Two more members of the Congressional Black Caucus are backing Kamala Harris’s bid for the presidency: Reps. Bobby Rush of Illinois and Frederica Wilson of Florida.

Endorsements from the caucus, which counts more than 50 members, could be influential in the Democratic presidential primary. With these two new supporters, Harris now has six endorsements from the CBC.

Rush has been sharply critical of former Vice President Joe Biden in the wake of comments in which he recalled working alongside two segregationist Southern senators. Rush told Politico that Biden, another Democratic presidential candidate, was “wholly out of touch and woefully ignorant of the nuances of the black American experience.” Rush will serve as Harris’ Illinois campaign chair.

Rush said Harris was “the only candidate prepared to fight for all Americans against a Trump Administration that has left them behind” and that she is a “once-in-a-lifetime leader” who “exemplifies what global leadership is all about.”

Harris and Biden clashed during the first Democratic primary debate after Harris, who is black, directly challenged Biden over his history of opposing school integration through federally ordered busing. Harris said Biden’s recollections of working with the two senators were hurtful.

Harris’s campaign announced on Saturday that she had raised $2 million in the first 24 hours following the start of Thursday’s debate. Aides to her campaign said she received donations from 63,277 people, and that 58 percent of those donors had not contributed to her campaign before.

The U.S. Institute of Peace is training and working with Kenyan women as they build trust within their communities to prevent violent extremism. The program comes as Kenya struggles to halt the recruitment efforts of Islamist militant group al-Shabab.

The organization Sisters Without Borders was formed in 2014. One of its missions is to bridge the mistrust between Kenyan security agencies and families of terrorism suspects.

The organization includes at least 20 women’s groups from Nairobi, Mombasa and Garissa, all of which have seen deadly terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab.

Sureya Hirsi, a member of the sisters’ group from Mombasa, attended the conference in Nairobi. She says it is time for women to take an active role in the fight against terrorism.

“The reason I joined this sisters group, it’s because I have been affected, I have family members, people whom I know, I know youths who have been recruited, and this is happening because as a community we don’t speak up about these issues. As a woman who is lucky and also educated, I have decided to be on the frontline to help my community so that we can speak about these issues that affect our community.”

Nicoletta Barbera, a program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says women can play a key role in preventing young people from going down the terrorist path.

“The women that we work with, the sisters without borders are integrated within their communities, they live, work, and serve. They are very aware of the threats that are in their homes, in their markets, in their communities. We enable them to identify those potential individuals who are prone in engaging in violent extremism and give them the skills to try to mitigate them at the very beginning when they see those initial signs of radicalization,” Barbera said.

Kenya National Counterterrorism Center Director Martin Kimani says that kind of ground-level activism is exactly what the country needs.

“We in the security services are hunting and looking for recruiters to put them behind bars where they belong. But radicalization continues to be a problem.  That problem is going to need for the county level actions to get radicalization, to where, for example, Kenya got HIV/AIDS where everybody could speak about it, everybody knows what it is and everybody know their role in how to stop it and protect it each other from getting into that kind of life,” Kimani said.

Kenya has been prime recruiting territory for al-Shabab since 2011, when the government sent troops into Somalia to fight militants.

Al-Shabab has been responsible for several major terrorist attacks, the worst coming in 2015, when al-Shabab fighters stormed Garissa University College, killing nearly 150 people.

Five Japanese whaling ships set off Monday to begin the first commercial whale hunt in more than 30 years.

Japan stopped commercial whaling in 1988 after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on killing the giant mammals.

But despite the global ban, Japan continued to hunt whales for what it claimed was scientific research. Critics have long disputed that claim, calling it commercial whaling in disguise.

In the 2017-2018 whaling season, Japanese sailors killed 333 minke whales in Antarctic waters. More than 120 were pregnant females.

In December, Japan announced it was leaving the IWC June 30.

The whaling fleet sailed from the port of Kushiro, on the northern island of Hokkaido. They will hunt minke, sei and Bryde’s whales in Japanese waters.

Japan’s return to commercial whaling has created an international outcry.

“Japan leaving the IWC and defying international law to pursue its commercial whaling ambitions is renegade, retrograde and myopic,” said Kitty Block, president of Humane Society International. “It is undermining its international reputation for an industry whose days are so clearly numbered, to produce a product for which demand has plummeted.”

But some experts say Japan’s move might be a blessing in disguise for some whales, because it will mean that Japan will stop hunting whales in the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic and other sensitive locations.

Japan’s Fisheries Agency set a quota at 227 whales for this year.
 

Senior U.S. officials were on hand in Jerusalem Sunday for the opening of part of what is believed to be an ancient Roman-era road to the Jewish temple, angering Palestinians and some Israeli historians.

Ambassador David Friedman, Mideast peace negotiator Jason Greenblatt, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham attended the unveiling.

The City of David Foundation, which organized Sunday’s ceremony, says visitors will now be able to “touch history” and walk the 300-meter-long portion of the road through a tunnel, uphill to where the Jewish temple stood more than 2,000 years ago in what is now east Jerusalem.

“Were there ever any doubts about the accuracy, the wisdom, the propriety of President Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, I certainly think this lays all doubts to rest,” Friedman said.

Work on the project was carried out in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. The Palestinian Authority condemned the project as another example of pushing the Palestinians out of Jerusalem. 

“The Israeli occupation is trying to legalize colonial practices in Jerusalem by using a religious cover. Friedman and Greenblatt are ready to fake history for this colonial purpose,” it said.

A group of Israelis who oppose what they call the politicization of archeology also said it resented the American officials being at Sunday’s event, calling it “a political act, which is the closest the U.S. will have come to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem.”

Greenblatt dismissed the criticism, as “ludicrous,” tweeting: “We can’t “Judaize’ what history/archeology show. We can acknowledge it and you can stop pretending it isn’t true. Peace can only be built on truth.”

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
 

Anti-government protesters in Hong Kong blocked main roads early Monday to limit access to a ceremony marking the anniversary of the city’s handover to China.

Senior officials from Hong Kong and mainland China are to attend the annual flag-raising on the 22nd anniversary of the handover on July 1, 1997.

Pro-democracy activists have called for a march as they have on every anniversary. This year the march is expected to be larger than usual because of widespread opposition to a government proposal that would allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China to face charges.

It will be the third protest in three weeks against the extradition bill.

The government has already postponed debate on the bill indefinitely, leaving it to die. But protest leaders want the legislation formally withdrawn. They are also calling for Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to resign.

On Sunday, government supporters held a pro-police rally. Hong Kong police have come under criticism for using tear gas and rubber bullets during a crackdown on a protest that left dozens injured June 12.
 

New York staged a huge Gay Pride march Sunday, one of several in major U.S. cities marking the 50th anniversary of the clash between police and gay patrons at the city’s Stonewall Inn bar that sparked the modern gay rights movement.

The New York parade could attract three million rainbow flag-waving supporters. More than 650 contingents with 150,000 people, including community groups, corporations, politicians and celebrities, are planning to march through the city’s streets.

“I believe we are going to have the greatest Pride celebration in the history of the globe,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, a vocal defender of gay rights and a Democratic presidential candidate.

In Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first openly gay mayor, is one of seven grand marshals for its parade.

The annual celebration of gay rights has its origin in the June 1969 riots sparked by repeated police raids on Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. The riots proved to be a pivotal touchpoint in the LGBTQ community’s struggle for civil rights.

The smaller Queer Liberation March started Sunday morning at the bar, with its organizers saying that the Pride march had become too commercialized and heavily policed.

Amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, U.S. President Donald Trump enters the week bolstered by Senate action that indirectly affirmed his latitude to order military strikes against Iran. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, late last week the Senate defeated an effort to force Trump to obtain congressional approval for any non-defensive military action taken against the Islamic nation.

New York staged a huge Gay Pride march Sunday, one of several in major U.S. cities marking the 50th anniversary of the clash between police and gay patrons at the city’s Stonewall Inn bar that sparked the modern gay rights movement.

The New York parade could attract three million rainbow flag-waving supporters. More than 650 contingents with 150,000 people, including community groups, corporations, politicians and celebrities, are planning to march through the city’s streets.

“I believe we are going to have the greatest Pride celebration in the history of the globe,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, a vocal defender of gay rights and a Democratic presidential candidate.

In Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first openly gay mayor, is one of seven grand marshals for its parade.

The annual celebration of gay rights has its origin in the June 1969 riots sparked by repeated police raids on Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. The riots proved to be a pivotal touchpoint in the LGBTQ community’s struggle for civil rights.

The smaller Queer Liberation March started Sunday morning at the bar, with its organizers saying that the Pride march had become too commercialized and heavily policed.

The Senate’s top Democrat called on the U.S. government Sunday to step up its efforts to investigate the deaths of Americans who traveled to the Dominican Republic and is asking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get involved.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the agency should step in to lend investigative support to the FBI and local law enforcement officials after at least eight Americans died in the Dominican Republic this year. Family members of the tourists have called on authorities to investigate whether there’s any connection between the deaths and have raised the possibility the deaths may have been caused by adulterated alcohol or misused pesticides.

The ATF – the agency primarily investigates firearms-related crimes but is also charged with regulating alcohol and tobacco – is uniquely positioned to provide technical and forensic expertise in the investigation, Schumer said. The agency also has offices in the Caribbean.

“Given that we still have a whole lot of questions and very few answers into just what, if anything, is cause for the recent spate of sicknesses and several deaths of Americans in the Dominican Republic, the feds should double their efforts on helping get to the bottom of things,” Schumer said in a statement to The Associated Press.

An ATF spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Francisco Javier Garcia, the tourism minister in the Dominican Republic, said earlier this month that the deaths are not part of any mysterious wave of fatalities but instead are a statistically normal phenomenon that has been lumped together by the U.S. media. He said autopsies show the tourists died of natural causes.

Five of the autopsies were complete as of last week, while three were undergoing further toxicological analysis with the help from the FBI because of the circumstances of the deaths.

Donald Trump on Sunday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, stepping across the border during a meeting at the demilitarized zone with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At the impromptu summit, Trump said they agreed to resume working level negotiations, which had been stalled, as VOA’s William Gallo reports from Seoul.

The seventh and latest round of peace talks between the U.S. and Taliban is “critical,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen on Sunday, the second day of talks with Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in the Mideastern state of Qatar, where the militant group maintains a political office.

Shaheen told The Associated Press both sides are looking for “tangible results” as they try to hammer out the fine print of agreements that will see the eventual withdrawal of over 20,000 U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan, and end America’s longest-running war.

The agreements are also expected to provide guarantees that Afghanistan will not again harbor terrorists to carry out attacks worldwide.

The talks began on Saturday and are expected to continue into the next week. 

The two sides sat down to negotiate just days after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was hopeful of a deal to end Afghanistan’s protracted war by Sept. 1.

“Getting a comprehensive peace agreement with the Taliban before Sept. 1 would be nothing short of a miracle,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson’s Center. 

“That said, I could certainly envision a more limited deal being in place by Sept. 1 on a U.S. troop withdrawal, given that there’s already been ample progress on this issue.”

Pompeo and Khalilzad have both said the final accord will include not only agreements with the Taliban on troop withdrawal and guarantees of a non-threatening Afghanistan, but also agreement on intra-Afghan dialogue and a permanent cease fire.

Until now the Taliban have refused direct talks with the Afghan government while holding two separate meetings with a wide array of prominent Afghans from Kabul, including former president Hamid Karzai, members of the former northern alliance that fought the Taliban during its five-year rule as well as members of the government.

The Taliban have said they will meet government officials but as ordinary Afghans, labeling President Ashraf Ghani’s government a U.S. puppet and noting that the U.S. is the final arbiter on their central issue, which is troop withdrawal.  

The Taliban have refused a ceasefire until the withdrawal is complete, saying that to restart their insurgency if the U.S. reneges on its promises could be difficult.

But the accelerated pace of negotiations and the sudden announcement of a Sept. 1 target date for an agreement could be linked to Afghan President Ghani’s insistence on presidential polls scheduled for Sept. 28 in Afghanistan, say analysts.

The upcoming elections have been criticized by many of his political opponents who often point to last October’s parliamentary polls. The voting was so badly mismanaged that Ghani fired the entire Independent Election Commission, and several of the parliamentary seats are still being contested.

A biometric identification system aimed at reducing election fraud was prematurely rolled out for the polls, with the few people trained on the machines not showing up on election day.

While there were incidences of violence during the polling, analysts widely agreed the greatest flaw was the widespread mismanagement and fraud.  

Khalilzad has also suggested that presidential elections could hamper reaching a peace agreement.

“I do think the U.S. government recognizes that the election could pose a major obstacle to peace talks, given that it will be a distraction and given that it will accentuate and intensify the fractures and rivalries in the Afghan political environment that undercut reconciliation prospects,” said Kugelman.

“Another reason for the focus on Sept. 1 is much simpler: President Trump wants out, and he wants a deal as soon as possible.”

The forces of Libya’s Khalifa Hifter said Friday that Turkish vessels and interests are “legitimate targets” in its battle to seize the capital of Tripoli, after it accused Turkey of helping rival militias allied with the U.N.-supported government.

The self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Hifter, already controls much of the country’s east and south. It launched an offensive against the weak Tripoli-based government in April. The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into another bout of violence on the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi and led to his death.

A spokesman for the LNA, Ahmed al-Mesmari, said the country had “come under illegitimate Turkish aggression” in recent weeks.

“Turkey has become directly involved in the battle (for Tripoli), with its soldiers, planes, sea ships and all the supplies that now reach Misrata, Tripoli and Zuwara directly,” al-Mesmari said.

He said Turkey had helped push the LNA out of the town of Gharyan, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Tripoli. The town was a key supply route for Hifter’s forces pushing toward the capital.

Turkish forces also bombed LNA positions and provided air cover for militias allied with the Tripoli-based government to retake the town, he said.

Al-Mesmari said LNA forces have now been ordered to target any Turkish ships, strategic sites or companies operating in Libya or its territorial waters, and to arrest any Turkish nationals in Libya.

Libyan officials said they had carried out “heavy” airstrikes in retaliation against the fighters who retook Gharyan. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. 

The government in the east said LNA forces were killed after being captured alive in hospitals in Gharyan, a claim denied by Gharyan Gov. Yousef Bediri, who is loyal to the Tripoli government.

Bediri called on rights groups to investigate the killing in Gharyan saying the LNA troops were killed earlier during the fighting.

Col. Mohamed Gnono, a spokesman for the Tripoli government forces, told a news conference in Gharyan that they captured over 150 of Hifter’s troops and seized armored vehicles, three drones and U.S.-made weapons and missiles.

Oded Berkowitz, an Israeli security analyst who specializes in the Libyan conflict, said “the most interesting and notable” of these seized weapons were FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles, UAE-made Yabhon drones, and Russia-made Kornet anti-tank guided missiles.

“This is a game changer not only because it’s a highly advanced weapon, but because it’s also American,” he said.

Last month, a Facebook page linked to the Tripoli government posted photos appearing to show more than a dozen armored vehicles arriving at port, without saying who supplied them. Supporters of the various militias allied with the government said the vehicles, which resemble Turkish-made Kirpi armored carriers, were supplied by Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday he was unaware of the LNA’s orders. “If Hifter has given such an order, we’ll get that evaluated,” he said. He said Turkey had already taken “necessary” precautions. 

Erdogan said in April his government would stand by Tripoli authorities as they repel the offensive launched by Hifter’s forces.

The U.N.-supported government condemned Hifter threats of targeting Turkey’s interests in Libya.

The Government of National accord, backed by Turkey, urged the U.N. support mission in Libya to have “clear positions” toward these “unprecedented comments” by the LNA spokesman.

In a press conference late Saturday, al-Mesmari said their airstrikes would continue on Gharyan and outskirts of Tripoli.

He said LNA forces repelled attacks by militias allied with the U.N.-supported government on towns of Ain Zara and Wadi al-Rabie outside Tripoli.

“Forensic reports showed that wounded in Gharyan hospitals were knifed, shot deal in their heads or rammed by cars,” he said.

Hifter, who in recent years has been battling Islamic extremists and other militias across eastern Libya, says he is determined to restore stability to the North African country. His opponents view him as an aspiring autocrat and fear a return to one-man rule.

Hifter has received support from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, while his rivals receive support from Qatar and Turkey.

The fight for Tripoli has killed at least 739 people, according to the World Health Organization. 

There are hundreds of thousands of churches in the United States. And though some 4,000 to 5,000 new congregations open their doors in the country each year, just as many close, mainly due to economic reasons. The vacant churches are then remodeled and reused as apartment complexes, bookstores and museums. Or turned into breweries, as was done in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Nataliya Leonova has the story.

Thousands marched through Madrid on Saturday to ask the Spanish capital’s new mayor not to ditch ambitious traffic restrictions in the center only recently set up to improve air quality. 
 
“Madrid Central,” as it is called, was one of the measures that persuaded the European Commission not to take Spain to court last year over its bad air pollution in the capital and Barcelona, as it did with France, Germany and the United Kingdom. 
 
“Fewer cars, better air” and “The new city hall seriously harms your health” were the messages on banners as protesters walked through the city’s center in 40-degree-Celsius heat. 
 
The capital’s new conservative mayor, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, made ditching “Madrid Central” a priority during his campaign, saying it had done nothing to ease pollution and only caused a nuisance for locals. 
 
But since he has taken power as part of a coalition with center-right party Ciudadanos, city officials have toned this down, saying the government is merely seeking to reform a system that does not work properly, having mistakingly handed out some fines. 
 
When the system was launched in November, Madrid followed in the steps of other European cities such as London, Stockholm and Milan that have restricted traffic in their centers. 
 

But while in these cases drivers can pay to enter such zones, Madrid went a step further, banning many vehicles from accessing the center altogether and fining them if they did. 
 
These fines will be suspended from July 1 to the end of September as the new city hall team audits the system. 
 
For Beatriz Navarro, 44, a university biochemistry professor who took part in the march, the system is working fine. 
 
“It’s a small seed … among everything that has to be done to slow down climate change,” she said. 
 
In a statement, environmental group Ecologistas en Accion said “the levels of pollution from nitrogen dioxide (NO2) registered during May this year were lower than those of 2018 in all the [measuring] stations in the system.” 
 
“In 14 of the 24 stations [in Madrid], the value registered in May 2019 was the lowest in the last 10 years.” 

The Trump administration has agreed to postpone implementing a rule allowing medical workers to decline performing abortions or other treatments on moral or religious grounds while the so-called “conscience” rule is challenged in a California court. 

The rule was supposed to take effect on July 22 but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its opponents in a California lawsuit mutually agreed Friday to delay a final ruling on the matter until Nov. 22.

The agency called it the “most efficient way to adjudicate” the rule.

A federal judge in San Francisco permitted the change on Saturday.

A California lawsuit alleges that the department exceeded its authority with the rule, which President Trump announced in May. 

The measure known as Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority would require institutions that receive money from federal programs to certify that they comply with some 25 federal laws protecting conscience and religious rights. 
Most laws pertain to medical procedures such as abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide.

The department has previously said that past administrations haven’t done enough to protect such rights in the medical field.

The rule is a priority for religious conservatives, but critics fear it will become a pretext for denying medical attention to LGBT people or women seeking abortions, a legal medical procedure.

“The Trump administration is trying to systematically limit access to critical medical care for women, the LGBTQ community, and other vulnerable patients,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement announcing Friday’s decision. “Hospitals are no place to put personal beliefs above patient care.” 

San Francisco would have faced losing about $1 billion in federal funding for health care-related programs if the rule took effect, according to the statement from his office.