Author: Selleco

NATO leaders are preparing to gather in London for a two-day meeting Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the alliance, but growing tensions among members could overshadow the celebrations. The war in Syria and the ongoing Russian threat will serve as the backdrop to the summit. Fellow NATO members the United States and Turkey came close to confrontation in northern Syria last month, rattling the alliance. “The position of Turkey in the North Atlantic alliance is a difficult one,” said Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute in London in an interview with VOA this week. “Turkey’s decision to become involved in military operations in the Middle East against the wishes of most of its allies, including the United States, [and] Turkey’s decision to buy Russian military equipment … [are] riling with many countries in Europe.” NATO members say it’s better to have Turkey inside than outside the alliance. “NATO is about European security, it’s not about coordinating policies in the Middle East,” Eyal said. Where American troops once kept the peace, Russian forces now patrol northern Syria. The U.S. withdrawal has fueled concerns over America’s commitment to NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron recently called the alliance “brain dead” and urged Europe to create its own security architecture.  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, is welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Nov. 28, 2019. The comments elicited a sharp rebuke from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg this week. “European unity cannot …

Residents remained on edge Thursday in the earthquake-stricken areas of Albania, as aftershocks continued to rattle the area. Thursday afternoon, another 5.0-magnitude quake was registered near the city of Thumane just hours after authorities called off search-and-rescue operations in the area after recovering the bodies of the last people who had been reported missing. The 6.4-magnitude temblor that struck Tuesday caused the most devastation in Thumane, where 23 people were killed, including seven from one family. “God let us keep two (members of the family) but took seven from us,” survivor Sul Cara told VOA. “Now we are focused on paying our respects to the dead, as honor and tradition demands of us. We will try our best to show strength as we send off seven loved ones to burial. This is a heavy tragedy to bear, but at the same time we have found strength in the outpouring of support, not just from this town but from the whole country.” Albanians sit at a makeshift camp in Durres, Nov. 28, 2019, after an earthquake shook Albania. The death toll rose to 47 as search operations continued in other locations, but rescuers are increasingly pessimistic survivors will be found. Residents in many neighborhoods remain in tents or have chosen to move in with relatives in other towns, as authorities warn that buildings remain unsafe. Dangerous aftershocks Albanians should heed the warnings, Stanford University geophysics professor Ross Stein told VOA’s Albanian Service. Stein said that the days, even months after a …

An American teenager, whose recent videos on the social media app TikTok have caused controversy, says she will continue her activism to raise awareness of the plight of Uighur Muslims in China despite Beijing’s efforts “to conceal the truth.” Feroza Aziz, a 17-year-old from New Jersey, said her account on the Chinese-owned social network was suspended after she posted three videos in which she condemned China’s policy against the Uighurs. The videos, which were disguised as makeup tutorials, have received millions of views. 👏👏17 yr old Feroza Aziz used Chinese platform TikTok to pretend to talk about eyelashes while raising awareness of China’s treatment of #Uighur Muslims in campsViewed by millions before she was banned, TikTok has now apologised & reinstated her accountpic.twitter.com/F3N4EOpkXK — Akil N Awan (@Akil_N_Awan) November 28, 2019 “I posted my first video on Saturday and it was about the Uighurs being thrown into concentration camps,” Aziz told VOA Thursday in a phone interview. “I woke up the next day to see that I got viral on the million views. Then I decided to post two more videos regarding the situation on Sunday night,” she said. There are an estimated 13 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities living in the Xinjiang region in northwest China. The Chinese government has faced growing criticism from the international community over the detention of Uighurs and other Muslims in internment camps. The U.S. government and human rights groups estimate 10% of the Uighur population is under detention. Beijing defends the …

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment is expected to sharpen the battle lines in Israel’s already deadlocked political system and could test the loyalty of his right-wing allies, Israeli commentators said Friday.                     The serious corruption charges announced Thursday appear to have dashed already slim hopes for a unity government following September’s elections, paving the way for an unprecedented repeat vote in March, which will be the third in less than a year.                     In an angry speech late Thursday, Netanyahu lashed out at investigators and vowed to fight on in the face of an “attempted coup.”                     His main opponent, the centrist Blue and White party, called on him to “immediately resign” from all his Cabinet posts, citing a Supreme Court ruling that says indicted ministers cannot continue to hold office. Netanyahu also serves as minister of health, labor and Diaspora affairs, as well as acting minister of agriculture.                     He is not legally required to step down as prime minister, but Netanyahu faces heavy pressure to do so, and it is unclear whether an indicted politician could be given the mandate to form a new government. Netanyahu has already failed to form a majority coalition of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset after two hard-fought elections this year.                     “This will not be an election, it will be a civil war without arms,” columnist Amit Segal wrote in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “There is a broad constituency that believes what Netanyahu said yesterday, but …

Tens of thousands of people in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore are at risk of respiratory disease because of poor air quality related to thick smog hanging over the region, an international rights group said Friday.                     Amnesty International called for “urgent action” for residents of Lahore in a bid to mobilize supporters around the world to campaign on their behalf due to smog that has engulfed the city of more than 10 million people over the past week.                     Amnesty says Pakistani officials’ inadequate response to the smog raises significant human rights concerns.                     “The hazardous air is putting everyone’s right to health at risk,” said Rimmel Mohydin, South Asia Campaigner at Amnesty. “The issue is so serious that we are calling on our members around the world to write to the Pakistani authorities to tell them to stop downplaying the crisis and take urgent action to protect people’s health and lives.”                     Once known as the “city of gardens,” Lahore is considered one of the world’s most polluted cities, where many residents have been forced to stay at home.                     Mohydin said on one out of every two days since the beginning of November the air quality in Lahore has been classified as “hazardous” by air quality monitors installed by the United States Consulate in Lahore and the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative.                     She said people in Lahore have not had healthy air for a single day this year and that the …

Pope Francis Friday called on bishops in Thailand to keep their doors open for priests and to spread the faith as their missionary predecessors did. “Be close to your priests, listen to them and seek to accompany them in every situation, especially when you see that they are discouraged or apathetic, which is the worst of the devil’s temptations. Do so not as judges but as fathers, not as managers who deploy them, but as true elder brothers.” Francis gave a speech to the Asian Bishops Conference at the Shrine of Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kithamrung in Sam Phran, 56 kilometers west of capital Bangkok. Huge crowds, including faithful from Vietnam, Cambodia and China welcomed the pope  when he earlier arrived for a meeting with clergy and seminarians at Saint Peter’s Parish in Nakhon Pathom province.    Francis concluded the day’s celebrations with a Mass dedicated to young people at Bangkok’s Cathedral of the Assumption.         Francis is only the second pope to visit Thailand. Pope John Paul II, now Saint John Paul II, was the first in 1984.   …

A Hong Kong court on Friday suspended its decision to strike down a government ban on wearing face masks at protests, allowing police to enforce the decree for another week around keenly contested local elections in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.                     The court had ruled Monday that the ban, imposed in October under rarely used emergency powers to prevent anti-government protesters from hiding their identity, infringed on fundamental rights more than was reasonably necessary.                     The government had appealed for a freeze on the ruling while it appeals to higher courts.                     The High Court agreed Friday to grant a one-week suspension in view of the “highly exceptional circumstances that Hong Kong is currently facing,” local broadcaster RTHK reported. China’s rubber-stamp parliament rebuked the court ruling this week, in what some interpreted as an indication it might overrule the verdict.                     Many Hong Kong protesters have defied the ban, and during lunchtime rallies Friday, some chanted “We have the right to wear masks.”                     The city’s new police commissioner, Tang Ping-keung, told reporters police would be out in force at polling stations Sunday to respond to any outbreak of violence “without hesitation.”                     Six masked protesters surrendered before dawn Friday, bringing to about 30 the number that have come out in the past day from a university campus surrounded by police.                     The group emerged from a campus entrance and held hands as they walked toward a checkpoint around 3 a.m. Five wore …

Three of the four ethnic-based parties in Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front or EPRDF,  voted Thursday to become one single party. The newly formed party, created just months ahead of the general election in May, is called the Prosperity Party. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement that Prosperity is “committed to strengthening and applying a true federal system, which recognizes the diversity and contributions of all Ethiopians.” The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front or TPLF, which dominated EPRDF before Abiy became prime minister, refused to participate in Thursday’s vote. “The whole process is a total sham,” said Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF member.  The prime minister didn’t follow the right procedures . . . it was wrong as well as undemocratic.” Last month, TPLF warned in a statement that a merged party would “put Ethiopia on the road to disintegration.”     …

A new report by leading health and safety agencies finds millions of sanitation workers in developing countries are forced to work under horrific conditions that put their health and lives at risk. Sanitation workers everywhere occupy the lowest rung of society and are stigmatized and marginalized because they do the dirty work that other people do not want to do.   The report’s authors – the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and WaterAid – say they hope to raise awareness on the plight of sanitation workers and the dehumanizing conditions under which they are forced to work. For example, the report says that many sanitation workers aren’t given the safety training or equipment needed to protect them when handling effluent or fecal sludge. World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier says sanitation workers make an important contribution to public health at the risk of their own lives. Poor sanitation, he says, causes more than 430,000 deaths from diarrhea every year and is linked to the spread of other diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis A and polio. “Sanitation workers are the people who work in jobs such as cleaning toilets, emptying pits and septic tanks, cleaning sewage and manholes and operating pumping stations and treatment plants.… Waste must be correctly treated before being disposed of or used.  However, workers often come into direct contact with human waste, working with no equipment or no protection to remove it by hand which exposes them to a long …

Authorities in Haiti said late Friday they are investigating allegations that a group of male inmates raped 10 women in a makeshift jail in the northern city of Gonaives. Prosecutor Serard Gazius told The Associated Press that more than 50 men broke out of their cells last week and overpowered police officers guarding the inmates, adding that an unknown number of them are suspected of raping 10 of 12 women being held in the same facility but in separate cells. He said the male and female inmates were being held in a former United Nations facility because the original prison was destroyed years ago and a new one hasn’t been built. Gazius said the women were scared and have yet to identify the suspects, adding that they have received medical care. Gazius said the women were being held on charges ranging from robberies to attempted murder. None of them have been convicted. Jean Castro Previl, head of the Artibonite police department, declined to comment and referred all questions to Gazius. All 340 detainees have been transferred to other facilities as authorities continue the investigation, with Gazius adding that violent protests that began more than two months ago seeking the president’s resignation are making it difficult to prosecute suspects because some courts have been shuttered, along with many schools and businesses. A human rights group known as the Defenders Plus Collective denounced the alleged rapes and called on the government to prosecute the suspects and do more to protect women and …

It’s looking like an anti-robocall bill will be sent to President Donald Trump this year, helping tackle an infuriating problem in the U.S. House and Senate leaders said Friday they’ve reached an agreement in principle on merging their two bills against robocalls. The House bill had gone further than the Senate one. Details about what’s in the final bill are still to come, but legislators say it will require phone companies to verify that phone numbers are real, and to block calls for free. It will also give government agencies more ability to go after scammers. It’s the latest effort in a crackdown, building on steps by state attorneys general and the Federal Communications Commission as well as the phone companies. Phone companies have been rolling out verification tools after prompting from regulators. These reassure customers that the number showing up on their phone is actually the number that called, and not a fraudster “spoofing,” or faking, the number to try to get people to pick it up. Numbers can be faked to look like they’re coming from the IRS, for example, or from a number with the same area code as you. But to combat this successfully, all carriers need to put the anti-spoofing system in place. Telecom companies are also offering call-blocking apps for smartphones and many home phones, although not always for free. The FCC in June gave them permission to turn on call-blocking by default. While tools had been available before, customers might not have known …

Palestinian militants fired two rockets deep into southern Israel from Gaza Saturday, and the Israeli military responded with a number of air strikes on militant targets, shaking an already tenuous truce.  Sirens sounded in the middle of the night in Beersheba, the largest city in southern Israel, about 35 km (18 miles) from the Gaza border, warning of incoming fire. The military said its missile defenses intercepted the two rockets. A few hours later, Israeli aircraft struck a number of militant outposts belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza. No injuries were reported. The overnight rocket attack came nearly two days after a ceasefire ended a flare-up in cross-border violence between Israel and a smaller Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad. The worst fighting in months was triggered Tuesday when Israel killed a top commander from the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, deeming him an imminent threat. A Palestinian demonstrator argues with an Israeli border policeman during a protest against Jewish settlements near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Nov. 15, 2019. Gaza medical officials said 34 Palestinians had been killed in the two days of fighting, almost half of them civilians. At the same time, hundreds of rocket launches by militants paralyzed much of southern Israel and reached as far north as Tel Aviv, sending entire communities to shelters. Dozens of Israelis were injured. Throughout the fighting, Hamas, the dominant force in Gaza, appeared to have stayed on the sidelines. That may have helped stem the escalation. Israel’s military, however, …

Polls closed Saturday evening after a day of voting for Sri Lanka’s next president, an election marred by shots fired at a convoy of Muslims heading to cast their ballots in what some called a coordinated effort to disenfranchise the minority group. There were no reported injuries in the convoy attack and police were investigating, said Manjula Gajanayake, spokesman for the Colombo-based Center for Monitoring Election Violence. The center said there were reports elsewhere of minor election law violations, such as supporters influencing voters near polling stations and distributing mock ballots with party symbols. Campaigning for Sri Lanka’s presidential election was dominated by worries over national security, which was pushed to the forefront after deadly Islamic State-inspired suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday that killed 269 people. At the same time, there’s fear among both Tamils and Muslims about a return to power of front-runner Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a hard-line former defense official under his brother, ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The Rajapaksa brothers are revered by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority for defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009 and ending the nation’s long-running civil war. But because of their heavy-handed rule during and after the war, some minorities fear their return. Rajapaksa had been widely expected to triumph over the ruling party candidate, Housing Minister Sajith Premadasa. But as the election approached, the race became very close. Sri Lanka’s former Defense Secretary and presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa, center, leaves a polling station after casting his vote in Embuldeniya, on the outskirts …

Tunisia took a step forward Friday in forming a new government following rollercoaster October elections, with the moderate Islamist Ennahda party proposing a prime minister from its own ranks to lead it.  Former junior agriculture minister, Habib Jemli, 60, will now have two months to form a government. If he fails to do so, newly elected President Kais Saied can tap another candidate. Still, it remains uncertain whether any future government emerging from a politically fractured parliament — along with an untested president — can tackle the country’s massive economic and employment challenges. With Tunisia considered the Arab Spring’s first and so far only relative success story, this latest twist in its bumpy post-revolutionary path is being closely watched abroad. Some analysts hail last month’s elections — where disaffected voters ousted establishment candidates in favor of political outsiders — as a messy but clear affirmation of democracy. Others fear the next government may prove just as disappointing as the last one. “The real issue is the economy,” said analyst Hamadi Redissi, president of the Tunisian Observatory for Democratic Transition research organization. “Can it deliver what people are asking for — jobs and prosperity? That remains to be seen.” Voters’ message Since its 2011 revolution, the North African country has seen shrinking growth and soaring joblessness, the same toxic ingredients that triggered the uprising. Its key tourism sector is only recently rebounding following 2015 terrorist attacks. Tunisia has also earned the unwelcome record as one of the largest exporters of terrorist …

Taiwan and the United States have sent their first joint trade delegation to one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies as tiny, often impoverished countries keep turning instead to China, a source of aid for the developing world but a perceived threat to both delegation organizers.   In the first week of November, the delegation visited Saint Lucia, one of just 15 nations that recognize Taiwan diplomatically instead of China. They assessed ways offshore businesses could help the Caribbean country with infrastructure, trade and investment, the government-run Central News Agency in Taipei said.   “The way to consolidate diplomatic relationships is multi-dimensional,” Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said. “It should be an effort across different domains, and investment is one of them. We hope that it will help. We do hope that through this joint delegation, it can play an important role.”   Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t announced plans for future visits to other Taiwan diplomatic allies but doesn’t rule out the idea. FILE – From left, the World Bank’s Erik Bethel, Saint Lucia Gov. Nancy Charles, Taiwan Amb. to Saint Lucia Shen Cheng-tsung, and U.S. Department of State official Corey Johnston visit a U.S.-owned firm, in Saint Lucia, Nov 6. 2019. (@USEmbassyBbdos)  Protecting fragile alliances   The prospect of more U.S. aid spearheaded by Taiwan should give allies in Latin America and the South Pacific new incentives to stick by Taipei instead of switching recognition to China, analysts believe. Those countries would see Washington as a potentially powerful benefactor, and …

United Airlines is removing the grounded Boeing 737 Max from its schedule until March 4, two months longer than previously planned.                     The change follows similar moves by American and Southwest, and reflects further delays in Boeing’s work to fix the plane after two deadly crashes.                     United said Friday that without the planes, it will cancel 56 flights a day in January, February and early March, down from 93 a day this month.                     United has 14 Max jets. All Max planes have been grounded since March, after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people.                     Boeing is fixing flight-control software and computers that played a role in the crashes. Boeing expects regulators to approve changes in pilot-training in January, clearing the way for U.S. airlines to resume Max flights with passengers. …

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is on the ballot in New Hampshire, where he hopes his patience will pay off.                     The Democratic presidential hopeful signed up for the first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Friday, the final day of the filing period. Though he lags behind in polls, Booker says he’s not one to switch strategies or states to focus on, as some other candidates have done.                     Booker’s latest trip to New Hampshire comes a day after former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick jumped into the race. Booker says it’s good to have robust competition, and that he doesn’t take it personally that some of his close friends are also running. …

Rights groups and the U.S. Embassy on Thursday called for the Cambodian government to drop the charges against two former Radio Free Asia reporters who were arrested in 2017 and released on bail a year ago. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, center, greets his government officers during the country’s 66th Independence Day from France, at the Independence Monument in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019. The calls came to mark the second anniversary of the Nov. 14, 2017, arrest of former Radio Free Asia journalists Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s crackdown on the media, civil society groups and the political opposition before the 2018 elections. The two faced espionage charges, and on Oct. 3, when Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Im Vannak had been scheduled to deliver a verdict after a trial that ended in August, he instead ordered a fresh investigation into hard disk drives seized when they were arrested. After their arrest, the former reporters were held in pretrial detention until 2018, when they were released on conditional bail, which prevented them from traveling overseas and required them to report to a local police station once a month. Support for reporters The U.S. Embassy, in a social media post, said Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin had been subjected to a prolonged trial that impinged on their personal freedoms and affected their personal and professional lives. “Dropping charges against these journalists and restoring their full rights and freedoms would correct an injustice, honor Cambodia’s …

Amazon.com Inc. will protest the Pentagon’s decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp., The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing a statement.    Amazon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.    A challenge to the Defense Department’s award announced last month was widely expected by legal experts, analysts and consultants, especially after President Donald Trump publicly derided Amazon’s bid for the high-stakes contract.    Trump had said in August that Amazon’s bid for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) contract was under review by his administration after complaints from other companies.    Amazon was considered a favorite for the contract, part of a broader digital modernization process of the Pentagon, before Microsoft emerged as the surprise winner.  …

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ office announced that a special envoy would be sent to Bolivia to support a “peaceful resolution” to its current crisis after military leaders called on the Bolivian president to resign over election irregularities.  Former U.N. special envoy to Colombia Jean Arnault will act as the U.N. envoy to Bolivia to engage with “all Bolivian actors,” and attempt to support peaceful elections in the country. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, announced that “the secretary-general remains deeply concerned about developments in Bolivia. He reiterates his appeal to all Bolivians to refrain from violence and exercise utmost restraint.” FILE – Jean Arnault, then the the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Colombia, speaks in Funza, Colombia, Sept. 22, 2017. Former President Evo Morales served as president of the South American nation for 14 years. He was the country’s first indigenous president in modern history and leader of the ruling Movement Toward Socialism Party (MAS).   After Morales’ government failed to remove constitutional restrictions on serving a fourth term, MAS appealed to Bolivia’s courts to allow the president to run again.  The Organization of American States (OAS) declared there were election irregularities in the October presidential election to protect Morales from having a runoff vote. Opposition leaders called for boycotts and protests in reaction to the news.  Morales also faced growing pressure from the OAS, the European Union, the United States and a handful of Latin American countries to hold new elections.  After Morales announced Saturday that he would hold new presidential …

“Welcome to the revolution,” my colleague says as we round the corner into Beirut’s Martyr’s Square on Wednesday evening. Tents are crowded with groups discussing corruption, governance and civil society, and a deep rumbling sound in the distance grows louder. They are part of an anti-corruption protest movement in Lebanon that has been holding rallies every day for nearly a month. “Corn on the cob?” my colleague suggests. Also for sale on the side of the streets are traditional cakes, bottles of water, and Lebanese flags and banners. At first glance, we appear to be entering a festival. But soon we can quite literally hear the depth of the anger being expressed here. This fist statue in Martyr’s Square says “Revolution.” Below it are the remnants of tents burned by counterprotesters in the early days of the demonstrations, pictured in Beirut on Nov. 14, 2019. (Heather Murdock/VOA) We walk toward the rumbling and see dozens of men and women pounding on walls littered with graffiti slogans like, “Beirut has spoken,” and, “All of them means all of them.” The rumbling of the fists pounding on the wall is now a roar, accompanied by the people banging on pots and pans and the occasional crack of someone slamming the wall with a bike or a foot. The banging then fades as more and more people join a chanting procession, a symbolic funeral for Alaa Abu Fakhr, a man who died on Tuesday after an officer fired on protesters blocking a road. …

The number of migrant families that U.S. border agents apprehended at the southwest border dropped sharply in October, according to data released Thursday by border officials.  The decrease follows what had been one of the most significant periods of family apprehensions in U.S. immigration history, an issue that dominated headlines and created challenges at detention facilities ill-equipped to handle so many young children.  Family units accounted for 55% of people who crossed the border without authorization and were stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the 2019 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.  Last month, however, that proportion dropped to 27%, a figure more in line with historical averages.  Families accounted for 9,733 of the 35,444 people apprehended in October, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  It was the fifth straight month of declining apprehension numbers since May, when the number of migrants stopped by CBP spiked past 130,000. Number of Children, Families Crossing US-Mexico Border Jumps in May Uptick most notable for families, most of whom are from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras That increase was driven in large part by Central American families seeking asylum. The Trump administration attributes the lower numbers in recent months to several new policies, including the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), under which more than 50,000 people apprehended after crossing the southwest U.S. border without authorization were sent back to Mexico — regardless of their country of origin — to await their U.S. immigration hearings. Migrants, advocates, researchers …

Fresh protests erupted Wednesday in Bolivia just hours after opposition Sen. Jeanine Áñez was sworn in as interim president. The United States recognized Áñez as Bolivia’s temporary president. The country’s longtime leader, Evo Morales, said he was removed by a coup and that he would continue to fight. He spoke from Mexico where he was granted asylum. The leftist leader resigned  Sunday after weeks of protests over a disputed presidential election result. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Morales still has supporters in his country, especially among indigenous Bolivians. …

U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met at the White House Wednesday but did not reach resolutions on major irritants to bilateral relations including Turkey’s recent incursion into northern Syria and its purchase of Russian military hardware. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.   …