The survival of wild animals such as elephants and tigers are at risk, and one of the main reasons is poaching. These animals are being hunted, even in protected wildlife parks, for their body parts such as elephants’ tusks and tigers’ skins. Park rangers may soon have a powerful tool to help fight poachers thanks to artificial intelligence. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.

Smoke and soot from central Alaska wildfires have afflicted the subarctic city of Fairbanks with some of the world’s worst air pollution in recent days, forcing many residents indoors and prompting one hospital to set up a “clean air shelter.”

Fine particulate matter carried by smoke into the Fairbanks North Star Borough over the past two weeks has been measured at concentrations as high as more than double the minimum level deemed hazardous to human health, borough air quality manager Nick Czarnecki said.

The hazardous threshold was exceeded again on Tuesday in the Fairbanks suburb of North Pole, the borough reported.

The problem is mostly linked to two fires burning since June 21 on either side of the Fairbanks borough – Alaska’s second-most populous metropolitan area, totaling some 97,000 residents.

The Shovel Creek and Nugget fires, both sparked by lightning strikes, have scorched nearly 20,000 acres (8,094 hectares) of timber and brush combined, fire authorities said.

Farther north, the massive Hess Creek blaze, also sparked by lightning, has raged across nearly 173,000 acres (70,000 hectares) of remote timber and grasslands, making it the largest U.S. wildfire so far this year, according to fire command spokeswoman Sarah Wheeler.

Thick smoke drifting into Fairbanks has prompted air quality alerts warning that outdoor exertion is dangerous to health and urging the elderly, the very young and individuals with
respiratory problems to limit their exposure by staying indoors.

That restriction has proved difficult for some because few homes in Fairbanks, a city just 200 miles (322 km) south of the Arctic Circle by road, are equipped with air conditioning, and a heat wave in the region has driven temperatures into the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit.

Fairbanks Memorial Hospital has opened a round-the-clock clean-air room where members of the public can find respite from the pollution. A Fairbanks auto shop was also giving away breathing masks to help residents cope.

“All the HEPA filters and everything are sold out in town, and the smoke is terrible,” Pearson Auto employee Michelle Pippin said.

A similar but somewhat less dire predicament faced residents of Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, about 350 miles (560 km) to the south, where smoke from a major fire raging for the past month in the neighboring Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has caused unhealthy air.

The Swan Lake blaze has charred nearly 97,000 acres (39,200 hectares) of the Kenai Peninsula since it was triggered by lightning on June 5.

Anchorage has also baked in unusually high temperatures, with three of its hottest days on record posted during the past week, including the city’s first-ever 90-degree Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) reading on July Fourth.

The record heat has only added to the general misery index in Alaska, where the National Interagency Fire Center reports about 40 large wildfires have burned more than 810,000 acres (32,780 hectares) across the state.

Wildfires have consumed more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares) in all so far this year, but that pales in comparison with the record 6.5 million acres (2.6 million hectares) that went up in flames across Alaska in 2004.

Creditors holding Venezuelan debt on Tuesday pushed back on debt restructuring plans backed by opposition leader Juan Guaido, urging a “fair and effective” framework for talks and improved communications with investors holding defaulted bonds.

The main committee of Venezuela creditors said it opposed requests for a U.S. executive order that would prevent asset seizures by investors and disagreed with a proposal to give different treatment for debts to Russia and China.

But the statement added that restructuring would not begin until the end of a “humanitarian crisis,” in reference to the hyperinflationary collapse overseen by President Nicolas Maduro that has fueled malnutrition and disease.

“A new government should work with creditor parties, such as the Committee, to agree on the design of the restructuring process and to negotiate the financial and other terms of the restructuring,” the statement said.

Guaido in January cited articles of the constitution to assume an interim presidency after calling Maduro’s 2018 election a fraud, quickly winning recognition by more than 50 countries including the United States.

Maduro’s government, which continues to exercise power thanks to the loyalty of the military, has failed to pay creditors some $11.4 billion in principal and interest since 2017, according to the creditors.

Jose Ignacio Hernandez, Guaido’s overseas legal representative, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The committee opposed requests by Guaido and his allies for an executive order by the White House that would block creditors from seizing U.S. refiner Citgo, which is owned by state oil company PDVSA.

“An executive order issued by the US government that undermines good faith negotiations would not further the long-term interests of Venezuela or its stakeholders,” the statement said.

The committee also took exception to the idea that debts to Russia and China would be treated differently than others.

“It is critical that the burden placed on creditors must be equitably shared among all creditors, public and private,” the committee wrote.

U.S. and Chinese trade officials held a “constructive” phone conversation on Tuesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, marking a new round of talks after the world’s two largest economies agreed to a truce in a year-long trade war.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and Minister Zhong Shan on Tuesday in a further effort to resolve outstanding trade disputes between the countries, a U.S. official said earlier in an emailed statement.

Kudlow said the talks “went well” and were constructive. He said the two sides were talking about a face-to-face meeting, but warned that there was not a magic way to reach what has so far been an elusive deal.

“There are no miracles here,” Kudlow told reporters at the White House. “There was headway last winter and spring, then it stopped. Hopefully we can pick up where we left off, but I don’t know that yet.”

Trade talks stalled in May after China backed away from commitments it had made to secure legal changes to its system, according to U.S. officials.

Kudlow’s comments suggested it was still unclear whether the two sides would resume work from the draft text agreed before that pull-back, as U.S. officials want, or whether they will use a different starting point.

A face-to-face meeting between the two negotiating teams would be a good thing and could take place in Beijing, Kudlow said, but no details were available yet.

“Both sides will continue these talks as appropriate,” the separate U.S. official said in an email, declining to provide details on what was discussed and the next steps for talks.

The negotiations picked up after a two-month hiatus, but a year since a tit-for-tat tariff battle began between the two countries. Washington wants Beijing to address what U.S. officials see as decades of unfair and illegal trading practices.

The United States and China agreed during a Group of 20 nations summit in Japan last month to resume discussions, easing fears of an escalation. After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20, U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to suspend a new round of tariffs on $300 billion worth of imported Chinese consumer goods while the two sides resumed negotiations.

Trump said then that China would restart large purchases of U.S. agricultural commodities, and the United States would ease some export restrictions on Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies.

“President Xi is expected, we hope in return for our accommodations, to move immediately, quickly, while the talks are going on, on the agriculture (purchases),” Kudlow said on Tuesday at an event hosted by CNBC. “That’s very, very important.”

He also said relaxed U.S. government restrictions on Huawei could help the technology giant but would only be in place for a limited time.

Kudlow, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, later told reporters there was no specific timeline for the agricultural buys, or for reaching an agreement. “No timeline. Quality not speed,” he added.

Three sources familiar with the state of the talks said the Chinese side did not make firm commitments for immediate purchases. It’s unclear that the two sides’ differences have narrowed, even as the discussions resume.

The sister of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman went on trial Tuesday in Paris over the alleged beating of a workman at her family’s apartment.

Princess Hassa bint Salman is accused of ordering her bodyguard to beat an Egyptian workman after he was seen taking a photograph inside the home on Paris’ exclusive Avenue Foch in 2016.

According to the indictment, the workman Ashraf Eid told police that he took a picture of the bathroom where he was working so he he could remember where items were placed before he started. 

The princess reportedly accused him of taking the photo in order to sell the image of the toney home. 

Eid told police the bodyguard bound his hands, punched and kicked him, and forced him to kiss the princess’ feet.  

The bodyguard was held by police but the princess left France soon after the incident. France issued a warrant for her arrest in December 2017. 

The bodyguard told the court Tuesday: “When I heard the princess shouting for help, I got there and saw them grasping the phone with their hands.”

“I seized [him] and overpowered him, I didn’t know what he was after,” he said, according to AFP.

The princess’ lawyers have said she is the victim of false accusations. “The princess is a caring, humble, approachable and cultured woman,” her lawyer, Emmanuel Moyne, said before the trial began.

The Saudi crown prince was under the media spotlight recently for his alleged involvement in the murder of dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi.

Agnes Callamard, a United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a report released last month that there was “credible evidence” linking the crown prince to the strangulation and dismemberment of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Growing potatoes and carrots high in the wind-swept mountains of western Venezuela had always proven a challenge for Luis Villamizar.

But as oil production in the South American country has collapsed under years of mismanagement and U.S. sanctions, many in the industry are confronting another hardship: Fuel shortages.

“Nobody’s going to eat this. It’s a loss for sure, said Villamizar, 53, as he dug up potatoes darkened with spots from a damaging infestation. “Who’s going to buy these? This won’t do.”

He’s not alone. Across Venezuela, crops are spoiling in the fields – at a time of unprecedented hunger – as farmers become the latest casualty of the nation’s deepening crisis.

Without a dependable supply of gasoline, critical shipments of pesticides have been entirely cut off, basic equipment has become impossible to operate, field workers cannot be bussed in and crops aren’t arriving at markets – further jeopardizing an already shaky sector in a country that has seen a whopping 10% of the population emigrate.

Oil output has reached record lows, with state run company PDVSA estimated to be producing at 10 to 15% of its capacity. Gasoline is dirt cheap at filling stations, but hard to find – driving the black market price for a 5.3 gallon (20 liter) container up to $100 in remote mountain communities. Many motorists have also grown accustomed to waiting days to fill up their cars or doing without any at all.

Critics blame the downfall on corruption after two decades of socialist rule, while embattled President Nicolas Maduro blames U.S. sanctions that were implemented against PDVSA this year to pressure him from office and put opposition leader Juan Guaido in charge.

In the middle are the nation’s farmers.

While the nation boasts the world’s largest reserves of oil, agriculture and related industries in Venezuela still account for a critical sliver of the country’s GDP, which has shrunk by more than 70% since 2012. In rural places like the western state of Tachira, many manage to eke out livelihoods by tending to crops such as potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes and peppers.

The lack of fuel is driving the industry toward collapse.

Robert Maldonado, a sweet pepper famer and outspoken community leader, represents roughly 1,500 farmers across the rural stretch traversed by the Andes, where the highest peak rises to nearly 12,800 feet (3,900 meters) above sea level.

In the past, produce ranging from cabbage to bananas was sent to markets and kitchens across Venezuela.

These days, Maldonado says the price of fuel has eaten up profits and made it impossible for farmers to feed themselves – let alone supply a country where hunger and hyperinflation run rampant. According to survey results published by three of the country’s most prominent universities, six in 10 Venezuelans said they lost weight, an average of 24 pounds (11 kilograms), between 2017 and 2018. Last year, inflation topped 1 million percent.

“We’re quite worried that in three or four months the production will collapse by more than half,” Maldonado said.

Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard University economist and former Venezuelan planning minister who is now an opposition figure, estimates that Venezuela’s farming output is down 90 percent from its 2005-2007 average, with fuel shortages adding to the blow.

“The planted area is the smallest we’ve seen in decades,” he said, calling it a “systemic collapse” of a supply chain for the sector – including shortages of seed, fertilizer and spare parts for tractors.

Before the oil boom started in Venezuela nearly a century ago, agriculture, forestry, and fishing made up more than 50 percent of GDP. In the 1930s farms provided 60 percent of the nation’s jobs.

This landscape began to dramatically change in the 1970s as the petro state took off, and today agriculture makes up a smaller portion of the economy than in any other country in Latin America. As farms declined, the government used its oil windfall to import food.

In the years following the 2010 government takeover of private agricultural company Agroislena, farmers had hunted for everything from seeds to pesticides – or even traveled to neighboring Colombia to secure supplies – in order to sustain production.

Rarely though, had crops spoiled, tractors sat idle and fields left completely fallow.

Villamizar, who has a tanned face and rough hands from years of toiling outside, still farms a small patch of land in the rugged mountains his family has tended for generations and said his last harvest of 14 60-kilogram (132 pound) potato sacks rotted before he could send it into town.

Fellow farmer Hauchy Pereira estimated he would lose 6 tons of onions since the transportation of his seedlings from greenhouses to open fields was delayed.

Pereira said a farming collective overseen by a general had given him a pass to fill up his truck in two months’ time, but his onion sprouts were already wilting.

“If you have the harvest and there’s no gas, you can’t sell it,” the 34-year-old said. “There is no way to transport it without fuel.”

 

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Tuesday any disruption to oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz will be a “major obstacle” for his country’s economy which has too few oil export outlets.

His government was studying contingency plans to deal with possible disruption, including looking at alternative routes for oil exports, Abdul Mahdi said.

“Iraq has too few export outlets,” Abdul Mahdi told reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “Right now, most of the Iraqi oil exports are being done through southern terminals.”

“We need to diversify our export outlets,” he said.

The prime minister’s comments came in response to a question on whether tensions between Iran and the United States could affect Iraq’s oil exports via the Strait.

A vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond, the Strait of Hormuz has been at the heart of regional tensions for decades.

Recent months have seen a bout of instability in the region, with six tankers attacked since May amid escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Many fear the tensions could affect the flow of oil. Abdul Mahdi said as part of contingency planning, his cabinet had authorized the country’s oil ministry to move forward on two projects to bolster the country’s future exports.

The ministry was tasked with conducting feasibility studies and looking at investment models to build a major pipeline to export oil from southern Iraq to Jordan’s Aqaba port, he said.
The ministry will also look at establishing an offshore oil installation in the south.

 

Twitter now prohibits hate speech that targets religious groups using dehumanizing language.
 
The social network already bars hateful language directed at individual religious adherents. Tuesday’s change broadens that rule to forbid likening entire religious groups to subhumans or vermin.
 
The company has come under fire – along with fellow social media networks such as Facebook and YouTube – for the prevalence of harassment and offensive language on its service.
 
Twitter’s latest update came after users wrote in thousands of responses when the company asked for suggestions on how to expand its hate speech policies.
 
The company says it may also ban similar language aimed at other groups such as those defined by gender, race and sexual orientation.

 

Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and the Dave Matthews Band will headline Farm Aid 2019 when the music and food festival visits Wisconsin’s dairy country in September.
 
Tickets for the Sept. 21 event at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy go on sale Friday.
 
Farm Aid says the farming economy this year resembles how things were when Nelson founded Farm Aid in 1985. Nelson says devastating weather, low prices and current federal farm and trade policies pose enormous challenges to family farmers struggling to keep their farms.
 
Other performers include Bonnie Raitt, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Margo Price, Jamey Johnson, Tanya Tucker, Brothers Osborne, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Yola, and Particle Kid.
 
Farm Aid has raised $57 million since 1985.

Amazon and Microsoft are battling it out over a $10 billion opportunity to build the U.S. military its first “war cloud” computing system. But Amazon’s early hopes of a shock-and-awe victory may be slipping away.

Formally called the Joint Enterprise Department Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military’s computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities. The Defense Department hopes to award the winner-take-all contract as soon as August. Oracle and IBM were eliminated at an earlier round of the contract competition.

But that’s only if the project isn’t derailed first. It faces a legal challenge by Oracle and growing congressional concerns about alleged Pentagon favoritism toward Amazon. Military officials hope to get started soon on what will be a decade-long business partnership they describe as vital to national security.

”This is not your grandfather’s internet,” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank. “You’re talking about a cloud where you can go from the Pentagon literally to the soldier on the battlefield carrying classified information.”

Amazon was considered an early favorite when the Pentagon began detailing its cloud needs in 2017, but its candidacy has been marred by an Oracle allegation that Amazon executives and the Pentagon have been overly cozy. Oracle has a final chance to make its case against Amazon — and the integrity of the government’s bidding process — in a court hearing Wednesday.

”This is really the cloud sweepstakes, which is why there are such fierce lawsuits,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.

Ives said an opportunity that was a “no brainer” for Amazon a year ago now seems just as likely to go to Microsoft, which has spent the past year burnishing its credentials to meet the government’s security requirements.

For years, Amazon Web Services has been the industry leader in moving businesses and other institutions onto its cloud — a term used to describe banks of servers in remote data centers that can be accessed from almost anywhere. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has been steadily catching up, as have other providers such as Google, in both corporate and government settings.

With an acronym evoking Star Wars and a price tag of up to $10 billion over the next decade, JEDI has attracted more attention than most cloud deals. A cloud strategy document unveiled by the Defense Department last year calls for replacing the military’s “disjointed and stove-piped information systems” with a commercial cloud service “that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

In a court filing last month, Lt. Gen. Bradford Shwedo said further delays in the Oracle case will “hamper our critical efforts in AI” as the U.S. tries to maintain its advantage over adversaries who are “weaponizing their use of data.” Shwedo said JEDI’s computing capabilities could help the U.S. analyze data collected from surveillance aircraft, predict when equipment needs maintenance and speed up communications if fiber and satellite connections go down.

Amazon was considered an early front-runner for the project in part because of its existing high-security cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. It beat out IBM for that deal in 2013.  

Worried that the Pentagon’s bid seemed tailor-made for Amazon, rivals Oracle and IBM lodged formal protests last year arguing against the decision to award it to a single vendor.

In an October blog post , IBM executive Sam Gordy wrote that a single-cloud approach went against industry trends and “would give bad actors just one target to focus on should they want to undermine the military’s IT backbone.”

The Government Accountability Office later dismissed those protests, but Oracle persisted by taking its case to the Court of Federal Claims, where it has pointed to emails and other documents that it says show conflicts of interest between Amazon and the government. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Wednesday. The case has delayed the procurement process, though the Pentagon says it now hopes to award the contract as early as Aug. 23.

Oracle’s argument is centered on the activities of a Defense Department official who later went to work for Amazon. Amazon says Oracle has exaggerated that employee’s role in the procurement using “tabloid sensationalism.”

Some defense-contracting experts say the conflict allegations are troubling.

”No one seems to deny that these were actual conflicts and the players affirmatively attempted to conceal them,” said Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University. “That simply cannot be tolerated.”

But Goure, whose think tank gets funding from Amazon but not from its cloud rivals Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, said the criticism is “coming from the also-rans.” He says rivals like Oracle “missed the boat” in cloud technology and are trying to make up lost ground through legal maneuvers.

The Pentagon has repeatedly defended its bidding process, though the concerns have trickled into Congress and onto prime-time TV. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted a segment last month to the cloud contract that questioned an Amazon executive’s 2017 meeting with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Carlson also aired concerns by Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who said “the allegations are incredible” and should be investigated.

A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday further detailed government emails about that meeting and another one between Mattis and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos later that year. In response, Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said the bidding process should be started over.

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said while military leaders are expected to engage with industry, no one in the defense secretary’s “front office” participated in drafting the contract requirements or soliciting bids.

Ives said it remains to be seen how much the conflict allegations will hurt Amazon or help Microsoft. Microsoft has largely stayed quiet during the dispute. In a statement, it focused on highlighting its 40-year partnership supplying the military with services such as email.

VOA Student Union’s Sahar Majid interviewed 2019 Miss District of Columbia Katelynne Cox, who talked about issues including her pageant journey and advocacy organization.

Katelynne Cox was chosen as the 2019 Miss District of Columbia last month.

Cox, a native of Washington state, is the manager of fundraising and events at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in Washington, D.C.

In the pageant, Cox was able to speak to her advocacy for the #MeToo movement.

Through the organization Silence Is Not Compliance, which Cox founded in 2016, she is providing rehabilitation resources to survivors of sexual assault and educating kids on how to prevent sexual violence.

Cox is a rape survivor, and works to inspire other women who have gone through similar trauma and have not been able to speak up.

“I am a survivor of sexual assault and was raped in college, and I wanted to turn my terrible experience into a way that could help others,” she said.

As she established Silence Is Not Compliance, Cox began lobbying for the victims for sexual assault before the U.S. Congress.

“I would argue right now, in our current policies, that victims are treated as tools for prosecution rather than victims deserving a rescue and that’s what I want to change,” she said.

Before moving to Washington, D.C., Cox attended the University of Missouri where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She also has two graduate certificates in nonprofit and public management from the school.

Cox said she became involved with the Miss District of Columbia organization for several reasons. The Miss DC pageant, which is part of the Miss America program, offers over $25,000 in scholarships each year to contestants. The winner receives a $10,000 scholarship and there are a variety of other awards available for academics.

Cox said the scholarship was one of the reasons she got involved with the organization.

Every year, the Miss District of Columbia Scholarship Organization recognizes high-achieving women between the ages of 18 and 25 who have been living or working in Washington, D.C., for at least six months preceding the date of the pageant. The program’s website says that a contestant who is not a district resident can obtain a waiver by showing her education or employment status in the District of Columbia. There is no entry fee to compete. This year’s event was held June 23.

The Miss DC organization has a partnership with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals – a Utah-based nonprofit organization that raises funds for children’s health care.

“This organization is near and dear to my heart,” Cox said, adding it gave her another reason to become involved with the Miss DC organization. Cox has been working with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals since she was a child.

In addition, the Miss DC organization provides contestants with an opportunity to pick a social impact initiative with which to become involved. “It was an amazing experience to promote my organization, Silence Is Not Compliance, as Miss DC,” Cox said.

This year, the Miss District of Columbia Pageant eliminated the swimsuit segment. It was a decision by the Miss America organization to replace it with onstage interviews of contestants.

Cox is grateful for the decision because it gave her an opportunity to talk about the #MeToo movement on stage and her experience as a survivor to connect with other survivors.

She highlighted her singing abilities for the talent portion.

“Well, my mom likes to say that I started singing before I could even talk,” she said, while telling the story of her musical journey.

Cox has worked with Red Hammer Records, a label based in Portland, Oregon, and released three albums during her teen years. She also had an opportunity to tour nationwide for her musical shows.

Cox believes scholarship programs, such as Miss America or Miss DC, provide young women with a platform to talk about social issues that need to be addressed.

“I think that inherently there is a problem with the thought that being involved in pageants is somehow sexually objectifying someone. I would argue that if you say that pageants are sexually objectifying me, then you are sexually objectifying me, not the pageant itself,” Cox said.

Cox is now gearing up for the 2020 Miss America contest, to be held on September 8 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

A delegation of more than 50 Afghans concluded a high-profile conference with the Taliban Monday with a joint statement emphasizing the need to bring civilian casualties in the nation’s civil war to zero and reaching a positive outcome in the on-going negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in Doha. 

They also emphasized the need to include all parties in the negotiations to end the 18-year-long conflict.

“All participants have full consensus that achieving sustainable, thorough, and a dignified peace, which is a demand of the Afghan people, is only possible via inclusive Afghan negotiations,” read the statement.

The conference is being hailed as a historic first for including members of the Afghan government, albeit in their personal capacity. Previously, the Taliban have been reluctant to engage directly with any government representatives, calling the Kabul administration “illegal” and a “puppet” of the Americans.

“There were cabinet ministers in the room in the past two days,” said Lotfullah Najafizada, a delegate and head of one of Afghanistan’s biggest TV news channels Tolo News, adding that in his opinion the pattern would be repeated in future dialogue. 

It was also the first intra-Afghan dialogue hosted formally by two governments—Qatar and Germany.  A previous conference in Moscow was organized by a government-linked NGO. 

The two sides agreed to the need to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan by listing targets that should be off-limits for attacks by either side including “schools, hospitals, madrassas, markets, water dams, and residential areas.”

The statement also called for ensuring women’s rights in “political, social, economic, educational, and cultural affairs, within the framework of Islamic values.”

The two sides asked for the “unconditional release of elderly, disabled, and sick inmates” by both Taliban and the Afghan government.

The two-day conference comes at a time when a team of Americans, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, is simultaneously negotiating an end to the conflict with the Taliban. 

His intermittent presence at the venue, interacting with the delegates and media in the hallways and meeting rooms of Sheraton Doha, indicated the importance the U.S. government associated with the event which the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called “a long time coming.” 

All eyes now turn to the negotiation he resumed Tuesday with the Taliban, also in Doha, which both sides claim is going well. “We progressed a lot in the last week and we hope that the few items left, we can finalize them also,” said Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who is leading negotiations with the Americans. His comments reinforced Khalilzad’s Tweet calling the last week “the most productive session to date.”

The last 6 days of talks have been the most productive session to date. We made substantive progress on ALL 4 parts of a peace agreement: counter-terrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, participation in intra-Afghan dialogue & negotiations, and permanent & comprehensive ceasefire

— U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) July 6, 2019

Still, in public at least, the two sides continue to define progress differently. Stanikzai said Monday his team was negotiating with the Americans on two issues, a time-table for the withdrawal of foreign troops and how to prevent Afghan soil from being used for terrorism. Khalilzad on the other hand, insisted the two sides had made progress on four issues, including a cease-fire in Afghanistan, and making Afghan government a part of peace negotiations.  

Several delegates said the wording of the joint statement indicated Taliban flexibility on the issue of direct negotiations with the government, which has been a stumbling block so far. 

And while most delegates from both sides exuded optimism about the outcome, they acknowledged there was a long way to go. 

“Let’s not forget, we’re in the beginning of the process. It requires formal negotiations,” Najafizada said.

Top U.S. officials say Iran should not test America’s patience, as the Islamic Republic creates nuclear material in quantities and purity above limits set in the 2015 international nuclear deal. The reaction came as the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors verified that Iran breached the limit set in the nuclear deal aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons development. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.

The $6 billion loan package for Pakistan approved by the International Monetary Fund last week will require “very ambitious” fiscal measures and sustained commitment for the bailout to succeed, IMF officials said on Monday.

The three-year agreement approved by the IMF board last week, Pakistan’s 13th bailout since the late 1980s, has seen a sharp drop in the value of the rupee currency after the central bank agreed to a “flexible, market-determined exchange rate.”

It also foresees structural economic reforms and a widening of the tax base to boost tax revenues that are currently estimated to account for less than 13% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 4-5 percentage points.

With slowing growth, a budget deficit which has climbed to more than 7% of GDP and currency reserves of less than $8 billion, or enough to cover 1.7 months of imports, Pakistan has teetered on the edge of a debt and balance of payments crisis.

Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, the Fund’s mission chief for Pakistan said the program targets were tough but Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which came to power last year vowing not to turn to the IMF, was committed.

“We certainly think that debt sustainability under the program will be assured,” he told a conference call with reporters, adding that it would require “very ambitious” fiscal consolidation, mainly through improved revenue collection.

Pakistan has a notoriously narrow tax base, with less than 1% of its 208 million population filing income tax returns, a vast informal economy and several key sectors of the official economy largely exempt from tax.

The IMF loan and the associated package of reforms that goes with it will unlock another $38 billion in loans from other international partners but commitment by Pakistani authorities in pushing through reform was essential, Ramirez Rigo said.

“Consistency and sustained implementation is key,” he said.

The 2020 budget, passed last month, approved tax measures worth some 1.7% of GDP to help cut the deficit and Pakistan has promised a multiyear effort to overhaul its tax and budget system to put its public finances on a firmer footing.

A central part of the program will involve cleaning up accumulated debts in the power and gas sectors and in loss-making state enterprises including Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Steel Mills, and Pakistan Railways.

Losses built up in the power sector now amount to the equivalent of 4% of GDP, posing a serious fiscal risk, while losses in the big three state enterprises amount to 2% of GDP, the IMF said in a report on the package.

The tough conditions of the package, which has already seen interest rates hiked by 150 basis points and which will see a raft of tax loopholes closed, has already drawn resentment among households facing inflation running at around 9%.

Ramirez Rigo said there was a risk that the difficulties of implementing some of the policies in the package were “more complicated than we have assumed” and that there would be problems in building consensus behind the reforms.

He also said any sharp rise in oil prices could unbalance the reform drive given Pakistan’s heavy dependence on imported energy.

Mexico’s newly created National Guard has detained U.S.-bound migrants and the government should make public the rules governing their power to curb immigration, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) said on Monday.

The National Guard is a security force created by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to bring down record homicide rates. But now it has been tasked with patrolling the border to placate U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods unless the country did more to stem the flow of Central American migrants heading to the United States.

“Publishing the protocols and coordination rules under which the National Guard operates in support of immigration authorities, particularly regarding the procedures for detaining persons with an illegal immigration status, is desirable,” CNDH President Luis Raul Gonzalez said in a speech. “If such protocols and rules don’t exist, establishing and publishing them is an urgent matter.”

The Mexican government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the speech.

While some 21,000 National Guard troops, nearly a third of their total ranks, have been deployed to Mexico’s northern and southern borders on immigration duties, their rules of engagement are still unclear.

Facing accusations the troops had been heavy-handed in their efforts to deter migrants from crossing the northern border, Lopez Obrador said on June 25 that the National Guard does not have orders to detain migrants.

The guardsmen themselves say they do not detain migrants but are there to advise them not to enter the United States.

Still, Reuters witnessed at least three adults and four children being detained as they tried to cross into the United States after Obrador made his statement.

Last week, Brigadier-General Vicente Antonio Hernandez, who heads the National Guard’s operations in Mexico’s southern states, said 20,000 migrants had been rescued since May 17.

Human rights groups say the migrants have been detained and some have been deported.

“There is a huge distance between what you hear from Lopez Obrador every morning and what is happening on the ground with respect to this issue. He’s not being very truthful, not being very honest with Mexican people regarding the reality of the deployment of these soldiers,” Fernando Garcia, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights, told Reuters.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Monday said they were using a court case to demand documents from President Donald Trump’s businesses in hopes of proving that they violated anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

A group of more than 200 Democratic Party lawmakers said in a statement that as part of lawsuit in federal court they had issued 37 subpoenas the Trump Organization and other entities, seeking information about foreign government payments accepted by properties in his real estate empire.

The subpoenas also seek information about trademarks granted to Trump businesses by foreign governments.

“Our goal is simple and straightforward – stopping President Trump from putting a ‘For Sale’ sign in Russian on the door to the Oval Office,” said Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Blumenthal added that the politicians were seeking “a targeted set of documents” to ensure Trump “can no longer shirk his constitutional responsibility.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing Trump in the court case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move had been expected in light of recent rulings by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington in favor of the Democratic Party lawmakers.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer, maintains ownership of his businesses but has ceded day-to-day control to his sons.

Critics have said that is not a sufficient safeguard.

In 2017, Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging Trump was illegally profiting from his businesses in various ways, including by collecting payments from foreign government officials who stay at his properties and accepting trademark registrations around the world for his company’s products.

A similar case brought the Maryland and the District of Columbia attorneys general is also making its way through the courts. 

The litigation represents the first time in U.S. history courts have interpreted the so-called “Emoluments Clauses” of the Constitution, which bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign and state governments without congressional consent.

On June 25 Sullivan rejected a request by Trump administration lawyers to halt the case and let them file an expedited appeal of key preliminary rulings he issued against the president.

On Monday the Justice Department urged an appeals court to put the litigation on hold, saying it was based on “novel and flawed constitutional premises” and allows “intrusive discovery into the President’s personal financial affairs.”

The radical and painful restructuring of Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which is cutting 18,000 jobs, is the end of a long, failed attempt to compete with the global investment banking giants that left it overextended.

The bank plan unveiled Sunday aims to go “back to our roots” by refocusing on traditional strengths like serving corporate customers and wealthy individuals and cutting down on its stock-trading business and fixed-income investments.

Investors gave a wary response Monday, however, pushing shares down 5% at 6.82 euros ($7.68) in Frankfurt.

CEO Christian Sewing said the job cuts have already begun and will last until 2022, though he wouldn’t give a geographical breakdown.

Deutsche Bank had nearly 91,500 employees at the end of March, about 41,600 of them in Germany. Many of its investment banking activities are carried out in New York and London.

“This is a rebuilding which, in a way, also takes us back to our roots,” Sewing said in a message to staff.

Failed expansion

Analysts say the overhaul is the bank’s long-needed reckoning with the failure of its expansion plan.

Deutsche Bank’s move into investment banking dates back to 1989, when it took over Morgan Grenfell, and the 1999 takeover of Bankers Trust. The division helped drive strong profits in the 2000s and was part of an ambition to become one of the global banking giants, like JPMorgan or HSBC.

But the expansion, and the global financial crisis around 2008, also helped generate its subsequent problems.

Deutsche Bank wrestled for years with high costs, weak profits, and a low share price. It also paid billions in fines and settlements related to behavior before and after the global financial crisis. 
 
Analysts expect Deutsche Bank’s departure to be a net benefit for the U.S.-based investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. Competition between the big Wall Street firms for business has been intense for years, and has only gotten worse in recent years as fewer companies are using traditional financial services to go public or issue debt. 
 
The end of Deutsche Bank’s commodity and bond trading operations will also be a boon for the banks, as trading will likely move to the banks which already specialize in it, like Citigroup, Goldman and JPMorgan.

‘Spread too thin’

The bad headlines continued this year when two U.S. congressional committees subpoenaed Deutsche Bank documents as part their investigations into President Donald Trump and his company. Deutsche Bank was one of the few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptcies and defaults starting in the early 1990s.

The Frankfurt-based bank went three straight years without an annual profit before earning 341 million euros for 2018. Sewing took over last year, promising faster restructuring after predecessor John Cryan was perceived to have moved too slowly.

“We tried to compete in nearly every area of the banking market at the same time,” Sewing told investors Monday. “We simply spread ourselves too thin.” 
 
Earlier this year, the bank entered talks to merge with German rival Commerzbank, which had also been ailing since the global financial crisis. But the talks failed in April amid concerns that a merger would be too complicated and costly.

That left open the question of what strategy Deutsche Bank could pursue to make its business leaner and more profitable.

Previous shake-up attempts have been “too little, too late,” said Neil Wilson, an analyst for Markets.com in London.

‘Right medicine’

“Now it’s the right medicine, it just should have been taken a few years ago,” Wilson said. He added that some questions remain about how the bank aims to grow revenues once it has restructured, and that seems reflected in the investors’ sell-off of the shares Monday.

Philip Augar, a British-based banking expert and former equities broker, told the BBC that Deutsche Bank was embarking on a spectacular reversal of the strategy that began with the 1999 Bankers Trust acquisition.

“Their ambition was to challenge the Wall Street giants. And for about decade, it looked as though they’d pulled it off,” he said, with the bank “a serious player on Wall Street and in the City” in the 2000s.

But things went wrong in the financial crisis as Deutsche Bank cut slowly and modestly while others “retreated radically and drastically, and more or less, instantly,” he added.

“They’ve been limping along for the last few years and I suppose this day had to come,” he said.

Police investigators summoned former Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev for questioning on Monday, setting the stage for a stand-off between him and his successor, incumbent Sooronbai Jeenbekov, in the volatile Central Asian nation.

Jeenbekov, who came to power in 2017 with Atambayev’s support and used to be his close ally, sidelined his predecessor last year by reshuffling senior security officials and wresting control over the ruling party out of Atambayev’s hands.

An escalation of the conflict between the two could be of concern to Russia which has a military air base in the former Soviet republic and counts it among its closest political allies. Atambayev dismissed the summons as illegal.

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted last month to strip Atambayev of immunity normally enjoyed by former heads of state.

On Monday, the investigative unit of the interior ministry summoned Atambayev to its headquarters for questioning on Tuesday morning as a witness, without saying what the summons was linked to.

He has not yet been charged with any crimes, but some of his allies have been charged with corruption and abuse of office and parliament, and state prosecutors have said they could investigate similar allegations against Atambayev.

Atambayev, 62, who has taken part in two violent revolts which overthrew his predecessors in 2005 and 2010, said he would ignore the summons.

“I am not even going to touch and read these papers, the government must first start following the law,” he said in a video posted online.

“I am not going to play along in this circus.”

Since the parliament moved to strip him of immunity, Atambayev has mostly stayed in his home village just outside the capital, Bishkek, surrounded by up to a few hundred supporters some of whom carried firearms in front of reporters.

The U.N. says over 460,000 suspected cholera cases have been recorded in war-battered Yemen so far this year — a sharp rise from the 380,000 cases for all of 2018.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq says 705 suspected cholera deaths have been recorded since January — a dramatic increase from the 75 deaths in the same period last year.

Haq says the spread of cholera has been accelerated by recent flash flooding, poor maintenance of waste management systems and lack of access to clean water.

The U.N. and its partners are operating nearly 1,200 cholera treatment facilities across Yemen, but Haq says “funding remains an urgent issue.”

The U.N.’s $4.2 billion humanitarian appeal to help over 20 million Yemenis this year is only 32 percent funded.

Eleven years after letting Jeffrey Epstein off lightly with a once-secret deal, federal prosecutors took another run at putting the billionaire financier behind bars on sex charges, accusing him Monday of abusing dozens of underage girls as young as 14.

Epstein, arrested over the weekend, was expected to make his first court appearance on the charges in the afternoon in New York City. Prosecutors were likely to argue he is a flight risk and should remain in jail instead of being released on bail to await trial.

Epstein, a 66-year-old hedge fund manager who once hobnobbed with some of the world’s most powerful people, was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday with sex trafficking and conspiracy. The charges carry up to life in prison.

He was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York.

Epstein “intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18,” prosecutors said. He also paid some of his victims to “recruit additional girls to be similarly abused by Epstein.”

“In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach,” prosecutors said.

Epstein’s lawyer did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment.

Epstein, whose friends have included President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, was arrested Saturday at an airport in New Jersey, just outside New York City, after his private jet touched down from France. He was being held at the federal lockup in Manhattan.

Former federal prosecutor David Weinstein said there was almost no chance Epstein would be allowed out on bail.

“The guy is a millionaire or a billionaire. He has unrestrained assets,” he said. “If they let him out on a bond, he may take off, go to a jurisdiction where they don’t have extradition, and they may never get him back.”

Epstein’s arrest came amid increased (hash)MeToo-era scrutiny of the 2008 non-prosecution deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to lesser state charges while maintaining a jet-set lifestyle that includes homes in Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands and a Bentley.

Under the deal _ overseen by Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time and is now Trump’s labor secretary _ Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution. He avoided a possible life sentence and served 13 months in jail.

The deal also required that he reach financial settlements with dozens of his victims and register as a sex offender.

Acosta has defended the agreement as appropriate, though the White House said in February that it was looking into his handling of the case.

The deal, examined in detail in a series of stories in The Miami Herald, is being challenged in federal court in Florida. A federal judge ruled earlier this year that Epstein’s victims should have been consulted under the law about the agreement, and he is now weighing whether to invalidate it.

Federal prosecutors recently filed court papers in the Florida case contending Epstein’s deal, known as an NPA, must stand.

“The past cannot be undone; the government committed itself to the NPA, and the parties have not disputed that Epstein complied with its provisions,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

It was not immediately clear whether that case and the new charges involved the same victims, since nearly all have remained anonymous.

Epstein’s guilty plea involved only state crimes, while the current case involves federal law. As a result, his constitutional protection against double jeopardy does not apply.

According to court records in Florida, authorities say at least 40 underage girls were brought into Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion for what turned into sexual encounters after female fixers looked for suitable girls locally and in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.