Month: October 2019

Twelve U.S. Democratic presidential candidates squared off in a spirited debate Tuesday night, all looking to confront President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, even as their Democratic congressional cohorts have accused Trump of political wrongdoing and opened an impeachment inquiry against him.    The dozen challengers all support the four-week-old impeachment probe, although Trump’s removal through impeachment remains unlikely. The candidates, however, wasted no time before telling a national television audience why Trump should be impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to face trial in the Republican-majority Senate.    In his opening statement, former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s top challengers, declared, “This president is the most corrupt … in all our history,” an assessment echoed across the debate stage.  ‘No one is above the law’ Another leading candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, said, “Sometimes there are issues that are bigger than politics. Donald Trump broke the law. No one is above the law. Impeachment must go forward.”    Tuesday’s debate was the fourth in a string of almost monthly get-togethers for the Democratic challengers seeking to win the party’s nomination to face Trump. But with the 12 candidates lined up on a stage at Otterbein University in the Midwestern state of Ohio, it was the largest such gathering and came as new drama has engulfed the U.S. political world about a year before voters head to the polls in the national balloting.    House Democrats opened the quick-moving impeachment probe after a whistleblower in the U.S. intelligence community …

“Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman — aka prisoner No. 77806-112 — reported Tuesday to a federal prison in California to serve a two-week sentence in a college admissions scandal that ensnared dozens of wealthy mothers and fathers trying to get their children into elite schools.    Huffman’s husband, actor William H. Macy, dropped her off at the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a low-security prison for women in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to TASC Group, which represents Huffman.    The prison has been described by media as “Club Fed,” making its way onto a Forbes list in 2009 of America’s 10 Cushiest Prisons.     Like all inmates, Huffman would be issued a prison uniform and underwear and referred to by her number once inside the prison, where she will share a room and open toilet with three other inmates, according to a TASC Group publicist who declined to be named in accordance with company policy.     Huffman, 56, “is prepared to serve the term of imprisonment Judge [Indira] Talwani ordered as one part of the punishment she imposed for Ms. Huffman’s actions,” the TASC Group said in a statement that provided no further details.    Officials at the prison did not immediately return two phone calls seeking comment.    The federal judge in Boston sentenced Huffman last month to 14 days in prison, a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and a year’s probation after she pleaded guilty of fraud and conspiracy for paying an admissions consultant $15,000 to have a proctor correct her daughter’s …

Eight-year-old Sara hardly speaks anymore. She spends most of her time watching cartoons on a mobile phone in a rugged pink cover.      One of her legs is severed above the knee, the other is broken.    On Thursday, about 15 minutes after her family decided to flee the area, a bomb fell about 8 meters from Sara and her three siblings.      Doctors say hospitals in northeastern Syria are already working beyond their capacity, as aid organizations evacuate their foreign staff.  As Turkey continues to fight for a strip of land along its southern border, doctors say this war is turning into an unmitigated health disaster.    “Any further crisis will destroy us,” said Dr. Furat Maqdesi Elias, who heads the Al Salam Hospital in Qamishli, a city on the Syrian border with Turkey. “What do NGOs and the U.N. give us?  They give us zero.”    Many Syrians here blame the United States for abandoning this region, after supporting Kurdish-led fighters against Islamic State militants for years. Turkey has long maintained it would create a buffer zone between it and the once-U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces vigorously if it had to. It began assaults on the Kurdish region nearly a week ago.    Turkey blames the PKK, a Kurdish militant group it equates with the SDF, which has been attacking Turkey for decades, leading to thousands of deaths.  Sara’s mother, Nariman, weeps as she explains that her four children were injured in a bombing last week — one died and Sara lost a …

Two unrelated earthquakes have rattled California in a little more than a 12-hour period. A  magnitude-4.7 earthquake hit a remote mountainous region in central California, 25 kilometers southeast of Hollister, just after noon on Tuesday. It followed a 4.5 magnitude temblor near Pleasant Hill, northeast of San Francisco, late Monday. Despite having occurred within a short time of each other, the quakes were centered too far apart to have been related, seismologist Lucy Jones said on Twitter.   Today’s M4.8 near Hollister is too far from yesterday’s M4.5 to be connected. When we look for patterns between quakes at long distances, we see triggering for ~3x length of the fault. The fault length in a M4.5 is less than 1 km. — Dr. Lucy Jones (@DrLucyJones) October 15, 2019 The quakes come just three days before the 30th anniversary of one of the deadliest in San Francisco Bay Area history.  In 1989, the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake killed 69 people and injured thousands.       …

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, announced that it would be suspending its operations in northeastern Syria due to “extreme volatility in the region.” Since Oct. 9, MSF has evacuated its staffs from hospitals in the Kurdistan region of Syria after the start of Turkish military operations in the area. Robert Onus, MSF emergency manager for Syria, said  the Turkish military engagement will “increase the need for humanitarian assistance” but that the organization could not provide it with the current “insecurity.” “We cannot operate at scale until we can gain the assurances and acceptance of all parties to the conflict that we can operate safely,” said Onus. According to MSF, the Syrian government has not authorizated the organization to operate in the country. With The Syrian Democratic Forces entering an alliance with the government, MSF’s lack of authorization could continue be an issue. A Turkish forces truck transporting armored personnel carriers, crosses the border with Syria in Karkamis, Gaziantep province, southeastern Turkey, Oct. 15, 2019. Most of the towns and cities that hosted MSF facilities and doctors were cities controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Many of the locations were liberated from Islamic States of Iraq and the Levant insurgents in 2015. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), which is the Syrian government’s state run media, has reported that soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army have entered key points in the northeast to “face Turkish aggression.” With the evacuation of personnel, the organization said it …

Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno on Monday officially scrapped his own law to cut expensive fuel subsidies after days of violent protests against the IMF-backed measure, returning fuel prices to prior levels until a new measure can be found. The signing of the decree is a blow to Moreno, and leaves big questions about the oil-producing nation’s fiscal situation. But it represents a win for the country’s indigenous communities, who led the protests, bringing chaos to the capital and crippling the oil sector. The clashes marked the latest in a series of political convulsions sparked by IMF-backed reform plans in Latin America, where increased polarization between the right and left is causing widespread friction amid efforts to overhaul hidebound economies. Moreno’s law eliminated four-decade-old fuel subsidies and was estimated to have freed up nearly $1.5 billion per year in the government budget, helping to shrink the fiscal deficit as required under a deal Moreno signed with the International Monetary Fund. But the measure was hugely unpopular and sparked days of protests led by indigenous groups that turned increasingly violent despite a military-enforced curfew. Moreno gave in to the chief demand of demonstrators late on Sunday, tweeting on Monday that: “We have opted for peace.” Then, later on Monday, he signed the decree officially reverting his previous measure. Moreno, who took office in 2017 after campaigning as the leftist successor to former President Rafael Correa, said fuel prices would revert to their earlier levels at midnight. A demonstrator holds tires as he …

Two Pacific Northwest tribes on Monday demanded the removal of three major hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to save migrating salmon and starving orcas and restore fishing sites that were guaranteed to the tribes in a treaty more than 150 years ago. The Yakama and Lummi nations made the demand of the U.S. government on Indigenous Peoples Day, a designation that’s part of a trend to move away from a holiday honoring Christopher Columbus. For decades, people have debated whether to remove four big dams on the Lower Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia, but breaching the Columbia dams, which are a much more significant source of power, has never been seriously discussed.   Proposals to merely curtail operations, let alone remove the structures, are controversial, and the prospects of the Columbia dams being demolished any time soon appear nonexistent. Tribal leaders said at a news conference along the Columbia River that the Treaty of 1855, in which 14 tribes and bands ceded 11.5 million acres to the United States, was based on the inaccurate belief that the U.S. had a right to take the land. Under the treaty, the Yakama Tribe retained the right to fish at all their traditional sites. But construction of the massive concrete dams decades later along the lower Columbia River to generate power for the booming region destroyed critical fishing spots and made it impossible for salmon to complete their migration. FILE – Water flows through the Dalles Dam, along the Columbia …

Along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, tens of thousands of New Yorkers and tourists celebrated the world’s largest display of Italian-American pageantry on Columbus Day, while New Mexico and a growing list of states and municipalities ditched the holiday altogether for the first time. The Italian navigator namesake who sailed to the modern-day Americas in 1492, Christopher Columbus has long been considered by some scholars  and Native Americans as an affront to those who had settled on the land thousands of years prior to his arrival.  While the earliest  commemoration of Columbus Day dates back to 1866 in New York City,  as a celebration to honor the heritage and contributions of the now-17 million Italian-Americans living in the United States, the movement behind “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” began more than a century later, in 1977, by a delegation of Native nations. The resolution, presented in Geneva at the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, paved the way for cities like Berkeley, California to officially replace the holiday 15 years later. Yet to organizers of the 75th annual Columbus Day Parade, the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus remains worth celebrating. “Columbus discovered America. If it weren’t for Columbus, who knows where we’d be today,” said Aldo Verrelli, Parade Chairman with the Columbus Citizens Foundation. “[With] any of those people in those days, we have to remember the good that they did,” Verrelli said. Let’s forget about all the other controversy.” It’s a sentiment and a suggestion that has long divided Americans: …

Police in northern Nigeria rescued nearly 70 men and boys from a second purported Islamic school where they were shackled and subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatments.” The raid in Katsina, the northwestern home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, came less a month after about 300 men and boys were freed from another supposed Islamic school in neighboring Kaduna state where they were allegedly tortured and sexually abused. “In the course of investigation, sixty-seven persons from the ages of 7 to 40 years were found shackled with chains,” Katsina police spokesman Sanusi Buba said in a statement. Men and boys are pictured after being rescued by police in Sabon Garin, in Daura local government area of Katsina state, Nigeria, Oct. 14, 2019. “Victims were also found to have been subjected to various inhuman and degrading treatments.” The raid occurred on Oct. 12 in Sabon Garin in the Daura local government area of Katsina state. Police issued a statement Monday and said they were working to reunite the victims with their families. Police arrested one man, 78-year-old Mallam Bello Abdullahi Umar, for running what they called an “illegal detention/remand home.” Lawai Musa, a trader who lived near the center, told Reuters by phone that families sent unruly men and boys there believing it was an Islamic teaching facility that would straighten them out and teach them Islamic beliefs. “The way he is treating the children is un-Islamic” he said. “We are not happy, they were treated illegally.” Islamic schools Islamic schools, …

California’s top utility regulator blasted Pacific Gas and Electric on Monday for what she called “failures in execution” during the largest planned power outage in state history to avoid wildfires that she said “created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated.”   The agency ordered a series of corrective actions, including a goal of restoring power within 12 hours, not the utility’s current 48-hour goal. “The scope, scale, complexity, and overall impact to people’s lives, businesses, and the economy of this action cannot be understated,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer wrote in a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson.   FILE – Pacific Gas and Electric employees work in the PG&E Emergency Operations Center in San Francisco, Oct. 10, 2019. PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians. The company said it did it because of dangerous wind forecasts but acknowledged that its execution was poor.   Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not receive enough warning that the power was going out.   “We were not adequately prepared,” Johnson said at a press conference last week. PG&E spokespeople did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the sanctions. In addition to restoring power faster, the PUC said the utility must work harder to avoid such large-scale outages, develop better ways to communicate with the public and local officials, get a better system for distributing outage maps, and …

News reports say South Korean pop star and actress Sulli has been found dead at her home south of Seoul.   A report by Yonhap news agency said the 25-year-old was found Monday afternoon. The report said police have said there were no signs of foul play at her home in Seongnam.   Repeated calls to the Seongnam Sujeong Police Department and Sulli’s agency weren’t answered.   Sulli’s legal name is Choi Jin-ri. She debuted in 2009 as a member of the girl band “f(x)” and also acted in numerous television dramas and movies. …

For weeks, Spain has rejected repeated U.S. requests for the extradition of former Venezuelan spy chief Hugo Carvajal, wanted in the United States on drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges. Now, the reasons for Madrid’s refusal are emerging: he is cooperating in Spain’s efforts to mediate Venezuela’s drawn out political crisis.  Spanish court documents say Carvajal was operating under “directions and orders from the Presidency of Venezuela,” and analysts say Spain’s protection of him may be influenced by his importance as an intelligence asset to the Spanish Foreign Intelligence Service, CNI. The weight of the charges levied by the United States is hefty. The indictment, sent to Voice of America by the Department of Justice, alleges that Carvajal “worked with terrorists and other drug traffickers to dispatch thousands of kilograms of cocaine” to the United States. U.S. Justice department officials say that to accomplish this, he worked with the leadership of the militant Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, during his near decade-long tenure as head of Venezuela’s powerful military counterintelligence service, DGCIM.   Carvajal and his alleged shady dealings have long been on the U.S. radar.  In 2008, the United States Department of the Treasury accused Carvajal of assisting the FARC in protecting Colombia’s Arauca Department, a region known as a center of cocaine production, and providing the FARC with official Venezuelan government identification.    FARC used profits from its drug trafficking networks to fund its decades-long insurgency against the Colombian government. The United States designated the FARC as a …

Spain’s Supreme Court on Monday sentenced 12 prominent former Catalan politicians and activists to lengthy prison terms for their roles in a 2017 bid to take the wealthy region out of Spain and create a new European country. The landmark ruling, after a four-month trial, inflamed independence supporters in the northeastern region bordering France where Catalan identity is a passionate issue. Nine of the Catalans on trial in association with their efforts to achieve independence received between nine and 13 years in prison for sedition. Four of them were additionally convicted for misuse of public funds, and three more were fined for disobedience. The Spanish Constitution says the country can’t be divided. Spain’s caretaker prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he hoped the sentence would mark a watershed in the long standoff between national authorities in Madrid and separatists in the Catalan capital Barcelona. Sánchez said the court’s verdict proved the 2017 secession attempt had become “a shipwreck.” He urged people to “set aside extremist positions” and “embark on a new phase” for Catalonia. Catalan Separatist Leaders Sentenced up to 9 and 13 years in Prison Former head of Catalonia’s regional government called the ruling an atrocity Authorities will respond firmly to any attempt to break the law, Sánchez said in a live television address, as thousands of people joined protest marches in the Catalan capital Barcelona shortly after the court’s verdict. Some protesters held banners saying, “Free political prisoners.” Grassroots pro-secession groups previously had warned that guilty verdicts would bring …

Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Saudi Arabia on Monday, meeting with the oil-rich nation’s king and crown prince as he seeks to cement Moscow’s political and energy ties across the Mideast.   Putin received all the trappings of a state visit, with a mounted guard escorting his limousine to King Salman’s Al-Yamamah palace in Riyadh on his first visit to the kingdom since 2007.   In the intervening years, the Arab Spring roiled the wider Mideast as Putin would partner with Iran in backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s still-raging war. The kingdom unsuccessfully backed those trying to oust Assad.   But more recently, Russia joined OPEC in lowering their production beginning in 2017, the first such cut for the cartel in a decade. It reduced production by 1.2 million barrels per day, with 800,000 coming from OPEC and 400,000 coming from non-OPEC members. That helped boost energy prices. Crude oil sold for over $100 a barrel in the summer of 2014 before bottoming out below $30 a barrel in January 2016. On Monday, it traded just under $60 a barrel.   Putin listened to a Saudi military band play Russia’s national anthem, then greeted officials and sat with King Salman for a conversation captured by state television. Earlier, a broadly grinning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman walked up to greet Putin on his arrival. The crown prince later engaged in a conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.   Keeping Russia with the oil cartel, …

An Egyptian rights lawyer says prosecutors have ordered a prominent pro-democracy activist to remain in custody for 15 days. Khaled Ali says Esraa Abdel-Fattah was brought before prosecutors late Sunday, after she was arrested by security forces in plain cloths a day earlier. How Egypt’s President Tightened his Grip Behind the scenes, President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi’s closest advisers reworked the constitution to prolong his presidency and tighten his grip on Egypt. Not since the decades-long rule of Hosni Mubarak has so much power been concentrated in the hands of one man Abdel-Fattah was a co-founder of the April 6 movement which played a crucial role in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising. Ali says Abdel-Fattah was questioned for allegedly disseminating false news and misuse of social media. He said the activist announced a hunger strike after alleged abuses by police. Abdel-Fattah’s arrest is the latest in a sweeping crackdown in the past weeks, following small but rare anti-government protests. More than 2,600 people have been arrested, though Egyptian authorities have released hundreds after brief detentions. Repression Risks Fueling Egypt Instability, Analysts Warn Egypt is reeling after a tense weekend of sparse anti-government protests for the second week in a row, which analysts say could bring more repression under President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi …

Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on Sunday defended his work in Ukraine and China after calls by President Donald Trump that the two countries investigate his business dealings, pleas that have engulfed Trump in an impeachment inquiry. The younger Biden, whose father is one of the leading Democratic candidates seeking to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election, said in a statement issued by his lawyer that despite Trump’s accusations of improprieties while he was a board member of the Burisma energy company in Ukraine for five years, no foreign or domestic law enforcement agency has accused him of any wrongdoing. Hunter Biden left the Burisma board last April and said, without giving an explanation, that he would leave the board of China’s BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company at the end of October. Published accounts say that he was paid as much as $50,000 a month to serve on the Burisma board, although his Sunday statement did not mention the salary he received. The younger Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, said the position with the Chinese investment firm was unpaid, but that Hunter Biden two years ago invested $420,000 for a 10% equity stake in the firm, which he still holds, although has not received any return on his investment. “Hunter undertook these business activities independently,” Mesires said. “He did not believe it appropriate to discuss them with his father, nor did he.” But Trump in a late July call to Ukraine President …

Seven people were wounded after a mortar attack by al-Shabab militants hit the area around Mogadishu airport on Sunday, Somali witnesses and officials say The mortars landed on the heavily-guarded Halane area of the airport that houses the African Union and United Nations Mission in Somalia. Witnesses told VOA Somali that six mortars were fired at the vicinity just after 1pm local time. The al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. The Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Somalia, James Swan, confirmed that the mortars landed inside the U.N. and AMISOM facilities.  “I am appalled by this blatant act of terrorism against our personnel, who work together with the Somali people on humanitarian, peace building, and development issues,” Swan said in a statement. “There is no justification for such despicable acts of violence, and the United Nations remains determined to support Somalia on its path to peace, stability and development.” Al-Shabab uses mobile vehicles that transport mortars from one location to another. The mortars are then dissembled immediately after being fired and hidden in the bush or in a car, according to security sources. Al-Shabab attacked the same facility with mortars earlier this year injuring two United Nations staff members and a contractor. The attack on Sunday comes a day before Somalia marks the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia and in Africa. October 14 is the second anniversary of the truck bomb in Mogadishu that killed 587 people and injured hundreds of others. …

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 …

Weekend protests in Hong Kong were smaller and more peaceful than previous actions, but the thousands of people who marched and held sit-ins on the 19th straight week of unrest say their convictions have only strengthened in the past four months. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Hong Kong on how residents are not backing down, with reporting from Yihua Lee and Paris Huang. …

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. In this photo taken from Ceylanpinar, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, smoke billows from fires on targets in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, caused by bombardment by Turkish forces, Oct. …