There are conflicting reports coming out of the Iraqi city of Karbala, where witnesses say gunmen opened fire on anti-government protesters overnight Tuesday, killing 18 and wounding hundreds.

One report puts the number of wounded at a staggering 865.

Some witnesses say the gunmen were Iraqi security forces or riot police while others say they were masked.

Karbala’s governor along with senior officials in Baghdad deny anyone was killed. Karbala is one of Islam’s holiest cities and the bloodshed could add more fury to the protests.

United Nations officials in Iraq condemned the violence. The human rights group Amnesty International says “These scenes are all the more shocking as they come despite assurances from Iraq authorities that there would be no repeat of the extreme violence used against demonstrators during protests earlier this month.”

The U.S. State Department has not commented on the latest reports from Karbala, but has called on all sides to reject violence. It also criticizes what it says are  Iraqi government efforts to pressure the media to censor reports about the demonstrations.

Anti-government demonstrators in Karbala, Baghdad, and elsewhere ignored an overnight curfew Tuesday, demanding the government resign.

Students and other protesters are angry at alleged corruption, a slow economy, and poor government services despite Iraq’s oil wealth.

A move in parliament to approve a bill to cancel privileges and bonuses for senior politicians, including the president, prime minister and Cabinet ministers, did little to calm the marchers.

The latest wave of violent protests across Iraq has killed at least 86 people since last Friday. That is on top of the nearly 150 killed during marches earlier this month.

Argentina’s president-elect Alberto Fernandez pledged to lead the country in a new direction on Tuesday amid a “difficult” domestic backdrop, as financial markets jumped around with investors grasping for any signs of the Peronist’s future plans.

The peso currency and over-the-counter bonds edged up after earlier falls, while the Merval stock index was flat. The black market peso jumped steeply on month-end demand for local currency after a pre-election sell-off last Friday.

Argentine investors and creditors are closely watching Fernandez for signals about his potential policies on the economy, his approach to the country’s mountainous debt pile and  he likely make-up of his key team of advisors.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the center-left leader confirmed he had appointed a small transition team until his government takes over in December, though there was no clear sign yet of his picks for key economy roles.

Fernandez, who won an election victory on Sunday, appointed a four-person team of confidante Santiago Cafiero, “Kirchnerist” Eduardo de Pedro, former justice minister Gustavo Beliz and former senator Vilma Ibarra to negotiate the transfer of power with defeated incumbent Mauricio Macri’s team.

The group does not include any economists, leaving up in the air the key question investors are asking about who will lead Fernandez’s economic team as the country’s grapples with currency and debt crises.

“Traders are sensitive and impatient given the high vulnerability with the complex current scenario,” said Gustavo Ber, Buenos Aires-based senior economist at Estudio Ber.

“They want him to define things quickly, to allow them to not only get past the electoral uncertainty but also make clear the future economic outlook.”

Market Tension

Fernandez and Macri had met on Monday to discuss a transition of power as Fernandez looks set to take Argentina in a new direction to the business-friendly reform agenda espoused by Macri, a staid former magnate with close ties with the United States.

“If we do the same things we will have the same results,” Fernandez said in a speech in the northwestern province of Tucuman, where he pledged to bolster jobs and stamp out issues like hunger which have worsened alongside a rising poverty rate.

“The current situation looks difficult. It is,” he added, without giving any details about his potential policy plans.

Markets are closely watching for signals from Fernandez about how closely he will work with Macri to smooth what has potential to be a tricky transition until the new government starts on Dec. 10.

“The only way to release market tension is to give a confidence boost with a credible economic team and a preventive plan for negotiations with the IMF,” said Siobhan Morden, managing director of Amherst Pierpont Securities.

Argentine media has reported that Cafiero could be in line to be the Cabinet chief, while de Pedro is a potential interior minister. Ibarra, who previously dated Fernandez, wrote a book called “Cristina versus Cristina” about his now running mate.

Beliz served under former President Nestor Kirchner, during whose administration Fernandez was chief of staff.

Argentina’s sovereign dollar bonds came under pressure earlier on Tuesday, with the benchmark international 2028 dollar bond down 1.1 cents to 37.1 cents in the dollar, while the 2023 issue slipped 0.9 cents to 39.36 cents in the dollar, according to Refinitiv data.

Fernandez rode back to power as the electorate voted to ditch the economic liberalization and austerity of conservative Macri, with the economy on the cusp of a complex $100 billion debt restructuring.

The opposition election win is seen with some trepidation by markets, which still recall more interventionist policies under Fernandez’s running mate, ex-president Cristina Fernandez de
Kirchner, who was president between 2007-2015.

A senior official in Afghanistan announced Tuesday that under a “new” peace plan, the government will not seek any more unconditional negotiations with the Taliban and will require that a cease-fire last at least one month before initiating any peace process with the insurgent group. 

Hamdullah Mohib, the adviser to President Ashraf Ghani on national security, revealed details of the plan at a news conference as officials confirmed to VOA a fresh Taliban attack in northern Jowzjan province killed at least 20 Afghan forces.

Mohib said the government has made the cease-fire a precondition because insurgents do not maintain unity of their command and do not control the war. Afghans have long alleged Pakistan covertly helps the Taliban, charges the neighboring country rejects. 

Some key Taliban commanders have even joined Daesh, the adviser claimed while referring to the Islamic State terrorist group by an Arabic acronym. 

“Before we enter into peace talks with them, Taliban leaders must prove how much control they have over their commanders and fighters,” Mohib said. 

The Taliban did not offer any reaction immediately to Mohib’s assertions and allegations. The insurgent group rarely responds to Afghan official statements, dismissing the government in Kabul as an American puppet. 

Critics are skeptical, however, about Afghan conclusions that the Taliban are divided or lack unity in their ranks. Analysts point to last year’s cease-fire the Taliban had observed during the three-day Muslim festival of Eid when insurgents did not carry out a single attack across Afghanistan and resumed fighting as soon as the festivities ended. 

Mohib spoke a day after the U.S. chief negotiator for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, ended a trip to Kabul where he held meetings with Ghani and other prominent Afghan political leaders regarding Washington’s peace-building efforts. 

This was Khalilzad’s first visit to the country since President Donald Trump halted a yearlong direct peace dialogue with the Taliban in September, citing continued insurgent attacks on Afghans and American troops. 

Adviser Mohib, however, said no peace-related discussions were held with Khalilzad and that the U.S. envoy’s mission this time was to seek government cooperation in securing freedom for two Western hostages in Taliban custody.

American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks were teaching at a Kabul university when they were kidnapped at gunpoint just outside the campus three years ago. The Taliban has been demanding release of some of its key prisoners from Afghan jails before freeing the two men. King is said to be suffering from serious health problems. 

“There were no discussions [with Khalilzad] on peace, nor were there discussions on political government in Afghanistan or other related issues. They are our internal matters and it is for the Afghan government to deal with them,” Mohib said.  

His remarks contradicted those of chief presidential spokesman Sediq Sediqqi, who said earlier this week that Khalilzad briefed Ghani on his recent visits and meetings “in some countries” regarding the Afghan peace process. 

The U.S.-Taliban talks excluded Kabul’s representation from the outset because of opposition from the insurgent group, creating rifts in Kabul’s relations with Washington.

During a U.S. visit in March, Mohib leveled strong criticism of Khalilzad’s conduct of the peace process. Addressing reporters at the Afghan embassy, Mohib accused the Afghan-born veteran U.S. diplomat of a lack of transparency and “delegitimizing” the Kabul government by excluding it from the process.  

The Trump administration denounced the allegations and has since stopped conducting official business with Mohib. 

The draft peace deal Khalilzad negotiated with the Taliban, before Trump canceled the process, required the insurgents to engage in intra-Afghan negotiations and give assurances they would not allow terrorist groups to use Taliban-held areas to plot international attacks. 

In return, U.S. and allied nations would stage a “conditions-based” drawdown from Afghanistan. 

The Taliban repeatedly has urged Washington to resume the stalled dialogue to conclude the deal that insurgent officials insist is just awaiting signatures from the two sides in the presence of international guarantors. 

The insurgent group refuses to cease hostilities against the Kabul government or enter into an intra-Afghan peace process until it concludes a peace agreement with the U.S. to bring an end to what the Taliban denounces as “foreign occupation” of Afghanistan.

 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystayko said a planned troop withdrawal has started in the town of Zolote in the eastern Luhansk region, where Ukrainian armed forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists for more than five years.

“The withdrawal is taking place right now, we are beginning [the process] today,” Prystayko said at an investment forum in the city of Mariupol, on Tuesday, adding that the process was delayed due to preparations by the OSCE mission.

Prystayko also said that after the withdrawal process in Zolote is over, Kyiv will start withdrawing its forces from the nearby town of Petrivske.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who rose to the presidency earlier this year on promises to end the conflict, accepted the withdrawal plan under the so-called Steinmeier Formula, earlier in October.

The Steinmeier Formula lays the groundwork for reinvigorating the larger peace deals known loosely as the Minsk Accords, and the first major international summit on the Ukraine conflict in three years.

Opposition

Zelenskiy’s support of the plan has drawn opposition from right-wing groups, some veteran groups, and activists in Ukraine.

Zelenskiy told reporters on October 10 that the plan proposed in 2016 by then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier would be enshrined in a new “special status” law for the separatist-controlled territories and drafted only after a summit of Ukraine, Germany, France, and Russia — the so-called Normandy format — takes place.

Prystayko said on October 29 that he hopes the Normandy talks will take place in November.

Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and backed a separatist movement in Ukraine’s easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk after Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin president, was overthrown and Western-leaning Petro Poroshenko was elected president the same year.

More than 13,000 people have died from the conflict since it began April 2014.

Moscow has repeatedly denied its role in funding, arming, or training the rebels despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, insisting that the conflict in Ukraine’s east is a civil war.

 

The Moscow City Court has denied bail to U.S. investor Michael Calvey and ruled to extend the house arrest of Calvey and his partner, French citizen Philippe Delpal, until January 13.

The court on Tuesday upheld a previous October 9 ruling by the Basman District Court.

Calvey and several other executives and employees of the Russia-based private-equity group Baring Vostok were detained in Moscow in February and charged with financial fraud.

They all deny any wrongdoing and say the case is being used against them in a corporate dispute over the control of a Russian bank. Calvey was released into house arrest in April and had hoped to win more freedom in court.

Baring Vostok Senior Partners Take Charge After its Founder Arrest

Moscow-based private-equity firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners announced Monday that senior partner Elena Ivashentseva and co-founder Alexei Kalinin are in charge of the company after its founder and senior partner Michael Calvey, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of embezzlement.Moscow Basmanny court judge Artur Karpov ordered Calvey, the founder of the firm and one of the country’s longest-standing and most prominent American investors, held in custody until at least April 13, arguing that the…

The arrests stunned many Western investors and drew complaints from high-level Russian business leaders and government officials, who questioned the motivations of the courts and prosecutors.

Baring Vostok is one of the largest and oldest private-equity firms operating in Russia since the early 1990s, managing more than $3.7 billion in assets. The company was an early major investor in Yandex, Russia’s dominant Internet search engine.

Calvey is one of two Americans currently facing potential trial in Russia on charges supporters say are groundless. Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, has been behind bars since December 28, when he was arrested on an espionage charge he denies.

There are a lot of reasons why people can’t donate blood. In some cases overseas travel or a recent tattoo can keep you from donating. And since 2014 the Food and Drug Administration has restricted sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating blood because of concerns that the HIV virus might be spread. But one group of university students in the state of Virginia is trying to get the government to reconsider those restrictions. Alexey Gorbachev has this story narrated by Anna Rice.

Experts say 8 million metric tons of plastics annually flow into the world’s oceans, a threat to life in and out of the water.  An inventor from the Netherlands has devised a clean-up solution. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi scoured up the details.

Pakistan has reassured the United States of its “steadfast” support to the peace and reconciliation process in war-shattered Afghanistan, stressing the importance for all parties to the conflict to take “practical” steps to reduce hostilities.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office said in a statement issued late Monday that he made the remarks in a meeting with visiting U.S. chief negotiator for Afghan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The U.S. envoy visited Islamabad a day after briefing leaders in Kabul on his renewed Afghan peace-building efforts. Khalilzad traveled to Afghanistan for the first time since President Donald Trump abruptly ended talks with Taliban insurgents last month.

“As a sincere facilitator and a friend, Pakistan remains ready to do everything possible in its capacity, as part of a shared responsibility, for (an) early conclusion of a peace deal,” Khan said.

The yearlong U.S.-Taliban dialogue, hosted by Qatar, had brought the two adversaries close to concluding a peace agreement to end America’s longest war before Trump abruptly ended the process. He cited a series of insurgent attacks in Kabul that killed, among others, a U.S. soldier.

Pakistan takes credit for arranging the U.S.-Taliban talks by persuading the insurgent group to come to the negotiating table.

“Achieving sustainable peace and security and ensuring long-term development, progress and prosperity in Afghanistan and the region was in Pakistan’s best national interest,” Monday’s statement quoted Khan as saying.

Khalilzad’s visit comes amid a new international diplomatic push by key regional players, including Russia, China and Pakistan, to help restart the stalled U.S.-Taliban talks and conclude the peace deal to end the Afghan war, which completed 18 years this month.

On Friday, Khalilzad visited Moscow for a four-party meeting with counterparts from Russia, China and Pakistan to review efforts the countries are jointly making to promote a negotiated settlement to the war.

A post-meeting statement said participants stressed the need for all parties to the Afghan conflict to immediately reduce violence to “create an environment conducive” for peace negotiations.

It noted Russia, China and Pakistan expressed their support for “the earliest resumption of (the) negotiation process and reaching an agreement” between the U.S. and the Taliban, saying it will pave the way for launching intra-Afghan talks.

In early October, Islamabad hosted informal talks between Khalilzad and Taliban negotiators. While the negotiating sides did not publicly discuss or even confirm the interaction, Pakistani officials said they had facilitated the meetings to help resurrect the U.S.-Taliban dialogue.

Afghan leaders allege Pakistan shelters Taliban leaders and fighters, enabling them to sustain and expand insurgent activities in Afghanistan.

Islamabad rejects the charges and does not rule out the possibility of insurgents using areas in Pakistan hosting nearly 3 million Afghan refugees as hiding place.

The two countries share a nearly 2,600-kilometer porous border, though Pakistan says its border management plan has secured most of the boundary over the past two years through fencing and establishing new outposts.

A large ancient wetlands region spanning northern Botswana – once teeming with life but now dominated by desert and salt flats – may represent the ancestral homeland of all of the 7.7 billion people on Earth today, researchers said on Monday.

Their study, guided by maternal DNA data from more than 1,200 people indigenous to southern Africa, proposed a central role for this region in the early history of humankind starting 200,000 years ago, nurturing our species for 70,000 years before climate changes paved the way for the first migrations.

A lake that at the time was Africa’s largest – twice the area of today’s Lake Victoria – gave rise to the ancient wetlands covering the Greater Zambezi River Basin that includes northern Botswana into Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east, the researchers said.

It has been long established that Homo sapiens originated somewhere in Africa before later spreading worldwide.

“But what we hadn’t known until this study was where exactly this homeland was,” said geneticist Vanessa Hayes of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney, who led
the study published in the journal Nature.

The oldest-known Homo sapiens fossil evidence dates back more than 300,000 years from Morocco. The new study suggests that early members of our species as represented by the Morocco remains may not have left any ancestors living today, the researchers said.

“There is no contradiction between the presence of an early Homo sapiens-like skull in northern Africa, which may be from an extinct lineage, and the proposed southern African origin of the Homo sapiens lineages that are still alive,” added study co-author Axel Timmermann, a climate physicist at Pusan National University in South Korea.

The ancient lake Makgadikgadi began to break up about 200,000 years ago, giving rise to a sprawling wetland region inhabited by human hunter-gatherers, the researchers said.

“It can be viewed as a massive extension of today’s Okavango Delta wetland area,” Timmermann said.

Changes in Earth’s axis and orbit caused climate, rainfall and vegetation shifts that set the stage for early migrations of this ancestral group of people away from the homeland region, first toward the northeast 130,000 years ago, then toward the southwest 110,000 years ago, Timmermann added.

“Our study provides the first quantitative and well-dated evidence that astronomically driven climate changes in the past caused major human migration events, which then led to the development of genetic diversity and eventually cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity,” Timmermann added.

 

The Trump administration announced Monday that it is shutting down one of the largest U.S. facilities for child migrants, which had come under intense criticism because of its regimented conditions and the contractor’s ties to a freshly departed White House official.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that it has reduced bed capacity from 1,200 to zero and the contract with Comprehensive Health Services Inc. is set to end on Nov. 30. About 2,000 workers will be let go in the coming days.

 The Homestead, Florida, facility emptied out in August but had remained operational in case there was no room at shelters for teen migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border and end up in government custody.

Health and Human Services said the decision to eliminate beds was to “ensure fiscal prudence.” Last month, Jonathan Hayes, director of the department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, said the facility was costing $720,000 a day to run even when no children were left there.

In a letter to Congress, the administration informed lawmakers that the facility was transitioning to “warm status” with no beds but would retain access to the site in case the number of child migrants rises.

A court filing earlier this year alleged the government was holding migrant children in “prison-like conditions” for months, allowing limited phone calls and ordering them to follow strict rules or face prolonged detention.

Democratic presidential hopefuls turned the Miami-area facility into a campaign stop this summer, when about 2,500 teens were held there. They attacked the administration for holding children in a cramped detention center run by a private company tied to former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

The Homestead facility, a former Labor Department Job Corps site, also was used during the Obama administration to hold up to 800 migrants from June 2016 to April 2017.

It reopened in March 2018, but the contractor was then backed by a private equity company Kelly had advised as a board member in the months before joining the Trump administration. The facility held as many as 140 children who were separated from their parents last year as part of a “zero-tolerance” policy that separated thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

As Homeland Security secretary, Kelly first revealed the U.S. government was considering separating families who were migrating to deter others considering traveling north.

This year, the facility underwent a massive expansion from 1,350 to 2,350 beds. In April, federal officials announced the capacity was growing to hold 3,200 children because of a surge of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Three months after leaving the Trump administration in January, Kelly was spotted by protesters touring the facility east of the Everglades in a golf cart. Authorities confirmed he had visited the site on April 4, on behalf of Caliburn International Corp., which owns the contractor Comprehensive Health Services. Five days later, that company was awarded a no-bid contract for $341 million citing an immediate need to increase bed capacity.

The company later publicly announced Kelly had joined the board.

Caliburn has in its executive suite a high-ranking military officer who advised President Donald Trump in his first months in office and a former Department of Defense principal deputy inspector general.

The company did not respond to a request for comment Monday and referred questions to Health and Human Services officials.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Democratic lawmaker who represents the district encompassing the site, invited the field of 2020 Democratic candidates to visit the facility. Along with other lawmakers, Mucarsel-Powell has pressed a government watchdog agency to investigate Kelly’s role in the contracting negotiations.

“Caliburn will no longer receive millions of dollars to operate an empty facility,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Given Caliburn’s poor record of child abuse and neglect, as well as the sheer number of former administration officials now serving on Caliburn’s board, this is a good first step towards ending one of many corrupt practices this Administration has executed.”

Backers and foes of Bolivian President Evo Morales are blocking streets and highways across the country in a dispute over official election results that show the leftist leader winning reelection without a runoff.

Anti-Morales protesters have shut down the eastern city of Santa Cruz for a sixth day, Pro- and anti-Morales demonstrators have clashed in the capital of La Paz, where schools and many businesses were closed and public transport frozen.

Backers of opposition leader Carlos Mesa say results from the Oct. 20 vote were rigged to give Morales just enough of a majority to avoid a runoff he might lose. He is demanding a runoff in any case.

Morales denies irregularities and says he welcomes an international audit of the election and vote counting.

 

The opening of Ethiopia’s once-secretive imperial palace complex has been hailed as symbolizing a new era of openness for the east African nation, but it also has another aim — job creation.

The Menelik palace and its 40-acre Unity Park compound overlooking Addis Ababa opened to the public this month after being closed for more than a century when it housed emperors but was also used as a torture site under the communist Derg regime.

It was established in 1887 by Emperor Menelik II and given back to the city by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power 18 months ago. The move “symbolizes our ability to come together” while also boosting tourism and jobs, his office said.

The palace opening was cited at an annual gathering of social entrepreneurs in Addis Ababa as an example of a rising number of tourism businesses set up with a mission to help local communities — with warnings these projects came with risks.

“[The palace] will add value to our tourism … it will help  Ethiopia,” said Samrawit Moges, founder of Travel Ethiopia, the first company in the country to use female guides.

“But tourism is a very delicate sector that can change the country for better or for worse … we need to give high importance to the environment.”

The growing social enterprise sector is tapping into the global travel and tourism industry, which contributed a record $8.8 trillion and 319 million jobs to the world economy in 2018, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

The WTTC forecast another 100 million new jobs by 2029.

Global efforts

Matt Pfahlert, co-founder of the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship, said growing numbers of tourism projects from Australia to Africa were being led by social enterprises — businesses set up with a mission to help society.

There was no official record on the number of such ventures.

Pfahlert led a A$2.5 million ($1.7 million) community buy-back of an old jail in his home town of Beechworth in the Australian state of Victoria, that was famed for its connection to the nation’s legendary outlaw Ned Kelly.

It opened in 2017, creating 22 jobs in a rural area with few opportunities and was helping to raise funds to train young people on business development to stem a decline in rural areas.

“For us, the jail is the engine for a national project,” Pfahlert told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the 12th annual Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF).

“If we get it right, we can make a huge difference,” said Pfahlert, adding that cycling tours were another draw.

He said tourism social enterprises focused on helping communities, while traditional tourism businesses tended to be profit-oriented with a focus on volume growth.

In Ireland, for example, the social enterprise My Streets trains homeless people to run tours of Dublin and Drogheda.

While in India, Grassroutes aims to create “one million livelihood opportunities” and reduce rural migration by running various tourist activities in villages outside Mumbai.

Dangers of growth

But tourism social entrepreneurs said in the rush to do good, it was important to be wary of not growing too fast as this could negatively impact communities and the environment.

Theodore Nzabonimpa, founder of Beyond The Gorilla Experiences in Rwanda, said it had been important to stem the number of tourists visiting the mountain gorillas in his country by doubling national park prices in 2017 before damage occurred.

“The risks can be huge even if the intention is good … you have to take quick action to address any risks,” said Nzabonimpa, whose tour company promotes community ecotourism.
 

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill, a rising Democratic star in the House, announced her resignation amid an ethics probe, saying explicit private photos of her with a campaign staffer had been “weaponized” by her husband and political operatives.

The California Democrat, 32, had been hand-picked for a coveted leadership seat. But in recent days, compromising photos of Hill and purported text messages from her to a campaign staffer surfaced online in a right-wing publication and a British tabloid. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Hill had acknowledged “errors in judgment” that Pelosi said made her continued service in Congress “untenable.”

The House ethics committee had launched an investigation into whether Hill had an inappropriate relationship with an aide in her congressional office, which is prohibited under House rules. Hill, one of the few openly bisexual women in Congress, has denied that and vowed to fight a “smear” campaign waged by a husband she called abusive.

But her relationship with the campaign aide became a concern for House Democrats who have made equality in the workplace a particular priority. On Sunday, after apologizing for the relationship with a subordinate, Hill announced she was stepping aside.

“It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress,” she wrote in a statement released Sunday.

“Having private photos of personal moments weaponized against me has been an appalling invasion of my privacy. It’s also illegal, and we are currently pursuing all of our available legal options,” she added. “However, I know that as long as I am in Congress, we’ll live fearful of what might come next and how much it will hurt.”

Hill’s statement provided no details on that or when she would step down. Hill’s office and campaign provided no additional public comment.

Pelosi, D-Calif., praised Hill in a statement on Sunday for bringing “a powerful commitment to her community and a bright vision for the future” to the House, but added: “She has acknowledged errors in judgment that made her continued service as a Member untenable. We must ensure a climate of integrity and dignity in the Congress, and in all workplaces.”

Pelosi picked Hill for a coveted leadership seat. Hill had also been named vice chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee.

District seat

Hill’s abrupt fall came after a blazing rise in which she won the last Republican-held House seat anchored in Los Angeles County, part of a rout that saw GOP House members driven out of their seats in Southern California.

She was elected by 9 percentage points last year, ousting two-term Republican Rep. Stephen Knight and capturing the district for her party for the first time since 1990. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried the district in 2016 by 7 points.

Hill’s campaign had raised a healthy $2.2 million so far this year, putting her on track for a strong reelection bid.

Citing the more than 4-in-10 district voters from minority groups, Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who heads House Democrats’ campaign committee, said there was “no doubt” her party would hold the district next year.

But Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., chairman of the House GOP campaign arm, said Republicans “look forward to winning back this seat.”

‘Smear campaign’

In recent days, Hill’s Los Angeles-area constituents were wrestling with questions about who might have been wronged, how much it matters and whether any punishment was warranted.

Hill, celebrated as a face of millennial change in Congress, said in her statement that she had no choice but to step down.

“This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation,” Hill said. “I can no longer allow my community, family, friends, staff, supporters, and especially the children who look up to me as a role model, to suffer this unprecedented brand of cruelty.”

She apologized to “people who have been hurt.”

She’s asked U.S. Capitol Police to investigate potential legal violations for posting and distributing the photos online without her consent.

Hill is divorcing her husband, Kenneth Heslep, and says he is abusive. While not providing any evidence of abuse, Hill says she turned elsewhere for companionship because of their turbulent relationship and lamented that “the deeply personal matter of my divorce has been brought into public view.”

In court papers, Heslep sketches a different story, one in which he was rejected by an ambitious wife after agreeing to her request that he play the role of house-husband, while she pursued her career aspirations. He said she left him soon after being elected to Congress.

“Our agreement was that I would stay at home and take care of all the domestic duties and responsibilities while (Hill) worked,” Heslep said in documents filed in July in Los Angeles Superior Court. He did not allege any extramarital affairs by his wife.
 

Today Vietnam has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, high levels of optimism in public opinion surveys, and good relations with its old wartime enemies, the United States and France. So locals were caught off guard by the high-profile deaths in Essex, which suggest that some thought they could find more opportunity abroad than at home.

British police found 39 people dead in a truck last week, prompting fears that the deceased were the victims of human trafficking. Several people have been arrested in the United Kingdom and one man has been charged with manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. Vietnam’s prime minister has ordered an investigation into whether this was a case of human trafficking.

Some here are surprised that people would spend tens of thousands of dollars, equivalent to hundreds of millions of Vietnam dong, to leave, even though Vietnam has a fast-growing economy that has lifted many out of poverty. One local noted that such money could be used to find work domestically.

“No matter what the country is, this is sad and depressing,” one poster on the news site Vnexpress said of the deaths. “I think the current life in Vietnam is not too difficult. Instead of spending hundreds of millions to go abroad, that amount of money in Vietnam could create many jobs.”

Life in Vietnam has improved for many people, and it is a different place than it was in wartime. In the 1960s and ’70s, waves of boat people left the violence of the Vietnam War. It was a time when some in the country would go hungry, most had only bicycles at best for transportation, and few could do business with the outside world amid international isolation.

Sill, labor migration continues to be a reality, with Vietnamese choosing to go to work in factories in Russia, construction in Libya, or cannabis farms in the UK. Drive around smaller towns like Da Lat, and there are signs posted by brokers offering to take workers overseas.

Some say it is not always helpful to label the workers as modern slaves, or victims who were tricked into human trafficking. In the UK example, researcher Nicolas Lainez said treating Vietnamese as victims who need to be saved by police could be “a smokescreen to conceal the severe control over human mobility enforced by the UK and its European counterparts, the deregulation of labor markets, the prevarication of workers, and the increase in inequality under neoliberal policies.”

In other words, he says authorities treat labor migration as an issue of public safety or criminal activity, rather than take responsibility for state policies that are harmful to workers and migrants.

“These structural forces, ignored in discussions on modern slavery, leave both citizens and non-citizens with little or no protection, and encourage labor exploitation and migration on a large scale,” Lainez wrote in a blog post.

Vietnamese have also viewed the latest tragedy as a case of disadvantaged workers, in search of a better life.

“They did not have enough money to leave as entrepreneurs,” one Facebook poster commented of those who died in the truck. “They went to look for a good future and take care of their families but ended up trapped … but the result is heartbreaking … Condolences to the victims.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has pledged to increase economic sanctions against Iran. He says the administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” is halting Iranian aggression.

Mnuchin met Monday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called on Washington to impose additional sanctions to stop what he called Iran’s “plunge for everything” in the Mideast.
 
Mnuchin is heading a delegation to the Middle East and India to discuss economic ties and counterterrorism initiatives. He is joined by U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was to meet with Netanyahu and his key rival, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz.
 
Mnuchin says American sanctions aim to force Iran to stop “their bad activities and exporting terrorism, looking to create nuclear capabilities, and missiles.”

 

 

Drones are being taught to deliver food and medical supplies to customers. Now, doctors and scientists at the University of Maryland at College Park are creating special, custom-made drones that can literally save lives. Alexey Gorbachev has the story narrated by Anna Rice. 

In Ivory Coast, an artist works hard for his money, painting scenes with pen, brush and paint — even though he has neither arms nor legs. VOA’s Jim Randle tells us how he does it. 

Democratic congresswoman Katie Hill of California has resigned amid an ethics probe and revelations of an affair with a campaign staffer.

In a statement Sunday, the 32-year-old freshman from the Los Angeles area says leaving the House is best for her constituents, community and country.

Hill is under investigation by a congressional committee for an alleged intimate relationship with a male senior aide, which Hill denies.

She has acknowledged an affair with a young female staffer. Compromising photos and purported text messages surfaced online this past week in a right-wing publication and a British tabloid.

Last year, Hill won the last Republican-held House seat anchored in Los Angeles County.

Clashes in the streets as thousands of people took to the streets for another weekend of protests in Hong Kong. This week, the city’s governing body formally withdrew the bill that sparked the original protests earlier this year, but that has done little to appease protesters in this leaderless movement, who say they want the government to do more to stave off what they believe is encroaching control from Beijing. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Hong Kong

The U.S. operation on Saturday that killed the leader of the Islamic State (IS) terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was reportedly carried out in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, home to several terror groups and tens of thousands of foreign fighters. 

Syrian Kurdish military officials said the highly clandestine mission took place near a village, which is approximately 5 kilometers away from the Syria-Turkey border.

“Al-Baghdadi, his family and some of his aides were hiding in the village of Barisha in northern Idlib,” a leading commander with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told VOA.   

The SDF official, who insisted anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter, added that Kurdish-led forces played “a crucial role” in the U.S. operation and provided “valuable intelligence to U.S. military intelligence agencies.”

Barisha and other surrounding villages are largely under the control of extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaida, experts said.

“Several groups that have ties with al-Qaida have presence in this area,” said Sadradeen Kinno, a Syrian researcher who closely follows Islamic militant groups in the country.

He noted that Huras al-Din is one of the groups that has operated in the area for a long time.

Huras al-Din emerged in Syria in early 2018 after several factions broke away from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) following al-Nusra’s decision to sever ties with al-Qaida.

The group is largely based in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, but has a significant presence in nearby provinces.

Kinno told VOA that following the defeat of IS in its last pocket of control in eastern Syria in March 2019, a significant number of its fighters fled to Idlib.

“IS and al-Qaida-affiliated groups in Syria disagree ideologically, but now they face a common existential threat from the U.S. and Russia. So I believe al-Baghdadi ended up in Idlib by striking a deal with Huras al-Din and other groups that are active there,” he said.

In March, a Kurdish military official said they had unconfirmed information about the whereabouts of IS leader in Idlib.

Nuri Mahmud, a YPG spokesman, said at the time that after removing IS from its last territory in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Kurdish forces couldn’t find al-Baghdadi and tentatively concluded that he had fled to Idlib.

Who controls Idlib?

The Syrian province of Idlib, home to nearly 3 million people including many displaced people from other parts of Syria, has been a center of contention between Russia and Turkey, two powers that support opposite sides of the Syrian conflict.

In September 2018, Moscow and Ankara reached an agreement that postponed a planned Syrian regime offensive on Idlib and other areas near the Turkish border.

As part of that agreement, Turkey was required to remove all extremist groups from the province, some of which are allied with the al-Qaida terror group.

More than a year into the deal, however, Turkey has allegedly failed to implement that part of its commitment with Russia leaving most of Idlib under the control of a former al-Qaida affiliate called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

For years, Turkey has maintained several military outposts throughout the Syrian province.

U.S. officials also have voiced concerns about the presence of tens of thousands of foreign fighters in Idlib.

“Idlib is essentially the largest collection of al-Qaida affiliates in the world right now,” Michael Mulroy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, said during recent remarks at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

IS in Idlib

Another SDF official, who also requested anonymity, said that after losing all Syrian territory it once held, IS began looking for a foothold elsewhere in Syria.

“This operation that targeted al-Baghdadi is yet another evidence that Daesh has many followers in Idlib, including some who fled after their defeat in eastern Syria and a large number of sleeper cells,” the Kurdish official said, using an Arabic acronym for the terror group.

He added that IS leaders have been planning to use Idlib as a new center to carry out attacks in Syria and around the world.