In India’s tourist city of Jaipur, state authorities and civil society groups have launched a major campaign to end the use of child labor as growing numbers of young boys are trafficked into the city from poorer states. They are put to work to make handcrafted products that have made the city a magnet for shoppers from all over the country.  Anjana Pasricha has a report.

The city of Huntington Park in the state of California has hired a new police office to patrol local parks. It’s always on duty and monitors the park 24 hours a day to make sure things are in order. Khrystyna Shevchenko met with this supercop and watched him work. Anna Rice narrates her story. 
 

A powerful early morning suicide truck bomb devastated a hospital in southern Afghanistan Thursday, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 90 others, an official said.

The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which destroyed part of the hospital in Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province, and left a fleet of ambulances broken and battered.

Residents, many of whom had come to see their sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry the wounded inside the destroyed building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar.

In the early hours after the explosion there were contradictory figures of the dead and wounded. The provincial governor’s spokesman Gul Islam Seyal put the death toll at 12 but said authorities were on the scene sifting through the debris. Atta Jan Haqbayan, head of the provincial council, put the death toll at 20.

The Taliban, who have been carrying out nearly daily attacks since peace talks with the United States collapsed earlier this month, said the target was a nearby government intelligence department building was the target.

Haqbayan said the wall of the National Security Department (NDS) building was damaged. He couldn’t say whether any personnel were among the casualties.

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a notice in less than a week to the city of San Francisco on its homeless and other issues.

Trump said there is “tremendous pollution” going into the ocean from the city “including needles.”

“They have to clean it up. We can’t have our cities going to hell,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “They are in serious violation.”

Fear is crippling Zimbabwe’s already struggling health system, as doctors and patients alike are staying away. The disappearance of an outspoken young doctor who led a strike for higher public-sector wages has only made the situation more dire. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Harare.

Lawyers for two Air Force members who are HIV-positive urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to uphold an injunction that bars the Trump administration from continuing with discharge proceedings against them.

The Department of Defense is appealing a ruling by a judge who found that the Air Force is working under policies that are “irrational” and “outdated.”

The policies prevented the service members with HIV from deploying outside the U.S. without a waiver and resulted in them being considered “unfit” for continued service. The Department of Justice has argued that the military allows service members who contract HIV to continue to serve if they can perform their duties.

While acknowledging that treatment decreases the risk of transmitting HIV, the DOJ argues that the risk is amplified on the battlefield where soldiers often come into contact with blood. The U.S. Central Command, which governs military operations in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, prohibits personnel with HIV from deploying without a waiver.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned a Department of Justice attorney extensively about why the military policy is still necessary despite major advances in the treatment of HIV.

“There are risks in the combat context,” said Lewis Yelin, an attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Division.

But Geoffrey Eaton, an attorney for the airmen, argued that the odds of transmitting HIV in combat are infinitesimal and should not limit their deployment or lead to their discharge. Eaton said advances in science and treatment of HIV have made the military’s policies outdated.

The 2018 lawsuit filed by the airmen argues that there is no rational basis for prohibiting deployment of service members with HIV. They argue that they can easily be given appropriate medical care and present no real risk of transmission to others.

The DOJ argues in legal briefs that the Air Force determined that the two airmen could no longer perform their duties because their career fields required them to deploy frequently and because their condition prevented them from deploying to Central Command’s area of responsibility, where most airmen are expected to go.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction in February, a ruling that ensured that the men would remain in the Air Force at least until their claims could be heard at trial. Brinkema is also expected to hear a separate lawsuit filed by a sergeant in the D.C. Army National Guard who says he was denied the opportunity to serve as an officer and faces possible discharge because of his HIV-positive status.

The airmen are not named in the lawsuit and are referred to by pseudonyms, Victor Voe and Richard Roe. The lawsuit was filed by Lambda Legal, the Modern Military Association of America and the law firm Winston & Strawn LLP.

“Serving my country has been the greatest honor of my life, one that I am extremely grateful for and proud off,” Voe said in a statement released by his attorneys.

“All my fellow service members in this lawsuit and I want is to be able to continue to serve, and to do so without unnecessary restrictions preventing us from giving this country what it deserves — our best,” he said.

The appeals court did not indicate when it would rule.

The world is decades behind schedule to achieve ambitious goals to fight poverty, inequality and other ills, development experts warned Wednesday, as global leaders prepared to meet to weigh their progress.

The high-level summit in New York next week will be the first to focus on the sustainable development goals since they were adopted by the United Nations four years ago.

The 17 sustainable development goals, known as SDGs, set out a wide-ranging “to-do” list tackling conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender inequality and climate change by 2030. Assessments of their progress have been bleak.

On Wednesday the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based nonprofit, said the goals were unlikely to be reached until 2073, more than four decades past their target date.

“Progress isn’t fast enough to achieve the ambition of the SDGs within my lifetime, and that’s a problem,” said Michael Green, chief executive of the Imperative. “There are some countries that are going backwards and letting us down.”

Most countries are lagging particularly in efforts to improve sanitation, nutrition, basic medical care, shelter and water, said the group, which ranks nations on an array of economic and social factors.

“The U.N. General Assembly week in New York is really an opportunity for the world to step back and look at the progress in helping those most in need,” said Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft Corp and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Efforts to improve access to basic health care and end inequality are not doing well, he said.

“If we don’t accelerate progress, the gaps will continue to get larger,” he said. “We are not on track to achieve these goals.”

‘Progress is faltering’

Placing blame on growing inequality and on climate change, Shantanu Mukherjee, policy chief at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said: “The pace of progress is faltering.”

“Not only are business-as-usual efforts losing steam, … there are trends that threaten to undermine and even reverse the progress already being made on a massive scale,” he said at a recent release of a report on the goals by leading scientists.

Their report said countries must address vast gaps in wealth distribution and improve access to economic opportunities and technological advances that undermine innovation and growth.

Progress has been made on the goal of ending extreme poverty, but in other areas, “progress has been slow or even reversed,” a U.N. assessment said this summer.

“The most vulnerable people and countries continue to suffer the most and the global response has not been ambitious enough,” it said.

Global cost

Holding a global summit every four years was mandated when the goals were first approved to assess progress, encourage broader implementation and boost public awareness.

The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated at $3 trillion a year.

The goals will fail without new ways to ease national debts, boost wages and expand trade, top financial organizations including the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization said earlier this year.

Money needs to be freed up through international trading and financial systems, they said.

When the goals were first adopted in 2015, then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “The true test of commitment to Agenda 2030 will be implementation.

“We need action from everyone, everywhere,” he said.

Iran has been suspended from international judo competitions because it boycotts bouts with Israeli athletes.

Less than a month after world champion Saeid Mollaei walked off the Iranian team in protest at the boycott policy, the International Judo Federation said Wednesday that Iran is suspended ahead of a full hearing.

Iran’s judo federation is accused of discriminating against Israeli athletes and breaking rules over manipulating competition results.

“The IJF Executive Committee considered that such a conduct is intolerable,” the federation said.

Mollaei has said he was repeatedly ordered by Iranian officials to lose matches or withdraw from competitions, including last month’s world championships, so as not to face Israelis. He is currently in hiding in Germany.

Iran does not recognize Israel as a country, and Iranian sports teams have for several decades had a policy of not competing against Israelis.

It’s not yet clear if the IJF will seek to stop Iran competing in the 2020 Olympic judo events. Meanwhile, the IJF is exploring ways to allow Mollaei to compete on the International Olympic Committee’s team of refugees.

The IOC has signaled a harder line on boycotts in recent years.

In June, IOC president Thomas Bach criticized governments who “clearly abuse sport for their political purposes,” noting a case in May of a Tunisian court blocking four Israelis from competing at the taekwondo junior world championships. 

Social media is changing the way we communicate and influencing behavior, from what to eat to how to vote. Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren examines how our decisions are being swayed by social media. Recorded August 7, 2019. Aired September 17, 2019.  

Niger and China are to build a 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) pipeline to carry crude oil from southeast Niger to the port of Seme in Benin, the Niger president’s office announced Wednesday.

President Mahamadou Issoufou launched the project on Tuesday at the Agadem oil field in the southeast of the country, where the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has been extracting oil since 2011.

It is expected to take 42 months to complete at a cost of $4.5 billion.

Until now, Niamey has moved crude  out via Chad to a port in Cameroon, but deadly jihadist attacks in Nigeria have spilled over the border making the region unstable.

Niger’s Oil Minister Foumakoye Gado signed the deal on Sunday with Wang Zhong Cai, president of the China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation, a CNPC subsidiary.

In the United States, the growing political divide along ethnic lines, along with President Donald Trump’s racially charged rhetoric, are renewing debate over what it means to be an American.  

The growing divide and rising ethnic tensions come amid a time of rapid demographic change in the country.  White European-Americans are projected to lose their majority status by 2045, to be eclipsed by the growing populations of Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans.  

“Demographic shifts are certainly fueling animosity but it’s more about, in essence, white people feeling they’re losing control of their country,” said Andre Perry, a scholar and commentator on issues of race, structural inequality and education at both the Brookings Institution and American University in Washington.

Former President Barack Obama seemed to foreshadow a new demographic alignment in the U.S. when he won two decisive election victories in 2008 and 2012, with surging support from minority voters, in addition to winning over large numbers working class whites, traditionally affiliated with the Democratic Party. 

Immigration rhetoric

Many of those same Democrats switched in 2016 to help elect Donald Trump as president, however, galvanized in key battleground states to support the head of the Republican ticket in part because he made illegal immigration a key campaign issue.   

Trump, his critics say, also stoked ethnic tensions by engaging in racially charged rhetoric, referring to undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals and calling for a “total and complete” immigration ban on all Muslims following a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, that was carried out by a Pakistani-born immigrant.

While in office, the president has continued to single out minority groups for criticism. Trump denounced African American football players for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and inequality in the country. He refused to strongly condemn a neo-Nazi and white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent. And he questioned the loyalty to the country of two Muslim American congresswomen who a support a boycott movement against U.S. ally Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories.

Trump’s defenders dismiss charges of racism against the president. They say Trump’s political strategy is to tie the Democratic Party to what he sees as its most unpopular issues and divisive leaders, adding that Trump’s reflex is to fiercely attack all critics.

“President Trump, I think is an equal opportunity insulter. Anybody who raises his ire or criticizes him is liable to be insulted regardless of race, creed, color, or ethnic origin,” said Michael Barone, a conservative political analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Real American 

The president’s critics worry that the promise of the American dream, where all immigrants can assimilate into a diverse cultural melting pot, is today complicated by questions of loyalty, legality and racism.

They say Trump’s tough talk, and his restrictive policies of severely reducing immigration from Muslim majority countries and accelerating deportations of undocumented Hispanic immigrants, are tainting entire ethnic groups in the U.S. as being un-American. The detractors worry that’s a way to gain political advantage.

“At the end of the day, we know that people are using racism as a way to gain power and resources for the privilege of some and burden of others,” said Perry. 

Amid Trump’s attacks against minority critics, including tweeting that four Congresswomen of color should “go back” to the “places from which they came,” there are growing reports of ethnic minorities being criticized in public spaces for not speaking English and being told to go back to the country from which they came.  

Assimilation qualms 

But in this highly polarized environment, some Trump supporters also have been confronted by angry critics of the president. 

Also, immigration skeptics say it is valid to raise concerns about undocumented immigrants who do not learn English, or about alarming reports that in the Muslim-American community in Minnesota, a number of Somali-Americans left to joined the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency, al-Shabab.

“I think that people have qualms about illegal immigrants, which is understandable. And people also have some qualms that our assimilation institutions are not working as well as they did a century ago,” said Barone.

Past waves of immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries from Germany, Italy, and Ireland also experienced hostility and negative stereotypes similar to what Hispanics and Muslims face today. Just a few generations ago, many questioned whether Catholics were more loyal to the Pope than to their newly adopted country. 

While immigration today has become a highly politicized issue, critics and advocates generally agree that immigrants from all over the world can become fully assimilated. 

It can take generations to fully integrate into society, though, and ultimately minority groups have to learn how to exercise political power in the American democratic system before they can achieve equal status.

Fifty-seven percent of teens say they “fear” climate change, according to a new survey by the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post. The survey comes as Greta Thunberg, a climate-change activist from Sweden, brought her well-publicized climate campaign to Washington last week.  Called Fridays for Future, it has attracted young people around the world to press governments to take action, as Sahar Majid tells us more in this report narrated by Kathleen Struck.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a civil suit Tuesday against former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden for publishing a memoir, in violation of his nondisclosure agreements with the intelligence agencies. The notorious whistleblower is currently residing in Russia where he received asylum in 2013 after leaking highly classified details of the NSA’s global surveillance programs, which raised ethical questions about U.S. spying practices. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

Facebook said Tuesday that it expects to name the first members of a new quasi-independent oversight board by year-end.

The oversight panel is intended to rule on thorny content issues, such as when Facebook or Instagram posts constitute hate speech. It will be empowered to make binding rulings on whether posts or ads violate the company’s standards. Any other findings it makes will be considered “guidance” by Facebook.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to establish the board last November after Facebook came under intense scrutiny for failures to protect user privacy and for its inability to quickly and effectively remove disinformation, hate speech and malign influence campaigns on its platform.

“Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” he wrote at the time.

Critics call the oversight board a bid by Facebook to forestall regulation or even an eventual breakup. The company faces antitrust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, Congress and a group of state attorneys general.

“Facebook is attempting to normalize an approach to containing hate speech internally,” said Dipayan Ghosh, a former Facebook policy adviser and a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “If it can illustrate that this approach can work, it can pacify the public itch to regulate the business model behind Facebook.”

The multinational board will eventually comprise 40 members, who will collectively decide a few dozen cases a year, company executives told reporters in a conference call. It will at first hear only cases initiated by Facebook but will begin hearing appeals initiated by users in the first half of 2020, the company said. It will get to work as soon as 11 members are named.

Priority cases will involve content that “threatens someone else’s voice, safety, privacy, dignity or equality” and affects a large number of people, Facebook said in blog post.

Experts say the panel will have a limited range for decision-making, however. Local laws or directives from repressive governments might clash with its rulings, and Facebook might heed them for business reasons.

“How to deal with authoritarian regimes is a deep issue for the platform, and for the world really,” said Harvard law student Evelyn Douek, an Australian expert on content moderation.

Douek says the group’s charter, also released Tuesday, should insulate board members from public pressure and Facebook’s commercial imperatives. But she believes the conditions under which members could be removed are still too vague.

The first few board members will be directly chosen by Facebook; they will then choose additional members. Facebook will also name the administrators of the trust that manages the Oversight Board and pays its members’ salaries.  

Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of governance, told reporters the company had not yet decided how much board members would be paid. He did not respond when asked how many hours a week would be expected of them in the part-time job. Facebook expects panelists will include former judges, editors, publishers and journalists, he said.

The board members’ access to Facebook data will also be limited. “The board will have access to data that’s pertinent to the case but no more,” said Harris.

Oversight board members are to serve three-year terms with a maximum of three terms.

They can be removed by trustees for violations of a code of conduct that has yet to be drawn up. Panels of five will convene to review individual cases and decisions will be public, though data and privacy restrictions could apply. Harris said the board will have a staff that will initially consist of Facebook employees seconded from their jobs.

It’s unclear where the permanent staff will eventually be located and how often oversight board members would meet in person to decide cases.

Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur-turned-presidential candidate, jogged onto the Philadelphia Art Museum steps made famous by Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky” on Tuesday, fully embracing the underdog plot of his campaign.

Instead of a grey sweatsuit, Yang sported a blue jacket and ball cap, declaring at his rally that he is seeking the presidency to solve the nation’s problems. The biggest problem, Yang said, is “How the heck did Donald Trump become our president?”

“I am not a politician. I’m a problem solver. I am an entrepreneur,” Yang said. “People will say to me all the time, ‘You don’t sound like any politician I’ve ever heard before,’ and they aren’t complaining.”

As Yang spoke, supporters waved signs that said “MATH” in bold white letters, as Yang has positioned himself as a data-driven candidate on a quest to Make America Think Harder. On Tuesday, Yang made a general-election pitch, saying he is one of the only candidates in the field who can attract a sizable share of Trump’s supporters and deliver Democrats the presidency.

But Yang’s pursuit of the presidency is perhaps improbable. Months after launching his campaign, Yang remains near the bottom of most national polls, but his campaign already has fared better than those of some of the more traditional candidates. Yang was one of 10 candidates to appear onstage at the last presidential debate. And his campaign has outlasted those of a sitting U.S. senator and a sitting governor.

His supporters say his candidacy provides a future-oriented platform that the sprawling Democratic field sorely needs.

“I think that we lost the last election worrying about who was going to win, and it came back to bite us,” said Alex Olson, 33, of Philadelphia. “I think you should support who you believe in. I think Andrew Yang is the best candidate by far. He’s the only person thinking outside of the box.”

“Nevertheless, Yang persisted”

As he waited for Yang to speak, Olson scrawled a handmade sign of support with the words “Nevertheless, Yang persisted.” That sign reflects a statement by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, in 2017 after Republican lawmakers voted to formally silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren — now a Democratic presidential candidate — as she was reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King criticizing Sen. Jeff Sessions’ civil rights record.

Olson said he supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election, describing himself as “Bernie or Bust,” but believes Yang is a candidate for his generation.

“I mean, Yang wasn’t around,” he said when asked what changed his mind. “I love me some Bernie. I think that Yang is better.”

Yang has based his campaign around one central proposal: giving every American adult $1,000 a month — what Yang calls a “freedom dividend” — if he is elected president. The idea has gained traction and not just in Silicon Valley, where some prominent figures have expressed support. It also is being experimented with in some cities around the country.

During the presidential debate earlier this month in Houston, he said he would distribute those payments to 10 people for the next year. He has already been distributing $1,000-a-month payments to three families in Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida.

Online Raffle

On Monday, Yang’s campaign announced that he had raised $1 million in the 72 hours following the debate and had collected more than 450,000 email addresses from entrants to his online raffle. That $1 million influx positions Yang to best his second-quarter fundraising total of $2.8 million. The third fundraising quarter ends this month.

Still, Yang’s haul is likely to be dwarfed by top-tier candidates in the race, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders and Warren.

Daniel Marzec, 31, of Philadelphia, said that after watching Yang in the debates, he’d decided to back Yang over his support for a universal basic income.

“We’re a city where we have the lowest per-capita income of any city of our size, and there’s not enough discussion about how much a community like West Philly would get every single month with the universal basic income. What that means over time, just that constant investment of resources,” he said.

Exit polls in Israel show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not won enough seats to put together a majority coalition of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The same exit polls also show, however, that neither does challenger and former Israeli army head Benny Gantz.

Israel’s three main television stations had slightly different results based on their own exit polls. One had Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White tied with 32 seats apiece. Another had Blue and White at 34 and Likud at 33. A third had Blue and White at 33, and Likud at 31.

Neither Netanyahu nor Gantz commented on the exit polls, preferring to wait until the final results were in.

But other Likud officials did comment.

“Benjamin Netanyahu will either be prime minister or we will go to third elections,” Likud MK Yoav Kisch told journalists. “I can’t see another option.”

It was the first time in Israel’s history that a second election was called so quickly. As elections are a national holiday here, they cost the Israeli economy millions of dollars, although many Israelis spent the unexpected day off at the beach.

Members of the rival Blue and White Party said it’s time for Netanyahu to go.

“We have said all along that we want a unity government, headed by Blue and White, with the Likud and [Avigdor] Lieberman, but without Netanyahu,” a spokesman for Yair Lapid, Gant’s partner, told the Times of Israel. “That’s also what the majority of the Israeli public wants.”

This kind of deadlock is unprecedented in Israeli politics. Once the final results are in, President Reuven Rivlin will hold consultations with each of the party heads, and ask either Netanyahu or Gantz to form a government.

The kingmaker this time, as last time, is former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the mostly Russian-supported Yisrael Beitenu party. He favors a unity government with Netanyahu’s Likud, Gantz’s Blue and White, and his party, without the ultra-Orthodox or other smaller parties.

After the last election, Gantz said he would consider this type of government only if Netanyahu stepped down as Likud leader. Netanyahu is facing a series of corruption allegations, including fraud and breach of trust.

Netanyahu had hoped to win a clear majority and many expected he would then legislate immunity for himself.

Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem said the election was a vote for or against Netanyahu.

“Behind the personal referendum, there is a deeper referendum this election is expressing,” he said. “It worries me very much, because for the first time we have in effect a referendum on democracy.”

Once final results are in, Israel’s president will consult with the leaders of each of the parties and recommend either Netanyahu or Gantz to try to put together a government. So far, it doesn’t look like either will be able to do that.

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani escaped an attack on his campaign rally in Parwan province that killed 24 people and wounded more than 30 others Tuesday.

The president was about to address the rally when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his explosives near the military facility where the gathering was held. Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Interior, tweeted that no one inside the building was harmed and the rally continued after the incident.

Qasim Sangeen, the head of Parwan provincial hospital told VOA bodies of the dead and wounded had been taken to a provincial hospital.

This is the first security incident since July 28, the official beginning of the election campaign in Afghanistan.  

The Afghan Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack, warning people to stay away from rallies and election related gatherings, promising to carry out further attacks on election activity.

“If despite the warnings they go to such meetings and get harmed, it is their responsibility,” a message from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.

Afghans are expecting a higher level of violence in the run up to the September 28 election due to a breakdown in peace talks between the United States and Taliban earlier this month.

The insurgent group has intensified its regional outreach, taking a trip first to Moscow and more recently to Iran.

“The main purpose was to explain our position on the recent developments in the peace process and the agreement that has already been completed,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, referring to an agreement between the insurgents and a U.S. team led by Special Representative on Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.

Khalilzad had indicated that the two sides had agreed “in principle” to a deal and that he was waiting for his boss, President Donald Trump, to approve it. As both sides waited for a date to be announced for the formalization of the agreement, President Trump unexpectedly tweeted that the talks were over because of a Taliban attack that had killed a U.S. soldier.

The peace talks had continued after previous U.S. solider deaths in Afghanistan.

Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman, said the group had little idea why the U.S. backed out, saying that they contacted Khalilzad’s team after the Tweet.

“We wanted them to tell us why they finalized everything and agreed to sign it within a week, and quite unexpectedly backed out,” he said, adding that they did not receive an answer.

Still, he added that his side was willing to sign the already negotiated deal if the U.S. changed its mind but would continue to fight if the U.S. wanted to continue the war.  

He also confirmed that they were in touch with other countries as well, like China and European and Central Asian countries, and would visit them if invited

“Regional countries want to know what happened, and why?” he said.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is unveiling a community-focused approach to disaster relief in a South Carolina city that was hit hard by Hurricane Florence last year.

During a speech Tuesday in Conway, Buttigieg is expected to call for a disaster commission to help coordinate efforts between federal agencies and the communities affected by disasters. He also wants to increase the number of trained disaster workers.
 
Conway was hit hard by Hurricane Florence, which destroyed more than 1,500 homes, caused $24 billion in damage and led to 53 deaths in the state.
 
Buttigieg’s campaign says he is the first of the Democratic hopefuls to release a stand-alone disaster relief plan.
 
Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He launched his presidential campaign in April.

An Afghan health official says 24 people were killed Tuesday in a bombing attack near the site of an election rally held by President Ashraf Ghani.

Dr. Qasim Sangin, the head of the provincial hospital in northern Parwan province, says at least 31 others were injured in the bombing, and that women and children were among the victims.  A spokesman for Ghani says the president was unharmed in the blast.  

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Insurgent violence is expected to increase in coming days as Afghanistan prepares to hold its presidential election on September 28. The Taliban has threatened to disrupt the vote by staging attacks against election organizers and the security forces deployed to guard polling stations around the country.

Four Democratic presidential candidates descended on South Carolina on Monday for what organizers call the oldest traditional campaign speech event in the country, taking an opportunity to continue to make their cases ahead of the first Southern vote of 2020.

On Monday, Joe Biden, Bill de Blasio, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar spoke at the Galivants Ferry Stump, a biennial Democratic event that takes place in a rural portion of northeastern South Carolina. One by one, they addressed a crowd of about 2,500 gathered in the unincorporated community of Galivants Ferry along the banks of the Little Pee Dee River.

The event dates back to the 1870s, when former Civil War Gen. Wade Hampton arrived in Galivants Ferry as part of his campaign for South Carolina governor. Area businessman Joseph Holliday began to invite Democratic candidates to give campaign speeches from his Galivants Ferry store, standing on a tree stump to be seen above the crowd.

A tradition was born, and the Holliday family has continued to host the stump every other year preceding an election. The gathering is like a scene out of the South of days gone by, with politicians glad-handing and visiting over the strains of music, clog dancing and the aroma of chicken bog, a Lowcountry dish of chicken, sausage and rice.

These days, candidates speak not from the original pine stump but from the porch of the Hollidays’ store, which has been recognized as a “Local Legacy” by the Library of Congress. On Monday, de Blasio characterized the event as “the center of the political universe.”

A common stop for South Carolina’s Democrats, this year’s event is the first organized specifically for presidential hopefuls. One of them, Biden, has been here before, introduced to speak at the 2006 event by longtime friend and Senate colleague Fritz Hollings as Biden considered a 2008 presidential bid. This year, Biden was the first confirmed attendee.

“I know I’m going to offend another state,” Biden told the crowd, after entering to music from a high school marching band and doffing his trademark Ray Ban sunglasses, “but this is my favorite campaign event.”

Republicans are always invited to attend the stump but aren’t allowed to speak. One of them, former South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford, worked the crowd as he mounts his longshot bid to challenge President Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

As Sanford looked on, Klobuchar called out Sanford for his infamous absence in 2009, when he told staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually visiting a mistress in Argentina.

“We don’t have a governor who hiked the Appalachian Trail,” Klobuchar told the crowd of South Carolinians. “Oh that’s right — you don’t, either.”

Buttigieg reminded the crowd of the generational contrast he presents to other 2020 hopefuls, pointing to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 victory.

“If you think about it, that’s how Democrats win,” Buttigieg said. “We win when we offer leadership from a new generation, with new ideas.”

Democratic White House hopefuls have been flooding South Carolina for nearly a year, taking opportunities to get to know and campaign to the state’s heavily African American electorate, which plays a key role in its first-in-the-South primary and reflects those in other Southern states that follow quickly on the nominating calendar, offering candidates a proving ground to test their message. The stump meeting draws thousands of attendees from across the state, but Horry County, in which Galivants Ferry sits, is more than 80% white.

Longtime state lawmaker John Land served as this year’s master of ceremonies.