A federal appeals court in New York has upheld the legality of congressional subpoenas seeking President Donald Trump’s banking records but said sensitive personal information should be protected.      

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
       
The decision came after The House Financial Services and Intelligence committees asked Deutsche Bank and Capital One to turn over records related to Trump’s business ventures as they investigate “foreign influence in the U.S. political process.”
       
Trump and three of his children challenged the subpoenas.
       
A judge had ruled that the subpoenas were legitimate.
       
The 2nd Circuit agreed though it said the lower court should implement a procedure protecting sensitive personal information. It also gave litigants a limited chance to object to disclosure of certain documents.

Eleven North Korean defectors detained in Vietnam are asking the South Korean government to provide asylum in Seoul so they can avoid being deported to North Korea, according to a South Korean activist group.

Peter Jung, head of Justice for North Korea, a human rights group based in Seoul, told VOA’s Korean Service that one of the defectors who had a cellphone contacted the South Korean Embassy in Vietnam asking for help.

“The embassy told them it will take appropriate measures to help them,” said Jung. “But the defectors have not heard from the embassy” since Friday.

Eight women ranging in age from early 20s to 50s, and three men in their 20s crossed the Chinese border into Vietnam on Nov. 23. Vietnamese border guards detained them two days later in the city of Lang Son.

The defectors faced repatriation to North Korea. After several of the women fainted, the Vietnamese government decided against forcibly sending them to China, according to Jung. Currently, Vietnam is detaining all the defectors.

“Please take us,” said one of the women, pleading to the South Korean government in a video clip Jung sent to VOA.

In a separate video clip sent by Jung, another woman who was nursing people who appeared to be ill, said, “We are fleeing with patients like this. Please help us.”

The South Korean Foreign Ministry told VOA it is aware of the asylum-seekers.

“We are working and negotiating with the relevant country (Vietnam),” said a South Korean Ministry spokesperson.

VOA tried to contact the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry for comment but received no response.

If the 11 defectors are sent to China, they would most likely be deported back to North Korea, where they could face severe punishment such as forced labor, torture and even execution. China has a history of repatriating North Korean defectors.

North Koreans seeking asylum in South Korea often cross North Korea’s northern border into China. From China, they travel to a third country to enter South Korea because China expanded its crackdown of North Korean defectors earlier this year.

In April, Vietnam sent three North Korean defectors who crossed the Chinese border into Vietnam back to China.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said China should not send North Korean defectors home.

“If you take a look at the ‘Report of the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea,’ North Korean defectors can be tortured and executed” by their government,  he said.

China joined the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol in 1982, which defines the rights of a refugee, as well as the responsibilities of countries that provide asylum.

China, however, does not follow the U.N.’s definition of a refugee and does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees but as illegal economic migrants.

The estimated number of North Korean refugees in China range from approximately 30,000 to 50,000, according to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

About 771 North Korean defectors entered South Korea this year as of September. There are 33,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, according to the South’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North.

Christy Lee contributed to this report which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.

Jewish groups expressed outrage on Tuesday at an oversized urn placed in front of the German parliament that those behind it claim contains Holocaust victims’ remains and is meant to highlight the dangers of far-right extremism.
                   
The International Auschwitz Committee condemned the action by the Center for Political Beauty, which unveiled the urn near the Reichstag building Monday, calling it a “pillar of resistance.”
                   
“Auschwitz survivors are aghast at this installation, which hurts their feelings and the eternal peace of the dead of their murdered relatives,” the organization said.
                   
The Center for Political Beauty, a Germany-based activist group known for provocative stunts, said the urn contained victims’ remains that it had unearthed from 23 locations near Nazi death and concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Ukraine. Soil the group said contained the remains could be seen in the transparent orange urn, which is about the size of an oil drum, set atop a metal pillar.
                   
The group defended its installation, saying it did not open any gravesites. “We only looked for earth-covered human remains that were hidden by the Nazis in the surroundings of the former death camps.”
                   
The group, whose members consider themselves political artists, said its actions aim to show that in Germany “the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and cowardice.”
                   
The urn serves as a warning in times of growing far-right extremism of how conservative forces in Germany helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler’s fascists to come to power in 1933, the group said.
                   
Six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, many of them transported from around Europe to be killed in the death camps like Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka that the Germans established in occupied Poland.
                   
“Some of the survivors told me: `My beloved family members were carted so much across Europe during the deportations – why can’t they just be left in peace now?” Christoph Heubner from the Auschwitz Committee told The Associated Press.
                   
Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said moving the remains of the dead is forbidden according to Jewish law.
                   
“The human remains of Holocaust victims are especially holy and require the greatest care and sensitivity,” Schudrich told the AP. “According to Jewish tradition, they should remain in their original grave and certainly should not be used for any other purpose, even a purpose which some may think is worthy.”
                   
Germany’s leading Jewish group, the Central Council of Jews, said that while it welcomed political action against far-right extremism, even in provocative ways, the latest stunt by the Center for Political Beauty was “problematic.”
                   
“If the ashes are indeed from Shoah victims, then the peace of the dead was disturbed,” the council’s president, Josef Schuster, told the AP.
                   
“It would therefore be welcome if during the dismantling of the `resistance pillar’ the advice of a rabbi would be considered to at least ensure a respectful … handling of the ashes.”
                   
It isn’t the first time the activists have irritated Jewish groups with their installations. Two years ago, they erected a Holocaust memorial outside the home of a nationalist politician who suggested Germany should end the decades-long tradition of acknowledging and atoning for its Nazi past. Critics said the memorial was about political activism and not about the victims of the Holocaust.
                   
On Tuesday morning, police examined the urn near the Reichstag building and took photos after receiving complaints.
                   
Julien Sauter, a 17-year-old student who was on a school trip to Berlin with his high school class from Stuttgart, dismissed the notion of the urn as a legitimate art installation.
                   
“You can’t excuse everything by calling it art,” Sauter said. “Especially not when it’s such a sensitive topic.”

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the FBI he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed” at the way James Comey was fired as FBI director, according to records released Monday.

Rosenstein was interviewed by FBI agents several weeks after Comey’s firing as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. An FBI summary of that interview was among roughly 300 pages of documents released as part of public records lawsuits brought by BuzzFeed News and CNN.

The records also include summaries of FBI interviews of key Trump associates, including Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski and Michael Cohen. They provide additional insight into Mueller’s two-year investigation, which shadowed the first part of Trump’s presidency and preceded an ongoing impeachment inquiry centered on his efforts to press Ukraine for investigations of political rival Joe Biden.

Hicks described efforts to prepare for media scrutiny of a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and the president’s oldest son. Lewandowski told investigators the president prodded him to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make an announcement that the scope of the Russia investigation had been limited to future election interference.

And Cohen, who is now serving a three-year prison sentence for campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, told investigators he advised Trump’s personal lawyer that there was more detail about a proposed deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow than what he had shared with lawmakers. He said he “vaguely recalled” telling Jay Sekulow about a call he had “with a woman from the Kremlin,” and said Sekulow’s response was in line with “so what” and the deal never happened, according to the FBI document.

Sekulow told The Associated Press on Monday night that Cohen’s statements were false and that Cohen never told him anything about any call with a woman from Russia.

Rosenstein, who left his Justice Department post last spring, was interviewed about his role in Comey’s May 2017 firing. Rosenstein wrote a memo harshly criticizing Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a document held up by the White House as justification for his firing.

Rosenstein said he was asked during a White House meeting one day before Comey’s firing to produce a memo laying out his concerns with the FBI chief. He said he knew when he left the office that day that Comey would be fired, though he said he did not expect for his memo to be immediately released, and was surprised by the portrayal in the media that the termination was his idea instead of the White House’s, according to the FBI document.

Rosenstein said he expected Comey would be contacted by either Trump or Sessions so a meeting could be scheduled and he could be fired in person. Comey instead learned of his firing from television while speaking with agents in Los Angeles.When he learned of how Comey was fired, he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed. It was also humiliating for Comey,” an FBI agent wrote of Rosenstein’s reaction.

At one point during the interview, as Rosenstein was describing how he had “always liked Jim Comey” but disagreed with his decisions in the Clinton case, the deputy attorney general “paused a moment, appearing to have been overcome by emotion, but quickly recovered and apologized,” according to the FBI.

North Korea issued its latest warning Tuesday that its end-of-year deadline for the United States to offer concessions in nuclear talks is approaching.

In a statement carried by state media, Ri Thae Song, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs handling U.S. affairs, said it is “entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

Ri also criticized U.S. efforts to conduct more talks with North Korea, saying such dialogue is only a “foolish trick” for political purposes.

The negotiations have been stalled since February with North Korea seeking sanctions relief before giving up any of its nuclear capability, a path the United States has so far rejected.

Tuesday’s warning was the latest in veiled statements made by North Korean officials ahead of the deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un.

Last week, North Korea conducted its fourth launch this year of what it called a “super-large, multiple-rocket launch system,” and warned it may soon launch a “real ballistic missile” in the vicinity of Japan.

North Korea last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017, and conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.

In April 2018, Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests, saying North Korea “no longer need(s)” those tests.

Recently, North Korean officials have issued reminders that North Korea’s pause on ICBM and nuclear tests was self-imposed and can be reversed.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee is expected to publicly release Tuesday a report on its findings and recommendations in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told MSNBC late Monday that the panel was “putting the finishing touches” on the report.  He also said the committee would vote Tuesday night on formally submitting it to the Judiciary Committee, whose members will decide whether to draw up articles of impeachment against Trump.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to start its own impeachment hearings Wednesday, and will do so without a Trump lawyer present.

The president said he would not be sending representation “because the whole thing is a hoax.”

Trump also criticized Democrats for holding the hearing at the time he will be attending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s leaders’ summit in London.

“Just landed in the United Kingdom, heading to London for NATO meetings tomorrow,” Trump tweeted late Monday.  “Prior to landing I read the Republicans Report on the Impeachment Hoax.  Great job!  Radical Left has NO CASE.  Read the transcripts.  Shouldn’t even be allowed.  Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?”

Wednesday’s hearing will focus on the constitutional grounds surrounding impeaching a president with four legal scholars appearing as witnesses.  The Judiciary Committee announced Monday a witness list of law professors Noah Feldman of Harvard University, Pamela Karlan of Stanford University, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.

Trump also pointed to fresh comments by Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskiy claiming that he never spoke with the U.S. president “from the position of a quid pro quo.”

Zelenskiy also told reporters for four magazines (Time, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and Gazeta Wyborcza) that at a time Ukraine is at war with Russia, the United States, as Kyiv’s strategic partner, should not have been blocking military aid.

“I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo,” said Zelenskiy.

Trump seized on that comment as further vindication from Democrats’ allegations that Trump withheld support to Ukraine until the country helped dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, now a leading contender to challenge Trump in next year’s election.

Zelenskiy “just came out a little while ago and he said, ‘President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong’ and that should end everything,” the U.S. president said Monday. 

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in a letter to Nadler late Sunday, said the Trump administration “cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings.”

Cipollone said he will reply by the end of the week on whether the White House would appear at future hearings.

Nadler assured Trump and his counsel in his invitation letter last week that he “remains committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”

The Judiciary Committee chairman added the president has the “opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process.”

Possible charges that could lead to Trump’s impeachment include bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump is accused of holding up nearly $400 million in badly-needed military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Zelenskiy’s public commitment to investigate Biden for alleged corruption.

Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to hold up U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine, unless the government fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.

Trump also insists it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of Democrats.

No evidence against the Bidens has ever surfaced and the charge against Ukraine was based on a debunked conspiracy theory that originated in Russia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey on Monday to stop holding up support for a NATO defense plan for the Baltics and Poland, as Ankara presses the alliance to support its fight against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of the NATO summit, Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labeling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse.

He called on Ankara to focus on the larger challenges facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The message to Turkey … is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” Esper said as he flew to London.

“Alliance unity, alliance readiness, means that you focus on the bigger issues — the bigger issue being the readiness of the (NATO) alliance. And not everybody’s willing to sign up to their agenda. Not everybody sees the threats that they see.”

NATO envoys need formal approval by all 29 members for the plan to improve the defense of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against any threat from neighboring Russia.

The dispute, as NATO prepares to hold its 70th anniversary summit, is a sign of deep divisions between Ankara and Washington over everything from the war in Syria to Turkey’s growing defense relationship with Russia.

Turkey wants NATO to formally recognize the YPG militia, the main component of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as terrorists and is infuriated that its allies have given the militia support.

Ankara has blamed Washington for the current impasse, saying it was caused by the U.S. withdrawal of support from a separate defense plan for Turkey, covering any possible attack from the south where it borders Syria.

Asked whether Washington might agree to branding the YPG as terrorists in order to break the deadlock, Esper said: “I wouldn’t support that.”

“We’re going to stick to our positions, and I think NATO will as well,” Esper said.

The issue is the latest source of friction between the NATO allies, which have also been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of advanced Russian air defenses, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO defenses and pose a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Washington said in July it was removing Turkey from the F-35 program and has warned of possible U.S. sanctions.

Two U.S. senators pressed the Trump administration on Monday to impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian missile defense system and said the failure to do so sent a “terrible signal.”

The United States on Monday called recent violence in Nassiriya, Iraq in which at least 29 people died “shocking and abhorrent,” calling on the Iraqi government to investigate and punish those responsible for the “excessive” use of force.

Iraqi security forces opened fire on demonstrators who had blocked a bridge and later gathered outside a police station in the southern city, killing at least 29 people. Police and medical sources said dozens more were wounded.

Iraqi forces have killed over 400 people, mostly young, unarmed protesters, since mass anti-government protests broke out on Oct. 1. More than a dozen members of the security forces have also died in clashes.

“The use of excessive force over the weekend in Nassiriya was shocking and abhorrent,” David Schenker, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told reporters.

“We call on the Government of Iraq to respect the rights of the Iraqi people and urge the government to investigate and hold accountable those who attempt to brutally silence peaceful protesters,” he added.

The unrest is Iraq’s biggest challenge since Islamic State militants seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014.

It pits mostly young, disaffected Shi’ite protesters against a Shi’ite-dominated government that is backed by Iran and has been accused of squandering Iraq’s oil wealth while infrastructure and living standards deteriorate.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi announced on Friday he would resign after a call by Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for parliament to consider withdrawing its support for his government to stem the violence. Parliament voted to accept the resignation on Sunday.

Joe Biden took in more than $15 million for his White House run over the past two months, a sum that shows the former vice president’s fundraising operation has rebounded slightly after a lackluster summer in which he trailed his leading rivals.

Biden’s campaign would not say exactly how much he has raised since the end of September. But with roughly one month left before the next reporting deadline, campaign manager Greg Schultz said in a memo provided to The Associated Press that Biden has already surpassed the $15.6 million he raised across July, August and September.

The improvement comes at a costly juncture in the Democratic primary, as candidates sprint to get their message out and mobilize supporters ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses in February.

Schultz said online fundraising helped fuel the increase, which he attributed to discredited attacks that President Donald Trump has made against Biden and his son over their past dealings in Ukraine.

Trump has sought to implicate Biden and his son Hunter in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading U.S. diplomatic dealings with Kyiv under President Barack Obama. Although the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.

“His campaign and special interest groups have spent millions of dollars airing ads to spread those same lies,” Schultz wrote. “This groundswell of support shows us — and Trump, and reporters, and anyone else watching — that his whole scheme is backfiring.”

The fundraising uptick, however, doesn’t offer a complete picture. A more telling sum at this stage of the race would be how much cash Biden has on hand.

The $9 million he reported in the bank at the end of September trailed Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg — all of whom reported having at least twice that amount.

Yet for anxious Biden allies it shows renewed signs of vigor at a time when many have fretted about whether his campaign could hold on until Southern states, where Biden enjoys more support, hold their contests later in the year.

Schultz said the revenue bump will give the campaign “the resources we need to knock more doors, make more calls, and build more support in the caucus rooms and in the ballot box.”

“The resources are important, but the timing really couldn’t be better,” he wrote.

An airstrike that hit a civilian area in a southern neighborhood of the Libyan capital killed at least four children, the country’s health ministry said Monday.

Tripoli has been the scene of fighting since April between the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, and an array of militias loosely allied with the U.N.-supported but weak government, which holds Tripoli.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the Sunday airstrike on the al-Sawani neighborhood, about 30 kilometers, or 18 miles, from the city center, but the Libyan interior ministry blamed the Libyan National Army. The force did not return calls seeking comment.

The health ministry spokesman, Malek Merset, who said a fifth child was wounded in the attack, shared graphic photographs of lifeless bodies and an image of a wounded child, purportedly from the attack.

The fighting for Tripoli has killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands. It has stalled in recent months, with both sides dug in and shelling one another along the city’s southern reaches.

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war that ousted and killed long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It is now split into rival governments — the U.N.-supported government based in Tripoli, which controls some of the country’s west, and the east-based government aligned with Hifter that controls the east. Each is backed by militias and armed groups fighting over resources and territory.

Action by Libyan parliament

In a political development, the Libyan parliament, which is based in the east and affiliated with the east-based government, on Monday called on the U.N. to withdraw its recognition of the Tripoli-based government.

The move appeared prompted by the parliament’s outrage over a maritime and security cooperation deal last week between the Tripoli-based government and Turkey.

The parliament has denounced the agreement, signed by Libya’s Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as a “flagrant breach” of the country’s security and sovereignty. It said the deal grants the Turkish government the right to use Libyan airspace and waters as well as build military bases on Libyan soil.

The parliament speaker, Ogila Saleh, said in a four-page letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the agreement amounts to Turkish “occupation of Libyan territory and the violation of its sovereignty.” Saleh also said the deal ignores the fact that Turkey has no maritime border with Libya, but that Greece and Cyprus have them.

Greece and Cyprus, along with Egypt, which backs Hifter, have criticized the agreement, calling it a serious breach of international law.

The Turkey-Libya deal has also added tension to an ongoing dispute with Greece, Cyprus and Egypt over oil-and-gas drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Greece plans to raise the issue of the deal at NATO’s summit in London, which starts Tuesday.
 

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock ended his Democratic presidential campaign Monday, becoming the third Western governor boasting executive experience and a Washington-outsider appeal to flame out in the contest.

The campaigns of Bullock, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper failed to gain momentum in a D.C.-centric race in which former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dominated the polls for most of the past few months.

Bullock, a 53-year-old two-term governor and former attorney general, had the textbook resume for primary success in past presidential elections. He’s a former labor lawyer and a gun owner whose governing record included expanding Medicaid in a red state. He touted across-the-aisle appeal, arguing he was the best bet to defeat President Donald Trump because he was the only Democratic candidate to win in a state that Trump won in 2016.

But instead of following Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on the path from the governor’s mansion to the White House, Bullock sputtered. The crowded 2020 race has centered on national debates around Trump and impeachment, and the Democratic National Committee imposed tougher polling and fundraising thresholds to make the debate stage. Those thresholds favored those with national name recognition and established online networks, making it tough for Bullock and other newcomers to the national scene to get a toehold.

Bullock was also hobbled by his late start, announcing his candidacy in May and joining nearly two dozen other Democratic candidates competing for attention and campaign donations.

He struggled to raise money and register in the polls, managing to meet qualification thresholds for only one DNC debate, in July.

“While there were many obstacles we could not have anticipated when entering this race, it has become clear that in this moment, I won’t be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowded field of candidates,” Bullock said in a statement Monday.

The governor said that he ran to win back places Democrats have lost and end the influence of “dark money” in politics. Those concerns have not changed, he said, but he leaves the race “filled with gratitude and optimism, inspired and energized by the good people I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the course of the campaign.”

Bullock flew to Iowa and notified his staff in person on Sunday that he was dropping out.

Unlike Hickenlooper, who dropped out in August to instead run for Senate, or Inslee, who decided to instead seek reelection, Bullock did not announce plans for another campaign.

Term limit laws prevent him from running for governor again in 2020, and he has repeatedly brushed off Democratic hopes that he’d instead run for Senate against first-term Republican Steve Daines. Bullock has said that he has no interest in the Senate seat and that there are already strong candidates running against Daines.

Bullock’s spokeswoman, Galia Slayen, reiterated that Monday.

“While he plans to work hard to elect Democrats in the state and across the country in 2020, it will be in his capacity as a governor and a senior voice in the Democratic Party — not as a candidate for U.S. Senate,” Slayen said in a statement.

Bullock had been exploring a presidential run since 2017, but he said he couldn’t announce his candidacy until he had finished his work in Helena, where the state legislature was meeting.

He staked his presidential campaign on Iowa, and he made repeated trips to the state to campaign alongside prominent state Attorney General Tom Miller, the first statewide elected official in Iowa to endorse a 2020 candidate.

Bullock stuck strictly to his campaign message of needing to win back rural Trump voters, noting he won reelection the day that Trump carried his state by 20 percentage points. He also touted his history as a crusader to eliminate the influence of anonymous and foreign money in elections.

But he remained at the bottom of the polls and unfamiliar to many voters. His biggest national exposure appeared to come when he didn’t make the cut for the first debate, resulting in a slate of news stories and an appearance on “The Late Night with Stephen Colbert.”

Bullock was Montana’s attorney general for a term before he became governor in 2013. Before that, he worked as an assistant attorney general, as an attorney in private practice in Helena and for law firms in New York and Washington, D.C.

U.S. President Donald Trump is in London this week to attend the NATO summit as his impeachment fight back home enters a new phase.  

“It will never end, because they want to do what they want to do,” Trump said to reporters as he left the White House, referring to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

With Democrats beginning hearings on drafting the articles of impeachment Wednesday, many leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are well aware of the pressures Trump is facing at home.

Impeachment hearings “eat up a considerable amount of time” for the president and his closest advisers, said Gary Schmitt, resident scholar in strategic studies and American institutions at the American Enterprise Institute. “You’ll see a very distracted president for sure,” Schmitt said.

However, Trump’s impeachment will not likely impact discussions among NATO member countries whose leaders “probably anticipate that the president will be impeached but won’t be removed from office,” said Schmitt.

“They know that at least for the next year they’ll be dealing with President Trump and his administration so they’ll plan accordingly,” he said.

This is not the first time Trump will be facing world leaders under the threat of impeachment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formal House impeachment inquiry against the president on Sept. 24, the same day Trump gave a speech in front of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Echoes of Nixon

Trump is not the first U.S. president to attend a NATO meeting as his impeachment looms. In June 1974, Richard Nixon was in Brussels attending a summit commemorating NATO’s 25th anniversary as the House Judiciary Committee was concluding its impeachment inquiry. Nixon stepped down a few weeks later.

When Trump meets leaders at NATO’s gathering to celebrate its 70th year, he will do so “with the confidence he will likely survive Nixon’s fate,” said Derek Chollet, Executive Vice President for Security and Defense Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Chollet added that as Nixon did in 1974, Trump will strive to project a sense of normalcy in the summit. “As Congress debates his future, Trump will still have extra incentive to show that he’s in command,” he said.

The parallel between Trump and Nixon doesn’t end with impeachment.

The 1974 summit was also a period in which the Europeans worried about the United States withdrawing from Europe, said Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow in the Europe Program at Chatham House.

Kundnani added that Europeans in general are hoping that Trump won’t stay in office, but they are aware enough of the process to know that Republicans are unlikely to convict in the Senate.

“The hope is more that Trump won’t be re-elected, rather than that he will be convicted and removed from office before the election,” Kundnani said. “I don’t think it will particularly affect the way that the NATO summit functions.”

Bilateral meetings

On the sidelines of the summit, Trump is expected to hold bilateral meetings, including with French President Emmanuel Macron who has been advocating “strategic autonomy” for NATO members, stressing that amidst concerns of U.S. commitment to the alliance, Europeans must not rely too much on American security guarantees.

Macron sharply criticized Trump after he withdrew American forces from northeastern Syria in October without consulting NATO allies, saying that the decision represents the “brain-death of NATO.”
 

When Usman Khan left prison last December after serving half of a 16-year sentence for his part in a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange, and for planning to establish a terror training camp in Pakistan, he was thought to be making good progress towards being de-radicalized and was seen as a poster boy for Britain’s rehabilitation programs.

Cambridge University, which ran one of the programs Khan attended, was even considering offering him a place to study.

But now following 28-year-old’s dramatic knife attack Friday on London Bridge during a university-sponsored justice event, which left two people dead and three seriously injured, the early release of convicted terrorists, as well as de-radicalization programs, are coming under immediate scrutiny amid accusations that militants are gaming the rehabilitation system and hoodwinking authorities.

Some criminal justice experts say Khan played the rehabilitation system cleverly to secure his release and to lull his probation officers into allowing him to travel unsupervised from his home in the English county of Staffordshire to London for the justice event, where he killed two rehabilitation tutors, 25-year-old Jack Merritt and 23-year-old Saskia Jones.

“Despite the monitoring he was subjected to, he was able to convince everyone he was well on the way to being a reformed character,” according to Harry Fletcher, a criminal justice expert and campaigner for victims’ rights. Khan’s attack wasn’t opportunistic, but deliberately planned, say British counter-terror officials.

With fears mounting that other recently freed terrorists may also be playing the system, a crackdown has been launched that’s likely to see a large number of them returned to prison. One of Khan’s close associates, 34-year-old Nazam Hussain, who was freed from jail the same day as the London Bridge killer, was re-arrested Sunday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

At least 74 freed terrorists are being vetted again, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said in a broadcast interview Sunday that they all needed to be “properly invigilated so as to make sure there is no threat to the public.”

Freed terrorists are required to follow a strict set of rules, including not using the Internet, not associating with former accomplices, observing a curfew and attending only approved mosques. They are required to wear electronic ankle tags so their movements can be monitored. Khan wore one during Friday’s attack which unfolded at a conference near London Bridge sponsored by Cambridge University’s “Learning Together” program, which aims to help assist in the rehabilitation of violent offenders.

An election issue

The London Bridge attack, which ended after the knife-wielding Khan was confronted by conference attendees, including former offenders, and staff and shot dead by police, is dominating election campaigning with Johnson quick to go on the attack and blame previous Labour governments for the system of early release for convicted terrorists.

Johnson says violent offenders “must serve every day of their sentence, with no exceptions.” He added: “If you are convicted of a serious terrorist offense, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years – and some should never be released.”

Labour politicians have hit back, saying it is recent Conservative spending cuts that are to blame and have called for a full investigation into Khan’s prison sentence and subsequent release. And Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the main opposition Labour party, says convicted terrorists should “not necessarily” automatically serve their full prison sentences. “I think it depends on the circumstances and it depends on the sentence but crucially depends on what they’ve done in prison,” Corbyn said.

But amid the political party wrangling, criminal justice professionals and lawmakers who have built up expertise on de-radicalization say knee-jerk reactions and politicization of the challenge will not help improve rehabilitation programs or answer difficult questions surrounding their effectiveness and whether a militant can be de-radicalized.

Programs’ efficacy in question

Some prison experts have warned for months about a lack of rigor with the programs but have also raised concerns about the resources being devoted to de-radicalization, arguing much more money needs to be spent. Among them, former top prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who says Friday’s terror incident could have been avoided.

“What makes me angry is that for some years we have been talking to the government, not just me but many others, about these de-radicalization programs. These programs are delivered by well-meaning people on a shoe-string and are under-resourced and involve the ticking of boxes, but no ticked box has saved anybody’s life,” he says.

Others say more fundamental thinking needs to be done and it is not just a question of resources. “Our judicial system isn’t able to cope. We try to rehabilitate but the two people who were killed were people who were trying to help to give this person a second life and yet he wanted to kill. We need to better understand the mindset of somebody like that,” Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative lawmaker and former army officer, told Sky News.

Former prison governor, Ian Acheson, who in 2015 led an independent review of how Islamist militants are handled by the country’s prisons and probation system, says the entire system is deeply flawed, marked sometimes by naïveté and a “toxic combination of arrogance, defensiveness and ineptitude.” He complained in his report that the “screening tools to detect and programs to tackle radicalized behavior were rudimentary in-house creations with former terrorist offenders telling us how easy courses were to ‘game.’”  

He argues Britain’s criminal justice system is “unsuited to managing the risk of religious extremists with a martyrdom complex coming from a moral universe far away from the professionals responsible for their management.”

But writing in The Times newspaper, Acheson said “it would be a shame — possibly counterproductive — to go for the punitive response that the public will understandably demand. Few terrorists will be locked up forever and we need to ensure that those released have a chance to recant their hateful beliefs and join society again.”

Donald Trump faces a process that could end with his removal as President of the United States. Impeachment hearings underway now in the House of Representatives is just the start of what is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. In today’s installment of American Impeachment, VOA’s Steve Redisch explains the US Senate’s role in holding a trial.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Monday oversaw the launch of a landmark pipeline that will transport natural gas from Siberia to northeast China, an economic and political boost to ties between Moscow and Beijing.

The start of gas flows via the Power of Siberia pipeline reflects Moscow’s attempts to pivot to the East to try to mitigate pain from Western financial sanctions imposed over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

The move cements China’s spot as Russia’s top export market and gives Russia a potentially enormous new market outside Europe.

It also comes as Moscow is hoping to launch two other major energy projects — the Nord Steam 2 undersea Baltic gas pipeline to Germany and the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey and southern Europe.

The 3,000-km-long (1,865 mile) Power of Siberia pipeline will transport gas from the Chayandinskoye and Kovytka fields in eastern Siberia, a project expected to last for three decades and to generate $400 billion for Russian state coffers.

“This is a genuinely historical event not only for the global energy market but above all for us, for Russia and China,” said Putin, who watched the launch via video link from the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“This step takes Russo-Chinese strategic cooperation in energy to a qualitative new level and brings us closer to (fulfilling) the task, set together with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, of taking bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2024.”
The new pipeline emerges in Heilongjiang, which borders Russia, and goes onto Jilin and Liaoning, China’s top grain hub.

Xi told Putin via a video link on Monday that the newly launched gas pipeline is “a landmark project of bilateral energy cooperation” and an “example of deep integration and mutually beneficial cooperation”.

Flows via the pipeline are expected to gradually rise to 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year in 2025, possibly making China Russia’s second-largest gas customer after Germany, which bought 58.50 bcm of gas from Russia last year.

Moscow began supplying natural gas to western and central Europe in the 1950s and Europe has long been Russia’s major consumer of gas, supplied by Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom, with total annual supplies of around 200 bcm.

The price China is paying for Russian gas in the new pipeline remains a closely kept secret with various industry sources saying it is tied to the price of an oil products basket.

Neither Putin, nor Xi commented on Monday on the gas price Beijing is set to pay under the contract.

Increased competition

Russian pipeline gas will compete against other pipeline gas supplies to China, including from Turkmenistan, as well as against shipments of sea-borne liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“China’s gas demand growth is expected to slow down from previous years yet remains strong, with an estimated 10% year-on-year growth for the first nine months of 2019,”

Jean-Baptiste Dubreuil, from the International Energy Agency’s natural gas market analysis team, told Reuters.
“Our medium term forecast ‘Gas 2019’ assumes average 8% growth until 2024 (compared with a world average of 1.6% pa).”

Russia has been in talks with China about raising gas sales via other routes too, such as from the Russian Far East and via Mongolia or Kazakhstan, but has not yet clinched any deals.

Russia has dramatically increased deliveries of oil to China in the past decade, challenging Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier in certain months.

To achieve that, Russia launched a major oil pipeline to China, which today ships 600,000 barrels per day (bpd), and opened a new port at Kozmino on the Pacific. Russia also ships 200,000 bpd to China via a pipeline crossing Kazakhstan.

Russian coal sales to the east in 2018 exceeded 100 million tons, accounting for more than half of Russia’s total coal exports.

The United States reportedly flew a reconnaissance plane over South Korea on Monday, marking the second intelligence-gathering flyover this week, according to an aviation tracker cited by several South Korean news sources.

The aircraft — thought to be an RC-135W — was first reported on Twitter flying west to east across South Korea at an altitude of around 31,000 feet at approximately 8:26 a.m. The spy plane was spotted by Aircraft Spots, an account that monitors military aircraft movements. 

The same account reportedly identified a U.S. Air Force U-2S plane flying over Seoul on December 1, while South Korean media reported similar recent flights by U-2S, EP-3C, E8C and RC-135V jets. The United States’ most recent reconnaissance flight took place just days after North Korea launched its 13th projectile this year — “a super large multiple rocket launcher” — on Nov. 28.

“Monitoring like this is routine, and we can assume that the U.S. military is surveilling North Korea at all times,” C. Harrison Kim, a North Korea expert and professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told VOA. “But at the same time, the recent missile launches from North Korea are seen as a provocation and so, given the situation, the U.S. has to respond on some level.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has given an end-of-year deadline for further nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

“The United States has to do some form of [military surveillance] to do its part as a military power in East Asia,” C. Harrison Kim said. “But I think the bigger situation at hand is that North Korea is sending a message to the world that it is ready to negotiate, and wants a concrete step forward with the United States.”

Samoa ordered a government shutdown to help combat a devastating measles outbreak Monday, as five more children succumbed to the virus, lifting the death toll in the tiny Pacific nation to 53.

The government said almost 200 new measles cases had been recorded since Sunday, with the rate of infection showing no sign of slowing despite a compulsory mass vaccination program.

The scheme has so far focussed on children but Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was time to immunize everyone in the 200,000 population aged under 60.

To achieve the goal, he said government services and departments would close on Thursday and Friday this week in order to allow all public servants to assist with the mass vaccination campaign throughout the country.

He said only electricity and water utility workers would be exempt and called on the nation to stand together to contain the outbreak.

“In this time of crisis, and the cruel reality of the measles epidemic, let us reflect on how we can avoid recurrence in the future,” Malielegaoi said in a national address.

Since the crisis began in mid-October, there have been 3,728 measles cases, accounting for almost two percent of the population.

Infants are the most vulnerable and form the bulk of infections, with 48 of the fatalities aged four or less.

A state of emergency was declared in mid-November, with schools closed and children banned from public gatherings, such as church services, to minimize the risk of contagion.

The outbreak has been exacerbated by Samoa’s low immunization rates, which the World Health Organization blames on overseas-based anti-vaccine campaigners.

Malielegaoi was unequivocal in his message, telling his people “vaccination is the only cure… no traditional healers or kangen (alkaline) water preparations can cure measles”.

“Let us work together to encourage and convince those that do not believe that vaccinations are the only answer to the epidemic,” he said.

“Let us not be distracted by the promise of alternative cures.”

Officials say the anti-vaccination message has resonated in Samoa because of a case last year when two babies died after receiving measles immunization shots.

It resulted in the temporary suspension of the country’s immunization program and dented parents’ trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.

What does Brexit have to do with Vietnam? It seems a strange question, but there are several ways that Britain’s planned divorce from the European Union would be likely to affect the Southeast Asian nation.

These effects can be put in three broad categories. First, Vietnam has finished negotiating a trade agreement with the EU, but Brussels appears too preoccupied to ratify the agreement until it has tied up Brexit once and for all. Second, if Britain is out of the EU, then some European products would become more expensive, so British consumers would look for cheaper alternatives, such as from Vietnam. And third, Britain has been looking for new trade agreements to join if it is no longer in the EU bloc, and that includes joining a major agreement already signed by Vietnam.

That agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, formerly known as the TPP, includes nations around the Asia Pacific and used to include the United States until President Donald Trump pulled the country out in 2017. When Britain first suggested the idea of joining the TPP, in 2018, it was met with a lot of raised eyebrows — Britain is not a Pacific power, after all. However, the idea subsequently received support from Japan, the TPP member with the biggest gross domestic product, which said it would welcome Britain with open arms. Vietnam is the TPP member with the lowest GDP per capita.

It makes sense that Vietnam would want to do more trade with Britain, Frederick Burke, who is the managing partner of Baker & McKenzie, a law firm in Ho Chi Minh City, said at a company conference last month.

“It’s a good market, it’s a good opportunity,” he said.

Brexit would mean that some European products would no longer have preferential access to the British market, so Vietnam could step in and compete with those products. For instance some British business interests in Vietnam believe Vietnamese tennis shoes and garments would become competitive against Romanian products, Burke said.

“The UK is not the same as the American economy but it’s about a third of that, and so it’s very substantial, second biggest economy in Europe,” he said. “So it’s a very good opportunity for Vietnam.”

Finally, the third impact may not be quite as favorable to Vietnam. Efforts to finalize the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, or EVFTA, have dragged on for years. The same can be said of Brexit, which was approved in a British referendum in 2016 but has yet to happen. Brussels is far more preoccupied with Brexit than with the Vietnam agreement, so it appears that Hanoi will have to wait.

Most recently, analysts expected the vote on the pact with Vietnam to happen this coming January — then again, Brexit has also been pushed to the same month. And if Brexit does not end up taking place in January, it does not look like the Vietnam vote will take place either.

“Things could be delayed eventually with the delay of the Brexit, which has been extended to the end of January,” Alain Cany, who is the country chairman of Jardine Matheson Vietnam, a conglomerate that covers areas from restaurants to engineering, as well as a former chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam, said. “So it [EVFTA ratification] might be postponed.”

An Irish citizen, who converted to Islam, traveled to Syria to join Islamic State and ended up marrying a British militant, has been arrested on arrival at Dublin airport Sunday.

Lisa Smith, 38, who served in the Irish Defense Forces before going to Syria, had been deported from Turkey with her 2-year-old daughter.

“On her arrival in Dublin, Lisa Smith was met by An Garda Síochána,” Irish Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said, using the Irish name for the national police force.  “This is a sensitive case and I want to reassure people that all relevant state agencies are closely involved.”

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney told Irish national broadcaster RTE that officials had been trying to repatriate Smith since learning of her presence in a refugee camp in March. He said the primary concern was for the toddler who is an Irish citizen because of her mother’s nationality. The child is now with Smith’s relatives in Dundalk.

Authorities plan to question Smith extensively before deciding on what action to take. She has denied fighting for IS or training female soldiers for the militancy.

Many European countries and the United States have resisted bringing back their citizens who joined Islamic State.

Unknown gunmen opened fire on a church in eastern Burkina Faso Sunday, killing at least 14 people.

Officials say the attack took place in the town of Hantoukoura, near the border with Niger.

Soldiers are hunting for the attackers who fled on motor scooters after gunning down worshipers during a Sunday mass.

No one has claimed responsibility, but Islamic extremists are suspected.

Christians and others had lived peacefully in the Muslim majority country until a series of attacks blamed on jihadists spilled over from neighboring Mali last year, leaving hundreds dead.