan. … So obviously they would want to take a performance report with them,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of two books on Pakistan’s military who also writes extensively on militancy in Pakistan.

Last year, the U.S. suspended more than $1.6 billion in security assistance to Pakistan, over its perceived inaction against militant groups, including those fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Despite the economic and other considerations, the Pakistani government faces an uphill battle in trying to convince the international community of its counterterrorism intentions.

“The U.S. will be heartened by this move, but it will want Pakistan to go further and take what it often describes as ‘irreversible’ steps — efforts that don’t just register cases against these terror groups but also dismantle their financial networks entirely,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

‘Devil is in the details’

Richard Olson, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, agreed that it would be regarded as a positive step initially but said, “The devil is in the details. Much will depend on how vigorously the prosecution is pursued.”

The doubts stem from past Pakistani actions, Siddiqa said.

“The reason why people doubt them is that they have taken such actions in the past under pressure [from the international community] but reversed them as soon as the pressure was off,” she said.

Amjad Shoaib, a retired lieutenant general of the Pakistan army who now appears as an analyst on local media, said Pakistan was expected to take action without evidence.

“Neither India nor the U.S. has ever given concrete proof against Hafiz Saeed that could lead to conviction. Then they expect us to take action against him. How can we do it?” he asked.

Pakistan’s courts have, in the past, dismissed cases against Saeed for lack of evidence. The U.S. government has offered a bounty of $10 million for information leading to his conviction.

Registering cases against Saeed or such individuals was only one part of the equation, said Amir Rana, the director of Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank. The other part of the equation, a comprehensive plan on what to do with the mindset that led to militancy, was missing.

“What we need to see is what to do with these people. Even if JuD disappears, the mindset will continue. There are other groups that its members can join,” he said.

At least 26 people died after a lobster-fishing boat capsized off the Atlantic coast of Honduras during poor weather conditions, an armed forces spokesman said Wednesday, in one of the country’s worst accidents at sea.

Forty-seven people were rescued after the accident near Puerto Lempira, said Jose Domingo Meza, the armed forces spokesman.

Various boats have gathered off the Honduran coast for lobster-fishing season, which began this month and runs through February.

Another fishing boat capsized earlier in the day in the same region because of the poor weather, but all 49 people onboard were rescued, Meza said.

Honduras lobster exports generated $46 million in 2018, according to official data, and were sent mostly to the United States.
 

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States on Wednesday of being “more and more hell-bent on hostile acts” against Pyongyang, despite President Donald Trump’s desire for talks between the two countries. 

In a statement, the mission said it was responding to a U.S. accusation that Pyongyang had breached a cap on refined petroleum imports, as well as to a letter that it said was sent on June 29 by the United States, France, Germany and Britain to all U.N. member states urging them to implement sanctions against North Korea. 

“What can’t be overlooked is the fact that this joint letter game was carried out by the permanent mission of the United States to the U.N. under instruction of the State Department, on the very same day when President Trump proposed for the summit meeting,” the statement said. 

Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. The pair agreed to resume stalled talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. 

The North Korean U.N. mission said the June 29 letter to U.N. member states “speaks to the reality that the United States is practically more and more hell-bent on the hostile acts against the DPRK, though talking about the DPRK-U.S. dialog.” 

North Korea is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). 

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products. 

‘Obsessed with sanctions’ 

The United States, backed by dozens of allies, told a council sanctions committee last month that North Korea had breached an annual U.N. cap of 500,000 barrels imposed in December 2017, mainly through transfers between ships at sea. 

Washington wanted the 15-member North Korea sanctions committee to demand an immediate halt to deliveries of refined petroleum to North Korea. However, Pyongyang allies Russia and China delayed the move. 

The letter from the United States, Germany, Britain and France cited by North Korea’s U.N. mission — and viewed by Reuters — was actually dated June 27. It urges all U.N. member states to comply with Security Council sanctions requiring the repatriation of all North Korean workers by Dec. 22, 2019. 

“It is quite ridiculous” for the United States to continue to be “obsessed” with sanctions and its pressure campaign against the DPRK, “considering sanctions as a panacea for all problems,” the North Korean U.N. mission said Wednesday. 

Following Sunday’s meeting between Kim and Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that a new round of denuclearization talks would most likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks,” and that North Korea’s negotiators would be Foreign Ministry diplomats. 

The United States and other Security Council members have said there must be strict enforcement of sanctions until Pyongyang acts, while Russia and China have suggested the council discuss easing the measures. 

“All U.N. member states will have to keep vigilance against deliberate attempts by the United States to undermine the peaceful atmosphere that has been created on the Korean Peninsula in no easy way,” the North Korean statement said. 

A federal judge temporarily blocked an Ohio law Wednesday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, allowing clinics to continue to provide the procedure as a legal faceoff continues. 
 
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett halts enforcement of the so-called heartbeat law that opponents argued would effectively ban the procedure. That’s because a fetal heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. 
 
Barrett said Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics represented by the American Civil Liberties Union that sued to stop the law “are certain to succeed on the merits of their claim that [the law] is unconstitutional on its face.” 
 
Barrett joined the court in 2006 after being nominated by Republican President George W. Bush. 
 
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill into law in April, after predecessor John Kasich, a fellow Republican, twice vetoed it.  
  
Ohio is among a dozen states that have considered similar legislation this year, as abortion opponents have pursued a national anti-abortion strategy to try to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. 
 
Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio, said in an emailed statement that the decision “upheld the clear law: women in Ohio (and across the nation) have the constitutional right to make this deeply personal decision about their own bodies without interference from the state.” 
 
Ohio Right to Life, the state’s oldest and largest anti-abortion group, called the judge’s decision disappointing but not surprising. 
 
“The heartbeat bill has the potential to be the vehicle that overturns Roe v. Wade,” Mike Gonidakis, the group’s president, said in a statement. “We know that this temporary restraining order is just a step in the process to finally seeing Roe reconsidered.” 

New York state’s attorney general asked a judge Wednesday to help resolve conflicting accounts by President Donald Trump and his administration as to whether they still want a citizenship question added to the 2020 census.

Attorney General Letitia James asked U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman for a hearing over the statements after the U.S. Supreme Court last week decided the question can’t immediately be added.

James cited a Wednesday Trump tweet in which the president said news reports saying the Department of Commerce was dropping its quest to add the citizenship question were “FAKE!”

She also cited a statement by the commerce secretary saying the Census Bureau was printing the questionnaires without the question.

In a court order, the judge said the Justice Department lawyers who defended the case before him last year must respond to James’ request for court intervention later Wednesday and include “a statement of Defendants’ position and intentions.”

Furman and two other judges in California and Maryland have concluded that the question was improperly added to the census last year by the Commerce Department without adequate consideration.

The administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters’ access to the ballot box.

 

The windows where scantily clad sex workers stand to attract customers in Amsterdam could be closing for good.

The city’s mayor proposed fundamental changes Wednesday to the network of narrow alleys and canal side streets that make up Amsterdam’s famed red light district.
 
The proposals range from closing the window curtains so sex workers no longer are on public display and shutting down brothels with display windows altogether to adding more windows and moving prostitution somewhere else in the city.

Mayor Femke Halsema said the ideas are intended to protect sex workers’ rights, prevent crime and reduce nuisances for local residents and businesses.

Halsema plans to discuss the four proposals for the red light district’s future at two meetings later this month with those affected. In September, the city council will also debate them before narrowing down the options and checking their financial and legal viability.

The announcement of a public consultation on the future of the neighborhood and its 330 prostitution windows marks the latest attempt by Amsterdam officials to clean up a part of the city’s historic center that has in recent years become a noisy, overcrowded tourist magnet.

A red light district has existed for centuries close to the city’s main waterway. In recent years, the local government has sought to reduce the number of windows and to gentrify the area, but with limited success.

On most evenings, large groups of tourists wander through the area, which also is home to peep shows, bars and marijuana-selling cafes.

Amsterdam says the proposed reforms follow changes in the sex industry in recent years and in the rise in the number of tourists.

In a statement, the city said that for some visitors, “a sex worker is nothing more than an attraction to look at.”
Increasingly, sex workers also are offering services online, away from the regulated industry in the red light district.

“In this part of the market, abuses happen more often,” the city said.

 

The U.S. Homeland Security chief on Wednesday ordered an immediate investigation into a report that current and former U.S. Border Patrol agents are part of a Facebook group that posts racist, sexist and violent comments about migrants and Latin American lawmakers.

Acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan said “any employee found to have compromised the public’s trust in our law enforcement mission will be held accountable.”

McAleenan said those contributing to the Facebook postings “do not represent the men and women of the Border Patrol” or the Homeland Security agency. 

I have directed an immediate investigation, and as the

Israeli police were bracing for another day of violent protests Wednesday after community activists called for renewed street demonstrations in response to the killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli teen by an off-duty police officer.

As crowds of protesters gathered in cities across Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged calm and said he was convening a ministerial committee to discuss “all issues” affecting Israel’s Ethiopian community, which suffers from poverty and discrimination and accuses the police of excessive force.

“We will discuss all issues but we will also discuss something that is unacceptable,” he said. “We are not prepared to either accept or tolerate the blocking of roads and the use of violence, including firebombs against our forces, the burning of cars or any other property of citizens.”

Police were deployed at demonstration sites throughout the country.

On Tuesday, protesters blocked major highways around the country, snarling traffic for hours. They also attacked police and vandalized vehicles in response to what they see as continued police brutality.

Iran’s president warned European partners in its faltering nuclear deal on Wednesday that Tehran will increase its enrichment of uranium to “any amount that we want” beginning on Sunday, putting pressure on them to offer a way around intense U.S. sanctions targeting the country. 

The comments by President Hassan Rouhani come as tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S. over the deal, which President Donald Trump pulled America from over a year ago. 

Authorities on Monday acknowledged Iran broke through a limit placed on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. 

An increasing stockpile and higher enrichment closes the estimated one-year window Iran would need to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the nuclear deal sought to prevent. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. has rushed an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers and F-22 fighters to the region and Iran recently shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. On Wednesday, Iran marked the shootdown by the U.S. Navy of an Iranian passenger jet in 1988, a mistake that killed 290 people and shows the danger of miscalculation in the current crisis. 

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting in Tehran, Rouhani’s comments seemed to signal that Europe has yet to offer Iran anything to alleviate the pain of the renewed U.S. sanctions targeting its oil industry and top officials. 

Iran’s nuclear deal currently bars it from enriching uranium above 3.67%, which is enough for nuclear power plants but far below the 90% needed for weapons. 

“In any amount that we want, any amount that is required, we will take over 3.67,” Rouhani said. 

“Our advice to Europe and the United States is to go back to logic and to the negotiating table,” Rouhani added. “Go back to understanding, to respecting the law and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Under those conditions, all of us can abide by the nuclear deal.”

There was no immediate reaction in Europe, where the European Union just the day before finalized nominations to take over the bloc’s top posts. 

On Tuesday, European powers separately issued a statement over Iran breaking through its stockpile limit, calling on Tehran “to reverse this step and to refrain from further measures that undermine the nuclear deal.”

Under the nuclear deal, Iran agreed to have less than 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of uranium enriched to a maximum of 3.67%. Both Iran and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency confirmed Monday that Tehran had breached that limit.

While that represents Iran’s first major departure from the accord, it still remains likely a year away from having enough material for a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, but the West fears it could allow Iran to build a bomb.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, relatives of those killed in the 1988 downing of the Iranian passenger jet threw flowers into the Strait of Hormuz in mourning. 

The downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the U.S. Navy remains one of the moments the Iranian government points to in its decades-long distrust of America. They rank it alongside the 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister and secured Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s absolute power until he abdicated the throne before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Just after dawn on July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes sent a helicopter to hover over Iranian speedboats the Navy described as harassing commercial ships. The Iranians allegedly fired on the helicopter and the Vincennes gave chase, the Navy said. Unacknowledged for years afterward by the Navy though, the Vincennes had crossed into Iranian territorial waters in pursuit. It began firing at the Iranian ships there.

The Vincennes then mistook Iran Air flight 655, which had taken off from Bandar Abbas, Iran, heading for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, for an Iranian fighter jet. It fired missiles, killing all 290 people on board.

The U.S. later would give USS Vincennes Capt. William C. Rogers the country’s Legion of Merit award, further angering Iran.

Iranian state television aired footage Wednesday of mourners in the strait, as armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast boats patrolled around them. They tossed gladiolas into the strait as some wept.
 

An airstrike hit a detention center for migrants in the Libyan capital early Wednesday, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, officials in the country’s U.N.-supported government said.

The airstrike was likely to raise further concerns about the European Union’s policy of partnering with Libyan militias to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, which often leaves them at the mercy of brutal traffickers or stranded in squalid detention centers near the front lines.

It could also lead to greater Western pressure on Khalifa Hifter, a Libyan general whose forces launched an offensive on Tripoli in April. The Tripoli-based government blamed his self-styled Libyan National Army for the airstrike and called for the U.N. support mission in Libya to establish a fact-finding committee to investigate.

A spokesman for Hifter’s forces did not immediately answer phone calls and messages seeking comment. Local media reported the LNA had launched airstrikes against a militia camp near the detention center.

The airstrike targeting the detention center in Tripoli’s Tajoura neighborhood also wounded 35 migrants, according to the Interior Ministry in Tripoli. Health Ministry spokesman Malek Merset posted photos of migrants being taken in ambulances to hospitals. He had earlier said that 80 were wounded.

Footage circulating online and said to be from inside the migrant detention center showed blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants’ belongings. 

The airstrike hit a workshop housing weapons and vehicles and an adjacent hangar where around 150 migrants were being held, mostly Sudanese and Moroccans, according to two migrants who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

The migrants said three or four survived unharmed and about 20 were wounded. They said the remainder were killed, indicating the final death toll could be much higher.

The U.N. refugee agency in Libya condemned the airstrike on the detention center, which houses a total of 616 migrants and refugees.

The LNA launched an offensive against the weak Tripoli-based government in April. Hifter’s forces control much of Libya’s east and south but were dealt a significant blow last week when militias allied with the Tripoli government reclaimed the strategic town of Gharyan, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital. Gharyan had been a key LNA supply route.

Many camps for militias loosely allied with the U.N.-supported government are in Tajoura, east of the city center, and Hifter’s forces have targeted such camps with airstrikes in recent weeks. The LNA said Monday it had begun an air campaign on rival forces in Tripoli after it lost control of Gharyan.

His forces include the remnants of Gadhafi’s army as well as tribal fighters and ultra-conservative Islamists known as Salafists. They appear more like a regular army than their adversaries, with uniforms and a clear chain of command. 

Hifter’s forces boast MiG fighter jets supplied by neighboring Egypt, as well as drones, attack helicopters and mine-resistant vehicles. It was not immediately clear what munitions were used in the airstrike early Wednesday.

Oded Berkowitz, a security analyst focused on the Libyan conflict, said Hifter’s LNA flies “a handful of obsolete aircraft” that are “in poor condition.” He said it has received spare parts from Egypt and possibly Russia, as well as decommissioned aircraft from both countries.

“Egypt and the UAE have been conducting air operations on behalf of the LNA, but there are no indications that the UAE transferred aircraft to the LNA,” he said.

The fighting for Tripoli has threatened to plunge Libya into another bout of violence on the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi and led to his death.

Hifter says he is determined to restore stability to the North African country. He is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia while his rivals, mainly Islamists, are supported by Turkey and Qatar. 

His campaign against Islamic militants across Libya since 2014 won him growing international support from world leaders who say they are concerned that Libya has turned into a haven for armed groups and a major conduit for migrants bound for Europe.

His opponents, however, view him as an aspiring autocrat and fear a return to one-man rule.

At least 6,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and other nations are locked in dozens of detention facilities in Libya that are run by militias accused of torture and other abuses. Most of the migrants were apprehended by European Union-funded and -trained Libyan coast guards while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.

The detention centers have limited food and other supplies for the migrants, who made often-arduous journeys at the mercy of abusive traffickers who hold them for ransom money from families back home.

The U.N. refugee agency has said that more than 3,000 migrants are in danger because they are held in detention centers close to the front lines between Hifter’s forces and the militias allied with the Tripoli government.

Libya became a major crossing point for migrants to Europe after the 2011 ouster and killing of Gadhafi, when the North African nation was thrown into chaos, armed militias proliferated and central authority fell apart.
 

The intensity of President Donald Trump’s hardline approach to immigration hasn’t just pushed the Republican Party rightward — it’s also moving Democrats in ways that are profoundly transforming the immigration debate.

Gone are hopes for a big, bipartisan immigration overhaul once envisioned in Congress. With dire conditions taking hold at the border, and deportations stoking fear in immigrant communities, groups on the left are no longer willing to engage in the trade-offs that had long been cornerstones to any deal. That’s pushing the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to increasingly say they’ll rely on executive action to undo Trump’s policies and revamp the system that lawmakers have been unable to fix.

“The brutality of this administration has pushed this conversation to happen,” said Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream Action.

The group formed around protecting young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, but now sees that issue as a starting point, or “floor,” in the debate as the nation confronts harsh images from the border, including the deaths of migrant children and adults in federal custody.

“The world is bearing witness,” Jimenez said. “You’re seeing the pressure of this moment is pushing the conversation.”

At their first televised debate, the Democratic presidential candidates gave voice to the enormous shift under way. Talk of reviving “comprehensive immigration reform” was largely absent, replaced by calls for unilateral action.

“Day One, we take out our executive order pen and we rescind every damn thing on this issue that Trump has done,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

California Sen. Kamala Harris said she would immediately use executive action as president to protect young immigrants by preserving the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — and by extending those deportation protections to parents and military veterans.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Housing Secretary Julian Castro want to do away with the law that makes illegal entry into the United States a criminal, rather than civil, offense.

And Sen. Cory Booker announced a plan Tuesday to use his presidential powers to orient the Department of Homeland Security away from immigration raids on schools or churches and end Trump’s travel ban to the U.S. by residents of certain majority-Muslim nations.

Longtime immigration advocate Frank Sharry said the urgency of the situation and the GOP’s embrace of Trump’s priorities is propelling Democrats in a new direction.

“Do we think comprehensive immigration reform would pass in 2021? It’s kind of hard to imagine,” he said.

For more than a decade, Congress has tried to broker an immigration compromise by marrying two different but related concepts — a pathway to citizenship for some of the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, and beefed-up border security and enforcement to prevent a wave of new arrivals. The pairing was central to a 2007 effort from John McCain and Ted Kennedy, the former Senate lions, and to a sprawling 2013 bill that was approved overwhelmingly in the Senate only to be ignored by John Boehner’s GOP-controlled House.

But that calculus changed under Trump. He entered the campaign in 2016 decrying Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and seized control of the party with his promise to “build the wall.” One of Trump’s first actions as president was to shut down entry into the U.S. for immigrants from some Muslim countries. As president, his focus has been on enforcement — both limiting new arrivals seeking asylum and stepping up deportations of those immigrants already here, even longstanding residents whose only crime was illegal entry.

Even though Trump spoke privately early on of doing something “nice” for the Dreamers, groups on the right who favor tough enforcement never signed on. Nor did some of Trump’s more influential advisers, and Trump ultimately resisted bipartisan overtures from Congress.

Last week, as the border crisis worsened, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to add provisions to improve migrant care as part of a $4.6 billion emergency funding bill. But the White House threatened a veto, saying it would “hamstring” the administration’s ability at to enforce borders.

President Barack Obama’s administration also carried out tough enforcement policies as they tried to broker a broader immigration deal with Congress — there were so many removals under his watch that immigrant advocates labeled him the “deporter-in-chief.” But when no deal could be found, Obama decided to go it alone, establishing and then expanding the deportation protections for young Dreamers that Trump is seeking to end — a step that is now pending before the Supreme Court.

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said Tuesday he still wants Congress to “fix a broken system.”

The Texas congressman, the twin brother of the presidential candidate, led a delegation of lawmakers to visit border facilities Monday and posted stark videos of women, some of them grandmothers, being detained in cramped and potentially unsanitary conditions.

“I continue to hold out hope that we can work together on some kind of immigration reform legislation,” Castro said in an interview. “Part of the challenge is that for the president it is his No. 1 go-to political punching bag issue. That makes it very hard because, even for moderate Republicans, it moves everybody to the far right.”

Republicans say the problem is Democrats want “open borders,” government benefits for those here illegally and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At the recent presidential debate, all the Democratic candidates onstage raised their hands when asked if they would provide health care for immigrants illegally in the U.S.

“All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!? That’s the end of that race!” Trump tweeted.

With the emotions around immigration so raw, longtime advocates see the gridlock as hard to overcome.

“The process of a McCain-Kennedy bipartisan breakthrough on immigration is hard to imagine,” said Sharry. He said even a more narrowly tailored bipartisan measure — linking funding to build Trump’s border wall to deportation protections for Dreamers — failed in the Senate in 2018 after the White House opposed it.

“The idea of a bipartisan deal with a Trumpian Republican Party is impossible to imagine for the short run,” he said.

New polls show California Senator and Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris surging after her performance in last week’s first Democratic candidates’ debate.

The surveys also show Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gaining ground while the current Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, is slipping. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has also lost ground, according to the new surveys.

A new Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed Biden still leading the Democratic primary field at 22 percent, followed closely by Harris at 20 percent. Warren is in third place with 14 percent followed by Sanders at 13 percent.

Harris also saw dramatic movement in a new CNN/SRSS poll that found her moving into second place among the Democratic contenders with 17 percent support, narrowly trailing Biden who leads with 22 percent.

Warren placed third with 15 percent followed by Sanders at 14 percent.  Trailing behind the top tier in the CNN poll were South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 4 percent, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke both with 3 percent, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at 2 percent.

Iowa shift

Similar trends were evident in a national poll by Morning Consult/Politico and in a survey in the early voting state of Iowa by Suffolk University and USA Today.

In the Iowa poll, Biden continues to lead the Democratic pack with 24 percent support, but Harris has hurtled into second place with 16 percent following the debate, ahead of Warren with 13 percent and Sanders at 9 percent.

Iowa begins the caucus and primary season to choose a Democratic nominee with its caucus vote on Feb. 3, 2020.

Debate impact

The new polling data confirms that Harris was able to capitalize on her direct challenge of Biden during last week’s debate in Miami.

Harris told Biden in the debate that his defense of having worked with segregationist senators decades earlier was “hurtful.” She also took him to task for his opposition to government-mandated busing efforts to desegregate public schools in the 1970s.

“You also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris said in the debate televised by NBC.  “And there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Biden appeared stung by the criticism and launched into a defense of his own civil rights record during his lengthy career as a senator and vice president.

“I am the guy who extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years! We got to a place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the United States Senate doing it. I have also argued very strongly that deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box,” Biden said in his response.

Harris jolt

Prior to the debate, Harris had been stuck in the high single-digits in most polls, well behind the top-tier contenders of Biden, Sanders and Warren.

But analysts say the first debate has clearly given the Harris campaign a jolt.

“I think Kamala Harris really did come out of this debate pretty well,” said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “Joe Biden is a frontrunner but holds a lot of support that is, perhaps, weak. The African American community is very with Joe Biden in the polls today. I think Kamala Harris really made a play for that in the debate and she would be a candidate who would speak to that group that is 25 percent of the electorate of the Democratic Party.”

Biden impact

Biden has been the Democratic frontrunner since he entered the race earlier this year.  University of Virginia analyst Kyle Kondik told VOA that some of Biden’s vulnerabilities are beginning to show and he can expect more scrutiny in the debates to come.

“And it will be a test for Biden as to whether he can maintain his level of support. Is his level of support just based on generic goodwill from the Obama years, his vice presidential tenure and his name identification? Or is there something deeper about Biden’s level of support that will help him withstand what is to come?” he said.

There are some bits of good news for Biden in the CNN poll. He still leads the Democratic field, though with a sharply reduced margin. And Biden also retains strong support from African American voters, a key voting bloc within the Democratic Party. Biden still leads among black voters with 36 percent support, but Harris has closed the gap at 24 percent.

The polls also show that many Democrats still see Biden as a moderate and regard him as perhaps the strongest candidate to take on President Donald Trump next year.

The CNN poll found that 43 percent of Democrats see Biden as the strongest challenger to Trump, with Sanders a distant second.

Quinnipiac found that 42 percent believe Biden has the best chance of beating Trump, while Harris was second at 14 percent.

Beating Trump

Previous polling has shown that defeating Trump in 2020 remains the top priority for most Democratic voters, according to Emory University expert Andra Gillespie.

“What Biden is kind of banking on is the fact that there are lots of moderate primary voters in particular who may be liberal on some things but are not as liberal as, say, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would be in the election. And so there might be a higher comfort level with him,” Gillespie told VOA via Skype.

The next Democratic debate will be held over two nights later this month in Detroit, Michigan.  The same qualifying standards apply as the first debate, which means that in order to appear on the debate stage, a candidate must register at least 1 percent in the polls and document campaign contributions from at least 65,000 individual donors.

The qualifications get tougher for the third debate in September. Contenders will have to register 2 percent in the polls and demonstrate 130,000 individual donors in order to qualify, standards that likely will leave some of the candidates out of the debate and scrambling to save their campaigns.

A major armed group in Syria has committed to identifying and releasing young boys and girls currently within its ranks, and put in place preventative, protection and disciplinary measures related to child recruitment and use, according to the the United Nations.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military alliance that has played a significant role in defeating the Islamic State (IS) terror group, signed an action plan with the U.N. to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children under the age of 18.

“It is an important day for the protection of children in Syria and it marks the beginning of a process as it demonstrates a significant commitment by the SDF to ensure that no child is recruited and used by any entity operating under its umbrella,” said Virginia Gamba, the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

The People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main group within the SDF, has been listed in the U.N. Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict for the recruitment and use of children since 2014.

In its 2018 annual report on children in armed conflict, the U.N. found 224 cases of child recruitment by the YPG and its women’s unit in 2017.

The 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War prohibits the use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers.

Reforming the SDF

But Kurdish military officials charge that they have been taking serious measures to address the issue of child soldiers in recent years.

“We are the only non-state group in Syria that adheres to international standards when it comes to recruitment of children and the conduct of war in general,” an SDF commander who declined to be identified told VOA.

Experts said the U.S.-backed SDF is under pressure from its international patrons to reform in terms of ethnic and sectarian norms.

“The SDF has a mandate to institutionalize and become a ‘normal’ security force, not just an umbrella coalition of militias, and this step is one of the important ways that it can achieve this goal,” said Nicholas Heras, a Syria expert at the Center for a New American Security.

Turkish response

Turkey has criticized the U.N. for signing such an agreement with a group it deems as terrorist.

Turkey views the SDF as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“The signing of an agreement by the U.N., which should be at the forefront in the fight against terror, with a terrorist organization cannot be explained in any way,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

In March 2018, Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels took control of the SDF-held city of Afrin in northwestern Syria after a two-month-long battle against Kurdish fighters.

Ankara has also threatened to carry out attacks against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

But U.S. President Donald Trump said recently that he has told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to make such a move.

Erdogan “had 65,000 men, army, on the border and he was going to wipe out Kurds… I called him, and asked him not to do it. I guess, they [Kurds] are natural enemies of his, or Turkey’s, and he has not done it. Then I said he [Erdogan] cannot do it,” Trump said over the weekend during a press conference in Osaka, Japan, where he attended the G-20 summit.

The U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday it will triple the number of people it is providing food and cash assistance to in northeastern Congo’s Ituri province, which is facing inter-ethnic violence and an Ebola epidemic.

WFP said a resurgence of clashes between ethnic groups has claimed at least 160 lives in recent weeks and has forced tens of thousands of additional people — many of whom are malnourished — to flee their homes.

Ituri is one of two provinces in the grip of Congo’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which has claimed more than 1,400 lives.

The U.N. food agency said it intends to expand the number of displaced people it is assisting in Ituri every month from 116,000 to 300,000.

“Our hearts go out to the latest victims of this senseless cruelty, most of them rural villagers who have had to run for their lives, with little or nothing, right at harvest time,” WFP’s Congo representative Claude Jibidar said in a statement. “Our ongoing relief operation in Ituri … means we are ready and able to quickly scale up.”

According to WFP, Congo is “the world’s second-largest hunger crisis,” with 13 million people not having a secure supply of food. This includes 5 million children “who are acutely malnourished,” the agency said.

WFP said it plans to assist 5.2 million Congolese this year, the same number it helped in 2018.
 

In a stinging defeat for President Donald Trump, his administration has ended its effort to add a citizenship  question to the 2020 U.S. census, saying that it will begin printing forms that do not include the contentious query.

White House and Justice Department officials confirmed the decision, which came in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling on June 27 that faulted the Trump administration for its original attempt to add the question.

Although the court left open the possibility of the administration adding the question, there was little time left for the government to come up with a new rationale.

The government had said in court filings that it needed to finalize the details of the questionnaire by the end of June.

Trump had suggested delaying the census so that the question could be added.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned Tuesday that the British economy is barely growing in the wake of mounting Brexit uncertainties and intensified trade tensions.

Carney said in a wide-ranging speech that a “sea change” has taken place in financial markets in recent months largely related to worries over the global economy. Trade tensions, particularly those involving the U.S. and China, have the potential to “shipwreck the global economy” and that’s a fear that’s taken root across financial markets.

“Reflecting the more febrile atmosphere, a trade war has shot to the top of the risks most worrying investors and measures of global economic policy uncertainty have reached record highs,” he said.

Though some of those tensions were eased over the weekend when U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to resume trade negotiations, Carney said it would be wise for investors not to get too carried away.

“Progress today is no guarantee of progress tomorrow,” he said. 
 
Carney, who is set to leave the bank at the end of January after seven years at the helm, said the British economy is having to cope with all these trade tensions at a time of acute uncertainty over the country’s departure from the European Union.

Britain was originally set to leave the EU on March 29 but because of the British Parliament’s failure to back a deal with the EU, it has been granted an extension until Oct. 31. Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, who are fighting it out to replace Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party and to become the next prime minister, have indicated that they’d be prepared to back a “no-deal” Brexit on that date if no revised agreement with the EU is struck.

Most economists think such an outcome will lead to a deep recession in Britain as tariffs and other restrictions to trade are imposed. Carney said markets now think the betting odds for a no-deal Brexit has risen to one-in-three.

“Recent data also raise the possibility that the negative spillovers to the U.K. from a weaker world economy are increasing and the drag from Brexit uncertainties on underlying growth here could be intensifying,” he said. “The latest surveys point to no growth in U.K. output.”

In the first quarter of the year, the British economy grew by 0.5% from the previous three-month period, though that was largely due to companies bringing forward production to build stocks before the original Brexit date. 
 
“Growth in the second quarter will be considerably weaker, in part due to the absence of that stock building effect and Brexit-related, temporary shutdowns by several major car manufacturers,” Carney said. “Looking across the first half of the year, in my view, underlying growth in the U.K. is currently running below its potential.” 

Nike is pulling a flag-themed tennis shoe after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick complained to the shoemaker, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The shoe’s heel has a U.S. flag with 13 white stars in a circle on it, known as the Betsy Ross flag. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Journal said that Kaepernick, a Nike endorser, told the company he and others found the flag symbol offensive because of its connection to slavery.

The Air Max 1 USA shoe had already been sent to retailers to go on sale this week for the July Fourth holiday, the Journal reports.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey lashed out at Nike’s decision to yank the sneaker, tweeting that he is asking the state’s Commerce Authority to withdraw all financial incentives for the company to locate there.

“Arizona’s economy is doing just fine without Nike. We don’t need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation’s history,” he wrote.

The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has released video and photos of migrant women being held at a border facility in Texas.

This moment captures what it’s like for women in CBP custody to share a cramped cell—some held for 50 days—for them to be denied showers for up to 15 days and life-saving medication. For some, it also means being separated from their children. This is El Paso Border Station #1. pic.twitter.com/OmCAlGxDt8

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) July 1, 2019

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro posted the images after touring a station in El Paso. Women held at the facility were “crammed into a prison-like cell with one toilet, but no running water to drink from or wash their hands,” Castro tweeted. Some had been separated from their children and held for more than 50 days, he said.

Castro said the women asked lawmakers to take down their names, shown in the video, to “let everyone know they need help.” He said the women feared retribution.

Officials had asked lawmakers touring the facility to leave their cell phones behind. After the visit, Democrats decried the conditions inside.