North Korea has criticized U.S. plans to hold a joint military exercise next month with South Korea, suggesting the drills could negatively impact upcoming working-level nuclear talks with Washington.

In a statement from the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the exercise violates an agreement reached last year by Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

“We will look at the future moves of the United States, and we will make a decision regarding the holding of working-level talks,” said the statement attributed to an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

The U.S. and North Korea agreed to hold working-level talks following a hastily arranged meeting last month between Trump and Kim at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

That meeting helped restart talks that had broken down over disagreements on how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

At their first summit in Singapore last June, Trump and Kim agreed to work “toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” But neither side can agree on what that phrase means or how to begin working toward it.

In Singapore, Trump also agreed to scale back U.S. military exercises with South Korea. But North Korea still regularly complains about the smaller exercises.

The exercise scheduled for next month is called “Dong Maeng,” or “alliance” in English. The drill will replace the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise that was scaled back as part of the Trump-Kim talks.

A statement earlier in the day from the North’s foreign ministry suggested that if the U.S. goes ahead with the exercises, Pyongyang could resume intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests.

“Our decision to suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests or the U.S. decision to suspend joint military drills was a pledge to improve bilateral relations, not some kind of legislated document carved on paper,” the statement said, according to a translation by South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.

The statement said the drills would be a “clear violation of the basic spirit” of the declaration signed by Kim and Trump in Singapore.

North Korea views U.S.-South Korea military exercises as preparation to invade. U.S. officials have called the drills necessary to deter North Korean attacks. Trump often dismisses the exercises as “war games” and says they are a waste of money.

Trump last month became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, when he briefly stepped across the military demarcation line at the Panmunjom truce village in the DMZ.

White House officials have portrayed that meeting as historic and an example of Trump’s successful outreach to Kim. Many observers say it risks becoming a stunt, unless accompanied by progress in working-level talks.

In an interview Monday with Fox News, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the DMZ meeting “has given us another chance to sit down” with North Korean officials and “have another conversation.”

“I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can be a little more creative too,” said Pompeo, who on June 30th said he hoped the working-level talks could resume in two to three weeks.

Trump and other U.S. officials have at times said they will not relax sanctions until North Korea gives up all its nuclear weapons. At other times, White House officials signal they are open to a more gradual approach.

A State Department spokesperson last week said the U.S. wants a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear program at the start of the process, but dismissed a report in The New York Times suggesting the U.S. was moving towards tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.

In his Monday interview, Pompeo said Trump’s “mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify.”

Kim wants substantial U.S. sanctions relief in exchange for partial steps to give up his nuclear program. In Hanoi, he offered to dismantle what is thought to be his main nuclear complex in Yongbyon in exchange for the removal of nearly all sanctions.

The North Korean leader has said he will give the U.S. until the end of the year to become more accommodating. U.S. officials have shrugged off the deadline.

It took 400,000 people to put Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a half-century ago.

That massive workforce stretched across the U.S. and included engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, pilots, divers, seamstresses, secretaries and more who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve those first lunar footsteps .

Some of them will be taking part in festivities this week to mark the 50th anniversary

A brief look at four:

Amid the sea of white shirts, black ties and pocket protectors inside NASA’s firing room for the liftoff of Apollo 11 sat JoAnn Morgan.

July 16, 1969 was her prime-time debut as the first female launch controller. It wasn’t easy getting there.

Morgan, 78, who began working for NASA in 1958 while in college, typically got the overnight shift before launches. She’d be replaced by a male colleague a few hours before showtime.
 
“The rub came on being there at liftoff,” she recalled.
 
And there was the taunting. She’d get obscene phone calls at her desk at Kennedy Space Center and lewd remarks in the elevator.

The situation was even more strained next door at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The old launch-pad blockhouses there had a single restroom _ for men. So Morgan found herself dashing to a nearby building for a women’s restroom, just as portrayed in “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 hit movie.

“I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it,” Morgan said. “Finally, 99 percent of them accepted that `JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’ “
As Apollo 11 loomed, Morgan’s boss went to the top to get her on liftoff duty. By then, the harassment had pretty much stopped.

While NASA’s countdown clocks ticked toward a 9:32 a.m. launch, Morgan monitored ground instrumentation, everything from fire and lightning detectors to guidance computer data. When the official firing room photo was later taken _ showing Morgan with her left hand raised to her chin _ she was listening to Vice President Spiro Agnew address the team after the launch.

With Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way, her job was done, at least for Apollo 11. Morgan and her husband Larry, a high school band director, slipped away on vacation and watched the July 20 moon landing on a hotel TV. As they toasted the first lunar footsteps, he told her, “Honey, you’re going to be in the history books.”

Morgan went on to become Kennedy’s first female senior executive. Retired since 2003, she splits her time between Florida and Montana, and encourages young women to study engineering.

Tedd Olkowski was on emergency standby for the launch countdown of Apollo 11.

His job was to help Collins _ should the unlikely need arise before liftoff _ escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad.

Armstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment.

NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room.

The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. There was a similar setup under Pad 39B. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned.

Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras.

With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing.
“Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said.

Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago.

“I said, `Mike, I know you don’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago …’ “
You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11.

As Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary.

Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection.

After the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap.

Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11’s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific.

Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. He still practices law in Houston at age 76.

“This is, to use the `Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.”

Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11’s moonmen back to Earth.

His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific.

The astronauts needed to be quarantined. Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape.

It may seem silly now, but the possibility of lunar bugs was “a really serious concern” back then, according to Hatleberg, who was 25 at the time and fresh from an underwater demolition team rotation in Vietnam.

Hatleberg was one of four frogmen on the recovery team who jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. The others secured the capsule, then moved upwind in a raft. That’s when Hatleberg moved in, carrying disinfectant.

Covered in a protective garment, Hatleberg momentarily opened Columbia’s hatch to toss in a bag with three of the outfits. Once the astronauts had the gray garments on, they emerged from the capsule one by one onto a waiting raft.

The first spaceman out offered his hand to shake. Hatleberg paused _ shaking hands was not part of the NASA protocol that he’d practiced. He recalled thinking, “I was the last person who could screw the whole thing up.”

Hatleberg shook hands anyway.
 
Once the astronauts were wiped down by Hatleberg with a potent bleach solution, they were lifted into a helicopter and flown to the USS Hornet, where their quarantine mobile home awaited them along with President Richard Nixon.
 
Hatleberg scoured Columbia before it, too, was transported to the aircraft carrier. He cleaned the raft and the flotation collar that had been around the spacecraft, then punctured them and watched them sink with his own decontaminated garment, any moon bugs swallowed by the sea.

“There were so many other people whose jobs were more important than mine,” Hatleberg said. Looking back, he’s still in awe at what the Apollo astronauts accomplished. “They were the ones who risked their lives to take that giant leap for all mankind. They’re the heroes and they always will be _ in my heart.”  
 
Hatleberg _ who at 75 is working again as an engineer in Laurel, Maryland _ said he always thought Aldrin was the first one he helped from the capsule. That is until a year or so ago, he said, when a Hornet curator pulled out old footage and zoomed in on the name tag.

It read Armstrong.

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface – the first men on the moon. The U.S. space agency, NASA, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this historic event in style – by restoring and reopening the control room that handled the historic Apollo 11 mission. Today it is a museum, but it looks every bit alive and real as it did in 1969, as though engineers and scientists just stepped away for a moment. Lesia Bakalets visited the control room. Anna Rice narrates her story. 

Egypt’s parliament on Monday removed jail penalties from a law controlling operations of non-governmental organizations, but rights groups rejected the changes as insufficient.

Justified by officials to protect national security from meddling by foreign-funded charities, the 2017 law restricted NGOs’ activity to developmental and social work, with jail terms of up to five years for non-compliance.

Activists saw it as an attempt to block humanitarian work and the law contributed to a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to freeze millions of dollars in military aid to Egypt for nearly a year.

The new legislation, approved overwhelmingly by parliament on Monday, removes the jail penalty and replaces it with fines between 200,000 and 1 million Egyptian pounds ($12,070-$60,350).

As well as ending jail sentences, the changes – which must still be ratified by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi – enable NGOs to receive money from Egypt or abroad as long as it is deposited in a bank account within 30 days.

The government has 60 days to challenge payments.

Although the new legislation was meant to answer criticisms, 10 Egyptian and international rights groups said last week the impending changes were not enough. They said other laws imposing strict controls on NGOs and civil society also needed revamping.

In 2013, 43 Americans, Europeans, Egyptians and other Arabs were sentenced to jail on charges including operating NGOs without necessary approval. Most were acquitted last year.

A case against domestic NGO workers, more than 30 of whom have been given travel bans and asset freezes, remains open.

“The new draft is but a re-marketing of the repressive law that contains a hostile attitude towards civil society groups,” the 10 groups said in a statement.

“The aim is to calm international public opinion, but the changes are not in line with the constitution or Egypt’s international obligations,” said Mohamed Zaree, Egypt program director at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Charities have long played an important role in feeding, clothing and providing healthcare and education in a country where millions live on less than $2 a day.

Sissi came to power after spearheading, as defence minister, the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as president in 2013.

Under Sissi, Egypt has seen a crackdown on dissent that campaigners say is unprecedented in its recent history.

His backers say tough measures are necessary to stabilize Egypt, which was rocked by years of unrest after protests toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he hoped both North Korea and the United States could “be a little more creative” as the two sides push to restart talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Pompeo did not say when the negotiations would begin.

President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month. During the meeting, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross into North Korea and the pair agreed to restart talks.

Trump and Kim have met three times and held two summits over the nuclear issue. Talks in Hanoi in February collapsed without agreement between the two leaders, as the United States insisted North Korea completely denuclearize and North Korea pushed for relief from sanctions.

“I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can be a little more creative too,” Pompeo said in a radio interview on “The Sean Hannity Show”

“The president’s mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify.

That’s the mission set for these negotiations,” Pompeo added.

Pompeo’s remarks come after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged Trump to show flexibility in dealing with Pyongyang and to ease sanctions on the country “in due course.”

China signed up for U.N. sanctions after North Korea performed repeated nuclear and missile tests, but has suggested they could be reduced as a reward for good behavior.

South Korean officials have expressed uncertainty that the talks between the United States and North Korea can take place this month.

North Korea has frozen missile and nuclear bomb testing since 2017, but U.S. officials believe Pyongyang has continued to expand its arsenal by producing bomb fuel and missiles.

Joe Biden is taking an aggressive approach to defending the Affordable Care Act, challenging not just President Donald Trump but also some of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination who want to replace the current insurance system with a fully government-run model.

The former vice president has spent the past several weeks highlighting his support for the health care law, which is often called “Obamacare.” He told voters in Iowa that he was “against any Republican (and) any Democrat who wants to scrap” the law. He’s also talked of “building on” Obamacare.

He released a proposal on Monday that would add a “public option” to the 2010 health care overhaul, with  expanded coverage paid for by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. He was back in Iowa and touted the public option as “the quickest … most rational way to get universal coverage.” A sudden transition to “Medicare for All,” he said, “is kind of risky.”

Biden hopes his positioning as Obamacare’s chief defender will be a reminder of his close work alongside former President Barack Obama, who remains popular among Democratic voters. And it could reinforce his pitch as a sensible centrist promising to rise above the strident cacophony of Trump and more liberal Democrats who are single-payer advocates.

The emerging divide between Biden and his progressive rivals could give him an opportunity to go on the offense ahead of the next presidential debates at the end of the month. Biden has spent the past several weeks on defense, reversing his position on taxpayer funding for abortions and highlighting his past work with segregationist senators. Kamala Harris slammed Biden during the first debates, blasting the segregationist comment and criticizing his opposition to federal busing orders to desegregate public schools during the same era.

Those episodes called Biden’s front-runner status into question, and in New Hampshire over the weekend it was clear he wanted to turn the tables on his rivals backing Medicare for All.

“I think one of the most significant things we’ve done in our administration is pass the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “I don’t know why we’d get rid of what in fact was working and move to something totally new. And so, there are differences.”

He argued that some of his opponents, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, aren’t fairly representing the consequences of their proposals.

“Bernie’s been very honest about it,” Biden said. “He said you’re going to have to raise taxes on the middle class. He said it’s going to end all private insurance. I mean, he’s been straightforward about it. And he’s making his case.”

Sanders will deliver a health care speech on Wednesday and is already hitting back at Biden. The Vermont senator insists his plan would be a net financial benefit for most households and rejects any suggestion that he hasn’t supported the Affordable Care Act.

“I traveled all over the country to fight the repeal of Obamacare,” Sanders tweeted Monday. “But I will not be deterred from ending the corporate greed that creates dysfunction in our health care system. We must pass Medicare for All.”

Speaking at an AARP forum in Iowa on Monday, Biden took pains to say he wasn’t criticizing rivals.

“I’m not being critical of my opponents,” he said. “I’m about what I’m for, not what they’re for. I’m not in that game because that just elects Donald Trump.”

Biden’s health care proposal is anchored by a “Medicare-like” plan that any American, including the 150 million-plus Americans now covered by job-based insurance, could buy on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

The proposal would make existing premium subsidies more generous and expand eligibility for middle-income households, lowering their out-of-pocket costs. It also would extend premium-free coverage to lower-income Americans who have been denied access to Medicaid in Republican-run states that refused to participate in the Affordable Care Act.

The campaign puts the taxpayer cost at $750 billion over 10 years, which would be covered by returning the top marginal income tax to 39.6%, the rate before the 2017 GOP tax cuts . Some multimillionaires also would lose certain capital gains tax advantages.

Biden’s aides framed his plan as more fiscally responsible and politically realistic than a single-payer overhaul. The idea behind a public option is to extend coverage to those who can’t afford decent private coverage while forcing corporate insurers to compete alongside the government, theoretically pressuring those private firms to lower their premiums and out-of-pocket costs for their policy holders.

The dynamics illustrate Democrats’ overall leftward shift on health care.

A decade ago, the public option was effectively the left flank for Democrats, a reality made obvious when Obama angered House liberals by jettisoning the provision to mollify some centrist Senate Democrats. Now, after Sanders’ insurgent 2016 presidential bid and his promise of “health care as a human right,” the left has embraced single-payer, with moderates moving to the public option.

Some Democratic White House hopefuls are joining Biden in advocating for the public option, arguing it will be difficult to go much further.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet greeted Biden’s proposal with a reminder that he’s been pushing a public option on Capitol Hill. He urged his Senate colleagues, including Sanders, Harris and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to “reconsider their Medicare for All approach.”

Bennet and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are among the moderates arguing that a public option is the next logical move, even for single-payer advocates.

“I think it is a beginning and the way you start and the way you move to universal health care,” Klobuchar said in the first debate.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is more frank, warning that Republicans will brand single-payer proposals as “socialism” and reclaim the health care advantage the party enjoyed in the 2018 midterms.

The United Nations told the United States it is concerned by tight travel restrictions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during his visit to New York this week, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said on Monday.

Zarif arrived in New York on Sunday after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on the visit amid heightened tensions between the two countries. But Zarif is only allowed to travel between the United Nations, the Iranian U.N. mission, the Iranian U.N. ambassador’s residence and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, a U.S. State Department official said.

Threat of blacklist

Late last month Washington threatened to blacklist Zarif, a move that could impede any U.S. effort to use diplomacy to resolve disagreements with Tehran. However, sources have told Reuters that Washington had decided to hold off for now.

Longtime U.S.-Iran strains have worsened since U.S. President Donald Trump last year quit a 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Haq told reporters that the U.N. secretariat is “in close contact with the permanent missions of the United States and Iran to the U.N. and has conveyed its concerns to the host country.”

U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, said no U.S. government officials would meet with Zarif.

“There is no back channel currently going on between the United States and anybody in the Iranian regime. Everything that’s being said is being said by the president and the secretary of state publicly,” Hook told Fox News Channel.

The United States had restricted Zarif’s travel “in a manner that is fully consistent” with its obligations under a 1947 agreement with the United Nations, the U.S. State Department official said.

Mouthpiece of an autocracy

The official accused Zarif of using U.S. freedoms “to spread malign propaganda” and said Zarif “is a mouthpiece of an autocracy that suppresses free speech.”

Despite the travel restrictions, Zarif did interviews on Monday with Britain’s BBC and U.S. network NBC at the residence of the Iranian U.N. ambassador on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said that all of Zarif’s meetings, interviews and speeches would be done at the United Nations, the Iranian U.N. mission or the Iranian U.N. ambassador’s residence.

“Putting restrictions on his presence in some streets in New York will certainly not effect his work schedule,” he said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

SDG meeting

Zarif is due to attend a ministerial meeting at the United Nations on sustainable development goals, which aim to tackle issues including conflict, hunger, equality and climate change by 2030.

Iranian diplomats, like the envoys of North Korea, Syria and Cuba, are already confined to a radius of 25 miles from Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan.

Under the 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement,” the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for “security, terrorism, and foreign policy” reasons.

In April 2014, the United States would not grant a visa to Iran’s chosen U.N. ambassador, Hamid Abutalebi, because of his links to the 1979-1981 Tehran hostage crisis when radical students seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Abutalebi said he acted only as a translator.

Iran complained to a U.N. committee, but ultimately ended up appointing a new ambassador in early 2015.

The European Union says talks are under way on whether a barter mechanism aimed at salvaging some trade with Iran might include oil, as Europeans scramble to ease tensions between Iran and the United States.

Following a meeting among European foreign ministers in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the special barter mechanism with Iran known as INSTEX would be open to third-party countries. The mechanism is aimed at working around U.S. sanctions, and for now, it narrowly targets humanitarian goods.

“The issue of whether INSTEX will deal with oil or not is a discussion that is ongoing among the shareholders,” Mogherini said. “We have around 10 member states and some are considering actively dong that.”

Europeans are increasingly alarmed the four-year-old Iran nuclear deal, known in shorthand as JCPOA, is on the verge of collapse — a message delivered by France, Britain and Germany as they urged nations to resume talks.

Earlier Monday, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt offered a sliver of hope.

“Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear bomb,” he said. “There is still some closing, but small window to keep the deal alive.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Europeans must remain united. He criticized Iran’s decision on breaching the deal’s uranium enrichment caps as a bad response to a bad decision by the U.S. in pulling out last year.

Iran says the Europeans haven’t done enough to compensate for the tough sanctions Washington has since reimposed against Tehran. Experts are skeptical INSTEX will have much of an impact. Mogherini acknowledged the mechanism proved much more complex than the Europeans originally expected, but she had a message for Iran.

“We’re doing our best,” she said, “and we hope that this will be enough for the Iranian public opinion and Iranian authorities to realize that we are committed to the full implementation of the JCPOA.”

She said for now, the parties in the nuclear deal do not see Iran’s breaches as significant non-compliance, noting all of Tehran’s steps are reversible. Iran has long said its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

Yemen’s warring parties have agreed new measures to enforce a ceasefire and facilitate a troop pullback from the flashpoint port of Hodeidah, the United Nations said on Monday.

Representatives of the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government met on a U.N. ship in the Red Sea for talks on Sunday and Monday, a U.N. statement said.

The United Nations is trying to broker a withdrawal from Hodeidah – the main entry point for food and humanitarian aid – so U.N.-supervised management can take over.

Yemen’s four-year war has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.

The U.N. statement said both sides were keen to reduce hostilities after a rise in ceasefire violations at Hodeidah.

“They agreed on a mechanism and new measures to reinforce the ceasefire and de-escalation, to be put in place as soon as possible,” it said, without giving more details.

The two sides met as members of the “Redeployment Coordination Committee,” a body set up by the United Nations and chaired by Danish Lieutenant General Michael Lollesgaard to oversee the ceasefire and troop exit.

The committee finalized conceptual agreement on troop withdrawals, which now required political leaders’ buy-in, the statement said. Political leaders would also have to agree on “local security forces, local authority and revenues,” the statement said, without elaborating.

New York’s mayor is fending off criticism because he was in Iowa campaigning for his presidential bid while Manhattan was in the grips of a major power outage.

Bill de Blasio said Monday on MSNBC that he was in frequent contact with agencies handling the emergency and that he thinks first responders did an “incredible job.”

The Saturday night blackout darkened more than 40 square blocks of Manhattan, including Times Square.

De Blasio sidestepped criticism from numerous quarters, including from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat. A front-page New York Post editorial called for de Blasio’s ouster.

De Blasio said he took a four-hour car ride from Iowa to Chicago and got on the first available plane home.

He insisted that the blackout response was well-managed with his remote supervision.

Ugandan pop star and opposition figure Bobi Wine said Monday he will challenge longtime President Yoweri Museveni in a 2021 election “on behalf of the people.”

But Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said he is concerned about his safety after what he believes was an attempt on his life last August. His driver was shot dead in his car after protesters threw stones at the president’s motorcade.
 
Wine’s arrest at the time sparked protests in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The 37-year-old said he is fearful of harm from running for president because “there has never been a threat to this regime like the threat we pose to it today as a generation.”
 
“I live every day as it comes, not being sure of the next day,” Wine said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I am not blind to the fact that the regime wants me dead and wants me dead as soon as possible.”
 
Authorities have repeatedly denied Wine is being targeted.
 
As the leader of a popular movement known as “People Power,” Wine has captured the imagination of many who want to see the exit of Museveni, a U.S. ally on regional security who has held power since 1986 and looks set to seek a sixth term.
 
Wine said his aim ahead of the election is “to multiply myself in various young men and women, so that there are as many Bobi Wines as possible.”
 
Uganda has never witnessed a peaceful transfer of power since the East African country gained independence from Britain in 1962.
 
“Power has been taken away from the people by those that wield guns, and that’s what we want to put an end to through the vote,” he said.
 
Wine first came to national prominence in 2017 when, as an independent candidate, he won election as a lawmaker representing a constituency near Kampala. He has since successfully campaigned for other opposition candidates, raising his profile as a leader and attracting encouragement to run for president.
 
Wine is “a symbol,” a potential catalyst for change in a country where many young people are jobless and angry over official corruption, said Mwambutsya Ndebesa, history lecturer at Uganda’s Makerere University. “He can still be symbolically a game changer in a system where the political space has been narrowed.”
 
Yet the singer’s candidacy comes with multiple challenges, including limited opportunities to hold rallies or stage concerts. Police violently foiled his recent attempts to hold public events, firing bullets and tear gas. Authorities insist such action is necessary in order to protect public order.
 
Wine also faces treason charges stemming from his alleged role in the incident in which the president’s convoy was attacked with stones. Prosecutors added additional charges of annoying the president over that incident. He also is charged with the offense of disobeying statutory authority after he led a demonstration against a new tax targeting social media. He denies all the charges.
 
Wine would be ineligible to run for president if he were to be convicted of any of those crimes.
 
“We know that the regime is going to try anything within their reach to block us from contesting,” Wine said.
 
Museveni, who is 74 and remains popular among some Ugandans, is expected to run again after parliament passed legislation removing a clause in the constitution that prevented anyone over 75 from holding the presidency.
 
As the bill was being debated, security personnel during one chaotic session entered the parliamentary chamber and roughed up opposition lawmakers, including Wine, who had been trying to delay a procedural vote.
 
The president accuses Wine and other opposition figures of trying to lure young people into deadly rioting.
 
Museveni’s party, which dominates the national assembly, has endorsed him as its sole candidate for the next election. The opposition is divided, with veteran opposition figures frequently attacking each other in public.
 
Although Wine’s rise as a possible presidential contender has energized the opposition, it also has exposed rifts among the opposition figures who hope to take power after Museveni.
 
As Wine’s stature rose, tensions grew between him and Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate who has been Museveni’s most serious election opponent. Besigye was criticized by Wine’s supporters after he suggested that the singer was not yet ready to become president, underscoring how difficult it will be for the opposition to unite against Museveni.  
 

Bitcoin slumped more than 10% over the weekend to a two-week low as fears of a crackdown of cryptocurrencies grew on mounting scrutiny of Facebook’s planned Libra digital coin.

Bitcoin fell 11.1% from Friday to $9,855 early on Monday, its lowest since July 2. The original cryptocurrency slumped 10.4% on Sunday alone, its second-biggest daily drop this year.

It was last up 1.3% at $10,319.

Politicians and financial regulators across the world have called for close scrutiny of Facebook’s Libra coin, with concerns ranging from consumer protection and privacy to its potential systemic risks given the social media giant’s global reach.

In a sign of widening U.S. attention, a proposal to prevent big technology companies from functioning as financial institutions or issuing digital currencies has been circulated for discussion by Democratic lawmakers, according to a copy of the draft legislation seen by Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump had last week criticized bitcoin, Libra and other cryptocurrencies, demanding that firms seek a banking charter and subject themselves to U.S. and global regulations if they wanted to “become a bank”.

Bitcoin, which initially shrugged off Trump’s Tweet, fell sharply after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for a halt to Facebook’s project until concerns from privacy to money laundering were addressed.

“Together they have increased the tail risk that the U.S. will look to crack down on it in some way,” said Jamie Farquhar, portfolio manager at crypto firm NKB Group in London.

Underscoring the growing attention on Facebook’s plans, Japanese authorities have also set up a working group to look at Libra’s possible impact on monetary policy and financial regulation, government sources told Reuters.

European Central Bank policymaker Benoit Coeure is due to deliver a preliminary report on the matter at a meeting of G7 finance ministers this week in Chantilly, north of Paris.

Bitcoin climbed nearly 55% in nine days after Facebook unveiled its plans for Libra on June 18, touching an 18-month high of nearly $14,000. The project has boosted hopes among some investors that cryptocurrencies could gain wider acceptance.
 

The health ministry of Democratic Republic of Congo said Monday two community health workers engaged in Ebola prevention have been killed in the eastern North Kivu province. The ministry said the workers had been receiving death threats for months.

Ministry officials, meanwhile, have confirmed the first case of Ebola in Goma, a city of more than 2 million people, along the Rwandan border.

Authorities said the patient is a pastor who took a bus from Butembo, one of the towns hardest hit by Ebola, to Goma. He arrived in Goma on Sunday and was quickly taken to an Ebola treatment center.

The health ministry said in a statement: “Given that the patient was quickly identified, as well as all the passengers on the bus from Butembo, the risk of the disease spreading in the city of Goma is low.”

The French news agency AFP reports the bus driver and passengers are receiving vaccinations Monday.

Ebola has killed more than 1,600 people in DR Congo.

Efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by violent attacks on health care workers and treatment centers.

Some Congolese people have also contributed to the spread of the disease by refusing to take their loved ones to treatment centers and not adhering to burial guidelines designed to reduce Ebola transmission.
 

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Monday that the international deal on Iran’s nuclear program “isn’t dead yet,” and that while the opportunity to find a resolution to the current crisis surrounding the agreement is closing, it is still possible to keep it alive.

He spoke ahead of talks with other European Union foreign ministers in Brussels where they planned to discuss the Iran situation.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed to by Iran and a group of world powers that included Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to allay concerns Iran was working to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran has long said its nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes, and it won badly needed relief from sanctions in return for limiting its nuclear activity far below what would be needed to make a weapon.

Hunt said Monday that Iran was more than a year away from having the capability to build a nuclear device.

Boris Johnson, a Conservative favorite to succeed Theresa May when she steps down as prime minister later this month, seemed to dismiss the importance of the leaked cables.

He described them as “embarrassing but it is not a threat to national security.”

“It is the duty of media organizations to bring new and interesting facts into the public domain,” said Johnson, himself a journalist and former editor.

In May 2018, Johnson, then Britain’s foreign minister, went to Washington to try to persuade Trump to not abandon the Iran pact.

After British and U.S. officials met, Darroch reported back to London that there were divisions within the Trump administration over Trump’s intention to quit the Iran accord. The diplomat criticized the White House for a lack of long-term strategy to deal with Iran.

“They can’t articulate any ‘day-after’ strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region,” he wrote.

Trump has long attacked the 2015 international Iran nuclear deal aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons development as ineffective and repeatedly blamed Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry for pushing for its adoption.

Trump withdrew the United States from the deal last year and reimposed economic sanctions, hobbling the Iranian economy and limiting its international oil trade.

Five other countries — China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain — along with the European Union have remained in the accord, but voiced their displeasure as Tehran has exceeded the size of the uranium stockpile and the uranium enrichment level allowed under the pact.
 

Taiwan’s presidential race kicked off Monday with China the top issue as a Beijing-friendly mayor won the chief opposition party’s primary to face an incumbent who wants Beijing to keep a distance.

The opposition Nationalists announced that Han Kuo-yu, now mayor of the Taiwanese port city Kaohsiung, had won the presidential primary Monday against four other candidates, including the founder of consumer electronics assembler Foxconn Technology. Han will go up against incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in the January 2020 general election.

China is expected to define the late-year campaign because the two contenders differ on how to handle it, reflecting divisions among Taiwanese people.

Divided public

Taiwan and China have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, but Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island. Opinion surveys as recent as January show most Taiwanese oppose rule by China, and protests in Hong Kong since June against the territory’s own rule by Beijing have solidified that sentiment.

“Now, incidents in Hong Kong actually are having an effect on youth,” said George Hou, mass communications lecturer at Taiwan-based I-Shou University who regularly talks to young people. “The Nationalist Party’s policies toward China and China’s policies make younger people feel discontent.”

But many Taiwanese say they hope their government can keep peaceful economic ties with China while holding it off politically. They complain of low salaries and high housing costs at home. Some see China in turn as a source of investment or as a place to find work.

“The Hong Kong matter will make people feel on guard, but when they vote for a president, they’ll hope to change their own lives, and voting will take that direction,” said Ku Chung-hua, standing board member with the Taiwan advocacy group Citizens’ Congress Watch.

Competing candidate platforms

Han, 62, has vowed to make peace with China. In March he signed deals with four Chinese cities including Hong Kong to sell $167 million worth of Taiwanese agricultural products. He won the mayoral race in November partly on an economic improvement platform.

In April, Han visited the United States to meet members of Congress and encourage American investment in Kaohsiung. The former 10-year Nationalist Party lawmaker had once managed a company that markets Taiwanese agricultural goods.

“Han Kuo-yu is the only candidate who has a really strong appeal to the lower middle class,” said Joanna Lei, CEO of the Taiwan-based Chunghua 21st Century Think Tank, comparing him to other Nationalist Party figures. He won the primary after party-commissioned public opinion polls returned a 45% support rate.

Tsai, elected in 2016, supports economic ties with China but disputes China’s condition for dialogue — that the two sides fall under one flag — meaning the two sides never talk. China has grown increasingly impatient with Tsai over her term, using military aircraft flybys and diplomatic pressure abroad as warnings.

After Chinese President Xi Jinping advocated earlier in January that China rule Taiwan under a “one country, two systems” setup as it governs Hong Kong, Tsai grew more vocal against the political pressure from China. The Hong Kong protests have added weight to her cause.

Han opposes “one country, two systems” but backs the Chinese dialogue condition.

Race too early to call

Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party lost most mayoral and county magistrate seats in the November local elections that put Han into power. Voters had called Tsai’s management of the economy slow or ineffective. Now GDP growth is expected to slow slightly this year to 2.2%.

But approval poll ratings for the president rose more than 10 percentage points in the months after she ramped up her anti-China comments.

The presidential race is too close to call, Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

“You can’t say, because the Nationalists now, according to polls, don’t have a candidate who could definitely win,” Huang said. “Changes in Taiwan’s elections happen fast.”

China’s economic growth slowed to its lowest level in a decade last quarter amid a tariff war with Washington, adding to pressure on Beijing to reverse a deepening slump.

The world’s second-largest economy expanded by 6.2% over a year earlier in the three months ending in June, down from the previous quarter’s 6.4%, government data showed Monday. That was the slowest growth since the first quarter of 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Chinese leaders have stepped up spending and bank lending to shore up growth and avert politically dangerous job losses. But they face an avalanche of unexpectedly bad news including plunging auto sales as they fight a trade battle with President Donald Trump over Beijing’s technology ambitions.

The economy faces a “complex environment both at home and abroad,” the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

Growth in retail sales slowed to 8.4% in the first half of 2019, down 0.1 percentage points from the first quarter, the government reported. Growth in factory output decelerated to 6% in the first half, down 0.1 percentage points from the first quarter.

Chinese exports to the United States fell 7.8% in June from a year, depressed by Trump’s penalty tariff hikes.

Auto sales, reported earlier, fell 7.8% in June, extending a yearlong contraction in the industry’s biggest market.

The U.S. may approve licenses for companies to restart new sales to Huawei in as little as two weeks, according to a senior U.S. official, in a sign President Donald Trump’s recent effort to ease restrictions on the Chinese company could move forward quickly.

Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, was added to a Commerce Department list in May that prohibits U.S. companies from supplying it with new American-made goods and services unless they obtain licenses that will likely be denied.

But late last month, after meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump announced American firms could sell products to Huawei. And in recent days, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said licenses would be issued where there is no threat to national security.

Chip industry, China pressure

Trump’s reversal, and rapid implementation by the Commerce Department, suggests chip industry lobbying, coupled with Chinese political pressure, may well reignite U.S. technology sales to Huawei.

Two U.S. chipmakers who supply Huawei told Reuters in recent days they would apply for more licenses after Ross’s comments. They asked to remain anonymous.

A customer response management company and a firm that simulates cross-sectional radar for Huawei are also likely to file applications in the coming days, according to Craig Ridgley, a trade compliance consultant in Washington.

Out of $70 billion that Huawei spent buying components in 2018, about $11 billion went to U.S. firms, including Qualcomm, Intel and Micron Technology.

“Since there’s no downside, companies are absolutely submitting applications, as required by the regulations,” said Washington lawyer Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official.

A Huawei spokesman said “the Entity list restrictions should be removed altogether, rather than have temporary licenses applied for US vendors. Huawei has been found guilty of no relevant wrongdoing and represents no cybersecurity risk to any country so the restrictions are unmerited.”

Not all sales need OK

U.S. companies can currently sell goods in order to maintain existing networks and provide software updates to existing Huawei handsets, but are prohibited from making new sales of American-made goods and services.

Furthermore, not all U.S. sales to Huawei hinge on government approvals of license requests. Some U.S. chipmakers’ sales to Huawei may not need licenses because their products could be beyond the scope of U.S. export controls since many are manufactured abroad with few U.S. components. 

U.S. officials have sought to clarify the new policy in recent weeks, saying they will allow sales of non-sensitive technology readily available abroad if national security is protected. But they have also reiterated that Huawei remains on the entity list, and relief would be temporary.

The U.S. semiconductor industry has been lobbying for broader relief, arguing that U.S. security goals should be advanced in a way that does not undermine the ability to compete globally and retain technological leadership.

Suppliers want to be allowed to provide customer service support for chips they build and sell overseas, or the approval to ship new American-made equipment to Huawei and its subsidiaries around the world.

Chip suppliers unclear

Still, it is unclear which products will be granted licenses. Some U.S. suppliers sought clarity at a conference the Commerce Department held in Washington this week. One manufacturer’s representative was told by the senior U.S. official that licenses could be granted in two to four weeks at the conference on Thursday.

The person, who did not want to be identified, said the official did not delineate the criteria for license approvals, but she came away believing they would be made on a case-by-case basis, at least at first, as the agency seeks to form more broad opinions.

When asked about the guidance from the senior official, a Commerce Department spokesman said the agency is “currently evaluating all licenses and determining what is in the nation’s best national security interest.”

The United States has pending cases against Huawei for allegedly stealing American intellectual property and violating Iran sanctions. It also has launched a lobbying effort to persuade U.S. allies to keep Huawei out of next-generation 5G telecommunications infrastructure, citing concerns the company could spy on customers. Huawei has denied the allegations. 

Eric Hirschhorn, a former undersecretary of Commerce, said the problem for government officials now reviewing the licenses is that they don’t know where the administration is going. 

“The policy two minutes ago may not be the policy two minutes from now,” Hirschhorn said.
 

Demonstrators returned to an immigration jail in Washington state a day after an armed man threw incendiary devices at the detention center and later died.

Willem Van Spronsen, 69, was found dead Saturday after four police officers arrived and opened fire.

Demonstrators returned Sunday to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, KOMO-TV reported. The demonstrators were protesting the facility and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups that were supposed to begin Sunday.

The facility holds migrants pending deportation proceedings. The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.

The center’s operator, GEO Group, said in a statement it was aware of a “community gathering” Sunday. “We respect every individual’s right to use their voice and express their opinions,” the center said.

‘I think this was a suicide’

Bullet holes riddled the scene Sunday, The News-Tribune reported. Police searched Van Spronsen’s Vashon Island home, the Tacoma newspaper reported.

Van Spronsen’s friend, Deb Bartley, told The Seattle Times she thinks he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict. She described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist.

“He was ready to end it,” Bartley said. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs. I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.”

Prior scuffle with police

Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention center in 2018, The News-Tribune reported. According to court documents, he lunged at the officer and wrapped his arms around the officer’s neck and shoulders, as the officer was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester June 26, 2018, the newspaper reported.

According to court documents, police handcuffed Van Spronsen and found that he had a collapsible baton and a folding knife in his pocket. Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police, and he was given a deferred sentence in October, The News-Tribune reported.

Van Spronsen had worked as a self-employed carpenter and contractor, according to court documents. He was also a folk singer, playing shows on Vashon Island and around the Seattle area, The Times reported.

The treatment of migrants in U.S. detention centers has generated friction between the Trump administration and opposition Democrats. Each side is casting blame on the other for the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. VOA’s Marcus Harton has more.

The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has said that the number of Hezbollah fighters in Syria has decreased.

Hassan Nasrallah said in a recent interview with al-Manar TV, Hezbollah’s official television, that the Syrian regime has been recovering militarily after years of fighting rebel groups seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We are present where we are needed to be,” Nasrallah said, referring to his group’s military presence in war-torn Syria.

The Syrians “have realized that they don’t need us anymore. That’s why we don’t have a real presence on frontlines,” the militant leader said.

Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to support the Assad regime.

The Lebanese Shi’ite militant group has been instrumental in major gains made against Syrian rebel forces throughout the country, particularly in Aleppo, Homs and Damascus suburbs.

Backed by Iran, Hezbollah fighters also have a strong presence in parts of oil-rich, eastern province of Deir al-Zour that are under the control of the Syrian regime.

Improved security

Throughout the Syrian war, Hezbollah fighters have been in control of much of Syria’s border with Lebanon. That arrangement has begun to change due to new military dynamics, he said.

Some experts like Seth Frantzman, the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, say that Hezbollah forces in Syria are not needed in the same numbers as the country enters a political phase.

“Nasrallah believes Syria is entering a political phase, with less need for boots on the ground, and after seven years of major involvement it makes sense for him to bring the fighters home,” he told VOA.

With Syrian regime troops regaining control of most territory once held by rebel fighters, experts believe that the Syrian government’s dependence on Hezbollah may be limited now.

Nasrallah, however, said that his fighters remain committed to backing Syrian troops for any potential battle in the future.

“A total withdrawal of our forces from Syria is unlikely in the near future. It depends on how the situations unfold in east of the Euphrates and Idlib. The decision is up to the Syrian leadership,” Nasrallah said.

Focus on Israel

In his interview, Hezbollah’s leader said that his group is now capable of striking anywhere in Israel, adding that “in all fields, the resistance has developed in quantity and quality.”

Some experts say that Hezbollah’s redeployment in Syria could be seen as a sign of the group’s “growing confidence and strength, as well as a threat to shift the focus to Israel.”

“In the context of [Nasrallah’s] threats against Israel, including claims that Hezbollah could reach the Galilee in a future war, Hezbollah needs its forces at home to rest up and also provide a kind of ‘lessons learned from Syria’ to future recruits,” analyst Frantzman said.

In response to Nasrallah’s comments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, “If Hezbollah dares to do something stupid and attack Israel, we will strike it and Lebanon, a crushing military strike.”

Since the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, the two sides have occasionally exchanged attacks. In the wake of Syria’s war, Israel has also hit Hezbollah targets inside Syria.

Labeled as a terrorist group by the United States, Hezbollah has been increasingly targeted by U.S. sanctions in recent months. Last week, the U.S. government announced new sanctions on three senior Hezbollah officials for their role in assisting Iran’s agenda in Lebanon.