Less than a week after the autumnal equinox brought fall to the United States, the northwestern parts of the country got hammered by an early winter storm.

Parts of Montana received more than 60 centimeters of snow.

The National Weather Service also forecasts snow for parts of Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, Nevada and California.

Montana Governor Steve Bullock declared an emergency Sunday, allowing the state to free up resources to help the worst-affected areas.

“Montanans should heed all warnings from state and local officials, travel safely, and be cautious during this time,” Bullock said in a statement.

“Very heavy wet snow and strong winds will lead to downed trees, power outages, and treacherous travel conditions,” the weather service warned.

It also warned Montanans to take extra care of their pets and livestock.

The storm was expected to let up sometime Monday.

Hurricane Lorenzo lost some force Sunday, weakening to a Category 4 storm after briefly escalating to Category 5 late Saturday.

The National Hurricane Center said the powerful storm is expected to pass over or near the Azores, the group of Portuguese islands about 900 miles west of Portugal on Tuesday.

“Steady weakening is expected over the next few days, but Lorenzo is still expected to be a potent hurricane in a couple of days,” the center said.

The forecasters warned of heavy rains and life-threatening flash flooding on the islands.

“Lorenzo is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 3 to 6 inches over much of the western Azores and 1 to 2 inches over the central Azores on Tuesday and Wednesday. This rainfall could cause life-threatening flash flooding in the western Azores,” the center said.

The NHC said Lorenzo has a wide wind field that could bring strong surf conditions to the beaches of the eastern United States and Canada, Western Europe and many Caribbean islands over the next few days.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Narda began pounding Mexico’s Pacific Coast Sunday.

Narda was expected to dump up to 25 centimeters of rainfall along the Mexican coast from Oaxaca to Nayarit, including resort towns of Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta.

 

Thousands of mourners paid tribute Sunday to former French President Jacques Chirac, who died at 86.

Chirac was lying in state Sunday afternoon inside the Invalides monument in Paris, where France honors its heroes, after he died Thursday.
 
People were holding a moment of silence in front of the casket draped in the French flag under a large, smiling picture of Chirac.

A booklet prepared by Chirac’s family was handed to those who came to the Invalides. Titled “Chirac in his own words,” it includes some quotes evoking key moments of Chirac’s presidency, like when he defiantly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, saying: “War is always the worst of all solutions.”
 
Chirac was also the first French president to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust in 1995.

Remy Clovel came from Paris’ western suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye to pay his respects.
 
“I have Jewish origins, so it’s important for us that he [Chirac] acknowledged the responsibility of the French state in the persecution of Jews during the Second World War,” he said.
 
Nicole Pats from Boulogne-Billancourt, west of Paris, has recalled Chirac as “a simple man.” “He watched you, smiled at you and he loved you. We had the impression [that we belonged] to his family,” she said.

Yolaine Mongole, native from La Reunion island, said she “always admired the man. He was, popular, warm and accessible.”
 
A memorial service is planned Monday in Paris. It will be attended by President Emmanuel Macron and about 30 former or current heads of states and government, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
 
A private funeral will take place later that day at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
 
Chirac served as Paris mayor, a lawmaker, prime minister and France’s president from 1995 to 2007.

       

 

Despite a personal apology from beleaguered Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Buckingham Palace sources say Queen Elizabeth is deeply frustrated at being drawn into the political firestorm raging over Brexit.

Johnson telephoned the queen midweek after Britain’s Supreme Court decided he had been wrong to ask her for approval to suspend Parliament for five weeks —  a historic ruling allowing the House of Commons to resume its session and frustrating government plans to take Britain out of the European Union by Johnson’s October 31 deadline.  

“He got on to the queen as quickly as possible to say how sorry he was” by requiring her to approve what the Court later ruled an unlawful suspension of  Commons, a Downing Street official said. The 11-judge court, to the anger of Brexiters, ruled unanimously Tuesday that the suspension, known formally as a prorogation, was designed to obstruct parliamentary scrutiny of his plans to break with the EU.

The court’s rebuke, and implied suggestion that Johnson lied to the queen to get her approval for the prorogation, has led to a breakdown in trust between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, according Britain’s Sunday Times. Courtiers are frustrated with Johnson for ignoring concerns expressed privately by the queen’s advisers prior to the prorogation.

“They are not impressed by what is going on — at the very highest levels of the family,” a senior civil servant told the newspaper.

Brexit has bent British politics out of all recognizable shape, shattering the delicate balance of power shared between Parliament, the courts, the government and the Crown, say analysts. Johnson claimed he needed the prorogation to draft plans for a new government program in line with a normal pattern that sees an annual autumn parliamentary suspension.

However, the length of the prorogation — more than double the usual duration — and its timing led Britain’s top court to agree with Johnson’s opponents that he wanted  avoid Commons scrutinizing or blocking his Brexit plans.

Johnson’s woes, though, are not only with the palace. Prompted partly by transatlantic political developments and the impeachment inquiry announced by Democratic lawmakers into U.S. President Donald Trump, opposition party leaders in Britain are exploring the possibility of of reviving an impeachment process that has not been used since 1848, one of  several options being explored to censure Johnson.

The move would constitute a revival of an obsolete sanctions process not seen in Britain since the mid-19th century, when there was an unsuccessful move to impeach Lord Palmerston, then foreign minister, for having signed a secret treaty with Russia. In earlier centuries impeachment of members of the executive wasn’t an uncommon method to depose ministers the Crown refused to discard, and was first used in 1376 with the impeachment of William Latimer, a crown minister. The last successful impeachment was of Henry Dundas, the peer Viscount Melville and secretary of war for misappropriation of public money.

Opposition politicians are throwing Johnson’s 2004 call for the impeachment of Prime Minister Tony Blair for misleading the country over the reasons for going to war against Iraq back at him. In a newspaper column Johnson wrote, “He treated parliament and the public with contempt, and that is why he deserves to be impeached.”

Welsh nationalist MP Liz Saville Roberts, acknowledges that “the idea of impeaching a prime minister seems extraordinary — unique even. But we are in extraordinary times.”

She added: “I have made clear to opposition leaders that Boris Johnson cannot be allowed to get away scot-free with breaking the law by shutting down parliament. Motions are being discussed between opposition parties and House of Commons officials that would see a salary cut, bans from parliament and other disciplinary measures, alongside a motion to explore impeachment.”

Such a move would inflame the country’s already-incendiary politics, which last week saw ferocious exchanges between members of the minority Conservative government Johnson leads and opposition parties and rebel Conservatives. Johnson’s own sister, broadcaster Rachel Johnson, branded his rhetoric as “tasteless” and “reprehensible.”

Johnson has repeatedly denounced legislation that would force him to delay Brexit if he can’t agree an exit deal with the EU, calling it a “surrender bill.” He dismissed as “humbug” lawmakers’ worries that “immoderate language” by government ministers is encouraging Brexiter outliers to target MPs with death threats, and risks an incident like the murder by a Brexit fanatic three years ago of Labour lawmaker, Jo Cox.

“My brother is using words like ‘surrender’ and ‘capitulation’ as if the people standing in the way of the blessed will of the people, as defined by the 17.4 million votes in 2016, should be hung, drawn, quartered, tarred, and feathered,” Rachel Johnson told Sky News. “I think that is highly reprehensible.”

Brexiters also say they are targeted by foul language and threats as a consequence of their opponents dubbing them racists. Government ministers accuse the Supreme Court of mounting a “constitutional coup” with its ruling and of straying deeply into political territory.

Johnson is also facing rising calls for him to explain his relationship when the mayor of London with an American ex-model and entrepreneur, Jennifer Arcuri. He is accused of failing to declare a series of potential conflicts of interest over benefits provided to Arcuri’s business by London authorities, including sponsorship cash for her company and other benefits and preferential treatment, including being on three overseas trade missions led by Johnson that officials had ruled she wasn’t eligible to join.

Johnson’s dealings with Arcuri, whose London apartment he visited frequently, is now the subject of four official investigations, including one by a police watchdog for misconduct in public office.

 

 

 

U.N. humanitarian agencies are shifting efforts away from emergency aid to longer-term recovery assistance for Hurricane Dorian survivors in the Bahamas.

Aid agencies rushed life-saving aid into the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, a deadly Category 5 storm, devastated the islands early this month. The toll from this disaster is huge.

Latest U.N. reports put the number of dead at 53, including 600 missing. Hurricane-force winds, torrential rains and storm surges flattened homes and destroyed infrastructure, rendering about 76,000 people homeless.

Chief of Press and External Relations at the U.N. in Geneva Rheal LeBlanc said the Bahamian government is now shifting emergency efforts to recovery. He told VOA the U.N. and its partners are providing humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable and displaced in support of the government-led response.

“As of Wednesday, the U.N. humanitarian organizations had supported the government in delivering over 350,000 meals, 135,000 liters of water, health services, debris removal, waste management, temporary housing and other items. So, the efforts do continue.”

The International Organization for Migration reports it is scaling up its operations to help survivors of Hurricane Dorian. It said it will distribute essential household items to displaced families, support debris removal and reach out to tens of thousands of displaced in less-affected areas of the country.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman saif his agency will manage shelters, provide equipment to collective centers for upgrades and repairs to existing buildings.

“Where families can return to their homes or require tools and materials to carry out small-scale rehabilitation, IOM will provide toolkits and necessary training to family members. This intervention will prevent the overcrowding of collective centers and support households returning home as quickly as possible, when safe to do so.”

Millman said IOM is able to increase its support to Hurricane Dorian survivors thanks to a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund.

 

Riot police have thrown tear gas and cordoned off part of a street at Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping belt after a large crowd started to amass for an anti-China rally ahead of Tuesday’s National Day celebrations.

Protesters chanted slogans and heckled police as they were pushed back behind a police line. The atmosphere is tense as police warned the crowd they were taking part in an illegal assembly. Officers fired tear gas canisters after some protesters threw bottles and other objects in their direction.

Police earlier searched some protesters and several people were detained. The crowd has swelled to more than 1,000 people, with many spilling into adjacent streets. 

Supporters of Beijing rally

Earlier, hundreds of pro-Beijing supporters in Hong Kong on Sunday sang the Chinese national anthem and waved red flags ahead of China’s National Day to counter pro-democracy protests that have challenged Beijing’s rule.

The show of support for Beijing came after another day of violence in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory that sparked fears of more ugly scenes that could embarrass Chinese President Xi Jinping as his ruling Communist Party marks its 70th year in power Tuesday. Pro-democracy advocates have called for a major rally to coincide with the celebrations in Beijing.

Police on Saturday fired tear gas and water cannons after protesters threw bricks and firebombs at government buildings following a massive rally in downtown Hong Kong. The clashes were part of a familiar cycle since protests began in June over a now-shelved extradition bill and have since snowballed into an anti-China movement with demands for democratic reforms. 

Protesters are planning to march Tuesday despite a police ban. Many said they will wear mourning black in a direct challenge to the authority of the Communist Party, with posters calling for Oct. 1 to be marked as “A Day of Grief.” 

Later Sunday, protesters also plan to gather for an “anti-totalitarianism” rally against what they denounced as “Chinese tyranny.” Similar events are being organized in more than 60 cities worldwide including in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Taiwan.

Hong Kong’s government has scaled down National Day celebrations in the city, canceling an annual firework display and moving a reception indoors.

Despite security concerns, the government said Sunday that Chief Executive Carrie Lam will lead a delegation of more than 240 people to Beijing Monday to participate in the festivities. She will be represented by Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung in her absence and return to the city Tuesday evening.

Lam held her first community dialogue with the public Thursday in a bid to diffuse tensions but failed to persuade protesters, who vowed to press on until their demands including direct elections for the city’s leader and police accountability are met.

Several hundred people, many wearing red and carrying Chinese flags and posters, gathered at a waterfront cultural center in the city Sunday and chanted “I am a citizen of China.” They sang the national anthem and happy birthday to China. They were later bused to the Victoria Peak hilltop for the same repertoire. 

Organizer Innes Tang said the crowd, all Hong Kong citizens, responded to his invitation on social media to “promote positivity and patriotism.” He said they wanted to rally behind Chinese sovereignty and urged protesters to replace violence with dialogue.

“We want to take this time for the people to express our love for our country China. We want to show the international community that there is another voice to Hong Kong” apart from the protests, he said.

Mobs of pro-Beijing supporters have appeared in malls and on the streets in recent weeks to counter pro-democracy protesters, leading to brawls between the rival camps. 

Losing freedoms

Many people view the extradition bill, that would have sent criminal suspects to mainland China for trial, as a glaring example of the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” policy when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

China has denied chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedom and accused the U.S. and other foreign powers of fomenting the unrest to weaken its dominance.

China’s president has presented national medals and honorary titles to 42 people.

Xi Jinping bestowed the awards upon the honorees in a lavish ceremony Sunday in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Among the recipients was Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine Tu Youyou.

Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was awarded a friendship medal.

The ceremony comes ahead of the celebrations Tuesday commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
 

A 3-year-old colt sustained a catastrophic injury in the eighth race at Santa Anita and was euthanized Saturday, the 32nd horse to die at the track since December.

Two-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Mario Gutierrez was tossed off in the incident on the second day of the fall meet at Santa Anita, where the Breeders’ Cup world championships are to be run in November.

Track officials said Gutierrez wasn’t injured after landing near the inner rail. He was taken away by ambulance.

Track veterinarian Dr. Dana Stead said in a statement that Emtech had two broken front legs and she made the decision to euthanize the colt on the track.

Dr. Dionne Benson, chief vet for The Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, said a review would be opened to consider the factors that contributed to Emtech’s injury.

She said the colt would have a necropsy at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, which is mandatory for all on-track accidents.

Emtech, trained by Steve Knapp, went down in the middle of the track in the upper stretch of the six-furlong, $40,000 claiming race.

The fatalities at Santa Anita since Dec. 26 have raised alarm within California and the rest of the racing industry. The majority occurred during the winter months when usually arid Santa Anita was hit with record rainfall totaling nearly a foot. 
 

Students at an American charity school in Liberia almost lost their institution to a notorious sex abuse scandal, forcing the academy to close. Then a new, Liberian-run organization formed to re-open the school. In Monrovia, Monique John follows one student on her first day back in class. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
 

French police repeatedly used tear gas and water cannons to break up a protest Saturday by nearly a 1,000 yellow vest demonstrators in the southwest city of Toulouse.

A police statement said officers made five arrests after being targeted by objects thrown by some of the protesters.

A group that observes police conduct at yellow vest protests said officers had attacked five of their number during the demonstration, injuring one of them.

The Observatory of Police Practice (OPP) posted images and video on Twitter to support their account and posted an open letter to the authorities protesting the incident.

The police headquarters in Toulouse was not available to comment on the allegations Saturday evening.

Earlier this month, a member of the OPP filed a complaint alleging that he had been injured during a police charge at a yellow vest protest.

The march in Toulouse, which holds regular yellow vests protests on Saturday, was led by demonstrators brandishing a giant banner that read: “Fed up of surviving. We want to live.”

As staff at a McDonalds outlet closed up the premises, one of the parasols outside went up in flames.

Even after the use of tear gas and water cannons, demonstrators continued to gather in the city streets.

Calm in Paris

In the capital Paris, some yellow vests joined a climate protest march.

September’s protests have revived the yellow vest movement, though not to the levels seen late last year and in the first half of 2019.

Saturday’s protests came two days after the French government unveiled a draft 2020 budget with more than 9 billion euros in tax cuts for households.

It includes 5 billion euros in tax cuts for some 12 million households already promised by President Emmanuel Macron, the result of a “great national debate” he held to try to address the ongoing protests.

Macron swept to the presidency in 2017 with a pledge to get the country back on a solid financial footing. But he was caught short by the yellow vest movement that accused the former investment banker of ignoring the day-to-day struggles of many French.

Demonstrations have been banned on the Champs-Elysees after protesters clashed with police on the famous Paris avenue last Dec. 8, in the early days of the yellow vest protests.

On that weekend, police detained 900 people, the most since the anti-government protests began.

Asian American groups are objecting to the Trump administration’s efforts to step up deportations of Cambodians, as dozens of refugees with criminal convictions are being ordered to report to federal officials next week for removal.

At least 20 people in California have been served notices to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin the deportation process, according to Ny Nourn, a San Francisco-based community advocate with the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. The state is home to the largest population of Cambodians in the U.S.

In Massachusetts, the state with the nation’s second largest Cambodian community, at least 10 residents have received them, said Bethany Li, director of Greater Boston Legal Services’ Asian Outreach Unit.

Cambodians living in Minnesota, Texas, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin have also been issued the orders, said Elaine Sanchez Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center in Washington.

Protests planned

Asian American activists are planning demonstrations in San Francisco, Sacramento and Boston next week. They argue that many of those facing deportation served criminal sentences years and in some cases decades ago, when they were troubled young refugees struggling to adjust to a new country after their families fled Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

“Many of these people have served their time and rebuilt their lives,” said Kevin Lam, an organizer with the Asian American Resource Workshop, which is helping organize Monday’s protest in Boston. “They have families, careers and contribute to their communities.”

The deportations have been happening since about 2002, when Cambodia agreed to begin repatriating refugees convicted of felony crimes in the U.S.

Deportations up 280%

But they’ve risen sharply since President Donald Trump took office and imposed visa sanctions on Cambodia and a handful of other nations in order to compel them to speed up the process.

The result has been a roughly 280% increase, from 29 removals in federal fiscal 2017 to 110 in federal fiscal 2018, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.

Through the current fiscal year, which ends Monday, 80 Cambodians have been removed, the agency told The Associated Press this week. There are nearly 1,800 Cambodians with final removal orders living in the country. The majority have criminal convictions but are on supervised release and not in detention, ICE said.

“ICE fully respects the constitutional rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions,” the agency said in response to the planned demonstrations. “That being said, ICE remains committed to performing its immigration enforcement mission consistent with federal law and agency policy.”

Asian American organizations say they’re focused on finding ways to get criminal convictions reduced or dropped so that Cambodian refugees can avoid deportation.

Pardons, class action suit

Democratic governors in California and Washington state have recently granted pardons to a handful of Cambodians, and at least two Cambodians recently returned to the U.S. after successfully challenging the criminal convictions that had prompted their removal.

A nationwide class action lawsuit challenging immigration raids on the Cambodian community is also pending in a California federal court. A temporary restraining order issued earlier this year in that case requires ICE to give written notice at least two weeks before detaining Cambodian refugees.

Nourn says sending refugees back to Cambodia now only sets them up for failure. Many have little connection to the country, let alone the language and other skills needed to navigate the unfamiliar environment.

Last year, 27-year-old Sophorn San, who had lived most of his life in Rhode Island after he family fled Cambodia in the 1990s, was deported after pleading guilty to a gun charge as a teen. He was struck and killed by a truck in the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh only a few months later.

Most of life in US

In Lowell, an old mill city in Massachusetts where about 15% of residents are of Cambodian descent, a 40-year-old refugee from Cambodia said he’s lived almost half his life with a removal order hanging over him.

The man, who requested anonymity because he’s trying to resolve his immigration status, said he came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old, got involved in a street gang as a youth and received felony convictions by the age of 18 that made him deportable.

The man said his attorney has helped him address the old convictions, but he now has to convince immigration officials to reconsider his deportation case. If he’s forced to go back to Cambodia, he said he’d be leaving his family and a nearly two-decade career serving at risk youths to live in a country he’s never known.

“I consider myself an American,” he said. “I have kids that are American, and a wife that is an American citizen. But just because of the past, they can pick you up and deport you at any moment. That’s just insane to me.”

For decades, the message to women in track and field was crystal clear: get pregnant, lose sponsorship money. A rebellion led by some of the sport’s top runners, Allyson Felix, Kara Goucher and Alysia Montano, is helping to change that. 

Two months after the U.S. women’s soccer players stated their case for equal pay, women in track and field come to their major event, the world championships in Doha, having found their footing on another important crusade — retaining full pay from their sponsorship deals after they get pregnant.

“It’s the power of the collective,” Felix said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Alysia speaking, Kara speaking, the women’s soccer team. It’s just such a pivotal time right now in women’s sports, and we’re seeing change happen.”

The six-time Olympic and 11-time world champion had a baby girl in November and will compete on the women’s relay team next week at the worlds in Doha, where she will have a new apparel sponsor, Athleta, after spending years with Nike.

Nike responded to the outcry, as well, announcing in May that it would not apply performance-related pay reductions for pregnant athletes for a consecutive period of 12 months. Then, last month, the company expanded that to 18 months — starting eight months before the due date — and pledged to include specific language about pregnancy in its contracts to reinforce the policy.

“We recognize we can do more and that there is an important opportunity for the sports industry to evolve to support female athletes,” Nike said in a statement.

The fights for women’s rights in soccer and track have taken different trajectories and centered on different issues, but both had been underway for several years before they came to a head this summer.

The members of the U.S. women’s soccer team, with Megan Rapinoe spearheading the move, brought their longstanding struggle for equal pay to the fore during their march to the World Cup title this summer. 

At issue is the difference in the collectively bargained pay structures between the U.S. men’s and women’s teams, which for decades has left the women making less per game.

The women’s team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit in March, and in the aftermath of its victory in the World Cup, momentum has been building for a revisiting of the pay gap, including a bill in Congress that would ensure equal pay for athletes who represent the United States in global competitions.

Track and field hasn’t dealt with as many equal-pay issues, in part because men and women compete at the same time at the same venue, so there’s never been an accurate way to measure attendance and viewership for one gender over the other.

The women’s side of the sport has long produced as much talent and star power as the men: Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Marion Jones, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and the list goes on. Meanwhile, USA Track and Field has established a pay system based on merit and potential that pays men and women equally.

“I understand the discrepancies in other sports, and exposure and differences in that sort of thing,” said agent Paul Doyle, who represents a number of track athletes, including hurdler Nia Ali, a mother of two. But in track and field, “this is the same exposure. Diamond League meets have just as many female events as male events. It’s as interesting a sport as the men’s sport.”

But, as the world found out this year, the conversation changes when it comes to endorsement contracts in a sport in which an increasing number of female athletes are putting careers on hold to have babies, then returning to compete at a high level.

In May, Montano, the six-time U.S. champion who famously raced while she was eight months pregnant, broke nondisclosure agreements with Nike to produce a video describing the reality of being a woman in track and field.

“The sports industry allows for men to have a full career, and when a woman decides to have a baby, it pushes women out at their prime,” she said. “When I told (Nike) I wanted to have a baby during my career, they said, `Simple, we’ll just pause your contract and stop paying you.”‘

Montano is five months pregnant with her third child and now has a sponsorship deal with an active wear company, Cadenshae, which has vowed to support her regardless of whether she returns to the track.

Her message led Felix and Goucher to both go public with their stories, as well.

In a New York Times opinion piece, Felix recounted how Nike “wanted to pay me 70% less than before.” She eventually helped push the company to change the way it deals with pregnant athletes. When Nike revised its contracts, she celebrated.

“This means that female athletes will no longer be financially penalized for having a child,” Felix wrote on Instagram. 

Goucher also participated in the op-ed, describing the pressure she felt from Nike to go back to training instead of caring for her newborn son, Colt. Despite Nike’s changes, Goucher now lists Altra as her shoe sponsor.

While Goucher and Montano will not compete in Doha this week, Felix will be there, and she won’t be the only mother on the track. 
Ali, the 2016 Olympic silver medalist in the 100 hurdles, will be there . Two-time Olympic sprint champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica is a mom. Marathoner Roberta Groner has three kids.

Joanna Hayes, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist, now coaches 20-year-old hurdler Sydney McLaughlin. Nine years ago, Hayes put her career on hold to have a baby, then “came back on a whim, just to have fun, and I ran OK.” But nearly a decade later, the issue is resonating much more widely, and not only on the track and the soccer pitch.

“We’re going to see a big difference,” Hayes said. “You hear stories about this in corporate America — so many things that women go through just to have children, and so I think it’s just great to see women standing together for a cause.”
 

A U.S. judge on Friday blocked new Trump administration rules that would enable the government to keep immigrant children in detention facilities with their parents indefinitely.

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said the rules conflict with a 1997 settlement agreement that requires the government to release immigrant children caught on the border as quickly as possible to relatives in the U.S. and says they can only be held in facilities licensed by a state.

Gee said the Flores agreement — named for a teenage plaintiff — will remain in place and govern the conditions for all immigrant children in U.S. custody, including those with their parents.

“The agreement has been necessary, relevant, and critical to the public interest in maintaining standards for the detention and release of minors arriving at the United States’ borders,” the judge wrote in her decision.

“Defendants willingly negotiated and bound themselves to these standards for all minors in its custody, and no final regulations or changed circumstances yet merit termination of the Flores agreement.”

The Trump administration sought to end the agreement and issued the new rules with the hope of detaining immigrant children in facilities with their parents. The move came as part of a broader crackdown on asylum seekers arriving on the Southwest border, many of them families with children from Central America.

The Flores agreement allows for the settlement to be phased out when rules are issued for the custody of immigrant children that are consistent with its terms.

Attorneys who represent detained immigrant children welcomed Gee’s position, which she initially conveyed to them in a draft ruling during a court hearing Friday. They said they wouldn’t let the administration use young immigrants to try to deter migrants fleeing desperate conditions from seeking asylum in the United States.

“We will continue vigorously to defend the rights of detained immigrant children,” Neha Desai, director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, told reporters.

The Department of Justice said the administration is disappointed with the ruling because it did what was required to implement the new rules.

On Friday night, the White House issued a statement criticizing the judge’s ruling.

“For two and a half years, this Administration has worked to restore faithful enforcement of the laws enacted by Congress, while activist judges have imposed their own vision in the place of those duly enacted laws,” the statement said. “The Flores 20-day Loophole violates Congressional removal and detention mandates, creating a new system out of judicial whole cloth. This destructive end-run around the detention and removal system Congress created must end.”

Attorneys for both sides said they would be willing to meet and discuss whether some aspects of the rules aren’t subject to the settlement. Gee gave them until Oct. 4 to do so.

More than 400,000 immigrants traveling in family groups with children have been stopped on the Mexico border in the past year.

In its crackdown, the Trump administration has had migrants await immigration court hearings in Mexico and required those who cross through a third country to seek refuge there before applying for asylum in the U.S.

Immigrant advocates have decried the changes, which threaten asylum for many people fleeing violence in their countries.

 

Mourners gathered at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday to pay their respects to former President Jacques Chirac, whose death unleashed a flood of tributes to a charismatic but complex giant of French politics. 
 
Chirac, president from 1995 to 2007, died Thursday at age 86 after years of deteriorating health since suffering a stroke in 2005. 
 
Ahead of a national day of mourning announced for Monday, the French presidency threw open the doors of the Elysee Palace for people wanting to sign a book of condolences. 
 
“I express my admiration and tenderness for the last of the great presidents,” read one tribute. “Thank you for fighting, thank you for this freedom and good spirits.” 
 
In a televised address Thursday night, President Emmanuel Macron praised “a man whom we loved as much as he loved us.” 
 
Chirac is also to be given the honor of a public memorial ceremony on Sunday as well as a mass on Monday, which will be attended by Macron and foreign dignitaries including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. 
 
A minute of silence will also be observed Monday at public institutions, schools and football matches. 
 
Schools have also been urged to dedicate class time on Monday “to evoke the former head of state’s memory,” with the education ministry saying it will propose potential discussion themes for teachers. 
 
And the Quai Branly museum of indigenous art founded by Chirac, who had a deep appreciation of Asian cultures, said it would offer free admission until Oct. 11. 
 
French newspapers splashed his portrait across their front pages and dedicated most of their editions to the former president’s life — Le Parisien had an exhaustive 35 pages plus a 12-page special insert. 

Everyman charm 

Even Chirac’s opponents hailed his charm and qualities as a political fighter, as well as how he stood up to Washington in 2003 by opposing the Iraq War. 
 
He was also lauded for acknowledging France’s responsibility for the wartime deportation of Jews, slashing road deaths with the introduction of speed cameras, and standing up to the increasingly popular far right under Jean-Marie Le Pen. 
 
But some questioned how much he had actually achieved during a long period in office — his career shadowed by a graft conviction while mayor of Paris, from 1977 to 1995. 
 
He contested the ruling but did not appeal it, saying the French people “know who I am: an honest man” who worked only for “the grandeur of France and for peace.” 
 
And it hardly dented the popularity of the beer- and saucisse-loving charmer, whose extramarital affairs were an open secret. 
 
He had barely been seen in public in recent years, after suffering a stroke in 2005 and undergoing kidney surgery in December 2013. 
 
He will be buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris next to his daughter Laurence, who died in 2016 after a lifelong battle with anorexia. 
 
He is survived by Bernadette, his wife of more than six decades; his daughter Claude, who served as his confidante and adviser; and a grandson, Martin. 

‘Embodied’ France 
 
The centre-right Chirac succeeded his longtime political rival,  Socialist Francois Mitterrand, in 1995 after two previously unsuccessful bids to secure the Elysee. 
 
“As a leader who was able to represent the nation in its diversity and complexity … President Chirac embodied a certain idea of France,” Macron said Thursday. 
 
His death garnered an outpouring of tributes from world leaders, the latest from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lauded “an old friend of the Chinese people.” 
 
Lebanon has also declared a day of mourning Monday, noting the close ties between Chirac and the family of former Premier Rafiq Hariri — whose family provided Chirac and his wife with a sumptuous Paris apartment for several years after he left office. 

President Donald Trump told two Russian officials in a 2017 meeting that he was not concerned about Moscow’s meddling in the U.S. election, which prompted White House officials to limit access to the remarks, the Washington Post reported Friday.

A summary of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S. was limited to a few officials in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly, the Post said, citing former officials with knowledge of the matter.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Whistleblower complaint

A whistleblower complaint about a July phone call in which Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden is at the heart of the U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry launched this week.

A member of the U.S. intelligence community who filed the complaint against Trump said notes from other conversations the president had with foreign leaders had been placed on a highly classified computer system in a departure from normal practice in a bid to protect information that was politically sensitive, rather than sensitive for national security reasons.

Trump’s 2017 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak was already considered controversial after it was learned that Trump disclosed highly classified information about a planned Islamic State operation.

On election interference, Trump told Lavrov and Kislyak he was not concerned about Russian meddling because the United States did the same in other countries, the Post reported.

Limited access to other conversations

CNN, citing people familiar with the matter, said efforts to limit access to Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that procedures for handling records of Trump’s conversations with world leaders had changed early in his tenure after calls with Mexico’s president and Australia’s prime minister were leaked.
 

Despite renewed threats from the Taliban to disrupt the voting process, Afghan voters seem determined to cast their votes in the country’s presidential elections on Saturday. Sirwan Kajjo has more.

The Trump administration is proposing to accept a maximum of 18,000 refugees in the coming year, in what would be the lowest refugee ceiling in the country’s history, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

If the government follows through, 2020 will be the third year of significant cuts to refugee resettlement under President Donald Trump.

For now, however, the latest figure remains a proposal.

The final decision, in the form of a “presidential determination,” will be made in the coming weeks after the required consultations with Congress, a senior administration official told reporters in a phone briefing organized by the White House on Thursday.

In fiscal 2018, the first full year of the Trump administration, the ceiling was set at 45,000, and 22,491 refugees were admitted.

In fiscal 2019, the ceiling was 30,000. With only three full days remaining in the fiscal year, the U.S. is close to the limit, with 29,972 refugees admitted, according to State Department data.

Prior to Trump’s election, the refugee ceiling average was 60,000 to 70,000 every year.

The proposed ceiling is one of three fundamental changes to the resettlement program announced Thursday.

Trump also issued an executive order that will require state and local governments to “consent” to accept refugees for resettlement.

While not a widespread issue, the order would allow states like Tennessee, which unsuccessfully sued the federal government to stop resettlement, to potentially prevent willing nonprofit organizations in the state from accepting refugees.

Additionally, the U.S. State Department is creating new categories — a procedure used rarely to meet specific needs, usually for a specific region.

For fiscal 2020, however, the total will include up to 5,000 refugees persecuted on account of their religious beliefs; 4,000 spots for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. during its operations in the country; and up to 1,500 of what the White House called “legitimate refugees” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Those specific allocations would allow for a maximum of 7,500 refugees who fall outside those categories.

The United States is pressing other countries to join its proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam Brownback calls “the most significant” new human rights initiative in a generation.

“We’re going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against religious persecution around the world,” Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier this week. “We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution come down.”

Brownback’s remarks came at a Monday press conference following the “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” a U.S.-sponsored event on the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event, President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.

The president’s chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early 2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S. senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as

Still seething over the whistleblower complaint that triggered a House of Representatives impeachment query, President Donald Trump returned to Washington on Thursday lashing out at congressional Democrats and the news media and darkly hinting at retribution for government officials who assisted the whistleblower in accusing the president of misusing his powers of office.

Trump returned to the White House from several days in New York attending the U.N. General Assembly. He returned the same time the House Intelligence Committee was holding a hearing on the administration’s delay in submitting the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress.

The complaint asserts that Trump in a July 25 phone call sought help from the new president of Ukraine in digging up dirt about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son that would hurt Biden’s prospects of winning the Democratic presidential nomination and challenging Trump in 2020.

Military assistance

Trump instructed his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back nearly $400 million in military assistance for Ukraine at least a week before the call, according to The Washington Post, to put pressure on the Ukrainian leader — a claim Trump bitterly disputes.

Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Trump denounced the Democrats’ tactics as “a disgrace” and accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and nemesis of the president, of “making up stories.”

“It’s a disgrace to our country,” he said. “It’s another witch hunt. Here we go again. It’s Adam Schiff and his crew making up stories and sitting there like pious whatever you want to call them. It’s just a — really, it’s a disgrace.”
 
Trump doubled down on his defense that he had done nothing inappropriate in his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and on his accusations of corruption by Biden and his son Hunter — allegations that so far the administration has not backed up with evidence.

Before leaving New York, Trump told staff from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations that he wanted to know who provided information to the whistleblower, saying that whoever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days,” spies were dealt with differently, according to The New York Times.

Maguire hearing

Trump made his comments as acting U.S. Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire told lawmakers he had complied with his “responsibility to follow the law every step of the way” as he faced questions about why he initially blocked the release of the whistleblower complaint now at the center of the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions formally announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this week.

Maguire told the House Intelligence Committee he could not legally disclose the complaint because he “did not have the authority to waive” executive privilege.

The acting DNI, who told lawmakers he believed the matter was “unprecedented,” was also scheduled to speak to members of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee behind closed doors.

Ahead of his public testimony, the House committee released text of the whistleblower complaint.  

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the complaint said. It added that Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Guiliani, was a central figure in this effort and that Attorney General William Barr appeared to be involved as well.

White House lockdown

The complaint also said the White House then attempted to “lock down” the information to prevent its public disclosure, including by removing the transcript of the call from the computer system that is typically used for such records of calls with foreign leaders and loading it into a separate electronic system that is used only for classified information that is of an “especially sensitive nature.”

The complaint noted that a White House official described that as an abuse of the secure system because there was nothing “remotely sensitive” on the phone call from a national security perspective.

The whistleblower noted that White House officials said this was “not the first time” the Trump administration had placed a presidential transcript into this “codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive, rather than national security sensitive information.”

‘Most graphic evidence’

The White House dismissed the complaint as “nothing more than a collection of thirdhand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings, all of which shows nothing improper.”

But in opening remarks of Thursday’s House hearing, Schiff said the complaint was “the most graphic evidence yet that the president of the United States has betrayed his oath of office.”

Schiff said that as the Ukrainian president tried to ingratiate himself to Trump during the call, Trump’s response “reads like a classic organized-crime shakedown.”

According to the summary of the call released by the White House on Wednesday, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, a potential rival for the presidency. 

The call summary also showed that Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to speak with Giuliani, whom he referred to as a “highly respected man,” as well as Barr. Trump said that Giuliani would be traveling to Ukraine. Zelenskiy said he would meet with Giuliani when he visited.

“I’m reeling from the content of the complaint. It’s horrifying. America is facing a clear and present danger to our continued existence as a republic,” former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub told VOA.

The Pentagon is sending a Patriot missile battery, four radar systems and about 200 troops to Saudi Arabia to boost the kingdom’s air defenses against further attacks.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said Thursday that the deployment “will augment the kingdom’s air and missile defense of critical military and civilian infrastructure.”

Two more Patriot batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system are also preparing to deploy there to defend against missiles, if needed, Hoffman added.

The movement is the first step in responding to what officials call an Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities earlier this month. One U.S. official told VOA the attack originated in “southwest Iran” and that the U.S. has more proof “than just debris” to back up this claim, although no evidence has been released by the U.S. to date.

Tehran has denied responsibility for the attack.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, first announced Trump’s decision to send forces and equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Friday night at the Pentagon.

The Patriot battery and radar systems are designed to provide increased surveillance across Saudi Arabia’s north. The country has largely focused its defenses to the south in order to protect the country from attacks by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that the presence of foreign forces in the Persian Gulf area would create “insecurity in the region.”

Esper said Friday that U.S. forces and equipment heading to the region would be “defensive in nature” and were being sent in response to requests from Saudi and UAE officials to improve their air and missile defenses.