Thousands of Haitians joined a protest in the capital Sunday called by the art community to demand President Jovenel Moïse resign, increasing pressure on the embattled leader after nearly a month of marches that have shuttered schools and businesses.

Members of one art group participating in the march wore diapers on their heads and held empty bowls, while other protesters chanted slogans against Moïse, expressing anger over corruption, rising inflation and a lack of basic goods in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

“Not our president” and “We want a different Haiti,” read signs in the protest in Port-au-Prince, where smoke could be seen rising from debris fires started by protesters.

In contrast to recent demonstrations, police did not intervene to stop the protesters and the march progressed without tear gas.

The demonstration comes amid a spike in violence in Haiti’s capital and surrounding communities as protests that have caused nearly 20 deaths and almost 200 injuries paralyze the country. Businesses remain shuttered and an estimated 2 million children have not been able to go to school, according to the United Nations.

Earlier in the month, Moïse announced the creation of a commission charged with finding a solution to end the worsening crisis, but opposition leaders have rejected his call for dialogue and unity, and are demanding his resignation.

Many are also calling for a more in-depth investigation following a report by Haiti’s Senate that accuses former top government officials from the administration of former president Michel Martelly of misusing at least $2 billion in funds tied to a Venezuelan subsidized oil program that were meant for social programs.

The report also names a company that Moïse once owned. Moïse, who was Martelly’s hand-picked successor, has denied the allegations.

In contrast to recent protests, police did not intervene to stop them and the march has progressed without tear gas

The bulk of the protesters appeared to turn around close to or after reaching Petion-Ville.

But a smaller group now here arguing with police blocking road leading to jovenel’s house

This protest apparently included a lot more young educated people and intellectual

These thousands of people are totally disorganized

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan held talks Sunday with leaders in Iran to formally begin a diplomatic offensive he said was aimed at defusing the neighboring country’s escalating tensions with Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Khan told a joint news conference after his “wide-ranging consultations” with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that his country’s close ties with both Tehran and Riyadh go a long way back and Islamabad will do its utmost to prevent a conflict between the two Islamic countries.  

“We recognize that it’s a complex issue. But we feel that this can be resolved through dialogue,” Khan stressed and announced he plans to travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to further his peace mission.

“I have been very encouraged talking to you Mr. President. I feel encouraged and I go in a very positive frame of mind to Saudi Arabia and we will act as a facilitator. We would like to facilitate talks [between Tehran and Riyadh],” Khan said.

The Pakistani leader noted his country has previously hosted Saudi Arabia and Iran for talks to help them iron out mutual differences and it is ready to do it again.

For his part, Rouhani said he agreed with Khan that regional tensions must be settled through political talks, promising to assist Pakistan in its peacemaking efforts.

“I told Mr. Prime Minister that we openly welcome any goodwill gesture by Pakistan to promote regional  peace and stability,” the Iranian president stressed.

US-Iran tensions

Khan emphasized his peace Middle East mission is “purely a Pakistan initiative”, though he acknowledged the United States also has a role in it. He also has said previously that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has asked him to help mediate tensions with Iran.

“When we were in New York, President Trump spoke to me and he wanted us to facilitate some sort of a dialogue between Iran and the United States… I know there are difficulties but whatever we can do we will be happy to facilitate,” Khan said while referring to his last month’s meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Rouhani said he discussions with Khan also focused on how Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers could be restored to its previous status and ultimately fully implemented.

Last year, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and reimposed sanctions on Iran, prompting the Shi’ite Muslim nation to gradually reduce its stated commitments to limit controversial uranium enrichment operations.

“We emphasized as a key point that the United States should return to the JCPOA and lift the sanctions,” Rouhani said.

Washington and Riyadh blame Tehran for being behind last month’s strikes against key Saudi crude oil processing facilities, which fuelled regional tensions. Iranian officials deny the charges.

Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen, which are fighting a Riyadh-led military coalition, took responsibility for the September 14 attacks.

Rouhani noted he also conveyed his concerns to Khan regarding Friday’s missile attack on one of Iranian oil ships near the port of Jeddah. The Iranian leader said his country  has “clues” and will continue investigations to determine who the culprit is behind the attack before coming up with a “proper response.”

Pakistan’s challenges

Khan met Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei before concluding his one-day official visit to Tehran.

Khan explained Pakistan is promoting peace because it can ill-afford another regional conflict at a time when it is already dealing with security and economic challenges stemming from the 18-year-old war in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani prime minister has lately also facilitated peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban to help bring an end to the Afghan war.

Pakistan has traditionally relied on financial assistance and import of oil on deferred payments from Saudi Arabia to support its troubled economy. Pakistani military troops are also stationed on Saudi soil to train local forces. More than 2.5 million of Pakistanis are living and working in the kingdom.

However, with its large Shi’ite minority and a nearly 900-kilometer border with Iran, Pakistan has stayed neutral in Middle East tensions. It declined a Saudi call a few years back to join the military alliance fighting the Houthi insurgents in Yemen.

The U.N. warns that conditions for hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the midst of Turkey’s military offensive in Kurdish-controlled areas of north-eastern Syria is rapidly deteriorating.

Turkey began its so-called Operation Peace Spring five days ago to oust the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, which it views as a terrorist organization. However, most of the West views them as key partners in the fight against Islamic State. The civilian “collateral” damage of the Turkish operation already is huge.

The U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs estimates more than 130,000 people are newly displaced. OCHA spokesman, Jens Laerke, said most displaced people are staying with relatives and host communities, but a growing number are living in collective shelters.

He said U.N. figures indicate up to 400,000 civilians may require assistance and protection as the war escalates in the coming period. He told VOA it will be difficult to provide this aid because of insecurity and limited access to people in need. He says a number of NGOs have scaled down their operations and relocated their staff.

“We do have staff that remain there. Of course, their ability to operate there and provide relief is severely restricted and hindered by the ongoing hostilities. And, as I mentioned also, local authorities are reportedly imposing some quite strict security measures at checkpoints,” he said.

The U.N. children’s fund reports the water situation is deteriorating. UNICEF spokeswoman, Marixie Mercado said a vital water pumping station in Ras al-Ain that came under attack on October 10 remains out of service.

“This is a station that provides safe water to at least 400,000 people in Hassakeh governorate, including displacement camps. Technical and operational staff have not been able to get to the water station yet to repair it due to the ongoing hostilities,” she said.

The U.N. reports among those being deprived of clean water are some 68,000 residents in Al Hol camp, which is run by the Kurdish SDF. Women and children comprise more than 90 percent of the population. Many are family members of Islamic State militants.

UNICEF says most of the 47,000 children in the camp are under age 12. It notes these children are living in legal limbo because their countries of origin refuse to repatriate them.

The agency is appealing to governments to reverse this decision, arguing the children should be treated as victims and not as perpetrators.

By calling for the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump this week, former Vice President Joe Biden showed a new urgency to maintain his Democratic frontrunner status and respond to personal attacks against him and his family by the president.  

From the start, Biden’s candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination largely rested on the argument he is the most electable candidate in a crowded field of Democrats.

But in light of revelations that Trump sought to enlist help from the Ukrainian president to dig up political dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter, Biden is making a new argument to voters that he will not allow the president to pick his Democratic opponent.  

In a set of speeches in the early primary voting state of New Hampshire, Biden made the case that he was uniquely qualified to take on Trump.

“I said I was running to restore the soul of this nation,” Biden said during a campaign event on Wednesday. “That is what is at stake in 2020. That’s why this election is so important. And that’s why we are not going to let Donald Trump pick the Democratic nominee for president. I’m not going to let him get away with this.”

WATCH: Biden Campaigns in New Hampshire

Turkey’s official news agency says allied Syrian forces have captured the town of Suluk in the fifth day of the Turkish offensive in northeast Syria.

Anadolu news agency said Sunday the town’s center, located at a strategic crossroads about 10 km south of the border, was cleared of Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

Turkey considers the group a threat for links to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency at home.

A Kurdish official on condition of anonymity said the clashes in Suluk were ongoing.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry tweeted 480 YPG fighters were “neutralized” since Wednesday. The number couldn’t be independently verified.

Several shells fired from Syria hit the Turkish border towns Akcakale and Suruc in Sanliurfa province. Anadolu news agency said one person was wounded Sunday in Suruc.

Trump an ‘Island of One’

U.S. President Donald Trump has faced widespread bipartisan criticism that he has endangered stability in the Middle East and risked the lives of Syrian Kurdish allies who helped the U.S. bring down the Islamic State group in Syria.

But on Saturday he remained steadfast and defended his decision, saying he is an “island of one” for removing U.S. forces from northeastern Syria.

Trump said the U.S. cannot fight “endless wars.”

“We have to bring our great heroes, our great soldiers, we have to bring them home. It’s time. It’s time,” Trump said in a lengthy and wide-ranging address to the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of social conservative activists.

He portrayed the Middle East as a hopeless cause, despite years of American military involvement and financial investment.

“It’s less safe now. It’s less secure, less stable and they fight,” he said. “That’s what they do. They fight.”

Trump announced that he had directed $50 million in emergency aid for Syria to support Christians and other religious minorities there.

Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations Saturday were smaller and less disruptive than recent massive rallies that shut down much of the city.
 
The largest event on Saturday was a march that included thousands of protesters in the Mong Kok shopping district in Kowloon, across from the business and financial centers on Hong Kong Island.
 
Some black-clad protesters spray-painted government offices and subway stations with anti-Chinese messages. Others set up impromptu roadblocks. Some vandalized shuttered shops that protesters say have expressed support for Beijing.
 
Riot police nearby displayed a black flag to indicate they would fire tear gas but took no action during the afternoon long march. Some protesters passing by shouted obscenities at the police.
 
Most of the protesters were young and masked but the crowd also included a few parents with young children and babies. One father marching with his young daughter, both in masks, said he was not concerned for their safety at the demonstration but is more worried about the possible repressive control of Hong Kong by the “Chinese government in the future.”
 
Emergency measures
 
Saturday’s turnout was less that last week’s demonstrations, when tens of thousands came out, and much less than the nearly 2 million people that participated in anti-government protests in June.
 
For over four months, Hong Kong has been in the midst of an uncompromising standoff between increasingly defiant pro-democracy protesters and equally determined government forces backed by Beijing.

 While China regained sovereignty over this former British colony in 1997, Hong Kong has maintained a degree of political autonomy and civil liberties including free speech and a free press that is not tolerated on the mainland.
 
The protests erupted over a failed extradition bill to China but has since grown into calls for direct elections for all Hong Kong officials, instead of the current system under which Beijing appoints the chief executive and committees representing Hong Kong business interests select a number of seats in the legislature.  The protesters are also demanding a release of jailed protesters, an inquiry into police abuse and even the disbandment of the police force.
 
Hong Kong police have used increasing force to quell the protests, employing water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets, and last week an officer shot a young protester with lethal ammunition during a scuffle with activists.
 
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam also invoked partial emergency powers in outlawing the use of face masks that protesters have used to hide their identities and to protect themselves from tear gas attacks by police.
 
Since June, Hong Kong police over apprehended over 2,000 demonstrators, and nearly one-third of those arrested are under the age of 18.
 
Pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip, head of the New People’s Party, credits the increased law enforcement measures with discouraging more people from risking arrest by participating in marches.
 
“Well in terms of the numbers of the so-called peaceful rational nonviolent protesters, those are the real peaceful demonstrators. The numbers are down a lot you know,” she said.

Fire and gasoline
 
It is not clear, however, if the lower turnout at Saturday’s march shows declining support for the democracy movement or is a temporary lull in activity. A march last Saturday attracted only about 1,000 protesters but support rebounded with a massive demonstration the next day.
 
Protesters who came out on Saturday said they would not be discouraged by the threat of arrest for participating in an illegal assembly or breaking the anti-masks law.
 
If “enough people break the law,” one masked woman protester said, “it won’t be illegal anymore.”
 
The activist group Citizen’s Press, in a statement, likened the Hong Kong emergency measures taken to suppress the protests “to extinguishing a fire with gasoline.”
 
Gasoline bombs were ignited at a subway station in Kowloon, likely by pro-democracy activists who have been increasingly engaging in vandalism and clashes with police. No one was injured in the incident, according to the Hong Kong government.
 
The subway system, which had been shut down during past protest marches, was operating Saturday but scheduled to close early at 10 p.m.
 
Some young protesters were seen at one point changing from the black clothing associated with the protester into more colorful attire and blending into a crowd of shoppers after being told police were approaching.
 
Also on Saturday a group of senior citizens calling themselves the “Silver-Haired Marchers” began a 48-hour quiet sit-in at police headquarters to show support for the predominately young protesters and “uphold the core values of Hong Kong and defend the future of our younger generations,” the group said in a statement.

The Human Life Protection Act, passed in May, will impose a near-total ban on abortions in Alabama starting in November 2019. Court challenges make it unlikely the bill will be allowed to go into effect, but it is one of many recently passed state laws that ban abortion and make no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Andrey Nazarbekian traveled to Huntsville where the only abortion clinic in the state still operates.
 

Amazon is endorsing the idea of government regulation of facial recognition technology, as part of a wide-ranging statement of its principles on a range of social and political issues.

The U.S. tech giant, which has come under scrutiny by antitrust enforcers and has been criticized over its use of facial recognition software, set out its positions in a statement posted late Thursday on its corporate website.

Some of those stances, such as its endorsement of a raise in the federal minimum wage, were previously disclosed by Amazon.

The statement also reiterated recent comments by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos on efforts to battle climate change.

Facial recognition

On facial recognition, Amazon said it believes that “governments should act to regulate the use of this technology to ensure it’s used appropriately.”

The company noted that it offered its own set of guidelines for facial recognition that “protects individual civil rights and ensures that governments are transparent in their application of the technology.”

Thursday’s statement said governments “should work quickly to put in place a regulatory framework” for the technology, which has been used increasingly around the world amid criticism on privacy and civil liberties concerns.

Human rights, privacy

Amazon also said it supports diversity and rights of persons of any gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion and sexual orientation and “strongly” endorses immigrant rights and immigration reform.

The company said it will back U.S. federal privacy legislation “that requires transparency, access to personal information, ability to delete personal information, and that prohibits the sale of personal data without consent.”

Minimum wage, taxes

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in the U.S. “is too low and should be raised,” Amazon said, noting that it has promised to pay a minimum of $15 an hour and has encouraged others to follow suit.

Amazon, which critics say has paid little or no income taxes in recent years, said it endorses a review of the international tax system.

“Corporate tax codes in any country should incentivize investment in the economy and job creation,” the company said.

“In addition, tax codes, particularly between countries, should be coordinated to have neither loopholes that permit artificially lower tax rates nor overlaps that cause higher tax rates or redundant taxation, because these distort company behavior in ways that don’t benefit consumers or the economy.”

A Mekong River hydropower dam scheduled to open this month worries Vietnam because the country sits just downriver from it and would be threatened by lower water flows.

Officials in Hanoi aren’t wildly protesting to the dam’s host country, Laos, however, because Vietnam knows Laos has support from their much larger neighbor, China.

Vietnamese leaders instead are approaching Laos cautiously about the dam, out of fear the tiny landlocked country would seek more of that help from Beijing, Southeast Asia scholars say. Vietnam struggles to get along with China and resents Chinese expansion in other parts of Asia.

The new fear in Hanoi shows it can no longer treat Laos as a client state as it’s used to doing, those experts say.

“Vietnam is worried that Laos is just doing a little bit too much to dam up the Mekong,” said Murray Hiebert, senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “But Vietnam, although they have talked quietly to the Lao, it has not chosen the nuclear option to carry on very publicly and condemn Laos.”

Laos once on back foot

Vietnam historically had an edge over Laos. In the 19th century, monarchs in Laos “paid tribute to the Vietnamese court” in a relationship modeled on Vietnam’s own subservient stance toward China at the time, U.S. research institution GlobalSecurity.org says.

Laos had become a Vietnamese “client state” by the 1980s after Vietnam helped foster the Lao communist party, it says. During the Vietnam War of the 1960s, thousands of North Vietnamese troops were based in Laos to maintain the crucial Ho Chi Minh Trail communications network. Today, Lao leaders still study in schools in Hanoi for communist officials.

Since the 1980s, Vietnam has surged ahead economically on manufacturing investment, while Laos depends largely on farming. About 23% of the 6.9 million Lao people live in poverty compared to 6% of Vietnam’s 95 million people, the Asian Development Bank says.

However, the wealthier China has helped build otherwise hard-to-get infrastructure to Laos, most notably a high-speed rail line and special economic zones. Some of the projects fall under China’s 6-year-old Belt and Road Initiative aimed at driving up Sino-foreign trade around Eurasia. Chinese funding also built some of the country’s roads and bridges.

The Lao hydroelectric project, Xayaburi Dam, is widely expected to reduce water, fish and sediment to about 50 million people downriver, many in Vietnam.

Sino-Vietnamese friction

China and Vietnam have chafed for centuries over territory. They now dispute resource-rich tracts of the South China Sea. The two countries are cordial on paper, but regular maritime sovereignty flaps stop relations from growing tighter.

The government in Beijing gives Laos and Cambodia economic help to ensure their political support on regional issues including some where Vietnam stands on the other side, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate politics and international studies professor at International Christian University in Tokyo.

In Cambodia, a relatively poor country with a pro-Beijing political outlook since the 1960s, China has invested between $400 million to $700 million per year since 2010, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce says. As of September 2017, China had invested a total of about $6.3 billion in Laos, ministry data show.

“China can provide a little bit of economic assistance and ensure that those two states don’t, for example, agree with ASEAN consensus or when China and Vietnam’s interests are colliding, the Chinese can positively influence Laos and Cambodia,” Nagy said. ASEAN is the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Vietnam relies more on Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan for investment. Japanese funding helped build some of Vietnam’s signature infrastructure projects.

Regional politics

Vietnam is watching the boom in Chinese investment in Cambodia to understand what might happen if China adds to its holdings in Laos, said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Cambodia normally sides with China on ASEAN issues including maritime policies that touch on the Sino-Vietnamese sovereignty dispute.

“I think that’s what the Vietnamese government is afraid of, that scenario, and so that’s the reason why it’s so like a push-and-pull game between the Vietnamese government and the Chinese government to win over Laos,” Nguyen said.

Vietnam is showing it hopes to keep working with Laos on its own terms.

On Wednesday this week, youth unions from the two sides discussed adding activities for children along their border as a way of fostering future cooperation.

And last week prime ministers from the two countries agreed to keep up formal exchanges in what the official Viet Nam News called “a more streamlined, effective and substantive manner, with emphasis on the sharing of experience and seeking solutions to difficulties and obstacles.”

The United States is finding itself bogged down in northeastern Syria, caught in the middle of an increasingly dangerous fight between two key allies — Turkey and the Syrian Kurds — with neither side giving any sign it will back down. 
 
Further complicating matters, U.S. military and intelligence officials say they see indications that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or Daesh, is finding ways to take advantage of the chaos. 
 
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday became the latest senior U.S. official to voice his disapproval, decrying Turkey’s military incursion during a hastily scheduled news conference at the Pentagon.  

“We oppose and are greatly disappointed by Turkey’s decision to launch a unilateral military incursion into northern Syria,” he said, describing the decision as “impulsive.” 
 
“This operation puts our SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces] partners in harm’s way,” he said. “It risks the security of ISIS prison camps and will further destabilize the region.” 
 
Turkish operation 
 
U.S. military officials said the Turkish incursion, named Operation Peace Spring by Ankara, has so far encompassed a 125-kilometer stretch along the Turkish-Syrian border, from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, both Syrian cities. 
 
“It’s been relatively limited in terms of ground forces,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Friday, noting the Turkish military has been relying on several commando units and fighters with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army.  

Officials with the mainly Kurdish SDF said Turkey was also pounding their positions with artillery, warplanes and armed drones, adding there were no signs Turkish forces would ease off anytime soon, a view shared by the Pentagon. 
 
“I have no indication that they are willing to stop,” Esper said, noting he had emphasized to his Turkish counterpart “the damage this is doing.” 
 
Turkish officials said their goal was to create a 30-kilometer-wide zone along the border to protect Turkey from the Kurdish forces, which they say have long-standing ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 
 
Both Turkey and the U.S. see the PKK as a terror group, though U.S. and Western officials say the Kurdish militias in Syria have been an effective and steadfast partner in the fight against Islamic State. 
 
“We are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces,” Esper said. 
 
The U.S. announced Friday that it was drafting “very significant” new sanctions to pressure Turkey to ratchet down its operations. 
 
“We can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned.
 
Staying the course 
 
Turkey seemed intent on staying the course, however. 
 
The Turkish operation “will not stop … no matter what anyone says,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. 
 
Separately, the Turkish ambassador to the U.S., Serdar Kılıç, said Friday, “The path forward is clear.”

“We are going to clear YPG-PYD elements from that region,” he said, using acronyms for the Kurdish militias. “We gave unreserved support to the United States in its fight against terrorism. We do not expect less.” 
 
Kılıç also promised Turkey would “pay utmost attention in order to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties.” 
 
Senior U.S. officials said that despite such guarantees, U.S. President Donald Trump had ordered them to negotiate a settlement between Turkey, a NATO ally, and the Kurds. But Turkish officials seemed to dismiss such moves Friday, emphasizing the government does not negotiate with those they see as terrorists. 
 
Speaking by phone through an interpreter, from near the front lines, the top Kurdish military commander described the situation as frustrating and disappointing. 
 
“We are now preparing ourselves for a long military operation that might take more than a year,” SDF General Mazloum Abdi said Friday. 
 
“They want to attack all the Kurdish towns. … They want to destroy all of our area,” he said, adding that in addition to meeting with top U.S military officials earlier in the week, he was taking his case directly to the White House with a letter to Trump. 
 
“I ask him to mediate between us and Turkey, not through war but through dialogue and discussion,” Abdi said. 
 
“We want them [the Americans] just to impose a no-fly zone,” Abdi added. “President Trump is capable of doing this.” 
 
US, SDF forces 
 
For now, U.S. military officials said U.S. forces in northeast Syria remained “co-located” with the SDF, with the exception of “two small outposts” in the area from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, as part of the fight against Islamic State. 
 
A U.S. commander on the ground, 30 kilometers south of Tal Abyad, also told VOA’s Kurdish service U.S. forces were staying in the area to make sure Turkey’s incursion did not go too far. 
 
“We are still conducting operations,” Milley said at the Pentagon. “Obviously, this incursion that was initiated by the Turks has had some effect.” 
 
Turkish operations inside Syria also appeared to be the cause of a close call for U.S. troops in the town of Kobani, where artillery landed near their position, the Pentagon said in a statement. 
 
Navy Captain Brook DeWalt, director of Defense Press Operations, said in a statement that the explosion occurred “in an area known by the Turks to have U.S. forces present.” 
 
Turkey denied intentionally firing on the U.S. forces, and a U.S. official told VOA that no one was hurt in the explosion. 
 
“There are no indications this was intentional,” the official added without saying who was responsible. 
 
DeWalt said, “U.S. forces have not withdrawn from Kobani.” 
 
Only SDF officials raised additional concerns, accusing Turkey of bombing the abandoned American outposts in Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. 
 
SDF-run prisons 
 
More worrisome, they said, is Turkey’s willingness to target SDF-run prisons, which are home to 9,000 to 12,500 IS fighters captured by Kurdish troops during the U.S.-led campaign to roll back the terror group’s self-declared caliphate. 
 
The SDF said Friday that at least two such prisons had been targeted by Turkish artillery and that the attack on a prison in the city of Qamishli allowed five prisoners to escape. 
 
The SDF’s Abdi said none of the escapees had been recaptured, and that because of Turkey’s actions, the SDF could no longer make the prisons a top priority. 
 
“If they [Turkey] don’t stop the war, our soldiers are going to have to leave,” Abdi said of the troops he had assigned to guard the prisons. He added that some of those troops had already been pulled to fight on the front lines. 
 
“All of these people are going to go to protect their villages, their towns, their families,” he added. 
 
Separately, IS claimed responsibility Friday for a deadly car bomb in Qamishli.
 
Top U.S. officials, including Trump, have said Turkey would be responsible for any IS prisoners in areas Turkish troops entered. 
 
But there have been no discussions about how such a transfer of control would take place. And the SDF was refusing to cooperate. 
 
“We will never, ever give these terrorists to Turkey,” Abdi said, adding the SDF would take its chances by releasing the IS prisoners if necessary. 
 
“Everybody is attacking us,” he said. “They can attack us, as well.” 

We go to Kemmerer, Wyoming to find out how residents are handling the move away from coal, and hear from economist Robert Godby who offers an explanation as to why the state has been so slow to transition to coal alternatives.

Reporter/Camera: Steve Baragona

Weeklong protests that have shaken Ecuador and driven its government from the capital threaten to aggravate wider regional tensions, with President Lenin Moreno accusing Venezuela and its allies of scheming to foment the unrest.

Moreno suggested in a speech broadcast Monday that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had plotted with Ecuador’s former leftist leader, Rafael Correa, to stir up the nationwide protests that were sparked by IMF-ordered austerity measures, including the elimination of fuel subsidies in the oil-producing nation.

Maduro “has activated a destabilization plan together with Rafael Correa,” Moreno said. “They are the ones who are behind this coup attempt.”

Maduro, who has also been accused of encouraging unrest in Peru and Colombia — where the FARC rebel movement threatens to renew its insurgency — laughed off the allegations Thursday. “It seems all I have to do is twitch my moustache to topple a government. Let me think of what governments I will topple next,” he joked.

Correa, who is now living in self-imposed exile in Belgium, similarly ridiculed suggestions he is involved in the protests.

“They say I am so powerful that with an iPhone from Brussels I could lead the protests,” he told Reuters this week. “People couldn’t take it anymore, that’s the reality.”

But Ecuador officials have doubled down on their accusations. Appearing as a studio guest on Spain’s main television news channel, Ecuador’s ambassador in Madrid, Cristobal Roldan, blamed the unrest on a “conspiracy orchestrated from Venezuela.”

Roldan said plans to infiltrate agitators, fund opposition groups and “manipulate” indigenous organizations were hatched at meetings between Correa and Maduro in Caracas last month.

According to reports by the Spanish news agency EFE, Correa also went to Havana for meetings with Cuban President Raul Castro, who provides Maduro with key intelligence support.

Change in policy

When Correa was president of Ecuador between 2007-2017, he joined Cuba and Venezuela in an alliance of leftist Latin American governments called ALBA.

Moreno has drastically switched policy, actively backing U.S. efforts to isolate Maduro and replace him with a shadow government led by National Assembly leader Juan Guaido.

Roldan said that 43 Venezuelan nationals were among hundreds of protesters arrested by police during days of rioting that led to the invasion of government buildings, including the congressional palace.

Military officials say 17 Venezuelans were arrested while entering Venezuela at Quito airport with maps of planned anti-government marches and information about Moreno’s personal security arrangements.

Moreno has moved his government to the coastal city of Guayaquil, from which he has tried to open negotiations with the indigenous groups and labor unions organizing the protests.

Oil wells, pumping stations and distribution facilities have also been occupied by anti-government militants, who virtually shut down fuel production for two days this week.

Protest leaders have vowed to continue until Moreno scraps an IMF-designed package of economic reforms that could double fuel prices through the elimination of subsidies. They also blame police actions for the deaths of two protesters.

Ecuador’s protest movement is also backed by Bolivia’s leftist president, Evo Morales, whose leadership of an indigenous-based revolt against a pro-business president propelled him to power in 2005 elections.

“Economic policies imposed by the IMF only bring us broken states. That is our experience,” Morales said at a public event this week.

Correa may be following his playbook.

“Ecuador is experiencing the struggle of a people against a government, which has betrayed its program to the mandates of the IMF,” he said in Brussels, where he took refuge after a court in Quito indicted him for corruption last year.
 

The Trump administration is suspending a tariff hike on $250 billion in Chinese imports that was set to take effect Tuesday, and China agreed to buy $40 billion to $50 billion in U.S. farm products as the world’s two biggest economies reached a cease-fire in their 15-month trade war.

The White House said the two sides made some progress on the thornier issues, including China’s lax protection of foreign intellectual property. But more work will have to be made on key differences in later negotiations, including U.S. allegations that China forces foreign countries to hand over trade secrets in return for access to the Chinese market.

The U.S. and Chinese negotiators have so far reached their tentative agreement only in principle. No documents have been signed.

President Donald Trump announced the trade truce in a White House meeting with the top Chinese negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He. The news followed two days of talks in Washington.

“You’re very tough negotiators,” Trump said to the Chinese delegation.

Trump has yet to drop plans to impose tariffs Dec. 15 on an additional $160 billion in Chinese products, a move that would extend the sanctions to just about everything China ships to the United States. The December tariffs would cover a wide range of consumer goods, including clothes, toys and smartphones and would likely be felt by American shoppers.

The trade war has taken an economic toll on both countries. U.S. manufacturers are hurt by rising costs from the tariffs and by uncertainty over when and how the trade hostilities will win.

“They’re trying to de-escalate,” said Timothy Keeler, a lawyer at the law firm Mayer Brown and former chief of staff at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representatives. “I think it serves both sides’ interests because both sides were feeling pain.”

Stock prices had been up substantially all day, partially in anticipation of a significant trade agreement. But once the White House announced the contours of the tentative accord, the market shed some of its gains. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had risen more than 500 points at its high, closed up 319.

The negotiators did not deal with a dispute over the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Huawei, saying it poses a threat to U.S. national security because its equipment can be used for espionage. Trump has said he was willing to use Huawei as a bargaining chip in the trade talks.  

Among the skeptics of Friday’s agreement is Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who suggested that the deal amounted to merely a temporary pause in the conflict.   

“The president is acting as if a lot of Chinese concessions have been nailed down, and they just haven’t,” Scissors said.  

Gregory Daco, an economist at Oxford Economics, said the partial nature of the deal won’t relieve much of the uncertainty surrounding trade policy that has discouraged many American companies from investing in new equipment and expanding.

“For businesses this will mean less damage, not greater certainty,” Daco said in a research note.

Daco has estimated that the trade fight will cut U.S. growth by about 0.6 percentage point in 2020. Friday’s pact might reduce that slightly to 0.5 percentage point, he said.

The two countries are deadlocked primarily over the Trump administration’s assertions that China deploys predatory tactics — including outright theft —   in a sharp-elbowed drive to become the global leader in robotics, self-driving cars and other advanced technology.

Beijing has been reluctant to make the kind of substantive policy reforms that would satisfy the administration. Doing so would likely require scaling back China’s aspirations for technological supremacy, which it sees as crucial to its prosperity.

For now, the two sides have come to “almost a complete agreement” on both financial services and currency issues, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

The Chinese agreed to be more transparent about the way they set the value of their currency, the yuan. The Trump administration has accused China of manipulating the yuan lower to give its exporter a price advantage in foreign markets.

China has agreed to open its markets to U.S. banks and other financial services providers, Mnuchin said.

Earlier Friday, China announced a timetable for carrying out a promise to allow full foreign ownership of some finance businesses, starting with futures traders on Jan. 1, as Beijing tries to make its slowing economy more competitive and efficient.

Ownership limits will be ended for mutual fund companies on April 1 and for securities firm on Dec. 1, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said. Until now, foreign investors have been limited to owning 51% of such businesses.

Pakistan’s anti-graft tribunal has ordered that convicted ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif be questioned on money laundering allegations over the next two weeks.

It’s yet another corruption case against Sharif, who is serving a seven-year sentence for corruption. He’s appealing that sentence.
 
His political party, now in opposition in parliament, says the new case is an attempt to keep Sharif behind bars should his sentence be overturned.

Friday’s decision saw Sharif being brought under tight security before the anti-graft tribunal in the eastern city of Lahore to hear the money laundering charges. He told reporters there that he’s being victimized.

Sharif, who served as Pakistan’s premier three times, was ousted from office by the Supreme Court in 2017 because of corruption charges against him.

Subsequent elections brought Imran Khan to power.

Two rockets struck an Iranian tanker traveling through the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Friday, Iranian officials said, the latest incident in the region amid months of heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S. 

There was no word from Saudi Arabia on the reported attack, and Saudi officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Iranian state television said the explosion damaged two storerooms aboard the unnamed oil tanker and caused an oil leak into the Red Sea near the Saudi port city of Jiddah.

The state-run IRNA news agency, quoting Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co., identified the stricken vessel as the Sabity. That vessel last turned on its tracking devices in August near the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.

US 5th Fleet ‘aware’

Lt. Pete Pagano, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet overseeing the Mideast, said authorities there were “aware of reports of this incident,” but declined to comment further. 

The reported attack comes after the U.S. has alleged that in past months Iran attacked oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, something denied by Tehran. 

Friday’s incident could push tensions between Iran and the U.S. even higher, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions now crushing Iran’s economy. 

The mysterious attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone and other incidents across the wider Middle East followed Trump’s decision. 

The latest assault saw Saudi Arabia’s vital oil industry come under a drone-and-cruise-missile attack, halving the kingdom’s output. The U.S. has blamed Iran for the attack, something denied by Tehran. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, whom the kingdom is fighting in a yearslong war, claimed that assault, though analysts say the missiles used in the attack wouldn’t have the range to reach the sites from Yemen.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his peacemaking efforts with Eritrea.

Ethiopia and Eritrea, longtime foes who fought a border war from 1998 to 2000, restored relations in July 2018 after years of hostility.

Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairwoman of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Institute that awards the Nobel Peace Prize said Ahmed was named for his moves to end his country’s conflict with next door Eritrea within months of coming to office in 2018. He signed a “Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship,”’ with Eritrean

Within the Nobel Peace Prize there is a long history of prizes going to statesmen associated with ending conflicts, most recently Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos who was awarded the prize in 2016 for helping to bring his country’s 50 year civil war to an end.

The prize, worth 9 million Swedish crowns, or around $900,000, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, two foreign-born associates of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were charged Thursday with conspiring to influence U.S. politics with illegal campaign contributions.

Prosecutors identified two other men, Andrey Kukushkin and David Correia, as conspirators in an alleged scheme that aimed to funnel $1 million in donations to politicians and political candidates in Nevada, New York and other states to benefit a planned marijuana business funded by an unnamed Russian businessman.

John Dowd, the lawyer for Parnas and Fruman, declined to comment on the charges. Parnas and Fruman made their initial court appearance in Alexandria, Virginia, with another court date set for next Thursday.

Details emerged about their backgrounds Thursday:  

Lev Parnas

Parnas, 47, who was born in Ukraine, is a businessman who divides his time between Florida and New York City.

He has garnered attention by becoming a mega-donor to Republican Party politicians. In May 2018, Parnas posted pictures on Facebook of himself and Fruman with Trump in the White House and with the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. at a breakfast in Beverly Hills, California.

Parnas told NPR last month that he was “good friends” with Giuliani and that they played golf together.

Parnas helped introduce Giuliani into top Ukrainian political circles as part of Giuliani’s effort to push an investigation of Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival, and his son Hunter, according to widespread media accounts.

Parnas told Reuters in an interview last month any violations of U.S. Federal Election Commission rules were unwitting and a “clerical thing” because he was not an experienced political donor.

Igor Fruman 

Fruman, 53, who is originally from Belarus, is a real estate investor who also runs a U.S. import-export business.

Like Parnas, he has donated widely to pro-Trump politicians and has helped Giuliani with his efforts in Ukraine to discredit the Biden family.

Andrey Kukushkin 

Kukushkin, 46, is a Ukraine native now living in San Francisco and a veteran of the cannabis business.

He was a vice president of a Russian hedge fund, Renaissance Investment Management, before getting into the business of growing and selling marijuana in the United States, according to news reports, legal records and corporate records. One report in Forbes Russia said Kukushkin started with investments in dispensaries in California and Nevada, and quoted him as saying he now made $60 million in revenue annually.

Kukushkin made an initial court appearance in San Francisco on Thursday. His bail hearing will continue Friday.

David Correia

Correia, 44, is the only one of the four defendants born in the United States. He is a businessman and a longtime associate of Parnas. Fraud Guarantee, a Florida-based fraud protection company, lists the two men as co-founders. Correia and Parnas also worked together on a failed moviemaking venture that ended in litigation, according to U.S. media reports.   

President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said Thursday he plans to reduce the size of the National Security Council by about a third in coming months and limit the NSC’s role to gathering options for Trump rather than directing foreign policy.

O’Brien appears eager to reinstate the inter-agency coordinating role for which the NSC was originally conceived after conservative hawk John Bolton’s tenure in which he drew fire for not adequately consulting other agencies. Trump fired Bolton last month over strong policy disagreements.

“We’re going to coordinate policy out of the White House, we’re not going to operationalize national security and foreign policy as the NSC out of the White House. That’s the work of the departments and agencies,” O’Brien told Reuters in an interview.

O’Brien was the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs when he was tapped by Trump on Sept. 18 to be his fourth national security adviser, a choice that had the blessing of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Policy challenges

A California lawyer with U.N. and State Department experience, O’Brien will have to navigate enormous policy challenges, including Republican backlash to Trump’s decision this week to withdraw some U.S. troops from northeast Syria, a move that enabled Turkey to begin an incursion against U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters.

O’Brien has told aides his job is not to tell the president how the world works and what he should do but to ensure he has options. He seeks to bolster the role of the Cabinet departments in crafting policy rather than have the NSC attempt to do it.

He told Reuters he was happy to offer Trump his own national security opinions if asked, but only after the president had already heard from his Cabinet.

Foreign policy role

The National Security Council has played a powerful foreign policy role over the decades since it was created in 1947 under President Harry Truman.

Some national security advisers have beefed up staff and run foreign policy out of the White House to the chagrin of officials at the State and Defense departments.

The number of NSC policy advisers has trended higher over the past 30 years. President George H.W. Bush had less than 50, Bill Clinton went up to 96, George W. Bush’s grew to 136 in his second term, and Barack Obama at one point had 184, according to NSC records.

O’Brien said he wants to bring the size of the White House agency down to 117 policy advisers from its current strength of about 178.

That is about the size the NSC was under the leadership of Condoleezza Rice when she was President George W. Bush’s national security adviser during Bush’s first term in the early 2000s.

O’Brien said he wanted to follow the model for the job established by Brent Scowcroft, who was George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser and who limited the NSC to coordinating foreign policy and making sure the president had all the options needed to make decisions.

O’Brien said he would achieve his goal of reducing the agency’s size primarily through attrition. Experts detailed from other departments like Defense and State will go back to their home bases as their details expire at the NSC, with the goal of streamlining the NSC by the end of January 2020.

A senior administration official said O’Brien planned to be careful about bringing new people into the NSC staff for now. He has halted hiring for the time being while sorting out what the agency’s needs are.

More efficient

O’Brien’s downsizing is aimed at making the NSC more efficient, not trying to limit the amount of leaks to the news media that have dogged the Trump presidency, the official said.

He has chosen from within the NSC for his leadership team.

Asia expert Matt Pottinger is his deputy national security adviser, with Victoria Coates serving as deputy national security adviser for the Middle East and North Africa affairs.

His chief of staff will be a former Pottinger aide, Alex Gray.

O’Brien is also taking steps to reduce bureaucratic red tape.

The international economics team will be a bit smaller and managed solely by Trump’s senior economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, rather than having both Kudlow and the national security adviser lead it.

“I’ve got a teamwork approach to working with my West Wing colleagues,” O’Brien said. “Larry feels the same way. This idea that there’s a dual report for certain staffers doesn’t make good management sense. We are going to fix that situation.”

Even as the winds gusted dangerously just as forecasters predicted, California’s biggest utility faced gripes and second-guessing Thursday for shutting off electricity to millions of people to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized Pacific Gas & Electric, and ordinary customers complained about the inconveniences caused by the unprecedented blackouts that began Wednesday, with many wondering: Has PG&E gone too far in its attempt to ward off another deadly fire season? And could the utility have been more targeted in deciding whose electricity was turned off and when?

PG&E, though, suggested it was already seeing the wisdom of its decision borne out. Gusts topping 75 mph (121 kph) raked the San Francisco Bay Area, and relatively small fires broke out around the state amid a bout of dry, windy weather.

“We have had some preliminary reports of damage to our lines. So we’ll have to repair those damages before we can safely energize the line,” spokesman Paul Doherty said.

Because of the dangerous weather in the forecast, PG&E cut power Wednesday to an estimated 2 million people in an area that spanned the San Francisco Bay Area, the wine country north of San Francisco, the agricultural Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills. By Thursday, the number of people in the dark was down to about 1.5 million.

PG&E, California’s largest utility, cast the blackouts as a matter of public safety, aimed at preventing the kind of blazes that have killed scores of people over the past couple of years, destroyed thousands of homes, and run up tens of billions of dollars in claims that drove the company into bankruptcy.
 
The fire danger spread to Southern California on Thursday as raging winds moved down the state. A blaze threatened homes in the community of Fontana, and Southern California Edison shut off electricity to about 12,000 people just outside Los Angeles, with wider blackouts possible.

Still, many of those affected by the outages, which could last as long as five days, were not so sure about the move.

‘A lot of frustration’
 
Sergio Vergara, owner of Stinson Beach Market, situated on scenic Highway 1, on the Pacific Coast just north of San Francisco, operated the store with a propane generator so his customers could have coffee, milk, meat and frozen meals.

“I’m telling you as a plain human being, there is no wind, there is no heat,” he said. “We never saw something like this where they just decide to shut off the power, but on the other side — preventing is a good thing, but it’s creating a lot of frustration.”

But in powered-down Oakland, Tianna Pasche said: “If it saves a life, I’m not going to complain about it.”

Faced with customer anger, PG&E put up barricades around its San Francisco headquarters. A customer threw eggs at a PG&E office in Oroville. And a PG&E truck was hit by a bullet, though authorities could not immediately say whether it was targeted.

Sumeet Singh, PG&E’s vice president of community wildfire safety, urged people to be kind to workers out in the field, saying the employees and contractors “have families that live in your communities.”

“Let’s just ensure their safety as well, as they are doing this work in the interest of your safety,” Singh said.

Governor: ‘It was unnecessary’

Newsom said PG&E should have been working on making its power system sturdier and more weatherproof. “They’re in bankruptcy due to their terrible management going back decades,” he said. “They’ve created these conditions. It was unnecessary.”

Experts say the big shut-off will yield important lessons for the next time.

Deliberate blackouts are likely to become less disruptive as PG&E gets experience managing them and rebuilds sections of the grid so that outages can be more targeted, said Michael Wara, a researcher on energy and climate policy at Stanford University.

Grids are built and operators are trained to keep the power on at all times, so the company and its employees have little experience with intentionally turning the electricity off in response to rapidly changing weather, he said.
 
“That’s a skill that has to be learned, and PG&E is learning it at a mass scale right now,” Wara said.
 
After a June shut-off in the Sierra foothills, PG&E workers reported repairing numerous areas of wind damage, including power lines hit by tree branches.

“That was worth it,” Wara said of the deliberate blackout. “That could have prevented a catastrophe.”
 

Governments, businesses and philanthropists pledged just over $14 billion on Thursday to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, exceeding the targeted amount, its chief executive Peter Sands announced.

Beside French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the replenishment conference and had urged governments to open their wallets wide, Sands said the target was even slightly exceeded, reaching $14.02 billion. The fund says the money will help save 16 million lives and avert 234 million infections by 2023.