An Australian student released after a week in detention in North Korea arrived in Tokyo on Thursday after telling reporters he was in “very good” condition, without saying what happened to him.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced to Parliament that Alek Sigley, 29, had been released following intervention from Swedish diplomats and had been taken to the Australian Embassy in Beijing.

Later Thursday, Sigley flew to Tokyo’s Haneda airport to reunite with his Japanese wife. He walked past reporters there without making any comments.

Earlier, at Beijing’s airport, he gave a peace sign and said “I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m good. I’m very good,” but did not respond to reporters’ questions about what had happened in Pyongyang.

His father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Western Australia, said his son had been treated well in North Korea.

It was a much happier outcome than the case of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned in North Korea and convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster. Warmbier died shortly after being sent back home to the U.S. in a vegetative state in June 2017.

Sigley’s friend and fellow student of North Korea, University of Technology Sydney academic Bronwen Dalton, said she had spoken to Sigley’s wife, who was thrilled by his release.

“We were jumping up and down and we love Sweden,” Dalton said.

“He’s a fine, young, emerging Asian scholar, he is very applied to his studies. I really doubted whether he did actually anything wrong by the regime,” Dalton added.

Swedish diplomats had raised concerns about Sigley with North Korean authorities in Pyongyang, where Australia does not have an embassy.

“Swedish authorities advised the Australian government that they met with senior officials from the DPRK yesterday and raised the issue of Alek’s disappearance on Australia’s behalf,” Morrison said, using the official acronym for North Korea.

“This outcome demonstrates the value of discrete behind-the-scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases in close partnership with other governments,” Morrison said.

In an interview with Swedish public radio, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said the country’s special envoy to North Korea, Kent Harstedt, “raised the issue of this case at highest level” in North Korea and the release happened during his visit there.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the Swedish delegation led by Harstedt headed back home on Thursday after a four-day visit. It said the Swedes visited a stamp museum and shoe factory during their stay in North Korea, but made no mention of Sigley.

The Pyongyang university student and tour guide had been out of contact with family and friends in Japan and Australia since Tuesday last week. He had been active on social media about his experiences in North Korea and had boasted about the extraordinary freedom he had been allowed as one of the few foreign students living in Pyongyang.

Morrison’s announcement was the first confirmation that he had been detained.

Morrison said he discussed Sigley’s disappearance with other world leaders attending the Group of 20 summit in Japan last week and accepted offers to find out what happened to him. Morrison dined with President Donald Trump in Osaka but declined to say with whom he discussed Sigley’s disappearance.

North Korea has been accused in the past of detaining Westerners and using them as political pawns to gain concessions.

Leonid Petrov, an Australian National University expert on North Korea and a friend of Sigley, last week speculated that Sigley had been “deliberately cut off from means of communications” temporarily because Trump was in the region.

Petrov said on Thursday that he had not been able to contact Sigley since he had been freed, but still suspected his disappearance was linked to Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday.

“It was a time of sensitivity in North Korea after the visit of (Chinese President) Xi Jinping and before the visit by Donald Trump,” Petrov said.

“I expected this to happen a couple of days earlier, but it was a good thing to see the Swedish government delegation arrive on Monday just after the summit. It was the right time to be there,” Petrov added.

 

A primary for Queens district attorney that was already receiving national attention as a proxy for the national fight between different Democratic factions is taking another turn, with a tally of paper ballots reversing the initial results and the close margin forcing an automatic recount.

Queens Borough President Melinda Katz now has a 20-vote edge over political newcomer Tiffany Caban, who had held a 1,090-vote lead with 99 percent of precincts reporting on primary night last week.

Katz is the favorite of the state’s Democratic Party establishment. Caban is a public defender who says the criminal justice system is rigged against the poor and was backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
 
Caban had declared victory on primary night, while Katz called for every vote to be counted. The updated results reversed those stances as well.

“I am proud to have been chosen as the Democratic nominee for Queens District Attorney,” Katz said in a statement. “We know that these numbers can and will be subject to recount, and there may be legal challenges, but what matters most is the will of Queens voters.”
 
Caban’s supporters said they were confident she would win, and said the tally should include some paper ballots that had been invalidated.
 
“Queens voters are inspired by Tiffany Caban’s campaign and her vision for real criminal justice reform. If every valid paper ballot vote is counted, we are confident we will prevail,” said Caban campaign spokeswoman Monica Klein.
 
The winner will be favored to win the November general election to succeed longtime District Attorney Richard Brown. He died in May at age 86.
 

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An appeals court on Wednesday upheld a freeze on Pentagon money to build a border wall with Mexico, casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s ability to make good on a signature campaign promise before the 2020 election. 
 
A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with a lower-court ruling that prevented the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of wall in Arizona and New Mexico. 
 
The decision is a setback for Trump’s ambitious plans. He ended a 35-day government shutdown in February after Congress gave him far less than he wanted. He then declared a national emergency that the White House said would free billions of dollars from the Pentagon. 
 
The case may still be considered, but the administration cannot build during the legal challenge.  
 
A freeze imposed by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. of Oakland in May prevented work on two Pentagon-funded wall contracts — one spanning 46 miles (74 kilometers) in New Mexico and another covering 5 miles (8 kilometers) in Yuma, Ariz.   
 
While the order applied only to those first-in-line projects, Gilliam made clear that he felt the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups were likely to prevail at trial in their argument that the president was ignoring lawmakers’ wishes by diverting Defense Department money.  
 

“Congress’s `absolute’ control over federal expenditures — even when that control may frustrate the desires of the Executive Branch regarding initiatives it views as important — is not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one,” the judge wrote.  

Another step
 
Gilliam went a step further Friday by ruling definitively that the administration couldn’t use Pentagon counterdrug money for the two projects covered in his May order or to replace 63 miles (101 kilometers) in the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Ariz., sector and 15 miles (24 kilometers) in its El Centro, Calif., sector.  
 
Trump immediately vowed to appeal. 
 
At stake is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term. 
 
Trump declared a national emergency after losing a fight with the Democratic-led House that led to the 35-day shutdown. Congress agreed to spend nearly $1.4 billion on barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, which was well below the $5.7 billion the president requested. 
 
Trump grudgingly accepted the money but declared the emergency to siphon money from other government accounts, finding up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. The money includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund. 
 
Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper has yet to approve transferring the military construction funds. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges. 
 
The president’s adversaries say the emergency declaration was an illegal attempt to ignore Congress. The ACLU sued on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.  

No mention of immigration
 
The administration said the U.S. needed emergency protection to fight drug smuggling. Its arguments did not mention illegal immigration or unprecedented numbers of Central American families seeking asylum at the U.S. border, which have dominated public attention in recent months. 
 
Justice Department attorneys argued that the freeze on Pentagon funds showed a “fundamental misunderstanding of the federal appropriations process.” 
 
“The real separation-of-powers concern is the district court’s intrusion into the budgeting process,” they wrote. 
 
The two sides argued before a three-judge panel in San Francisco on June 20, made up of Barack Obama appointee Michelle Friedland and George W. Bush appointees N. Randy Smith and Richard Clifton. 
 

The administration has awarded $2.8 billion in contracts for barriers covering 247 miles (390 kilometers), with all but 17 miles (27 kilometers) of that to replace existing barriers, not expand coverage. It is preparing for a flurry of construction that the president is already celebrating at campaign-style rallies. 
 
Trump inherited barriers spanning 654 miles (1,046 kilometers), or about one-third of the border with Mexico. Of the miles covered under Trump-awarded contracts, more than half is with Pentagon money. 
 
The Army Corps of Engineers recently announced several large Pentagon-funded contacts.  
 
SLSCO Ltd. of Galveston, Texas, won a $789 million award to replace the New Mexico barrier. Southwest Valley Constructors of Albuquerque, N.M., won a $646 million award for the work in Tucson. Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Mont., won a $141.8 million contract to replace barrier in Yuma and El Centro. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with Pope Francis on Thursday, a day before Ukraine’s Catholic leaders meet at the Vatican to discuss the crisis in their country, and amid speculation that the visit could be a prelude to the first trip by a pope to Russia.

Putin, who has met Francis twice before, is due to arrive at the Vatican in the early afternoon at the start of a lightning visit to Italy that will also include talks with Italian leaders.

Ukraine, which remains a difficult issue in relations between the Vatican and Russia, is expected to be a main topic of discussions in the official papal library in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

When they last met in 2015, the pope urged Putin to make a “sincere and great effort” to achieve peace in Ukraine and help bring an end to fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist rebels in the East.

On Friday, leaders of Ukraine’s Catholic Church and Vatican officials begin two days of meetings to discuss various problems in their country, a former Soviet republic.

Church’s independence

Ukraine’s religious world was made tense last year when the country’s Orthodox Church, which for centuries effectively had been under control of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared its independence and set up a national church.

Russia opposes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church having autocephalous, or self-governing, status, saying the move had more political than religious motives.

Putin has aligned himself closely with the Russian Orthodox Church and has accused the government in Kyiv of flagrantly meddling in the life of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

Thursday’s meeting between the pope and Putin will be their first since Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill met in 2016, a landmark step in healing the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, had invited the late Pope John Paul to visit.

Friction stood in way

But a trip was not possible because of tensions between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most influential in world Orthodoxy, with 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.

Apart from his meeting three years ago with Kirill, which was the first in history between a Roman Catholic pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch, Francis has made a number of visits to countries with predominantly Orthodox populations.

The latest were to Romania and to Bulgaria and North Macedonia earlier this year.

From the Vatican, Putin will meet with Italy’s prime minister and president and attend a conference on Italian-Russian dialogue at the foreign ministry.

Formal trade talks between the United States and China are poised to resume days from now, a senior White House official told VOA on Wednesday. 

“Those talks will continue in earnest this coming week, actually,” said Larry Kudlow, National Economic Council director. 

Asked by VOA if the discussions would be face to face, Kudlow replied in the affirmative, noting they would be led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with their respective staffs and trade principals. 
 
“We will be very involved now,” added Kudlow. 
 
Asked if the Americans would travel to China or the Chinese would be visiting the U.S., Kudlow said, “I don’t know yet.” 
 
U.S. President Donald Trump, following a lengthy Friday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka on the sidelines of the G-20 leaders’ summit, said that telephone discussions between trade officials of the two countries had already resumed and relations with Beijing were “right back on track.”  
  
The truce in the U.S.-China yearlong trade war meant Trump would not impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. 
 
Xi, at the start of the meeting with Trump in Japan, said that “cooperation and dialogue are better than friction and confrontation.” 
 

The Chinese leader, however, failed to win relief from existing sanctions on $250 billion in goods — which it countered by placing punitive tariffs on $110 billion in American products. 
 
“We will not lift tariffs during the talks,” Kudlow cautioned Wednesday.  
 
Referring to concessions made by the United States to China on telecommunications giant Huawei, Kudlow characterized the adjustment as one of having “slightly opened up the general merchandise applications for export licenses — not national security.” 
 
The U.S. Commerce Department announced Tuesday that as long as Huawei remained on the entity list, reviews of export licenses would “continue under the highest national security scrutiny,” which is “the presumption of denial.” 
 
Kudlow said the Trump administration hoped Beijing would keep its side of the bargain by purchasing “a good many American imports — agriculture, agricultural services, maybe industrial, maybe energy.” 
 
The National Economic Council director reiterated that China’s “unfair and frequently unlawful trading practices cannot be tolerated.” 
 
He specifically noted theft of intellectual property, technology transfers and cyberspace hacking.  
  
“It’s been a very unbalanced relationship,” Kudlow said. 

A Navy SEAL who was acquitted of killing a wounded Islamic State captive but convicted of posing with the corpse was sentenced by a military jury Wednesday to a reduction in rank and four months of confinement.

A judge, however, credited Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher with enough time already spent in custody to ensure he won’t be locked up.

Gallagher turned to his wife, shook his head and pretended to unpin his “anchors” — the insignia of a chief — and fling them across the courtroom. He then smiled and hugged her.

The sentencing came after Gallagher addressed the jury that had acquitted him Tuesday of murder, attempted murder and other counts stemming from an incident during a 2017 deployment to Iraq.   

“I put a black eye on the two communities that I love — the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy — specifically the SEAL community” he said.

He said he tried to lead by example but didn’t always succeed.

“I’ve made mistakes throughout my 20-year career — tactical, ethical, moral — I’m not perfect but I’ve always bounced back from my mistakes. I’m ready to bounce back from this” he said.

The jury reduced Gallagher’s rank by one grade to petty officer 1st class and ordered his monthly pay cut by $2,697 for four months.

The judge then modified the sentence, capping the pay cut at two months and giving Gallagher 60 days’ credit for being held in overly harsh conditions before being tried and being deprived of treatment for a traumatic brain injury.

Gallagher also got credit for 201 days of pretrial confinement.

A Navy prosecutor had asked only for a reduction in rank, not confinement. The defense recommended no punishment.

Gallagher told the jury he was fully responsible for his actions on the day he took photos with the body of the 17-year-old militant.

One image shows him clutching the hair of the corpse with one hand and holding a knife in another.

The photos were taken after Gallagher and other SEALs provided medical treatment for the captive who was wounded in an air strike in 2017 and handed over by Iraqi forces.

The prosecutor, Lt. Brian John, said Gallagher was the platoon chief and should not have been the centerpiece of the photos in which nearly all the members posed with the body. John said Gallagher should have stopped the photos from being taken.

“For that reason, he no longer deserves to wear anchors” the prosecutor said.

John said the photos had the potential to be used as propaganda by Islamic State and be harmful to U.S. forces overseas.

The verdict clearing Gallagher of the most serious charges was met with an outpouring of emotion.

President Donald Trump, who intervened earlier this year to have Gallagher moved from the brig to less restrictive confinement, tweeted congratulations to the SEAL and his family.

“You have been through much together. Glad I could help!” the president wrote.

The outcome dealt a major blow to one of the Navy’s most high-profile war crimes cases and exposed a generational conflict within the ranks of the elite special operations forces.

Asked in an interview Wednesday on Fox & Friends what his message might be to future Navy SEALs, Gallagher said he would tell them that “loyalty is a trait that seems to be lost. … You’re there to watch your brother’s back, and he’s there to watch your back.”

Speaking of his accusers, Gallagher said, “this small group of SEALs that decided to concoct this story in no way, shape or form represent the community that I love.”

Gallagher also thanked Fox News “for being behind us from day one” and also thanked Trump along with Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.

Defense lawyers said Gallagher was framed by junior disgruntled platoon members who fabricated the allegations to oust their chief. They said the lead investigator built the probe around their stories instead of seeking the truth.

They said there was no physical evidence to support the allegations because no corpse was ever recovered and examined by a pathologist.

The prosecution said Gallagher was incriminated by his own text messages and photos, including one of him holding the dead militant up by the hair and clutching a knife in his other hand.

“Got him with my hunting knife” Gallagher wrote in a text with the photo.

The defense said it was just gallows humor and pointed out that almost all platoon members who testified against him also posed with the corpse.

The jury of five Marines and two sailors, including a SEAL, was comprised mostly of seasoned combat veterans who served in Iraq. Several lost friends in war.

A little-known U.S. anti-money laundering law is costing international travelers millions of dollars a year, raising concerns of civil liberties’ advocates that many innocent people are unwittingly being swept up by a statute designed to catch criminals.  

The law, known as the Bank Secrecy Act, requires travelers leaving and entering the U.S. with more than $10,000 in cash to report it to customs officials at ports of entry.  A traveler’s failure to disclose the precise amount can result in the money being seized – even without any charges against the person.  

Customs and Border Patrol officials see the law as an important tool in combating money laundering and potential terrorist activities.   But critics say CBP does little to warn travelers about the currency reporting requirement and that the agency’s seizure practice is sometimes unconstitutional.  

“The government just assumes that anyone traveling with a large amount of cash is a criminal, takes the money on the spot, and then lets the person go only to then violate federal laws and regulations that require the agency to return the money or go before a court to justify the seizure,“ said Darpana Sheth, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm in Washington.

In recent years, the Institute for Justice has taken CBP to court to reclaim money taken from international travelers and to challenge the federal agency’s policies.

In one case in 2017, CBP seized more than $58,000 from an Albanian immigrant at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport and planned to keep it through civil asset forfeiture, a legal procedure that allows law enforcement to seize property without bringing criminal charges.    The man and his wife had saved the money to fix up a house in their native country.  

In another case last year, a Nigerian-American nurse from Texas had $40,000 seized from her at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, money she was carrying to build a clinic for women and children in Nigeria.  

In both cases, CBP returned the money only after the Institute sued the agency.

The Institute for Justice’s lawsuit on behalf of Nigerian nurse Anthonia Nwaorie challenges CBP’s policy of demanding that travelers agree not to sue the agency before they can get their money back.

“No one should have to waive their constitutional rights to get back property, which they are already legally entitled to,” the Institute for Justice’s Sheth said.

In its class action lawsuit, the Institute says that while incoming international travelers are often handed a customs declaration form, there is no similar process for outbound travelers.

“Most people have never heard of this requirement because the government does very little to notify people of this or publicize it,” Sheth said.  

CBP declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the pending litigation.  

International travelers carry large amounts of cash for a variety of reasons.  

“Some conduct real estate sales, some pay vendors in cash and get discounts or some try to avoid wire transfer fees,” said Jennifer Diaz, a customs and international trade attorney based in North Miami, Florida.

One client, Diaz said, was carrying cash because of a religious prohibition against using financial institutions.   To get the client’s money back from CBP, “we got a letter from their religious leader stating so,” she said.

Jason Wapiennik, a Michigan-based lawyer who represents travelers before CBP, said currency seizures disproportionately affect immigrants and other foreign-born travelers from countries with a cash economy.   

“My clients are probably fairly representative of the whole class of people who are having money seized from them,” Wapiennik said.

“Seizures are happening around the country and probably at every airport and every border crossing in the United States on a daily basis,” he added.

The numbers are big.  On a typical day, CBP seizes nearly $300,000 in undeclared or illicit currency. Last year, the agency seized close to $65 million in cash from international travelers, mostly at airports.  While the gross figure has remained steady in recent years, CBP’s Detroit field office earlier this year reported a year-to-date increase of 62% in cash seizures.

But it’s not just failure to report that can result in confiscation of cash. Misreporting the amount of cash can also lead to seizure. Wapiennik said that while in the vast majority of cases, the law is “fairly applied,” CBC officers sometimes appear bent on catching violators than helping travelers comply with the law.  He said he once had a client whose report was “literally off by a dollar.”

“I think oftentimes people aren’t given enough opportunity to report the money or to understand you know the importance of giving an accurate number,” Wapiennik said.   

Asked to respond to the criticism, CBP referred VOA to agency guidelines that allow violators to revise the initial reported amount of currency to the agency. In a statement, a spokesman said that “lack of comment should not  be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations.”

International travelers can try to reclaim their seized money by filing a petition with CBP.   But they have to be able to prove that the money had a legitimate source and intended use, a process that can take about six months.  

Ill-gotten cash and property seized from criminals is forfeited and then put in a fund run by the Treasury Department.   The proceeds are then shared with victims of crime as well as law enforcement agencies to conduct more seizures.

Ecuador on Tuesday mobilized hundreds of soldiers and police to a mountainous area to confront illegal mining and organized crime that have fueled violence in the north of the country, the interior minister said.

The South American nation is hoping to fuel its sluggish economy by expanding its mining sector. It has drawn the interest of firms including Australia’s SolGold Plc, which is developing a copper, gold and silver mine in northern Ecuador.

The security forces began the operation on Tuesday morning in the small town of Buenos Aires, near the border with Colombia, following months of heavy confrontations between illegal miners and gangs, who want control of the mineral-rich area.

“The occupation of the area by people engaged in these illegal activities requires stronger intervention by the state,” Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters, adding that the results of the operation would be announced later.

On Monday night, the government of President Lenin Moreno declared a state of emergency in the area, which has also suffered environmental devastation from the influx of thousands of people and growth of illegal mining.

“There is a serious environmental impact,” Romo said.

Some 10,000 people now work in illegal mining in Buenos Aires, which Romo says has a population of around 2,000. Armed gangs are increasingly involved in human trafficking and prostitution.

The region witnessed 27 incidents of violence in the first half of 2019, including murders by stabbing and firearms, the government said Monday.

Gin Blossoms is one of the top alt-rock groups of the ‘90s and is on tour this summer, “New Miserable Experience Live” performing songs from their multi-platinum album from front-to-back in celebration of its recent 25th anniversary.  The band released their latest album, “Mixed Reality” last year.

A House committee has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the Ways and Means Committee against the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service.
 
The committee says it doesn’t have to explain its reasons for seeking Trump’s tax return information. It says that the administration has defied a subpoena for the documents “in order to shield President Trump’s tax return information from Congressional scrutiny.”
 
The committee says it’s investigating tax law compliance by the president, among other things.

More than 200 corporations, including many of America’ best-known companies, are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal civil rights law bans job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The corporations outlined their stance in a legal brief released Tuesday by a coalition of five LGBTQ rights groups. The brief is being submitted to the Supreme Court this week ahead of oral arguments before the justices on Oct. 8 on three cases that may determine whether gays, lesbians and transgender people are protected from discrimination by existing federal civil rights laws.

Among the 206 corporations endorsing the brief were Amazon, American Airlines, Bank of America, Ben & Jerry’s, Coca-Cola, Domino’s Pizza, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Starbucks, Viacom, the Walt Disney Co. and Xerox. Two major league baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Tampa Bay Rays, were among the group.

In their brief, the companies argued that a uniform federal rule is needed to protect LGBTQ employees equally in all 50 states.

“Even where companies voluntarily implement policies to prohibit sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination, such policies are not a substitute for the force of law,” the brief argued. “Nor is the patchwork of incomplete state or local laws sufficient protection – for example, they cannot account for the cross-state mobility requirements of the modern workforce.”

Such friend-of-the-court briefs are routinely submitted by interested parties ahead of major Supreme Court hearings. The extent to which they might sway justices is difficult to assess, but in this case it’s an effective way for the corporations to affirm support for LGBTQ employees.

Federal appeals courts in Chicago and New York have ruled recently that gay and lesbian employees are entitled to protection from discrimination; the federal appeals court in Cincinnati has extended similar protections for transgender people.

The question now is whether the Supreme Court will follow suit, given its conservative majority strengthened by President Donald Trump’s appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The three cases are the court’s first on LGBTQ rights since the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored landmark gay rights opinions.

The Obama administration had supported treating LGBTQ discrimination claims as sex discrimination, but the Trump administration has changed course. The Trump Justice Department has argued that the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not intended to provide protections to gay or transgender workers.

The companies signing the brief represent more than 7 million employees and $5 trillion in annual revenue, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest of the LGBTQ rights groups organizing the initiative. Other organizers included Lambda Legal, Out Leadership, Out and Equal, and Freedom for All Americans.

“At this critical moment in the fight for LGBTQ equality, these leading businesses are sending a clear message to the Supreme Court that LGBTQ people should, like their fellow Americans, continue to be protected from discrimination,” said Jay Brown, a Human Rights Campaign vice president. “These employers know firsthand that protecting the LGBTQ community is both good for business and the right thing to do.”

In one of the cases heading to the Supreme Court, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a gay skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired because of his sexual orientation. The appeals court ruled that “sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination.”

The ruling was a victory for the relatives of Donald Zarda, now deceased, who was fired in 2010 from a skydiving job that required him to strap himself tightly to clients so they could jump in tandem from an airplane. He tried to put a woman with whom he was jumping at ease by explaining that he was gay. The school fired Zarda after the woman’s boyfriend called to complain.

A second case comes from Michigan, where a funeral home fired a transgender woman. The appeals court in Cincinnati ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal law.

The funeral home argues that Congress was not considering transgender people when it included sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”

The third case is from Georgia, where the federal appeals court ruled against a gay employee of Clayton County, in the Atlanta suburbs. Gerald Bostock claimed he was fired in 2013 because he is gay. The county argues that Bostock was let go because of the results of a financial audit.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Bostock’s claim in an opinion noting the court was bound by a 1979 decision that held “discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII.”
 

Mauritania’s constitutional council confirmed Mohamed Ould Ghazouani as president, amid concerns of election impropriety by opposition leaders.

On Monday, the West African country’s constitutional council announced Ghazouani had won the June 22 presidential elections with 52% of the vote, rejecting a challenge by the opposition.  

“The candidate Mohamed Ould Cheikh Lohaled Ahmed Ould Ghazwani is proclaimed president, having acquired an absolute majority in the first round,” said Haimond Ba, a council member.

Ghazouani will take office on August 2, succeeding Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. Aziz, an ally of Ghazouani, who had served two five-year terms, the maximum in Mauritania.

Prior to being elected president, Ghazouani had served as the country’s defense minister.

The confirmation by the Constitutional Court represents the first democratic transition of power since Mauritania’s independence from France in 1960.

On Sunday, opposition parties alleged that election fraud took place, referencing crackdowns in the country surrounding the presidential vote, as well as what they saw as impossible poll percentages.

The constitutional council asserted that there was insufficient evidence for the allegations. 

 

The amount of ice circling Antarctica is suddenly plunging from a record high to record lows, baffling scientists.

Floating ice off the southern continent steadily increased from 1979 and hit a record high in 2014. But three years later, the annual average extent of Antarctic sea ice hit its lowest mark, wiping out three-and-a-half decades of gains — and then some, a NASA study of satellite data shows.

In recent years, “things have been crazy,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. In an email, he called the plummeting ice levels “a white-knuckle ride.”

Serreze and other outside experts said they don’t know if this is a natural blip that will go away or more long-term global warming that is finally catching up with the South Pole. Antarctica hasn’t showed as much consistent warming as its northern Arctic cousin.

“But the fact that a change this big can happen in such a short time should be viewed as an indication that the Earth has the potential for significant and rapid change,” University of Colorado ice scientist Waleed Abdalati said in an email.

At the polar regions, ice levels grow during the winter and shrink in the summer. Around Antarctica, sea ice averaged 4.9 million square miles (12.8 million square kilometers) in 2014. By 2017, it was a record low of 4.1 million square miles (10.7 million square kilometers, according to the study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The difference covers an area bigger than the size of Mexico. Losing that much in just three years “is pretty incredible” and faster than anything scientists have seen before, said study author Claire Parkinson, a NASA climate scientist.  Antarctic sea ice increased slightly in 2018, but still was the second lowest since 1979. Even though ice is growing this time of year in Antarctica, levels in May and June this year were the lowest on record, eclipsing 2017, according to the ice data center.

Ice melting on the ocean surface doesn’t change sea level. Non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science often had pointed at increasing Antarctic sea ice to deny or downplay the loss of Arctic sea ice.

While the Arctic has shown consistent and generally steady warming and ice melt — with some slight year to year variation — Antarctica has had more ups and downs while generally trending upward. That is probably in part due to geography, Parkinson and Serreze said.

The Arctic is a floating ice cap on an ocean penned in by continents. Antarctica is just the opposite, with land surrounded by open ocean. That allows the ice to grow much farther out, Parkinson said.

When Antarctic sea ice was steadily rising, scientists pointed to shifts in wind and pressure patterns, ocean circulation changes or natural but regular climate changes like El Nino and its southern cousins. Now, some of those explanations may not quite fit, making what happens next still a mystery, Parkinson said.

A victim of domestic abuse while pregnant and now a mother of two, Miriam Gutierrez is a champion Spanish boxer and an elected official whose goal is to knockout those who challenge women’s rights. Arash Arabasadi has more.

The third meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has drawn praise as well as criticism.  Critics say Trump is showering attention on a dictator without getting any concessions on the North Korean nuclear development, while others see it as a ray of hope for a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula.  VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

Uruguayan primary elections look set to pit a former mayor against a senator in the presidential vote in October, according to early exit polls Sunday evening in the South American country.

Polls after ballots closed showed former Montevideo mayor Daniel Martinez and Senator Luis Lacalle Pou winning the nominations for Broad Front and the National Party respectively, the two main factions expected to battle in out later this year.

Data from the three main local pollsters Cifra, Equipos and Opcion, after voting closed at 7:30 p.m. indicated that Ernesto Talvi looked set to be the candidate for the Colorado Party, the third main political faction.

Uruguay’s electoral court has not yet given official data.

Martinez, a 62-year-old engineer, beat out Carolina Cosse, former Minister of Industry whose candidacy was backed by ex-President Jose Mujica. Also competing were former Central Bank president Mario Bergara and trade unionist Oscar Andrade.

Lacalle Pou, 44, a lawyer and the son of former President Luis Alberto Lacalle, was facing Senator Jorge Larranaga and businessman Juan Sartori, who joined the party at the end of last year and had been surging lately in the polls.

Talvi, a 62-year-old economist, is a relative newcomer with the Colorado Party, but looks to have beaten out more experienced rival Julio Maria Sanguinetti, an 83-year-old lawyer who was the country’s president twice before.

Overall polls ahead of the Oct. 27 election currently suggests a closely fought race between the Broad Front party and the National Party, with a likely run-off in November, which happens if there is no clear winner in the first round.

The next president, who will take over from incumbent Tabare Vazquez, will need to revive economic growth in the country that is expected to grow less than 1% this year, after the farming-heaving economy was hit by droughts and floods.

Five Japanese whaling ships are set on Monday to begin the first commercial whale hunt in more than 30 years.

Japan stopped commercial whaling in 1988 after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on killing the giant mammals.

But despite the global ban, Japan continued to hunt whales for what it claimed was scientific research. Critics have long disputed that claim, calling it commercial whaling in disguise.

In the 2017-2018 whaling season, Japanese sailors killed 333 minke whales in Antarctic waters. More than 120 were pregnant females.

In December, Japan announced it was leaving the IWC on June 30.

The whaling fleet will sail from the port of Kushiro, on the northern island of Hokkaido. Its ships will hunt minke, sei and Bryde’s whales in Japanese waters.

Japan’s return to commercial whaling has created an international outcry.

Kitty Block, president of Humane Society International, said: “Japan leaving the IWC and defying international law to pursue its commercial whaling ambitions is renegade, retrograde and myopic. It is undermining its international reputation for an industry whose days are so clearly numbered, to produce a product for which demand has plummeted.”

But some experts say Japan’s move might be a blessing in disguise for some whales, because it will mean that Japan will stop hunting whales in the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic and other sensitive locations.

Japan has yet to disclose how many whales it will allow its fishermen to kill.

 

Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across Sudan on Sunday against the ruling generals, calling for a civilian government nearly three months after the army forced out long-time leader Omar al-Bashir.   

Chanting anti-military slogans and raising Sudan’s flag, the protesters took to the streets of the capital and headed for the presidential palace, in what organizers were calling a “million-man march.”

In addition to demanding a civilian government, they called for those behind the deadly early June crackdown on protesters to be brought to justice.  Protest organizers said the death toll from the June 3 incident was at least 128, while authorities claim it was 61, including three security personnel.

On Sunday there were reports of tear gas and live bullets being fired in an effort to disperse demonstrators.

One of the protest organizers, the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), called on the crowds to reach the presidential palace and camp out there until their demands are met.

Mohamed Hassan, one of the protesters, was upbeat but said there was no guarantee the military would not interfere.

“We succeeded to make and we mark the June 30 by our winning, we are now in (the district of) Bahri, we are moving forward now and the RSF (Rapid Support Force) are moving around us. The protesters are moving free so far in this area but we don’t know what will happen in the coming time,” he said.

General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council, claimed an unknown armed group of snipers had attacked the peaceful protesters.

Today, they declared a million-man march and we warned of some perpetrators that may target the demonstration, now I received reports that unknown snipers have targeted the protests and injured 3 of our forces and five or six protesters, he said.

He also stressed that the generals want to reach an “urgent and comprehensive agreement” with no exclusion.

Ethiopia and the African Union have offered a plan for Sudan that calls for a civilian-majority body, which the generals say could create the basis for new negotiations.