French airport workers, teachers and others joined nationwide strikes Tuesday as unions cranked up pressure on the government to scrap changes to the national retirement system.

Police ordered shops and restaurants closed across a swath of Paris, fearing violence on the fringes of what government opponents hope is another mass march in the afternoon. At least 800,000 people turned out for demonstrations around France when the strike movement kicked off last Thursday.

Protests are also planned Tuesday in other cities, as the strike pushes on into a sixth straight day. Unions fear President Emmanuel Macron’s retirement reform will force people to work longer for smaller pensions, even though the government says it won’t raise the official retirement age of 62.

Only about a fifth of French trains ran normally Tuesday, frustrating tourists who found train stations empty and trains canceled, and most Paris subways were at a halt. The Paris region registered double the number of traffic jams at morning rush hour than on a normal day.

Overall the number of striking workers is lower than last week but travelers’ patience is wearing thin, as commuters struggle to squeeze on scarce regional trains to get to work.

Air France, the national carrier, said more than 25% of its domestic traffic would be grounded Tuesday by the strike, along with more than 10% of its medium-range flights.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for North Korea’s new mountainous luxury spa.

Video released by North Korean state media on Dec. 8 revealed Kim receiving a bouquet of flowers and clapping in front of a sprawling winter hot spring complex, called the Yangdok Hot Spring Cultural Recreation Center. The state media report showed footage of outdoor hot spring spas, a ski resort and an equestrian park with young children riding horses.

“[Kim] hardly repressed his happiness, saying that it has become possible to provide people with new culture, and one more plan of the Party to make our people enjoy high civilization under socialism as early as possible has come true,” an announcer from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The recreation center no doubt looks new, but it’s a project that “has been in the works for like a decade,” according to Jenny Town, a fellow at the Stimson Center and managing editor of North Korea news analysis site 38North.

“[The center’s opening] is absolutely significant,” Town told VOA News. “There’s a real priority in the tourist sector right now, and part of that is an opportunity for North Korea. All the reports that we hear claim that there are tons of Chinese tourists coming in every day.”

Tourism is one of North Korea’s few industries that remains free of U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to pressure Kim to abandon the country’s nuclear weapons program. But while export bans on seafood and coal are hurting the economy, North Korea still appears to be heavily investing in other tourism projects in recent months. Pyongyang’s state-run newspaper recently announced a medical tourism program that would offer foreign visitors dental implants, cataract surgery and other medical procedures.

Meanwhile, inter-Korean tourism appears to be facing a setback. In October, Kim reportedly ordered the demolition of several South Korean-built hotels and tourist facilities at the Diamond Mountain Resort along the North Korean side of the border. In a KCNA report, Kim called the facilities “shabby” and said he would re-develop the resort by himself.

“Right now, it’s all about being able to provide amenities other than just tours of Pyongyang to tourists,” Town said.

U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be calling North Korea’s bluff on its end-of-year deadline for nuclear negotiations, prompting some analysts to wonder whether the U.S. president should be taking Pyongyang’s threats more seriously.

“Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way. He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore. He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 9. “North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic  potential, but it must denuclearize as promised.”

That same day, a top North Korean official released a threatening statement that addressed the U.S. president directly through the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“It seems that Trump is very anxious to know what we are thinking now. And he feels very fretful about what will be done by us,” said Ri Su Yong, vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. “The recent words and expressions spouted one after another by Trump sound like a threat to someone at a glance, but they are a corroboration that he feels fear inside.”

“Trump might be in great jitters, but he had better accept the status quo that as he sowed, so he should reap, and think twice if he does not want to see bigger catastrophic consequences,” Ri continued.

In both Seoul and Washington, experts are concerned that Trump’s bluster will only continue to yield mirrored responses from Pyongyang.

“Whether Trump is taking [North Korea’s deadline] seriously is really unclear. But he definitely should be,” Jenny Town, a fellow at the Stimson Center and managing editor of North Korea news analysis site 38North.

“It’s one thing to talk about having a great relationship [with North Korea], and it’s another thing to emphasize ‘you need me’ and the sentiment that’s very much along the line of the ‘don’t be a tough guy’ comment to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan],” Town said. “It’s just not going to play out the way Trump wants it to.”

John Delury, a North Korea analyst and associate professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, believes North Korea is firm about its end-of-year deadline.

“There’s two parties to the negotiation. If one party says they have a deadline, it’s a deadline,” he said. “I mean, the other party can choose to ignore it, but there are consequences.”

Kim Jong Un first set the deadline during a diplomatic deadlock last April, shortly after talks with Trump broke down at the Hanoi summit in late February.

“North Korea has been so consistent with their messaging about this deadline and they put so much emphasis on this deadline that, you know, I don’t think it’s the right thing to approach it by saying it’s arbitrarily made up,” Delury said.

It’s unclear what the United States would need to do to pass Pyongyang’s deadline, but experts said a proposal with tangible concessions and detailed steps toward denuclearization would be a good start.

“North Korea is looking for a deal to consider,” Town said. “… But it seems pretty clear that Kim Jong Un has already made a decision as to what he thinks is going to happen. Now, he’s basically looking for the U.S. to change his mind.”

Russian and Ukrainian leaders agreed to implement a ceasefire and a prisoners’ swap by years end, following four-way talks in Paris on Monday that also included France and Germany. 

The four heads of state said they had made progress and that just talking was a key step forward. They are to meet again in four months.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was confident of the ceasefire would take place this month. He outlined both steps forward and progress still to be made during a late night press conference, echoing similar remarks made by other leaders there.

“It’s not a frozen situation,” Zelensky said. “And to answer your question, yes I do feel we will meet again in another four months, and be in a position to go forward and address other questions on the basis of our achievements.”

This is the first meeting between Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin since the Ukrainian actor took office earlier this year. It’s the first such four-way summit since 2016 that also includes France and Germany.

Putin said describing a possible thaw between Russia and Ukraine was correct.

“We’ve have had progress on most issues,” Putin said. “All of this does suggest that things are going the right way.”

The talks aim to pave a solution to the ongoing conflict between the two countries that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014. Both sides have since accused the other of failing to honor a 2015 peace agreement.

President Zelensky, a political newcomer, has made ending the conflict a priority.

But many Ukrainians are worried he may concede too much. Ahead of the Paris meeting, thousands demonstrated in the capital Kyiv against any so-called “capitulation” to Moscow.

The talks are also seen as a diplomatic test for host Emmanuel Macron. The French President wants to re-engage with Russia after several years of European Union sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. But that has gotten pushback from EU members like Poland. 

Argentine bond prices rose on Monday in the first session since President-elect Alberto Fernandez named debt restructuring expert Martin Guzman as economy minister, the central figure in a cabinet that will start serving after Tuesday’s inauguration.

Over the counter bond prices popped an average 2.1% higher and country risk spreads tightened, showing the market took Fernandez’s cabinet picks in stride.

Guzman, 37, will be responsible for sparking growth, taming inflation and steering restructuring talks with creditors and the International Monetary Fund over about $100 billion in debt.

Creditors had feared that Peronist Fernandez might take a tough stance in upcoming restructuring talks. But Guzman, who sees the problem as one of liquidity rather than solvency, has advocated for a debt revamp based on a suspension of payments that would preserve eventual repayment of principal.

Such an approach would avoid a “haircut,” or outright cut in the return of creditors’ principal investment.

“There had been uncertainty about the debt restructuring proposal. Guzman does not want to implement a haircut on the principal. So this clears some of the fear that had been priced into bonds,” said Gabriel Zelpo, director of economic consultancy Seido.

Sovereign risk spreads tightened 123 basis points to 2,194 over safe-haven U.S. Treasuries on JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus, having blown out from the 480 basis points where the index stood when outgoing President Mauricio Macri, a proponent of free markets, took office in late 2015.

Inflation has risen under Macri, and the peso has lost 83.75% of its value while Latin America’s No. 3 economy has stalled. Consumer prices are up more than 50% so far this year after a 47.6% rise in 2018. The peso was stable on Monday at just under 60 to the dollar.

Guzman, an academic and protégé of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, is an expert in bond restructurings.

He opposed Macri’s austerity drive, which included public utility subsidy cuts that jacked up power and heating bills paid by Argentine families and businesses.

Those utility bill increases fueled the inflation that dogged Macri’s four years in power, killed his once-high popularity and undermined his re-election campaign.

Markets had been on edge since Fernandez thumped Macri in the August primary election. The lopsided victory signaled a shift away from Macri’s strict pro-business policy stance. The inauguration will take place around midday on Tuesday.

Residents in parts of eastern Australia evacuated their homes on Tuesday as soaring temperatures and strong winds threatened to fan bushfires in a giant blaze north of Sydney, the country’s biggest city.

Air quality in parts of Sydney plunged as the city awoke to another thick blanket of smoke, disrupting transport services and prompting health warnings from authorities.

More than 100 fires are ablaze in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states in eastern Australia, many of which have been burning since November. The fires have killed at least four people, destroyed more than 680 homes and burned more than 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of bushland.

After a brief respite over the weekend, conditions are set to worsen on Tuesday as temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and winds pick up, stoking fears that fires could spread to more populated areas.

Such forecasts have heightened worries about a so-called megablaze burning north of Sydney.

Stretching for more than 60 km (37.2 miles), the firefront in the Hawkesbury region, about 50 km north west of Sydney, could grow if the forecasted winds arrive, authorities have warned.

While there is no official evacuation order, many locals have decided to leave their homes, Hawkesbury Mayor Barry Calvert told Reuters.

“It is eerie, many people have decided to leave, and I’m going to do the same,” said Calvert.

“I’ve been through this before about 20 years ago when I stood outside my house looking at flames 50 feet high, I decided then that I would leave early if it happened again.”

While conditions are not expected to reach the higher “catastrophic fire danger” hit last month, authorities said the recent hot, dry weather has increased the expanse of potential fireground.

“There are some that are much closer and with greater potential to impact on more densely populated or highly populated areas,” said NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

Keen to reassure locals, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there were 111 aircraft ready to join firefighting efforts if needed.

Bushfires are common in Australia’s hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires in the southern spring is unprecedented. Experts have said climate change has left bushland tinder-dry.

The wildfires have blanketed Sydney – home to more than 5 million people – in smoke and ash for more than two weeks, turning the daytime sky orange, obscuring visibility and prompting commuters to wear breathing masks.

Sydney’s air quality index readings in some parts of the city on Tuesday were 11 times the recommended safe levels, government data showed.

The thick haze forced widespread transport disruptions, with ferries suspended and trains experiencing lengthy delays.

“Remain inside with the windows and doors closed, preferably in an air-conditioned building,” the NSW state government’s health department said.

Federal authorities are investigating a cyberattack on the city of Pensacola, Florida, home to the naval air station where a Saudi flight student killed three sailors and wounded eight others on Friday.
                   
A spokeswoman for the city said federal authorities were alerted to the cyberattack as a precaution, in light of the deadly violence at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
                   
City officials became aware of the attack early Saturday morning, hours after the shooting, but expressed caution about linking the two incidents _ although they were not prepared to outright dismiss any connections.
                   
Much of the city’s computer systems remained offline Monday morning. However, city officials stressed that all emergency services were running, including 911 services.
                   
Some phone lines to city offices were not working as the city and federal authorities continued their investigation. The city’s email and other electronic services were down until further notice.

As 2019 draws to a close, the U.S. economy is posting strong numbers, capping a remarkable 11-year streak of expansion. President Donald Trump argues that’s why he deserves to win reelection in 2020. But as VOA’s Ardita Dunellari explains, there are dangers ahead that could rattle both the economy and the president’s reelection message.

Soccer wasn’t always Lionel Messi’s favorite activity.

When he was a child in the modest neighborhood of La Bajada in his Argentine hometown of Rosario, he spent his time bicycling with friends, building forts out of branches and stones, playing hide and seek – and occasionally stealing lemons from a neighbor to make juice.

Those stories and others are the focus of a new tour being offered by Rosario to celebrate their 32-year-old hometown hero, an international sports superstar who just won an unprecedented sixth Golden Ball as world soccer’s player of the year.

The tour put together by Rosario’s city hall is free of charge and available in an app translated into several languages, guiding fans through 0 stops.

Few houses are higher than two stories in La Bajada, a middle-class neighborhood in the city that is 186 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of Buenos Aires.

Halfway down Israel street stands a gray house, closed off by shut curtains and protected by railings. There is no sign outside indicating it was Messi’s home, and no one lives there now, though it still belongs to his family.

The neighbors aren’t so shy about the Messi connection, however. Colorful paintings dedicated to the soccer star stand in front of houses and there are sidewalks colored in the blue and white of Argentina’s national team with Messi’s jersey number, 10, painted in black.

Messi’s neighbors and friends are often willing to share stories with visitors.

“Leo was normal and ordinary like other people here,” Diego Vallejos, one of Messi’s childhood friends, told The Associated Press on a sandy soccer field of the El Campito club as three youngsters played soccer.

“We fell, we scratched ourselves riding bikes. We went to the street with water bombs and threw them at buses,” said Vallejos, who is one year older than Messi.

Also are on the tour are the school Messi attended and the Abanderado Grandoli club, where he learned his first soccer moves.

The city long had a somewhat distant relationship with Messi, and officials say the tour seeks to change that. Rosario’s city hall said Messi’s family did not take part in the creation of the tour.

“What we want to emphasize is that Leo is a product of his city, and that there is a life and many stories behind the superstar,” said Santiago Valenti with Rosario’s tourism agency.

Messi was born June 24, 1987, in the Hospital Italiano Garibaldi in Rosario. He lived in the city until 2000, when he moved to Barcelona.

A recently opened sports museum, a few blocks from Messi’s old house, offers an interactive tour of the lives of local stars in racing, boxing, basketball and soccer.

Messi’s section of the museum is introduced by a painting that mixes monuments from Rosario and Barcelona, and the sentence: “All that I did, I did for soccer.” Two giant screens display goals and testimonials from his teammates.

“The idea is not to pay a tribute to his sporting success,” said museum coordinator Juan Echeverria. “It is to value the path he walked, everything that an athlete has to go through to get to the tip of the iceberg that we see when he is on the podium.”

The museum has contacted Messi’s family and the player’s father said he would donate more memorabilia.

One of items on display is a small red coat with a white collar. Below it is Messi’s official register as a Newell’s Old Boys academy player and a picture of him smiling.

Downtown is the Malvinas compound where Newell’s has its soccer academy. It was there the young Messi was filmed out-dribbling much bigger opponents.

“This is where it all started,” said Lisandro Conte, an employee at the academy.

Messi did not play for Newell’s. “At that time there were players who looked more promising, and the bet was placed on them,” Conte said

Still, Messi has said he wants to finish his career at Newell’s, playing for his hometown club in his own country after a professional career in Barcelona’s storied Spanish league team.

Fans visiting Rosario might even be able to catch a match between academy teams like the recent clash between Newell’s and arch-rival Rosario Central. Among the 14 youngsters chasing the ball might be Rosario’s next star.
   

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released information on Sunday about her past legal work, showing nearly $2 million in compensation from dozens of clients, as a dispute intensified with her rival Pete Buttigieg over transparency.

Warren, a leading candidate among the 15 Democrats vying for the party’s nomination to take on President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, had already put out 11 years of tax returns in April and called on other candidates to follow suit.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has said in recent days that Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, should release older tax documents detailing her corporate legal work.

In return, Warren has called on Buttigieg to allow media coverage of his private donor events and to disclose information about his past work at the consultancy company McKinsey. Warren does not hold big-ticket fundraisers and has focused her campaign on combating Washington corruption and corporate greed.

Buttigieg’s campaign said on Saturday it was working on making the details of his employment at McKinsey “fully transparent” and called on Warren to match that by releasing her tax returns covering her corporate legal work.

On Sunday, in a 15-page document, Warren’s campaign provided examples of her legal work, some of which dated back to 1985, in capacities including as a counsel, consultant and expert witness, giving information about the cases and how much she was compensated.

The document included dozens of cases, some of which Warren took on a pro-bono basis and was not compensated for. In some cases, she worked with a group of consultants. The document showed a total of nearly $2 million in compensation.

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll on Thursday showed that support for Warren dropped nationally to its lowest level in four months, as she came under attack over her proposal to extend government-paid healthcare to all Americans, deemed too costly by her rivals for the nomination.

Warren, 70, is still among the leaders in opinion polls in Iowa, which kicks off the Democratic nominating contests on Feb. 3, and in other early voting states. Buttigieg, 37, who had campaign stops this weekend in Iowa, has surged into the lead in recent opinion polls there.

Kenyan rescuers digging through the rubble of a six-story building found two survivors alive Sunday, two days after it collapsed in Nairobi and killed at least five people and injured 31 others.

Authorities said 24 people were still missing. When the two survivors were found Sunday morning, a crowd of onlookers burst into cheers and clapping.

Rescuers including the military had said they were communicating with people believed to be trapped in pockets of debris.

Building collapses are common in Nairobi, where housing is in high demand and unscrupulous developers often bypass regulations.

After eight buildings collapsed and killed 15 people in Kenya in 2015, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered an audit of all the country’s buildings to see if they were up to code. The National Construction Authority found that 58% of buildings in Nairobi were unfit for habitation.

On Friday, Nairobi authorities said more than 20 people had been rescued, with some searchers using their bare hands to pick through the debris. Eight people were taken to a hospital, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse. Officials said 57 rooms had been rented out in the building. The Red Cross said 22 families lived there.

Myanmar leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi  departed on Sunday for the U.N.’s top court in The Hague to defend the country against charges of genocide of its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi was pictured smiling as she walked through the airport in the nation’s capital, Naypyitaw, flanked by officials, a day after thousands rallied in the city to support her and a prayer ceremony was held in her name.

Crowds are expected to gather again in the afternoon to send off several dozen supporters who will travel to The Hague in the Netherlands and demonstrations are planned throughout the coming week, with hearings set for Dec. 10 to 12.

Gambia, a tiny, mainly Muslim West African country, filed a lawsuit in November accusing Buddhist-majority Myanmar of genocide, the most serious international crime, against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

During three days of hearings, it will ask the 16-member panel of U.N judges at the International Criminal Court of Justice to impose “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya before the case can be heard in full.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military-led crackdown the U.N has said was executed with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rape.

Despite international condemnation over the campaign, Suu Kyi, whose government has defended the campaign as a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya militants, remains overwhelmingly popular at home.

On Saturday, thousands rallied in Naypyitaw while senior officials held a prayer ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in the former capital of Yangon.

Among them was religion minister Thura Aung Ko, who was been vocal in his disdain for the minority and last year said refugees in the camps in Bangladesh were being “brainwashed” into “marching” on Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Suu Kyi spent the eve of her departure meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, with both countries pledging stronger ties, according to Zhao Lijian, deputy director general of the information department at China’s foreign ministry.

“Aung San Suu Kyi thanked China for its strong support and help in safeguarding national sovereignty, opposing foreign interference, and promoting economic and social development,” he said on Twitter on Sunday.

Pro-Suu Kyi demonstrations have been held in major towns and cities since the news was announced that she would attend the hearings in person.

Billboards with her picture and the words”stand with Suu Kyi” have also been erected around the country, including in historic former capital Bagan, the country’s major attraction for tourists who come to see the centuries-old temples.

Four gold miners trapped underground after a tremor caused a rockfall in northeast South Africa have been found dead, their union said Sunday.

A fifth miner was rescued with serious injuries on Friday after the accident at the Tau Lekoa Mine in the town of Orkney, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said.

“The four mineworkers were found dead,” a union statement said after the rescue team lost contact with the four men deep underground early Saturday.

“The last person we talked to said: ‘We are suffocating please, bring us some oxygen’,” said NUM president Joseph Montisetse.

Deadly accidents involving miners are common in South Africa, which has the deepest mines in the world.

Last year 81 people died in the country’s mines, according to the department of mineral resources.

As reports about the threat of far-right recruitment among Europe’s law enforcement and military grow, German armed forces, or Bundeswehr, told VOA that they are working to keep far-right extremists away from their units or to remove them once they have been identified. 
 
A spokesperson for the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) told VOA the military was expanding its cooperation with German security authorities and international partners to analyze links and connections of suspected right-wing extremists to try to expose them. 
 
“There is no place whatsoever for extremists in any form, but especially right-wing extremists, in the Bundeswehr with its over 250,000 members,” the MAD spokesman, who did not wish to be named, said. 
 
He said the military has taken several approaches to prevent infiltration by far-right extremists, including carrying out 16,000 security checks annually for all its applicants. 
 
“We also take other preventive measures, aiming to encourage an improved reporting culture within the units through advisories, talks and our own publications,” the spokesperson added. 

German media Sunday reported that the Bundeswehr had suspended an officer of its elite special forces, or Kommando Spezialkräfte, who had ties to right-wing elements. The Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported the officer and two other soldiers had been covertly investigated for months, which had exposed their neo-Nazi activities. 
 
On Wednesday, outrage erupted on social media after the Bundeswehr posted on its Instagram channel a picture of a Nazi swastika uniform with the word “retro” on the top of it. Following the backlash, the Bundeswehr removed the post and apologized, saying its intention in the post was to show in the photo “a centuries-long influence of uniforms on fashion.” 
 
VOA reached out to the German military officials for a comment on the officer’s suspension, but a Military Counterintelligence Service spokesperson said they were unable to comment on “specific operations.” 
 
Far-right tendencies 
 
In recent years, some German officials and counterextremism experts have cautioned against the rise in anti-Semitic and anti-immigration rhetoric among the country’s law enforcement following multiple reports of members showing far-right extremist tendencies. 
 
Fabian Virchow, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf and the director of the Research Unit on Right Wing Extremism, told VOA that many far-right groups see police and the military as attractive recruitment grounds to expand their membership and enforce their ideology. 
 
As an example, Virchow said, Alternative for Germany, a right-wing political party founded in 2013, has named a number of police officers as its leading personnel. 
 
“Far-right extremists guess rightly that these two bodies are, on average, more conservative than the rest of the society. This refers mainly to the idea of law and order, which, from the perception of many, has been violated, especially during the crisis of the migration regime in 2015,” he said. 
 
The penetration of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis into Germany’s law enforcement gained attention in April 2017, when German army officer Franco A. was accused of plotting a right-wing terror attack he seemingly hoped would be mistaken for Islamist extremism. 

The chief of MAD, Christof Gramm, recently said 20 soldiers at Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), the special forces command composed of soldiers selected from the Bundeswehr, are under investigation for suspicious ties to right-wing extremists. 
 
Earlier this year, MAD admitted it had underreported the numbers of alleged cases, saying it could be as many as 450, newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported. Of those cases, MAD said 64 were suspected of membership in the Identitarian movement, while another 64 were tied to Reichsbürger. 
 
Originating in France and active in Germany since 2012, Identitarian is a right-wing movement asserting the need to preserve the “European” culture from immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants. Reichsbürger, another far-right group, does not recognize the legitimacy of the modern German state, but instead believes in reviving the 1871 borders of the German empire. 
 
Virchow, of the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, said the risk of radicalization in the military has been downplayed. He said many officials fear that an investigation could lead to exposing structural problems with racism in the police. 
 
“A very urgent task to do should be a scientific investigation of to what an extent police units hold racist and anti-Semitic ideas. To make sure that the police and the military, as the two armed structures in society, stay absolutely loyal to democracy and actively defend it is key,” he said. 
 
Transnational issue 
 
Some experts say combating the threat of right-wing infiltration of the police will likely require collective action from European countries. They say similar reports of radicalization among law enforcement of other European countries show the issue is transnational. 

The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, known as Europol, concluded that violence related to right-wing extremism was rising in many EU states, according to a confidential report cited by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the country’s main daily newspapers, in September. 
 
The report said the groups were pursuing military and police members to boost their “combat skills.” 
 
Daniel Koehler, the director of the German Institute in Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies (GIRDS), told VOA that by infiltrating law enforcement and the military of European countries, right-wing groups are trying to secure a long-term power base and shield themselves against any potential future repression by their governments. 
 
“The hope to easily connect to soldiers and police officers ideologically is not that far off, since the far right’s approach through patriotism, nationalism, anti-communism or even blatant racism and anti-Semitism, as well as a positive stance towards violence, might resonate with many others who feel attracted to serve in the military or police,” Koehler said. 
 
He said certain European countries have taken important steps in countering this potential threat, particularly in the United Kingdom, where mandatory training is provided to officers to more easily spot far-right radicalization. 
 
However, “a more proactive approach” to embedding the concept of countering violent extremism (CVE) — actions to thwart extremist efforts to recruit, radicalize and mobilize followers to violence — within law enforcement “should be taken,” he said.  

North Korea said Sunday that it had carried out a “very important test” at its long-range rocket launch site.

The Korean Central News Agency said the test was conducted at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground on Saturday afternoon. It said the result of the test was reported to the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The test results will have “an important effect on changing the strategic position of [North Korea] once again in the near future,” the agency reported. 

The report didn’t say what the test entailed. But media reports said a new satellite image indicated North Korea might be preparing to resume testing engines used to power satellite launchers at the site.

The reported test came as North Korea is stepping up pressure on the U.S. to make concessions in stalled nuclear talks.

The U.N. bans North Korea from launching satellites because it is considered a test of long-range missile technology.

After repeated failures, North Korea successfully put a satellite into orbit for the first time in 2012 in a launch from the same site. North Korea had another successful satellite launch in 2016. 

Marchers are again expected to fill Hong Kong streets in a rally Sunday that will test the enduring appeal of the city’s protest movement marking a half year of demonstrations.

Police granted approval for the march, which could boost participant numbers.

The rally was called by the Civil Human Rights Front, a group that has organized some of the biggest demonstrations since hundreds of thousands of protesters first marched on June 9.

That rally protested now-withdrawn government proposals that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts in mainland China.

The movement has snowballed from there into a sustained challenge to the government of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory and communist leaders in Beijing.

Strikes disrupted weekend travel around France on Saturday as truckers blocked highways and most trains remained at a standstill because of worker anger at President Emmanuel Macron’s policies.

Meanwhile, yellow vest protesters held their weekly demonstrations over economic injustice in Paris and other cities, under the close watch of police. The marchers appear to be emboldened by the biggest national protests in years Thursday that kicked off a mass movement against the government’s plan to redesign the national retirement system.

As the strikes entered a third day Saturday, tourists and shoppers faced shuttered subway lines around Paris and near-empty train stations.

Other groups are joining the fray, too.

Truckers striking over a fuel tax hike disrupted traffic on highways from Provence in the southeast to Normandy in the northwest. A similar fuel tax is what unleashed the yellow vest movement a year ago, and this convergence of grievances could pose a major new threat to Macron’s presidency.

The travel chaos is not deterring the government so far, though. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe plainly told the French in a nationwide address Friday: “You’re going to have to work longer.”

He will present details of the plan next week. The government says it won’t raise the official retirement age of 62 but the plan is expected to including financial conditions to encourage people to work longer. Philippe did offer one olive branch, saying the changes would be progressive so that they don’t become “brutal.”

Macron says the reform, which will streamline a convoluted system of 42 special pension plans, will make the system more fair and financially sustainable.

Unions, however, see the plan as a t hreat to hard-fought workers’ rights, and are digging in for what they hope is a protracted strike. They also plan new nationwide retirement protests Tuesday, despite the tear gas and rioting that marred the edges of the Paris march Thursday.

In a society accustomed to strikes and workers rights, many people have supported the labor action, though that sentiment is likely to fade if the transport shutdown continues through next week.

“I knew it was going to last … but I did not expect it to be that chaotic,” Ley Basaki, who lives in the Paris suburb of Villemomble and struggles to get to and from work in the capital, told The Associated Press on Saturday at the Gare de l’Est train station. “There is absolutely nothing here, nothing, nothing. There is no bus, nothing.”

Many travelers are using technology and social networks to find ways around the strike — working from home, using ride-sharing apps and riding shared bikes or electric scooters.

But some are using technology to support the strike: A group of activist gamers is raising money via a marathon session on game-streaming site Twitch. Their manifesto says: “In the face of powers-that-be who are hardening their line and economic insecurity that is intensifying in all layers of the population,” they are trying to “occupy other spaces for mobilization and invent other ways of joining the movement.”

Only after finding safety in numbers, joining hundreds of other pro-government protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday, did Reddy Lin drum up the courage to slip into her red T-shirt marked, “China, I love you” and glue a heart-shaped Chinese-flag sticker on her face.

But for the train ride home, the teacher said she’d be taking all her pro-China garb off again. The risk of running into supporters from the rival camp, those who oppose China’s communist rulers, was simply too great, she said.

“It’s very dangerous. They’ll beat you,” she said. “They’re brutes.”

Lin and hundreds of other protesters waving red Chinese flags packed a Hong Kong park to vociferously denounce what they say is a reign of terror being imposed on the city by months of anti-government demonstrations. The protest highlighted the widening gulf between the pro- and anti-government camps in Hong Kong, with divisions that appear irreconcilable.

Compared to the hundreds of anti-government rallies that have gripped Hong Kong since June, the pro-China demonstration was like stepping through a looking glass. The Hong Kong police were praised as saviors, not bullies. China was presented as a country to love, not fear. Hong Kong was described as a city freer than most, instead of a place losing its liberties.

Chief among the demonstrators’ complaints was that they have grown scared of the black-clad, frequently violent hard core of the anti-government movement.

Calling them “rioters,” many said hard-line protesters are destroying Hong Kong’s freedoms, rather than protecting them, by resorting to violence.

In chants, the crowd called anti-government protesters “cockroaches.” Photos displayed at the rally showed the bloodied faces of people who have been attacked during protests. They have included people who’ve been deemed by mobs to be unsympathetic to the anti-government movement, including a man who was doused with inflammable liquid and set on fire last month.

“They destroy everything,” fumed Tata Tsg, a retiree at the rally who said she is now too scared to go out in the evenings. “Those bastards have freedom, I have no freedom.”

Tsg and two friends who joined her, sisters Angie and Winnie Choi, said it marked the first time that any of them, all in their fifties, had ever taken part in a protest. Angie Choi carried a poster marked: “Extreme rioters. Hong Kong suffers.”

Lin, the civics teacher who traveled from the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen for the protest in a small square amid Hong Kong tower blocks, collected hundreds of signatures for ‘Thank you’ letters she said she’ll mail to the territory’s much-maligned police force.

“They are working very hard,” she said. Lin said her 20-year-old son, who studies at a Hong Kong university, was too afraid to join her at the demonstration, scared that he might be recognized by classmates and “be beaten.”

The police force has become hated by many anti-government protesters, furious over riot officers’ liberal use of choking tear gas and thousands of often muscular arrests. A call for an independent probe of police behavior features among the anti-government movement’s main demands.

Hong Kong’s new police commissioner, Chris Tang, said Saturday in Beijing that he’ll adopt both “hard and soft approaches” for policing protests. He spoke after his first meetings with Chinese officials since his appointment last month.

Hurling gasoline bombs or stones are “violent actions we will not tolerate,” he said. “But for other incidents, such as protesters walking off-road or other minor incidents, we will take humanistic and flexible approaches.”

Those pledges will be tested by a rally Sunday of the anti-government movement that will offer a fresh gauge of its appeal and ability to continue mobilizing support.

At the pro-government rally, some demonstrators said they don’t feel great admiration for embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam or her Communist Party bosses in Beijing but feel such great anger about protest violence that they had to turn out.

But leaving the rally, many demonstrators furled and put away their Chinese flags and peeled off red stickers they’d been wearing, for fear of running into opponents on their rides home.

“Who is more scary: the communists or the rioters?” said retiree Peter Pang. “I don’t like the government very much but I don’t like rioters even more.”

The Minnesota National Guard says the three soldiers who were killed when their helicopter crashed near St. Cloud this week were part of a unit that returned last May from a nine-month deployment to the Middle East.

The Guard identified the men who were killed in Thursday’s crash as Chief Warrant Officers 2nd Class James A. Rogers Jr., 28, and Charles P. Nord, 30, and Sgt. Kort M. Plantenberg, 28.

The Guard tweeted that during their unit’s recent Middle East deployment, it conducted medical evacuations in support of operations Spartan Shield and Inherent Resolve.

All three soldiers were assigned to Company C, 2-211th General Support Aviation Battalion, which is based in the central Minnesota city of St. Cloud.

The soldiers were killed when their Black Hawk crashed in a field about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of St. Cloud, which is where it had taken off from. The Guard says the crash happened during a routine maintenance test flight.

A team from Fort Rucker, Alabama, was sent to Minnesota to determine why the crash happened.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who served in the Guard for 24 years, ordered flags flown at half-staff at state and federal buildings throughout Minnesota from 2:05 p.m. Friday until 2:05 p.m. Monday. That was the time on Thursday when the Guard lost contact with the crew.

 Samoa said Saturday the death toll from measles has risen to 65.  Most of the victims were young children.

The Health Ministry said 103 new cases have been reported since Friday.

The new figures were released after a two-day lockdown, allowing the government to conduct a mass immunization campaign.

The ministry said almost 90% of its population has received the measles vaccine.

The South Pacific island has declared a state of emergency as the virus has infected more than 4,500 people.  

Schools have been temporarily closed.    

“The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world’s most vulnerable children,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus, the World Health Organization director-general, said earlier this week. “To save lives, we must ensure everyone can benefit from vaccines – which means investing in immunization and quality health care as a right for all.”

The worldwide measles vaccination rate has “stagnated for almost a decade,” WHO reports.

Samoa’s measles vaccination rate tumbled from 59% in 2017 to 31 % in 2018, according to WHO and UNICEF, “largely due to misinformation and mistrust among parents.”

This year the United States reported the most cases of measles in 25 years.

Last year, four European countries — Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and the United Kingdom — lost their measles elimination status after “protracted outbreaks of the disease,” according to WHO.