Turkey dismissed Thursday a U.S. court conviction of a Turkish banker in connection with a billion-dollar plot to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The court in New York City convicted Mehmet Hakan Atilla on four counts of conspiracy, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, plus one count of bank fraud. The 47-year-old Turkish national was acquitted on a charge of money laundering.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said Thursday the ruling was unfair and unfortunate, and also an unprecedented interference in Turkey’s internal affairs.

Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter the jury’s decision does not carry legal value in Turkey.

The case has strained relations between Turkey and the United States.

Atilla is a deputy general manager at Turkey’s state-run Halkbank. U.S. prosecutors charged him with helping to facilitate a deal in which Iran traded oil and gas for gold, moving some of the transactions through U.S. banks without their knowledge.

Atilla was heard on telephone recordings setting up fake food and agriculture deals with Iran to disguise deals that were really sales of oil. Atilla’s lawyer said his client was merely “a hapless pawn” in those deals, blaming Atilla’s boss, Reza Zarrab, instead. 

Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian trader who has admitted arranging the deals, told the court he paid about $50 million in bribes in 2012 to the Turkish finance minister to push the deals through. Zarrab testified that he believed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was aware of the scheme.

Erdogan said the case is an American conspiracy to blackmail Turkey, a strategic partner with the United States in Middle East affairs.

Iran and the United States have had chilly relations since the Iran hostage crisis from 1979-1981, in which 52 Americans were held by student activists in Iran for 444 days until a release was negotiated. The United States now bans most financial dealings with Iran, which is a major oil-producing nation.
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Iranian Americans are closely watching protests in Iran, where a government crackdown on demonstrators has led to the deaths of 21 people and the arrest of more than 400 over the past week. Thousands of counter demonstrators have marched to support the regime. Many in the Iranian community of Southern California, the largest outside Iran, are hoping for a peaceful resolution, and reform.

The largest concentration of Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles is found in the Little Persia neighborhood on the city’s west side, where people criticize Iran’s clerical government, which they widely view as incompetent and corrupt.

WATCH: Iranian Americans react to protests

“People are fed up with this,” notes one immigrant as he leaves a Persian market. “When you are mullah,” he says of Iran’s religious rulers, and “you want to manage a country like Iran, you destroy everything.”

The Iranian regime, says an immigrant named Ali, has a history of repression. “And the people are angry,” he says, “especially young people.” 

“We are in fact very anxious that this might lead to even more violence,” he adds.

Americans speak out

American officials have spoken out against the Iranian government’s actions. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has called on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session over the protests and crackdown. Iranian authorities have placed curbs on social media sites such as Instagram, and President Donald Trump has promised “support from the United States at the appropriate time” in messages posted on Twitter. 

Some Iranian Americans say the United States should tread carefully because the anti-government protests are homegrown.

“If the U.S. intervenes in any shape or form, or even supports some faction against another,” warns Muhammad Sahimi, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California and political communist, “the hard-liners in Iran will use that as an excuse to crack down hard on demonstrations.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already blamed what he calls “enemies of Iran” for sparking the protests. The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has accused the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia of being behind the dissent.

The demonstrations started last week as laborers and workers in a number of cities rallied against corruption and high unemployment. 

Sahimi does not believe that the protests are as broadly based as those of 2009, when students and members of the middle class denounced what they viewed as a rigged election in a movement that came to be known as the Green Revolution.

Others believe the current protests will spread, as the earlier ones did.

Los Angeles publisher Bijan Khalili blames mismanagement of the Iranian economy and says Iranian officials will not accept responsibility, and “the only thing that is left is blaming on foreign countries and foreign people,” he says.

Muhammad Sahimi says that U.S. sanctions against Iran also played a role, and notes that President Trump has promised to strengthen those sanctions by removing waivers on Iranian oil, in place since Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in 2015. He says stronger sanctions will only worsen economic conditions in Iran.

Realtor Sam Kermanian says the nuclear agreement raised the hopes of Iran’s people, but when the benefits failed to materialize, disappointment gave way to anger over rampant corruption among the clerical elite.

Los Angeles grocer Todd Khodadadi says Iranians are expressing legitimate grievances, “trying to get their rights, and they raised their voice, and hopefully, peacefully, they (will) get what they want,” he says.

“What they want is freedom,” says travel agent Farhad Besharati. “It’s not too much,” he argues. “We’re in the 21st century. The government killing them? This is not fair. It’s not good,” he says.

These Iranian Americans say the nations of the world should defend the right to peaceful protest, but leave these protests in the hands of Iran’s people to avoid giving the regime an excuse for a further violent crackdown. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon says he thinks it was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and campaign manager to meet in the midst of the 2016 election campaign with Russians promising incriminating information about Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to a new book about the Trump White House.

Bannon assailed Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a key White House adviser, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, according to the book, for attending the June 2016 meeting at campaign headquarters inside Trump Tower in New York. It was set up by the younger Trump after he was told by a European intermediary that the information was part of “Russia and its government’s support” for his father’s election campaign against Clinton.

The younger Trump said he would “love it” to get the damaging material, although he subsequently has said that the Russian lawyer at the meeting had no such incriminating evidence.

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers,” Bannon is quoted as saying in author Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. “They didn’t have any lawyers.”

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s—, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Bannon said, referring to the top U.S. criminal investigative agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Wednesday extensively quoted Bannon’s views from the soon-to-be-published book, which the newspaper said it had seen. Bannon was chief executive of Trump’s campaign in the last three months before the November 2016 election, then chief White House strategist for seven months before returning to head the right-wing Breitbart News website. Bannon remains a staunch Trump supporter, but has failed so far in his political efforts to help insurgent Republican candidates win seats in Congress to support Trump’s populist agenda.

Bannon, according to the book, says that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators, now in the midst of a months-long criminal investigation of alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia during the election, are focusing on money laundering.

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon said of the investigators.

“You realize where this is going,” Bannon is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f—— Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner …It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

Bannon said the White House has been too dismissive of the coming storm from the Mueller investigation, comparing it to facing down the strongest hurricane.

“They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five,” Bannon said.

Mueller has already indicted Manafort and another Trump campaign aide, Rick Gates, on money laundering charges linked to their lobbying efforts for Ukraine prior to the 2016 election, and secured guilty pleas from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to federal agents about their Russia contacts. Aside from probing Trump campaign links with Russia, Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI director James Comey, who was heading the agency’s Russia investigation before Mueller was appointed to take over the probe.

Trump has often denied there was any collusion between his campaign and Russia, contending that Mueller’s probe and congressional investigations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election were excuses by Democrats to explain his upset victory over Clinton.

Trump last week told The New York Times that he thinks Mueller is “going to be fair” in his investigation, but also that his probe “makes the country look very bad.”
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Iraqi nationals under threat of deportation and currently in detention should have the opportunity to win their release, a U.S. District Court has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith in Detroit, Michigan, ruled Tuesday that hundreds of Iraqi Chaldeans who have been held in detention centers around the country for at least six months should be given bond hearings.

Goldsmith ordered immigration judges to hold the hearings and release the detainees unless they are a public safety risk. Detainees who don’t get a bond hearing must be released by February 2.

“Over time, as more detainees are held for six months, the same rules apply,” CODE Legal Aid, an advocate for the detainees, wrote on Facebook.

“Our legal tradition rejects warehousing human beings while their legal rights are being determined, without an opportunity to persuade a judge that the norm of monitored freedom should be followed,” Goldsmith said.

He made some exceptions, saying a detainee could remain locked up if the government can show the detainee has acted in “bad faith.”

Goldsmith also said his ruling applies only to the group of Iraqi Chaldeans and has no wider application.

​Irreparable harm cited

In July, Goldsmith blocked the deportation of 1,400 Iraqi nationals nationwide to give them time to challenge their removal. Many are Christians who fear being tortured or killed if deported. The judge’s ruling noted that many of the Iraqis — estimated at 247 — continue to be jailed in U.S. detention centers around the country, “the vast majority having spent six months or more in custody.” Almost half are residents of Detroit.

“Many of these folks were on final order of removal for committing crimes in the 1980s or 1990s,” Chaldean Community Foundation Martin Manna told VOA in August. “They came here legally at some point, but either had a misdemeanor or a felony, which put them on final order of removal.”

Until recently, Iraq has refused to take back its nationals who are under deportation orders. The Iraqis had been released into their communities, where they had been supervised.

“According to Petitioners, they lived peaceably in their respective communities under the orders of supervision — a point the Government does not contest,” Goldsmith said in his ruling.

Attorneys for the detainees also argued that prolonged detention had caused them irreparable harm. The judge did not disagree, citing testimony from various detained Iraqis.

“Recently, I was forced to close my auto shop business and now face a real possibility of losing it forever because I cannot continue running it while I am detained,” Atheer Ali said.

“Our son is scheduled to attend college next year but as of now, we cannot afford to even pay the minimum deposit for his tuition,” according to Usama Hamama.

“[I]t took two months for me to receive medical treatment after my transfer to Chippewa County, Michigan,” Habil Nissan said.

​Agreement with Iraq

The U.S. government argued in court that the Iraqis should be kept in detention because “removal is reasonably foreseeable.”

Goldsmith agreed with that statement, but said it is anything but clear that Iraq will repatriate all of the 1,400 Iraqis with deportation orders, citing a declaration from Michael Bernacke, acting assistant deputy assistant director for Department of Homeland Security’s removal management division.

“In his declaration, Bernacke states that the agreement between the United States and Iraq is not memorialized in writing, but is instead the product of ongoing negotiations,” Goldsmith wrote, adding, “Bernacke also states that the agreement does not contemplate any numeric limitation on the number of removals.”

Since Goldsmith’s July ruling, he writes that 164 Iraqis have filed motions to have their cases heard in immigration court.

“Seventy-four have been granted, 11 have been finally denied, and 79 are pending. Approximately 10 of the 74 grantees have had their cases adjudicated to the merits, with each one resulting in grants of relief or protection.”

The government has argued that Goldsmith is exceeding his authority and should leave deportation disputes to immigration courts. His earlier decisions are being appealed.
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U.S. President Donald Trump promised new support for the Iranian people Wednesday, even as Iran’s state media reported that tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators staged rallies across the country after days of anti-government protests.

“Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government,” Trump said in a Twitter comment. “You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!” It was not immediately clear what assistance Trump had in mind.

Iranian state television Wednesday showed video of crowds waving Iranian flags and chanting in support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Later in the day, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the anti-government protests that erupted over the past few days were at an end.    

“Today we can announce the end of the 2018 sedition,” Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said on its website, adding that the number of protesters “did not exceed 15,000 people nationwide.” He said the Guard had deployed limited numbers of troops in Isfahan, Larestan and Hamadan.

Official and semi-official media offered no new reports of anti-regime protests, which have claimed 21 lives in the last week.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani expressed hope in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the protests would end in a few days, a Turkish presidential source said.

Blame game 

Khamenei has blamed other governments for driving the anti-government protests that began last Thursday.

“In recent days, enemies of Iran used different tools, including cash, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatus to create troubles for the Islamic Republic.” Khamenei said in a televised statement Tuesday. He added that he would address the nation about the protests “when the time is right.”

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, accused the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia of being behind the protests.

Trump has used several Twitter posts to express support for those protesting the Iranian government.

“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime,” he posted Tuesday. “All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”

After Trump’s comments, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said, “Instead of wasting his time sending useless and insulting tweets regarding other countries, he would be better off seeing to the domestic issues of his own country, such as daily killings of dozens of people…and the existence of millions of homeless and hungry people.”

UN emergency session

The United States is calling for the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency session to discuss the Iranian protests. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said the Iranian people “are crying out for freedom.”

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made similar comments in an interview Tuesday with VOA.

“The Iranian people are expressing frustration, frustration about a regime that pays more attention to exporting terrorism than it does of meeting the needs of its own people,” McMaster said.

WATCH: McMaster on Iran

He also told VOA the Iranian government has to be held accountable for its actions.

“It’s important that this regime be denied the resources it needs to continue its murderous campaigns, and so its diplomacy, but it’s also sanctions, and we see the Iranian people are expressing their displeasure about the nature of this regime how it treats them, but also how it treats the rest of the world,” McMaster said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “regret” at the bloodshed in Iran, saying the U.N. expects “the rights to peaceful assembly and expression of the Iranian people will be respected.”

Social Media blocked

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department urged Iran to stop blocking online social media traffic in the country and said its citizens could set up virtual private networks to circumvent censorship. Since the protests erupted last week, Iran has curbed some social media services like Instagram and Telegram.

Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested since the protests began Thursday in Mashhad before spreading to other parts of the country. Deputy Interior Minister Hossein Zolfaghari said 90 percent of those detained were under the age of 25. Some analysts say it is an indication of their frustration at lack of social freedoms and economic conditions, including high unemployment and rising food prices.

Shahram Akbarzedeh, a research professor at Australia’s Deakin University, said Rouhani came to power with a mandate to revive Iran’s economy, generate jobs and bring down inflation, and has largely failed to deliver.

He also told VOA that Khamenei’s comments are consistent with the government’s practice of blaming outsiders.

“It shifts the blame – our society is fine, our regime is fine, everyone is happy in Iran, and if it wasn’t for this external meddling there would be no issues whatsoever. That’s one thing. The second thing it does, it legitimizes the use of violence against protesters because if the regime is dealing with external saboteurs and not internal dissenters then it’s perfectly legitimate for Iran to use its security forces and clamp down on opposition,” Akbarzedeh said.
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A U.S. judge on Tuesday refused to order a mistrial in the case of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey’s majority state-owned Halkbank who is charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan federal court rejected arguments by Atilla’s lawyers that the trial was tainted when prosecutors asked Atilla, during a Dec. 19 cross-examination, whether he remembered that a report by a Turkish expert had concluded he violated sanctions.

‘Grossly mischaracterized’

Atilla’s lawyers objected before Atilla could answer, saying the question involved hearsay and “grossly mischaracterized” the Turkish expert’s conclusion. Berman told the jury to disregard it.

Atilla’s lawyers moved for a mistrial on Dec. 20.

Berman said on Tuesday that his instruction to the jury was enough to prevent any unfairness to Atilla, adding that a mistrial was an “extreme” outcome that should be avoided whenever possible. Berman had already denied another motion by Atilla for a mistrial earlier in the case.

A lawyer for Atilla could not immediately be reached for comment.

Jurors are expected to come to court on Wednesday for their fourth day of deliberations in the case, which has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey.

At the center of the three-week trial was testimony from Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to charges of violating sanctions and testified for U.S. prosecutors.

Turkey president implicated

Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent gold and food transactions that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions.

Zarrab also implicated Turkish officials in the scheme, including President Tayyip Erdogan.

Attempts to reach Erdogan’s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government.

Charges denied

Atilla has denied all of the charges against him.

Halkbank has denied taking part in any illegal transactions.

The first request for a mistrial came after jurors heard testimony from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police officer who said he led an investigation that included Atilla and fled Turkey in fear of retaliation. Atilla’s lawyers said the testimony unfairly associated their client with political violence. 

U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, were arrested by U.S. authorities.
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Acknowledging his push to broker peace in the Middle East has stalled, President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to threaten to cut off U.S. aid money to the Palestinian Authority, asking why the U.S. should make “any of these massive future payments” when the Palestinians are “no longer willing to talk peace.”

 

Trump, in a pair of tweets, said the U.S. pays “the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.”

 

“They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue … peace treaty with Israel,” he wrote.

 

Trump infuriated Palestinians and Muslims across the Middle East when he announced late last year that the U.S. would consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move its embassy there, upending decades of U.S. policy and igniting protests.

 

While the Palestinians haven’t closed the door to a potential deal with Israel, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the announcement had destroyed Trump’s credibility as a Mideast peace broker, calling the decision “a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process.”

 

Tuesday’s tweets mark a tacit admission by Trump that his decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has thrown a wrench into his administration’s plans to restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, which he had dubbed “the ultimate deal.”

 

Trump tasked son-in-law Jared Kushner to restart the effort, and brought his former attorney, Jason Greenblatt, into the White House to lead the negotiations. Trump’s Mideast peace team had held meetings with Israeli, Palestinian and Arab leaders for nearly a year ahead of an expected peace proposal.

 

But by recognizing Israel’s claim to Jerusalem, Trump was seen by the Palestinians as siding with Israel on the most sensitive issue in the conflict. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem — which Israel captured in 1967 — for their capital.

 

Trump said his decision merely recognized the reality that Jerusalem already serves as Israel’s capital and wasn’t meant to prejudge the final borders of the city.

 

In his tweets, Trump argued his decision had taken “Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more.”

 

When Trump declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, he insisted, counterintuitively, that the move would improve, not hurt, prospects for clinching a peace deal.

 

In the days after the decision, Trump administration officials said the strategy was based on the notion that Israel had lost faith in the U.S. as a committed partner during the Obama administration. With trust in Washington restored, Netanyahu’s government would be more inclined going forward to make tough concessions that would ultimately be needed for a peace deal, the U.S. officials argued at the time, and Israeli officials quietly indicated that they could potentially do so.

 

No one spelled out, however, what the Palestinians would receive in return.

 

Trump on Tuesday also issued a threat to cut off foreign aid dollars to an unspecified list of countries that don’t reciprocate.

 

“It’s not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others,” Trump wrote, appearing to reference a Jan. 1 tweet lambasting Pakistan for failing to do enough to combat terror groups while taking U.S. aid. “No more!” Trump had tweeted Monday.

 

Trump’s language marks a striking departure from decades of bipartisan American practice and reflects Trump’s transactional view of global affairs. U.S. leaders of both parties have long utilized foreign assistance dollars — a minor percentage of the overall budget — to promote American interests abroad, alleviate humanitarian crises and support oppressed peoples.

 

Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, foreshadowed Trump’s warning earlier Tuesday at the U.N. Security Council. Haley said the president doesn’t want to give more funds “until the Palestinians are willing to come back to the negotiation table.”

 

“We still very much want to have a peace process. Nothing changes with that. The Palestinians now have to show they want to come to the table,” Haley said. “As of now, they’re not coming to the table, but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid. We’re going to make sure that they come to the table.”

 

Since a Dec. 21 U.N. vote condemning Trump’s Jerusalem decision, U.S. officials have been weighing various options for retaliating against the Palestinians for pushing the resolution, which passed by a 128-9 margin.

 

Those options, which were to be discussed by Trump’s top national security aides at a meeting next week, included several involving cutting off some or all aid to the Palestinian Authority. Another option would cut funding to the U.N. agency that provides services to the Palestinians in places like Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon.

 

The talks are in their very early stages, with no determination yet of a fixed amount or percentage of assistance to be cut, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

 

However, the officials noted that only a relatively small amount of the more than $220 million that the U.S. was planning on sending to the Palestinians in the current budget year actually goes to the Palestinian Authority. Most of that assistance flows to non-governmental groups that are involved in building civic organizations that promote good governance, anti-corruption efforts, and health and education projects.

 

The officials said one possibility would be to redirect aid from the Palestinian Authority to those groups. Similar proposals were envisioned for the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, the officials said, noting that Palestinian children in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon would be disproportionally affected by an immediate and complete cut-off.

 

One basket of money that is unlikely to be affected is security assistance that helps the Palestinian Authority coordinate police cooperation with Israel, the officials said. They spoke on conditions of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.
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Coal mining deaths surged in the U.S. in 2017, one year after they hit a record low.

The nation’s coal mines recorded 15 deaths last year, including eight in West Virginia. Kentucky had two deaths, and there were one each in Alabama, Colorado, Montana, Pennsylvania and Wyoming. In 2016 there were eight U.S. coal mine deaths.

West Virginia has led the nation in coal mining deaths in six of the past eight years. That includes 2010, when 29 miners were killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia.

In September, President Donald Trump appointed retired coal company executive David Zatezalo as the new chief of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Most of the deaths this year occurred before his appointment. The Wheeling resident retired in 2014 as chairman of Rhino Resources.

Zatezalo was narrowly approved by the Senate in November. His appointment was opposed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who said he was not convinced Zatezalo was suited to oversee the federal agency that implements and enforces mine safety laws and standards.

Last month the Trump administration brought up for review standards implemented by Barack Obama’s administration that lowered the allowable limits for miners’ exposure to coal dust. MSHA indicated it is reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust — the cause of black lung — and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer.

Eight coal mining deaths this year involved hauling vehicles and two others involved machinery. None were attributed to an explosion of gas or dust, which was to blame for the Upper Big Branch disaster.

The number of coal mining fatalities was under 20 for the fourth straight year after reaching exactly 20 in 2011, 2012 and 2013. By comparison, in 1966, the mining industry counted 233 deaths. A century ago there were 2,226.

MSHA has attributed low numbers in previous years to far fewer coal mining jobs and tougher enforcement of mining safety rules. Zatezalo, who said in October that his first priority was preventing people from getting hurt, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment left with MSHA on Tuesday.

There have been 13 fatalities in 2017 in non-coal mines that produce gravel, sand, limestone and mineable metals. There also were 17 such deaths in 2015 and 30 in 2014.

Coal production

Appalachia has been especially hit hard by the closing of dozens of mines in recent years, but there was a turnaround in production in 2017.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s weekly estimates, U.S. coal production increased 8.9 percent in the 52 weeks ending Dec. 23, the latest available. Production in West Virginia increased 16 percent, including 25 percent in coal-rich southern West Virginia.

Wyoming, the top coal-producing state, saw a 10.7 percent increase and Pennsylvania had an 11.6 percent hike.

There were about 92,000 working miners in the United States in 2011, compared with about 52,000 in 2016, the lowest figure since the Energy Information Administration began collecting data in 1978. The 2017 numbers are not yet available.
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