A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Monday demanded documents from Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao as part of a new investigation into whether she has used her office to benefit a shipping company owned by her family.

Leaders of the Democratic-controlled House Oversight Committee said in a letter to Chao they were troubled by media reports she may have used her role in the Trump administration to boost Foremost Group, a shipping company founded by her father.

The committee requested copies of communications between Chao and her father, James Chao, and her sister Angela Chao, Foremost’s chief executive, among other documents.

Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican ally of President Donald Trump.

A Transportation Department representative said in a statement that the agency looked forward to responding to the committee’s request.

“Media attacks targeting the secretary’s family are stale and only attempt to undermine her long career of public service,” said the representative, who declined to be identified.

New York-based Foremost does most of its business in China and has received low-interest loan commitments from a bank run by the Chinese government, according to a New York Times report.

The Times reported in June that Chao had attempted to include family members in meetings with Chinese officials that she was set to attend as transportation secretary.

Politico reported last year that Chao appeared alongside her father in at least a dozen interviews with Chinese and Chinese-American media outlets since her nomination.

The House Oversight Committee said in Monday’s letter that it was also investigating Chao’s “failure to divest” from Vulcan Materials Co., one of the largest U.S. construction companies, where she served on the board of directors before becoming transportation secretary.

In early 2017, Chao pledged to cash out her stock holdings in Vulcan by April 2018. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Chao had yet to fulfill that pledge.

Chao sold her shares in Vulcan a few days after the Wall Street Journal report, according to documents submitted to the Office of Government Ethics.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido is considering attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month to step up pressure on socialist President Nicolas Maduro but has not yet reached a decision, the opposition’s envoy to the United States said on Monday.

It would only be the second trip abroad by Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly since he invoked Venezuela’s constitution in January to assume an interim presidency, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

“We haven’t decided. It is an option,” Carlos Vecchio, Guaido’s envoy to the United States, told a small group of reporters at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

He made his comments a day after the opposition said talks mediated by Norway to try to resolve Venezuela’s political crisis had ended and put the blame on Maduro’s government.

Maduro, who has accused Guaido of leading a U.S.-directed coup attempt, said on Thursday he will not travel to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, an annual gathering of world leaders. But he said two of his envoys would attend to denounce U.S. sanctions on the OPEC nation.

Vecchio said among the factors weighing on the decision on Guaido’s attendance would be the difficulty he would face getting out of Venezuela and then returning home.

Guaido, who has been recognized as Venezuela’s rightful leader by dozens of countries, including the United States, slipped out of Venezuela in February and made a tour of Latin American capitals aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Maduro to step down.

If Guaido decides to go, Vecchio said, he will press for expanded international action against Maduro and make the case that the Socialist leader is unwilling to reach a political settlement.

The Venezuelan opposition is planning a series of events on the sidelines of the U.N. gathering to draw attention to the Venezuelan situation.

Now that talks between the two sides in Barbados have ended, the Venezuelan opposition wants European countries to impose more targeted sanctions on Maduro’s government and cut off financial transactions conducted via European institutions as well as the illicit gold trade, Vecchio said.

Guaido led a failed uprising in April against Maduro, who is accused of human rights violations and has overseen an economic collapse prompting millions to flee the country.

Russian actor Pavel Ustinov has been sentenced to 3  1/2 years in prison for violence against police during a protest rally last month he insists he did not participate in.

The Tver district court in Moscow on Monday found Ustinov guilty of verbally insulting police and assaulting a National Guard officer during the August 3 rally.

The demonstrators were protesting against the refusal by officials to register opposition and independent candidates for Moscow city-council elections that took place on September 8.

Ustinov pleaded not guilty. He has said that he did participate in the rally but just stood nearby.

Defense witnesses have confirmed that he neither insulted anyone nor resisted police, but was beaten up by law enforcement.

Judge Sergei Krivoruchko ruled that videos from the rallies, which the defense had wanted to present in the case, were not admissible.

The August 3 rally was part of a wave of demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of Russians onto the streets of Moscow.

Police violently dispersed several of the protests and more than 2,000 people were detained, drawing international condemnation.

A number of those detained have received jail sentences.

Six weeks after the Indian government imposed a partial clampdown in Kashmir, the Supreme Court directed authorities to “make the very best endeavor” to return normal life to the disputed Himalayan region. Judges also asked the Indian government to ensure smooth functioning of schools, hospitals and public transport.

The Supreme Court did not order the government to take specific actions to address the crisis.

India imposed a security lockdown and communication restrictions in the restive region on August 5, after scrapping its partial autonomy and bringing it directly under New Delhi’s control.

Since then some curbs have been eased and most landlines have been restored. But the Kashmir valley continues to be largely shuttered, and mobile and internet services are still blocked. Although schools have opened, most students are not attending classes. An estimated 1,000 people including regional political leaders are in detention.

The court’s ruling came in response to petitioners who have challenged the restrictions in the state calling them “draconian.”

They include editor Anuradha Bhasin, who told VOA that she is still not able to print the Srinagar edition of her newspaper, Kashmir Times, due to the clampdown on mobile phones and the internet.

She noted the difficulty in putting out a newspaper with only landlines functioning.

“More than 40 days have already passed by and the process of restoring communications has been a very slow one,” Bhasin said.

India’s top court has said normalcy must be restored “keeping national security in mind.”

The government told the court the restrictions are needed to maintain law and order and have argued such measures have already prevented widespread casualties like those during previous periods of unrest in the region.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a three-decade long violent separatist insurgency that has wracked Kashmir.

“Not a single bullet has been fired, there has been no loss of life,” the government’s lawyer, Tushar Mehta, told the court.

Since the dramatic announcement that changed Kashmir’s status, two deaths have been reported but there are conflicting accounts about what caused the fatalities. A teenager, Asrar Ahmad Khan, died in Srinagar earlier this month — locals say the injuries that caused his death were suffered when security forces fired with pellets and tear gas, but the government says he was hit by stone pelters.

A 60-year-old shopkeeper was also shot dead last month while sitting inside his shop. The government says he was killed by armed militants because he did not heed warnings by militant groups to keep shops closed.

Police officials say that militant groups have been distributing pamphlets warning people against opening shops, banks and petrol stations and this is preventing a return to normalcy.  

With the Indian government placing restrictions on journalists traveling to or reporting from Kashmir, authorities’ claims, and that of local residents, are difficult to verify.

Kashmir, which is disputed by India and Pakistan is India’s only Muslim majority region. New Delhi accuses Islamic militant groups based in Pakistan of fomenting a violent anti-India insurgency in Kashmir and says that it brought the Himalayan region under its direct control to end “terrorism” and bring development to the Himalayan region.

 

The Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China on Monday, becoming the latest country to leave the dwindling Taiwanese camp.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the move, saying the Solomon Islands Cabinet had approved a resolution to recognize Beijing as the government of China.
 
“The Taiwan government strongly condemns this and announces that it will terminate diplomatic relations between the two countries from now on, stop relevant aid programs and withdraw relevant personnel from the Taiwanese Embassy,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at a news conference.
 
There was no immediate confirmation from the Solomon Islands. The possibility of a switch had been widely reported in recent weeks.
 
China and Taiwan split in 1949 during a civil war. Most countries recognize Beijing as the government of China, and China has been wooing the remaining ones to abandon the island territory. Fewer than 20 governments still recognize Taiwan.

 

 

Purdue Pharma, the maker of prescription painkiller OxyContin, has filed for bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court.

The company is facing numerous lawsuits from local and state governments and other plaintiffs alleging it aggressively marketed dangerous, addictive painkillers that helped fuel the opioid crisis in the United States.

The bankruptcy filing comes days after Purdue Pharma reached a tentative settlement with about 2,000 entities that have filed lawsuits.  The value of the settlement could reach $12 billion.

But some of the states involved in the suits oppose the settlement, saying the company and the Sackler family that controls it are not offering enough and that the current terms would not produce the $12 billion in estimated relief.

Purdue Pharma Chairman Steve Miller rejected criticism of the settlement and said if instead the lawsuits go forward the only result would be to waste money on the legal fight that could otherwise be part of the agreement.

The Sacklers have offered to pay $3 billion under the settlement, and said they want the company to be utilized for public benefit.  That could include providing communities with free doses of drugs the company has created to combat overdoses and addiction to opioids.

The New York Attorney General’s office alleged in a Friday court filing that members of the Sackler family used hidden accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves.  The family said the transfers were done decades ago and were legal.

U.S. government data shows the number of drug overdose deaths involving opioids rose from 8,000 in 1999 to 47,600 in 2017.

NATO is hoping to provide stability in Afghanistan after long-anticipated peace talks with the Taliban fell apart. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more from the Slovenian capital, where NATO’s military chiefs have gathered.

Mamadou Wade Diop has been working with drones both in the photography and health sectors for years. But recently, he decided to work with local blacksmiths and construct a drone made entirely in Senegal.

Mamadou Wade Diop, who calls himself Dr. Drone on social media, is one of the few people, if not the only person in the Dakar area who can fix broken drones.

But recently, he’s taken his knowledge a step further, consulting with drone makers across the world on how to construct one of his own.

Diop says that through the internet, he’s been able to communicate with other drone makers in France and China to chat about their experiences. 

Though he does a lot of work in the audio-visual sector, renting his services out to news and documentary crews as well as collecting drone footage of various places in Senegal to sell, the purpose of his first Made-In-Senegal drone will be in the health sector – a drone that can spread chemicals to prevent mosquito breeding in stagnant water.

Not all materials necessary to make the drone are available in Senegal, but Diop says he wants to prove that it’s possible to make this technology right here in his home country.

Diop says that carbon fiber isn’t available in Senegal. Though he ordered it from China, he worked with local blacksmiths to shape pieces for his drone. And as for local materials, he was able to recycle a piece of aluminum from a broken refrigerator to form part of the body of his drone.

Mamadou Diallo is an owner of a photography shop who often collaborates with Diop.

Diallo says that the demand for drones in Senegal is not high but is increasing, though there is not yet enough of a market.

But he supports Diop, who says that if they don’t start making their own drones now, foreign companies will come in and begin to sell them at much higher prices.

Roughly 49,000 workers at General Motors plants in the U.S. plan to go on strike just before midnight Sunday, but talks between the United Auto Workers and the automaker will resume.

About 200 plant-level union leaders voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a meeting Sunday morning in Detroit. Union leaders said the sides were still far apart on several major issues and they apparently weren’t swayed by a GM offer to make new products at or near two of the four plants it had been planning to close, according to someone briefed on the matter.

“We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most,” union Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement, referring to union concessions that helped GM survive bankruptcy protection in 2009. “Now we are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members.”

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said Sunday evening that contract talks would resume at 10 a.m. Monday, but the strike was still expected to go ahead.

GM on Friday offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according someone who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because that person wasn’t authorized to disclose details of the negotiations, which hadn’t been released to the public. The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a plant that has already stopped making cars. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.

It’s unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.

The UAW’s Rothenberg said the company made general statements about why it is planning to strike, but he would not comment further on GM’s offer. The union said it would strike for fair wages, affordable health care, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.

In a statement, GM also said the offer made to the union on Saturday included more than $7 billion in U.S. factory investments and the creation of 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The investments would be made at factories in four states, two of which were not identified.

The statement also said the company offered “best in class wages and benefits,” improved profit sharing and a payment of $8,000 to each worker upon ratification. The offer included wage or lump sum increases in all four years of the deal, plus “nationally leading” health benefits.

The announcement came hours after the union let its contract with GM expire Saturday night.

If there is a strike, picketers would shut down a total of 53 GM facilities, including 33 manufacturing sites and 22 parts distribution warehouses. GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.

On Saturday, Dittes, the union’s chief bargainer, said in a letter to GM members that after months of bargaining, both the union and GM were far apart on issues such as wages, health care, temporary employees, job security and profit-sharing. The letter to members and another one to GM were aimed at turning up the pressure on GM negotiators.

A strike would bring to a halt GM’s U.S. production, and would likely stop the company from making vehicles in Canada and Mexico as well. That would mean fewer vehicles for consumers to choose from on dealer lots, and it would make it impossible to build specially ordered cars and trucks.

The strike would be the union’s first since a two-day work stoppage at GM in 2007.

On Friday, union leaders extended contracts with Ford and Fiat Chrysler indefinitely, but the pact with General Motors was still set to expire Saturday night.

The union picked GM, which is more profitable than Ford and Fiat Chrysler, as the target company, meaning it’s the focus of bargaining and would be the first company to face a walkout.

Talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because GM plans to close four U.S. factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, and Lordstown. The union has promised to fight the closures.

Here are the main areas of disagreement:

— GM is making big money, $8 billion last year alone, and workers want a bigger slice. The union wants annual pay raises to guard against an economic downturn, but the company wants to pay lump sums tied to earnings. Automakers don’t want higher fixed costs.

— The union also wants new products for the four factories GM wants to close. The factory plans have irked some workers, although most of those who were laid off will get jobs at other GM factories. GM currently has too much U.S. factory capacity.

— The companies want to close the labor cost gap with workers at plants run by foreign automakers. GM pays $63 per hour in wages and benefits compared with $50 at the foreign-owned factories. GM’s gap is the largest at $13 per hour, followed by Ford at $11 and Fiat Chrysler at $5, according to figures from the Center for Automotive Research.

— Union members have great health insurance plans and workers pay about 4% of the cost. Employees at large firms nationwide pay about 34%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The automakers would like to cut costs.

 

Ten top Democrats faced off in a debate in Houston last week, making a case for his or her policies while claiming to be the candidate who can beat Republican Donald Trump. VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports, Democrats face the challenge of appealing to party members while expanding their appeal to other voters

Hong Kong protesters clashed with  police Sunday.

Protesters threw Molotov cocktails and bricks at police near the Legislative Council building.

Police responded by firing water cannons filled with blue jets of water, a practice usually initiated to identify protesters later.

Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were on Hong Kong’s streets Sunday.

The weekend demonstrations have continued for three months despite the Hong Kong government’s promise to withdraw extradition legislation that sparked the protests. Dissenters have since broadened their demands for the direct election of their leaders and police accountability.

The protesters saw the bill that would have allowed some Hong Kong criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China for trial as an example of the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

More than 1,300 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began in early June.

The increasingly violent demonstrations have further damaged Hong Kong’s economy, which had already been weakened by the U.S.-China trade war.

Earlier Sunday, demonstrators gathered outside the British consulate where they sang “God Save the Queen.”

Under an agreement with the former colonial power Britain, China has promised Hong Kong can maintain its free market system and democratic freedoms until 2047. But hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for marches to protest what residents of Hong Kong see as steady encroachment on those freedoms by Beijing.

 

Less than two months into its term, Thailand’s post-junta government is fending off a series of challenges to its very existence, including a brewing political storm over the Cabinet’s failure to recite the full oath of office.

A general election in March returned the 2014 coup leader, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, to power to widespread criticism that his military junta had manipulated the contest in its favor. Two months later the country crowned a new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who has been consolidating power around the Royal Palace since the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, in 2016. The country’s GDP growth rate has meanwhile dipped to its lowest level since just after the putsch.

Analysts expect the country’s courts to save Prayut’s new administration from collapse. They say, though, that a pending fight in the lower house of Parliament next week over the botched oath could further batter its already bruised image, especially if the economy continues to flag.

Legitimacy of administration challenged

By challenging the administration’s very legitimacy, the opposition parties are “trying to wake Thai people up to the fact that this is not a democracy; this is simply the continuation of the junta by a different form,” said Paul Chambers, a political analyst and lecturer at Thailand’s Naresuan University.

At a swearing-in ceremony July 16, Prayut and his 35 ministers lined up before the king and pledged their allegiance. They also swore to work for the people and country but left out the last few words of the official oath, which included a vow to “uphold and observe the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand in every respect.”

The opposition says the omission raises fresh doubts about Prayut’s commitment to the rule of law. In theory it could also undo everything he and his Cabinet have done since taking the oath, including the approval of a draft 2020 budget and economic stimulus plan, if their tenure is ultimately deemed illegitimate.

Prayut has yet to explain why he and the ministers failed to recite the oath in full. Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam fueled speculation that it was deliberate while deflecting questions from local reporters in the days that followed.

“One day you’ll know why we shouldn’t talk about it,” he was quoted as saying by local media, adding that it was “something no one should stick his nose into.”

On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court bowed out of the brawl by claiming the matter was between Prayut and his Cabinet and the king. The Office of the Ombudsman had forwarded the original complaint to the court after deciding that the incomplete oath had breached the national charter.

Pitch Pongsawat, an assistant professor of political science at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, said he was not surprised by the decision from a court that has developed a reputation for siding with Thailand’s royalist, pro-military establishment.

“It’s unconstitutional,” he said of the swearing-in, “but [it] doesn’t matter with this regime … Everybody knows that they will find a way out.”

Parliament to grill Prayut

The opposition is scheduled to question the prime minister over the oath in Parliament Wednesday.

Pitch said the best it can hope for is to do more damage to the government’s democratic credentials by drawing an often truculent Prayut into a political faux pas or blunder under the pressure of a public grilling.

“If they do it very well … it will put the regime in trouble,” he said. “I think that’s what they’re aiming for.”

The day of the debate, the Constitutional Court is also set to rule on whether Prayut was even eligible to run for prime minister while still at the helm of the military government that followed the coup.

Eligibility questioned

The Constitution bars “state officials” from running for political office. A ruling against Prayut would trigger a new vote for prime minister in Parliament.

Pitch and Chambers expect the court to clear him one way or another, or draw the case out indefinitely.

Even if the government does survive, it may find it ever harder to actually govern.

Prayut’s Cabinet entered office with a razor-thin majority in the 500-seat lower house of Parliament to begin with. Having been passed over for ministry and legislative committee posts since then, a few of the coalition’s smallest parties recently announced that their votes were no longer guaranteed, leaving the parties remaining in the alliance with just under half the seats.

Pitch said, though, that the government was counting on lawmakers among the opposition parties to switch sides and make up for any losses when the time comes.

Chambers also noted that the lawmakers threatening to split from the ruling coalitions have said they were going “independent,” not necessarily joining the other side, possibly to win concessions for their continued loyalty.

“As independent MPs, they can demand more from the coalition for their vote. Actually they become more powerful,” he said.

Slowing economy

The one thing that just might bring the government down, Chambers said, had nothing to do with the courts, Constitution or Parliament.

“Probably the only thing that could really hurt this government is the economy,” he said. “If the economy sours increasingly … then those people who still like Prayut are going to wash their hands [of] the government. At that point there could be another election.”

Thailand’s year-on-year GDP growth hit 2.3% in the second quarter of 2019, its slowest pace in nearly five years.

The government spokesperson’s office would not comment for this story. A spokesman for Prayut’s party, Palang Pracharath, did not reply to a request for an interview.
 

Tunisians will choose Sunday from no fewer than 26 candidates in the country’s second democratic presidential elections — moved up several weeks by July’s death of President Beji Caid Essebsi.  

But this first round, which precedes legislative elections and a likely runoff presidential vote, will take place against the backdrop of a stagnating economy and a sense that the country’s 2011 “Jasmine” revolution has failed to deliver on its promise. 

The experience of final Friday night rallies in downtown Tunis was a bit like going candidate shopping. Crowds backing the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party packed one section of the iconic Habib Bourguiba Avenue, dancing and waving flags. 
 
Farther down were supporters of leftist candidates Hamam Hammami and Mongi Rahoui. 
 

And finally, fans of businessman Nabil Karoui, considered a strong contender despite — and maybe partly because of — his being detained on corruption charges. 
 
Posters lining the streets of the capital offered a dizzying choice, identifying candidates by number, 1 to 26, as well as by name.  University student Fellah Ferchichi, 25, couldn’t decide whom to vote for. 
 
“You have three or four people all the same, like [Prime Minister] Youssef Chahed is the top one now, and you have Kais Said,” Ferchichi said. “And especially you have a woman, like Selma Loumi [Rekik].” 

Businesswoman Mouna Belaid was voting for female candidate Abir Moussi, one of two female candidates and a supporter of ousted autocratic President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Belaid likes Moussi’s platform — and the idea of having Tunisia’s first female president. 

But there’s another strong contender: disaffection. Tunisia’s economy is struggling. Unemployment is soaring. Along some streets, uncollected garbage piles up on broken sidewalks. 
 
“I don’t know whom to vote for — they’re all the same,” said Alia Sitou, 57. “All of them say they’re going to create jobs and good things for youth. But there’s nothing, and the cafes are full of young men with diplomas and no jobs. 
 
“This first round is very important for the future … not only the future of the race, but also the future of Tunisia,” said Hamadi Redissi, head of the Tunisian Observatory for Democratic Transition outside Tunis. People are angry their lives haven’t improved since the revolution, eight years ago, and “that’s why the political elite and classic political parties are discredited, definitely discredited. Probably the Islamists will be discredited in these election.” 
 

That means the main Islamist party, Ennahda, which has been in coalition governments since 2011. It’s fielding Abdelfattah Mourou, 71, as its first presidential candidate. 
 
Deputy scientific research minister Khalil Amiri, part of the campaign team, said, “We are very conscious time is running out and patience is running out … and that’s why our program … has focused primarily on questions of regional development, economic governance [and] providing opportunities for everyone.” 

Priorities are the same for other candidates. But some pooorer voters are especially connecting with business tycoon Nabil Karoui, whose charitable work is well covered by his Nessma TV station. Supporters like campaign team member Samy Achour say tax evasion and money laundering charges against Karoui are politically motivated. 
 

“He has traveled all over the country for the past 3½ years, from north to south, east to west,” Achour said. “And he listened to the people and he understood their issues and he knows what it takes to make a difference.” 
 
The one thing certain about Sunday’s election is — it’s wide open. 

Congo’s National Ebola Response Committee says confirmed Ebola deaths in the east of the sprawling African nation are nearing 2,000 and confirmed cases of the virus have exceeded 3,000.

The committee released the latest numbers Friday after a discussion in Goma by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church about efforts to help stem the spread of Ebola in communities. A mistrust of health workers and widespread security issues still threaten the fight against the second deadliest outbreak of Ebola in history in a region where armed groups have fought for decades over the mineral-rich land.

The committee reported 3,002 confirmed Ebola cases with 1,974 deaths.
 
The World Health Organization said Friday they recorded the lowest weekly incidence of Ebola since March 2019 with 40 new cases, but said it was unclear if this positive trend would continue.

 

President Donald Trump has pegged his re-election bid on the strength of the U.S. economy. Amid growing concerns of a potential slowdown, the president insists the economy is strong, at the same time he’s pushing for growth by floating another potential round of tax cuts and urging the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates further. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.

VOA reporters Victoria Macchi and Ramon Taylor spoke with a broad sampling of migrants and asylum-seekers in early August. Many departed their home countries months before U.S. policy changes went into effect, under assumptions that no long apply. All are awaiting immigration court hearings. Here are some of their stories.

An international press freedom monitor has awarded Vietnamese journalist and blogger Pham Doan Trang a 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact.

“Pham Doan Trang is a true heroine given the situation of press freedom in Vietnam, where journalists and bloggers who do not toe the line of the current direction of the Communist Party face extremely severe repercussions,” said Daniel Bastard, who heads the Asia-Pacific Desk of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Trang, who has no fixed address, reports on civil rights issues in Vietnam, where she has been beaten and imprisoned twice.

Two other women received awards from the group Thursday night in Berlin. Saudi journalist Eman al Nafjan received the award for Courage and Maltese journalist Caroline Muscat received the prize for Independence.

Founder of Luât Khoa

Trang’s prize is awarded to journalists whose work has led to concrete improvements in journalistic freedom, independence and pluralism, or to an increase in awareness of these matters, according to an RSF statement.

Trang founded Luât Khoa, an online magazine that specializes in providing information about legal issues, and she edits another, The Vietnamese, which helps citizens defend their rights and resist the Communist Party’s rule, RSF said.

Independent journalists and bloggers who report critically on sensitive issues face harassment or detention on anti-state charges, and at least 11 were behind bars as of Dec. 1, 2018, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which ranks Vietnam sixth among the 10 countries where it deems journalists are most censored. Like Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, Vietnam is “especially adept at practicing these two brands of censorship: jailing and harassing journalists and their families, while also engaging in digital monitoring and censorship of the internet and social media,” according to a CPJ report.

Colleague accepted award

Because Vietnamese authorities wanted to set conditions on Trang for her to leave the country to accept the award, which she said she would not consent to, her friend and colleague, Trinh Huu Long, editor-in-chief for Luât Khoa magazine, accepted the award on Trang’s behalf.

“I hope this award will encourage the Vietnamese people to engage more in press freedom and to push Hanoi to improve the citizens’ basic rights,” Trang told VOA Vietnamese.

“I really wish it [will] encourage other journalists, including freelance journalists, to become more committed to pursuing truth, justice and human rights in Vietnam,” said Trang, who was born in 1978.

“I hope this award can help gain more international recognition of the hidden wave under the so-called political stability in the country. Below that surface is a layer of waves of repression and silence,” she added.

Grateful for RSF

RSF said that the Vietnamese government tries to stifle Trang’s voice through police intimidation, because she exposes its inconsistencies and its failure to guarantee civil and political rights.

Despite the major crackdown that began in 2016, Trang plays a crucial role in helping her fellow citizens gain access to independent information and enabling them to use the rule of law, as guaranteed by the Vietnamese constitution, against the arbitrary practices of the authorities, Bastard said.

“I believe that RSF’s goals for giving the award are to let journalists around the world, especially journalists who are victims of persecution, harassment, abuse and persecution, [know they] are not alone in their fights,” Trang said. “RSF has really helped people like me to feel I’m not alone.”

Her books, such as Politics for the Common People, A Handbook for Families of Prisoners and Politics of a Police State, were all published outside Vietnam. They “received much more readership than I expected,” Trang said.

Trang has been beaten by the police because of her work and was detained arbitrarily twice for several days in 2018, according to an RSF statement.

Two more women win

Muscat dedicated her award to assassinated Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb just meters from her home in October 2017. The Council of Europe has given Malta a deadline to hold an independent public inquiry into the journalist’s assassination, but with just days remaining, there is no sign that this will take place, according to The Shift News, which Muscat co-founded. The independent investigative news website focuses on combating corruption and defending press freedom.

Al Nafjan founded the blog Saudi Woman, which “features her reporting and opinions on the campaign to end the ban on women driving in the kingdom, as well as coverage of women’s rights issues, local elections, the Saudi anti-terror law and profiles of Saudi human rights activists,” according to CPJ.

A former Roman Catholic priest who fled to Morocco before he was returned to the United States and convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico in the 1990s was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.

U.S District Judge Martha Vazquez imposed the sentence in Albuquerque federal court on Arthur Perrault, 81, a onetime Air Force chaplain and colonel, U.S. Attorney John Anderson said in a statement.

“There are few acts more horrific than the long-term sexual abuse of a child,” Anderson said. “At long last, today’s sentence holds Perrault accountable for his deplorable conduct.”

Perrault’s trial attorney, Samuel Winder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Perrault was convicted by a federal jury in April on six counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact with a minor in 1991 and 1992 at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque and at the Santa Fe National Cemetery, prosecutors said.

The victim, now an adult, testified that Perrault befriended him when he was 9 years old, showering him with gifts and trips before sexually assaulting him, prosecutors said.

Although he was convicted of abusing one victim, prosecutors alleged in court filings that Perrault was a serial child molester who abused numerous young people in more than 30 years as a priest in New Mexico and Rhode Island.

At his trial, seven other alleged victims testified that Perrault, ordained in 1964, abused them during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

The Roman Catholic Church has been roiled by allegations of sexual abuse since 1992, when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed a decades-long cover-up by church hierarchy of sexual misconduct by its clergy.

The U.S. Catholic Church has paid out more than $3 billion to settle clergy abuse cases, according to BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the issue.

Under federal law, a convicted defendant must serve at least 85% of a sentence, meaning Perrault will likely die in prison.

Perrault fled the United States in 1992 when his criminal conduct became public, prosecutors said. He was located in Morocco, where he was arrested in 2017 following his indictment on the sex charges, and was extradited to New Mexico.

Linda Card, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said Perrault served in the Air Force Reserve Chaplain Corps, and for a time was on active-duty status.

A woman accused of trying to help al-Qaida has pleaded guilty in Alabama to a charge of concealing terrorism financing.

Federal prosecutors say Alaa Mohd Abusaad entered the plea Friday during a hearing in federal court in Tuscaloosa.

Authorities arrested the one-time University of Alabama student last year. Court documents show Abusaad communicated over messaging programs with a person she didn’t know was an undercover FBI employee.

A statement from prosecutors shows she gave instructions on how to send money to the mujahedeen and included the comment: “You can’t have war without weapons.” Authorities say she also put the FBI in touch with someone who could get money to al-Qaida.

A criminal information against the woman was filed Wednesday, the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
 

Pacific Gas & Electric and a group of insurers announced Friday they reached an $11 billion settlement to cover most of the claims from wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018.
 
The utility said in a statement the tentative agreement covers 85% of the insurance claims from fires that included the one that decimated the town of Paradise and killed 86 people.

A group of insurers said in a separate statement the settlement is well below the $20 billion the insurance companies had sought in bankruptcy court.

“While this proposed settlement does not fully satisfy the approximately $20 billion in group members’ unsecured claims, we hope that this compromise will pave the way for a plan of reorganization that allows PG&E to fairly compensate all victims,” the insurers said.

The settlement still must be approved by a bankruptcy court.

“Today’s settlement is another step in doing what’s right for the communities, businesses, and individuals affected by the devastating wildfires,” PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said in a statement.

PG&E Corp. on Monday released a plan to offer nearly $18 billion to wildfire victims, insurance companies, and cities and public entities in California that battled wildfires sparked by its electrical equipment.
 
PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January because it said it could not afford an estimated $30 billion in damages.

The San Francisco-based company is under deadline pressure to emerge from bankruptcy by June 2020 in order to participate in a state wildfire fund to help California’s major utilities pay out future claims as climate change makes wildfires across the U.S. West more frequent and more destructive.