Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday that he has a possible skin cancer, after a medical visit where he had a mole removed from his ear.

The presidential office, however, said there is no sign that Bolsonaro has a cancer, adding that the president had been to a hospital in Brasilia in the afternoon. “The president is in good health, without any indication of a skin cancer and is keeping his appointments for this week,” said the statement.

Earlier, Bolsonaro also said he had been advised to cancel a trip to Salvador, in the state of Bahia, due to suffering from exhaustion.

Noor Alexandria Abukaram, a 16-year-old runner living in the U.S. state of Ohio, was recently disqualified from a race because she wore a hijab. Now, Abukaram is fighting to get the rules changed. VOA’s Mohammad Jafar Haand visited the runner in her hometown and filed this report. 

Haiti is already the western hemisphere’s poorest country. Things are getting worse. Plugged In examines the political, economic and social collapse of a country has yet to recover from a devastating earthquake nearly 10 years ago. Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse and opposition leader Reginald Boulos answer our questions about their plans for the future. US Ambassador to the organization of American States, Carlos Trujillo discusses the US policy toward the Caribbean island nation. Haitian-Americans Albert Decady, Executive Director of the Haitian United Front of the Diaspora and Cleve Mesidor, Founding member of LOGOS and U.S. Haiti Technology Association provide a look to the future. Hosted by Mil Arcega. Air date: December 11, 2019.

House Democrats will vote on two articles of impeachment early next week, charging President Donald Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — two offenses they say should remove him from office under the standards laid down by the U.S. Constitution. 
 
Trump is the third president in history to face impeachment based on a specific charge that he abused the power of his office. The Constitution does not directly mention abuse of power among the reasons that Congress can impeach a president. Instead, “treason, bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors” are listed. 
 
Democratic lawmakers, legal experts and precedent support the approach. 
 
Trump has said he did nothing wrong and that House Democrats’ allegations are “flimsy, pathetic, ridiculous articles of impeachment.”  

What do the articles of impeachment say about Trump’s abuse of power? 
 
The abuse of power charge is centered on the allegation that Trump predicated the release of $391 million of congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy upon an announcement by Ukraine that Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival of Trump, and Biden’s son Hunter would be investigated. 

“President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of political benefit,” said the first article of impeachment introduced Tuesday by House Democrats. “In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the nation.” 
 
Why would ‘abuse of power’ fall under ‘high crimes and misdemeanors?’
 
While the framers of the Constitution did not specifically mention abuse of power as an impeachable offense, House Democrats argued this week that Congress was given the power to remove presidents from office for this very kind of conduct. 
 
“The framers of the Constitution recognized that someday a president might come to office who would have used that office, betrayed the public trust and undermined national security to secure foreign help in his reelection,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California said Tuesday while introducing the articles of impeachment. “They recognized this danger, and they prescribed a remedy, and that remedy is impeachment.” 
 
Some experts say the fact that the aid to Ukraine was approved by another branch of the U.S. government makes this a clear-cut case of abuse of power. 
 
“He really had no say constitutionally on whether it should be given to Ukraine. Right there, he’s in violation of constitutional norms and practices and the law,” said Barbara Ann Perry, presidential studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Perry said Trump further abused the power of the presidency by tying the holdup in aid to an investigation into his political rivals. 
 
How do the charges against Trump compare with charges against past presidents? 
 
Lawmakers in previous impeachments have used the broad outlines of “high crimes and misdemeanors” to include charges of abuse of power against presidents. 
 
“The central kind of problem that impeachment is directed toward is that somebody who achieves the status of president, and then instead of using that power for the American people and to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, uses it for illicit purposes,” said Louis Michael Seidman, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center. “That’s a theme that runs through all presidential impeachments.”  

President Bill Clinton faced four articles of impeachment in December 1998, but the charge that he abused the power of his office while covering up an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky did not pass in the House of Representatives. 
 
In August 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned rather than face a vote on articles of impeachment in the House, including a charge he abused the power of his office by directing government agencies to target citizens with investigations. 
 
President Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for multiple offenses related to his use of executive powers. But he did not face a specific charge of abuse of power. 
 
Why do House Democrats believe Trump’s dealings with Ukraine constitute an abuse of power? 
 
Trump’s conduct “strikes at the heart of our democracy — the ability of people to elect their own leaders,” Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, head of the House Democrats’ communications arm, told reporters Tuesday. “There’s no higher crime than dragging a foreign government in to corrupt our elections.” 
 
Trump is the first president to face impeachment charges related to an alleged abuse of power in foreign affairs. Cicilline said the framers of the Constitution were concerned about precisely this kind of situation when they developed the remedy of impeachment. 
 
“This is the president of the United States soliciting a foreign government to corrupt our elections and undermine our democracy. It undermined our national security,” Cicilline said.  

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that wrote the articles of impeachment, said Tuesday that lawmakers’ actions “distinguish America from every other country. That is that no one is above the law.”   
 
Lee said her committee “looked very keenly at the question of abuse of power, which, if we begin to not mind holding presidents accountable, it sends America down a spiraling path of being like every other country that has had its challenges with leadership. It clearly denotes that we have a president and not a monarch,” Lee said. 
 
When the full House votes next week, lawmakers will also consider if Trump should be removed from office for obstructing Congress’ investigation into potential abuses of power. If one or both of the articles are adopted, the Senate will hold a trial early next year to consider if Trump should be removed from office. 

Jesse Oni contributed to this report.
 

Indian authorities in the far-flung northeast called in troops Wednesday to help contain demonstrators opposed to contentious citizenship legislation expected to be approved by the upper house, officials said.

Troops were deployed to the state of Tripura and were on standby in Assam, a senior army official said, as police battled protesters railing against a bill that will fast-track citizenship claims for immigrants from three neighboring countries — but not if they are Muslim.

For Islamic groups, the opposition, rights groups and others this is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims — something he denies.

But many in India’s northeast, which on Wednesday was rocked by a third straight day of demonstrations following a general strike Tuesday, oppose the new law for different reasons.

They object because the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) stands to give citizenship to large numbers of Hindus who have emigrated from Bangladesh in recent decades.

Police fired tear gas in different parts of Guwahati, Assam state’s biggest city, as several thousand demonstrators attempted to barge past security barriers to converge on the adjoining state capital Dispur.

Tripura has suspended mobile internet services to stop the spread of misinformation on social media, according to authorities there.

“If the CAB is passed in Rajya Sabha (the upper house) today, we appeal to all the students, civilians, tea garden workers and all sections of the society to come out to the streets again tomorrow to protest,” local activist Akhil Gogoi said.

‘Eerie similarity’ to Nazi laws

The legislation — which Modi’s government tried and failed to get through the upper house in its first term — passed the lower house just after midnight Tuesday following a fiery debate.

Derek O’Brien, an opposition lawmaker in the upper house, on Wednesday said the legislation bore an “eerie similarity” to Nazi laws against in the Jews in 1930s Germany.

“In 1935, there were citizenship laws to protect people with German blood … today we have a faulty bill that wants to define who true Indian citizens are,” he said.

Modi’s government — re-elected in May and under pressure over a slowing economy — says Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are excluded from the legislation because they do not face discrimination in those countries.

Also left out are other minorities fleeing political or religious persecution elsewhere in the region such as Tamils from Sri Lanka, Rohingya from Myanmar and Tibetans from China.

Many Muslims in India say they have been made to feel like second-class citizens since Modi stormed to power in 2014.

Several cities perceived to have Islamic-sounding names have been renamed, while some school textbooks have been altered to downplay Muslims’ contributions to India.

In August, Modi’s administration rescinded the partial autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and split it into two.

A citizens’ register in Assam finalized this year left 1.9 million people, many of them Muslims, facing possible statelessness, detention camps and even deportation.

Removing ‘infiltrators’

Modi’s government has said it intends to replicate the register nationwide with the aim of removing all “infiltrators” by 2024.

Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand-man and home minister, has likened illegal immigrants to “termites.”

“The Indian government is creating legal grounds to strip millions of Muslims of the fundamental right of equal access to citizenship,” Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Monday termed the bill as a “dangerous turn in the wrong direction.”

India’s foreign ministry retorted that the remarks were “neither accurate nor warranted” and “guided by their prejudices and biases.”

Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has been named Time  magazine’s  Person of the Year for 2019.

Editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal made the announcement Wednesday during an appearance on NBC’s Today   show.

“She became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement,” Felsenthal said.

Thunberg is the youngest person to win the award after quickly evolving into one of the world’s most prominent climate change activists.

Her Friday protests alone outside the Swedish parliament during school hours at age 15 helped trigger a global movement to fight climate change.

The movement, which became known as “Fridays for Future,” prompted millions of people in about 150 countries “to act on behalf of the planet,” Felsenthal said.

Felsenthal noted that Thunberg, now 16, “represents a broader generational shift in culture,” with more youth advocating for change worldwide, including during demonstrations in countries such as Hong Kong, Chile, Sudan and Lebanon.

Thunberg’s straightforward speaking style captured the attention of world leaders, resulting in invitations to speak at several high-profile events, including at the United Nations and before the United States Congress.

During her appearance before  U.S. lawmakers, Thunberg, who has Asperger syndrome, refused to read prepared remarks. She, instead, submitted the  U.N.’s 2018 global warming report to them and declared, “I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science.”

One of her most memorable moments came at the  U.N. Climate Change Summit in September, when she berated  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other world leaders, declaring they had stolen her “dreams of childhood” with their “empty words.”

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction,” she said, “and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Those words resonated worldwide, energizing climate change activists and sparking a series of prompting scornful reactions from others.

Thunberg’s dedication to fighting climate change also earned her a nomination for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft, which has been grounded since March following two deadly crashes, will not be cleared to fly until 2020, the top US regulator said Wednesday.

Federal Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson told CNBC the process for approving the MAX’s return to the skies still has 10 or 11 milestones left to complete, including a certification flight and a public comment period.

“If you just do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020,” Dickson said.

Boeing has been aiming to win regulatory approval this month, with flights projected to resume in January.

But Dickson said, “I’ve made it very clear Boeing’s plan is not the FAA’s plan.” He added that “we’re going to keep our heads down and support the team in getting this report done right.”

Boeing and the FAA have been under intense scrutiny following crashes that together killed 346 people and have prompted Boeing to cut production of the top-selling jet while new plane deliveries are suspended.

Dickson was expected to face another round of tough questioning at a congressional hearing later Wednesday. 

Lawmakers have questioned whether the crashes were the result of FAA officials being too cozy with Boeing, leading to lax oversight during the original certification process for the aircraft.

 

A powerful bomb-and-gun attack on the largest American military base in Afghanistan early Wednesday injured dozens of people, mostly civilians.

Afghan military authorities said a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed vehicle in front of the gate of an unused hospital almost adjacent to the Bagram Airfield in Parwan province.

Four gunmen later entered the vacant health facility before foreign forces engaged them in a gunfight, Alozai Ahmadi, the commander of the Parwan coordination center, told VOA.

A spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support military mission confirmed the attack on the medical facility.

“The attack was quickly contained and repelled by our ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security) and coalition partners, but the future medical facility was badly damaged. There were no U.S. or coalition casualties and Bagram remained secure throughout the attack,” he said.

Ahmadi said the casualties occurred in the nearby civilian population because the powerful car bomb explosion shattered houses there. He said more than 50 people, including women and children, were injured. Ahmadi said the hospital was built by the Korean government but it had not been in use for four years due to security reasons.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack, though Taliban insurgents routinely fire rockets at the Bagram base.

On November 28, U.S. President Donald Trump made a surprise visit to Bagram, located about 50 kilometers north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, to celebrate Thanksgiving with his troops.

The U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general is due to testify Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his report that found no evidence of political bias in the FBI’s launching of its investigation into Russian election interference.

Michael Horowitz issued the report Monday with findings that amounted to a rejection of President Donald Trump’s repeated claim that the FBI probe was a political witch hunt to undo his presidency.

Trump nonetheless asserted that the report confirmed an “attempted overthrow” of the government far worse than he had ever thought possible.

The president on Tuesday criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray for saying in an interview with ABC News that the investigation “was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.” Wray also noted Horowitz found the FBI made numerous mistakes during its inquiry.

“I don’t know what report the current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but I’m sure it wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted.  “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”

I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

The U.S. military says a suicide bomber attacked a medical facility near the Afghan capital of Kabul Wednesday.

In a written statement issued by the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan, there were no U.S. or coalition casualties as a result of the attack outside the gate of Bagram Air Base, but five Afghans were wounded.

The medical facility, which was under construction to serve local Afghans, was badly damaged.  

No one has taken responsibility for the attack. 

A look at the history, facts and timeline of the war in Afghanistan.

Lawyers for Huawei’s chief financial officer have won a court battle after a judge asked Canada’s attorney general to hand over more evidence and documents relating to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, according to a court ruling released Tuesday.

Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s legal team that there is an “air of reality” to their assertion.

But she cautioned that her ruling is limited and does not address the merit of Huawei’s allegations that Canadian authorities improperly handled identifying information about Meng’s electronic devices.

Meng, 47, was arrested at the Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, at the request of the United States, where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading the bank HSBC about Huawei Technologies’ business in Iran. She has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition.

She was questioned by Canadian immigration authorities prior to her arrest, and her lawyers have asked the government to hand over more documents about her arrest.

Meng’s legal team has contested her extradition in the Canadian courts on the grounds that the United States is using her extradition for economic and political gain, and that she was unlawfully detained, searched and interrogated by Canadian authorities acting on behalf of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Judge’s ruling

In her ruling, Holmes wrote that she found the evidence tendered by the attorney general to have “notable gaps,” citing the example of why the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) “made what is described as the simple error of turning over to the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), contrary to law, the passcodes CBSA officers had required Ms. Meng to produce.”

Holmes also said the attorney general did not provide adequate evidence to “rebut inferences from other evidence that the RCMP improperly sent serial numbers and other identifiers of Ms. Meng’s devices to the FBI.”

Holmes said these gaps in evidence raise questions “beyond the frivolous or speculative about the chain of events,” and led her to conclude that Meng’s application “crosses the air of reality threshold.”

The order does not require the disclosure of documents — the attorney general may assert a privilege, which Meng could contest in court.

Neither the Canadian federal justice ministry nor Huawei immediately responded to requests for comment.

No timeline was outlined in Holmes’ ruling.

Meng’s extradition hearing will begin Jan. 20, 2020, in a federal court in Vancouver.
 

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that House Democrats have reached agreement with the Trump administration on a new and revised North American trade deal now known as United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA. The agreement on the pact’s final terms came after more than two years of talks, that also included Canada and Mexico, to revise the original free trade accord, known as NAFTA. Pelosi’s announcement came on the same day that democratic lawmakers announced articles of impeachment against President Trump. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.

A police officer and multiple other people were killed in a furious gunbattle Tuesday that filled the streets of Jersey City with the sound of heavy gunfire for about an hour, authorities said.

Authorities said they believe the shootout was not an act of terrorism, but the bloodshed was still under investigation.

Officials gave no immediate details on what set off the shooting and how it unfolded, and there was no word on how many suspects were involved or whether anyone had been taken into custody.

One officer was pronounced dead at a hospital, and multiple other people were found dead at a kosher supermarket, Mayor Steven Fulop said without specifying how many were killed. A second officer was struck in the shoulder by gunfire, and two others were hit by shrapnel, Fulop said.

The shooting spread fear through the neighborhood, and the nearby Sacred Heart School was put on lockdown as a precaution.

The bullets started flying early in the afternoon in the city of about 270,000 people, situated across the Hudson River from the Statue of Liberty. 

SWAT teams, state police and federal agents converged on the scene, and police blocked off the area, which in addition to the school and supermarket included a hair salon and other shops. Dozens of bystanders pressed against the police barrier to capture the action on their cellphones, some whooping when bursts of gunfire could be heard.

Video shot by residents recorded loud volleys of gunfire reverberating along one of the city’s main streets and showed a long line of law enforcement officers pointing guns as they advanced, yelling to bystanders, “Clear the street! Get out of the way!”

“It’s like firecrackers going off,” said Andy Patel, who works at a liquor store about three blocks away. “They were shooting like crazy. … The cops were clearing everyone off the streets.”
 

A Pennsylvania appeals court rejected Bill Cosby’s bid to overturn his sexual assault conviction Tuesday over issues including the trial judge’s decision to let five other accusers testify.

The Superior Court ruling was being closely watched because Cosby was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the (hash)MeToo era. The same issue was hard-fought in pretrial hearings before movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial.

Cosby’s lawyers in his appeal said the suburban Philadelphia judge had improperly allowed the five women to testify at last year’s retrial although he’d let just one woman testify at the first trial in 2017.

But the Superior Court said Pennsylvania law allows the testimony if it shows Cosby had a “signature” pattern of drugging and molesting women.

“Here, the [prior bad act] evidence established appellant’s unique sexual assault playbook,” the court said, noting that “no two events will ever be identical.”

The court went on to say that the similarities were no accident.

“Not only did the [prior bad act] evidence tend to establish a predictable pattern of criminal sexual behavior unique to appellant, it simultaneously tended to undermine any claim that appellant was unaware of or mistaken about victim’s failure to consent to the sexual contact that formed the basis of the aggravated indecent assault charges,” the panel said in its ruling.

Lawyers for Cosby had argued eight issues on appeal, including the judge’s decision to let prosecutors use portions of a deposition he gave in the accuser’s related civil suit. His lawyers also argued that he had a binding promise from a former prosecutor that he would never be charged in the case and could testify freely at a deposition in accuser Andrea Constand’s related lawsuit.

The appeals court rejected those arguments and upheld the judge’s classification of Cosby as a sexually violent predator.

Cosby, 82, can now ask the state Supreme Court to consider his appeal.

He has been serving a three- to 10-year prison term for the 2004 encounter at his suburban Philadelphia home, which he deemed consensual.

He was arrested a decade later, after a federal judge unsealed portions of the deposition at the request of The Associated Press and new prosecutors reopened the criminal case.

The Superior Court panel, in arguments in Harrisburg in August, asked why Cosby’s lawyers didn’t get a written immunity agreement and have it approved by a judge, instead of relying on an oral promise.

“This is not a low-budget operation we were operating here. They had an unlimited budget,” said Superior Court Judge John T. Bender, who questioned whether any court would have approved the deal.

Judge Steven O’Neill’s decision to let the other accusers testify came after more than 60 women accused Cosby of sexual misconduct. Prosecutors asked to call 19 of them. Superior Court Judge John Bender appeared to agree with O’Neill’s logic in letting some take the stand.

“The reality of it is, he gives them drugs and then he sexually assaults them. And in four out of the five, those were in mentor situations,” Bender said.

Kristen L. Weisenberger, representing Cosby, said one of the women wasn’t even sure she was sexually assaulted. However, prosecutors said, that’s how Cosby planned it.

O’Neill had allowed just one other accuser at Cosby’s first trial in 2017, when the jury deadlocked. Cosby’s lawyers called his later decision to let more women testify arbitrary and prejudicial.

The long-married Cosby, once beloved as “America’s Dad” for his TV role as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the hugely popular sitcom “The Cosby Show,” has acknowledged having sexual contact with a string of younger women, many of whom came to him for career advice and took alcohol or pills he offered them.

He and his lawyers and agents have suggested that many of the accusers were gold diggers seeking money or fame. He told a news outlet in November that he expects to serve the maximum 10-year sentence if he loses the appeal, because he would never express remorse to the parole board.

Cosby agreed to pay Constand, a former Temple University basketball team manager, about $3.4 million to settle her lawsuit. His insurance company, following his conviction, settled at least nine other defamation lawsuits filed by accusers for undisclosed sums.

The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.
   

Roughly 300 Saudi Arabian military aviation students have been grounded as part of a “safety stand-down” after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a U.S. Navy base in Florida, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

The FBI has said U.S. investigators believe Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, acted alone when he attacked a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, before he was fatally shot by a deputy sheriff.

The shootings have again raised questions about the U.S. military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has come under heightened scrutiny in Congress over the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

Still, U.S. military leaders have sought to portray this as a localized issue which would not affect the overall U.S.-Saudi relationship.

“A safety stand-down and operational pause commenced Monday for Saudi Arabian aviation students,” said Lieutenant Andriana Genualdi, a Navy spokeswoman.

Another U.S. official said the grounding was to help Saudi students prepare to eventually restart their training and similar procedures would have been taken if such an incident took place in a U.S. military squadron.

Genualdi said the grounding included three different military facilities: Naval Air Station Pensacola, Naval Air Station Whiting Field and Naval Air Station Mayport, all in Florida.

She added that while it was unclear when the Saudi students would be allowed to fly again, their classroom training was expected to resume soon. She added that aviation training had resumed for students from other countries.

There are currently about 850 Saudi students in the United States for military training.

Alshamrani was on the base as part of a U.S. Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies. He had started training in the United States in 2017 and had been in the Pensacola area for the past 18 months, authorities said.

A group that tracks online extremism has said Alshamrani appeared to have posted criticism of U.S. wars in predominantly Muslim countries and quoted slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on Twitter hours before the shooting spree.

U.S.-Saudi relations

The attack comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has maintained warm ties with Riyadh amid high tensions with Middle East rival Iran.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has dismissed suggestions that the shootings might make him more reluctant about new U.S. deployments to Saudi Arabia, which were announced in October and first reported by Reuters.

“Saudi Arabia is a longstanding partner of ours in the region. We share mutual security interests,” Esper said over the weekend.

Esper said he had instructed the armed forces to review both security at military bases and screening for foreign soldiers who come to the United States for training after the shooting.

In the wake of the shootings, the U.S. Northern Command immediately ordered all military installations to review force protection measures and to increase “random security measures.”

A Northern Command spokesman said local commanders in the United States also had the authority to “add further countermeasures as needed,” without elaborating as to which, if any, bases did so.
 

Greece has sent two letters to the United Nations explaining its objections to a maritime boundary deal between Turkey and Libya and asking for the matter to be taken up by the U.N. Security Council, the government spokesman said Tuesday.

The country’s foreign minister also convened a meeting in Athens to brief political party leaders on developments. The deal, endorsed by Turkey’s parliament last week, has fueled regional tension, particularly over drilling rights for gas and oil exploration.

The agreement would give Turkey and Libya access to an economic zone across the Mediterranean despite the objections of Greece, Egypt and Cyprus, which lie between the two geographically. All three countries have blasted the deal as being contrary to international law, and Greece expelled the Libyan ambassador last week over the issue.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Greece sent one letter to the U.N. Secretary General and one to the head of the U.N. Security Council Monday night detailing Greece’s position. He said the letters noted the agreement “was done in bad faith and violates the law of the sea, as the sea zones of Turkey and Libya are not neighboring, nor is there a joint maritime border between the two countries.”

The letters also note the deal “does not take into account the Greek islands” and their right to a continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. The agreement has also not been ratified by Libya’s parliament, Petsas said, rendering it “void and unable to affect Greek sovereign rights.”

Neighbors Greece and Turkey, although NATO allies, have tense relations and are divided by a series of decades-old disputes, including territorial issues in the Aegean Sea, and have come to the brink of war three times since the 1970s, including once over drilling rights in the Aegean.

 

A summit of Arab Gulf nations opened on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia without Qatar’s ruler in attendance, despite signs of a thaw in a diplomatic crisis that has gripped the regions U.S. allies.

Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani instead sent Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser Al Thani to head Qatar’s delegation to the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting.

The GCC bloc, composed of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, has been fractured since mid-2017. That’s when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar and blockaded the tiny peninsula-nation.

The four accuse Qatar of supporting Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which these countries view as a terror threat to regional security. They also accuse Qatar of having close ties with Iran. Qatar, which shares a massive underwater gas field with Iran, says its commitments have always been “to uphold international law and protect human rights and not to a specific party or group.”

There had been some speculation among analysts that Sheikh Tamim might attend the summit following recent signs hinting at reconciliation. Others said he would never be seen visiting any of the quartet nations so long as their blockade on Qatar persists.

Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani acknowledged last week, however, there have been talks with Saudi Arabia.

“We hope that these talks will lead to a progress where we can send an end for the crisis,” he said at the Mediterranean Dialogue Forum in Rome.

In another sign of a possible thaw, teams from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain flew this month to Qatar and participated in the Arabian Gulf Cup soccer tournament, which they had previously refused to do.

Still, there’s little indication that deeply-strained ties with the UAE might also be repaired, despite Kuwaiti mediation efforts to end the dispute. This year’s GCC summit was originally planned to be held in the UAE, but was moved to Saudi Arabia.

Gerald Feierstein, senior vice president at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the venue change is indicative if the Emirati-Qatar rift.

“Unhappiness with Doha’s sympathetic view of the political Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its close relationship with Turkey remain friction points,” he said.

For all their diverging views and interests, the GCC states share a common interest of stability in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping corridor vital that’s to their energy exports in the Persian Gulf.

Attacks blamed on Iran this summer, including a stunning attack on a major Saudi crude processing facility, have rattled the region. Tensions between Tehran and Washington have also escalated.

“All these countries’ economies and oil exports are at risk if the Gulf is not secure,” Omani analyst Abdullah Baabood said.

Sigurd Neubauer, a Mideast analyst based in Washington, said the recent attacks in the Persian Gulf have accelerated the need for GCC reconciliation.

“The external threat to the GCC is significant now from Iran as opposed to just a year ago,” he said.

Qatar’s powerful ex-prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, said reconciliation talks must address the harm inflicted on Qatar from the blockade so that “such policies are not repeated.”

“I am with a reconciliation that comes without conditions, and which protects the dignity and sovereignty of nations,” he wrote on Twitter, before adding that it will take years to rebuild trust among nations of the GCC.

Centuries-old ties that bind families and tribes underpin the Arabian Peninsula, but that kinship has been strained under the crisis. After the row erupted in June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain warned that anyone who sympathizes with Qatar or criticizes the measures taken against it would be imprisoned and fined.

Qatari citizens were expelled from the three countries after years of visa-free travel throughout the Gulf. Transport links with Qatar were cut and Saudi Arabia sealed shut Qatar’s only land border, impacting food imports.

Qatar turned to Turkey and Iran to restock its food shelves and supplies, and deepened its military alliance with Turkey.

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said resolution to the crisis ultimately lies with Qatar.

“It’s in the hands of Qatar to make sure that all our worries that led to us to boycott them are dealt with from their part,” he said in remarks at the Manama Dialogue last month.

 

Taiwan’s top diplomat said Tuesday that his government stands with Hong Kong citizens pushing for “freedom and democracy,” and would help those displaced from the semi-autonomous Chinese city if Beijing intervenes with greater force to quell the protests.

Speaking to The Associated Press in the capital, Taipei, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu was careful to say his government has no desire to intervene in Hong Kong’s internal affairs, and that existing legislation is sufficient to deal with a relatively small number of Hong Kong students or others seeking to reside in Taiwan.

But he added that Hong Kong police have already responded with “disproportionate force” to the protests. He said that any intervention by mainland Chinese forces would be “a new level of violence” that would prompt Taiwan to take a different stance in helping those seeking to leave Hong Kong.

“When that happens, Taiwan is going to work with the international community to provide necessary assistance to those who are displaced by the violence there,” he said.

Chinese paramilitary forces have deployed to the Chinese city of Shenzhen, just outside Hong Kong, since the protests began in June. Neither they nor the thousands of Chinese military troops garrisoned in Hong Kong itself have been deployed to confront the protesters so far.

“The people here understand that how the Chinese government treats Hong Kong is going to be the future way of them treating Taiwan. And what turned out in Hong Kong is not very appealing to the Taiwanese people,” Wu said.

China’s Communist Party insists that Taiwan is part of China and must be reunited with it, even if by force. Modern Taiwan was founded when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who once ruled on the mainland, were forced to retreat to the island in 1949 after the Communists took power in the Chinese Civil War.

Beijing has suggested that Taiwan could be reunited under the “one country, two systems” model that applied to Hong Kong after the former British colony was returned to China in 1997. That agreement allowed Hong Kong to keep its civil liberties, independent courts and capitalist system, though many in Hong Kong accuse Beijing of undermining those freedoms under President Xi Jinping.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has said that the “one country, two systems” model has failed in Hong Kong and brought the city to “the brink of disorder.”

Government surveys earlier this year showed that about 80% of Taiwanese citizens oppose reunification with China.

Wu spoke a month before Taiwanese voters go to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 11. Opinion surveys suggest that Tsai, a U.S. and British-educated law scholar who rejects Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, is on track to secure a second term over her more China-friendly rival, Han Kuo-yu of the Nationalist Party.

China severed links with Taiwan’s government after Tsai took office in 2016 because of her refusal to accept Beijing’s claims on the island. It has since been increasing diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan.

That includes sending aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Strait — the most recent transit was last month — and peeling away Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies. Two more, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing in September.

A second term for Tsai would see a continuation of Taiwan’s tough stance against its much larger neighbor.

 “If President Tsai is reelected, we’ll continue to … maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. We’ll continue to send out goodwill gestures to China,” Wu said. “We want to make sure that the Chinese have no excuse in launching a war against Taiwan.”

Taiwan, known officially as the Republic of China, lacks a seat at the United Nations. It counts on its 15 official diplomatic allies, which are mostly small and poor, to help bolster its claims to international legitimacy.

Safeguarding diplomatic relations with those remaining countries is a top priority for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wu said.

“I think our relations with these 15 countries are quite strong at this moment and we don’t worry that much,” he said.

Taiwan also has unofficial relationships with several other countries, including the United States, which does not support its independence but is bound by law to ensure its defense.

The Trump administration has increased support for Taiwan even as it is embroiled in a trade war with China. The U.S. this year agreed to sell 66 F-16 fighter jets worth $8 billion to Taiwan, prompting complaints by China.

Wu said Taiwan’s relationship with the U.S. is the best it has been in 40 years — a reference to the four decades since Washington formally shifted its diplomatic relations with China from the government in Taipei to the one in Beijing.

The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China is creating both opportunities and challenges for Taiwan, Wu acknowledged. Taiwanese companies are big investors in China, and some are moving their businesses off the mainland as the trade war drags on, he said, citing $23 billion of investments pledged by companies relocating operations back to Taiwan.

But he said Taiwan enjoys “strong bipartisan support” in Washington and is not concerned that its status with the U.S. could be used as a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations.

 “We are being assured … by very senior Trump administration officials that their relations with Taiwan is independent of relations with any other country and to the United States, Taiwan is a very important partner,” he said.

 

 

The Pentagon has denied intentionally misleading the public about the 18-year war in Afghanistan, after The Washington Post published a trove of government documents revealing that officials made overly optimistic pronouncements they knew to be false and hid evidence that the conflict had become un-winnable. 

“There has been no intent by DoD to mislead Congress or the public,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell wrote to VOA on Monday. 

“The information contained in the interviews was provided to SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) for the express purpose of inclusion in SIGAR’s public reports,” he added.

The Post said the documents contain more than 400 interviews with senior military and government insiders who offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of war.

According to the Post, U.S. officials, most of whom spoke on the assumption that their remarks would not be made public, acknowledged that the strategies for fighting the war were flawed and that the U.S. wasted hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make Afghanistan into a stable, democratic nation. 

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, said in 2015, according to the documents. “We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

The Post said the interviews also highlight botched U.S. attempts to reduce corruption, build a competent Afghan army and reduce the country’s opium trade.

U.S. presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all vowed to avoid becoming mired in “nation-building” in Afghanistan. However, the report shows how even from the early days of the war, senior officials in charge of directing U.S. policy in the country expressed confusion about Washington’s basic objectives and strategy for achieving them.

The Post said the interviews “contradict a long chorus of public statements” that assured the U.S. was “making progress in Afghanistan.”

Outgoing Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, who serves as the senior enlisted adviser to the top U.S. military officer, told reporters on Monday that he “firmly thought the strategy we had in place was working.”  

“I feel that we’ve never been lied to, and we are continuing to move forward (in Afghanistan),” Troxell added.

The Afghan war is estimated to have killed more than 150,000 people, including civilians, insurgents, local and foreign troops, since the U.S. and its allies invaded 18 years ago to oust the Taliban from power for sheltering al-Qaida leaders accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the U.S.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 2,400 U.S. service members and cost Washington nearly $1 trillion.

The Post waged a legal battle for three years to force the government to disclose the information because of its importance to the public.

The U.S. and the Afghan Taliban restarted peace negotiations on Saturday, three months after Trump abruptly stopped the yearlong process aimed at finding a political settlement with the insurgent group and ending the war in Afghanistan.

Afghan-born U.S. special reconciliation representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, led his team at a meeting Saturday in Doha, Qatar, where insurgent negotiators are based.

The draft agreement the U.S.-Taliban negotiations had produced before Trump called off the process on Sept. 7 would have set the stage for a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

The Taliban, in return, had given counterterrorism guarantees and promised to engage in intra-Afghan peace negotiations to permanently end decades of hostilities in the country.