The U.S. aircraft carrier strike group Abraham Lincoln sailed through the vital Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, U.S. officials told Reuters, amid simmering tensions between Iran and the United States.

Tensions in the Gulf have risen since attacks on oil tankers this summer, including off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, and a major assault on energy facilities in Saudi Arabia. Washington has blamed Iran, which has denied being behind the attacks on global energy infrastructure.

The commander overseeing U.S. naval forces in the Middle East told Reuters in May that he would send an aircraft carrier through the Strait of Hormuz if needed.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Navy said the Lincoln transited through the Strait into the Gulf.

About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States has deployed thousands of additional military forces in the Middle East, including bombers and air defense personnel, to act as a deterrent against what Washington says is provocative Iranian behavior.

The latest move comes as protests, sparked by gasoline price hikes, have spread across Iran since Friday, with demonstrators demanding that clerical leaders step down.

Waiting to Buy Fighter Jets

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. military released a report that said Iran is likely to buy fighter jets and battle tanks from Russia and China when a United Nations-imposed arms embargo on Tehran — under the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers — is lifted next year.

While the U.N. arms embargo on Iran is supposed to be lifted in October 2020, five years after the nuclear deal took effect, it is questionable whether that will transpire given the recent unraveling of the accord.

The report said that Iran was already in discussions with Russia, and China to a lesser extent, to buy military hardware.

Earlier this month, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would regain access to the international arms market later next year if it stuck to the 2015 nuclear deal and this would prove “a huge political success.”

The nearly 120-page report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency detailed Iranian military strategy and capabilities.

According to the report, Iran will deploy increasing numbers of more accurate and lethal ballistic missiles in the future and field new land-attack cruise missiles. And over the next decade, Iran’s military could consider taking part in multilateral peace-keeping missions and building permanent bases in allied countries, the report said.

 

One of only four oar makers for Venice’s famed gondoliers, Paolo Brandolisio wades through his ground-floor workshop for the third time in a week of record-breaking floods, despairing of any help from national or local institutions.

“If these phenomena continue to repeat themselves, you have to think about how to defend yourself,” he says. “Because the defenses that the politicians have made don’t seem to be nearly enough.

“You have to think of yourself,” he repeats.

Venetians are fed up with what they see as inadequate responses to the city’s mounting problems: record-breaking flooding, environmental and safety threats from cruise ship traffic, and the burden on services from over-tourism.

They feel largely left to their own devices, with ever-fewer Venetians living in the historic part of the city to defend its interests and keep it from becoming mainly a tourist domain.

The historic flooding this week — marked by three floods over 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) and the highest in 53 years at 1.87 meters (6 feet, 1 inch) — has sharpened calls to create an administration that recognizes the uniqueness of Venice, for both its concentration of treasures and its increasing vulnerability.

Flood damage has been estimated at hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), but the true scope will only become clear with time. Architectural masterpieces like St. Mark’s Cathedral still need to be fully inspected and damaged manuscripts from the Music Conservatory library treated by experts — not to mention the personal losses suffered by thousands of residents and businesses.

“I feel ashamed,” said Fabio Moretti, the president of Venice’s historic Academy of Fine Arts that was once presided over by Tiepolo and Canova. “These places are left in our custody. They don’t belong to us. They belong to humanity. It is a heritage that needs to be preserved.”

‘Sick governance’

The frustration goes far beyond the failure to complete and activate 78 underwater barriers that were designed to prevent just the kind of damage that Venice has endured this week. With the system not yet completed or even partially tested after 16 years of work and 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) invested, many are skeptical it will even work.

“This is a climate emergency. This is sick governance of the city,” said Jane Da Mosto, an environmental scientist and executive director of the NGO “We Are Here Venice,” whose aim it is to keep Venice a living city as opposed to a museum or theme park.

Brandolisio, the oar builder, sees systemic lapses in the official response, including the failure of local authorities to organize services immediately for those in need, an absence filled by volunteers. That included both a network of students who helped clear out waterlogged property for those in need and professionals like water-taxi drivers who offered transport during the emergency.

For now, he is taking matters into his own hands.

To protect his bottega where he not only makes oars but carves ornamental oar posts for gondolas or as sculpture, Brandolisio said he will have to consider raising the floor by at least 20 centimeters and buying a pump — precautions he never previously deemed necessary.

“I think I will lose at least two or three weeks of work,” he said. “I will have to dry everything. Lots of things fell into the water, so I need to clean all the tools that can get rusty. I need to take care of wood that got wet, which I can’t use because it cannot be glued.”

At the public level, proposals for better administering the city including granting some level of autonomy to Venice, already enjoyed by some Italian regions like Trentino-Alto-Adige with its German-speaking minority, or offering tax breaks to encourage Venice’s repopulation.

Shrinking populations

Just 53,000 people live in the historic part of the city that tourists know as Venice, down by a third from a generation ago and dropping by about 1,000 people a year. The population of the lagoon islands — including glass-making Murano and the Lido beach destination — is just under 30,000, and dwindling too.

That means fewer people watching the neighborhood, monitoring for public maintenance issues or neighbors in need. Many leave because of the increased expense or the daily difficulties in living in a city of canals, which can make even a simple errand a minor odyssey.

Activists also say local politicians are more beholden to the city’s mainland population, which has jumped to 180,000 people not directly affected, for the most part, by the same issues as the lagoon dwellers.

They are pushing for passage of a referendum on Dec. 1 that would give the historic center and islands their own administration, separate from that serving more populous Mestre and the industrial port of Marghera. Those areas were annexed to Venice by the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and not necessarily a natural fit.

“It is precisely because we also have a climate emergency that this kind of thing is more important,” Da Mosto said.

“The only thing we can do for the climate is to prepare. That requires appropriate policies and investments and responsible engineering. And because the political context of Venice is so wrong, Venice doesn’t have a chance at the moment.”
 

The federal government wants a judge to reject Nevada’s request for a court order to remove weapons-grade plutonium from a site north of Las Vegas, arguing that officials have already promised that no more will be shipped to the state.
                   
In documents filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Reno, the federal government brands as “conjectural” or “hypothetical” state claims that residents are harmed by radiation from the one-half metric ton of plutonium secretly trucked a year ago from South Carolina to Nevada.
                   
The decision cannot be undone, the material is already in the state and the federal government has sovereign immunity, meaning the state can’t force the federal government to act, the motion contends.
                   
The Department of Energy “routinely and safely transports nuclear materials into and out of Nevada and stores classified amounts of plutonium in Nevada,” it added.
                   
State Attorney General Aaron Ford is pressing for the court order, saying the state was not informed of the shipments until they had already been made and can’t trust the federal agency to abide by after-the-fact promises.
                   
“While we appreciate the Department of Energy’s new position that it will not ship additional plutonium here, a court order to this effect will hold the department accountable,” Ford said Monday in a statement.
                   
The state maintains the Energy Department failed to conduct proper environmental reviews, and that an accident transporting, handling or storing the highly radioactive material could permanently harm Las Vegas, home to 2.2 million people and host to more than 40 million tourists a year.
                   
“The long-term storage of this plutonium has exposed, and will continue to expose Nevada’s property, lands, water, air and citizens to greater radiological pollution and increased risk of ecological and economic catastrophe,” state attorneys said in documents filed Oct. 23.
                   
The Energy Department disclosed last January that the plutonium had been taken in late 2018 to a specialized facility at the vast Nevada National Security Site, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The site was used to conduct nuclear weapons tests from 1945 to 1992.
                   
The U.S. government had been ordered by a federal judge in South Carolina to remove a metric ton (2,204 pounds) of plutonium from the Savannah River nuclear weapons refining complex by 2020, and to remove another 5 metric tons (11,020 pounds) in future years.
                   
The Energy Department says it plans to eventually move the plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry in April promised to send no more plutonium to Nevada and to remove the amount already delivered by 2027.
                   
A spokeswoman for Democratic Sen. Catherine Marie Cortez Masto of Nevada said last week that Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Perry, said he will abide by the department’s promise to remove the plutonium.

Pakistan’s former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who is serving a seven-year jail term for corruption and money laundering, left for London Tuesday to receive medical treatment there.

Sharif boarded an air-ambulance arranged by his family from his native city of Lahore. His younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, the head of the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, also accompanied the ailing politician.

The 69-year-old Sharif was released on bail last month on medical grounds.  But his personal doctors and legal aides had maintained from the outset his deteriorating health and multiple medical complications required him to seek treatment of his choice outside Pakistan.  

However, Sharif could not undertake the journey until last Saturday when a high court responded to his request and ordered the government to remove his name from a so-called “exit control list” that prevents suspects or convicts from leaving Pakistan.

The judicial verdict gave Sharif four weeks to receive treatment abroad, with the court saying the duration can be extended further if required. But it placed certain conditions to bind Sharif to return to Pakistan after receiving the treatment to serve his prison sentence and face several other ongoing cases of corruption against him, explained the attorney general following the verdict.  

Sharif’s party insists he has no plans to seek exile and will return home.

But government officials suspect those claims, saying five Sharif family members, including his two sons, previously left Pakistan and have not returned to appear in courts in corruption cases against them. The London-based family members have all been declared absconders by Pakistani courts.

Sharif was forced by the Supreme Court to step down from office in 2017 for concealing foreign family assets before he was convicted and sentenced to a seven-year jail term by an anti-graft court a year later for corruption and money laundering.

He was thrice elected as prime minister since the early 1990s but all of his administrations ended prematurely amid allegations of widespread corruption and poor governance, though Sharif and his party reject the charges as politically motivated.
 

Waves of student protesters attempted daring escapes past police lines, while less than 200 others remain barricaded inside a Hong Kong University, which has been surrounded by riot police since Sunday.

VOA Cantonese Service reporter Iris Tong, who was with students inside the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, described scenes of desperation, with at least two young teenagers threatening suicide. 

“I saw one boy (threaten) to use a knife on his neck,” Tong says. “I didn’t see any blood from his neck, but he just talked about how he wanted to kill himself. But other people said it wasn’t necessary for him to do that and told him to put down the knife.” 

“I can feel they are hopeless,” she said. “It’s quite sad.”

Since Sunday, police have ordered the protesters to drop their homemade weapons and leave the campus via a single exit, where they likely would face riot-related charges. As of early Tuesday, hundreds had agreed to leave the school following negotiations by local officials and community leaders.

Many other students have attempted to escape to freedom — some by sliding down ropes to waiting motorcycles, which tried to zoom past the security cordon that surrounds the campus. Police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at those who attempt to flee.

Last week, hundreds of students barricades themselves on the campus, collecting makeshift weapons including bricks, arrows, and molotov cocktails. Now, only “100-something” protesters remain, says Tong. “But less than half of them can go to the frontlines,” she estimates. 

Lam comments

Hong Kong’s executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday made her first substantial remarks on the standoff, saying she is “extremely worried” and hopes the situation can be resolved peacefully.

But the Beijing-friendly Lam also defended police actions, saying she was shocked that the students had turned the campus into a “weapons factory.” About 600 protesters have left the campus so far, Lam said. 

The scene around the campus was relatively calm as of midday Tuesday. A night earlier, waves of protesters tried unsuccessfully to breach police lines and reach the campus with supplies. Protesters lobbed petrol bombs at police and set obstructions on the street, but were eventually turned back by the police, who fired water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. 

Escalation

The clashes are some of the worst violence since anti-government protests began in Hong Kong five months ago.

The protests started in opposition to a proposed bill that would have allowed Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to the mainland. The protests quickly morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to growing Chinese influence.

A smaller group of hardcore protesters have also increasingly engaged in more aggressive tactics — clashing with police, destroying public infrastructure, and vandalizing symbols of state power. The protesters have defended the tactics as a necessary response to police violence and the government’s refusal to make political concessions.

Beijing standing firm

Neither Beijing nor Hong Kong authorities show signs of giving in.

Earlier this week, Hong Kong’s High Court ruled that the government’s ban on face masks was unconstitutional. The face mask ban, which went into effect last month, punished offenders with up to a year in prison.

But China’s top legislature on Tuesday slammed the court ruling, insisting Hong Kong courts have no authority to rule on the legality of legislation.

Beijing’s statement fundamentally threatens the rule of law in Hong Kong, says Angel Wong, a Hong Kong lawyer.

“This completely changes our understanding of our legal system,” says Wong. “It makes us worry what Beijing will do to take away the power of the Hong Kong court(s).”

Many Hong Kongers are outraged by the steady erosion of the  “one country, two systems” policy that Beijing has used to govern Hong Kong since Britain handed it over to China in 1997.

The last time Vararunee Khonchanath was in the presence of a pope was before she was born just over 35 years ago, but when Pope Francis visits Bangkok later this week to bless Thailand’s tiny Catholic minority she will be singing in the choir.

A sixth-generation Catholic of Portuguese-Thai ancestry, Vararunee lives in a 250-year-old community that is as old as the Thai capital itself. During the previous papal visit, back in 1984, Vararunee’s pregnant mother was among the congregation.

“I was in my mum’s tummy as she attended the mass when His Holiness John Paul II visited Thailand the last time,” Vararunee said, adding how honored she felt to be in the choir this time, when Pope Francis offers mass at the National Stadium.

During his visit from Nov. 20-23, Pope Francis will also celebrate mass at Assumption Cathedral in central Bangkok.

In overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand, Catholics number just a little more than 380,000 in a country of more than 65 million.

Missionaries, traders

Historians say more than 70 percent of Catholics in Thailand, like Vararunee, have foreign ancestry.

Catholicism first arrived in Siam, the old name for Thailand, in the mid 1500s with Portuguese missionaries and traders.

The Vatican formally established its “Mission de Siam” 350 years ago during the reign of King Narai, an anniversary that coincides with the visit of Pope Francis that begins on Wednesday.

While missionaries failed to achieve mass conversions, they were largely tolerated by the Buddhist majority and particularly the royal court.

“In the past, many Catholics from places like Japan and Vietnam, migrated to this land to escape religious persecution,” said Puttipong Puttansri, a historian at the Archdiocese of Bangkok Historical Archive.

Catholics have over the years built schools and hospitals, some of which are still well known and respected today.

“For many Thais, Catholicism is synonymous with schools,” Puttipong said.

Martydom

There were also spells of religious persecutions. In the late 1600s, Catholic priests were arrested and some killed out of suspicion they were working with France to colonize the country.

Similar hostility stirred in the 1940s when a nationalistic Thai government was at war with France in Indochina.

The tension resulted in the closing down of schools, confiscation of properties and the arrest of some clergy.

In 1940, seven Catholics, including three teenage girls, were killed by Thai police in the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom. Pope John Paul II later declared them martyrs.

Peace and pastries 

In the modern era, Thailand remains largely tolerant to Catholics.

Catholics in Bangkok’s historic Kudi Chin community along the Chao Praya River have mostly lived peacefully while maintaining their unique traditions and beliefs.

The district is known locally not only for Santa Cruz Church, that is the focal point for its Catholic community, but for the traditional Portuguese-influenced cupcake that is still baked there.

For the faithful such as Vararunee, the papal visit casts a light on their community and faith.

“I am very proud that we manage to hold on to our roots,” Vararunee said.

Paul McCartney is to headline the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury in June next year, the world’s largest greenfield festival, organizers announced on Monday.

“Hey Glasto – excited to be part of your Anniversary celebrations. See ya next year!” the 77-year-old former Beatle tweeted.

The “Hey Jude” hitmaker will be the headline act on the festival’s main Pyramid Stage on Saturday, June 27, according to the Glastonbury Twitter account. McCartney last appeared on the Pyramid Stage in 2004 alongside Oasis and Muse.

Glastonbury and McCartney’s representatives were not immediately available for further comment.

Tickets for the 2020 event went on sale in October and were sold out in just over half an hour, according to the festival’s website.

Glastonbury Festival was founded by farmer Michael Eavis, 83, and his late wife Jean in 1970, after they were inspired by the Bath Festival of Blues. Marc Bolan played the first event, which had an entry charge of 1 pound with free milk included.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday the U.S. is changing its position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, dismissing the State Department’s 1978 legal opinion that civilian settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are “inconsistent with international law.”  The announcement is the latest in the Trump administration’s moves that weaken Palestinian claims to statehood. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

Bolivia’s interim president Jeanine Anez was forced to suspend a trip out of the capital La Paz planned for Monday, a government spokesman said, after a threat on her life by a “criminal group.”

Anez, 52, had been due to travel to her native Beni province in northeastern Bolivia but the trip was canceled because of a credible threat, Interior Minister Arturo Murillo said at a news conference in La Paz.

Murillo said Venezuelans, Cubans, and Colombians were “involved,” without giving further details. Anez’s government on Friday asked Venezuelan officials to leave the country and accused Cuba of stoking unrest.

Both Cuba and Venezuela were close allies of socialist former president Evo Morales, who stepped down last week amid violent protests and accusations of vote-rigging in an Oct. 20 presidential election. An Organization of American States audit found irregularities in the vote.

Morales fled to Mexico but his supporters have since taken to the streets, sometimes armed with homemade weapons, barricading roads and skirmishing with security forces.

A total of 23 people have died in the unrest so far, according to a government human rights institution.

The roadblocks have caused a food and fuel crisis, resulting in long lines outside grocery stores in La Paz. A general strike called for Monday appeared by midday to have fallen flat.
Anez, a conservative former senator, took over last Tuesday.

She has promised to build bridges with Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party and hold fresh elections, albeit without the participation of Morales, who ran the country since 2006.

But attempts at dialogue with Morales’ supporters have faltered, with both sides trading accusations of fomenting violence.

Jerjes Justiniano, the newly-appointed presidency minister, said he would be advising Anez to “immediately” call an election by presidential decree, in the absence of an agreement.

Murillo said the government would ensure an election was held within the mandated 90-day limit.

“We are leaving in days,” he said. “We will have an election. The greatest honor for a Bolivian is to become president of the country but that person must win with votes, not with bullets or boots.”

Bolivia’s Roman Catholic Episcopal Conference said that, together with European Union and United Nations representatives, it would seek to bring the national government and opposition parties together for fresh talks on a roadmap for elections on Monday afternoon.

“Holding new, transparent and credible elections, is the best way to overcome differences in a democratic and peaceful way,” the Church said.

 

The United States on Monday granted another 90 days for companies to cease doing business with China’s telecoms giant Huawei, saying this would allow service providers to continue to serve rural areas.

President Donald Trump in May effectively barred Huawei from American communications networks after Washington found the company had violated US sanctions on Iran and attempted to block a subsequent investigation.

The extension, renewing one issued in August, “will allow carriers to continue to service customers in some of the most remote areas of the United States who would otherwise be left in the dark,” US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

“The department will continue to rigorously monitor sensitive technology exports to ensure that our innovations are not harnessed by those who would threaten our national security.”

American officials also claim Huawei is a tool of Beijing’s electronic espionage, making its equipment a threat to US national security — something the company denies.

Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company’s founder and CEO, was arrested in Canada last year and is now fighting extradition to the United States on fraud and conspiracy charges tied to US sanctions.

The battle over Huawei has also landed squarely in the middle of Trump’s trade battle with Beijing.

US officials initially said the two were unrelated as the Huawei actions were strictly law enforcement and national security matters but Trump has suggested a resolution could involve some common ground concerning Huawei.

Following the near-collapse of US-China trade talks in May, Washington added Huawei to a list of companies effectively barred from purchasing US technology without prior approval from the US government.

But, since companies have said they need time to begin to comply with the change, Trump has granted a series of limited reprieves, which officials say allow only “specific, limited” transactions involving exports and re-exports.

The Ukrainian journalist Oleg Sentsov, who was jailed in Russia for reporting on the country’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi were among those honored at the recent Magnitsky Awards ceremony in London. The awards pay tribute to those who risk their lives to stand up for human rights. Henry Ridgwell reports from the ceremony

The United States is “gravely concerned by the deepening political unrest and violence in Hong Kong” as the confrontation between police and protesters has escalated in recent days.

“We’ve repeatedly called for restraint from all parties in Hong Kong. Violence by any side is unacceptable. The Hong Kong government bears primary responsibility for bringing calm to Hong Kong,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday during a press briefing at the State Department.

Pompeo’s remarks came amid a dramatic escalation in unrest, with Hong Kong police threatening to fire live bullets if demonstrators did not stop using weapons in the latest anti-government protests.

“Unrest and violence cannot be resolved by law enforcement efforts alone. The government must take clear steps to address public concerns,” added the top U.S. diplomat.

Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly called on the Chinese government to honor its promises to the Hong Kong people “who want the freedoms and liberties” that they have been promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a U.N.-registered treaty.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hit out at China, pointing to leaked documents that “delineate the government’s chilling, systematic campaign against ethnic minorities in another supposedly autonomous region, Xinjiang.”

“The problem is Beijing’s efforts to erect the same kind of sinister, brutal surveillance state in Hong Kong that China is also trying to set up everywhere else,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor. “The protesters are not the problem. It is Beijing and the Hong Kong leadership who must de-escalate.”

The top Republican in the Senate called on the Trump administration to not solely focus on trade, when it comes to China, but also “make Hong Kong’s autonomy a key topic within our bilateral diplomacy.”

Polytechnic University siege

Earlier Monday, police tightened the barricade around the Polytechnic University and prevented dozens of students from breaking through police lines.

The president of the Polytechnic University said he has brokered a truce with police that would allow the hundreds of protesters trapped inside the campus to leave peacefully.

Teng Jin-Guang Teng said he received assurances from police for a temporary suspension of the use of force if the protesters do not initiate the violence.

“We have also received permission from the police for you to leave the campus peacefully, and I will personally accompany you to the police station to ensure that your case will be fairly processed,” Teng said.

It is unclear whether and when the truce was taking effect.

Dozens of student protesters, however, made another frantic attempt to escape the university that has been surrounded by riot police, as the siege on the campus entered a second day.

Waves of students fled on foot late Monday, running through clouds of tear gas as they attempted to break through police lines.

Threat of lethal force

It was the second concerted attempt by students to flee the urban campus, which has been surrounded by police who have repeatedly warned they will use lethal force.

Live feeds showed riot police chasing down students, some of whom were covered in blood. It was not immediately clear how many were arrested and how many may have escaped the campus successfully.

The clashes raised fears that the siege would end in a deadly crackdown.

Students barricaded themselves on the campus, and several others across Hong Kong, early last week, stockpiling homemade weapons such as petrol bombs, slingshots and bricks.

Early Monday, VOA saw police arrest dozens of students, who were detained with plastic wire ties around their wrists. Some were marched in front of reporters as they were taken away toward waiting police vans.

“I can’t imagine this happening in Hong Kong. We are a civilized city and we are witnessing so many uncivilized acts,” said a young man nicknamed Ronald, who came out to witness the campus siege firsthand. “We all have something in common and we all want to achieve the same thing.

“In my opinion, (the students) are not really violent. They are acting in response to the police force,” he said.

Thousands of riot and other police have surrounded the urban campus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for the past day, warning the students to drop their weapons. But a hardcore group showed no signs of surrender. Earlier, police said they were arresting students on riot related charges.

The number of casualties is not clear. Police on Sunday warned they would use lethal force if they continued to be attacked. Local media reports said live rounds were used in several cases.

The clashes are some of the worst violence since anti-government protests began in Hong Kong five months ago.

Escalating protests

Since June, Hong Kong has seen massive, regular demonstrations, which started in opposition to a proposed bill that would have allowed Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to the mainland. The protests quickly morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to growing Chinese influence.

A smaller group of hardcore protesters, many of whom are college students, have also increasingly engaged in more aggressive tactics — clashing with police, destroying public infrastructure, and vandalizing symbols of state power. The students have defended the tactics as a necessary response to police violence and the government’s refusal to accept their demands.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University is one of at least five campuses where students this week barricaded themselves in, blocking roads and collecting makeshift weapons in case of an attack by authorities. Most of the protesters had left the other campuses by Saturday, though a group of hardcore protesters remained at Polytechnic.

The protests escalated in the past week, following the first death of a protester who fell from a building during clashes between protesters and police.
 

 Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited President Donald Trump to testify in front of investigators in the House impeachment inquiry ahead of a week that will see several key witnesses appear publicly.

Pushing back against accusations from the president that the process has been stacked against him, Pelosi said Trump is welcome to appear or answer questions in writing, if he chooses.

“If he has information that is exculpatory, that means ex, taking away, culpable, blame, then we look forward to seeing it,” she said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Trump “could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants,” she said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer echoed that suggestion.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet. He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath,” Schumer told reporters. He said the White House’s insistence on blocking witnesses from cooperating begs the question: “What is he hiding?”

The comments come as the House Intelligence Committee prepares for a second week of public hearings as part of its inquiry, including with the man who is arguably the most important witness. Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, is among the only people interviewed to date who had direct conversations with the Republican president about the situation because the White House has blocked others from cooperating with what it dismisses as a sham investigation. And testimony suggests he was intimately involved in discussions that are at the heart of the investigation into whether Trump held up U.S. military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure the country’s president to announce an investigation into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 candidate, and Biden’s son Hunter.

Multiple witnesses overheard a phone call in which Trump and Sondland reportedly discussed efforts to push for the investigations. In private testimony to impeachment investigators made public Saturday, Tim Morrison, a former National Security Council aide and longtime Republican defense hawk, said Sondland told him he was discussing Ukraine matters directly with Trump.

Morrison said Sondland and Trump had spoken approximately five times between July 15 and Sept. 11 – the weeks that $391 million in U.S. assistance was withheld from Ukraine before it was released.

And he recounted that Sondland told a top Ukrainian official in a meeting that the vital U.S. military assistance might be freed up if the country’s top prosecutor “would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.” Burisma is the gas company that hired Hunter Biden.

Morrison’s testimony contradicted much of what Sondland told congressional investigators during his own closed-door deposition, which the ambassador later amended.

Trump has said he has no recollection of the overheard call and has suggested he barely knew Sondland, a wealthy donor to his 2016 campaign. But Democrats are hoping he sheds new light on the discussions.

“I’m not going to try to prejudge his testimony,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he suggested, “it was not lost on Ambassador Sondland what happened to the president’s close associate Roger Stone for lying to Congress, to Michael Cohen for lying to Congress. My guess is that Ambassador Sondland is going to do his level best to tell the truth, because otherwise he may have a very unpleasant legal future in front of him.”

The committee also will be interviewing a long list of others. On Tuesday, it’ll hear from Morrison along with Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Alexander Vindman, the director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine.

On Wednesday the committee will hear from Sondland in addition to Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, and David Hale, a State Department official. And on Thursday, Fiona Hill, a former top NSC staffer for Europe and Russia, will appear.

Trump, meanwhile, continued to tweet and retweet a steady stream of commentary from supporters as he bashed “The Crazed, Do Nothing Democrats” for “turning Impeachment into a routine partisan weapon.”

“That is very bad for our Country, and not what the Founders had in mind!!!!” he wrote.

He also tweeted a doctored video exchange between Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, in which Schiff said he did not know the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the inquiry. The clip has been altered to show Schiff wearing a referee’s uniform and loudly blowing a whistle.

In her CBS interview, Pelosi vowed to protect the whistleblower, whom Trump has said should be forced to come forward despite longstanding whistleblower protections.

“I will make sure he does not intimidate the whistleblower,” Pelosi said.

Trump has been under fire for his treatment of one of the witnesses, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump criticized by tweet as she was testifying last week.

That attack prompted accusations of witness intimidation from Democrats and even some criticism from Republicans, who have been largely united in their defense of Trump.

“I think, along with most people, I find the president’s tweet generally unfortunate,” said Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Still, he insisted that tweets were “certainly not impeachable and it’s certainly not criminal. And it’s certainly not witness intimidation,” even if Yovanovitch said she felt intimidated by the attacks.

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, said Trump “communicates in ways that sometimes I wouldn’t,” but dismissed the significance of the attacks.

“If your basis for impeachment is going to include a tweet, that shows how weak the evidence for that impeachment is,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

And the backlash didn’t stop Trump from lashing out at yet another witness, this time Pence aide Williams. He directed her in a Sunday tweet to “meet with the other Never Trumpers, who I don’t know & mostly never even heard of, & work out a better presidential attack!”

 

An airstrike slammed into a biscuit factory in the capital, Tripoli, on Monday killing at least seven workers including five foreign nationals and two Libyans, health authorities said.

Tripoli has been the scene of fighting since April between the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, and an array of militias loosely allied with the U.N.-supported but weak government which holds the capital.

The Tripoli-based health ministry said the airstrike took place in the capital’s Wadi el-Rabie neighborhood, the south of the city center where fighting has been raging for months.

Malek Merset, a spokesman with the ministry, told The Associated Press that the dead included five workers from Bangladesh, and two Libyan nationals.

The airstrike also wounded at least 15 foreign workers, mostly from Niger and Bangladesh, who were taken to nearby hospitals for urgent treatment.

Footage shared online showed wounded people with bandages and blood on their legs on stretchers before being taken by ambulances to hospitals.

Fighting for Tripoli has stalled in recent months, with both sides dug in and shelling one another along the city’s southern reaches. The months of combat have killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands.

The fighting threatens to plunge Libya into another bout of violence on the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Libya has been divided into rival governments, with Tripoli controlling parts of the country’s west, and a rival government in the east aligned with Hifter’s force. Each side is backed by an array of militias and armed groups fighting over resources and territory.

 

 

 

New research has found that U.S. agriculture uses child workers without proper training and care for their safety. The report published last week in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine says 33 children are injured every day while working on U.S. farms, and more child workers die in agriculture than in any other industry. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports rights groups blame loopholes in U.S. laws for failing to protect child workers in agriculture

Heavy police presence in Athens appeared to have prevented serious clashes Sunday with anarchists and other extreme leftists on the 46th anniversary of a student uprising against the then-ruling Greek military dictatorship.

Over 20,000 people made the traditional march from the National Technical University of Athens, site of the 1973 uprising, to the U.S. Embassy on Sunday.

Police said about 10,000 people participated in a Communist Party rally and a further 1,000 marched with the formerly ruling leftist Syriza party, both separate from the main march with over 10,000 participants. Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras started the march with Syriza but left before the halfway point.

Police say they arrested 28 people in clashes after the march, mostly in the Exarchia neighborhood near the university, and detained a further 13.

A recent crackdown by the conservative government on extreme leftist activity in Exarchia, a known anarchist haven and counterculture center, and another nearby university, the Athens University of Economics and Business, had raised fears of possible heavy clashes. More than 5,000 officers were deployed, focused on preventing rioters from occupying the rooftops of apartment buildings and hurling firebombs and rocks into the streets below, as happened two years ago.

Police tactics appeared to have worked, and the first six arrests, shortly after the march, were of people who had sneaked firebombs, rocks, gas masks and other paraphernalia onto a rooftop close to Exarchia’s main square.

There were reports of police violence, including from a news site reporter who said he was attacked while filming riot police pursuing protesters. He appeared in a video with his face bruised.

Clashes with police also took place in the northern city of Thessaloniki, again after marches in which almost 10,000 took part, as well as in other Greek cities.

In Thessaloniki, vehicles were set on fire. Police said they detained 14 people in Thessaloniki and 17 in two other Greek cities. They said 2 police officers were injured, but did not specify the city.

French Beninese writer and activist Kemi Seba is in Haiti this weekend on a humanitarian mission.

Seba traveled to the Caribbean nation to show support for the PetroChallenger anti-corruption movement and for the residents of the poorest slums of the capital.

VOA Creole spoke with the activist as he was distributing sanitary kits in Port-au-Prince.

“We wanted to show that we are capable and that we don’t have to wait for the government to act, we can take action ourselves to show our support,” Seba said.

“Although we have meager resources we only exist when we can share what we have with others in the context of this dimension, this dynamic,” he added. “We have medical staff with us, midwives, specialists who are not only distributing the kits but also doing free consultations. They are volunteers who gave their time to make this happen.”

French Beninese writer and activist Kémi Seba is visiting

President Moise denies the corruption allegations and in recent weeks has taken steps to address the protesters’ concerns, such as naming new Cabinet ministers, visiting local businesses, and speaking directly to the people on traditional and social media. He has also called for a national dialogue to discuss ways to resolve the political impasse, but the opposition has repeatedly rejected the offer.

Activist Seba told VOA he hopes his effort will spark future progress.

“We hope this will not be a just drop in the bucket, but rather the beginning of a process to address this issue with sister institutions and medical partnerships who are already working here. I want to especially thank the medical staff who helped us bring this mission to fruition today,” he said.

The local residents, who did not wish to be photographed, expressed gratitude and thanks to Seba and his team for taking the time to visit them and address some of their most urgent needs.

Jacquelin Belizaire and Matiado Vilme in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.

House Republicans and Democrats are reacting Sunday to the first week of Impeachment hearings targeting U.S. President Donald Trump. Democrats say testimony hearing during the hearings confirms the president abused power by allegedly withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on a political foe.  Republicans say the proceedings have provided no hard evidence of wrongdoing.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports

A senior official from Britain’s main opposition Labour Party says that leaks from a parliamentary report on Russian interference in British politics raises important questions about the fairness of next month’s general election.

An 18-month-long investigation by the British parliament’s cross-party intelligence committee has concluded Russian meddling may have impacted Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, though the panel couldn’t decide how much it affected the vote. The leak of the report’s conclusion, published in Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper, is adding to pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to publish the full findings of the inquiry before Britons head to the polls on December 12.

Emily Thornberry, Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson, said the disclosure that Russian meddling may have distorted the Brexit vote raises questions about how next month’s election can be safeguarded. “If it is correct that our security services have been unable to reach a conclusion about the extent or impact of Russian interference in the 2016 referendum, then it raises serious questions which require serious answers,” she said.

If the report is not immediately published by Johnson “people will rightly continue to ask: what is he trying to hide from the British public and why,” she added.

Opponents have accused the government of sitting on the report by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), despite the fact that the country’s security services have cleared it for publication. Witnesses who testified to the panel say the report will contain embarrassing disclosures about the funding of the ruling Conservatives by London-based Russian oligarchs tied to the Kremlin or Russian intelligence agencies.

The delay in publishing the report could well become the subject of at lest one court action this week, and possibly more. Lawyers acting for the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent and Russian dissident who was murdered with a radioactive isotope in 2006, sent Johnson a letter last week saying she planned to take legal action unless the report’s findings are released in full ahead of the election. An official British inquiry concluded Litvinenko was murdered on the orders of the Kremlin.

Marina Litvinenko’s says there’s “profound public interest in the information being disclosed to the public, so they are fully informed of the extent of Russian interference in British politics before they go to the polls on 12 December 2019.”

An urgent legal challenge is also being planned to force the government’s hand by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has written to Downing Street demanding publication. Lawyers for the bureau are planning to ask for a judicial review

Rachel Oldroyd, managing editor of the bureau, said in a statement: “The absolute minimum voters in any democratic election should expect is the knowledge that the previous election was fair and free of outside interference. British voters are being denied that.”

Security minister Brandon Lewis told Sky News Sunday that the report couldn’t be published during the election campaign, which officially got underway last week, because of rules which restrict government announcements during the run-up to a general election.

“We want to make sure, particularly where national security is involved, we go through that process properly and thoroughly,” he said. “We can’t publish things during the general election … but after the general election that report will be published,” he said.

But critics, including former attorney general Dominic Grieve, who chaired the committee, say the 50-page dossier, which examined the level of Russian infiltration of the higher ranks of British politics as well as allegations of a Kremlin-sponsored influence campaign during the 2016 referendum, was vetted by the country’s security agencies days before the election was called and could have been released before electioneering was in full swing.

The report “comments directly on what has been seen as a perceived threat to our democratic processes,” says Grieve. He says members of the committee had expected Johnson to approve publication ahead of the election.

“Someone in Downing Street calculated that it was less embarrassing to suppress the intelligence and security committee’s report into Russian interference in the UK than it was to publish it,” according to Oliver Bullough, author of the book “Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back.”

According to the Sunday Times, the parliamentary panel found that anti-EU, pro-Brexit articles disseminated by Kremlin-controlled outlets in the run-up to the referendum campaign had four times more social media impact than those put out by British Leave campaigns. The report also reportedly criticizes British intelligence agencies for failing to devote sufficient resources to combat Kremlin meddling in British politics.

Johnson dismissed claims Friday that he was suppressing the report to save the Conservatives from embarrassment and he defended taking money from Russian oligarchs living in London, saying there’s no evidence of Moscow interference.

“All donations to the Conservative Party are properly vetted and properly publicized,” he said during a BBC radio interview. He added: “I think that you’ve got to be very careful before you simply cast aspersions on everybody who comes from a certain country just because of their nationality.”

A few Pakistani women friends, working for big tech companies in the U.S., decided they wanted to create the mentoring and professional network they wished they’d had when coming up in the business. The result is the Seattle based Pakistani Women in Computing or PWIC. VOA’s Nadeem Yaqub recently visited the Seattle chapter of PWIC and filed this report.