After Kenya’s Supreme Court nullified the country’s presidential election results six weeks ago, the East African nation has been careening down the path to a re-run that has further inflamed political tensions ahead of Thursday’s vote. VOA’s Jill Craig reports from Nairobi.
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Month: October 2017
Tiger Woods Set to Enter Plea Bargain for DUI Arrest
The diversion program for intoxicated drivers that Tiger Woods is expected to enter Wednesday is one of several across the U.S. aimed at reducing the number of repeat offenders and backlogs of court cases.
The 41-year-old Woods is scheduled to plead guilty at a court hearing to reckless driving, a less severe charge than driving under the influence, as part of a Palm Beach County, Florida, program that has graduated almost 2,500 first-time offenders since it began four years ago.
Deputy State Attorney Richard Clausi, who oversees the county’s misdemeanor prosecutions, said that less than 1 percent of the program’s participants have reoffended. He said the key has been getting offenders to take responsibility for their actions without requiring a trial and making sure they complete the program.
“It’s still early, but we think it has been a success,” he said.
In the diversion program, Woods will spend a year on probation and pay a $250 fine and court costs. He also must attend DUI school, perform 20 hours of community service and attend a workshop where victims of impaired drivers detail how their lives were damaged. Since he was intoxicated with prescription drugs and marijuana, according to court records, he will also be required to undergo regular drug tests.
At the hearing, he must show he has started the program. If he completes it, he can ask a judge to expunge the reckless driving conviction, but if he is charged again, he could be treated like a second-time DUI offender. He would not be again eligible for diversion and he could face possible jail time, a mandatory license suspension and stiffer fines.
Similar DUI diversion programs are offered in several other states, including Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas. Details vary and some, like Florida, let local officials decide whether to offer it.
Neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration nor Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) knew of any recent outside studies examining whether diversion programs are effective.
J.T. Griffin, MADD’s chief government affairs officer, said the organization supports diversion programs like Palm Beach County’s because for drunken drivers, it requires the installation of an interlock device, which checks the driver’s blood-alcohol content before the car can be started. He said studies show interlocks decrease recidivism among first-time offenders by 65 percent.
“It is good for the public because 50 to 75 percent of drunk drivers are going to continue to drive, even on a suspended driver’s license,” Griffin said. “With an ignition interlock, they can keep driving but in a safe way and the hope is that they will learn their lesson.”
Woods was arrested about 2 a.m. May 29 when officers found him unconscious in his Mercedes-Benz, which was parked awkwardly on the roadside and had damage to the driver’s side. It’s not clear how he damaged the car. Officers checked the area but didn’t find that he had hit anything. He was about 15 miles from his home.
Woods had the active ingredient for marijuana, two painkillers – Vicodin and Dilaudid – the sleep drug Ambien and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his system but no alcohol, according to a toxicology report released in August.
Woods issued a statement in August saying he had been self-medicating for pain caused by his fourth back surgery and insomnia. He did not specifically address the marijuana issue. None was found in his possession.
“I realize now it was a mistake to do this without medical assistance,” Woods said then. He completed a drug treatment program in July.
Woods’ attorney, Douglas Duncan, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment about Wednesday’s hearing.
The DUI arrest was the first time Woods had been in trouble since Thanksgiving weekend 2009, when he plowed his SUV into a tree and a fire hydrant outside his then-Windermere, Florida, home. That led to revelations that he had multiple extramarital affairs, and a divorce from his wife Elin Nordegren, the mother of his two children. He spent 45 days in a Mississippi clinic where he was treated for sex addiction.
Woods’ 79 PGA Tour victories and 14 major titles both rank No. 2 all-time. He has not competed since February because of his back injury and is not expected to return this year. His last win was in August 2013.
Woods has said his back is improving. Even though he has been a non-factor on the PGA Tour, Forbes Magazine lists Woods as the 17th best-paid athlete in the world in 2017, making $37 million, almost exclusively from endorsements.
your ad hereStudy: NYC Could See Bad Flooding Every 5 Years
Within the next three decades, floods that used to strike the New York City area only once every 500 years could occur every five years, according to a new scientific study released just days before the fifth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy.
The study, performed by researchers at several universities and published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, primarily blames the predicted change on sea-level rise caused by global warming.
“This is kind of a warning,” said Andra Garner, a Rutgers University scientist and study co-author. “How are we going to protect our coastal infrastructure?”
The researchers based their analysis on multiple models that factored in predictions for sea level rise and possible changes in the path of future hurricanes.
Many of the models had a dose of good news for the nation’s largest city: Climate changes may mean that storms are more violent, but are also likely to swing further off-shore, meaning storm surge heights aren’t likely to increase substantially through 2300.
However, rising sea levels could mean that floods of 7.4 feet (2.25 meters) or more that struck the New York city area roughly once every 500 years before 1800, and which occur roughly every 25 years now, could happen once every five years between 2030 and 2045.
Researchers made no recommendations on what public officials or others should do to prepare.
“The idea is this kind of study we hope will provide information that people making those kinds of decisions can use,” Garner said. “We know that when Sandy hit in 2012, of course, subways, tunnels flooded, power was knocked out, parts of the city were just really devastated so studies like this provide some warning.”
Other researchers included scientists from Penn State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The researchers said there is scientific consensus that global sea level will rise in the coming centuries, although it is not certain how high. They cautioned that sea-level rise at New York City could exceed 8 feet by the end of the century if, in a high-emissions future, the West Antarctic ice sheet rapidly melts.
The study expects about 5 inches to 11 inches (12.7 centimeters to 27.9 centimeters) of sea-level rise likely in New York City between 2000 and 2030.
The study examined sea level rise through the year 2300.
“I think the study is valid, but year 2300 is a long way off,” said Billy Sweet, an oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was not involved in it. “What is more certain is the amount of sea level rise likely to occur in the next 50 to 100 years or so and that storm surges from nor’easters and hurricanes will continue to pose a risk for New York City.”
Hurricane Sandy merged with two other weather systems into an unusual storm that devastated the oceanfront coastline and caused catastrophic flooding in New York and cities in New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012. It was blamed for at least 182 deaths and $65 billion in damage in the U.S.
State and city officials in New York say they are planning numerous projects to guard against future flooding, including fortifying utilities and transit facilities, and note other projects are still in the design stage.
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Dunford: Families of Soldiers Killed in Niger Deserve Quick, Accurate Investigation
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says the families of the four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger deserve a quick and accurate investigation.
Marine General Joseph Dunford spoke to reporters Monday as the Trump administration strives to clear up the still murky details of just what happened on during the October 3rd operation.
Dunford acknowledged that many questions are still unanswered and even the Pentagon does not know exactly what happened and why. He said the probe is also geared toward learning lessons.
The general said the initial assessment is that the U.S. forces were ambushed by local tribal fighters associated with Islamic State.
One question still to be answered is why it took an hour for U.S. forces to call for backup after they first encountered the enemy and why it took another hour for French fighters jets to show up.
“I make no judgement as to how long it took them to ask for support. I don’t know that they thought they needed support prior to that time, I don’t know how this attack unfolded. I don’t know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with,” the general said.
Dunford also said under the rules of engagement in Niger, U.S. forces only accompany Niger forces when the “chances of enemy, contact are unlikely.”
Other questions that need a thorough investigation include whether the U.S. had adequate intelligence and an accurate assessment of the threat in the area — and why did it take two days to recover the body of Sergeant La David Johnson.
General Dunford says he will have to “redouble” his efforts to get answers to Congress and to Johnson’s family. He also promised to look into claims by Johnson’s widow Myeshia that she was denied permission to view her husband’s body in the casket.
The United States has close to 1,000 forces as part of a French-led mission helping African forces confront Islamic State and al-Qaida in West Africa.
Dunford says Islamic State will try to set up a presence in West Africa since being driven from Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. He says U.S. operations are aimed at training local forces to make sure that does not happen.
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Catalonia: Not Your Normal Political Revolution
As far as political revolutions go the independence bid by Catalan separatists to tear away from Spain must rank as one of the most surreal in recent memory.
There are no Molotov cocktails or barricades or other trappings of insurgency. In fact, there is no geographical flashpoint — no Maidan or Tahrir Square.
But there are hordes of tourists thronging the alleys of the Gothic Quarter, sampling the flavors of Barcelona, a prosperous, sun-blessed city — and that despite a reported 20 percent drop in tourist numbers.
Wedged between the Mediterranean and the Montserrat, a multi-peaked mountain range, Barcelona boasts a unique cuisine combining fish and meat — from butifarra, uncured spiced sausage, to fideua, a seafood noodle paella. There’s a throbbing nightlife packing a party punch that attracts the world’s glitterati, and only gets going when most north Europeans are long in bed, ending as dawn breaks.
No change in pace
The tourism, as well as bustling shopping thoroughfares like the tree-lined kilometer-long La Rambla, offer a jarring backdrop to a political crisis that will have not only major repercussions for the Spanish and Catalans but also for a Europe fearful of other nationalisms unpicking the map of a continent that can ill afford volatile border disputes, which can quickly escalate with unforeseen consequences.
As the separatists of Spain’s restive northeast region and the politicians in Madrid traded threats this week, the manicured grounds of Catalonia’s parliament in Parc de la Ciutadella were full of school parties and adult tourist groups picking their way past television camera crews and reporters rehearsing on-air lines.
“Eleanor, stop feeding the pigeons,” a bearded, tanned British teacher shouted at one of his wayward teenage charges.
When asked by this reporter, whom he eyed with rising suspicion, if his British teenagers had expressed any opinions about the to-and-fro struggle between Catalan separatists and Madrid, he answered, “No.”
“We steer clear of that sort of thing,” he sniffed. He then broke off to scream again at his teenagers as they began to wander off, discarding their picnic boxes as they went and snapping selfies. “Girls. Where are you going?”
Nearby, crocodile lines of Catalan primary school kids twisted into the regional parliament, an imposing building, once a military arsenal, dating back to the 18th century.
Separatists have pledged to throw up walls of non-violent protesters to meet any squads of national police Madrid dispatches to shutter the parliament, possibly this weekend. Then, there will be no room for wayward picnicking teenagers or primary-school kids.
The imposition of direct rule by Madrid over rebellious Catalonia risks creating the very geographical flash-points the independence bid now lacks — the parliament and the region’s public broadcaster could quickly transform into Tahrir Squares, if Madrid is heavy-handed.
But for now there is nothing to suggest history is being made in Parc de la Ciutadella, except for loitering TV crews eager for a major development and a bit more swiftness to this drawn-out chess game of a political standoff. It is all a far cry from “La Pasionaria,” a Spanish Republican heroine of the Spanish civil war, and the international bridges.
For foreign news desks this stop-start crisis has been frustrating to cover. When to send in reporters and cameramen, and when to withdraw them has exercised editors, who fear not having a presence when something blows up, but are reluctant to waste money keeping crews on the ground when all is quiet.
Such questions aren’t worrying the tourists crowding the streets of the Gothic Quarter. Their biggest dilemma is which restaurant to pick. The most ubiquitous, echoing sound in the neighborhood’s narrow alleys is the clippety-clop of rolling luggage being heaved across paving stones.
A divided society
But for all of the sense of normality, behind the scenes in private Catalans are angry, alarmed and argumentative. The independence crisis has had real impact, especially in terms of dividing Catalan society — a polarization that starts at the kitchen table, throwing up issues of identity and pride.
“What can’t be forgotten is the effect the crisis has had within families and between friends. When old pals start throwing accusatory fingers at each other and politics is banned from family meals, you know you’ve got a problem, irrespective of what the politicians end up doing,” says Jaz Allen-Sutton, a British writer who lives in the countryside outside Barcelona.
The International media focuses more on the split between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. But the divide between Catalans is as wide.
For many there is real fear of the economic consequences of secession. Some Catalans have been transferring their bank accounts to other regions of Spain as a precaution, fearing what may befall their savings should Catalonia declare independence, which would mean exiting, despite the naive denials of separatist leaders, the European Union also.
“Separatists think everything will be so happy and perfect after we leave, but it won’t. We are going to have the euro or what? People are really afraid and they are going to the banks. I am worried about our money in the bank — tomorrow it may not be there,” says Alba, a mother of one.
Another surreal aspect of the independence crisis is how little serious debate there has been about the likely economic impact of secession — even less than in the run-up to Britain’s Brexit vote last year. Fearful of suddenly being outside the EU, more than a thousand businesses have relocated their headquarters outside Catalonia, including major banks.
The lack of economic debate is especially ironic considering the roots of this latest surge in Catalan nationalism can be found in the financial crash of 2008-2010. Catalonia may be prosperous, but not for all. The region has suffered from severe austerity cuts — and even before resources become more scarce many had already been left behind in the good times.
Swiss journalist Raphael Minder notes in a new book on Catalan rebel politics, “The Struggle for Catalonia,” that the ongoing Catalan separatist challenge is “without doubt linked to the financial crisis.” He adds: “The more scarce resources are, the more people tend to bolster their self-esteem through national pride.”
Many Catalans, though, are worried that pride can come before a fall.
your ad hereSerial Killer Fears: Area of Tampa on Edge After 3 Killings
Fears of a serial killer have police in Tampa escorting children to school in one neighborhood near downtown, and a city bus changed its usual route.
Three people have been shot to death in the past two weeks within a 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) radius in the normally quiet Seminole Heights neighborhood. Police believe the shootings are linked by proximity and time frame, but they don’t have a motive or a suspect.
The three victims did not know each other, but all three rode the bus and were alone when they were shot on the street. None were robbed.
“I’m afraid,” said Maria Maldonado, who lives near the scene of two of the shootings, about 300 yards apart. The other was less than a mile away.
Maldonado won’t let her 7-year-old son play in the yard.
“We don’t open the door or nothing. A lot of people are scared. I’m scared for my son, for the neighborhood,” she said Monday.
Seminole Heights is a working-class neighborhood northeast of downtown Tampa that’s slowly becoming gentrified. Run-down homes sit next to renovated, historic bungalows, and trendy restaurants have sprung up near auto body shops.
Residents and business owners say there are car burglaries and fights between kids, but they are not accustomed to anything like the violence that started Oct. 9.
Business owners report a downturn in recent days, as worried residents stay inside.
“We don’t know what’s next,” said Majed Foqahaa, owner of the M&M market.
He said two of the victims would come into the store and buy soda and snacks. Foqahaa said he has a concealed carry permit for a handgun, and he keeps it at the store while he is working. When he walks out to his car at night, he holds it in his hand.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said the city has put dozens of officers in the area around the clock. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also are helping, he said.
“There aren’t a lot of facts, or evidence, yet,” Buckhorn said as he visited a block where one victim was killed. “But it’s not for lack of Tampa Police Department trying. We literally have put bodies out here by the dozens. We’re going to find this guy and we’re not leaving this neighborhood till we do.”
He was hesitant to use the word serial killer, but Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan wasn’t.
“We can call it what we want. If that brings attention to this. … That’s fine,” he said.
Police said 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was the first person killed on Oct. 9. Two days later, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa was killed in a vacant lot. Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot and killed Oct. 19.
Lula Mae Lewis, an 80-year-old woman who has lived in the area for 30 years, lives across the street from where Hoffa’s body was found.
“I heard the shots that Wednesday night,” she said. “But I was afraid to open my door because they were so loud, it sounded like it was just right here.”
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Former White House Strategist Defends Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist came to the defense of the administration’s foreign policy, denying it is either isolationist or Islamophobic, while taking repeated swipes at “foreign policy elites” for creating a mess he said must now be cleaned up.
“I don’t think there’s anything that President Trump has done in this administration that makes us look isolationist at all,” Steve Bannon said Monday in Washington.
As proof, he pointed to a counterterror speech the president gave this past May at a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, adding it “should have put to bed [the notion] that President Trump was an Islamophobe.”
Bannon, who left the administration in August, also credited Trump with engineering the collapse of the Islamic State terror group’s so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria by changing the U.S. strategy from one of attrition to annihilation.
But the former chief White House strategist admitted much of the fight was carried out by U.S. partners on the ground, including Iraqi and Kurdish forces, which he said would serve as a model for future U.S. actions.
“That’s once again what President Trump is trying to get across — it’s not going to have to be America that has to lead here,” he said. “It’s what’s in the vital national security interests of the United States is what you should commit to.”
Bannon’s remarks Monday, coming at the conclusion of a conference sponsored by the Hudson Institute, stood in stark contrast to the thoughts of two other prominent, former officials who spoke earlier in the day.
“We’re living in a world where there are a huge number of flashpoints…probably more flashpoints than we’ve seen since the end of World War II,” warned Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defense. “It demands very strong U.S. leadership.”
Panetta, who also served as CIA director in the Obama administration, further warned President Trump to “lower the volume of rhetoric” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
The former commander of U.S. Central Command and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, retired General David Petraeus, also noted U.S. leadership is vital, especially in the fight against terrorism.
“The U.S. invariably has to lead,” Petraeus said. “We have the assets that are proving to be the most valuable of all.”
But Bannon rejected such criticism, blaming “geniuses of both political parties” for creating what he called a slew of messes, from North Korea to the long-running war in Afghanistan.
“President Trump in his whole candidacy from the very beginning … was a repudiation of the elites,” he said. “A repudiation of this concept we’ve had of this rules-based international order of which the American middle class and working class underwrite with their taxes and more importantly with the blood of their children.”
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Maryland Bans State Business with Companies Boycotting Israel
Maryland is the latest state to prohibit official business with companies boycotting Israel.
Republican Governor Larry Hogan signed an executive order Monday after the Democratic-led state legislature filed to pass a bill spelling out the policy.
“Boycotts based on religion, national origin, place of residence or ethnicity are discriminatory,” Hogan said. “Contracting with businesses that practice discrimination would make the state a passive participant in private-sector commercial discrimination.”
The governor said the state will review all existing contracts for any boycotts of Israel.
The head of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Yousef Munayyer, called Hogan’s executive order “profoundly disappointing” and unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against an anti-boycott law in Kansas.
Other states that have passed anti-Israeli boycott laws include Illinois, New York and South Carolina.
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Demand for Hawking Thesis Shuts Down Cambridge University Website
When Britain’s Cambridge University put physicist Stephen Hawking’s 1966 thesis on line for the first time Monday, the university’s website collapsed.
Professor Hawking’s “Properties of Expanding Universes” has been the most requested item in the university’s library.
To meet the demand, and with Hawking’s encouragement, Cambridge made it available on line.
About 60,000 people sought to access it, causing the system to periodically shut down throughout the day Monday.
Hawking is the world’s best-known physicist and expert on the cosmos.
His landmark 1988 work “A Brief History of Time” has sold more than 10 million copies.
With his thesis now available for anyone to read, Hawking said he hopes to “inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet, to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos.”
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IS Assassinates 128 Civilians Before Leaving Strategic Town in Central Syria
Dozens of civilians were found dead in the streets of Al-Qaryatayn town after IS withdrew from the town on Saturday, after 22 days of fighting with the Syrian regime.
Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on its official webpage that at least 128 civilians were assassinated mainly by Islamic State — 83 were killed in the last 48 hours of IS taking control of the town.
The Observatory added that 12 civilians were killed by the Syrian regime forces.
“Two hundred ISIS militants fled to the Syrian Desert after beheading and shooting dozens of civilians accused of conniving with the regime,” the Observatory said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
18,000 civilians remain in Al-Qaryatayn
Abdullah Abdul Karim, an activist from Al-Qaryatayn, told VOA that 18,000 civilians have remained in the city while humanitarian aid is scarce.
“Only 75 bodies were identified, the rest of the bodies were decomposed in the streets and in water wells. IS used to leave those killed in the streets to rot in order to terrorize the people,” Abdul Karim said.
Al-Qaryatayn is a strategic town on the road connecting the historical city of Palmyra to the Qalamoun region located northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus. The town lies about 300 kilometers (186 miles) west of Deir al-Zour city, where pro-Syrian government forces backed by Russian jets and allied militias are focusing their military offensive.
Pro-Syrian government forces took control of Al-Qaryatayn in April during the regime’s effort to regain control over central Syrian governorates Hama and Homs.
An official statement released by the local council of Al-Qaryatayn after IS took over the town in September, called on Humanitarian Organizations and UN entities to work on preventing a possible massacre in Al-Qaryatayn.
“The village is under embargo by [the] Syrian regime after IS seized it on September 29 2017. More than ten thousand civilians, Muslims and Christians, are facing an unknown destiny,” the statement said.
Officials used in negotiations
Abdul Karim told VOA that IS kept the district administrator, a number of police officers and Syrian officials alive in Al-Qaryatayn to use them in the negotiations with the regime to guarantee their way out.
“Currently, the Syrian regime is conducting investigation in the town and when the investigation is over, civilians must leave the town because it will be turned into a military site,” Abdul Karim said.
“The number of victims might increase as many people are still missing.”
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Iraqi Shi’ite Leader Meets with Jordan King in Rare Visit
Jordan’s king met Monday with an influential Iraqi Shi’ite leader, as the United States stepped up efforts to contain the influence of Shi’ite-led Iran in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally and leader of the region’s camp of Sunni Muslim states that also includes Jordan, is concerned about the influence of its regional rival Iran in Iraq.
Iran has backed Shiite militias fighting against the Islamic State group in Iraq.
On Monday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II received Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shi’ite leader who in the past urged Shi’ite militias in Iraq to disband. A palace statement said the two talked about the need for expanding trade and economic cooperation, but provided no details.
A day earlier, Abdullah had met with Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.
The meetings came after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Tillerson made the case for containing and isolating Iran in the Middle East, pushing Saudi Arabia and Iraq to unite to counter growing Iranian assertiveness.
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Pence Honors Memory of Marines Killed in 1983 Beirut Bombing
Vice President Mike Pence is honoring the memory of 241 U.S. service members who were killed in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.
Pence and White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster paid tribute Monday to the service members, including 220 Marines, on the anniversary of the truck bombing.
The vice president pledged that under President Donald Trump’s leadership, “we will drive the cancer of terrorism from the face of the earth.”
The bombing linked to Iran was the deadliest attack against U.S. Marines since the battle over Iwo Jima in February 1945. The ceremony and parade at the Marine Barracks in Washington included families of service members who died in the attack.
your ad hereNew Hampshire Governor Asks Trump to Stop Indonesian Deportation Effort
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu on Monday publicly called on U.S. President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, to halt an effort to deport 69 Indonesian Christians who fled violence in that country two decades ago and are living illegally in the state.
The group had been living near the state’s coast under the terms of a 2010 deal worked out with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allowed them to remain so long as they handed in their passports and turned up for regular check-ins with immigration officials.
That changed starting in August when members of the group who arrived for scheduled meetings with ICE officials at the agency’s Manchester, New Hampshire, office were told to buy one-way plane tickets back to Indonesia, which they fled after 1998 riots that left about 1,000 people dead.
“I am respectfully requesting that your administration reconsider its decision to deport these individuals, and I urge a resolution that will allow them to remain in the United States,” Sununu said in a letter to Trump dated Friday, which his office made public Monday.
Several members of the group, who are all ethnic Chinese, told Reuters they fear that they would face discrimination or violence if they returned to the world’s largest majority-Muslim country.
“While I firmly believe that we must take steps to curb illegal immigration, it is also imperative that we make the process for legal immigration more streamlined and practical,” Sununu wrote.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Immigration advocates have filed lawsuits in Boston on behalf of 47 members of the group asking a federal court judge to intervene.
Chief U.S. District Judge Patti Saris has ordered a stay to the deportations, but has indicated that she has little jurisdiction over immigration, which is handled by the Executive Office for Immigration review.
She is currently weighing whether she can order a longer delay to give the affected people, many of whom have U.S.-born children, time to renew their efforts to gain legal status.
Most of the group entered the United States legally on tourist visas following the riots, which erupted at the start of the Asian financial crisis. They overstayed their visas and failed to apply for asylum on time, but have been allowed to live openly under the accord with ICE, negotiated with the help of U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat.
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Murder Trial Starts for Man Who Stoked US Immigration Debate
A murder trial started Monday for a Mexican man who set off a national immigration debate after he shot and killed a woman two years ago on a popular San Francisco pier.
Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, has acknowledged shooting Kate Steinle in the back while she was walking with her father on the downtown pier on July 1, 2015.
But Garcia Zarate has said the shooting was accidental. He said he was handling a handgun he found wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier when it accidentally fired.
His lawyer told reporters before the trial started that his client was unaware that he had picked up a gun and that it went off as he unwrapped the T-shirt.
“He did not know the object in his hand was a gun,” attorney Matt Gonzalez said before he headed into the courtroom. “He does not bear criminal responsibility.”
Prosecutors have said that Zarate recklessly pointed the gun at people on the pier.
Garcia Zarate is charged with second-degree murder, which could result in a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia declined to comment on the case
Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was homeless in San Francisco when he shot Steinle. He had recently completed a prison sentence for illegal re-entry when he was transferred to the San Francisco County jail to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge.
Prosecutors dropped that charge, and the San Francisco sheriff released Zarate from jail despite a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation. The sheriff’s department said it was following the city’s sanctuary policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The handgun belonged to a Bureau of Land Management ranger who reported that it was stolen from his parked car in San Francisco a week before Steinle was shot.
The shooting touched off a political furor during last year’s presidential race, with President Donald Trump referring during his campaign to Steinle’s death as a reason to toughen U.S. immigration policies.
Steinle’s mother and brother were attending the beginning of the trial.
Since being elected, Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, several of which have filed lawsuits to prevent the move.
None of that is at issue during the trial, and the judge has barred mention of the politics of immigration and gun control during the proceedings.
Garcia Zarate originally went by the name Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez when he was arrested. But Gonzalez said he now prefers to be called by his birth name of Zarate.
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EPA Keeps Scientists From Speaking About Report on Climate
The Environmental Protection Agency kept three scientists from appearing at a Monday event about a report that deals in part with climate change.
The scientists were expected to discuss a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary. The EPA didn’t explain exactly why the scientists were told not to.
“EPA supports the Narragansett Bay Estuary, and just this month provided the program a $600,000 grant,”’ agency spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said in a statement Monday. “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting; it is not an EPA conference.”
Thomas Borden, program director of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which published the report, told The Associated Press that Wayne Munns, director of EPA’s Atlantic Ecology Division, called him Friday afternoon to say two staffers who work out of its research lab in the town of Narragansett had been advised that they could not attend. Munns did not give him an explanation, but Borden said he understood that the decision came from EPA headquarters in Washington.
One of the staffers, Autumn Oczkowski, was scheduled to give the keynote at an afternoon workshop session. Another, Rose Martin, was scheduled to speak on a panel.
“We’ve been working with more than five researchers in that lab who have contributed substantial elements to our report,” Borden said.
He said after Munns’ call, he checked with a third researcher who consults for the EPA, Emily Shumchenia, and who was scheduled to participate in Monday’s event.
“I advised her, you should check with your folks and see if you should attend,” he said. “She was advised by EPA Region 1 that she should not attend.”
The report finds that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish.
Borden said scientists from a variety of agencies and institutions had been working for years on the 500-page technical document, the purpose of which is to examine the condition of the bay and the trends with data on 24 different environmental indicators. Those include stressors such as population, and also climate change, such as warming temperatures, increased precipitation and increased sea level rise.
“It’s a comprehensive scientific update of the status of the bay,” he said. “It’s not a policy document. It’s a scientific report. It doesn’t propose policy changes.”
All four members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation were scheduled to attend a news conference on the report Monday morning. Democratic Sen. Jack Reed criticized the EPA’s move, which was first reported by The New York Times.
“Muzzling EPA scientists won’t do anything to address climate change,” he said. “While the Trump administration tries to suppress the facts, the American people are seeing and feeling the real world impacts. We need to work on a bipartisan basis to reduce pollution and emissions, and this type of hostility toward science inhibits rather than furthers discussion and action.”
About 30 people gathered outside the meeting Monday to protest the EPA’s actions. They carried signs including “Ungag the EPA” and “Science not silence.”
The estuary program gets all its funding from the EPA.
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Bergdahl Defense Calls for Dismissal
The defense for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who could face life in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he endangered comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan in 2009, has asked the judge to renew a motion to dismiss charges based on new comments made by President Donald Trump.
Trump, whose role as president includes the job of commander in chief, responded to a reporter’s question on Bergdahl last week by stating that he couldn’t say more on the case, “but I think people have heard my comments in the past.”
As a candidate for president, Trump called Bergdahl a “traitor” who deserved to be executed. He also promised that, as president, he would “review his case” if the soldier did not receive further punishment from the court.
The judge, Army Col. Jeffrey Nance, heard arguments Monday in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on the last-minute motion, which said Trump’s comments were “unlawful command influence” that prevent Bergdahl from getting a fair sentence.
Last week, Bergdahl pleaded guilty at a court martial hearing to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The latter carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Nance is expected to rule of the motion when the court martial comes out of recess Wednesday morning. He said he “did not have any doubt whatsoever” that he could be fair and impartial.
However, Nance pointed out that “in spite of” Trump’s initial acknowledgement that he shouldn’t comment on the hearing, the president “goes on to say something” knowing that the sentencing for Bergdahl was still pending.
Trump’s comments on the campaign trail had previously been deemed by the judge as “disturbing” but not unlawful command influence because they were considered “political rhetoric” meant to embarrass his opponent.
However, Nance told the prosecution Monday that this reasoning “tend(s) to be eroded when the now president of the United States arguably adopts those statements.”
“What political opponent is he trying to embarrass when making statements in the (White House) Rose Garden?” the judge said.
Starting Wednesday, the hearing is expected to include testimony from soldiers injured in the dangerous search for Bergdahl after he left his post and was captured by the Taliban. The judge is expected to weigh their testimonies along with factors such as Bergdahl’s willingness to admit guilt and his five years in Taliban captivity.
Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban shortly after he left his remote post in 2009, prompting an extensive manhunt. The soldier from Idaho previously explained his actions saying he merely intended to cause alarm and draw attention to what he saw as problems with his unit.
Bergdahl was freed from captivity in 2014 in exchange for five Taliban detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His high-profile case drew national political attention. President Barack Obama was criticized by Republicans who claimed the prisoner trade jeopardized the nation’s security.
Speaking last year in an on-camera interview by a British filmmaker, which aired Monday on ABC News, Bergdahl said Trump’s comments would make his chance for a fair trial impossible.
“We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs that got what they wanted,” Bergdahl said. “The people who want to hang me, you’re never going to convince those people.”
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White House: Trump Asia Trip Aims to Keep World from Plunging Into ‘Darker Era’
U.S. President Donald Trump will use his upcoming trip to Asia to further consolidate international pressure on North Korea to attempt to deter its pursuit of perfecting a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.
“If we fail to confront and reverse the threat from North Korea we’re going to be living in a much darker era,” according to a senior White House official who, on Monday, defended the administration’s more assertive stance towards Pyongyang.
“The president’s rhetoric, and more importantly his actions, have led to the most substantial shift and progress by the international community in confronting this threat than we’ve seen over the past several administrations,” the official told White House reporters.
There is much speculation whether Trump, following in the footsteps of some of his predecessors will go to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and peer into the North, placing him within meters of soldiers on the other side of the most militarized border in the world.
Whether Trump will go there is undecided, according to White House officials.
“Security is not a concern” on whether the president will visit the DMZ,” according to the senior official. “I don’t think it sends a message either way.”
South Korea
Instead, Trump – at the invitation of the South Koreans – is likely to go to Camp Humphries, 65 kilometers south of Seoul, which is the fastest growing U.S. army installation on the peninsula.
The president, during his time in Beijing during his November trip, will also raise the North Korean issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Amid recent strengthening of United Nations’ sanctions against North Korea, the senior administration official – nothing that Beijing accounts for 90 percent of international trade with Pyongyang – said “If China is not fully implementing those resolutions it undermines the international will.”
White House officials, while praising China for applying what they term as “unprecedented” pressure on North Korea, contend that Beijing can still do more.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has offered to return to Pyongyang on behalf of the Trump administration – something he did over the objections of President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990’s.
“There’s nothing planned at the moment,” responded the White House official, but “we’re open to having conversations with anyone who has great ideas for how to achieve resolution of this terrible crisis.”
Hawaii
Trump is to make his first visit to the Asia-Pacific region from November 3. Lasting 12 days it will be the longest trip, so far, of his presidency.
His first stop will be Hawaii where he will be briefed at the U.S. Pacific Command and visit the memorial at Pearl Harbor, built over the sunken USS Missouri, the final resting place for many of the more than 1,100 crewmen killed on December 7, 1941 when Japanese naval forces attacked the base.
From there, Trump flies to Japan where he will speak to American and Japanese service members and hold talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on security and trade issues.
Japanese officials say the two leaders will also make time to play golf together but the White House has yet to confirm that.
In South Korea, it is confirmed that Trump will address the National Assembly and hold talks about the North Korea threat with President Moon Jae-in.
China, Vietnam
In China, the U.S. president will also raise trade differences.
“We have huge barriers that Americans companies have to surmount to gain access to the Chinese market,” the White House official said. “The president is intent on rectifying that situation.”
At regional meetings in Vietnam and the Philippines Trump may also hold talks on the sidelines with various heads of government, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, but there is nothing to announce at this time, according to officials.
During the Vietnam visit the president is also set to travel from the APEC summit in Da Nang to the capital of Hanoi for talks with President Tran Dai Quang.
The White House confirmed Monday that Trump will hold official talks in the Philippines with President Rodrigo Duterte, host of the ASEAN meetings, who has been denounced internationally for his war on drugs which had led to possibly thousands of extrajudicial killings.
President Trump “will always speak frankly about our views on human rights,” replied the senior White House official when asked about the deadly crackdown.
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Turkish Sources: Iraq PM to Visit Turkey on Wednesday
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will visit Turkey on Wednesday to discuss potential joint steps against northern Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government following last month’s independence referendum, Turkish prime ministry sources said.
Abadi and Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim would also discuss issues of regional security, stability and peace, the sources said on Monday.
Last week, Turkey said it would close its air space to Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region and work to hand control of the main border crossing into the region to the central Iraqi government.
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Israel’s Water Worries Return After 4 Years of Drought
It was a source of national pride — technology and discipline besting a crippling lack of water.
But four years of drought have overtaxed Israel’s unmatched array of desalination and wastewater treatment plants, choking its most fertile regions and catching the government off-guard.
“No one imagined we would face a sequence of arid years like this, because it never happened before,” said Uri Schor, spokesman for Israel’s Water Authority.
The Sea of Galilee, technically a lake near the border with Syria, is forecast to hit its lowest level ever before winter rains come, despite the fact that pumping there was massively reduced. Underground aquifers, the other main freshwater source, are nearing levels that will turn them salty.
How to cope with the crisis is becoming an increasingly touchy subject in Israel. Proposed cuts to water use for the coming year, more than 50 percent in some areas, prompted vehement opposition from farmers, who already face tough restrictions and would have been the hardest hit. The government quickly backtracked.
In the Middle East, one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, water is also the subject of wider tensions.
Intense pressure on already scarce water resources could lead to an increase in migration and the risk of conflict, the World Bank has warned.
Syria and Jordan depend on some of the same water sources as Israel, which as added to tensions in the past. Palestinians have long complained of inadequate access to water, which is mostly under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. Israel has said it has supplied more water than required under interim peace deals.
Under discussion for a possible long-term solution to Israel’s water problem is the construction of an additional desalination plant, an industry official said. A similar facility in Israel has cost more $400 million.
Several new reservoirs to catch rain and flood waters could also relieve some pressure as a quick, $60 million fix, the official said, asking to remain anonymous due to the political sensitivity of the subject.
Just a few years ago Israel, a country two-thirds arid, declared an end to the water shortages that hounded it for decades. A longstanding nationwide awareness campaign ceased and Israelis could take long showers and water their gardens.
There was even talk of exporting surplus water to its neighbors. This came as a result of a massive investment drive which saw Israel put 15 billion shekels ($4.3 billion) in its national water grid and sewage treatment centers. The commercial sector invested another 7 billion shekels into the construction of five desalination plants.
Supply issues are being hardest felt among farmers in the northern tip of Israel, the region where Dubi Amitay, a fourth-generation farmer and president of the Israel Farmers Federation, lives.
Amitay said the shortage had made him decide to dry out 3,700 acres of land, which will take a toll on future harvests.
His home region of eastern Galilee, a lush swath of land between the coast and the Golan Heights, could lose up to 500 million shekels this season, he said.
The lack of reliable waters supply leaves farmers with deep uncertainty.
“Will we have water or not?,” he said.
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Army Officer Allegedly Behind South Sudan Killing, Rapes Found Dead
A South Sudanese army officer who oversaw soldiers accused of killing a journalist and raping at least five international aid workers last year has died in his jail cell, according to the army.
First Lieutenant Luka Akechak was found dead in his cell more than a week ago, but his death was reported Friday.
Army spokesman Colonel Santo Domic said there was no sign of foul play in Akechak’s death.
“Luka Akechak died. He died of natural causes,” Domic told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus. He said no post-mortem report was given to the army.
Chief suspect
Akechak was a chief suspect in the case, which has highlighted the difficulty of bringing accused perpetrators of human rights violations to justice in South Sudan, where conflict has raged for nearly four years.
Akechak was accused by at least one alleged rape victim of instructing soldiers under his command to rape aid workers at the Terrain Hotel complex in Juba in July 2016.
“Instead for him to stop rape or looting because he was a commanding officer for that unit, one of the victims reported he was the one facilitating rape,” Domic said. The soldiers were also accused of killing a local journalist, John Gatluak.
While defense attorney Philip Sanyang told VOA that Akechak’s death comes as a shock, it will not jeopardize his efforts to prosecute the other defendants.
Cause of death questioned
He also questioned the commander’s cause of death.
“If the army is saying it is a natural death, natural death happens with reasons, so there must be post-mortem report that shows this person died of natural death, so it can’t just be a verbal testimony by anyone,” said Sanyang.
The specific charges against each of the remaining suspects are unclear, along with the evidence that led to the charges.
The military court overseeing the case ordered the women accusing the soldiers of rape to return to the country and testify in person against the accused, refusing any testimony offered outside of South Sudan. Most of the aid workers left South Sudan shortly after the incident took place and have not returned.
Evidence to convict
Sanyang said Akechak was an important witness to the prosecution’s case, but he believes there is enough evidence to convict the other soldiers.
“Most of the charges levied against this person were things that were done jointly. So in an absence of one person it cannot lead to the throwing out of the other charges against other accused persons. We know it has created a gap, but still we are hopeful that the case is still well,” Sanyang said.
An alleged victim from Italy returned to South Sudan in August to testify. In two weeks another victim is expected to return and provide evidence.
Domic said court proceedings are expected to reconvene this week, but will be held behind closed doors.
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UK Says its Democracy is Secure After Suggestion of Foreign Meddling in Brexit
Britain’s democracy is one of the most secure in the world and will remain so, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday in response to a question about a suggestion that there may have been foreign interference in the Brexit vote.
Opposition lawmaker Ben Bradshaw last week urged the government to look into reports by an advocacy group suggesting that the origin of some Brexit campaign funds was unclear.
Bradshaw said in parliament the issue should be investigated “given the widespread concern over foreign and particularly Russian interference in Western democracies.”
At a regular briefing with reporters, May’s spokesman was asked if the prime minister was concerned about the reports. “I am not aware of those concerns,” he said.
“More broadly, as we’ve always said, the UK democratic system is amongst one of the most secure in the world and will continue to be so.”
The Electoral Commission, which regulates political finance in Britain, said in April it was investigating campaign spending by pro-Brexit organization Leave.EU, without giving details.
A spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission said on Monday that investigation was still going on and it would not provide any further information until it was complete.
your ad hereSierra Leone to Auction Multi-Million Dollar Diamond to Benefit Poor
Sierra Leone hopes to raise millions of dollars for development projects by auctioning a huge uncut diamond, believed to be one of the world’s largest, in New York in December.
It will be the government’s second attempt to sell the 709-carat gem, known as the “Peace Diamond”, after it rejected the highest bid of $7.8 million at an initial auction in New York in May.
Over half of the proceeds from the sale will be used to fund clean water, electricity, education and health projects in Sierra Leone, and particularly in the village of Koryardu, in the Kono region in eastern Sierra Leone, where the diamond was discovered.
“There’s a reason God gave these diamonds to the poorest people in the world and made the richest people want them. This is Tikun Olam [Hebrew for correcting the world], this is making the world a better place,” Martin Rapaport, chairman of Rapaport Group, a network of diamond companies which will manage the auction, told Reuters.
The diamond, which the auctioneers described as the 14th largest in the world, was unearthed in Koryardu in March by a Christian pastor who gave it to the government.
Diamonds fuelled a decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone, ending in 2002, in which rebels forced civilians to mine the stones and bought weapons with the proceeds, leading to the term “blood diamonds.”
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Outrage, Condemnation in Zimbabwe over President’s Global Health Post Nomination
Outrage against the nomination of Zimbabwe’s president as a World Health Organization goodwill ambassador led to his swift removal from the post over the weekend. But the outrage appears strongest in his home country, where Robert Mugabe is largely blamed for ruining his nation’s economy and health system during his 37 years in power.
Dr. Fortune Nyamande said he could think of 4,000 reasons why President Robert Mugabe was a poor choice to be goodwill ambassador for the global health body.
Poor health record
Four thousand, he says, is the number of Zimbabweans estimated to have been killed by cholera in 2008 and 2009. Cholera is widely seen as an indictment on modern health care systems, as the waterborne disease rarely causes deaths in developed nations.
The state of Zimbabwe’s health care system, says Nyamande, who heads the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, can be laid squarely at Mugabe’s feet.
“They have failed, in fact they have put in place disastrous policies, which have seen the collapse of our health sector from being one of the best health sectors in the world into a sorry and miserable state,” he said. “We still have a lot of people in our hospitals who are losing their lives because of lack of basic things: drugs, health care worker shortages, poor public health care funding, and quite a lot of other things.”
Not that Mugabe has to endure this, says Dewa Mavhinga, southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch, which also condemned last week’s appointment.
“Mugabe himself has been engaged in medical tourism, frequently flying to Singapore to seek medical attention, leaving behind in Zimbabwe a totally collapsed and useless health sector,” said Mavhinga.
Party supporters
But Mugabe still has cheerleaders within his ZANU-PF party, who say the decision to rescind the post is a sign of international bias against Zimbabwe. Mugabe has claimed for years that Western powers are suffocating his nation with sanctions.
“We saw that that was a befitting honor, and it is one that obviously was going to help in the advancement of that cause at an international level,” said Psychology Maziwisa, a member of parliament. “But of course they have had to rescind it for political reasons, which do not surprise us at all, because of course we are are talking of the Western world here.”
Opposition politician Douglas Mwonzora disagrees.
“Every right-thinking Zimbabwean, on social media and in other modes of communication, was condemning the appointment. And for them to say that it is the British and the Americans is simply to find a scapegoat. We, the Zimbabweans, did not want it,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald newspaper, long seen as a mouthpiece for the ruling party, has yet to weigh in on the issue.
Sebastian Mhofu contributed to this report from Harare.
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Toxic Fumes Keep EU Summit Venue Shut for Another Week
The building that houses EU summits, where toxic fumes forced EU leaders to switch venues last week, will be closed for a further week as investigators
seek to resolve the problem.
The fumes leaking from the drains have forced the Europa Building, also known as “The Egg,” to be evacuated twice this month, including before a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday.
The new building was opened in January amid controversy over its 321-million-euro ($378 million) price tag.
Staff and meetings will be temporarily transferred to the next door Justus Lipsius building until the issue is resolved.
About 20 catering staff had to go to hospital on October 13 and an unspecified number on Wednesday. An EU official said the Council and Belgian health and safety agencies believe the two incidents were due to the same source.
Reporting by Lily Cusack; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Toby Chopra.
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