Syrian forces used chemical weapons during an attack in Latakia province in May, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

Although no one was killed in the chlorine gas attack, Pompeo said the U.S. “will not allow these attacks to go unchallenged nor will we tolerate those who choose to conceal these atrocities.”

Pompeo said the U.S. is placing sanctions on nine Russian individuals and entities for evading sanctions against deliveries of military jet fuel to Syria.

He also said the State Department is sending another $4.5 million to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to help in investigate the use of such weapons in Syria.

Latakia is near Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria. Syrian forces launched an operation against Idlib in April to try to push the rebels out.

Human rights observers say the Syrian military drive has killed more than 1,000 people and sent more than 400,000 fleeing from their homes.

VOA’s Zabihullah Ghazi from Nangarhar, Sayed Zairmal Hashemi from Kabul contributed to this report. Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Afghanistan is bracing for possible violence ahead of Saturday’s presidential election.

Amid an effectively stalemated war and postponed U.S. peace talks with the Taliban, the insurgents are threatening to attack polling stations, and some political candidates, concerned about potential fraud, are threatening violence if elections are not considered fair and transparent.

This is the fourth presidential election in Afghanistan since 2001, when the U.S.-led coalition toppled the former Taliban regime for harboring within its borders the al-Qaida militants who carried out the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

The insurgent group has since viewed the Western-backed Afghan government as a “puppet regime” and have been engaged in a bloody insurgency against it that claimed tens of thousands of lives, mostly civilians.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the elections during the campaign season and Thursday once again threatened voters to stay away from polling centers.

The group has claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in recent weeks across the country, targeting rallies and voter registration centers, killing and injuring dozens of people mostly civilians.

“The Islamic Emirate directs its Mujahideen to prevent this process throughout the country by making use of everything at their disposal and activate their plans for its neutralization,” a Taliban statement read.

They came from the same country. They were in town for the same reason — as diplomatic representatives of their government. And they took pains to make sure their paths never, ever crossed.

Two separate diplomatic delegations represented Venezuela at the U.N. General Assembly this year, shadowing and circling each other in a fierce fight for international recognition as the country reels from an economic collapse and political uncertainty.

One set of diplomats represented President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s head of state in the eyes of the United Nations system. The other group represented the shadow government of opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized as Venezuela’s rightful president by the U.S. and more than 50 other countries that have condemned Maduro’s 2018 re-election as fraudulent.

Neither rival leader showed up at the world gathering. But Venezuela nonetheless commanded attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump personally hosting one of four high-level meetings on the country’s political and humanitarian crisis.

Instead of facing his angry neighbors, Maduro flew to Moscow for an impromptu visit to his top ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In New York, the rival Venezuelan delegations steered clear of each other while battling bitterly to drive the narrative of separate public appearances and overlapping bilateral meetings.

Guaido’s delegation could not enter U.N. headquarters as Venezuelan delegates, so eight Latin American countries provided them with credentials instead. One Venezuelan lawmaker entered as part of Argentina’s delegation. Another delegate was a “Honduran adviser,” and a third was a “Colombia expert.”

Maduro’s government controls Venezuela’s U.N. Mission headquarters. Guaido’s people set up shop at Venezuela’s consulate in New York, vacated by Maduro’s diplomats after the U.S. revoked recognition.

Particularly sensitive were dual meetings with the foreign ministers of Spain and Portugal, which have officially recognized Guaido’s presidency but have not yet responded to his lobbying for tougher sanctions on Maduro’s government.

The spectacle of the dueling missions managed to display both Maduro’s enduring grip on power and his growing international isolation.

So far, he has survived U.S. oil sanctions, quashed an April military uprising and walked out of Norway-backed negotiations with the opposition last month. He has the financial and political backing of Russia and China, two powerful U.N. Security Council members.

So, it was Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, and other diplomats who sat in Venezuela’s chair for the General Assembly debate, the Climate Action Summit and other U.N.-organized gatherings. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, will deliver Venezuela’s address Friday.

But Venezuela’s closest neighbors ignored Arreaza and staged a concerted effort to thrust’s Guaido’s diplomats into the spotlight.

Maduro’s people were shut out of high-level talks to discuss Venezuela’s crisis, which climaxed with more than a dozen Latin American countries agreeing to investigative and arrest Venezuelan government officials and associates suspected of drug trafficking, money laundering and financing terrorism.

Canada, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador convened a meeting on Venezuela’s migration crisis at U.N. headquarters. That gave Guaido’s chief foreign policy adviser, Julio Borges, the chance to sit behind Venezuela’s nameplate at U.N. conference rooms, even if not in the iconic green-marbled General Assembly hall.

Borges, a former Venezuelan lawmaker now exiled in Colombia, tweeted video of the scene.

“I think this really highlights the gap between the democratic legitimacy and the de facto control on the ground. The opposition has one and not the other,” said Geoff Ramsey, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.

“This General Assembly isn’t going as well as Maduro hoped it would,” Ramsey said. “He wants to normalize relations with the rest of Latin American and get out of this rut, and what we are seeing is that they have made clear this isn’t going to happen without new presidential elections.”

Arreaza scorned the borrowed U.N. credentials as a sign of Guaido’s illegitimacy.

“They are wandering like ghosts at the United Nations,” Arreaza told reporters. “They are wandering around with credentials through the missions of other countries. It’s the most absurd thing — absolute desperation.”

Guaido’s representatives saw the passes as symbolic of the solidarity of Venezuela’s neighbors.

“In a courageous effort, several countries helped us get access,” said Miguel Pizarro, an exiled Venezuelan lawmaker. He said the passes were just one part of an effort months in the making to ensure that Guaido’s delegation had a robust presence.

Arreaza kept up a stream of videos and photos on Twitter that showed the diplomatic isolation was not universal: There he was shaking hands with a grinning Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the General Assembly hall; sharing a laugh during an exchange with South African delegates; and chatting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who, Arreaza claimed, “showed interest in the aggression against the Venezuelan people.”

And there was Arreaza laughing with the foreign ministers of Spain and Portugal, despite their official recognition of Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

Spain and Portugal also met one-on-one with Borges, who said later both countries “understand the blame for the failed negotiations lies with Maduro.”

Portugal and Spain, for their part, kept the meetings under the radar. Spain waited days to issue a carefully worded statement that the meetings were intended to push for the resumption of negotiations.

Underscoring what’s at stake, both Arreaza and Borges met with U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet to discuss her report last year documenting repression of political opponents, arbitrary detentions, torture and nearly 5,300 killings by Venezuela’s security forces.

Arreaza came away with an agreement to allow the U.N. officers access to detention centers and freedom of movement in the country. While that showed Maduro responding to international pressure, it also underscored that he remains the authority in Venezuela.

The leader of Sierra Leone demanded Thursday that the U.N. Security Council reconfigure itself to add permanent representation for Africa, saying the continent’s “patience is being tested” by its long-standing exclusion. 
  
Julius Maada Bio, president of the West African nation, used blunt words in his annual U.N. General Assembly speech to amplify calls by African countries that they have a more robust voice on the body that represents the most powerful political and global-security authority of the United Nations. 
  
Bio, who also advocated for two additional nonpermanent seats to be held by Africans, was anything but indirect. “Africa’s patience is being tested,” he said. 
  
For decades, there have been calls to expand the U.N.’s most powerful body. It has 10 members elected for two-year terms and five permanent members: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. 
 
Competing national and regional interests have prevented council reform so far. 
 
Africa has no permanent seat on the council, and three nonpermanent seats are allocated for the continent of more than 1.2 billion people. 

‘Urgent action’

That’s not acceptable to Bio, who oversees a nation still recovering from a brutal civil war that ended in 2002 and only now beginning to maintain enduring peacetime institutions. 
 
“The legitimacy and effectiveness of the Security Council’s decisions, as well as the relevance of the United Nations, will continue to be questioned if urgent action is not taken to make the council more broadly representative,” Bio said. 
  
“Africa’s demand for two permanent seats with all the rights and prerogatives of current members, including the right of veto, and two additional nonpermanent seats is a matter of common justice and the right to have an equal say in decision-making on issues pertaining to international peace and security,” Bio said. “This long-standing injustice … ought to be addressed.” 
 
There’s little doubt that Africa’s more than 50 nations would benefit from a permanent voice on the council. They have long struggled in global forums as they try to commandeer resources and attention in the face of behemoth nations whose economic and political dramas suck the oxygen out of the room at meetings like the General Assembly. 
  
Still, the voices for Africa’s increased representation have increased over time — and not all of them are African. 
  
“We continue to witness an historic, unjust underrepresentation of Africa, which was still ruled by colonial powers when the U.N. came into existence and the Security Council established,” said Michael D. Higgins, Ireland’s president. 
 
“Africans must be allowed to have a fair say in council decisions affecting their own continent,” Higgins said Wednesday. Ireland is running for a 2021-22 council seat itself. 

Different approaches
  
African nations have taken different approaches to increased Security Council representation. Some, like Kenya, vie for an upcoming nonpermanent seat. Others are more keyed toward establishing a permanent seat for the continent and its nations and interests. 
 
“We reiterate the need to increase the number of permanent members of the Security Council, including in particular Africa and South America,” Angolan President Joao Lourenco said in his speech. 
 
The current composition, he said, which was largely built around the winning powers after World War II, “does no longer reflect the need for a fairer global geostrategic balance.” 
  
Zambia’s president echoed those sentiments. “Time has come for the Security Council to be representative, democratic and accountable to all member states, irrespective of status,” Edgar Lungu said. 
  
“Given that Africa constitutes the second-largest bloc of the U.N. membership,” he said, “proposals to reform the Security Council should heed Africa’s call.” 

Iran has launched an inspection of security at its key Persian Gulf oil and gas facilities, including preparedness for cyberattacks, the Oil Ministry news agency SHANA said, following media reports of Washington weighing possible cyberattacks on Tehran. 

U.S. media reports have said the United States is considering possible cyberattacks against Iran after the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil sites that U.S. officials have blamed on Tehran. The Islamic republic has denied being behind the raids, which were claimed by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group. 

Pirouz Mousavi, head of the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ), inspected the area and met with senior managers, including those in charge of cybersecurity and emergency response, SHANA said Wednesday. 

The PSEEZ was set up in 1998 to develop the oil and gas resources in the South Pars field, the world’s largest natural gas reservoir. The offshore field is shared between Iran and Qatar, which calls it North Field. 

Separately, Gholamreza Jalali, head of civil defense, which is in charge of cybersecurity, called for beefing up security at industrial installations. “Our enemies consider the cyber domain as one of the main areas of threat against nations, especially Iran,” the semiofficial news agency Fars quoted Jalali as saying. 

After reports on social media last Friday of a cyberattack on some petrochemical and other companies in Iran, a state body in charge of cybersecurity denied there had been a successful attack. 

NetBlocks, an organization that monitors internet connectivity, earlier reported “intermittent disruptions” to some internet services  in Iran. 

Iran said in June that U.S. cyberattacks against Iranian targets had not been successful, after reports the Pentagon had launched a cyberattack to disable the country’s rocket launch systems following the downing of a U.S. military drone.  

Iran has long been on alert over the threat of cyberattacks by foreign countries. The United States and Israel covertly sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010 with the now-famous Stuxnet computer virus, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges that were enriching uranium. 

Water management can blunt the impact of climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming, reports UN-Water, an agency that works on water and sanitation issues.

About 90 percent of all major natural disasters are water-related, according to the United Nations. Floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and other water-related events are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, as well as economic losses that run into hundreds of billions of dollars.

UN-Water spokeswoman Daniella Bostrom Couffe says while water management can be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, the measures are largely overlooked.

“Water is not gaining that much political attention just because it is something that we all take for granted,” she said. “And, of course, we would all like to see more attention both from the public and from political decision makers about this.”

A recent UN-Water report cites a number of strategies for managing climate and water in a coordinated and sustainable manner. One focuses on reviving Earth’s disappearing wetlands.

Couffe notes about two-thirds of natural wetlands are vanishing because of factors including agriculture, drainage, and mining for fuel. That, she says, results in the release of massive amounts of carbon.

“Wetlands … cover about 3 percent of the Earth,” she said. “But they hold twice as much carbon as all the Earth’s forests together. So, by restoring these wetlands, that is a very effective way to limit the effects of climate change.”  

UN-Water reports harmful emissions can be reduced by making water supplies more sustainable. It notes 123 countries are implementing solutions by sharing aquifers, and rivers and basins, which affect around 40 percent of the world’s population.

The agency says lower income populations are disproportionately affected by climate change, and must be helped through targeted strategies from the richer countries that produce most of the damaging carbon.

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook Istanbul on Thursday, slightly injuring eight people and sending school children and residents into the streets of Turkey’s commercial and cultural hub.

The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said the earthquake struck in the Sea of Marmara at 1:59 p.m. (1059 GMT) at 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) deep and was felt throughout the western Marmara region.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said eight people were injured and had received treatment. “Apart from small damage, we have not received any reports so far that would pain our hearts,” he said.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Twitter confirmed there were no deaths.

News footage showed a collapsed minaret in the city’s western Avcilar district. The emergency agency said one building tilted, two showed damage and cracks were found in others. Turkish media showed children being evacuated from schools and city residents waiting outside their homes. Schools were cancelled for the day.

The U.S. Geological Survey assessed the quake’s magnitude at 5.7. The Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute recorded several aftershocks, with the highest at 4.4 magnitude.

Turkey is crossed by fault lines and prone to earthquakes. Experts have long warned that a major earthquake is expected to hit Istanbul, Turkey’s most populous city with more than 15 million residents. A 4.6 magnitude earthquake hit the city on Tuesday.

In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in western Turkey killed more than 17,000 people.

A shallow tremor Thursday sent terrified residents of northeastern Pakistan onto the streets, days after a powerful quake killed 38 people and caused widespread damage in the area.

The tremor stretched already-frayed nerves in Mirpur, in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, as fears of aftershocks from Tuesday’s quake sent hundreds into the streets and put local hospitals on alert.

The US Geological Survey put the quake at 4.7 magnitude and 10 kilometres (six miles) deep, adding that it had struck just four kilometres outside of Mirpur.

City residents huddled in streets following the quake, some still barefoot, while others recited verses from the Koran.

“It’s hell. I am running to save my life,” Mohammad Bilal told AFP moments after the tremor.

“I thought most of the building would have tumbled down,” said Sagheer Ahmad. “Allah is very kind to us.”

Dozens of patients were evacuated from the main government hospital in Mirpur, some in wheelchairs or on stretchers.

Dr Farooq Noor, the medical superintendent at the hospital, told AFP that 93 people were brought in after the tremor.

Most were swiftly discharged with minor wounds or shock, but some with head injuries and broken limbs were admitted, he added.

The city’s hospitals were already packed with hundreds injured by the quake earlier in the week.

‘Poor construction’

The tremor came as rescuers continued to pick through toppled buildings to reach victims from Tuesday’s earthquake.

“You can see we have no arrangements, we don’t have any place to live, have nothing to eat, we are pulling out rubble, and trying to restore electricity and water,” Muhammad Waqas Aslam, who lives in the village of Nakkah Kharak outside Mirpur, told AFP.

The village of Jatlan appeared to be one of the worst affected by Tuesday’s quake, while Mirpur was largely spared major damage.

In Jatlan, bridges, mobile-phone towers and electricity poles were badly damaged while its roads were ripped apart.

Pakistani geologists blamed the “poor construction of shanty houses in Jatlan” for some of the damage, as well as its location near a fault line and the shallowness of the quake.

Pakistan’s Kashmir information minister Mushtaq Minhas said at least 6,500 homes were destroyed by Tuesday’s quake, adding that officials had begun to distribute thousands of tents to affected residents.

Mirpur, a city known for its palatial houses, has strong ties to Britain and many of its population of 450,000 carry both British and Pakistani passports.

The city owes its prosperity to thousands of former residents who migrated to Britain in the 1960s, but retained their links to the area — repatriating money to buy land and build plush homes.

Tuesday’s quake also sent people in Lahore and Islamabad running into the streets, while tremors were felt as far as New Delhi.

Pakistan straddles the boundary where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, making the country susceptible to earthquakes.

In October 2015, a 7.5-magnitude quake in Pakistan and Afghanistan killed almost 400 people across rugged terrain that impeded relief efforts.

The country was also hit by a 7.6-magnitude quake on October 8, 2005, that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Advocates are warning of an “epidemic” of mental health problems and suicide among Australian farmers. Isolation, financial pressures and the impact of drought are all part of the problem. 

Seven days a week, Joe Meggetto is up before dawn on his dairy farm near the town of Warragul, 100 kilometers southeast of Melbourne in southern Australia.

He is the son of Italian migrants. He’s tough and hard working, but for years he has battled the demons of mental illness.

“I used to carry a bullet around in my pocket and I remember talking to my brother one day on the road just here, I was bringing the cows home on the road and I was talking to him and I was angry at the time and I kept this bullet in my pocket all the time,” he said. “And I got the bullet out and said to my brother — I showed it to him — and I said one day I’m going to bloody blow my head off, you know. I was really down in the dumps and by that afternoon I was milking the cows and before I knew it there were two policemen at the milking shed and they pulled me out of the shed and they had a bit of a talk and before I knew it the guns were seized.”

Counseling, support from the community and small doses of medication have helped Joe to fight his mental illness. Advocates believe much more needs to be done to help those struggling to cope on Australian farms.

Higher suicide rates

Suicide rates for male farm workers are reported to be twice those for the general population.

Lia Bryant is an associate professor from the University of South Australia.

She believes that capitalism disadvantages those on the land because it takes power away from individual farmers and puts it into the hands of big corporations, who control the prices producers receive.

“I think it is imperative we turn away from that concept of mental ill-health and think about our context of our policies, our state government policies, our federal government policies — we think about how corporate agriculture functions and challenge that, and most importantly we challenge capitalism, and the way it constructs the farmer and takes away, strips the autonomy of the farmer and produces distress,” she said.

Researchers also say that unprecedented weather events across Australia have had a “clear and devastating” impact on the mental health of many people, not just farmers. Droughts, bushfires and floods have caused the loss of homes, land and livelihoods.

Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. Last summer was the hottest ever recorded.
 

The gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States grew last year to its highest level in more than 50 years of tracking income inequality, according to Census Bureau figures.

Income inequality in the United States expanded from 2017 to 2018, with several heartland states among the leaders of the increase, even though several wealthy coastal states still had the most inequality overall, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The nation’s Gini Index, which measures income inequality, has been rising steadily over the past five decades.

The Gini Index grew from 0.482 in 2017 to 0.485 last year, according to the bureau’s 1-year American Community Survey data. The Gini Index is on a scale of 0 to 1; a score of “0” indicates perfect equality, while a score of “1” indicates perfect inequality, where one household has all the income.

Calls for a ‘wealth tax’

The increase in income inequality comes as two Democratic presidential candidates, U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are pitching a “wealth tax” on the nation’s richest citizens as a way to reduce wealth disparities.

The inequality expansion last year took place at the same time median household income nationwide increased to almost $62,000 last year, the highest ever measured by the American Community Survey. But the 0.8% income increase from 2017 to 2018 was much smaller compared to increases in the previous three years, according to the bureau.

Even though household income increased, it was distributed unevenly, with the wealthiest helped out possibly by a tax cut passed by Congress in 2017, said Hector Sandoval, an economist at the University of Florida.

“In 2018 the unemployment rate was already low, and the labor market was getting tight, resulting in higher wages. This can explain the increase in the median household income,” Sandoval said. “However, the increase in the Gini index shows that the distribution became more unequal. That is, top income earners got even larger increases in their income, and one of the reasons for that might well be the tax cut.”

Demographics

A big factor in the increase in inequality has to do with two large population groups on either end of the economic spectrum, according to Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida.

On one side, at the peak of their earnings, are baby boomers who are nearing retirement, if they haven’t already retired. On the other side are millennials and Gen Z-ers, who are in the early stages of their work life and have lower salaries, Snaith said.

“I would say probably the biggest factor is demographics,” he said. “A wealth tax isn’t going to fix demographics.”

The area’s with the most income inequality last year were coastal places with large amounts of wealth — the District of Columbia, New York and Connecticut, as well as areas with great poverty — Puerto Rico and Louisiana.

Utah, Alaska, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota had the most economic equality.

Biggest gains in inequality in heartland

Three of the states with biggest gains in inequality from 2017 to 2018 were places with large pockets of wealth — California, Texas and Virginia. But the other six states were primarily in the heartland — Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire and New Mexico.

A variety of factors were at play, from a slowdown in agricultural trade and manufacturing to wages that haven’t caught up with other forms of income, economists say.

While some states have raised the minimum wage, other states like Kansas haven’t. At the same time, the sustained economic growth from the recession a decade ago has enriched people who own stocks, property and other assets, and have sources of income other than wages, said Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas.

“We’ve had a period of sustained economic growth, and there are winners and losers. The winners tend to be at the top,” Ginther said. “Even though we are at full employment, wages really haven’t gone up much in the recovery.”

The acting U.S. director of national intelligence, who had blocked the release of a whistleblower complaint now at the center of an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions, is set to testify publicly Thursday before the House intelligence committee.

Joseph Maguire is also expected to speak to members of the Senate’s intelligence committee behind closed doors.

On Wednesday evening, some lawmakers who sit on intelligence committees were allowed to view the whistleblower’s complaint. Assessments are generally split along party lines with Democrats calling it damning and Republicans predicting its public release would not cause any concern for the fate of the Trump presidency.

House Impeachment Vote Possible by End of 2019 video player.

The whistleblower contacted the intelligence inspector general, who called the complaint “serious” and “urgent.”

Lawyers for the whistleblower have been in contact with both the House and Senate intelligence committees seeking to work out the details of having the whistleblower meet directly with the panels, if necessary.

Call details

The White House on Wednesday released a summary of the phone call that shows Trump asked for Ukrainian officials to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Democrats say the summary confirms their suspicions that the president was conducting U.S. foreign policy for his own personal political gain. President Trump however dismissed suggestions that anything he said was improper. Several Republican lawmakers also defended the president Wednesday, saying the summary does not show anything incriminating.

During a news conference following his meeting with the Ukrainian president on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Trump insisted there was “no quid pro quo” during the July conversation with Zelenskiy, meaning he did not promise any benefit for Ukraine in exchange for help on the Biden issue.

“The way you had that built up, that call was going to be the call from hell,” Trump told reporters Wednesday morning. “It turned out to be a nothing call, other than a lot of people said, ‘I never knew you could be so nice,’” the president added, blaming “corrupt journalists” over the controversy.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said, according to the summary.

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me,” the summary said.

The administration has not provided evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.

The call summary also showed that Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whom he referred to as a “highly respected man” as well as Attorney General William Barr. Trump said that Giuliani would be traveling to Ukraine. Zelenskiy said he would meet with Giuliani when he visited.

Trump also asked Zelenskiy to “do us a favor” and “find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine” regarding Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company that helped investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was not clear what Ukraine “situation” the president was referring to.

Impeachment inquiry

The summary’s disclosure came one day after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump and allegations that he sought a foreign government’s help to smear a Democratic political opponent and help Trump with his 2020 reelection bid.

On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he withheld military aid from Ukraine, saying he did so over his concerns that the U.S. was contributing more to Ukraine than were European countries.

The Washington Post had reported that Trump had told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to delay almost $400 million in military aid for at least a week before he made the call to the Ukrainian president.

Congressman Schiff called it “shocking at another level” that White House officials would release these notes and believe that somehow this would help the president.

Those notes reflect a “classic mafialike shakedown of a foreign leader,” Schiff said, referring to Zelenskiy as a leader who was “desperate for military support” in a war against Russia. Schiff noted that after Zelenskiy expressed the need for further weapons, Trump tells him that “he has a favor to ask.”

Not verbatim

The administration acknowledges that the memorandum released by the White House is not a verbatim transcript, but a record of the “notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and National Security Council policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place.”

“This MEMCON can vary greatly from a lightly edited full transcript to a vaguely worded summary of the call,” said Larry Pfeiffer, former senior director of the White House Situation Room under President Barack Obama from 2011-2013.

Law, regulation and practice forbid recordings of presidential phone calls by the U.S. intelligence community, Pfeiffer said, but working transcripts are “a long-standing practice,” intended to not only memorialize the call but to protect the president against the foreign leader or government making egregious claims about the call.

Critics of the administration are questioning whether there may be more damning information not conveyed in the five page summary of the more than 30-minute phone call.

…

The Marshall Islands confirmed it was maintaining diplomatic ties with Taiwan on Wednesday, a welcome show of support for President Tsai Ing-wen who has seen two other Pacific nations drop ties in favor of China in a matter of weeks.

The neighboring Solomon Islands and Kiribati decided to recognize China earlier this month, dropping self-ruled and democratic Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own province with no rights to state-to-state relations.

The small developing nations lie in strategic waters that have been dominated by the United States and its allies since World War II, and China’s moves to expand its influence in the Pacific have angered Washington.

‘Profound appreciation’

In a statement, the Marshall Islands said it had adopted a resolution to show its “profound appreciation to the people and government of Taiwan.”

“We’ve all seen China’s attempts to expand its territory and footprint, and this should be of great concern to democratic countries,” President Hilda Heine said.

The Foreign Ministry in Taiwan, which has denounced China for luring its allies with promises of easy loans, expressed “deep thanks” for the message of support and pledged to further deepen cooperation with the Marshall Islands.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said cooperation was warmly welcomed and had brought the Pacific island nations real benefits.

“Anyone who understands the situation and is not prejudiced can see this very clearly,” he told a daily news briefing, when asked about Heine’s criticism of China’s role.

Ties to 15 countries

Self-ruled Taiwan now has formal relations with only 15 countries, many of them small, less developed nations in Central America and the Pacific, including Belize and Nauru.

Seven countries have dropped Taiwan as a diplomatic ally since 2016, when Tsai took office. So the show of support from the Marshall Islands will provide some relief for her ahead of presidential elections in January.

Last week parliament in the tiny South Pacific country of Tuvalu elected a new prime minister, making a change that analysts say could give China a chance to further undermine Taiwan in a region that has been a pillar of support.

Having retained his seat at a general election earlier this month, Tuvalu’s pro-Taiwan leader Enele Sopoaga had been expected to keep the premiership, but the 16-person parliament instead selected Kausea Natano.

Taiwan’s embassy in Tuvalu said that its ambassador there, Marc Su, met Natano and Foreign Minister Simon Kofe on Tuesday, having met with all members of the new Cabinet late last week.

It did not provide details of their conversations.

The arrest of a U.S. soldier with far-right sympathies who is suspected of plotting an attack on American soil to spark “chaos” has highlighted a challenge for the Pentagon: purging its ranks of extremists.

Jarrett Smith, a private in the U.S. Army based at Fort Riley in Kansas, was arrested and charged in federal court with one count of distributing information related to explosives after offering a detailed explanation to an undercover FBI agent.

Smith also expressed interest in targeting members of the leftist group Antifa and heading to Ukraine to fight with a far-right paramilitary group, the FBI says.

But he is hardly the first U.S. soldier to reveal far-right or ultra-nationalist leanings — and some fear the U.S. military is being used as a training ground by extremist groups.

White supremacists target military

“Everything old is new again,” said Brian Levin, a professor of criminal justice at California State University, San Bernardino, and the director of the school’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“There is a renewed effort within part of the white supremacist world to focus on the military because they have such valuable skills,” he added, pointing to Smith’s case.

The links between the far-right and the U.S. armed forces first came to light in the 1980s when Vietnam veteran Louis Beam came home, joined the Ku Klux Klan and had links to the Order, an underground neo-Nazi group that called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Earlier this year, a U.S. Coast Guard officer who espoused white supremacist views, Christopher Paul Hasson, was arrested on firearms and drug charges outside Washington.

Hasson, an avowed admirer of Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, whose attacks in 2011 left 77 people dead, allegedly had drafted a hit list of Democratic politicians and prominent media figures.

Prosecutors have said Hasson identified himself as a “White Nationalist for over 30 years and advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a white homeland.”

And in May, the U.S. Army said it was investigating a 22-year-old soldier for suspected ties to neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division.

“Our standards are clear; participation in extremist activities has never been tolerated” and is a punishable offense, Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell told AFP.

Are ‘screening tools’ enough?

The Pentagon tries to “learn as much as possible about potential new soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines so we can assess whether they should be extended the privilege to serve in the military,” Maxwell said.

“While we can’t guarantee that every person who enters the service will be free from holding extremist thoughts, various screening tools provide us the best opportunity to identify those who do not share our values,” she said.

In Smith’s case, an investigation revealed that he had joined the Army a year after connecting on Facebook with Craig Lang, an extremist known to U.S. security officials for fighting alongside paramilitaries in Ukraine.

“No former military experience, but if I cannot find a slot in Ukraine by October I’ll be going into the Army,” Smith told Lang in June 2016, according to the FBI.

One year later, he was stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia. Recruiters had not uncovered his leanings, or the risk presented.

For Levin, Smith’s case is interesting because it implies that white supremacist groups are on the prowl for soldiers sharing their views.

He said that while the Pentagon is making a “sincere effort” to combat extremism within its ranks, it was not enough.

“The military is acutely aware of the problem and they are certainly working on it,” Levin said. “Now what we have to do is to retool our response to it.”

Breeding ground for far-right sympathizers

Even if the U.S. military is seen as the most ethnically diverse institution in the country, it remains a fertile breeding ground for far-right sympathizers.

According to a poll conducted among 829 service members in October 2018 by the Military Times, 22% said they had seen signs of white supremacism or racism within the military in the previous year.

The number is similar to one found the year before, shortly after an American neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd protesting white supremacists and other hate groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. One woman was killed.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 hit the island of Seram in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku on Thursday, damaging some buildings, but there was no risk of a tsunami, the geophysics agency said.

Disaster officials said the early morning quake, initially measured at a magnitude of 6.8, was felt in towns such as Ambon and Kairatu, waking some residents, who said it felt like trucks rumbling past.

A university building was slightly damaged and a bridge cracked in Ambon, about 40 km (25 miles) from the epicenter, said Agus Wibowo, a spokesman for the disaster mitigation agency.

Video posted on social media showed plaster and rubble scattered over floors and chairs in the Al Anshor Islamic boarding school in Ambon, the provincial capital, but a witness said no injuries were reported from the school.

Indonesia, which sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, often experiences deadly earthquakes and tsunamis.

In September 2018, Palu, on the island of Sulawesi west of Maluku, was devastated by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and a powerful tsunami it unleashed, killing more than 4,000 people.

In 2004, a quake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 in 14 countries, more than 120,000 of them in Indonesia.

After two days of intense negotiations, the Universal Postal Union has reached a compromise agreement on mailing rates that has averted a threatened walkout by the United States, which could have caused a major disruption to the global postal system. 

The United States declared victory in the UPU’s “Extraordinary Congress,” saying it got what it wanted. The head of the U.S. delegation, Peter Navarro, said member countries unanimously approved the adoption of a comprehensive set of reforms based on the U.S. proposal. 
 
Navarro, who is the director of trade and manufacturing policy at the White House, said the measure lets the United States immediately self-declare its postal rates, thereby covering the costs of bulky letters and small parcels sent from abroad. 

Major savings seen
 
Navarro called this a big deal.  
 
“The U.S. got immediate self-declared rates that saves us a half a billion dollars,” he  said. “It eliminates market distortions.  It creates tens of thousands of jobs for America.  It also helps our friends and allies, and other nations — Norway, Finland, Brazil — who are getting hammered by this situation. It allows them in a multispeed option to get to that path.”  
 
UPU Secretary-General Bishar Hussein said the deal would not kick in until July 1, 2020, for the U.S., when the American self-declared rates will go into effect.  For other member states, he said, the new postal rate system will begin in January 2021. 
 
Once a country declares its rates, he said, the exporting country will have to factor in that cost.  This, he said, means that cost will be transferred to the person who is mailing that item. 

Global impact
 
“When you are in a country and you buy items overseas, the end customer will definitely have to get a higher price, because it is not the old price which is in force now,” Hussein said. “So, I have no doubt in my mind that it will have a financial impact, or rather an impact, on the customers globally.”  
 
Hussein said the negotiations were intense, tough and at times worrisome.  But in the end, he said, countries agreed on a compromise that maintains the UPU as a strong, well-functioning organization.  He said no country got everything it wanted.  But he noted that no country walked out. 

Egyptian security forces arrested three political activists known for their outspoken criticism of Egypt’s government and president, defense lawyers said Wednesday, amid an intensified crackdown on dissent following small but rare anti-government protests over the weekend.

The demonstrations erupted over corruption allegations earlier this month against the military and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, by an Egyptian businessman living in self-imposed exile. El-Sisi, who is currently attending the United Nations General Assembly, has dismissed the corruption allegations as “sheer lies.”

Police quickly dispersed the protests, but they signified a startling eruption of street unrest. Demonstrations have been almost completely silenced in recent years, with those who dare take to the streets being quickly arrested and receiving lengthy prison sentences.

Attorneys Nour Farahat and Khaled el-Masry identified the three detained activists as Hazem Hosny, Hassan Nafaa and Khaled Dawoud.

Hosny and Nafaa are political science professors at Cairo University and were arrested Tuesday. Hosny also was a spokesman for the 2018 presidential campaign of Sami Annan, who served as chief-of-staff for former president Hosni Mubarak. Annan was detained in January last year.

Dawoud, a journalist and former head of the liberal al-Dustour party, was arrested Wednesday. Dawoud, Hosny and Nafaa have been brought before prosecutors, according to attorney Khaled Ali.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, could not be reached for comment.

The short-lived protests impacted Egypt’s stock exchange, which suspended trading for 30 minutes on Sunday, the first day of the country’s work week, after its main index fell by 5 percent. After three days of losses, the exchange went up 3.22 percent Wednesday, according to the state-run MENA news agency.

Wave of arrests

Over the past week, authorities have conducted a wave of arrests, according to rights lawyers. The arrests came amid new calls for protests in the coming days on social media, from which Friday’s demonstrators took their cue.

Over 1,200 people, including political activists, journalists and rights lawyers, were detained, el-Masry said.
 
Prosecutors have questioned at least 750 people about claims that they took part in activities of an outlawed group, a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, and disseminating false news, he said.

Prosecutors ordered the three activists to remain in custody for 15 days pending investigations into claims they, too, took part in activities of an outlawed group and disseminating false news.

Heavy security measures are still in place in Cairo, the capital, since the weekend, particularly around Tahrir Square. The square was the epicenter of the so-called Arab Spring uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

El-Sisi, a general-turned-president, led the 2013 military’s ouster of an elected but divisive Islamist president amid mass protests against his brief rule. Since then, he has overseen an unprecedented crackdown, silencing critics and jailing thousands.

MPIGI, UGANDA — Faith Aweko of Uganda describes herself as a “waste-preneur.”  She has come up with an innovative way to transform discarded plastic bags into backpacks for everyday use.  

Aweko has no problem picking up waste.  She had to do it all the time as a child, when rainwater and trash would flood her home, located in a slum, in a low-lying part of Kampala.

Now, she works with women who are hired to collect and wash plastic bags in the Mpigi district of southern Uganda. The bags are then transformed into durable, sustainable, waterproof and beautiful bags.

Aweko and her colleagues, through the Reform Africa project, wanted to do something with the plastic bags that litter streets across Uganda, soiling the environment.

“They are collecting plastic bottles around, but the polythene bags are really being left. Yet they are the most dangerous for the environment. And you find them poorly disposed. Some people even burn them, others dump it in their gardens which doesn’t lead to good agricultural production,” Aweko said.

In Uganda, the most popular imported polythene bag is the 30 microns polythene.  Research has shown that it will take 1,000 years for each bag to decompose.

Aweko’s idea was to compress bags together using an iron, then stitch the material into backpacks.

“We iron this. We have to compile 15 plastic bags of these ones to come up with a strong back pack. We have designs, our customers need designs on it, we cannot iron it as plain as it is, so we have to get these Lato milk buveera’s (polythene), or the plastics, other plastic small bags to really add in the creativity so that it looks very strong,” Aweko said.

Rachel Mema, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is working with Reform Africa.

When she lived in one of Uganda’s refugee settlements, Mema says, there was a lot of plastic trash, which bred mosquitoes, leading to disease outbreaks.

“So, those solutions is something that is not just for urban people but also those people out there who really need to have something like that and eco-friendly and it’s an action towards our health right now, for who are suffering from plastic,” Mema said.

As world leaders set new agendas to fight climate change and save the environment, Mema, Aweko and others at Reform Africa believe they are doing their part — and generating some income in the process.

Myroslava Gongadze in Washington and Celia Mendoza in New York contributed to this report.

NEW YORK/CAPITOL HILL — U.S. President Donald Trump asked Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate if Democratic presidential contender and former Vice President Joe Biden shut down a probe into a Ukrainian company that employed his son, according to a summary of a transcript of a July telephone call between the two leaders.

Democrats have accused Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, of seeking Zelenskiy’s help to dampen Biden’s chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said, according to the summary released Wednesday by White House.

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me,” the transcript summary said.

U.S. President Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July telephone call to investigate whether former Vice President Joe Biden shut down an investigation into a company that employed his son, a summary of the call released by the Trump administration on Wednesday showed.

President Donald Trump is meeting Wednesday in New York with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy amid reports the U.S. leader pushed his Ukrainian counterpart during a phone call to investigate Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden over a high-paying job his son Hunter had with a Ukrainian gas company.

The phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry announced by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Trump has acknowledged the issue of the Bidens came up during a phone call Zelenskiy but insists there was no pressure put on the Ukrainian leader.

President Trump confirmed he told his staff to withhold about $400 million in aid to Ukraine days before the phone call.  He has said he will release the transcript of the conversation.

“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

Ahead of his talks with Trump, Zelenskiy told VOA’s Ukrainian service “We just want the U.S. to always support Ukraine and Ukraine’s course in its fight against aggression and war.”

Zelensky added “I think the meeting will be very warm.”