President Donald Trump, a self-described deal-maker, is saddled with a long list of unresolved foreign policy deals he has yet to close heading into his U.N. visit this coming week.

There are challenges with Iran, North Korea, the Afghan Taliban, Israel and the Palestinians — not to mention a number of trade pacts. Some are inching forward. Some have stalled.

Trump has said repeatedly that he is in “no rush” to wrap up the deals. But negotiations take time. He is nearly three years into his presidency and the 2020 election looms, which will crimp his ability to tend to unfinished foreign business.

“I don’t blame the president for having so many deals open,” said Nicholas Burns, a former undersecretary of state who has worked for Republican and Democratic presidents. He gives Trump credit for going after China on its trade practices and talking to the Taliban to try to end 18 years of war in Afghanistan.

“But I do think you have to be tough-minded as citizens and grade him,” Burns said. “How’s he doing? Well, in my book, he doesn’t have a single major foreign policy achievement in more than 2½ years in office.”

Trump’s critics say that lack of success means the president is going to the United Nations in a weakened position.

Some foreign policy experts give Trump credit for opening up international negotiations. Yet there is plentiful criticism of his brash negotiating style — blasting foreign leaders one day, making nice the next — because they think it makes the global chessboard more wobbly.

In his defense, Trump says: “It’s the way I negotiate. It’s done very well for me over the years, and it’s doing even better for the country.”

Trump’s “America first” mantra hasn’t gone over well at the United Nations before. Now, as tensions escalate between the U.S. and Iran, the president needs international support to help put pressure on Tehran.

With marching bands, drum lines, hundreds of yard signs and at least one fire truck, Democratic presidential candidates made a colorful and often loud pitch to Iowa Democrats at the Steak Fry fundraiser in Des Moines on Saturday.

The event, a fundraiser for the Polk County Democratic Party and one of the biggest remaining opportunities for candidates to flex their organizing muscles in Iowa before the caucuses, comes as a number of candidates are facing an uncertain future in the race and shaking up their campaign strategies in an effort to break out of the pack.

Warren gains in poll

A new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll Saturday shows Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenging Joe Biden’s dominance in the field. Warren stands at 22% to the former vice president’s 20% in a poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers.

On Saturday morning, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker warned he may need to end his campaign if he’s unable to raise $1.7 million by the end of the third fundraising quarter. His announcement came soon after California Sen. Kamala Harris announced she’d be going all-in on Iowa in hopes of finishing in the top three. Both have been stagnant in national and Iowa surveys, with Harris polling in the middle of the pack and Booker struggling to move beyond low single digits.

In the new poll, Harris sits at 6% and Booker, along with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, has 3%.

At the Steak Fry, however, Harris turned out her fans in force, marching into the event with hundreds of supporters and a drum line. Booker had a smaller crowd gathered to see him into the event, and the portrait the candidate painted to reporters after speaking to the Steak Fry crowd was dire.

“I don’t believe people should stay in this just to stay in it,” he said. “You either have a trajectory to win or not. And right now if we don’t raise $1.7 million we won’t be able to make the investments necessary. He added: “If we don’t have a pathway to win we should get out of this race.”

Part parade

The event Saturday is part parade, part organizing show of force — and quintessentially Iowa, home of the 2020 race’s leadoff caucuses in February.

It began as a fundraiser for Tom Harkin’s first congressional bid, where the 53 attendees could buy a steak and a foil-wrapped baked potato for $2.

Harkin has retired from the Senate and is out of politics, but the steak fry lives on, now more than four decades strong.

This year, more than 12,000 people were expected to join in addition to 19 presidential candidates. Attendees enjoyed the traditional steaks — 10,500 were grilled by volunteers — but they also had the option to order from a food truck or visit a craft beer tent.

There are even camping grounds, where supporters of former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke spent Friday night.

The county’s Democratic chairman, Sean Bagniewski, said the event has a “modern twist.”

“That’s the future of the party — it’s gonna be more women in positions of leadership, it’s gonna be more people of color, and it’s going to be more young people,” he said.

Part show of force

What hasn’t changed is the event’s significance for the candidates. When Barack Obama marched into the 2007 Iowa steak fry flanked by 1,000 supporters, skeptical Iowans were put on notice that he could win the state’s caucus. Bagniewski said that, like 2007, Democrats are looking for someone who can show they have the organizational strength to win.

“Everyone wants to beat Donald Trump,” he said. “Everyone has a top five, but when you actually see that your candidate of choice has 1,000 people supporting them at the steak fry, it gives you more liberty to make that decision.”

A few hours before the candidates began their speeches, gray clouds swirled overhead at the Des Moines Waterworks.

People wore campaign T-shirts and chanted the names of their preferred candidates as smoke hovered over the thousands of cooking steaks at the riverside park.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was hoping to make a big splash Saturday as he steps up his Iowa presence, addressed hundreds of supporters sporting his campaign’s signature gold and blue T-shirts. In the new CNN/Des Moines Register poll, Buttigieg has 9%. O’Rourke, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang all have 2%

Against this festive backdrop, former Vice President Joe Biden commented on the whistleblower’s complaint in Washington that involved Trump’s phone conversation with Ukraine’s leader. Although the complaint is under wraps, Trump is known to want Ukraine to investigate business dealings there by Biden’s son, Hunter, during his vice presidency.

“The fact of the matter is that that fellow in the White House knows that if we get the nomination we’re gonna beat him like a drum,” Biden said. “So be prepared for every lousy thing that’s coming from him.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to send additional U.S. military forces and air defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, saying it was the administration’s latest attempt to “circumvent” Congress. 
 
“President Trump’s plan to accelerate the delivery of military equipment to Saudi Arabia and UAE, and to deploy additional U.S. forces to the region, is the latest outrageous attempt by the Trump administration to circumvent the bipartisan, bicameral will of Congress,” she said in a statement. “These unacceptable actions are cause for alarm.” 
 
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced Trump’s decision Friday night at the Pentagon. 

Allies’ requests
 
Esper said the forces would be “defensive in nature.” He added that the U.S. was responding to requests from Saudi and UAE officials to improve their air and missile defenses after last weekend’s attacks on Saudi Arabian oil installations. U.S. officials have said Iran was responsible, an allegation that Tehran denies. 
 

The Sept. 14 assault exposed the vulnerability of the region’s oil facilities to drone and cruise missile attacks. 
 
Details regarding the U.S. deployments were to be discussed over the weekend and released next week, Dunford said Friday. 
 
“Secretary [of State Mike) Pompeo just came back this morning, and the Saudis asked for enhanced capabilities,” Dunford said. “We haven’t decided on specific units,” but those chosen would help enhance the countries’ air missile defenses. 
 
Pelosi said in her statement that the House and Senate had passed bipartisan legislation months ago to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE, as well as condemn the Saudis’ involvement in Yemen.  
 
“Once again, President Trump is turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s continued violence against innocent Yemenis, as well as its horrific murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its gross abuses of human rights, which represent a moral and humanitarian crisis,” she added. 

Iranian defiance
 
Hours after the U.S. announced the deployment, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, General Hossein Salami, warned that his forces “are ready for any scenario.” Salami added: “If anyone crosses our borders, we will hit them.” 
 
Also late Friday, the United Nations announced that it had sent a four-member team of international experts to Saudi Arabia to investigate the attacks on the oil installations. 
 
Earlier in the day, Trump announced new sanctions against Iran’s national bank, further escalating economic pressure on the Islamic Republic, but pulling back from any direct military action.  

“I think the sanctions work,” Trump said during a joint White House news conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Trump also said “the military would work, but that is a very severe form of winning.” 
 
But Trump said he was not planning a military response to the attacks, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “The strong-person approach and the thing that does show strength would be showing a little bit of restraint.” 
 
Trump warned, however, that “Iran knows if they misbehave, they’re on borrowed time.” 
 
Trump announced the sanctions as his administration weighed other options on Iran, including military strikes. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday that a U.S. or Saudi military strike against his country would trigger “an all-out war.” 
 
The United States previously imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran because of its alleged nuclear program. But the U.S. Treasury Department said Friday that the latest sanctions had been imposed because Iran’s central bank engaged in “terrorism” by providing “billions of dollars” to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.   
 
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has often said that any negotiations between himself and Trump can occur only if the U.S. first provides sanctions relief. 

A senior Danish official says his country hopes to set an example for the world with an ambitious scheme to cut carbon emissions by 70% in little more than a decade, but it has no illusions that it can have a meaningful impact on global warming by itself. 
 
“To be honest, for the climate, even if we just close down our country tomorrow, it wouldn’t help much,” Dan Jørgensen, Denmark’s top climate and energy official, told VOA during a visit to Washington this week. “I guess you can argue: Does it really matter what you do?” 
 
Jørgensen said Denmark accounts for just 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, a drop in the bucket compared with emissions from the largest polluters such as China, the United States and India. But he said, “The reason we do these things anyway is that if we succeed in doing that, then hopefully we’ll inspire others.” 
 
Jørgensen, who will be in New York next week to promote his country’s climate agenda at the United Nations, said his country hopes to demonstrate that it can carry out a green transformation and still be competitive in the global marketplace. In the process, it expects to develop new technologies that “other countries can also use.” 

Stages of debate
  
According to Jørgensen, the climate debate in Denmark has gone through several stages since the issue started to enter the public’s consciousness about 15 or 20 years ago. 
 
At that time, he said, some in Denmark still questioned how real climate change was and whether humans had anything to do with it. That was followed by a period in which the public by and large understood that climate change was real, but some remained reluctant to devote resources to the problem, concerned that efforts by Denmark alone would be futile.  

Now, he said, most people agree on the nature of the problem. Looking out the window, “they see droughts, they see flooding, they see extreme weather phenomena,” he said. “We are also a nation that’s closely connected to Greenland,” one of the places where climate change is most evident in the form of melting glaciers. 
 
With that consensus, the debate has shifted to an energetic discussion about the best policy instruments to address the problem. 
 
The issue so dominated Danish general elections in June that the campaign has been described as the country’s “first climate election,” with the question of how to achieve a green transformation topping the agenda in debates among the candidates for prime minister and other posts. 
 
Looking beyond Denmark, Jørgensen said Denmark and its partners in the European Union were sad to see the United States withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and hope it will reconsider. “There’s nothing I would hope more than the U.S. taking leadership on the global stage also on green issues,” he said. 

Join the battle
 
Meanwhile, Jørgensen said, all countries and especially the “big growing economies” must join in the battle to prevent climate change “from becoming irreversible and having the most catastrophic consequences.” 
 
But he acknowledges the frustration of newly developing countries, which are only now acquiring energy-intensive amenities that the developed nations have long enjoyed. 
 
“It’s not up to us who’ve been polluting and emitting greenhouse gases for more than 100 years — when I say us, I mean the West, the United States, Europe — it’s not up to us to tell them, ‘No, you cannot drive a car, you cannot buy a fridge or an air conditioner, no, you can’t start to eat meat a few times a week because you can afford it all of a sudden because you’ve come out of poverty.’ ” 
 
Rather, he said, it is up to Denmark and the other developed countries to say, “Can we help you in any way to make that growth green?” 

Secretary of state is taking the lead in responding to the attacks on Saudi’s oil processing facilities, viewed by many as his first major diplomatic crisis and a test of his leadership

Young people afraid for their futures protested around the globe Friday to implore leaders to tackle climate change, turning out by the hundreds of thousands to insist that the warming world can’t wait any longer.

Marches, rallies and demonstrations were held from Canberra to Kabul and Cape Town to New York. More than 100,000 turned out in Berlin.
 
Days before a U.N. climate summit of world leaders, the “Global Climate Strike” events were as small as two dozen activists in Seoul using LED flashlights to send Morse code messages and as large as mass demonstrations in Australia that organizers estimated were the country’s largest since the Iraq War began in 2003.
 
“You are leading the way in the urgent race against the climate crisis,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres wrote in a message to the young protesters on Twitter. “You are on the right side of history. Keep pushing us to do the right thing.”
 
In New York, where public schools excused students with parental permission, tens of thousands of mostly young people marched through lower Manhattan, briefly shutting down some streets.
 
“Sorry I can’t clean my room, I’m busy saving the world,” one protester’s sign declared.
 
Thousands marched to the Capitol in Washington, including 15-year-old high school sophomore A.J. Conermann.
 
“Basically, our earth is dying, and if we don’t do something about it, we die,” Conermann said.
 
Thousands packed the streets around Seattle’s City Hall, following a march where tech workers from Amazon and Google joined students demanding an end to fossil fuel use.
 
Demonstrations came in smaller cities as well. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who recently abandoned his climate-focused presidential run, addressed a rally in Spokane, and a crowd chanted inside the rotunda of the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.
 
“It’s really unbelievable and really startling to know how little time we have to reverse the damage,” said Maris Maslow-Shields, a high school student from Santa Rosa, California, who marched in San Francisco.
 
In Paris, teenagers and kids as young as 10 traded classrooms for the streets. Marie-Lou Sahai, 15, skipped school because “the only way to make people listen is to protest.”
 

The demonstrations were partly inspired by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has staged weekly “Fridays for Future” demonstrations for a year, urging world leaders to step up efforts against climate change.
 
“It’s such a victory,” Thunberg told The Associated Press in an interview in New York. “I would never have predicted or believed that this was going to happen, and so fast – and only in 15 months.”
 
Thunberg spoke at a rally later Friday and was expected to participate in a U.N. Youth Climate Summit on Saturday and speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit with global leaders on Monday.
 
“They have this opportunity to do something, and they should take that,” she said. “And otherwise, they should feel ashamed.”
 
The world has warmed about 1 degree Celsius since before the Industrial Revolution, and scientists have attributed more than 90 percent of the increase to emissions of heat-trapping gases from fuel-burning and other human activity.
 
Scientists have warned that global warming will subject Earth to rising seas and more heat waves, droughts, storms and flooding, some of which have already manifested themselves.
 
Climate change has made record-breaking heat twice as likely as record-setting cold temperatures over the past two decades in the contiguous U.S., according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.
 
Nations around the world recommitted at a 2015 summit in Paris to hold warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius more than pre-industrial-era levels by the end of this century, and they added a more ambitious goal of limiting the increase to 1.5 C.
 
But U.S. President Donald Trump subsequently announced that he would withdraw the U.S. from the agreement, which he said benefited other nations at the expense of American businesses and taxpayers.
 
Trump called global warming a “hoax” before becoming president. He has since said he’s “not denying climate change” but is not convinced it’s man-made or permanent.
 
New York protester Pearl Seidman, 13, hoped the demonstration would tell the Trump administration “that if they can’t be adults, we’re going to be adults. Because someone needs to do it.” At least one Trump supporter waved a large “Trump 2020” flag as the demonstrators marched in Manhattan.
 
In Florida, high school students shouted “Miami is under attack” in Miami Beach, where some worried about losing their homes to rising water. On the West Coast, student-led protests drew in some Google and Amazon employees.
 
Amazon, which ships more than 10 billion items a year, vowed Thursday to cut its use of fossil fuels, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the Financial Times in a story published Friday that eliminating the company’s carbon emissions by 2030 did not seem “unreasonable.”
 
Friday’s demonstrations started in Australia, where organizers estimated 300,000 protesters marched in 110 towns and cities, including Sydney and the national capital, Canberra. Demonstrators called for their country, the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquid natural gas, to take more drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack – filling in while Prime Minister Scott Morrison was on a state visit to the United States – said Australia was already taking action to cut emissions. McCormack called the climate rallies “a disruption” that should have been held on a weekend to avoid inconveniences.
 
Many middle schools in largely coal-reliant Poland gave students the day off so they could participate in the rallies in Warsaw and other cities. President Andrzej Duda joined school students picking up trash in a forest. German police said more than 100,000 people gathered in front of Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate, near where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet thrashed out the final details of a $60 billion plan to curb Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions .
 
Thousands of schoolchildren and their adult supporters demonstrated in London outside the British Parliament. The British government said it endorsed the protesters’ message but did not condone skipping school – a stance that did not sit well with some of the young protesters.
 
“If politicians were taking the appropriate action we need and had been taking this action a long time ago when it was recognized the world was changing in a negative way, then I would not have to be skipping school,” said Jessica Ahmed, a 16-year-old London student.
 
In Helsinki, the Finnish capital, a man dressed as Santa Claus stood outside parliament holding a sign: “My house is on fire, my reindeer can’t swim.”
 
Smaller protests took place in Asia, including in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and India. In the Afghan capital of Kabul, an armored personnel carrier was deployed to protect about 100 young people as they marched, led by a group of several young women carrying a banner emblazoned with “Fridays for Future.”
 
“We know war can kill a group of people,” said Fardeen Barakzai, one of the organizers. “The problem in Afghanistan is our leaders are fighting for power, but the real power is in nature.”

Dozens of demonstrators were arrested at yellow vest protests in Paris on Saturday as more than 7,000 police were deployed to quell any violence by the movement and its radical, anarchist “black blocs.”

There were also fears that the demonstrators could try to infiltrate a march against climate change in the French capital.

The yellow vest movement erupted 10 months ago and blindsided President Emmanuel Macron, whom protesters accused of being out of touch with the needs of ordinary French people.

Their weekly demonstrations prompted Macron to loosen the state’s purse strings to the tune of nearly 17 billion euros ($18.8 billion) in wage boosts and tax cuts for low earners, but tapered off over the summer.

However, it remains to be seen whether the movement will regain the momentum of the winter and early spring, when the protests often descended into violent clashes with security forces, especially in Paris.

Several hundred protesters were in the streets of the French capital around 11am (0900 GMT) on Saturday.

By then police had arrested 39 of them, police headquarters said, adding that some protesters had been found to carry hammers or petrol canisters.

Macron on Friday called for “calm”, saying that while “it’s good that people express themselves”, they should not disrupt a climate protest and cultural events also due to go ahead on Saturday.

The number of police deployed for Saturday’s rallies are on a par with the peak of the yellow vest protests in December and March.

‘Black blocs’

Key yellow-vest figure Jerome Rodrigues has billed Saturday’s protest as “a revelatory demonstration”, claiming “many people are going to come to Paris”.

But officials have again outlawed protests on the Champs-Elysees and other areas in the heart of the capital, where previously protesters had ransacked and set fire to luxury shops and restaurants.

Some demonstrators in January even used a forklift truck to break down the doors of a government ministry.

The police have also been criticized for being heavy-handed in clashes with hardcore anti-capitalist “black bloc” groups blamed for much of the violence that has accompanied the demonstrations.

Saturday coincides with the annual European Heritage Days weekend, when public and private buildings normally off-limits to the public are open to visitors.

After attracting 282,000 people nationwide on the first day of protests last November, yellow-vest protest participation had fallen sharply by the spring, and only sporadic protests were seen over the summer.

Macron said in an interview with Time magazine published Thursday that the movement had been “very good for me” as it had made him listen and communicate better.

“My challenge is to listen to people much better than I did at the very beginning,” the president said.

The Solomon Islands announced Saturday the establishment of diplomatic relations with China, becoming the second Pacific island nation in as many days to switch its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan.

The moves are part of a long-term effort by Beijing to undermine Taiwan’s recognition as an independent nation and come as a blow to its president, Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election in January. Both Beijing and Taipei claim to be the rightful government of China.

The Solomon Islands’ move had been expected after it severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan on Monday. The island nation of Kiribati announced on Friday that it was switching its recognition to China “in accordance with the best national interest for our country and people.”

The Solomons’ foreign minister also cited the national interest in announcing his country’s decision, saying the Solomons has “huge” development needs and that “we need a broader partnership with countries that also includes China.”

Both Beijing and Taipei have used development assistance to woo the support of small nations. The latest moves leave Taiwan with little more than a dozen countries plus the Vatican that recognize its independence.

Francis Rooney is a Republican congressman from a conservative Florida district who opposes federal funding for abortions and supports President Donald Trump’s plans for construction of a wall along the Mexican border.

But he also recently co-sponsored a carbon pricing bill and is one of a handful of lawmakers from his side of the aisle who have bucked orthodoxy and acknowledged human beings are responsible for global warming.

The modern Republican Party is one of the few political forces in the world whose leadership denies manmade climate change, but there are now small yet perceptible signs of changes within its ranks, driven by an increase in extreme weather events and shifting public opinion.

“Seventy-one percent of the people in my district say that climate change is real. We’re scared of sea-level rise and we want the government to do something about it,” Rooney, citing recent polling, said at a talk this week organized by the World Resources Institute.

In late July, he along with Democrat Dan Lipinksi of Illinois introduced a new bill aimed at setting a price on carbon emissions, one of several similar proposed laws currently before the House of Representatives.

Extreme weather

For now, the legislation has no hope of passing: fellow Republicans are highly unlikely to take it up in the Senate, and even if it did clear the upper house, Trump would almost certainly exercise his veto. 

But the bills “indicate that Republicans and Democrats are beginning to agree that a price on carbon is the most efficient way to reduce America’s emissions,” the Citizens’ Climate Lobby wrote in a blog post on the subject.

“Republicans are getting very nervous about their lack of any serious policy on climate change, because climate change is beginning to have huge costs to average everyday Americans,” Paul Bledsoe, a former staffer for ex-president Bill Clinton and lecturer at American University, told AFP.  

There is a broad scientific consensus that warmer oceans are supercharging hurricanes, making Category 4 and 5 storms more common. 

New research suggests that warming may also be affecting global atmospheric currents, thus increasing the frequency of ultra slow-crawling hurricanes like last month’s Dorian and 2017’s Harvey.

Rooney and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who also supports a carbon tax, are the two most outspoken Republican lawmakers on climate change, but in recent months others have begun talking about the need to reduce emissions.

These include Senator John Barasso from deep red Wyoming, who earlier this year introduced a bill to expand nuclear power, in part citing the need to address climate change, and a handful of others including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and John Cornyn of Texas who have made similar calls to expand renewables.

But if the majority of the party of Lincoln remains ostensibly skeptical of the science surrounding climate change, it was not ever thus.

Rightward lurch

Karolyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute told AFP that when Americans first became conscious of it in the late 1960s, environmentalism was a non-partisan cause — indeed, it was under President Richard Nixon that the Environmental Protection Agency was created. 

The practice of imposing taxes to reduce emissions was later used to great effect by former president George H.W. Bush, who in 1990 signed an amendment to the Clean Air Act that placed a price on sulfur dioxide to address the then-serious problem of acid rain, a wildly successful policy.

But Republicans then assumed a harder tack driven by lobbying from special interest groups funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, along with the emergence of an anti-taxation wing under the Republican Congress of the 1990s and the Tea Party movement of the late 2000s.

The question of what happens next is up for debate. 

A Trump victory in 2020 would put to rest any chance of a serious climate policy becoming law in the U.S., according to Bledsoe, even if younger Republicans are starting to care more about the issue.

But David Karol, the author of “Red, Green and Blue: The Partisan Divide on Environmental Issues,” said the emergence in Congress of the bipartisan “Climate Solutions Caucus” in 2016 was an interesting development, even if some environmentalists have deemed it a way for Republican legislators to “check a box and claim to care.”

“Even if that’s true, the fact that the GOP politicians felt a need to do this says something about where they think public opinion is,” Karol said.
 

Emergency workers used boats Friday to rescue about 60 residents of a Houston-area community still trapped in their homes by floodwaters following one of the wettest tropical cyclones in U.S. history.

At least four deaths have been linked to the remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda, which deluged parts of Texas and Louisiana and drew comparisons to Hurricane Harvey two years ago. Officials took advantage of receding floodwaters to begin assessing how many homes and cars were flooded.

Almost 16 feet of standing water was reported in Huffman, northeast of Houston, when a nearby bayou overflowed. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office deployed its marine unit to evacuate about 60 residents. Officials have warned residents high waters might not recede in their neighborhoods until the weekend.

East of Houston in Jefferson County, which got more than 40 inches of rain in 72 hours, officials also began taking stock of their damage. They also announced the death of Malcolm Foster, a 47-year-old Beaumont resident whose body was found inside his vehicle.

The heaviest rainfall had ended by Thursday night in Southeast Texas, but forecasters warned that parts of northeast Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana could see flash flooding as Imelda’s remnants shifted to the north.

Officials in Harris County, which includes Houston, said there had been at least 1,700 high-water rescues following Thursday’s torrential rainfall.

Most of the Houston-area roads that became water-logged after heavy rainfall Thursday and resulted in more than 1,650 vehicles being abandoned and later towed were mostly dry Friday.

But parts of one of the major thoroughfares that passes through Southeast Texas — Interstate 10 — remained closed Friday because of flood waters in the Beaumont area. Another freeway section, closer to Houston, was also shut down as officials assessed damage to its bridges over the San Jacinto River after they were hit by two barges that broke free of their moorings.

Nearly 123,000 vehicles normally cross the bridges each day, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.

Officials say two of the deaths from Imelda happened in the Houston area: an unidentified man in his 40s or 50s who drowned Thursday while driving a van through 8-foot-deep floodwaters, and a man whose body was found in a ditch Friday and is believed to have drowned.

In Jefferson County, besides Foster’s death, officials say a 19-year-old man drowned and was electrocuted Thursday while trying to move his horse to safety.

For many residents in Houston, Imelda’s punishing rainfall and flooding evoked the memory of Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches (127 centimeters) of rain on the nation’s fourth-largest city in 2017. Imelda is the first named storm since then to impact the Houston area.

The flooding from Imelda came as Hurricane Humberto blew off rooftops and toppled trees in the British Atlantic island of Bermuda, and Hurricane Jerry was expected to move to the northern Leeward Islands on Friday and north of Puerto Rico on Saturday. In Mexico, people in Los Cabos just missed Hurricane Lorena’s arrival after the storm veered to the east.
 

Thousands of activists fanned out across beaches and rivers throughout Asia Saturday, picking up rubbish and drawing attention to the amount of trash that is dumped worldwide, a day after millions marched to urge world leaders to act on climate change.

The volunteers turned out for World Cleanup Day, an initiative that has sent millions into the streets and cleaning up litter across the globe since it began just over a decade ago.

The Pacific island nation of Fiji swung into action early, with people scouring palm-fringed beaches for rubbish, heaving discarded car tires and engine parts from the coast just west of the capital Suva.

On Australia’s Bondi beach, activists sifted through the sand, carting off bits of plastic and cigarette butts.

In the Philippines, some 10,000 people swept across a long stretch of beach on heavily polluted Manila Bay, clutching sacks they filled with rubbish.

Plastic pollution is a major problem across Southeast Asia, but particularly in the Philippines, which — along with China, Vietnam and Indonesia — is frequently listed among the world’s worst offenders.

“It’s for us to help the environment, especially here in Manila, there’s a lot of garbage,” Mae Angela Areglado, a 20-year-old student told AFP as she pitched in with the cleanup, held right next to the city’s huge Baseco slum.

“(Plastic is) affecting the marine life because they think that it is food”, she added.

The mass cleanup is coordinated by the Let’s Do It Foundation, which aims to “connect and empower people and organizations around the world to make our planet waste free,” according to its website.

It attracted around 1,400 volunteers in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi, where they scoured different areas of the city for litter under the scorching sun.

“Although our actions are very small — like cleaning trash from the sidewalk — it could spread a meaningful message,” 18-year-old Hoang Thi Hoan told AFP, as motorists zipped by on a busy street.

In China, a group of about 30 gathered by the Xiaotaihou River in Beijing to pick up rubbish along the manmade waterway.

“You can’t get permission to organize large events in Beijing due to tight security ahead of the 70th anniversary celebrations,” organizer Zhang Hongfu, from the environmental group Friends of Nature, told AFP.

Seventy-nine percent of the plastic ever made has ended up dumped, with little reused or destroyed despite recycling and other initiatives to curb use, a U.N. report from 2018 said.

Just 9% of the 9 billion tonnes of plastic the world has produced has been recycled.
 

The United States said it is deeply disappointed in Kiribati’s decision to abandon its diplomatic ties with Taiwan, in favor of China.

Several Republican and Democratic lawmakers voiced grave concerns. A Senate panel plans to move forward with a congressional proposal that could “impose consequences on nations downgrading ties with Taiwan.”

In a stern statement on Friday, a State Department spokesperson said “countries that establish closer ties to China primarily out of the hope or expectation that such a step will stimulate economic growth and infrastructure development often find themselves worse off in the long run.”

The spokesperson said the U.S. supports the status quo in cross-Strait relations, which includes Taiwan’s diplomatic ties and international space, as important to maintaining peace and stability in the region.

“China’s active campaign to alter the cross-Strait status quo, including by enticing countries to discontinue diplomatic ties with Taiwan, are harmful and undermine regional stability. They undermine the framework that has enabled peace, stability, and development for decades,” the spokesperson told VOA.

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan on Friday, becoming the second country to do so this week and bolstering China’s hand.

This comes as another blow to Taiwan, as its three decades’ diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands ended on Monday after the Pacific island state’s cabinet voted in favor of switching ties to China.

“In the last couple weeks, the Solomon Islands and now Kiribati have cut formal ties with Taiwan under pressure from Beijing. Unless this behavior is confronted, Beijing will stop at nothing to isolate Taiwan internationally,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said.

In the last couple weeks, the Solomon Islands and now Kiribati have cut formal ties with Taiwan under pressure from Beijing. Unless this behavior is confronted, Beijing will stop at nothing to isolate Taiwan internationally. https://t.co/dVS8h1uLgm

— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) September 20, 2019

The U.S. sees Taiwan as part of a network of Asian democracies, calling Taiwan “a democratic success story and a force for good in the world.”  Informal Taiwan-U.S. ties have improved under U.S. President Donald Trump.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who is also ranking member of Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, also weighed in on Twitter.

China’s predatory campaign to isolate #Taiwan from the rest of the international community is seriously alarming & unacceptable. Taiwan is, and always will be, one of our most important partners in the region. We must continue to stand for democracy. https://t.co/B0XUjcMve3

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) September 20, 2019

Next week, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will consider the so-called TAIPEI Act, the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, said Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner in a tweet.

“Kiribati ending diplomatic ties with Taiwan demonstrates a need for urgent action,” said Gardner, who is the chairman of Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and international cybersecurity policy.

The proposed bill will allow the secretary of state to consider “the expansion, termination, or reduction” of U.S. foreign assistance to countries that downgrade ties with Taiwan.

China’s ‘problematic behavior’

As China’s influence in the region has grown, American officials frequently point out what they see as “a range of increasingly problematic behavior” that includes China’s ongoing militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea, and “predatory” economic activities and investments seen to undermine good governance and promote corruption and human rights abuses.

“This should concern all countries,” a State Department official told VOA.

Funds were promised by China in return for Kiribati’s recognition, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

“According to information obtained by Taiwan, the Chinese government has already promised to provide full funds for the procurement of several airplanes and commercial ferries, thus luring Kiribati into switching diplomatic relations,” Wu said.

One China principle

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Kiribati’s decision “fully testifies to the fact that the One China principle meets the shared aspiration of the people.” 

Geng added, “There is but one China in the world and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China.” 

The two sides split after the 1949 civil war when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists and sought refuge on Taiwan. But Beijing considers the self-ruled island part of its territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, but U.S. presidents are bound by law to supply it with arms and come to its defense.

The nuance between Washington’s “One China policy” and China’s “One China principle” is that the U.S. stance leaves open the possibility that a future resolution could be determined peacefully by both China and Taiwan.
 

The United States Special Inspector General, tasked with monitoring U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, said the reintegration of tens of thousands of fighters into the Afghan society would be necessary for sustainable peace should talks resume.

Direct peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban are currently “dead” after President Donald Trump called them off earlier this month after a spike in violence.

John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said Thursday that whenever peace talks begin with the Taliban, the issue of reintegration would be a central factor in ensuring a “sustainable peace” in the country.

“For if there is ever to be a true, sustainable peace in Afghanistan, reintegration of the Taliban and other combatants will be a necessary component of that process, whether that process begins days — or years — from now,” Sopko said at an event at U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).

Sopko, however, cautioned against the U.S. supporting a comprehensive reintegration program in Afghanistan prematurely.

“As long as the Taliban insurgency continues, the U.S. should not support a comprehensive program to reintegrate former fighters, because of the difficulty in vetting, protecting and tracking former fighters,” Sopko said while discussing his organization’s recent report on Afghanistan.

“We recommend that the U.S. should consider supporting a reintegration effort if first, the Afghan government and Taliban sign a peace agreement that provides a framework for reintegration of ex-combatants; secondly, if a significant reduction in overall violence occurs; and thirdly, if a strong monitoring and evaluation system is established for reintegration efforts,” he added.

According to SIGAR, Taliban have an estimated 60,000 full-time fighters and about 90,000 seasonal fighters in Afghanistan.

Sopko said reintegration efforts have to be inclusive and combatants of all stripes have to be taken into consideration.

“A failure to reintegrate combatants of all stripes into Afghan society will only lead to the continuation of a 40-year cycle of war that has led to generations of Afghans growing up knowing only death and destruction,” Sopko said. “And for Afghanistan’s supporters, the continuation of the sacrifice of blood and treasure in a distant land.”

Peace talks

The U.S. had been engaged in several rounds of direct talks with the Taliban that lasted almost a year, and a potential deal was within sight between the two sides. Earlier this month, however, President Trump surprised many by announcing that he was calling off a previously secret plan to have Taliban officials and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani attend talks at the Camp David presidential retreat near Washington.

Trump said he canceled the event and the peace negotiations altogether after continued Taliban attacks in Kabul, including one that killed a U.S. soldier earlier this month.

“If they [Taliban] cannot agree to a cease-fire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then it probably doesn’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight,” Trump said in a tweet at the time.

Zalmay Khalizad, the administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, in his first public appearance since peace talks were called off, spoke Thursday to a House of Representatives committee to answer questions about the talks as well as the administration’s future plans.

Ambassador Khalilzad had been subpoenaed to testify before U.S. lawmakers.

“While I would have preferred to hear from Ambassador Khalilzad in an open setting, I’m glad our members will have this long-overdue opportunity to press for answers on the peace plan,” Congressman Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Wednesday.

Khalilzad held nine rounds of negotiations with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, and had announced an “agreement in principle” with the Taliban. That plan had called for the United States to withdraw 5,000 of its 14,000 troops from Afghanistan, and for the Taliban to renounce ties with al-Qaida and guarantee Afghanistan would not be used for terror attacks against the United States.

Spike in violence

Following the collapse of the peace talks, there has been a spike in violence across Afghanistan in recent days with dozens of people, mostly civilians, killed and injured in attacks carried out by the Taliban.

The increase in violence also coincides with preparations for Afghan presidential elections scheduled for later this month. Taliban have warned people against participating in the elections and vowed to disrupt them.

At least 48 people were killed and dozens more were injured in an attack on a campaign rally in northern Afghanistan for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

The insurgent group also claimed responsibility for attacks in Kabul, Nangarhar and Zabul provinces this week that killed and injured dozens of civilians.

The White House condemned the attacks and called them “cowardly.”

“The United States strongly condemns the Taliban’s cowardly attacks against the Afghan people. Today’s bombing of the election rally in Parwan province killed nearly 30 Afghan civilians, including women and children, while the suicide attack in Kabul near the Afghan Ministry of Defense and U.S. Embassy compound killed more than 20 Afghans,” the White House said in a statement.

“The president has made clear that he will not negotiate a peace agreement while the Taliban continues such attacks,” the statement added.

The U.N. Security Council called the attacks “heinous” and underlined the need to hold the perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts accountable.

“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the continuing high number of attacks in Afghanistan in recent weeks, and, most lately, in Qalat, Zabul province on 19 September, which resulted in at least 20 people killed and more than 95 injured, for which the Taliban have claimed responsibility,” the Security Council said in a statement.
 

The U.S. Department of Education has notified Duke University and the University of North Carolina that their joint Middle East studies program might see its federal funding curtailed.

In a letter dated Aug. 29 and published Tuesday in the Federal Register, Assistant Secretary Robert King wrote that the Education Department is “concerned” that the Center for Middle East Studies, which promotes the learning of critical Mideast languages, might lose its Title VI funds.

Issue with Iran curriculum

The Education Department, headed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, takes issue with curriculum around Iran.

“Although Iranian art and film may be subjects of deep intellectual interest and may provide insight regarding aspects of the people and culture of the Middle East, the sheer volume of such offerings highlights a fundamental misalignment between your choices and Title VI’s mandates,” the letter stated.

“Although a conference focused on ‘Love and Desire in Modern Iran’ and one focused on Middle East film criticism may be relevant in academia, we do not see how these activities support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of U.S. national security and economic stability,” the letter said.

The department laments that elements of the Middle East program do not, in its opinion, hold up under Title VI as it applies to the teaching of Farsi, or Persian, the national language in Iran. The program is in jeopardy of losing its $235,000 federal grant.

Lack of balance

Additionally, the Education Department letter said the studies program “lacks balance” in focusing on “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, and others,” instead placing “considerable emphasis” on “the positive aspects of Islam.”

“To be clear, activities focusing on American culture or academic preferences that do not directly promote foreign language learning and advance the national security interests and economic stability of the United States are not to be funded under Title VI,” the letter continued.

The Education Department asked Duke-UNC “to demonstrate that it has prioritized foreign language instruction as required by law” and “to provide the department with a full list of courses in Middle East studies, including academic rank and employment status of each instructor who teaches each course.”

Language learning

The federal government supports critical-language learning around the world through immersive experiences, including the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program for college students that grants “summer study abroad opportunity for American college and university students to learn languages essential to America’s engagement with the world.”

The U.S. Department of Defense also offers similar critical-language training through its Project Global Officer, or Go program, “a collaborative initiative that promotes critical-language education, study abroad, and intercultural dialogue opportunities for Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) students. Project GO programs focus on the languages and countries of the Middle East, Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and South America.”

Those languages include Arabic and Persian.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the department was motivated by what it sees as an anti-Israel movement on college campuses that participate in “Boycott, Divest, Sanctions.” That movement criticizes policies in Israel over the treatment of Palestinians.

“The department’s civil rights chief, Ken Marcus, previously ran an advocacy organization that filed civil rights complaints against BDS groups on campuses, arguing that they discriminated against Jewish students,” the Journal reported.

Hebrew is included in the list of critical languages the federal government promotes, according to the website of the National Security Education Program. The program is “a major federal initiative designed to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills,” according to its website.

The universities have a deadline of Sept. 22 to respond.

Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran have been severed since 1980, when Iran held 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. Recent tensions over Iran’s nuclear program have escalated the conflict.

The United States planned to sign an agreement Friday to help make one of Central America’s most violent countries, El Salvador, a haven for migrants seeking asylum, according to a senior Trump administration official. 
 
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan would sign a “cooperative asylum agreement.” 
 
Two other officials described the agreement as a first step in the governments’ working together on asylum. Details of the agreement will be settled in the weeks ahead, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. 
 
The agreement could be struck despite the fact that many Salvadorans are fleeing their nation and seeking asylum in the United States. A Salvadoran delegation has been in the U.S. this week discussing the matter. 

Remain-in-Mexico policy
 
The asylum agreement would be the latest effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to force asylum-seekers in Central America to seek refuge outside the United States. Immigration officials also are forcing more than 42,000 people to remain in Mexico as their cases play out, and they have changed policy to deny asylum to anyone who transited through a third country en route to the southern border of the U.S. 
 
The agreement would be another step by the Trump administration aimed at stopping the flow of migrants into the United States. McAleenan also signed a  “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, but officials in that country are still working out how it would be implemented. 
 
The arrangement with El Salvador was not described as a “safe third country” agreement, under which nations agree that their respective countries are safe enough and have robust enough asylum systems, so that if migrants transit through one of the countries they must remain there instead of moving on to another country. 
 
The U.S. officially has only one such agreement in place, with Canada, but has been working toward others in Honduras and agreed to the one in Guatemala that has not yet been implemented. 
 
The Trump administration this year threatened to withhold all federal assistance to three Central American countries unless they did more to stem the migrant flow. Congress resisted the move, as experts had said that the cuts would most likely only exacerbate the number of migrants seeking to make the hazardous journey to the U.S. because of a further lack of resources. 
 
In June, the State Department announced that the Trump administration was reversing some of the cuts but would not approve future aid to those nations. The State Department said then that $370 million from the 2018 budget would not be spent and instead would be moved to other projects. 

Dangerous place

Gang-plagued El Salvador is among the world’s deadliest countries, with one of the highest homicide rates on the globe. 
 
According to a 2018 State Department report, human rights issues included allegations of “unlawful killings of suspected gang members and others by security forces; forced disappearances by military personnel; torture by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of government respect for judicial independence.” 
 
Many people who flee from El Salvador have said they and their families were threatened by gang members. Teenagers often are pressured to join gangs and have had their lives and their families threatened if they refuse. Some young women are forced to become the girlfriends of gang members, facing rape or murder if they refuse. 
 
The two main street gangs in El Salvador are MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, both of which trace their origins to Los Angeles, where many Salvadorans sought refuge during their country’s civil war. Gang members arrested for crimes in the U.S. were deported back to El Salvador, taking their knowledge of gang culture with them. Trump frequently seizes on MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, as a reason to tighten U.S. immigration policy. 

Hundreds of Haitians braved rainy weather and joined an opposition protest Friday to demand an end to rampant government corruption and to call for President Jovenel Moise to resign.

Opposition Senator Saurel Jacinthe, who drew attention to a bribery scheme in parliament, joined protesters in the capital, Port-au-Prince. One of Jacinthe’s main targets was Prime Minister-designate Fritz William Michel, who has come under fire for allegedly bribing members of parliament to approve his nomination and for a questionable contract one of his businesses signed with the government.

Michel has been criticized for selling to the government 20,000 American goats at a cost of $325 a head. Critics say Michel has no experience with livestock and does not own a goat farm. The market price for goats in Haiti is $100.

“You can’t put a goat thief in the prime minister’s seat. I think it’s obvious,” Jacinthe told VOA Creole, referring to the contract that Michel landed with the government.

“Michel has to withdraw [his nomination] and I think it’s clear that after that we can move forward with a … new alternative to lead the country. That’s why we are here today,” Jacinthe said.

The senator said the mobilization would continue until Tuesday.

Friday’s protests were meant to coincide with the birthday of national hero and former slave Jean Jacques Dessalines.

Dessalines, a revered revolutionary war general, announced the country’s independence from France in 1804. For many Haitians, he symbolizes the pinnacle of good leadership.

The opposition also called for the establishment of a transitional government, trials for all those implicated in a corruption scandal surrounding Caribbean oil alliance PetroCaribe, prosecution of public officials accused of corruption, and organization of a National Sovereignty Conference to discuss the framework for a new government. The PetroCaribe scandal concerns the misuse of oil revenue that was supposed to be used for social programs in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. The oil came from Venezuela under specially negotiated terms.

PetroCaribe was launched in June 2005 as an alliance with Venezuela, giving members preferential treatment for energy purchase, at a discounted price with low-interest deferred terms and an option to pay in kind instead of currency.

Several audits have shown that much of Haiti’s PetroCaribe revenue disappeared, having been disbursed for government construction contracts on projects that were never finished.

“[No matter] where you live in the country, you are facing the same problems,” a protester in the Canape Vert neighborhood of the capital told VOA Creole. “We blame Jovenel for our misery; he has to leave the country.”

“It’s not the government that is the problem,” another protester said. “It is a problem of the legislative chamber which includes the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. They are the problem, not the president, or the ministers.”

Demonstrations are expected nationwide as Haiti faces a severe fuel shortage, along with an economic and political crisis.

President Moise has not commented on the protests.

Jie Xi from Mandarin service contributed to this report

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he wants a complete trade deal with China and that the country’s purchase of American agricultural goods is not enough. He made the comments ahead of the next round of senior level U.S.-China trade talks in Washington.

“We’re looking for a complete deal. I’m not looking for a partial deal. China has been starting to buy our agricultural product, if you noticed over the last week, and actually some very big purchases. But that’s not what I’m looking for. We’re looking for the big deal,” said Trump during a joint press conference with visiting Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the White House.

Washington and Beijing last held major talks in July, but there was no major breakthrough in the trade disputes between the world’s top two economies.

The two countries have been engaged in a series of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs for more than a year, sparked by the U.S.’s initial demand for changes in China’s trade, subsidy and intellectual property practices.

Beijing says Washington’s trade policies are aimed at trying to stifle its ability to compete.

As the U.S. continues to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump said Friday China is experiencing “the worst” economy in years.

“Two weeks ago it’s the worst in 22 years, now it’s 57 years and it’s only going to get worse,” said Trump.

While government economists in Beijing are slightly more optimistic, as they expect a stimulus plan to help stave off a sharper slowdown, some American analysts said China’s economic growth risks slipping below the lower-end of Beijing’s 2019 target of 6% in the third quarter or over the next year.

Brad Setser from Council on Foreign Relations says the economic stimulus measures provided by the Chinese government have “been too modest to push China’s growth back up.”

“The hits to confidence and uncertainty have been important in dampening the outlook in China. Even firms that are not planning to leave in the short term are exploring alternatives more seriously than in the past, rather than relying on one country for their production or supplies,” said Martin Chorzempa from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Registered nurses staged a one-day strike Friday against Tenet Health hospitals in Florida, California and Arizona, demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
 
About 6,500 National Nurses United members walked out at 12 Tenet facilities after working without a contract for two years in Arizona and under expired contracts for months in California and Florida, the union said. They plan to resume working Saturday.
 
Members are also passing out leaflets in Texas, where contracts at two Tenet hospitals in El Paso expire later this year.
 
Yajaira Roman, a union leader and neurological intensive care nurse at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Florida, said that although the Tenet nurses want higher wages, they also want a lower patient-to-nurse ratio as a way to avoid burnout and improve care. For example, the union says Tenet assigns eight patients per nurse in Palmetto’s surgical unit, double the level the union says research recommends.
 
“We are nurses — we are really proud of what we do and we’re happy that we’re serving the community, but we want to do it in a way where when patients leave the hospital they are extremely satisfied,” said Roman, a nurse for 18 years.
 
Tenet, which has 65 hospitals and 115,000 employees nationwide, issued a statement saying it has negotiated in “good faith” and it is disappointed the union chose to strike.
 
“While we respect the nurses’ right to strike, patients and their loved ones can be assured that our patients will continue to be cared for by qualified replacement registered nurses and other caregivers,” the Dallas-based company’s statement said.

U.S. numbers
 
According to the U.S. Labor Department, almost 3 million registered nurses are employed nationally, with an average annual salary of $75,510. Florida’s average RN salary is $66,210, Arizona’s is $77,000 and California’s is $106,950, tops in the nation. RNs typically have either an associate degree or bachelor’s degree in nursing or graduated from a three-year program at a teaching hospital. They then must pass a state licensing exam.
 
The Tenet walkout is one of several strikes and organizing efforts nationwide as unions work to rebuild from a steep membership decline that began 50 years ago. Many are focusing on white-collar, female-dominated and service-sector industries such as health care, teaching, the media and hospitality instead of just blue-collar, male-dominated industries like manufacturing, where the United Auto Workers is striking against General Motors.
 
A recent Gallup poll showed Americans support unions by a 2-to-1 margin, up from a near even split 10 years ago and nearly the highest level since the 1960s.

As the world waited for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to decide what to do next in response to last weekend’s drone and missile attack on two major Saudi oil fields, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the most bellicose statement yet on the attacks, unambiguously accusing Iran of launching them and declaring the attacks an “act of war.”

Almost as soon as the attacks were reported, Pompeo, a former member of Congress and director of the CIA, asserted himself as the person driving the U.S. response. “Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is no evidence the attacks on Saturday came from Yemen.”

Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo)

The Zimbabwean doctor whose disappearance sparked off a wave of doctors’ protests across the country, has reappeared, alive.

Speaking Thursday on VOA Zimbabwe Service’s Livetalk program, a disoriented-sounding Dr. Peter Magombeyi, the president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’ Association, confirmed he was the one on the other end of the phone.

“I honestly don’t know how to truly identify myself, but I am Dr. Peter Magombeyi, I work at Harare Hospital,” he said.

The doctor, who had been spearheading calls for an increase of doctors’ salaries when he disappeared on September 15, said he could not remember exactly what happened to him or how he ended up where he was — an area called Nyabira, about 33 kilometers from Harare.

“That part I’m just so vague about, I need time to recall,” he said.

Dr. Magombeyi said his last recollection before being taken by unnamed people was the memory of being electrocuted.

“I remember being in a basement of some sort, being electrocuted at some point, that is what I vividly remember. I, I just don’t remember,” Dr. Magombeyi said, struggling to speak.

Zimbabwe’s government and police have denied involvement in Magombeyi’s disappearance, but said they were doing all they could to find the doctor.  

Officials also suggested a third party could be involved in the disappearance to taint the government’s image.

Responding to the police allegation, and also Twitter posts alluding to the same accusations, Magombeyi said he had no answers.  

“I need time to think about it, I don’t know,” he said.