As winter approaches, refugees in living in tents in Shahba camp in northern Syria are doing what they can to prepare for the cold weather. An estimated 300-thousand people live in the camp.  VOA’s Newroz Resho has more in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

The world’s economic model has “broken down” as the business practices of multinational corporations and digital platforms put a growing number of workers at risk of exploitation and modern slavery, according to a leading labor rights campaigner.

Too many companies are failing to take responsibility for workers in their supply chains, while governments must do more to hold firms to account on labor rights, said Sharan Burrow, head of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

About two billion people — more than 60% of the world’s workforce — are in informal work, leaving them vulnerable to being underpaid, overworked and treated like slaves, she said.

And the rise of digital platforms from food to taxi apps where workers lack proper contracts and social protections means that key rights such as a living wage, trade unionization and fair working conditions are under growing threat, Burrow added.

“The world’s employment framework has broken down … we need a new social contract to clean up forced labor,” said Burrow, the ITUC general secretary and a speaker at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference on Wednesday.

“If you don’t have the rule of law, from corporate or responsible business conduct to government regulation … nobody is going to be in a position to look towards a secure future.”

The ITUC, which has more than 207 million members, says it is the world’s leading body fighting for the rights of workers.

About 25 million people are estimated to be victims of forced labor, and companies are facing rising consumer pressure to clean up their supply chains with the issue in the spotlight since the United Nations set a target of ending slavery by 2030.

Burrow called upon businesses to do more to identify the risk of exploitation and slavery in their operations and provide workers with avenues to report abuse without fear of reprisals, and urged governments to ensure labour rights are respected.

She pointed to Qatar — which relies on about 2 million migrant workers for the bulk of its workforce – as a positive example of how pressure from labor rights groups over what they described as modern slavery could lead to broad labour reforms.

Doha last month announced a new minimum wage law and steps to end the “kafala” sponsorship system, which binds workers to one employer and has been criticized as abusive.

Yet the global outlook for workers’ rights is concerning, Burrow said, citing recent ITUC research that showed workers had no or restricted access to justice in 72% of countries and found a spike in the number of nations blocking trade unionization.

“For workers, the struggle continues for fundamental rights, a minimum living wage, the right to bargain collectively, and the guarantee of a safe workplace,” she said. “Every business … and government must be held to account.”

 

 

A Michigan teenager was the recipient of what could be the first double lung transplant on a person whose lungs were severely damaged from vaping, health officials said Tuesday.

Doctors at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit described to reporters Tuesday the procedure that saved the 17-year-old’s life and pleaded for the public to understand the dangers of vaping.

The teen was admitted in early September to a Detroit-area hospital with what appeared to be pneumonia. He was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit and taken Oct. 3 to Henry Ford Hospital where the transplant was performed Oct. 15. The double lung transplant is believed to be the first performed on a patient due to vaping.

Doctors found an “enormous amount of inflammation and scarring” on the teen’s lungs, said Dr. Hassan Nemeh, surgical director of thoracic organ transplant at Henry Ford. “This is an evil I haven’t faced before. The damage that these vapes do to people’s lungs is irreversible. Please think of that — and tell your children to think of that.”

Health officials declined to release the teen’s name and said he is expected to recover. They also did not specify what the teen vaped or how long he vaped.

“We asked Henry Ford doctors to share that the horrific life-threatening effects of vaping are very real!” his family said in a statement released by the hospital. “Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades.”

“Within a very short period of time, our lives have been forever changed. He has gone from the typical life of a perfectly healthy 16-year old athlete — attending high school, hanging out with friends, sailing and playing video games — to waking up intubated and with two new lungs, facing a long and painful recovery process as he struggles to regain his strength and mobility, which has been severely impacted.”

The boy had his 17th birthday after initially being admitted to the hospital.

More than 2,000 Americans who vape have gotten sick since March, many of them teenagers and young adults, and at least 40 people have died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week announced a breakthrough into the cause of a vaping illness outbreak, identifying the chemical compound vitamin E acetate as a “very strong culprit” after finding it in fluid taken from the lungs of 29 patients. Vitamin E acetate previously was found in liquid from electronic cigarettes and other vaping devices used by many who got sick and only recently has been used as a vaping fluid thickener.

Many who got sick said they had vaped liquids that contain THC, the high-inducing part of marijuana, with many saying they received them from friends or bought them on the black market.

E-cigarettes and other vaping devices heat a liquid into an inhalable vapor. Most products contained nicotine, but THC vaping has been growing more common.

Henry Ford doctors did not say Tuesday what the lung transplant recipient vaped. They did say that he was critically ill when he arrived at Henry Ford where he was placed Oct. 8 on an organ transplant waiting list. His lung damage due to vaping was so severe and he was so close to death that the teen immediately was placed at the top of the transplant waiting list, they said.

“Vaping-related injuries are all too common these days. Our adolescents are faced with a crisis,” said Dr. Lisa Allenspach, pulmonologist and the medical director of Henry Ford’s Lung Transplant Program. “We are just beginning to see the enormous health consequence jeopardizing the youth in our country … these vaping products should not be used in any fashion.”

The 17-year-old’s case does not open any new ethical considerations about transplants for people how who irreparably damage their own lungs by vaping, Nemeh told The Associated Press.

“It won’t change what we do on a routine basis. We will still evaluate every patient as an individual patient,” he said. “We hope sharing this patient’s story prevents anyone else from experiencing a vaping injury that would require a transplant.”

Nemeh added that lung transplants have been considered for ex-smokers who have quit and demonstrated that they quit smoking, but transplants are not routinely done for people over the age of 70.
“Children do receive priority over an adult for a transplant from a pediatric donor,” he said. “The United Network for Organ Sharing creates the rules and then offers the organs to recipients who are a match. We don’t decide who gets an offer.”

 

Seven people are dead after a car bomb detonated outside of government offices in the Afghan capital of Kabul Wednesday.

Officials say seven others were wounded in the bombing, which was centered near the interior ministry headquarters.

So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came a day after the Afghan government released three high-ranking Taliban leaders in exchange for two Westerners, an American and Australian, who have been held hostage by the Islamic insurgent group since 2016. 

One-third of outstanding U.S. student loan debt is owned by only 6% of all student loan borrowers. A new report from the public policy nonprofit Brookings Institution clarifies where all of that $1.5 trillion student debt comes and goes. 

“A very small fraction of all student loan borrowers have very large loans. Six percent of borrowers owe more than $100,000 in debt, with 2% owing more than $200,000,” the report by Brookings’ Kadija Yilla and David Wessel found. “This 6% owes one-third of the outstanding $1.5 trillion of debt.

“At the other extreme, 18% of borrowers owe less than $5,000 in student loan debt. They collectively owe 1% of the debt outstanding,” the report found.

About one-quarter of those with student loans borrowed for graduate school, Brookings said, but that one-quarter owns about half of all outstanding student loan debt.

“While only a small share of households with student debt have a graduate degree, loans associated with graduate degrees account for 50% of the total outstanding student loan debt,” the report said. Households with student debt headed by someone without a bachelor’s degree account for only one-quarter of total outstanding debt.

And those who owe the most are not the ones defaulting on debt, the Brookings report said.

Brookings said borrowers with graduate degrees who own half of all student debt are the least likely to default. Who has higher default rates? Those who attend for-profit universities, like DeVry and the University of Phoenix, which have closed several offices and locations.

In February 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump was required to pay $25 million to settle class-action lawsuits accusing Trump University of fraud after failing to deliver on promises to teach students how to succeed in the real estate sector.

US Court Upholds $25M Lawsuit Against Now-Defunct Trump University

Students in the U.S. who said they were deceived by President Donald Trump’s now-defunct Trump University can now get most of their money back, according to a ruling Tuesday by a federal appeals court.

The 9th Circuit U.S.

“Forty percent of borrowers from for-profit, two-year programs default on their loans within five years,” the report said. Just under one-third of borrowers who attended for-profit four-year programs “defaulted in this same timeframe.”

Among students who borrowed to attend public community colleges, about 25% default within five years of entering repayment.

Defaults are much less frequent among those who borrowed to go to public or private nonprofit four-year schools.

Student debt is not all about tuition. In some cases, room and board, books, transportation and other living expenses cost well above tuition.

“Many students borrow to not only cover their tuition and fees but also to get cash to finance the cost of living while they are in school,” Brookings reported.

Some public schools offer students “tuition free” financial aid. But that doesn’t include the dorm or rental housing, or food. For students at public universities and colleges who pay no tuition, 22% borrow $30,000 or more. The average student borrows $24,000, Brookings said, based on an Urban Institute analysis conducted using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study.

And what about all those young college students receiving bachelor’s degrees from four-year colleges and universities? They graduate with little to no debt, Brookings said.

“Thirty percent of all bachelor’s degree recipients graduate with no debt,” Brookings reports. “Another 23% graduate with less than $20,000 in loans.”

Fewer than 20% of all borrowers owed more than $40,000. Only 12% of those who attended four-year public colleges owed more than $40,000.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will quit his fractious right-wing Social Liberal Party (PSL) and start a new one by March 2020, PSL lawmakers Daniel Silveira and Bia Kicis said on Tuesday after meeting with the president.

The PSL, which Bolsonaro joined as a vehicle to win the elections in October, is split down the middle over control of the party, though it is not clear how many of its 53 representatives and three senators will follow the president.

A meeting will be held on Nov. 21 to begin setting up the new party, which will be called Movimento pelo Brasil, or Movement for Brazil, Kicis told Reuters by telephone.

The split came to a head last month with an exchange of insults between the president and PSL founder Luciano Bivar, who has not wanted to hand over the reins to Bolsonaro and his sons.

At stake is 390 million reais ($94 million) in public campaign funds for municipal elections, an unprecedented war chest for the PSL, which rode Bolsonaro’s coattails to grow from a single lawmaker in Congress to the second-largest bench.

While senators, governors and mayors can freely switch parties, lower house lawmakers are subject to rules that bar them from continued access to the campaign funding if they swap parties.

“Several representatives plan to follow the president. We are prepared to lose the campaign funds because we want to found a new party to follow him,” Kicis said.

Bolsonaro needs to gather 500,000 signatures to start a new party, and his supporters are confident he can achieve that through social media, a tool that greatly aided his successful run for president last year.

One of the PSL’s three senators, Senator Soraya Thronicke from the farm state of Mato Grosso, told Reuters she has not made up her mind yet.

If she stayed in the PSL, only one senator would follow Bolsonaro, his son Flavio Bolsonaro.

The breakup of the PSL is not expected to affect Brazil’s economic reform agenda, which has ample backing in Congress.

But starting a new party could politically weaken Bolsonaro, who switched allegiances among eight parties during his 28 years in Congress before joining the PSL last year.

($1 = 4.1637 reais)

 

Poland’s opposition parties elected their candidate as speaker of the Senate on Tuesday, a small victory that allows them to check the power of the populist right-wing ruling party.

Senator Tomasz Grodzki was chosen speaker in a 51-48 vote with one abstention during the first sitting of the new parliament that was elected in October. Grodzki hailed the move as a victory for democracy. Until Tuesday’s vote, it was not certain that the opposition parties would manage to take control of the Senate.

For the past four years, the ruling Law and Justice party has put through laws giving it much greater power over the judicial system. The European Union has often expressed its concerns that the party was eroding judicial independence, warning that rule of law in the young democracy was on the line.

In many cases, with control of both houses of parliament, the party would rush laws through without allowing opposition lawmakers any say.

Now, the Senate will be able to slow down and influence, though not block, the passage of laws. Perhaps more importantly, the Senate has the power to appoint the heads of some key state bodies and the opposition — if it maintains its majority — will be able to block the nominations of some ruling party loyalists.

Law and Justice has tried to win over some opposition members in Senate, but has so far failed.

Earlier Tuesday, the lower house of parliament, also named its speaker — Elzbieta Witek of Law and Justice.

President Andrzej Duda opened the first day of parliament’s four-year term with a speech that paid homage to Poland’s tradition of being a land of tolerance and a place where many ethnic and religious groups lived for centuries in relative harmony. He also paid tribute to Roman Catholicism and strong family traditions that he credited with preserving the social fabric over a difficult history.

The parliamentary election on Oct. 13 gave a second term Law and Justice party, which won nearly 44% of the votes, the highest percentage of any party since Poland returned to democracy 30 years ago.

But the election also created some complications for the party and its 70-year-old leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as it continues its plans to reshape the nation.

Aside from the loss of the Senate, the ruling party must now contend with the fact that a far-right party, Confederation, got almost 7% of the vote, winning 11 seats in the assembly.

Law and Justice had sought to prevent any party arising in parliament to its right. That strategy had led Kaczynski and other leaders to try to appeal to the far right, and they even marched with them on Independence Day in 2018.

In another change, a left-wing alliance won 49 seats, after a hiatus of four years, after getting nearly 13% of the vote.

President Donald Trump claimed credit Tuesday for the nation’s strong economic performance under his leadership.

Trump told the Economic Club of New York that “we have delivered on our promises — and exceeded our expectations by a very wide margin.”
 
The president, who is campaigning for a second term and views the economy as a selling point with voters, spoke about his efforts to roll back federal regulations, massive tax cuts he enacted at the end of his first year in office, and low unemployment rates across major demographic groups.
 
Trump said the administration is responsible for creating 7 million jobs, though only 6.25 million have been created since he took office in January 2017.
 
Trump delivered the speech against a backdrop of anxiety over his administration’s trade policies, including talks with China meant to deescalate an 18-month trade war. Trump also criticized policy-making by the Federal Reserve.
 
He addressed the club in the same midtown Manhattan ballroom where he celebrated his election to the White House in 2016.
 
When the applause was slow in coming after Trump declared he had delivered on his promises, the president jokingly said, “Thank you. I was waiting for that. I almost didn’t get it.”

 

 

House Democrats launch a new phase in the impeachment investigation into US President Donald Trump Wednesday with a round of public testimony from current and former administration officials. Those witnesses will provide a detailed picture of Trump’s alleged request to Ukraine to investigate his potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election. As VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, newly released transcripts from the closed door testimony preview what could be a pivotal week in the Trump presidency.

Deep in the rainforest of Volcanoes National Park, a 23-year-old female gorilla named Kurudi feeds on a stand of wild celery. She bends the green stalks and, with long careful fingers, peels off the exterior skin to expose the succulent inside.

Biologist Jean Paul Hirwa notes her meal on his tablet computer as he peers out from behind a nearby stand of stinging nettles.

The large adult male sitting next to her, known as a silverback, looks at him quizzically. Hirwa makes a low hum — “ahh-mmm” — imitating the gorillas’ usual sound of reassurance.

“I’m here,” Hirwa is trying to say. “It’s OK. No reason to worry.”

Hirwa and the two great apes are all part of the world’s longest-running gorilla study — a project begun in 1967 by famed American primatologist Dian Fossey.

Yet Fossey herself, who died in 1985, would likely be surprised any mountain gorillas are still left to study. Alarmed by rising rates of poaching and deforestation in central Africa, she predicted the species could go extinct by 2000.

Instead, a concerted and sustained conservation campaign has averted the worst and given a second chance to these great apes, which share about 98% of human DNA. Last fall, the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature changed the status of mountain gorillas from “critically endangered” to “endangered,” an improved if still-fragile designation.

It wouldn’t have happened without an intervention some biologists call “extreme conservation,” which has entailed monitoring every single gorilla in the rainforest, periodically giving them veterinary care and funding forest protection by sending money into communities that might otherwise resent not being able to convert the woods into cropland.

Instead of disappearing, the number of mountain gorillas — a subspecies of eastern gorillas — has risen from 680 a decade ago to just over 1,000 today. Their population is split between two regions, including mist-covered defunct volcanoes within Congo, Uganda and Rwanda — one of Africa’s smallest and most densely populated countries.

“The population of mountain gorillas is still vulnerable,” says George Schaller, a renowned biologist and gorilla expert. “But their numbers are now growing, and that’s remarkable.”

Once depicted in legends and films like “King Kong” as fearsome beasts, gorillas are actually languid primates that eat only plants and insects, and live in fairly stable, extended family groups. Their strength and chest-thumping displays are generally reserved for contests between male rivals.

Every week, scientists like Hirwa, who works for the nonprofit conservation group the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, gather data as part of long-term behavioral research.

If they see any health problems in the gorillas, they inform the staff at Gorillas Doctors, a nongovernmental group whose veterinarians work in the forest. The vets monitor wounds and signs of respiratory infections, but intervene only sparingly.

When they do, they almost never remove the animals from the mountain.

“Our hospital is the forest,” says Jean Bosco Noheli, a veterinarian at Gorilla Doctors. When his team goes into the field to address a gorilla emergency, they must carry everything they might need in equipment bags weighing up to 100 pounds — including portable X-ray machines.

Schaller conducted the first detailed studies of mountain gorillas in the 1950s and early ’60s. He also was the first to discover that wild gorillas could, over time, become comfortable with periodic human presence, a boon to researchers and, later, tourists.

Today, highly regulated tour groups hike in the Rwandan rainforest to watch gorillas.

Ticket revenue pays for operating costs and outstrips what might have been made from converting the rainforest to potato farms and cattle pastures. About 40% of the forest already was cleared for agriculture in the early 1970s.

“With tourism, the tension is always not to overexploit,” says Dirck Byler, great ape conservation director at the nonprofit Global Wildlife Conservation, which is not involved in the Rwanda gorilla project. “But in Rwanda, so far they’re careful, and it’s working.”

The idea of using tourism to help fund conservation was contentious when conservationists Bill Weber and Amy Vedder first proposed it while living in Rwanda during the 1970s and ’80s. Fossey herself was skeptical, but the pair persisted.

“The wonder of the gorillas’ lives, their curiosity, their social interactions — we felt that’s something that could be accessible to others, through careful tourism,” Vedder says.

Figuring out the balance of how many people could visit the forest, and for how long, was a delicate process of trial and error, Weber says.

In 2005, the Rwandan government adopted a model to steer 5% of tourism revenue from Volcanoes National Park to build infrastructure in surrounding villages, including schools and health clinics. Two years ago, the share was raised to 10%.

To date, about $2 million has gone into funding village projects, chief park warden Prosper Uwingeli says.

“We don’t want to protect the park with guns. We want to protect and conserve this park with people who understand why, and who take responsibility,” he says.

The money from tourism helps, but the region is still poor.

Jean Claude Masengesho lives with his parents and helps them farm potatoes. About once a week, the 21-year-old earns a little extra money helping tourists carry their bags up the mountain, totaling about $45 a month. He would someday like to become a tour guide, which could earn him about $320 monthly.

The obstacle is that most tour guides have attended college, and Masengesho isn’t sure how his family can afford tuition.

“It’s my dream, but it’s very hard,” he says. “In this village, every young person’s dream is to work in the park.”
 

While Southern California draws film and television students from all over the world, people in New Mexico don’t have to set foot outside the state to learn the trade, as local colleges are grooming talent for a booming entertainment industry that has sprung up about 1,200 kilometers from Hollywood.

Recently, Albuquerque Studios signed a billion-dollar contract with entertainment giant Netflix and a $500 million deal with NBC Universal Studios. These agreements come on the heels of New Mexico’s enhanced tax incentives to production companies, who film there and hire local talent. One of the seedbeds for such talent is Central New Mexico (CNM) Community College.
 

Program tied to jobs
 
Students at Central New Mexico Community College can learn about wardrobe assembly, electrical work, set lighting and camera operation — to name a few of the courses offered. For New Mexico residents, CNM charges $56 per credit hour; for nonresidents, $296 per credit hour. Even that price is nowhere near the five-figure yearly tuition at other colleges around the country, such as New York’s renowned School of Visual Arts, whether tuition is upwards of $50,000 a year, for a similar program.
 
Both schools promise connections and training to get their students hired. But in Albuquerque, students have an edge: a blossoming film industry that provides tax incentives for TV and film productions with crews made up of at least 60% local hires.

Amber Dodson, film liaison for the city of Albuquerque, said entertainment giant Netflix alone has committed over the next decade to spending $1 billion in production and generate 1,000 jobs a year throughout the state. She said students in Albuquerque learning “below-the-line” crafts, which include jobs on a film crew like a grip, “are getting jobs often times before they even graduate.”
 
Jim Graebner, CNM’s senior film instructor, described the school’s program for below-the-line crafts.
 
“Our program is only a two-term program, that’s basically half a (calendar) year, where we get through the whole protocol of how to make a movie and workflow, and then we expose people to all the different tools they’ll need on a set and then try to get them specialized in a different craft,” Graebner, or “Grubb” as he is known, added.
 
Work ethic
 
Graebner likened CNM’s program to a “boot camp,” where the students are working hard to learn skills to meet the needs of production companies and studios.
 
“The biggest thing we have to teach them is stamina, because they are coming in(to) a world where everybody expects an eight-hour workday. We’ve got 14 hours. It’s the average,” he said.
 
In a trade dominated by men for decades, women are beginning to make inroads.
 
“I have women – especially Hollywood’s big on upping the percentage of women on all the below-the-line (non-cast member) crafts – I have women who are grips now and they don’t have to be huge or strong. So, if you’re a woman, want to become a grip, I can get you a job tomorrow,” Graebner said.
 
Apart from learning to be a grip – that is, to be part of a team that builds and develops a movie set – students receive mentoring and gain on-set experience.
 
Graebner said the school connects students with the local union, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) 480, where they train with a paid union member and get evaluated for their skills. If they show competency, they can get into the workforce pipeline for the industry, which the union has negotiated for safe working conditions and labor benefits.
 
Good prospects
 
CNM instructional technician Gabe Reyes works full time at CNM and also freelances for the film industry.

With the influx of Hollywood in Albuquerque, Reyes said CNM’s Applied Technologies and Film program has taken off since he started in the summer of 2018.

Karen Grandinetti, enrollment strategist of CNM School of Applied Technologies, said the program had 220 students enrolled in the summer of 2018. This fall, there are 657 students.

Prospects are also good for homegrown New Mexican directors and actors who want to build a career in their home state.

One of them is Riley Del Rey, a student actor in the film program at CNM, who recently completed a short film called “Doubt.”
 
“I think it’s important for people that are moving here to work on productions to take a look at our work and to start selecting their directors and their talent from this market because that’s what’s going to get people to stay and that’s it’s gonna uplift our state,” she says.
 
Del Rey also pointed to the importance not having to set foot outside the state where she grew up to learn the trade and seek job opportunities.
 
“What’s making me stay here is that this is the place I’m getting my chops, and it’s where I have family. I also know people in the industry and, with the film community growing so much, it’s just more places for me to find where I fit in here,” Del Rey said. “It’s also less daunting than traveling thousands of miles to go somewhere where I’m not familiar with and (where) it’s kind of a make-it-or-break-it situation.

“I still have to take risks, but I still have all the support from my network here at school but also the family ties that I have to New Mexico,” she added.

Exiled Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy said Tuesday the European Union’s assessment of whether to suspend trade privileges for his country will add momentum to efforts to restore democracy despite a government crackdown.

The EU finalized a preliminary report Tuesday that Sam Rainsy said would be the basis for suspending trade privileges for Cambodia. The EU announced earlier this year that it would begin a monitoring process to decide on the ending of preferential duty-free and quota-free imports from the Southeast Asian nation. It said it acted on concerns that Cambodia was limiting human and labor rights.
 
The EU did not immediately make the report public but said it had been sent to the Cambodian authorities.
 
The report comes amid several developments that have shaken the Cambodian political scene.
 
Sam Rainsy made a well-publicized trip in which he vowed to return to his homeland to spark a popular movement to unseat long-serving authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Cambodia’s government had said he and other exiled colleagues were unwelcome, and managed to hinder them from entering on Saturday, their intended date.
 
However, as Sam Rainsy found himself stuck in Malaysia, a Cambodian court announced Sunday that it was releasing from house arrest Kem Sokha, his co-leader in the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, who had been detained without trial for more than two years on a treason charge widely seen as specious. It retained the charge against him and barred him from political activity.
 
The release of Kem Sokha suggested that Hun Sen, whose hard line included detaining scores of opposition supporters accused of supporting Sam Rainsy’s return plan, may be seeking to assuage his critics — especially the EU — by projecting an image of compromise.
 
The possibility of the EU junking Cambodia’s trade privileges is perhaps the greatest leverage the opposition holds over the situation, as an economic downturn could erode the support Hun Sen has earned with Cambodia’s economic growth.
 
“If they don’t want Cambodia to face an economic crisis, with hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs, they must restore democracy,” Sam Rainsy told a news conference outside Malaysia’s Parliament building after meeting a group of Malaysian lawmakers.
 
The EU initiated its move after Hun Sen’s ruling party won a sweeping victory in 2018 elections. The EU and others said the polls were not free and fair because the Cambodia National Rescue Party — the sole credible opposition force — was dissolved in 2017 by Cambodia’s Supreme Court, which is seen as being under the government’s influence.
 
Sam Rainsy insisted Tuesday that the timing was now right for peaceful resistance to topple Hun Sen’s government due to the “unique combination of internal pressure and external pressure.”
 
Phnom Penh’s release of Kem Sokha from house arrest was an indication of mounting pressure on the government, he said.
 
Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said Sunday on his Facebook page that Sam Rainsy was now allowed to enter Cambodia but would have to face a raft of charges and standing convictions. Sam Rainsy did not say Tuesday when he might make the journey.
 
“I will stay in the region because the situation can change very quickly, and I will go back to Cambodia,” he said.
      

 

 

U.S. President Donald Trump contended Tuesday that some of the young immigrants that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, allowed to stay in the country to avoid deportation are now “hardened criminals.”

The U.S. leader, who won the White House in 2016 by taking a tough stance against illegal immigration, unleashed his attack on the immigrants hours before the Supreme Court heard arguments on the legality of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The 2012 policy allowed more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants who crossed illegally into the U.S. at a young age with their parents to remain in the United States — for many, the only home country they have known.

“Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels,’ Trump said on Twitter. “Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!”   

Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from “angels.” Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam says protesters who threw Tuesday’s rush hour commute into chaos by erecting barricades on roads and subway tracks were “extremely selfish.”

The actions marked another day of violent protests and disturbances in the Chinese territory that had been previously confined to the weekends over the past five months. Dozens of passengers aboard a commuter rail line were forced to exit the train when it stopped short of the station.  

The unrest also reached onto Hong Kong’s college campuses Tuesday, with riot police firing tear gas at protesters who erected barricades at roads at both Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  

Thousands of protesters staged a “flash mob” demonstration in the city’s central business district at midday, chanting “five demands, not one less, a reference to their demands for democracy, an independent probe into allegations of police brutality and other issues.

Tensions have escalated in Hong Kong after a policeman shot a 21-year-old protester Monday as he was physically struggling with another protester he was attempting to arrest.  The city’s hospital authority says the protester was in critical condition.  A man set on fire after he was doused with gasoline in a separate incident is also in critical condition.  

Lam denounced the violence Monday, telling protesters it is “wishful thinking” that the Hong Kong government will give into protesters “so-called political demands” in order to quell the violence.  

The protests were initially sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial, but have since evolved into demands for full democracy for Hong Kong.  More than 3,000 people have been arrested since the demonstrations erupted

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus issued a statement Monday condemning “violence on all sides” and urged “all parties — police and protesters — to exercise restraint.”

The next adventure in the “Star Wars” movie and TV franchise, arriving Tuesday on Walt Disney Co’s new streaming service, takes place on a lawless planet at the outer reaches of the galaxy.

“The Mandalorian,” an eight-episode live-action series, stars “Game of Thrones” actor Pedro Pascal as a helmeted bounty hunter. It will be available on Disney+, a new $7-per-month online subscription meant to compete with Netflix.

As is typical with “Star Wars,” Disney and the cast have revealed little about the plot.

“Just kind of imagine crossing the borders and going into unknown territory … with a lot of familiar elements and completely brand new elements,” Pascal said in an interview with Reuters.

“The Mandalorian” is set between the events of “Return of the Jedi” and “The Force Awakens,” the sixth and seventh installments in the “Star Wars” movie saga.

Disney will release the first episode Tuesday and the second Friday, followed by one installment each Friday after that.
 

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is considering making a late run for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to two people with knowledge of his deliberations, underscoring some Democrats’ deep uncertainty about the party’s current crop of contenders.

Patrick, a close friend and ally of former President Barack Obama, ruled out a presidential bid earlier this year but has since been talking with Democratic operatives and donors about launching a campaign. He has not made a final decision on whether to run, but he is expected to do so quickly, given fast-approaching deadlines to get on the ballot in key states.

Patrick is the second Democrat to weigh jumping into the race at this late juncture, less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also reconsidering a run, citing concerns about the current Democratic front-runners’ ability to defeat President Donald Trump. Bloomberg is expected to make a final decision on his 2020 prospects within days.

The people with knowledge of Patrick’s deliberations spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Democrats plunged into the 2020 race with sky high enthusiasm about the prospects of defeating Trump and with a historic number of candidates vying for the nomination. But as the field has started to dwindle, some in the party have raised concerns about the durability of former Vice President Joe Biden and the ability of liberal Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to win in a general election.

Although Patrick ruled out a run late last year, he reopened conversations with close friends and aides over the summer but did not take active steps to form a campaign. In recent days, those conversations have intensified, with Patrick gauging interest in a run with donors and Democratic operatives.

He would face big hurdles to launching a campaign at this late stage. Unlike Bloomberg, a wealthy billionaire who would self-fund, Patrick would have to quickly raise money to build out a campaign operation and boost his familiarity with voters. Some of his former political advisers are already working for other 2020 candidates, including his former chief of staff Doug Rubin, who is working for Tom Steyer.

Patrick, who made history as Massachusetts’ first black governor, could gain traction in neighboring New Hampshire, which holds the first primary contest. However, he’d face stiff competition there from two other neighboring state candidates: Warren of Massachusetts and Sanders of Vermont.

New Hampshire’s primary filing deadline is Friday.

Bloomberg plans to skip the early states, where candidates have camped out for months courting voters and building operations. Instead, he’s said he would focus on the crush of states that vote on March 3 — dubbed Super Tuesday — and beyond, where more delegates are at stake.

When Patrick decided last year not to run, he cited what he called the “cruelty” of the election process.

“After a lot of conversation, reflection and prayer, I’ve decided that a 2020 campaign for president is not for me,” Patrick had posted on his Facebook page. Patrick said he and his wife worried that the “cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadn’t signed up for the journey.”

Patrick has tried to position himself as more moderate than his party’s left flank and could compete for votes with Biden, who is running as a centrist.

Early in his career, Patrick served as assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration and later worked as an executive at Texaco and Coca-Cola. Since leaving the governor’s office, Patrick has worked as a managing director for Bain Capital — a company co-founded by Mitt Romney and widely criticized by Democrats during Romney’s 2012 Republican presidential campaign.

 

Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said protesters who are trying to
“paralyze” the city were extremely selfish and hoped all universities and schools would urge students not to participate in violence.

Lam was speaking a day after police shot a protester and a man was set on fire in some of the most dramatic scenes to grip the city during the more than five months of civil unrest.

On Monday, Lam said that the violence roiling the former British colony exceeded protesters’ demands for democracy and demonstrators are now the people’s enemy.

 

The recent release from prison of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and upsurge in political instability across Latin America will not hinder Brazil’s economic reform process, a senior Economy Ministry official said Monday.

“I think, in fact, eventually you’ll have more debate about reform, which is good,” Treasury Secretary Mansueto Almeida told Reuters in Brasilia. “When you make changes to society based on proper debate, it’s good, because those changes are done with conviction.” 

Regarding Lula’s release last Friday after the Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling keeping people convicted of crimes in jail if they lose their first appeal, Almeida said Brazil should not be concerned about who the “political actors” are.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think we need to be afraidof having a ‘politician A,’ ‘politician B,’ ‘politician C’ (released from jail),” Almeida said. “You have to put the debate to Congress and see how it evolves. If you convince the people and lawmakers, you make the changes. If not, you don’t. That’s democracy.”

On Saturday, Lula gave a speech in which he strongly criticized Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and his economic views, while President Jair Bolsonaro and members of his cabinet took swipes back at the leftist former president.

After approving a landmark pension reform bill that will save the public purse some 800 billion reais ($193 billion) over the next decade, Brazil’s Congress is set to debate other government proposals like tax reform and “administrative” reform.
 

For weeks, as Democratic critics of U.S. President Donald Trump have called for his impeachment, the U.S. leader has repeatedly described his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “perfect.”

Though it is a violation of U.S. campaign finance law to seek foreign government help in a U.S. election, Trump had asked Zelenskiy to investigate one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Biden’s son’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Trump also asked Zelenskiy to investigate a debunked theory that Ukraine rather than Russia meddled in the 2016 election, as the U.S. intelligence community has concluded.

To Trump’s chagrin, some of his normal Republican supporters are rejecting his “perfect” characterization of the phone call, saying it was wrong, improper or inappropriate, albeit not rising to the level of an offense that Trump should be impeached and removed from office.

With public hearings set to start Wednesday targeting him and his three-year presidency, Trump is recoiling at any retreat from full-bore Republican support, though no Republican official has called for Trump to be the first U.S. president to be removed from office in the country’s 243-year history.

Even if the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives votes to impeach him in the coming weeks, as numerous Washington political analysts are predicting, his conviction by the Republican-majority Senate remains unlikely.

At least 20 Republican senators would need to turn against Trump to oust him from the White House.

“The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT,” Trump said Sunday on Twitter. “Read the Transcript! There was NOTHING said that was in any way wrong. Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!”

The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT. Read the Transcript! There was NOTHING said that was in any way wrong. Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2019

While dozens of Democratic lawmakers have criticized the Trump request for “a favor” from Zelenskiy — the investigation of the Bidens — some Republicans are also voicing their opposition.

The Washington Post said it had found 13 Republicans who had criticized Trump’s overture to the Ukraine leader.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, “It is not a good practice for us ever to ask a foreign country to investigate an American.” But she added, “I don’t see it as impeachable.”

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said, “I thought it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign government to investigate a political opponent,” while adding, “I also do not think it’s an impeachable offense.”

John Sullivan, Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Russia, said at his Senate confirmation hearing, “Soliciting investigations into a domestic political opponent — I don’t think that would be in accord with our values.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and a frequent Trump critic, said, “By all appearances, the president’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

 

Stargazers witnessed a rare celestial event on Monday, as Mercury passed directly across the face of the sun.

Mercury, the solar system’s smallest planet and closest to the sun, won’t make the next such transit until 2032.

The tiny planet traveled directly between Earth and the sun on Monday, creating a perfect alignment.

The best views of the event took place in North and South America, while viewers in Europe and Africa were able to see part of Mercury’s passage.

Stargazers had to use solar-filtered binoculars and telescopes to spot Mercury, which appeared as a small black dot on the face of the sun.

For those who could not see the event directly, the U.S. Space agency, NASA, live-streamed images of the celestial transit, which took about five and a half hours.