Sixteen countries have been designated as Countries of Particular Concern by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. The bipartisan U.S. government commission documents religious freedom around the world and makes recommendations to the president, secretary of state and Congress. VOA’s Mariama Diallo explains why some countries are on the list, including one superpower.
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Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been named special counsel to oversee the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. The development comes during a week filled with scandals that have engulfed the administration of President Donald Trump, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from the White House.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin says President Donald Trump never passed any classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when they met last week in Washington, and he has the transcripts to prove it.

Speaking Wednesday alongside Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Putin said Lavrov never passed the purported secrets on to him, and he would be happy to hand over the transcripts of the conversation.

Trump has been defending himself this week after media reports claimed he shared sensitive intelligence with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

The president and his aides have denied Trump shared any information that would have compromised sources or methods of gathering intelligence. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called Trump’s discussion with Russian diplomats “wholly appropriate.”

“I’m not concerned at all,” said McMaster, who sat in on the Oval Office meeting

News accounts of the meeting claim the classified information involved a possible Islamic State plan to smuggle bombs hidden in laptop computers aboard airliners.

Putin said the anti-Russian sentiment in America is damaging the country and not allowing Trump to govern properly. He accused Trump’s detractors of suffering from “political schizophrenia.”
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A violent altercation broke out in Washington, D.C., prior to the arrival of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House. The fight erupted between Erdogan supporters and a few dozen protesters outside of the Turkish ambassador’s residence. Erdogan’s bodyguards were also involved. Police said nine people were hurt, one with serious injuries. Two people were arrested.
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Annual exercises held by the Philippine and U.S. navies are skipping the South China Sea this year as the Southeast Asian nation’s leader takes another step toward a stronger political and economic relationship with China, the sea’s most ambitious claimant.

The “Balikatan” military exercises May 8-19 include a disaster drill off Aurora province on the Pacific Ocean side of the main Philippine island, Luzon. They have kept clear of disputed tracts in the South China Sea. Beijing’s maritime claims overlap Manila’s in the South China Sea off the west Luzon coast.

Avoidance of the disputed sea advances Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s friendship with China after four years of open disagreement that had landed in a world arbitration court.

“President Duterte has never been a true geopolitical person, which means that foreign policy is about economic policy, and you can see this in the way he actually justifies or explains the approach to China,” said Herman Kraft, a political scientist at University of the Philippines Diliman.

Duterte has visited China twice, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and agreed to hold talks – going on this month – over management of contested tracts of water. China offered $24 billion in aid and investment in October and in January committed to 30 projects worth $3.7 billion.

The exercises off the Philippine’s Pacific coast signal support for China while giving a new nod to the United States as well as pro-American elements of the public, analysts say.

Benham Rise, a 13-million-hectare undersea plateau believed to be rich in fossil fuels, was awarded to Manila in 2012 by the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. But Chinese vessels were spotted exploring it last year. China does not officially claim the plateau.

A show of force backed by the U.S. navy, part of the world’s strongest military, near Benham Rise should help calm Filipinos upset by China’s presence last year and those who simply prefer Washington to Beijing, analysts say.

“It ensures the pro-American Filipinos the Americans are not totally out of the Philippines and there’s still room for dialogue and cooperation, and so these exercises are just a calibration of Philippines-U.S. relations,” said Eduardo Araral, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “So China is happy, Philippines is happy, U.S. is happy.”

About 70 percent of Filipinos place “much trust” in the United States, according to a late 2016 poll by the Metro Manila research institution Social Weather Stations.

The United States colonized the Philippines for about 50 years through World War II and has given it military support since then.

Duterte angrily questioned American influence in the Philippines last year and ordered that its forces leave — but later backed down on most of his threats. He knew about Chinese research vessels at Benham Rise last year, but didn’t reveal that knowledge according to some Philippine media reports.

China resents U.S. involvement in the South China Sea, a 3.5 million-square-kilometer tract rich in fish, shipping lanes and possible fuel reserves.

“The naval drill serves also the purpose of signaling that Manila is intentioned to make the Philippine defense posture less unbalanced,” said Fabrizio Bozzato, an associate researcher specializing in international affairs at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

“So far the Philippine defense strategy, attention and resources have been focused on the western corridor of the Philippines, so President Duterte intends to show the domestic and international audience that he’s determined to improve the security infrastructure in the eastern part of the country,” Bozzato said.

In 2014, former Philippine president Benigno Aquino signed an enhanced defense agreement with Washington. Joint naval exercises since that year had targeted possible scenarios aimed at resisting China in the disputed sea.

The world arbitration court said in July China lacks a legal basis to most of its claim, which covers about 95 percent of the whole sea extending south from Hong Kong to Malaysian Borneo. China has irritated the Philippines and three other Southeast Asian claimants to the same sea with a push since 2010 to landfill tiny islets for military use.

Philippine and U.S. officials agreed in November to the scope of this year’s joint exercises, which the U.S. Embassy in Manila says include “maritime interdiction and amphibious raids” as well as humanitarian aid and anti-terrorism work. The United States sent a navy logistics vessel, amphibious vehicles and more than 25 military aircraft, the embassy says.

The embassy did not comment on reasons for this year’s choice of the Philippine Pacific Coast as a location for the exercises.
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North Korean claims that its newly-tested ballistic missile can carry a nuclear warhead appear to explain a subtle but significant shift in the way U.S. intelligence views Pyongyang.

 

Top officials, who once described North Korea as a “second tier” adversary with more intent than capability, now refer to it as an “increasingly grave” threat bent on demonstrating that the United States will soon be within its military reach.

 

“We have assessed this as a very significant, potentially existential threat to the United States that has to be addressed,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told lawmakers during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week on worldwide threats.

 

“It is the highest priority, one of the highest, if not the highest priority of the intelligence community at this time,” Coats added.

 

Coats’ comments seem to contrast the view taken by his predecessor, James Clapper, who just over a year ago told lawmakers that among nation states, Russia and China were the “prime” threats to the U.S.

 

And earlier this month, then-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Russia poses “the greatest threat of any nation on Earth, given their intention and their capability.”

 

Current and former officials, however, caution the intelligence community’s use of increasingly stronger language to describe the threat from North Korea is not so much a change in thinking as it is a stark acknowledgment of an evolving threat.

 

Likewise, they warn that the elevation of North Korea on its list of threats should in no way diminish the danger posed by Russia.

 

“It’s hard to rack and stack the North Korean and the Russian threat,” former CIA and National Security Agency Director, Gen. Michael Hayden, told VOA via email.

 

“Russia is more global, more powerful but also in its own way more restrained,” he said, while North Korea “is more willing to conduct provocative and unpredictable action.”

 

Such unpredictability, combined with what officials have described as a ratcheting up of its development and testing program over the past year, has many now describing the North Korean issue as one that has escalated from a regional threat to a global one.

 

The ever more dire warnings appear to have found a receptive audience, both in the White House and Congress.

 

Asked about Comey’s testimony earlier this month describing Russia as the greatest threat, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters the president has been “very clear” about his views regarding the North Korea nuclear threat.

 

Likewise, during last week’s Intelligence Committee hearing, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein called the latest assessments on North Korea’s activities “deeply concerning.”

 

“I would argue that the greatest danger to the United States is North Korea,” she said.

 

Making the situation even more worrisome for U.S. officials is what they described as a persistent lack of clarity about what is going on inside such an isolated country.

 

In response, the CIA last week announced the creation of a Korea Mission Center to “get back on our front foot with respect to foreign intelligence collection,” according to CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

 

“We should not all focus simply on the ICBM’s either,” Pompeo told lawmakers.

 

In fact, the latest, unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment raises significant concerns about North Korea’s conventional military force.

 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “has further expanded the regime’s conventional strike options in recent years,” the assessment warns, citing better training and upgraded artillery systems.

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo told the country’s parliament Tuesday that not only was Sunday’s missile test successful, but that the program itself was developing faster than expected.

 

“There’s a worry about where they’re really going with this march forward — how far are they going to take it?” said Cortney Weinbaum, a senior technical analyst at the RAND Corporation. “It adds a very thick layer of uncertainty that makes a lot of people very nervous.”

 

Weinbaum, who spent 14 years working for U.S. intelligence agencies and the Defense Department, said the uncertainty alone would merit elevating North Korea on the list of threats.

 

Adding to the concerns is a growing realization that while international sanctions may have slowed North Korea’s progress, they have not stopped it altogether.

 

“The North Koreans have really perfected their networks and driven them deep underground,” Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton said at forum in Washington late last month.

 

“It’s very necessary for the international community to come together and share information and go after some of these companies that are providing either products or equipment that contribute to the weapons program or financial measures that continue to the sort of sustainment of the regime,” she said.

 

U.S. officials say China, for one, has shown a willingness to take significant financial and economic action against Pyongyang, pointing to the recent ban on North Korean coal imports, but caution it is just the start.

 

“The intelligence suggests we’re going to need more to shake free this terribly challenging problem,” said the CIA’s Pompeo.
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A week after U.S. President Donald Trump sparked anger in Turkey by authorizing the arming of Syrian Kurds, he welcomed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House on Tuesday.

Trump said the two leaders would hold “long and hard discussions” regarding the relationship between their countries.

“We’ve had a great relationship and we will make it even better. So we’re going to have a very, very strong and solid discussion,” he said.

WATCH: Trump on US-Turkey relationship

The United States sees the Kurdish force, the YPG, as a key part in the fight against Islamic State and the effort to oust the militants from their de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria. Turkey considers the YPG terrorists because of their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, that has been waging a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.

Erdogan called the decision to provide U.S. arms “contrary to our strategic relations to the U.S.”

He reiterated his concerns Tuesday, telling reporters Turkey will never accept the use of YPG fighters in the battle against IS.

Erdogan, however, said last week ahead of the trip that he views his visit to Washington as “a new beginning in Turkish-American relations.”

Erdogan said Tuesday that cooperation between the U.S. and Turkey is “very important for the world” and vowed to expand economic and military ties between the two countries.

“There is no place for the terrorist organizations in the future of our region,” he said.

Protests

Prior to Erdogan’s arrival at the White House, a brief scuffle broke out between pro-Erdogan demonstrators and a group of Kurdish advocates. The two sides were quickly separated by police and Secret Service agents stationed outside the White House gates.

Both Turkey and the United States have backed rebels in Syria during the six-year war against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and allies. And the NATO allies have been heavily involved in battling Islamic State since the group swept into large areas of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria in mid-2014.

In comments to reporters, Erdogan brought up the status of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric living in the United States. The Turkish president blames him for an attempted coup last year. Turkey has asked the U.S. to extradite Gulen, but that request has gone nowhere.
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