Hundreds of Iraqi protesters remained in Baghdad’s central Tahrir Square on Sunday, defying a bloody crackdown that killed scores over the weekend and an overnight raid by security forces seeking to disperse them.

Young men had erected barricades on a bridge leading to the capital’s fortified Green Zone between them and security forces who continued to lob tear gas canisters towards them.

At least 67 Iraqis were killed and hundreds wounded Friday and Saturday, as demonstrators clashed with security forces and militia groups in a second wave of protests against Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government this month, bringing the total death toll in October to 224.

Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service said Sunday it had deployed in the streets of Baghdad to protect important state buildings “from undisciplined elements.”

Two security sources had told Reuters Saturday that the elite counterterrorism forces had been deployed in Baghdad and had been told to “use all necessary measures” to end the protests against Abdul Mahdi’s government.

Counterterrorism forces beat and arrested dozens of protesters in the southern city of Nassiriya Saturday night.

They broke up the demonstrations in Tahrir Square with tear gas and stun grenades but some protesters have regrouped.

The unrest has broken nearly two years of relative stability in Iraq, which from 2003 to 2017 endured a foreign occupation, civil war and an Islamic State insurgency.

It poses the biggest challenge to Abdul Mahdi since he took office just a year ago. Despite promising reforms and ordering a broad cabinet reshuffle, he has so far struggled to address the protesters’ discontent.

Political alliances backing his fragile coalition government began to fracture, making his continued leadership increasingly precarious.

Hong Kong police fired tear gas Sunday to disperse a rally called over concerns about police conduct in monthslong pro-democracy demonstrations, with protesters cursing the officers and calling them “gangster cops.” 

Organizers called the demonstration at a waterfront park but police said the rally was unauthorized and engaged in a standoff with the protesters after ordering them to leave.

The protesters taunted the officers, calling them names, and the situation appeared tense. Police fired rounds of tear gas and moved forward to chase away the crowds.

Police have faced criticism for heavy-headed tactics including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and a water cannon to subdue protesters who have hurled bricks and firebombs.

March to show unity

Protesters said they will also march in support of the former British colony’s ethnic and religious minorities, in a show of unity after police used a water cannon to spray a mosque and bystanders the previous weekend. 

Protesters have taken to the streets for more than four months. The movement was initially sparked by an unpopular extradition bill that many residents worried would put them at risk of being sent into China’s Communist Party-controlled judicial system. 

The government formally withdrew the bill last week, but the movement has snowballed to include demands for political reform and police accountability.

Medical workers protest

At a rally Saturday night organized by medical workers to oppose what they called “violent repression” by police in response to protesters, some protesters jeered and cursed several officers observing from a footbridge.

Earlier Saturday, the Hong Kong government won a temporary court order banning anyone from posting personal details or photos of police officers online. The order prohibits unlawfully “publishing, communicating or disclosing” officers’ details including their Facebook and Instagram account IDs or photos of officers or their family members.

This month, an 18-year-old was charged with intentional wounding in a slashing attack on a riot officer.

Despite repeated government appeals for people not to side with mobs involved in vandalism, throwing gasoline bombs and other violence, the protest movement is still rousing determined support from more moderate demonstrators. They’re broadly worried about the future and freedoms of the city that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, with promises from Beijing that it would largely be its own boss, its way of life unchanged.

More than 40 people died in 2018 after being shocked by Tasers in the United States. As an alternative, some police departments are trying BolaWrap  said to be a new, non-lethal device. Genia Dulot has the story.
 

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to make a “major statement” at the White House at 9 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) Sunday, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said late Saturday.

Gidley gave no further details, and it was unclear what the topic of Trump’s statement might be.

There was speculation, however, that Trump might have news about Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive militant who has been the subject of an international manhunt for years.

The president gave an indication that something was afoot earlier Saturday night when he tweeted without explanation:

Something very big has just happened!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2019

Trump has been frustrated by the U.S. news media’s heavy focus on the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, which he calls an illegitimate witch hunt.

He has also faced withering criticism from both Republicans and Democrats alike for his U.S. troop withdrawal from northeastern Syria, which permitted Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies.

“The President of the United States will be making a major statement tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock from the White House,” according to @WhiteHouse statement. https://t.co/8fTw3WySN2

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 27, 2019

Trump was expected to make the statement in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, which he has used to make a number of major announcements.

Just last week he used the same room to announce that a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds had taken hold.

For centuries, Cambodians have looked to the Tonle Sap for a protein-rich river fish dinner. But supply has been a challenge. Malis Tum reports from a riverbank fish market in Phnom Phen.
 

Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera asked all his Cabinet members to offer their resignations Saturday as he prepared to shake up his government in response to a wave of protests, including one that drew more than a million people the day before. 
 
Chile’s conservative president also said he might lift the state of emergency that has covered much of the country for the past nine days — a decree that had failed to bring peace after rioting broke out in response to a 4-cent rise in subway fares.  

The protests rapidly expanded to cover a far wider sense of frustration among many Chileans who felt they have been struggling to make do as the well off grew richer. 
  
“The march we all saw yesterday was a massive and peaceful march,” Pinera said. “We have all heard the message. We have all changed.”  

He promised “a new Cabinet to confront these new demands and take charge of the new times.” 
 
Friday’s demonstration in central Santiago that drew 1.2 million people was the largest in the country at least 35 years. 
 
“All of them [Cabinet ministers] should go because they have been laughing at the people,” said Sonia Novoa, a 78-year-old retiree. 

Pay, pensions, housing and more
 
Protesters have been calling for better pay, pensions, schools, housing and medical care, among many other demands. While most of the protests have been peaceful, some, especially at the start, have devolved into riots and looting, and the government says at least 20 people have died. 
 
Pinera has responded by raising pensions and the minimum wage, as well as by revoking the subway fare hike. He said he is also considering cutting water fees and highway tolls. 
 
For Pablo Rodriguez, a 30-year-old actor, the steps “are a good start, but aren’t sufficient.”  

Some of those who protested on Friday returned to the downtown Italy Plaza to clean up the garbage and debris left behind. 
 
“But I am going to take advantage of that and say to protest again,” said student Andres Villarroel as he headed downtown. 
 
Politicians from both the ruling party and opposition had been asking for the ministerial change to re-establish the government’s credibility in the face of the unrest. Among the most controversial ministers is Andres Chadwick, who as interior minister is in charge of police who have violently broken up protests. 

It’s a start
  
Supermarket employee Yolanda Jerez said she favored the moves. 
  
“The president’s announcements are great because we are expecting changes and they have to start with something,” she said. 
  
Despite Pinera’s announcements and concessions, thousands gathered again Saturday in plazas across Chile. Police with tear gas dispersed protesters in a plaza in central Santiago. As night fell, pot-banging protests could be heard in many cities. 
  
The independent National Human Rights Institute said that since the state of emergency went into effect, 3,162 people have been detained and 997 injured. 
 
As of Saturday, most of the country was under a state of emergency and curfew.

Catholic bishops from across the Amazon called Saturday for the ordination of married men as priests to address the clergy shortage in the region, an historic proposal that would upend centuries of Roman Catholic tradition. 
 
The majority of 180 bishops from nine Amazonian countries also called for the Vatican to reopen a debate on ordaining women as deacons, saying “it is urgent for the church in the Amazon to promote and confer ministries for men and women in an equitable manner.” 
 
The proposals were contained in a final document approved Saturday at the end of a three-week synod on the Amazon, which Pope Francis called in 2017 to focus attention on saving the rainforest and better ministering to its indigenous people. 
 
The Catholic Church, which contains nearly two dozen different rites, already allows married priests in Eastern Rite churches and in cases where married Anglican priests have converted. But if Francis accepts the proposal, it would mark a first for the Latin Rite church in a millennium. 

Tradition since 11th century
 
The celibate priesthood has been a tradition of the Latin Rite Catholic Church since the 11th century, imposed in part for financial reasons to ensure that priests’ assets pass to the church, not to heirs. 
 
Francis told the bishops at the end of the voting that he would indeed reopen the work of a 2016 commission that studied the issue of women deacons. And he said he planned to take the bishops’ overall recommendations and prepare a document of his own before the end of the year. 
 
Some conservatives and traditionalists have warned that any papal opening to married priests or women deacons would lead the church to ruin. They accused the synod organizers and even the pope himself of heresy for even considering flexibility on mandatory priestly celibacy. 
 
They vented their outrage most visibly this week when thieves stole three indigenous statues featuring a naked pregnant woman from a Vatican-area church and tossed them to into the Tiber River. 
 
The statues, which conservatives said were pagan idols, were recovered unscathed by Italy’s Carabinieri police. They were on display Saturday as the synod bishops voted on the final document, which was approved with each paragraph receiving the required two-thirds majority. 
 
The most controversial proposals at the synod concerned whether to allow married men to be ordained priests, to address a priest shortage that has meant some of the most isolated Amazonian communities go months without a proper Mass. The paragraph containing the proposal was the most contested in the voting, but received the required majority 128-41. 

‘Suitable and esteemed men’
 
The proposal calls for the establishment of criteria “to ordain priests suitable and esteemed men of the community, who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, having a legitimately constituted and stable family, to sustain the life of the Christian community through the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments in the most remote areas of the Amazon region.” 
 
The paragraph ended by noting that some participants wanted a more “universal approach” to the proposal — suggesting support for married priests elsewhere in the world. 
 
Francis has long said he appreciates the discipline and the gift of celibacy, but that it can change, given that it is discipline and tradition, not doctrine. 
 
History’s first Latin American pope has been particularly attentive to the argument in favor of ordaining “viri probati” — or married men of proven virtue — in the Amazon, where Protestant and evangelical churches are wooing away Catholic souls in the absence of vibrant Catholic communities where the Eucharist can be regularly celebrated. 

The Democratic-led impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump resumed with testimony from a senior State Department official on Saturday, a day after a judge buoyed the probe by dismissing a central Republican objection. 
 
Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, was due to meet with the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees behind closed doors at the U.S. Capitol. 
 
Lawmakers and staff were holding the first weekend deposition of the investigation, after Reeker’s testimony was postponed because of memorial events this week for Representative Elijah Cummings, who had been Oversight Committee chairman and played a leading role in the impeachment inquiry. 

Inquiry ruled valid
 
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the claim that the impeachment process was illegitimate, as he ordered the Republican Trump administration to give the House Judiciary Committee secret material from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s reporting on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. 
 
Howell said the House did not have to approve a resolution formally initiating the effort for the impeachment inquiry to be valid, something Republicans have been insisting is the case. 

Reeker, 54, is a career diplomat whose current portfolio includes Ukraine, the country central to the investigation of Trump. Reeker has held his position on an acting basis since March 18. 
 
The impeachment inquiry has underscored what current and former U.S. officials describe as a campaign by Trump against career diplomats. Several have already met with congressional investigators. 
 
Investigators were expected to ask Reeker about issues including Trump’s abrupt dismissal of Marie Yovanovitch in May as ambassador to Ukraine. According to emails given to congressional committees this month, Reeker was among diplomats who sought to intervene when Trump supporters accused Yovanovitch of being disloyal to the president.  

Another career diplomat involved in those communications, George Kent, testified last week that he was told to “lie low” on Ukraine and instead defer to three of Trump’s political appointees. Yovanovitch has also testified, accusing the Trump administration of recalling her based on false claims and of eviscerating the State Department. 
 
Focus on Ukraine 
 
At the heart of the impeachment inquiry is a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender to face Trump in the 2020 election, and his son Hunter, who had been a director of a Ukrainian energy company. 
 
The Trump administration was withholding $391 million in security assistance for Ukraine when the call took place, and investigators are looking into whether Trump improperly tied the release of the aid to getting Ukraine’s help in probing the Bidens. 
 
Trump denies wrongdoing and, backed by his fellow Republicans in Congress, insists he is being treated unfairly. The administration has refused to hand over documents requested by the congressional committees and has sought to prevent current and former officials from giving interviews. 
 
The committees have scheduled several depositions next week, following Reeker’s appearance on Saturday, all behind closed doors. 
 
For Monday, they have called Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser, and on Tuesday, lawmakers expect Alexander Vindman, the White House National Security Council’s (NSC) top expert on Ukraine. 

Court guidance
 
Kupperman on Friday filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to determine whether he could testify. His lawyer Charles Cooper said the judicial branch needed to weigh in on whether the president could block Kupperman and other White House officials from complying with congressional subpoenas. 
 
Kathryn Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security, is scheduled to appear on Wednesday, and Tim Morrison, a top NSC Russia and Europe adviser, is scheduled for Thursday. 
 
Democratic members of the three committees said they felt they had gathered a great deal of evidence and did not expect this phase of the investigation to last many more weeks, before public hearings. 
 
“We’ve heard a lot of compelling testimony. We feel like we know a lot of what’s happened,” New Jersey Representative Tom Malinowski, told reporters at the House this week. 

Ahmad Al-Rashid knows what the suffering was like for the 39 people who were found dead in the back of a truck in southeastern England this week.  

The 29-year-old Syrian refugee found himself gasping for breath inside a refrigerated shipping container with a group of migrants and a load of frozen chicken when a planned trip across the English Channel turned into hours of terror in 2015. The truck hadn’t even left the French port of Calais when someone heard the cries of the desperate migrants and opened the doors. 
 
“I was in their shoes. I knew the desperation of their last moments,” he said of the people who died this week. “In my case, someone came to help me. [For them], all their screams were in vain.” 
 
Authorities are calling Wednesday’s truck container discovery in a town near London one of Britain’s worst human smuggling cases. Rashid said it brought his journey to the U.K., and its terrors, back in stark relief. 

‘One hell to another’
 
Rashid fled Aleppo in 2013, thinking he would return to his wife and two children in a few weeks. He first went to northern Iraq, where he taught English to other refugees. But the shooting and bombs followed him “from one hell to another,” so he finally decided to pay smugglers to help him get to Europe. 
 
The journey took Rashid from Iraq to Turkey and Greece, where Rashid said the smugglers opened a suitcase full of passports and gave him one from Bulgaria. From Greece, he traveled to Marseille in southern France, then on to “The Jungle,” a notorious camp outside Calais where migrants gathered in hopes of hitching rides to the U.K. until it was closed in 2016. 
 
Even after he almost suffocated in the back of the shipping container, Rashid recalled trying to get across the channel until he finally succeeded, hiding in the back of a truck — but just a regular one that wasn’t airtight. 
 
He was eventually granted asylum, allowing him to start a new life and bring his wife and children to Britain. 
  
In contrast to his own arrival, Rashid met his family at Heathrow Airport and drove them back to his apartment in the central English city of Derby. 
 
“They could fly, you know, safely, with dignity,” Rashid said. “And this was the whole point for me making this journey, because it was for the sake of my family.” 

Now Rashid works with other refugees and migrants, helping them get on their feet in a new land. And he has a message for anyone thinking of traveling to Europe: Don’t trust the people smugglers. 
 
“They don’t see you as a human being. They see you as a commodity, as money, as an object,” he said. “Never, ever, trust them. I mean, I had to put my faith inthem and I regretted it.” 
 
Rashid told his story to The Associated Press to try to make people understand that migrants and refugees gamble their lives in sealed trucks and leaky rafts because safer routes have been closed to them. They take risks because they feel like they have no other choice, he said. 
 
“No one puts their life in danger for no reason,” Rashid said. “People do this out of desperation.” 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkey would “clear terrorists” on its border in northern Syria if Syrian Kurdish militia did not withdraw by the end of a deadline agreed with Russia.

“If the terrorists are not cleared at the end of the 150 hours, we will take control and clean it ourselves,” Erdogan said during a speech in Istanbul, referring to the YPG militia which Turkey views as a “terrorist” offshoot of Kurdish PKK insurgents.

Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a deal in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday in which Moscow will “facilitate the removal” of the fighters and their weapons from within 30 kilometers (18 miles) of the border.

The deadline ends at 6pm local time (1500 GMT) on Tuesday October 29.

Despite his threat, Erdogan said Turkey had “to a large extent” reached its goal in terms of setting up a “safe zone” to protect against attacks from the so-called Islamic State (IS) extremist group and the Kurdish YPG militia.

Turkey has repeatedly criticized American support to the YPG, who spearheaded the fight against IS under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) banner.

For Ankara, the YPG is as dangerous as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies.

Erdogan also urged the international community to support establishing a “safe zone” for some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

“If there is no support for the projects we are developing for between one and two million in the first stage for their return, we will have no option but to open our doors, and let them go to Europe,” he warned.

After similar threats were accused of being blackmail, Erdogan insisted he was “not blackmailing anyone” but “putting forward a solution”.

Earlier this month, Turkey and the U.S. reached an agreement on the YPG’s withdrawal from a 120-kilometer zone between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain following Ankara’s operation supporting Syrian proxies against the Kurdish fighters, which began on October 9.

The U.S. said this had been completed and in return, Ankara agreed to halt its offensive.

‘Not realistic’ German plan

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier Saturday said a German suggestion for an international force to establish a “safe zone” in northern Syria was not realistic.

Speaking at a press conference in Ankara alongside his German counterpart Heiko Maas, Cavusoglu said: “At this point, we don’t find it really realistic.”

Earlier this week, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer suggested a “security zone” could allow international forces, including European troops, to resume the fight against IS as well as to “stabilize the region”.

Maas also appeared to pour cold water on Kramp-Karrenbauer’s idea, saying that he and Cavusoglu “had no time for issues of a theoretical nature because the people in Syria don’t have time for theoretical debates”.

“We are told by everyone that this is not a realistic proposal,” Maas added.

Maas represents Merkel’s junior, center-left coalition partners the SPD, while Kramp-Karrenbauer is leader of the chancellor’s conservative CDU party.

The German government has been sharply divided over Kramp-Karrenbauer’s plan.

The commander of Kurdish forces in Syria has welcomed the plan, as has the U.S., but so far it has gained little further traction and few details are available.

 

The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, the United States signed with 11 other countries in 2016 would have given American farmers more places to market their crops and reduced tariffs on U.S. goods.

The United States failed to ratify the pact in the waning months of the Obama administration, and Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency pledging to withdraw from the accord, arguing it would cost U.S. manufacturing jobs. Trump kept his promise soon after taking office.

Kirkwood, Illinois, farmer Wendell Shauman, who has extensively traveled to China and other parts of the world where U.S. crops are marketed, supported Trump in 2016 — despite wanting the TPP agreement.

“Any time you back out on a trade deal, that’s not a precedent I like to see set,” Shauman told VOA in an interview in January 2017.

Trade policies

Under President Trump, the United States not only withdrew from the TPP, it also dismantled the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA.

A replacement — the United States, Mexico Canada Trade Agreement, or USMCA — is under review in the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to wage a trade war with one of its biggest crop buyers, China, which imposed tariffs on U.S. corn and soybeans in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.

Today, as Shauman heads to his cornfields to harvest much later than usual thanks to extremely wet weather during the planting season, he contemplates how current trade policy might drain his profits. But he still supports President Trump.

“From what I hear on the other side, I’d be happy to support what he’s doing versus what they are proposing,” Shauman told VOA during a break in harvesting his corn. Much of his ire is directed at the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Harry Truman talked about the do-nothing Congress. Well, we’ve got another do-nothing Congress. Anything Trump wants to do, they are against,” Shauman said.

Success on the international trade front is a top issue for U.S. farmers, and many want Congress to pass the USMCA soon.

This segment of the American landscape largely supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but continues to face difficult economic conditions amid increased costs to operate farms and decreasing profits for their crops.

Fearing a Democratic president

While an uncertain trade environment lingers ahead of casting ballots in 2020, Shauman also worries a Democratic president may impose restrictive environmental regulations to the detriment of his farm operations.

He’s not alone.

“I was excited to see a Republican take back the White House,” Elkhart, Illinois, pork farmer Thomas Titus told VOA. “I love the stance that we are taking.”

So does Jim Raben, who farms corn and soybeans in Ridgeway, a town in southern Illinois. “I think he’s doing what is right,” he told VOA at the 2019 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois.

“I think the majority of our people are by far supportive of the president,” says Illinois Farm Bureau’s Mark Gebhards, who points out that Trump has been able to blunt the impact of tariffs through payments to farmers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “Market Facilitation Program.” This year it cost taxpayers about $16 billion, on top of roughly $15 billion in 2018.

“We’ve said all along we want trade, not aid,” he told VOA. “We don’t want to have to live on hoping that we get another round of market facilitation payments. We really need to find a final way forward — not only the tariffs with China, the UMSCA, Japan, the EU, all these other issues that are out there.”

Little understanding of agriculture

Yet the lack of substantial trade progress during Trump’s first term causes concern among some of his supporters.

“I really feel like he doesn’t understand what happens out here in these flyover states [in the middle of the country],” says Colona, Illinois, farmer Megan Dwyer. “He’s walking a very thin line in what is happening in the ag[riculture] sector.”

Dwyer says the Trump administration’s waivers for oil refineries to use corn-based ethanol, the president’s tweeting, and his mixed results on trade could affect her vote.

“Some of his comments recently around ag are frustrating to me,” she said.

Amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry in the U.S. Congress, a straw poll conducted by Farm Journal Pulse in September showed 76% of 1,138 farmers polled support Trump in 2020, down from 79% in July.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are disappointed,” Shauman said. “But it comes down to the choice they give us, and right now most farmers … I don’t think he’s going to lose many.”

 

Protesters trickled back on to the streets across Lebanon on Saturday, despite army efforts to unblock roads, with no end in sight to a crisis that has crippled the country for 10 days.

A military statement said army and security commanders met to plan ways to re-open main arteries to get traffic flowing again while “safeguarding the safety of protesters”. People have closed routes with barriers and sit-ins as part of a wave of unprecedented protests demanding the government resigns.

Lebanon has been swept by 10 days of protests against a political class accused of corruption, mismanagement of state finances and pushing the country towards an economic collapse unseen since the 1975-90 civil war.

Banks, schools, and many businesses have shut their doors.

“We won’t leave the streets because this is the only card that people can pressure with,” Yehya al-Tannir, an actor protesting at a makeshift barricade on a main bridge in the capital Beirut. “We won’t leave until our demands are met.”

Troops and riot police deployed to main roads across Lebanon on Saturday.

The forces re-opened some roads for a few hours on Saturday morning before people gathered again. On the bridge in Beirut, riot police scuffled with protesters who were sitting on the ground to keep it closed.

Protesters have resisted efforts earlier this week to open some roads, including along a main highway.

Banks will stay closed until life returns to normal and will pay month-end salaries through ATMs, the Association of Banks in Lebanon has said.

It has held crisis meetings in recent days in search of a way to reopen banks amid growing fears that a rush on them could deplete dwindling foreign currency deposits.

Emergency reforms

The protests have continued to grip Lebanon despite the government announcing an emergency reform package this week that failed to defuse anger. It has also yet to reassure foreign donors to unlock the billions in badly needed aid they have pledged.

Lebanon has one of the world’s highest levels of government debt as a share of economic output.

The size and geographic reach of the protests have been extraordinary in a country where political movements have long been divided along sectarian lines and struggle to draw nationwide appeal.

On Saturday, the first day of Lebanon’s weekend, people milled around to patriotic music, waving Lebanese flags and banners in central Beirut.

In the southern coastal city of Saida, some shops opened their doors after days of closure.

“Shopkeepers are opening up to see if they can get things moving. The end of the month is near, people have rents to pay,” said protester Hoda Hafez. “But in the end, they will all take part and come down to the (protest) square.”

The leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, backed by Iran, warned on Friday against a power vacuum and urged followers to stay away from the protests after they confronted demonstrators in central Beirut.

 

A U.S. proposal to boost global humanitarian trade with Iran in accordance with U.S. sanctions has sparked a positive British response and a debate about whether the plan’s goal is achievable.

In a Friday statement, the U.S. departments of Treasury and State announced the launch of what they called a “new humanitarian mechanism to ensure unprecedented transparency into humanitarian trade with Iran.” The statement said the mechanism “will help the international community perform enhanced due diligence on humanitarian trade to ensure that funds … are not diverted by the Iranian regime to develop ballistic missiles, support terrorism, or finance other malign activities.”

In an email sent to VOA Persian, the British Embassy in Washington said: “We have noted the announcement of this new humanitarian channel and look forward to hearing details of how it will work. It is vital that humanitarian goods are able to get to Iran.”

Preserve Iran nuclear deal

Britain is one of three European Union nations, along with France and Germany, that launched their own mechanism for humanitarian and other trade with Iran, known as the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or INSTEX, in January. INSTEX was intended to facilitate what the three nations called “legitimate” trade to help preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in which world powers promised Tehran sanctions relief in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.

The Trump administration has put the nuclear deal’s survival in doubt by withdrawing from it last year, saying it was not tough enough on Iran and unilaterally tightening U.S. sanctions. It also has warned EU nations not to use INSTEX to circumvent the U.S. sanctions and said European businesses have refrained from participating in it for fear of being further penalized by Washington.

“This new humanitarian mechanism will help international companies that seek to engage in permissible humanitarian trade with Iran to ensure that they do not run afoul of sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in Friday’s statement.

Iran a ‘money laundering concern’

In a concurrent action, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final ruling that Iran is a “jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern.” The ruling prohibits international banks from helping an Iranian financial institution open or maintain a correspondent account in the U.S.

“FinCEN’s action further exposes the characteristics of Iran’s deceptive financial conduct to the international community as part of our maximum pressure campaign to shut off the Iranian regime’s illicit sources of revenue,” Mnuchin said.

Brian O’Toole, a former senior U.S. sanctions adviser who served at Treasury from 2009 to 2017 and currently serves as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told VOA Persian the FinCEN ruling sends a problematic message about conducting humanitarian trade with Iran.

Onerous paperwork

“People have known about the U.S. concern with money laundering in Iran for quite some time, so as a practical matter, finalizing an interim ruling on the issue doesn’t do anything,” O’Toole said. However, what he described as Treasury’s “aggressive” messaging against Iran is going to “further chill the market” for food and medicine exports to the Iranian people, as he put it.

O’Toole said another problem is the “enhanced due diligence” that international businesses must perform on their Iranian partners to secure U.S. approval for selling humanitarian goods to Iran under the new trade mechanism.

“The amount of detail that you would have to provide (to Treasury) about your Iranian partners and the kind of comfort that you would have to develop with those partners is such that foreign companies, with maybe very limited exceptions, are not going to want to formally approach the U.S. government to turn over all of this information,” he said.

“Requiring disclosures of sensitive financial information may be unacceptable to Iranian banks and companies wary of U.S. intentions,” wrote Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of London-based Bourse & Bazaar, an Iran-focused business media company.

“The Trump administration’s latest gesture to ease humanitarian trade may end up doing just the opposite.”

In another VOA Persian interview, Peter Harrell, who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for counter threat finance and sanctions from 2012 to 2014, said it is “certainly plausible” that large international pharmaceutical companies will be willing to share the required information with Treasury in order to export products to Iran.

“It’s premature to say this would be a failure, and I hope it succeeds because I’d like to see humanitarian trade with Iran enabled,” said Harrell, now an economics analyst at the bipartisan Center for a New American Security.

Annie Fixler, a sanctions and illicit finance analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Persian that she sees a silver lining for international companies that accept the “onerous” paperwork involved in the U.S. humanitarian mechanism.

“The kind of due diligence necessary to ensure that no sanctioned persons are benefiting from the trade is the kind of due diligence that companies have to be doing anyway,” Fixler said.

“If banks are hesitant to do business with Iran because they are concerned they might become exposed to secondary U.S. sanctions, this provides them a mechanism to ensure that they can conduct permitted trade and not worry about getting hit for sanctions violations. So it may actually ease some of the risk and allow more trade to happen,” she said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

More Vietnamese families came forward Saturday with information their relatives may be among the 39 people found dead in the back of a container truck in southeastern England.

British police initially said they believed the victims were Chinese but acknowledged this was a “developing picture.”

A representative for VietHome, a U.K.-based organization of the Vietnamese community, said it sent the pictures of nearly 20 people reported missing to the police.

Police on Friday arrested three people on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. The 25-year-old driver of the truck remains in custody on suspicion of murder.

Families fear the worst

In Vietnam, the father of 20-year-old Nguyen Dinh Luong feared his son was among the dead.

He told The Associated Press he had not been able to reach him since last week, when he told his father he would join a group in Paris that was trying to reach England.

“He often called home but I haven’t been able to reach him since the last time we talked last week,” Nguyen Dinh Gia said. “I told him that he could go to anywhere he wants as long as it’s safe. He shouldn’t be worry about money, I’ll take care of it.”

He said his son left home in central Ha Tinh province to work in Russia in 2017, then on to Ukraine. In April 2018, he arrived in Germany then traveled to France. He told his family that he wanted to go to the U.K.

The Vietnamese Embassy in London said Friday that it contacted police about a missing woman feared to be one of the dead. An embassy spokesman said it was contacted by a family in Vietnam who says their daughter had been missing since the truck was found.

‘I can’t breathe’

The BBC reported it had been in contact with six Vietnamese families who feared their relatives are among the victims. Relatives of 26-year-old Pham Tra My told the broadcaster they had been unable to contact her since receiving a text Tuesday night saying she was suffocating.

“I’m so sorry mom and dad. … My journey abroad doesn’t succeed,” she wrote. “Mom, I love you and dad very much. I’m dying because I can’t breathe. … Mom, I’m so sorry.”

China said it could not yet confirm the victims’ nationalities or identities. There was speculation circulating online in Vietnam that the victims may have been traveling on false Chinese passports.

“The police said that they were urgently carrying out the verification work and the identities of the victims cannot be confirmed at present,” said Tong Xuejun, a Chinese consular official in London.

“We hope the British side can verify the victims’ identities as soon as possible,” he said. “What I want to stress is that no matter what their nationalities are, this incident is a huge tragedy which arouses attention of the international community to issues of illegal immigration.”

Tracing the truck and container

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Chinese authorities were also seeking information from police in Belgium, since the shipping container in which the bodies were found was sent to England from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

British police believe the truck and container took separate journeys before ending up at the industrial park. They say the container traveled by ferry from Zeebrugge to Purfleet, England, where it arrived early Wednesday and was picked up by the truck driver and driven the few miles to Grays.

The truck cab, which is registered in Bulgaria to a company owned by an Irish woman, is believed to have traveled from Northern Ireland to Dublin, where it caught a ferry to Wales, then drove across Britain to pick up the container.

Groups of migrants have repeatedly landed on English shores using small boats to make the risky Channel crossing, and migrants are sometimes found in the back of cars and trucks that disembark from the massive ferries that link France and England.

Human trafficking

But Wednesday’s macabre find in an industrial park was a reminder that criminal gangs are still profiting from large-scale trafficking.

The tragedy recalls the deaths of 58 Chinese migrants who suffocated in a truck in Dover, England, in 2000 after a perilous, months-long journey from China’s southern Fujian province. They were found stowed with a cargo of tomatoes after a ferry ride from Zeebrugge, the same Belgian port featured in the latest tragedy.

In February 2004, 21 Chinese migrants, also from Fujian, who were working as cockle-pickers in Britain drowned when they were caught by treacherous tides in Morecambe Bay in northwest England.

Hyperinflation and the continuing economic and political crisis in Venezuela is driving more Venezuelans to travel to the Colombian border to buy food and other supplies. Even though the government has raised the minimum wage, it is still not nearly enough and most Venezuelans continue to struggle. VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit reports.
 

Twenty-seven of 31 suspected cartel members arrested this week in a Mexico City raid were freed by a judge, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday, marking his  government’s second high-profile failure to keep suspected criminals locked up in as many weeks.

The suspects were nabbed by security forces in a central district of the capital Tuesday after authorities seized two laboratories used to produce synthetic drugs, 50 kg (110 pounds) of chemical precursors, more than two tons of marijuana and 20 kg of cocaine, as well as an unspecified amount of money, rocket launchers and grenades.

Lopez Obrador, speaking at his regular morning press conference, said the unexpected release of the criminal suspects would be investigated but cautioned against a rush to judgment.

“Here the important thing is to see what the arguments were that were used to release these people,” said the leftist leader, who took office in December. “Let’s not rush. If someone acted improperly, illegally, if there was corruption, we will condemn it,” he said.

Homicide record

With homicides on track to hit an all-time high this year and following the bungled arrest last week of a notorious drug lord’s son, Lopez Obrador’s approach to security has come under increasing scrutiny.

Sinaloa Cartel gunmen on Oct. 17 overwhelmed security forces who had detained one of the sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the northwestern city of Culiacan, forcing the release of the son and prompting a public outcry.

In his comments Friday, Lopez Obrador said police were under-trained and had been ineffective in putting together case files, and gathering all the evidence needed to keep suspected criminals behind bars.

“The case files are wrongly put together and this lets judges say ‘This is wrong, there isn’t enough evidence, there are contradictions’ and then they go free,” he said.

He did not elaborate, and the circumstances surrounding the release of the suspects believed to belong to the Tepito Union cartel, including the identity of the judge who handled their case and when they were allowed to walk free, were not immediately known.

Judicial reform

A judicial reform, approved by Congress in 2008 and implemented in 2016 under the administration of Lopez Obrador’s predecessor, requires police to present more evidence for arrests.

The reform sought to modernize the judicial system by ending closed-doors trials and implementing public proceedings where prosecutors and defenders present evidence.

Lopez Obrador said security officials need to be “better trained” and that judges must be “honest, incorruptible.”

“Western Stars” was just the change of pace that Bruce Springsteen needed after baring his soul over the past few years.

First, he shared his darkest secrets in his memoir, “Born to Run.” Then he spent more than a year telling his story five nights a week in Springsteen on Broadway. So, an album set in the American West, with an accompanying documentary seemed like the perfect bookend.

“I see it like that myself, because for me, there was the book and then from the book we did the play. And out of the play really came this film,” Springsteen told The Associated Press Wednesday at the film’s New York premiere. The film opened in theaters Oct. 25. The album was released in June.

Film a concert and a commentary

The songs of “Western Stars” reveal characters experiencing love and loss, needing family and partners but sometimes feeling lonely and uncertain. In the film, Springsteen performs in front of a live audience under the cathedral ceiling of his family’s giant old barn with a backing band and orchestra.

Between each song he shares commentary and draws connections to his own life. Springsteen’s voice accompanies archive footage and home movies of his family. Several amusing scenes from their honeymoon touched wife, Patti Scialfa, who missed last month’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“I was surprised, because I hadn’t seen it in so long. I hadn’t even remembered that we did all those silly things. So, it’s actually very, very sweet. It’s really a lovely surprise,” Scialfa said.

Feeling of the West

The presence of the American Southwest is felt in the music with hints of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb and in the vast expanses of land shown in the film.

Thom Zimny, who shares directing credit with Springsteen on the film, knew they had something special.

“Working on ‘Western Stars’ was an interesting time, because it was a different collaboration. Bruce was with me from day one, and literally we knew we had something different. Because the sonic landscape of this music, the strings, the feeling of the West, we knew that was different than ‘Springsteen on Broadway,’ and all other projects that we worked with, together,” Zimny said.

Back to the studio and E Street Band

Springsteen has no plans for a “Western Stars” tour, instead he’s heading back into the studio to work on a new E Street Band record. Springsteen laughed at the notion of incorporating recent social and political upheavals in the lyrics of the band’s new music. He’s leaning toward the personal. Most of what he’s written so far “ruminates a little bit about some of the things from my past,” Springsteen said.

“I think it’s a little more forward looking than writing the memoir or doing a play,” he said.

At 70, Springsteen still impresses audiences around the world with his energetic concert performances, but equally as important is his ability to create an album and film like “Western Stars.” At some point, even the most established artists stop making new music and begin resting on their previous accomplishments, despite having successful tours.

Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau said The Boss’ approach to his craft is what precludes him from ever being a nostalgia act.

“Never gonna happen. The magic is that he’s an artist. He’s an artist every day. He’s not looking back, he’s looking forward. I mean he loves to go on tour, and he loves to play his favorite songs. He loves for his audience to hear him. But if he wasn’t pursuing new things, none of that would matter. It’s the new things that keep him young,” Landau said.

Guests at the star-studded premiere included Ralph Lauren, Clive Davis, Jon Stewart, Edward Burns, Harvey Keitel, Steven Van Zandt and Gayle King. Music mogul Jimmy Iovine said he’s not surprised by the caliber of work Springsteen is creating at this point in his life.

“What Bruce always tries to do is not compromise and do great. Everyone thinks they’re trying to do great, but deep down inside, some people keep going hard, but they — they end up compromising here and there. And this guy doesn’t. He just has no interest in doing it until he is completely satisfied with it,” Iovine said.

Offshore wind could become a cornerstone of the world’s power supply as steep cost reductions and improved technology unleash the potential of the green energy source, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Friday.

Renewables replacing fossil fuel is crucial to meet a globally-agreed goal of limiting temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius this century and the expansion of offshore wind could avoid 5-7 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions from the power sector globally, the IEA said.

Power generated from wind turbines at sea only accounts for 0.3% of global electricity generation today, said the IEA in what it called “the most comprehensive” study of offshore wind to date.

“(But) the potential is huge,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol told Reuters in the capital of Denmark — the country where the first offshore turbines were installed in 1991 and which last year produced 15% of its electricity from offshore wind.

Next game-changer?

Based on current and proposed policies, capacity is set to increase 15-fold over the next two decades, turning it into a $1 trillion business, according to the IEA.

Birol likened offshore wind to two other game-changers in the energy system: the shale revolution and the rise of solar photovoltaics (PV) and said that offshore wind had the potential to deliver similar steep cost reductions.

Birol said he expected the average generation cost for global offshore wind to halve to $60 per megawatt hour in five years. This reduction would be driven especially by bigger turbines, some measuring almost as high as the Eiffel tower, and lower financing costs.

In Europe, offshore wind will soon beat new natural gas-fired capacity on cost and be on a par with solar PV and onshore wind while in China, it is set to become competitive with new coal-fired capacity around 2030, according to the IEA.

However, Birol cautioned that large investments into onshore grid infrastructure and real political action were needed.

“If the governments are serious about their climate policies and climate neutrality they have to have dedicated policies in order to foster green technologies like offshore wind,” he said.

Emissions disconnect

While the green transition is increasingly taking over the global political agenda, there is a growing disconnect between climate ambitions and real-life emissions trends as energy-related CO2 emissions reached a historic high last year.

The U.K. today has the biggest capacity but by around 2025, China is likely to have the largest offshore wind fleet. The industry is also growing in markets like the United States, Taiwan and Japan.

Denmark’s Orsted is the world’s biggest developer of offshore wind, while Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, a joint venture between Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, are the largest makers of wind turbines employed at sea.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Thursday called for the release of four journalists and their driver who were arrested while covering a deadly clash between Burundi security forces and rebels from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. 
 
Burundi police said 14 members of the group RED-Tabara were killed Tuesday. 
 
The organization, based in eastern DRC, is headed by one of Burundi’s most outspoken opponents, Alexis Sinduhij, the government and diplomats believe. 
 
RSF said the journalists with the Iwacu newspaper “were arrested [Tuesday] at midday while trying to get witness statements from residents fleeing the fighting.” 
 
The group said the reporters were being held alongside their driver in Bubanza in northwestern Burundi. 
 
“These journalists were just doing their job by going to the scene to verify information about armed clashes … we urge authorities to free them without delay,” said the RSF’s Africa chief, Arnaud Froger. 
 
Police spokesman Moise Nkurunziza did not want to reveal the reason behind their arrests during a press conference, citing “confidentiality of investigations.” 

HRW demands release
 
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday also demanded the journalists’ “immediate release.” 
 
A Burundian journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “The objective was to prevent the presence of the media in this area, and it was successful. No other information aside from that given by officials is getting out.” 
 
A local official in Bubanza indicated the situation was still tense and told AFP a police officer had been killed by a “residual group of rebels” Wednesday evening. 
 
Iwacu, one of the last independent publications in the country, has previously reported on cases of extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests during attacks in this area of Burundi. 
 
RSF recently warned that because of the intensity of the crackdown on the media in Burundi, “there is a risk of all forms of independent journalism disappearing less than a year before the presidential election of May 20, 2020.” 
 
Burundi is ranked 159th out of 180 countries by RSF’s world press freedom index. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a criminal complaint Friday against a French magazine over a cover accusing him of “ethnic cleansing,” according to the state-owned Anadolu Agency. 

The filing was the latest example of efforts by the Erdogan government to restrict press freedoms in Turkey. 

The complaint filed against the French magazine Le Point’s director, Etienne Gernelle, as well as the editor in chief of the publication’s international section, Romain Gubert, was based on the cover of the October 24 issue, which depicts Erdogan saluting under the headline “The Eradicator,” with the subtitle  “Ethnic cleansing: the Erdogan method.” 

Prosecutors alleged the cover constituted an insult to the president, a crime under Turkish law commonly used to target journalists in Turkey, according to Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director for Human Rights Watch, an international NGO that conducts research and advocacy for human rights.    

“The charge in general is one that’s been in the penal code for years. But it was not until Erdogan became president that there’s been a huge escalation in the use of that charge to prosecute people who are critical of the president,” Sinclair-Webb said. 

Turkish reporters are frequent targets of Erdogan, but increasingly foreign journalists based in Turkey are also facing legal action, said Nate Schenkkan, director for special research at Freedom House, an independent think tank that covers issues related to democracy and human rights. 

“I think the main point is that from an international perspective, [the charge] has no merit … from a Turkish perspective, there have been lots of these cases. I would say many have been brought as a warning or threat rather than to put someone in prison,” Schenkkan said. 

Bloomberg journalists 

In September, U.S.-based Bloomberg News reported that two of its journalists were facing up to five years in prison for a report on how Turkey’s financial regulators and banks were responding to the country’s economic difficulties. And in October 2017, a reporter working for The Wall Street Journal was sentenced to prison in absentia for charges related to a 2015 story covering the conflict against Turkey’s Kurdish minority in the country’s southeast. 

Le Point’s criticism of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish groups in Syria is a particular area of concern for Erdogan’s government, according to Schenkkan.  

The Turkish president has been accused by some of pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish population of northern Syria with its military incursion into the region, dubbed Operation Peace Spring. Critics allege that the operation is designed to drive out the region’s Kurds so that Turkey can resettle Arab Syrians in their place. 

Ankara says the incursion is necessary to eliminate armed groups that the Turkish government considers terrorists, including the Kurdish YPG and PKK. 

“I think that from the government perspective, they feel that they face unfair criticism for the operations in Syria. They’re accused of ethnic cleansing, they’re accused of attacking the Kurds … the problem is when you bring a court case and claim that this is somehow illegal,” Schenkkan said. 

‘They are panicked’

Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin previously attacked Le Point’s October 24 cover on Twitter. 

“The reason they attack our president is clear: they are panicked when their intrigues are foiled with the blow to their agents in Syria. The Kurds are not your agents and never will be. Your days of colonization are over,” Kalin tweeted in a thread containing an image of the cover on Thursday. 

And while foreign journalists based in Turkey previously have been charged by authorities for reports critical of the government, the fact that a foreign publications like Le Point was targeted directly is unusual, according to Sinclair-Webb.  

“It creates a chilling environment for all media, including foreign media,” Sinclair-Webb said. 

But Schenkkan said the case against Le Point most likely would not discourage foreign journalists working in Turkey, who are used to this sort of pressure for criticizing the government’s policies. 

“I don’t think this will change anything for them since this is par for the course. I think foreign journalists in Turkey have become highly aware of minding their p’s and q’s,” said Schenkkan. “They continue to report on things, [but] the government has laid down markers to say that we will come down hard on you if we don’t like your reporting. So it takes a lot of courage to continue doing it.”