U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will welcome his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday — the Russian’s first visit to Washington since a controversial 2017 meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, the State Department announced.

The brief statement about the meeting, to be held at the State Department, said Pompeo and Lavrov would “discuss a broad range of regional and bilateral issues.”

On Friday, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said the meeting was being “prepared” for Tuesday.

The situations in war-wracked Syria and Ukraine are likely to top the agenda. The Washington meeting will come on the heels of talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy over the conflict in Ukraine’s east in Paris on Monday.

Iran and North Korea are also of mutual concern in Washington and Moscow.

Pompeo and Lavrov met in September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

But Lavrov has not been on an official visit to the U.S. capital since his encounter with Trump in the Oval Office in May 2017, which was followed by allegations that the U.S. leader divulged classified intelligence in the meeting.

Photographs of the meeting showed Lavrov, Trump and subsequently sacked Russian envoy to Washington Sergei Kislyak sharing a laugh.

U.S. intelligence concluded that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election with an eye to swinging it in Trump’s favor, but U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller found there was not enough evidence to prove that Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government in those efforts.

The report did not conclude that Trump had committed a crime, but it also did not fully exonerate him.

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller’s long-awaited report said.

“Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

 

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Sunday welcomed a Lebanese-born Swiss real estate mogul who purchased Nazi memorabilia at a German auction and is donating the items to Israel.

Rivlin called Abdallah Chatila’s gesture an “act of grace.”

Chatila, a Lebanese Christian who has lived in Switzerland for decades, paid some 600,000 euros ($660,000) for the items at the Munich auction last month, intending to destroy them after reading of Jewish groups’ objections to the sale. Shortly before the auction, however, he decided it would be better to donate them to a Jewish organization. Among the items he bought were Adolf Hitler’s top hat, a silver-plated edition of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and a typewriter used by the dictator’s secretary.

The items are to be donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

Chatila said he initially bought the items for personal reasons.

“He is the personification of evil — evil for everyone, not evil for the Jews, evil for the Christians, evil for humanity,” he said. “And that’s why it was important for me to buy those artifacts.”

But Chatila decided that he “had no right to decide” what to do with these artifacts, so he reached out to Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal, a nonprofit fundraising body that assists Israeli and Jewish causes. It then decided to pass the items on to Yad Vashem because of its existing collection of Nazi artifacts.

“Usually Yad Vashem doesn’t support trade. We do not believe in trade of artifacts that come from the Nazi party or other parts,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem. “We like that it should be in the hands of museums or public collectors and not in private hands.”

At a press conference at Keren Hayesod’s Jerusalem office, Chatila said his donation has been criticized by some in his homeland. Israel and Lebanon have never signed a peace agreement, and relations remain hostile.

“I got a few messages saying that I was a traitor, saying that I helped the enemy. And also some messages of people warning me not to go back to Lebanon,” he said. “It’s easy for me as I don’t go to Lebanon. I don’t have a problem with it.”

But Chatila said his parents still travel to Lebanon, making the backlash difficult for his family. Still, he said the donation was “the right thing to do.”

Rivlin thanked Chatila for his act and donation “of great importance at this time” when Holocaust denial and neo-Nazism are on the rise. He also noted that the artifacts would help preserve the Holocaust legacy for future generations who will not be able to meet or hear from the dwindling population of aging survivors.

“What you did was seemingly so simple, but this act of grace shows the whole world how to fight the glorification of hatred and incitement against other people. It was a truly human act,” Rivlin said.

The items are still at the German auction house, and it was not immediately known when they would be transferred to Yad Vashem.
 

The House Judiciary Committee holds another hearing Monday in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.  Proceedings have been centering on allegations that the president abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into political rival Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential contender. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, the hyper partisanship in Washington promises to intensify.

Actress Sally Field, singer Linda Ronstadt and the disco-funk band Earth Wind and Fire awaited their turn in the spotlight Sunday night as part of the latest group of recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievements in the arts.

Also in this year’s class are conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and long-running children’s TV show “Sesame Street.”

Once again, the attendance of President Donald Trump had been an open question until the White House said Friday that neither he nor first lady Melania Trump would attend. Trump skipped the past two celebrations; in 2017, after multiple recipients threatened to boycott the event if he attended.

The Kennedy Center’s president, Deborah Rutter, said in an interview earlier this year that “they are always invited.”

Field, 72, was a television star at age 19 and went on to forge a distinguished career that included two Academy Awards and three Emmys. She starred last year in a Netflix miniseries called “Maniac.”

“Sesame Street” debuted in 1969 and remains a force in children’s educational television. The show now airs new episodes on HBO, and they are rebroadcast months later on the show’s original home, PBS. The co-founders of “Sesame Street,” Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, will accept the award on behalf of the show.

Hours before the ceremony, the Sesame Workshop announced that Caroll Spinney, who gave Big Bird his warmth and Oscar the Grouch his growl for nearly 50 years on “Sesame Street,” died Sunday at the age of 85 at his home in Connecticut.

Ronstadt was one of the faces of American music in the 1970s and 1980s, landing on the cover of Time magazine in 1977. In 2011, she announced her retirement from singing, citing the advancing effects of Parkinson’s disease.

Tilson Thomas, who has served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for the past 24 years, has become particularly renowned for his interpretations of the entire works of Gustav Mahler.

Earth, Wind and Fire was originally formed in Chicago by lead singer Maurice White. The group drew elements from rhythm and blues, funk, and disco in a flashy crowd-pleasing mix that spawned eight No. 1 hits. Songs such as “September” and “Shining Star” remain in heavy rotation for both radio station programmers and wedding DJs.

Each recipient was to be honored with a personalized presentation that in the past has in included surprise guests. Last year, Cher was shocked to find her friend Cyndi Lauper walking onstage to deliver a tribute; Lauper had said she would be out of town.

The event will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 15.

 

Thousands of people gathered in the center of Kyiv on Sunday to send a message to Ukraine’s president, who meets his Russian counterpart on Monday, that Ukrainians will not accept a peace deal at the cost of the country’s independence and sovereignty.

“We are here because we are not satisfied with the peace at any costs … the peace at the costs of capitulation,” Inna Sovsun, a lawmaker of opposition Golos (Voice) party, told the rally.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin are meeting in Paris alongside the French and German leaders in a renewed effort to end a conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed forces in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014. Zelenskiy, who won a landslide election victory in April promising to bring peace, said this week that his first face-to-face meeting with the Russian president would give Kyiv a chance to resolve the more than five-year-old war in the Donbas region.

But many Ukrainians are concerned over a possible compromise with Russia, which they see as an aggressor seeking to restore the Kremlin’s influence over the former Soviet republic and ruin Ukraine’s aspiration to closer European ties.

The Ukrainian government wants to agree with Moscow on a sustainable cease-fire in Donbas, the exchange of all prisoners, and a timeline for the withdrawal of all illegal armed forces from regions under the control of Russia-backed separatists.

The leaders’ meeting was arranged after Ukraine and separatists withdrew their military forces from three settlements in Donbas – implementing agreements reached between Russian, Ukrainian and separatist negotiators in September.

Kyiv also promised to grant a special status to territory controlled by the rebels and to hold elections there.

These plans, seen as a sign of Kyiv’s capitulation, sparked protests in the Ukrainian capital.

According to an opinion poll of Ukrainians conducted by a think-tank Democratic Initiative and Kyiv’s International Institute of the Sociology on Nov 4-19, 53.2% of respondents are against a special status for Donbass and 62.7% do not accept an amnesty for those who fight against the Ukrainian army.

“We are here so that the voice from Kyiv can be heard in Paris. Friends, we cannot make any concessions to Putin until the last sliver of Ukrainian land is free,” ex-president Petro Poroshenko told Sunday’s rally.

Relations between two countries collapsed following pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych’s escape to Russia and Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, which prompted Western sanctions on Russia.

Historian Volodymyr Vyatrovych said many centuries and recent years of Ukrainian history showed Kyiv should not believe in Moscow’s good will.

“Zelenskiy’s new team seems to be returning to this erroneous strategy, which consists in the fact that we can agree with Russia,” he told the rally.

 

Hundreds of thousands of protesters packed the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to mark six months of an unprecedented, sweeping anti-government movement in this Chinese-ruled, semi-autonomous city.

The police-sanctioned march on Sunday which started at 3pm local time was largely peaceful but tensions escalated in the evening, when riot police got locked into a tense standoff with a large group of black-clad protesters who split off from the authorized rally to occupy a major thoroughfare in the business district of Central, the end point of the protest route.

Protesters set up makeshift barricades with plastic roadside barriers, metal sheets, bamboo poles and other objects on the thoroughfare and a box marked with the message “Do not kick, it may explode” was placed on the road.

Some riot police officers pointed their non-lethal shotguns at people and journalists gathered there and ordered them to leave.  The police’s water-cannon-equipped anti-riot vehicle also stood by.

The protest movement, sparked by a controversial extradition bill which could see individuals sent to mainland China for trial, started with a mass demonstration attended by around a million protesters on June 9, but it has since morphed into a broader and increasingly violent movement.  

Demonstrators wearing protective gear on Sunday also set up makeshift road blocks at other locations along the protest route.  Police warned protesters that “necessary action” would be taken if protesters ignore instructions to disperse, noting that the protesters had gone beyond the end point of the protest route.

Police issued a statement saying a group of protesters vandalized shops and a bank during the rally and warned them to refrain from “illegal acts posing a threat to public order and endangering public safety.”  A Chinese-owned bank was smashed up with broken glass littering the floor and sign was placed outside the bank that says “Love China, hate the party”, reported public broadcaster RTHK.  A Starbucks cafe, run by a franchise company seen as pro-Beijing, was also vandalized.

Earlier in the evening, the fire alarm was set off at the High Court and broken bottles were found at its front entrance, which had been burned black.  The message “Rule of law is dead” was emblazoned on the wall of the building.  

The organizer of the protest, Civil Human Rights Front, said around 800,000 people participated in the march on Sunday. The participants in the authorized rally came from a vast age range and backgrounds, from parents pushing toddlers in strollers, young people, middle-aged professionals to pensioners.  Some were in wheelchairs.  

It was the first police-sanctioned mass protest for almost four months and was also the first after pro-democracy politicians scored a landslide victory in a district election last month.

Unlike many of the recent protests which had been banned by police, the march on Sunday had a relaxed atmosphere and protesters were in high spirits.

“Good guys don’t become police!” yelled protesters at riot police officers guarding a footbridge, while many stuck their middle fingers at them.

Earlier in the day, the unofficial anthem of the movement wafted in the air as people chanted “Five demands, not one less!”, referring to the political demands yet unfulfilled which included universal suffrage and an independent investigation into police brutality.  

The extradition bill which sparked the protest in June was belatedly scrapped in September but many ordinary Hong Kongers say excessive police force should be investigated by an independent body.

Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, raising funds for victims of police brutality in the six-month movement, said to a crowd: “We want our freedoms back so our young people can regain the freedom from fear.”

“I feel so sorry for our young people  the police have real weapons and bullets, while the youngsters have only bricks and Molotov cocktails.  They have no other way to resist,” said Mary Tse, a retiree.

A young couple was seen waving a giant U.S. flag during the protest Sunday.  They said they were grateful to the United States for passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

“I am truly thank to the U.S. for this law. There is nothing more we can do to change our political system and if we don’t come out to fight there will never be an opportunity,” said Joe Lai, 30.

Earlier in the day, police said they had seized a semi-automatic Glock pistol and 105 bullets in an operation.  Police arrested eleven people aged between 20 and 63.

An Ebola survivor has fallen ill with the disease for a second time in eastern Congo, the Congolese health authorities said on Sunday, saying it was not yet clear if it was a case of relapse or reinfection.

The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has infected over 3,300 people and killed more than 2,200 since the middle of last year, making it the second worst year on record.

Experts say there has been a working assumption that Ebola survivors generally have immunity from the disease. There have been no documented cases of reinfection but some researchers consider it to be at least a theoretical possibility, while the recurrence of a previous infection is considered extremely rare.

In a daily report on the epidemic, the Congolese health authorities reported that a survivor in Mabalako, North Kivu province, had fallen ill with the virus again, but did not give further details.

Representatives of the World Health Organization and Congo’s National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) said tests were being carried out to determine what had happened.

“Clinically, we will check whether it is a reinfection to know if it is the same virus and if the person has been infected by another source,” Ahuka Steve Mundeke, a virologist at INRB, told Reuters.

“We have had cases where the virus persists in immune reservoirs,” said Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization (WHO). “In rare cases the virus can cause symptoms again. We are investigating now to see whether this was what happened.”

A survivor working in an Ebola treatment center fell sick again with the virus and died in July, but it has not been determined if she relapsed, was reinfected or had a false positive the first time she was ill.

Progress in containing the disease has been hampered in the last month by a surge in violence that forced aid groups to suspend operations and withdraw staff from the epidemic’s last hotspots.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said they pulled their staff out of Biakoto region in Ituri province on Dec. 4 following two fresh attacks on their health centers by groups of people armed with sticks and machetes.

“MSF cannot work if the security of our staff and patients is not ensured,” the aid group said in a statement.

Mai Mai militia fighters and local residents have attacked health facilities on several occasions since the outbreak began, sometimes because they believe Ebola does not exist, in other cases because of resentment that they have not benefited from the influx of donor funding.
 

France is ready to go to the World Trade Organization to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to put tariffs on champagne and other French goods in a row over a planned French tax on internet companies, the finance minister said on Sunday.

“We are ready to take this to an international court, notably the WTO, because the national tax on digital companies touches U.S. companies in the same way as EU or French companies or Chinese. It is not discriminatory,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on France 3 television.
 

 

 The flaming barricades are mostly gone, protesters have largely dissipated and traffic is once again clogging the streets of Haiti’s capital, but hundreds of thousands of people are now suffering deep economic aftershocks after more than two months of demonstrations.

The protests that drew tens of thousands of people at a time to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moise also squeezed incomes, shuttered businesses and disrupted the transportation of basic goods.

“We are nearing a total crash,” Haitian economist Camille Chalmers said. “The situation is unsustainable.”

Haiti’s economy was already fragile when the new round of protests began in mid-September, organized by opposition leaders and supporters angry over corruption, spiraling inflation and dwindling supplies, including fuel. More than 40 people were killed and dozens injured as protesters clashed with police. Moise insisted he would not resign and called for dialogue.

The United Nations World Food Program says a recent survey found that one in three Haitians, or 3.7 million people, need urgent food assistance and 1 million are experiencing severe hunger. The WFP, which says it is trying to get emergency food assistance to 700,000 people, blames rising prices, the weakening local currency, and a drop in agricultural production due partly to the disruption of recent protests.

In the last two years, Haiti’s currency, the gourde, declined 60% against the dollar and inflation recently reached 20%, Chalmers said. The rising cost of food is especially crucial in the country of nearly 11 million people. Some 60% make less than $2 a day and 25% earn less than $1 a day.

A 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of rice has more than doubled in price in the local currency, said Marcelin Saingiles, a store owner who sells everything from cold drinks to cookies to used tools in Port-au-Prince.

The 39-year-old father of three children said he now struggles to buy milk and vegetables.

“I feed the kids, but they’re not eating the way they’re supposed to,” he said, adding that he has drained the funds set aside for his children’s schooling to buy food.

A growing number of families across Haiti can’t even afford to do that since the protests began, with barricades preventing the flow of goods between the capital and the rest of the country.

Many of those live in Haiti’s rural areas, which also have been hardest hit by demonstrations that continue in some cities and towns.

Wadlande Pierre, 23, said she temporarily moved in with her aunt in the southwest town of Les Cayes to escape the violent protests in Port-au-Prince. However, she had to move back to the capital because there was not gas, power or water in Les Cayes, and food was becoming scarce.

“There is no access to basic items that you need,” she said.

Pierre is now helping her mother, Vanlancia Julien, sell fruits and vegetables on a sidewalk in the neighborhood of Delmas in the capital.

Julien said she recently lost a couple hundred dollars’ worth of produce because she could not go out on the street to sell due to the protests.

“All the melon, avocado, mango, pineapple, bananas, all of them spoiled,” she said.

Last year, sales were good, but she is now making a third of what she used to earn before the protests began, even though streets have reopened.

“That doesn’t amount to anything,” she said. “The fact that people don’t go out to work, it’s less people moving around and makes it harder for me.”

That also means businesses like the small restaurant that 43-year-old Widler Saint-Jean Santil owns often remain empty when they used to be full on a regular afternoon.

He said the protests have forced many business owners to lay off people, which in turn affects him because clients can no longer afford to eat out.

“If people are not working, there is no business,” he said.

Among the businesses that permanently closed was the Best Western Premier hotel, which laid off dozens of employees.

Chalmers warned that economic recovery will be slow if the political instability continues, adding that the situation is the worst Haiti has faced in recent history.

“A lot of crises came together,” he said. “Not only the economic one, but the political and fiscal ones.”

 

 Iran’s president said on Sunday his country will depend less on oil revenue next year, in a new budget that is designed to resist crippling U.S. trade embargoes.

Iran is in the grips of an economic crisis. The U.S. re-imposed sanctions that block Iran from selling its crude oil abroad, following President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

“The budget sends a message to the world that despite the sanctions, we will manage the country,” President Hassan Rouhani told the opening session of Parliament. The proposed budget will counter “maximum pressure and sanctions” by the U.S., he said.

Rouhani added that the Iranian government will also benefit from a $5 billion loan from Russia that’s being finalized.  He said the U.S. and Israel will remain “hopeless” despite their goal of weakening Iran through sanctions.

The budget aimed at giving more relief and “removing difficulties” for poor people by heavily subsiding food and medical needs, he stated.

The next Iranian fiscal year begins March 20, with the advent of the Persian New Year. The budget is set to be about $40 billion, some 10% higher than in 2019. The increase comes as the country is suffering from a 40% inflation rate.

Parliament has until early February to discuss the budget bill. The Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog, must approve the bill for it to become law.

Iran’s economic woes in part fueled the anger seen in widespread protests last month that Iranian security forces violently put down. Amnesty International says the unrest killed over 200 people. Iran has not given any nationwide death toll so far.

 

President Donald Trump said Saturday that Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than him because, unlike his predecessors, “I kept my promises.”

Trump energized an audience that numbered in the hundreds at the Israeli American Council National Summit in Florida by recounting his record on issues of importance to Jews, including an extensive riff on his promise to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and relocate the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Trump said his predecessors only paid lip service to the issue.

“They never had any intention of doing it, in my opinion,” Trump said. “But unlike other presidents, I kept my promises.”

Trump also highlighted his decision to reverse more than a half-century of U.S. policy in the Middle East by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the strategic highlands on the border with Syria.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war but its sovereignty over the territory had not been recognized by the international community.

In his speech, the president also claimed there are some Jewish people in America who don’t love Israel enough.

“We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more, I have to tell you that. We have to do it. We have to get them to love Israel more,” Trump said, to some applause. “Because you have Jewish people that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough.”

Aaron Keyak, the former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, denounced Trump’s remarks as anti-Semitic.

“Trump’s insistence on using anti-Semitic tropes when addressing Jewish audiences is dangerous and should concern every member of the Jewish community – even Jewish Republicans,” Keyak said.

Trump has been accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic stereotypes before, including in August, when he said American Jews who vote for Democrats show “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” A number of Jewish groups noted at the time that accusations of disloyalty have long been made against Jews.

The Israeli American Council is financially backed by one of Trump’s top supporters, the husband-and-wife duo of Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate.

Both Adelsons appeared on stage to introduce Trump, with Miriam Adelson asserting that Trump “has already gone down in the annals of Jewish history, and that is before he’s even completed his first term in office.”

The Adelsons donated $30 million to Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016 race. They followed up by donating $100 million to the Republican Party for the 2018 congressional elections.

Trump’s entourage at the event included Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, along with Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Michael Waltz, whom he described as “two warriors” defending him against “oppression” in the impeachment inquiry.

Trump criticized Israel’s sworn enemy, Iran, saying he withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal with other world powers because Tehran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

But Trump voiced support for Iranian citizens who have been protesting a decision by their government to withdraw fuel subsidies, which sent prices skyrocketing.

Trump said he believes thousands of Iranians have been killed in the protests and that thousands more have been arrested.

“America will always stand with the Iranian people in their righteous struggle for freedom,” he said.

The president introduced his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who has played a leading role in helping the administration craft its Mideast peace plan.

A self-described deal-maker, Trump said he had long been told that achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be the hardest deal of all.

But “if Jared Kushner can’t do it, it can’t be done,” Trump said.

The White House has said its Mideast peace plan is complete and had promised to release it after Israeli elections in September. The long-delayed plan remains under wraps, and Israel appears headed for its third round of elections this year.

The plan also is facing rejection by Palestinian officials, who object to the pro-Israel leanings of the Trump administration.

During his speech, Trump also name-dropped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., criticizing her for supporting the “BDS” movement against Israel: boycott, divest and sanction. In August, at Trump’s urging, Israel denied Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., entry to the country over their support for the BDS movement. Omar and Tlaib are the first two Muslim women elected to Congress and outspoken critics of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

“My administration strongly opposes this despicable rhetoric,” Trump said. “As long as I am your president, it makes no difference. It’s not happening.”

Before addressing the Israeli American Council summit, Trump spoke at the Florida Republican Party’s Statesman’s Dinner in nearby Aventura. The state GOP closed the event to media coverage.
 

 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Saturday he still plans to shift the American military’s focus to competing with China and Russia, even as security threats pile up in the Middle East.

Esper outlined his strategic goals and priorities in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of government, defense industry and military officials.

Esper, who became Pentagon chief in late July, said he is sticking to the national defense priorities set by his predecessor, Jim Mattis, who was sitting in his audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Since Mattis resigned one year ago in protest of President Donald Trump’s push to withdraw from Syria, the Middle East has become even more volatile. At least 14,000 additional U.S. troops have been sent to the Persian Gulf area since May out of concern about Iranian actions.

Syria itself has arguably become a more complex problem for Washington, with Turkish forces having moved into areas in the north where American forces had been partnering with Syrian Kurdish fighters against remnants of the Islamic State extremist group. Also, Iraq is facing civil protests and a violent crackdown by security forces.

The deadly shooting at a Navy base at Pensacola, Florida, on Friday by a Saudi Air Force officer could complicate U.S.-Saudi military relations, although Esper said Friday that relations remain strong.

Esper this week denied news reports that he was considering sending up to 14,000 more troops to the Middle East, but he acknowledged to reporters Friday that he is worried by instability in Iraq and Iran.

In his speech Saturday, Esper made only a passing reference to Iran, citing Tehran’s “efforts to destabilize” the region.

He focused instead on shifting the U.S. military’s focus toward China and Russia — “today’s revisionist powers.” He accused Moscow and Beijing of seeking “veto power” over the economic and security decisions of smaller nations.

On Friday, Esper said he realizes that it will be difficult to move resources out of the Middle East to increase the focus on China and Russia.

He said he has been studying the force and resource requirements for every area of the globe to determine how to rebalance those resources.

“My ambition is and remains to look at how do we pull resources — resources being troops and equipment and you name it” — from some regions and either return them to the United States or shift them to the Asia-Pacific region, he said Friday.

“That remains my ambition, but I have to deal with the world I have, and so I gotta make sure at the same time I deter conflict — in this case in the Middle East,” he said. “I want to have sufficient forces there to make sure” the U.S. does not get into an armed conflict with Iran.

President Donald Trump indicated Saturday that his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani wants to take the information he has gathered from his investigations in Ukraine to the U.S. attorney general and to Congress.

Trump said Giuliani had not yet told him what information he has gathered, though the president said he’s heard it was plentiful.

“He’s going to make a report, I think, to the attorney general and to Congress,” Trump told reporters outside the White House before he departed for Florida. “He says he has a lot of good information. I have not spoken to him about that information.”

Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, has been traveling to Ukraine to pursue investigations into Trump’s potential 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son, as well as a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s push to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — which led to a determination that Russia meddled to help Trump win — has ultimately landed him facing down articles of impeachment, which House Democrats are drafting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request.

Trump is accused of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into announcing investigations into the Bidens while the White House held back crucial security aid for the country that had been approved by Congress.

Joe Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president, and Trump has alleged without evidence that the father got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired because the prosecutor was looking into the company. In fact, the U.S. and many other Western governments had pushed for the prosecutor’s ouster, believing that he was soft on crime.

Trump said he believes Giuliani wants to present his information to congressional investigators and to the Justice Department.

“I think he wants to go before Congress … and also to the attorney general and to the Department of Justice,” Trump said. “I hear he’s found plenty.”

Iran will unveil a new generation of uranium enrichment centrifuges, the deputy head of Iran’s nuclear agency Ali Asghar Zarean told state TV on Saturday. 
 
“In the near future we will unveil a new generation of centrifuges that are domestically made,” said Zarean, without elaborating. 
 
In September, Iran said it had started developing centrifuges to speed up the enrichment of uranium as part of steps to reduce compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal following the withdrawal of the United States.

The Israeli military said Saturday that three rockets had been fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel. 
 
The military said air defenses had intercepted two of the missiles. 
 
There were no reports of injuries, and no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. 
 
Cross-border violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza has ebbed and flowed in recent years. Fighting last month was the most violent in months. 
 
Leaders from Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, and the smaller but more radical Islamic Jihad are in Cairo, talking with Egyptian officials about cementing a cease-fire. 

U.S. Democratic lawmakers met privately Saturday to work on the investigation into President Donald Trump, inching closer to an impeachment vote, possibly before the Christmas holiday recess. 
 
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were working through the weekend to review evidence against the Republican president and to draft charges that they could recommend for a full House vote as early as Thursday. 
 
The legislators disclosed a 55-page report Saturday that outlined what they viewed as the constitutional grounds on which the charges, known as articles of impeachment, could be based. 
 
On Friday, the White House said it would not cooperate with the remaining House impeachment proceedings against Trump.  

“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” read a letter from Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. 
 
The response was issued less than an hour before a Friday afternoon deadline for lawyers of the president to state whether they would represent him in the next round of the committee’s impeachment proceedings. 
 
“You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” Cipollone said in the letter. 
 
The counsel reiterated the president’s tweeted words that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business.” 

‘He cannot claim’ unfairness
 
Later Friday, Nadler expressed disappointment Trump had decided not to participate.   
 
“We gave President Trump a fair opportunity to question witnesses and present his own to address the overwhelming evidence before us. After listening to him complain about the impeachment process, we had hoped that he might accept our invitation,” the committee chairman said in a statement. “If the President has no good response to the allegations, then he would not want to appear before the Committee. Having declined this opportunity, he cannot claim that the process is unfair.” 
 
Democrats contend the Republican president defied the norms of conduct for the office and violated his sworn obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution by asking Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president running for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Trump next year, and his son Hunter. 

Trump contends his phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been perfect and he did nothing wrong. Republicans have defended the president, saying Trump was right to press Ukraine to scrutinize the work that Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian natural gas company. 
 
Republicans are also pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community concluded it was Ukraine’s neighbor, Russia, that was doing the meddling. 
 
Trump’s request to Kyiv came at a time when his administration was withholding $391 million in military assistance approved for Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. The aid was released in September without Ukraine opening investigations of the Bidens. 
 
The request for such an investigation in exchange for military assistance is expected to be among the articles of impeachment against Trump. 

Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. 

Airstrikes on areas in the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria on Saturday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and wounded others as a three-month truce crumbles, opposition activists said. 
 
The airstrikes on Idlib province have intensified over the past few weeks as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest and once a commercial center. 
 
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed in Idlib province while the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense said 18 lost their lives. 
 
The largest number of casualties occurred in the village of Balyoun, where the Civil Defense said eight people were killed while the Observatory said nine died. Both groups also said that four people, including a child and two women, were killed in airstrikes on the rebel-held village of Bara. 
 
Both groups also said that five others were killed in the village of Ibdeita. The Civil Defense said another child was killed in a nearby village in Idlib while the Observatory had two more. 
 
Conflicting casualty figures are common in the immediate aftermath of violence in Syria, where an eight-year conflict has killed about 400,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s prewar population. 
 
Syrian troops launched a four-month offensive earlier this year on Idlib, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants. The government offensive forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes. 
 
A fragile cease-fire halted the government advance in late August but has been repeatedly violated in recent weeks. 

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump agreed during a phone conversation to maintain dialogue with the nuclear-armed North, Seoul said Saturday, with the two allies noting the situation had become “grave”.

Denuclearisation negotiations have been at a standstill since a summit in Hanoi broke up in February and pressure is rising as an end-of-year deadline to offer concessions, set by Pyongyang for Washington, approaches.

The 30-minute talk was the first conversation between the US President and the South Korean leader since they met at the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

“The two leaders shared an assessment that the current situation on the Korean peninsula is grave,” said Ko Min-jung, the spokeswoman of the South’s presidential office.

“They agreed momentum for dialogue to achieve prompt results from denuclearisation negotiations should be continued,” she went on to say, adding that Trump had requested the call.

The discussion came after a week in which exchanges between Trump and North Korea raised the prospect of a return to a war of words, culminating in Pyongyang’s threats to resume referring to the US president as a “dotard” and to take military action if the US military moves against it.

The South Korean leader was instrumental in brokering the landmark summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore last year which produced only a vaguely worded pledge about denuclearisation.

One hundred forty bushfires continue to burn across eastern Australia.  A huge blaze near Sydney is bigger in size than the city itself and could take weeks to put out.  Conditions have eased Saturday but the dangers persist.  

Sydney is again shrouded in a toxic, smoky haze.  Health warnings have been issued and many weekend sporting activities have been cancelled.  Several blazes have combined to create a “mega fire” north of Australia’s biggest city. The fire’s front is 60 kilometers long and officials warn it is simply too big to put out.

Lauren McGowan works in a bar in the nearby city of Cessnock.

“Everyone is a bit on edge, getting a little bit too close to home for around here.  Like, even with people we have working here the fires are practically on their doors,” she said.

There are 95 bushfires here in the drought-hit state of New South Wales.  Half are burning out of control.  More than 2,000 firefighters are on the ground.  Their task is unrelenting, but reinforcements have arrived from overseas, including Canada, New Zealand and the United States.  

Morgan Kehr, a senior firefighter from Edmonton, has flown in to join his Australian counterparts, who have in previous years battled blazes in Canada.

“First time away from Christmas, as it is with all of these guys.  Certainly a tough conversation but we’re happy,” said Kehr. “We’ve been assisted four times out of the last five years.”
 
There are hazardous conditions in Queensland, to the north.  Parts of that state are blanketed in smoke, and dozens of blazes still rage.  The World Health Quality index, a nonprofit environmental project based in China that measures global pollution, has shown unhealthy levels of air quality in many areas.

Authorities say that only heavy rain will put some of the fires out, but, ominously, the forecast is for more hot and dry conditions over the Australian summer.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called for the World Bank to stop loaning money to China, one day after the institution adopted a lending plan to Beijing over Washington’s objections.

The World Bank on Thursday adopted a plan to aid China with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in low-interest loans annually through June 2025. The plan calls for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8 billion.

“Why is the World Bank loaning money to China? Can this be possible? China has plenty of money, and if they don’t, they create it. STOP!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.

“World Bank lending to China has fallen sharply and will continue to reduce as part of our agreement with all our shareholders including the United States,” the World Bank said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
“We eliminate lending as countries get richer.”

Spokespeople for the White House declined to comment on the record.

The World Bank loaned China $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year, which ended on June 30, a decrease from around $2.4 billion in fiscal 2017.

But the fall in the World Bank’s loans to China is not swift enough for the Trump administration, which has argued that Beijing is too wealthy for international aid.