The Senate will vote at noon Monday on a bill to reopen the government through Feb. 8, though passage is not assured. Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer are continuing to negotiate on a deal to reopen the government and begin legislative work on protecting some young immigrants, but Schumer said “we have yet to reach a path forward.” We get more from VOA Senate correspondent Michael Bowman.
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Month: January 2018
Malawi Farmers Turn to Traditional Methods Against Fall Armyworm
Malawi is once again grappling with an invasion of fall armyworms, which ravaged crops across parts of Africa in 2016 and 2017 and aggravated food insecurity. Amid a shortage of pesticides in Malawi, some farmers are turning to homemade concoctions. Lameck Masina reports for VOA from one of the hardest hit areas, the Mulanje district in southern Malawi.
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Young Rwandese Seek to Reshape Narrative About Their Country
Young Rwandan bloggers and filmmakers are working to re-shape the narrative about their country. They want to move away from stories of the 1994 genocide and its aftermath, and toward stories of the new generation in what is now one of Africa’s fastest growing economies. Chika Oduah reports for VOA from Kigali.
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US Jerusalem Decision in Focus as Pence Visits Israel
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Monday it was an honor “to be in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” highlighting a U.S. decision to recognize the city as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
President Donald Trump parted from decades of U.S. policy by saying Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and setting in motion the process of moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.
“In making his historic announcement on December 6, President Trump did so convinced that by recognizing Israel’s capital of Jerusalem that we would create an opportunity to move on in good faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on issues that can be discussed and President Trump truly believes can be resolved,” Pence said during his latest stop on a four-day visit to the Middle East.
Netanyahu thanked Trump and Pence for what he called the “historic statement” and declared the U.S.-Israel relationship has “never been stronger.”
In addition to a series of bilateral talks, Pence is also giving an address Monday to the Knesset, Israel’s lawmaking body.
Senior White House officials said the vice president would be discussing the U.S.-Israeli relationship, ways to counter Iranian influence in the region, and strategy on the Syrian conflict.
In the Knesset speech, the officials said Pence planned to say there is an open window for both Israelis and Palestinians to get to work and make necessary sacrifices toward a long-sought peace agreement.
Trump’s decision brought sharp criticism from Palestinian leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas who said the United States could no longer play a role in the peace process.
Arab members of parliament have said they will boycott Pence’s speech. Netanyahu criticized that decision during a Cabinet meeting Sunday while calling Pence a “great and true friend of Israel.”
Before traveling to Israel, Pence was in Jordan where King Abdullah expressed concern about the Jerusalem decision and urged the United States to “rebuild trust and confidence” in the search for a two-state solution.
King Abdullah said the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the two-state solution long sought by the international community, and that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Pence said the two countries had agreed to disagree on the Jerusalem issue.
“Friends occasionally have disagreements, and we agreed to disagree on recognizing Jerusalem. We agreed all parties need to come to the table. I hope I impressed on him our earnest desire to restart the peace process,” Pence told reporters after the meeting.
Before Jordan, Pence visited Cairo, where he pledged the U.S. would continue to support Egypt in its battle against terrorism.
Pence also met with U.S. troops in the region before flying to Israel.
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Tens of Thousands of Greeks March to Demand Sole Right to the Name of Macedonia
Tens of thousands of flag-waving Greeks rallied in Thessaloniki Sunday, demanding Greece never compromise on the name Macedonia for its northern province.
Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic that shares the same name have been feuding over who gets to use it since Macedonia became independent Yugoslavia in 1991.
Police put the turnout for Sunday’s march at 90,000 while organizers say it is much higher.
Some of the protesters wore costumes from the period when Macedonia was ruled by the ancient Greek King Alexander the Great.
They say allowing the neighboring country to use the name Macedonia insults Greek history and implies a claim on Greek territory.
Sunday’s march was largely peaceful. But police quickly intervened when scuffles broke out between far-right extremists and anarchists who held up banners denouncing nationalism.
Greece has blocked Macedonian efforts to join the European Union and NATO because of the name dispute.
But United Nations negotiator Matthew Nimetz said last week he is “very hopeful” a settlement is near.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tells the Ethnos newspaper “If there is an opportunity for a solution, it would be a national stupidity not to make good use of it.”
The country of Macedonia is officially known at the U.N. as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
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Tunisian Forces Kill Senior al-Qaida Member
Tunisian special forces have killed a senior member of al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in a remote western area of the country, near the border with Algeria.
Tunisian officials have identified the militant as Bilel Kobi, a senior aide to Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the leader of the militant group.
Another jihadist was also killed in the operation as a special unit of the National Guard and soldiers circled an armed group of militants in the western region of Kasserine overnight Saturday, the Ministry of the Interior said.
Islamic State claims most major attacks in Tunisia including a hotel attack and an attack on a museum that killed dozens of tourists in 2015 as well as raids by militants who crossed from Libya into Tunisia in 2016.
More than 3,000 Tunisians have left over the last few years to fight for Islamic State and other militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Authorities are trying to prepare for the threat posed by their return.
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Mattis: Turkey Alerted US Before Striking Kurds in Syria
Turkey alerted the United States before striking a U.S.-allied Kurdish militia in northern Syria, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
“They warned us before they launched the aircraft that they were going to do it,” Mattis told reporters Sunday on a plane headed for Southeast Asia.
Turkey on Saturday began bombing the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin along the Turkish border in northern Syria, in an attempt to drive the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, from the area.
Mattis said the communication took the form of a telephone call between high level Turkish and U.S. military officials. But he declined to say whether U.S. officials cautioned Turkey against the strikes.
“We are very alert to it. Our top levels are engaged…and we’re working through it,” Mattis said. “We’ll work this out.”
The YPG is a key U.S. partner in the war against Islamic State, and makes up a large portion of the Syrian Democratic Forces a coalition that has forced Islamic State from virtually its entire so-called caliphate.
But Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist group, and says it is linked with Kurdish separatists within its own borders.
“They have proven their effectiveness,” said Mattis. “It has cost them thousands of casualties, but you have watched them, with coalition support, shred ISIS’ caliphate in Syria, and that’s a matter of arithmetic.”
Mattis acknowledged that the success against Islamic State “does not remove many of Turkey’s concerns,” adding that it is “easy to understand” why Ankara is worried the conflict will spill over the Syrian border.
“Turkey is a NATO ally. It’s the only NATO country with an active insurgency inside its borders. And Turkey has legitimate security concerns,” Mattis said.
The U.S. and Turkey have worked together to fight Islamic State as part of an international coalition. Specifically, U.S. and other planes have used Turkey’s Incirlik military base to carry out strikes on IS.
The U.S. military currently has about 2,000 personnel in Syria. But no US forces are at risk because of the Turkish offensive “at this time,” Mattis said.
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Partial US Government Shutdown Continues for Second Day
The U.S. government stayed partially shut down Sunday for a second day, with no immediate end in sight to the stalemate between Republican and Democratic lawmakers over federal spending and immigration issues.
U.S. President Donald Trump, at the start of his second year in office, pressured Congress to resolve the standoff, suggesting on Twitter that if it continues, Senate Republicans should abandon the long-standing supermajority rule required for major legislation in the chamber. He said Republican lawmakers should instead opt for a “nuclear option” and a simple majority to vote “on real, long term budget,” rather than voting on another temporary funding measure.
The lawmakers traded barbs all day Saturday over the blame for the first government hiatus since 2013, even as some moderate lawmakers from both parties huddled to see if they could broker an agreement that would reopen the government in time for the start of the work week on Monday.
The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, scheduled a vote for 1 a.m. Monday, possibly sooner, on a new spending bill that would keep the government open until February 8. But opposition Democrats, over the objection of Republicans, held fast in demanding that part of the agreement include protection against deportation for nearly 800,000 young immigrants who years ago were brought illegally to the United States by their parents.
Trump tweeted Sunday, “Great to see how hard Republicans are fighting for our Military and Safety at the Border” with Mexico, where he wants funding for a wall to thwart more illegal immigration. “The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked.”
Essential work continues
The partial government shutdown, curtailing services considered to be non-essential, started at midnight Friday after Senate Republicans fell 10 votes short of the required 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member chamber in voting on a spending plan that the House of Representatives had already approved to fund government operations through February 16.
The lawmakers are at loggerheads over an array of defense spending and immigration issues, including the fate of the program ended by Trump last September that protected the young immigrants from deportation, even as he gave Congress until March 5 to weigh in on the issue.
But he wants tighter security along the 3,200-kilometer U.S.-Mexican border, including funding for the wall, in exchange for allowing the immigrants to remain in the U.S. without the threat of deportation.
“The president will not negotiate on immigration reform until Democrats stop playing games and reopen the government,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Saturday.
White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told NBC’s Meet the Press show on Sunday that Trump remains willing to resolve the deportation issue, but Short described a bipartisan immigration proposal offered Trump last week as “woefully insufficient.”
One key Democratic senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, told the same show, that the budget and immigration issues will only be resolved “when the president shows some leadership.”
Temporary solutions
Any temporary spending measure that eventually could be approved to reopen the government in full would be the fourth in the last few months, leaving lawmakers short of enacting legislation that sets spending through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30.
As debate continued Saturday during the stalemate, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin objected to the continuing series of temporary spending bills, saying it “simply kicks the can down the road and fails to get the job done for the American people.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted, “I know it looks like a mess — but there are many senators of good will who want to solve the problem.” Graham thanked Democratic senators’ “commitment to hard work and finding solutions.”
The House stayed in session Saturday, voting on a rule that would allow the chamber to quickly consider any newly negotiated legislation sent over from the Senate. Both the House and Senate are set to meet again Sunday afternoon.
Federal agencies, meanwhile, prepared to idle employees and halt major portions of their operations if no agreement was reached Sunday or in the wee hours Monday.
The U.S. government has been partially shut down on several occasions before in lawmaking and funding disputes over the years, most recently in 2013 for 16 days in a partisan deadlock over health care policy. About 850,000 federal workers were furloughed then.
What stops and what continues during a federal shutdown varies. But federal research projects could be stalled, national parks and museums closed, tax refunds delayed, processing of veterans’ disability applications delayed, and federal nutrition programs suspended, as was the case in 2013.
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5 Dead, Dozens Injured as Congo Police Disperse Protests
Police in Congo used tear gas and gunfire to disperse thousands of anti-government demonstrators across the nation on Sunday, leaving five people dead and injuring more than 33 who marched after church services calling for President Joseph Kabila to step down, the United Nations said.
Catholic churches and activists had called for peaceful demonstrations Sunday in Kinshasa, Goma, Lubumbashi and other cities. The protests turned violent as police tried to disperse the demonstrators.
Security forces arrested 69 people countrywide, said U.N. spokeswoman in Congo Florence Marchal. The five dead were in Kinshasa, though it was unclear if police were among any of the casualties, she said. The government cut off SMS and internet services Sunday across the country to discourage gatherings.
In Congo’s eastern Beni, police arrested about a dozen members of a civic organization, LUCHA, which in English is known as Fight for Change. Protesters there were also injured by stones being thrown when the demonstration turned more violent.
“We are asking President Joseph Kabila to give up power and to respect the New Year’s agreement,” said Vyanney Kasondwa, a LUCHA member.
The violence prompted Pope Francis to appeal for peace in Congo. Francis made the appeal Sunday from the Peruvian capital, where he led thousands of young people in prayer.
He said of Congo: “I ask the authorities and those responsible and all those in this beloved country that they use maximum commitment and effort to avoid all forms of violence and look for solutions in favor of the common good.”
In a similar protest on Dec. 31 police killed at least seven people after the Saint-Sylvestre Accord was signed to set a new election date, free political prisoners and ease tensions in this vast, mineral-rich Central African country.
The United States and others have condemned Congolese security forces’ response to the protests at more than 160 churches, which included tear gas being fired in churches and the altar boys being arrested.
On Jan. 12, police in the capital fired into the air and used tear gas to disperse people, including ambassadors, attending a mass at Kinshasa’s Catholic cathedral to honor protesters killed in clashes with security forces.
Kabila, whose mandate ended in December 2016, had agreed to hold an election by the end of 2017. But Congo’s election commission later said the vote cannot be held until December 2018.
Critics accuse Kabila of postponing elections to maintain his grip on power, while international observers have warned that Congo’s political tensions could further destabilize the impoverished country and the region at large.
Kabila can remain in power until the next election is held, although he is barred by the Constitution from seeking another term in office.
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Prospect of More Denaturalizations Worries Immigrant Advocates
Immigrant adovocates are alarmed after last week’s Department of Justice announcement that Baljinder Singh had been stripped of his U.S. citizenship — the first under an Obama-era program.
They worry that more denaturalizations are to follow and are critical of the “aggressive” manner in which the government is seeking to denaturalize individuals as the pace of the investigations appears to have picked up over the past year.
“It’s a very alarming thing to do because … [when] you become a U.S. citizen, you know, you belong here. You’re part of the fabric of our society,” said Sirine Shebaya, a senior staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, an advocacy group.
Operation Janus, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) probe, identified 315,000 immigrants whose fingerprints were missing from government databases, of which 1,000 have been referred for further investigation.
Shebaya told VOA that her group has filed a Freedom of Information Actto find out what policies are guiding the denaturalization case, fearing that the probe will be used to discriminate against Muslims or people from Muslim or South-Asian communities.
“Which is why we want more information about the decisions that are being made to go after denaturalization cases this way and to publicize it in this way,” said Shebaya.
Operation Janus was started after DHS identified some 858 individuals who obtained U.S. citizenship under aliases after they had been ordered deported or removed. They were discovered when no digital fingerprint records were available.
“Although US Citizenship and Immigration Services procedures require checking applicants’ fingerprints against both the Department of Homeland Security’s and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) digital fingerprint repositories, neither contains all old fingerprint records. Not all old records were included in the DHS repository when it was being developed,” according to a DHS document.
Fighting denaturalization
The government had Pavaez Manzoor Khan’s fingerprints, according to his lawyer, but he is under threat of denaturalization in the U.S. District Court Middle District of Florida.
“[My client] has been fingerprinted three separate times that we can count,” said attorney James Lavigne, who is contesting the case on Khan’s behalf.
Federal prosecutors claim that Khan, 60, of Pakistan, entered the U.S. in 1991 with a Pakistani passport in the name of Mohammad Akhtar. At the time, officials determined the photo in the passport had been altered.
Lavigne said his client “immediately” disclosed the passport “wasn’t him.”
The Pakistani man then applied for asylum and gave his name as Jaweed Khan.
When Khan failed to appear in immigration court, he was ordered deported in February 1992.
His client also did not know about the removal order, said Lavigne.
“The government knew who he was and where he was going to be. … He doesn’t have anything to hide,” the attorney said.
As Parvez Manzoor Khan, Khan married a U.S. citizen, received permanent residency in 2001 and naturalization in 2006.
“He’s been paying taxes. He’s a taxpayer. He’s been working… which is exactly what we want immigrants to do. … [My client] has U.S. citizen children here. And they wait 25 years to do something to him?”
Once common practice
According to SCOTUS blog, a blog written about the Supreme Court, 50 years ago the Supreme Court put a stop to the government’s once-common practice of denaturalization, and in the process “redefin[ed] the country’s understanding of sovereignty and citizenship.”
Amanda Frost, a law professor American University Washington College of Law writing for the website, said through “much of the 20th century” government could end someone’s citizenship, either native-born or naturalized citizens, for a variety of reasons.
“Between 1907 and 1922, women who married foreign men automatically lost their citizenship, and the government could also denationalize U.S. citizens for voting in foreign elections or deserting from the armed forces. Naturalized citizens were at even greater risk,” Frost wrote.
But after a “series of decisions starting in the 1940s” the Supreme Court ended the practice.
In 1967, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote for the majority in the Afroyim v. Rusk and said, “In our country, the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship,” therefore it would be “completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.”
Since the 1967 case, SCOTUSblog reports that about 150 people have been denaturalized, most for committing fraud in the naturalization process.
The Singh case
In a January 5th 12-page decision, federal judge Stanley Chesler of the District of New Jersey granted the government’s request to revoke Baljinder Singh’s naturalization saying the government “has met its heavy burden in demonstrating, by clear and convincing evidence, that defendant’s naturalization was illegally procured.”
The judge said the U.S. Supreme Court has enumerated four requirements for denaturalization set by previous cases.
The government must show that the naturalized citizen misrepresented or concealed some facts, whether the misrepresentation or concealment was willful, whether the fact was material, and whether the naturalized citizen procured citizenship as a result of the misrepresentation or concealment.
Using the Supreme Court’s independent requirements, Chesler sided with the Justice Department saying Singh “deliberately” willfully misrepresented information when he was applying for his U.S. citizenship.
Chesler wrote: “Defendant did not disclose his previous arrival in the United States under a different name, his previous application for asylum, or the removal proceedings and ‘in absentia’ exclusion order against him.”
Singh did not respond to the complaint within the time allowed by law. There is no attorney information immediately available for him and he could not be immediately reached Thursday.
But Lavigne said, unlike Singh, his client plans to fight until the end. “We still have the right to a trial which we will attend as well,” he said.
Singh’s immigration status was reverted from U.S. citizen to lawful permanent resident. He could be subject to removal proceedings at the DHS’s discretion, according to the Justice Department.
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Technology Helps Save Endangered Species in Africa
According to a global authority on endangered wildlife, nearly one-third of more than 85,000 animal species are in danger of extinction, among them, African zebras and rhinos. Scientists and volunteer activists are increasingly using technology not only to keep them alive but also to support procreation. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Nigeria Women Bobsledding Team to Make History as First Africa Team at Winter Olympics
Bobsled and Nigeria are not two words typically used in the same sentence. But soon they will be heard together often. Bobsledders Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga will not be heading to February’s Winter Olympic Games just to be a “feel good” side story. They say they want to win something they can bring back to West Africa. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on the historic participation of the Nigerian bobsledding team in this year’s games.
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Marches Draw Hundreds of Thousands Across the US
Demonstrators gathered in cities across the United States, and around the world, to call for equal rights in pay and health care, to denounce sexual harassment and to encourage women to run for office. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, this year’s “Women’s March” isn’t just a protest. Organizers hope it’s a nationwide call to action.
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FACT CHECK: Trump Disdained Jobless Rate, Now Loves It
Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, would not like the way Trump, the president, is crowing about today’s unemployment rate. He’d be calling the whole thing a “hoax.”
Trump raised a red flag about declining jobless numbers during his campaign, denying President Barack Obama any credit. Trump noted that the jobless rate masks the true employment picture by leaving out the millions who have given up looking for work.
But Trump is seeing red no more. The same stats he assailed in 2015 and 2016 now are his proof of “fantastic,” “terrific” economic progress, for which he wants the credit.
That disconnect is part of why Trump’s statements about the economy this past week, some accurate on their face, fall short of the whole truth.
Trump also made the far-fetched claim that the economy is better than it has ever been. And in a week consumed with the dustup over a government shutdown, Trump’s doctor stepped forward with a testament to the president’s health that other physicians found to be too rosy.
A look at some recent remarks away from the din of the budget battle:
Black unemployment
TRUMP: “Black unemployment is the best it’s ever been in recorded history. It’s been fantastic. And it’s the best number we’ve had with respect to black unemployment. We’ve never seen anything even close.” — remarks from Oval Office Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Yes, the black unemployment rate of 6.8 percent is the lowest on record. No, it’s not far and away superior to any time in the past. In 2000, it was within 1 point of today’s record for six months, and as low 7 percent.
As Trump was quick to note as a candidate, the unemployment rate only measures people without jobs who are searching for work. Like other demographic groups, fewer African-Americans are working or looking for work than in the past. Just 62.1 percent of blacks are employed or seeking a job, down from a peak of 66.4 percent in 1999.
The black unemployment rate would be much higher if the rate of black labor force participation was near its levels before the Great Recession.
During the campaign, Trump claimed that real unemployment then was a soaring 42 percent. It’s not quite clear, but he could have been referring to the percentage of the U.S. population without jobs — a figure that includes retirees, stay-at-home parents and students. At the time, he considered the official jobless rate a “phony set of numbers … one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.”
Women’s unemployment
TRUMP: “We’re making incredible progress. The women’s unemployment rate hit the lowest level that it’s been in 17 years. Well, that’s something. And women in the workforce reached a record high. … That’s really terrific, and especially since it’s on my watch.” — at women’s event Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Again — yes, but. The 4 percent jobless rate for women is at a 17-year low, just as it is for the overall population. But the labor force participation rate by women is lower today than in 2000. The proportion of women in the workforce is not at a record high.
Overall economy
TRUMP: “Our country is doing very well. Economically, we’ve never had anything like it.” — from Oval Office on Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Never say never. The U.S. economy had better employment stats during the 2000 tech boom, for one example. It’s enjoyed stock market surges before. It’s had blazing, double-digit annual growth, a far cry from the 3.2 percent achieved during the second and third quarters of 2017. That was the best six-month pace since 2014 — hardly the best ever.
The economy added about 170,000 new jobs a month during Trump’s first year. That was slightly below the average of 185,000 in Obama’s last year.
Trump checkup
DR. RONNY JACKSON, White House physician, on his examination of Trump: “I think he’ll remain fit for duty for the remainder of this term and even for the remainder of another term if he’s elected. … His cardiac health is excellent.” — White House briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Physicians not connected with the White House have widely questioned that prediction of seven more years of healthy living and that conclusion about his heart. Cardiac functioning was indeed normal in the tests, according to the readings that were released. But Trump is borderline obese and largely sedentary, with a “bad” cholesterol reading above the norm despite taking medication for it. He’ll be 72 in June. It’s doubtful that most men that age with similar histories and findings would get such a glowing report from their doctors.
Trump has some things in his favor: “incredible genes, I just assume,” said his doctor, and no history of tobacco or alcohol use.
But “by virtue of his age and his gender and the fact he has high cholesterol and that he is in the overweight-borderline obese category, he is at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a primary care physician and professor of family medicine at Georgetown University. “The physician was saying, yes he’s in excellent health — but yes he does have risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Which is why the comment he will remain healthy for the remainder of his term makes little sense to me. How you can make that kind of assessment from a one-point-in-time examination? Just from those four factors he is at a higher risk.”
Trump’s LDL, the bad cholesterol, registered at 143, a number his doctor wants below 120.
Jackson also said Trump has nonclinical coronary atherosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries from plaque, which is a combination of calcium and cholesterol.
That’s common in people older than 65 and can be a silent contributor to coronary heart disease. Jackson’s conclusion was based on a coronary calcium score of 133, which Mishori called “a little bit concerning” because it could show mild coronary artery disease, although how to interpret these scores isn’t clear-cut. Jackson said he consulted a variety of cardiologists about that calcium score and the consensus was reassuring.
Abortion viewpoints
TRUMP: “Americans are more and more pro-life. You see that all the time. In fact, only 12 percent of Americans support abortion on demand at any time.” — remarks Friday to opponents of abortion rights.
THE FACTS: Neither side of the abortion debate is scoring breakaway support in public opinion research. Gallup said in conjunction with its poll in June: “The dispersion of abortion views today, with the largest segment of Americans favoring the middle position, is broadly similar to what Gallup has found in four decades of measurement.” In short, half said abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances,” identical to a year earlier, while 29 percent said it should be legal in all circumstances. The smallest proportion, 18 percent, said it should always be illegal.
Americans’ positions on abortion are sufficiently nuanced that both sides of the debate can find polling that supports their point of view. Polling responses on abortion are also highly sensitive to how the questions are asked.
But in the main, the public is not clamoring for abortion to be banned or to be allowed in all cases.
Trump’s claim that only 12 percent support abortion “on demand” may come from a Marist poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, which opposes abortion rights. In that poll, 12 percent said abortion should be “available to a woman any time during her entire pregnancy.”
Most polls have found that a distinct minority, though more than 12 percent, think the procedure should be legal in all cases. The percentage was 25 percent in an AP-NORC poll, 21 percent in a Quinnipiac poll, both done in December.
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Al-Qaida Affiliate Leader’s Top Aide Reportedly Killed in Tunisia
Tunisian security forces have killed a top aide of Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the leader of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an official source told Reuters on Saturday.
Tunisia has been on high alert since 2015, when Islamic State gunmen killed dozens of foreign tourists in a museum in the capital, Tunis, and on a beach in the resort city of Sousse.
Algerian Bilel Kobi was “the right arm of Abu Wadud” and was killed in an ambush near the Algerian border when on a mission to reorganize AQIM’s Tunisian branch following strikes by Tunisian forces against it, the source told Reuters.
Last year, Tunisian forces killed Islamist militants including Mourad Chaieb, the Algerian leader of Okba Ibn Nafaa, a group that has fought for years with security forces in Tunisia’s mountainous interior.
The country also faces a potential threat from Tunisian militants returning from abroad. More than 3,000 are thought to have left to fight for jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya over the past years.
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Migrants Stuck in Serbia Want to Move On
After traversing several countries en route to the rich West, Najibullah, a former policeman from the Afghan town of Kholm, his pregnant wife and four children, got stuck in Serbia.
Now they spend days of relative normalcy in a drab refugee camp in Krnjaca, an industrial area on the outskirts of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, hoping they will ultimately move to Germany where Najibullah, 30, has relatives.
If they get their wish, they would join more than a million other migrants who have arrived in Germany since 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and poverty.
Although lauded in some quarters, Merkel’s actions cost her politically in German elections in 2017, where the far right surged on anti-migrant sentiment. In that light, the challenges of migration remain high on the agendas of Western states, not least those gathering at Davos this month under the banner of “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World.”
The path many took to Germany, the so-called “Balkan route,” was shut in 2016 when Turkey agreed to stem the flow of people in return for EU aid and a promise of visa-free travel for its own citizens.
But migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia continued to arrive in Serbia, mainly from Turkey, via neighboring Bulgaria, attempting to enter the EU through bloc members Hungary and Croatia.
According to officials there are as many as 4,500 migrants in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say that hundreds of others are scattered in Belgrade and towns along Croatian and Hungarian borders.
In Krnjaca, Najibullah’s daughter Sonya, 8, started attending school and soon excelled in Serbian, enough to serve as an interpreter with her father in an interview on Tuesday.
“It is not bad here. I am going to school. I have good friends there — they invite me to parties. … My father wants to go to Germany. He has friends, a sister there,” Sonya said, pointing to Najibullah.
Sonya is one of 95 children in the Krnjaca camp who are currently attending 11 elementary schools in Belgrade. Their numbers vary as some families leave camps to enter Hungary and proceed further into Europe while others arrive.
Of the migrants who arrived in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, since mid-2015, many have struggled to find their feet in the labor market because of a language barrier or vocational skills. Germany needs skilled labor, given its aging population.
Last October, Merkel agreed to cap the number of refugees the country accepts at 200,000 annually, and Najibullah said he was hoping his family would be accepted.
“I hope I will find a job in Germany,” Najibullah said, according to Sonya’s translation.
In another prefabricated hut, built by the communist Yugoslavia for single factory workers, Marwan Ahman, an ethnic Kurd from the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, complained about the bland, canned food served to his family of four in camp’s kitchen.
Marwan, a civil engineer by education and a shopkeeper by trade, also said he had no plans to stay in Serbia, where living standards and wages lag far behind those in the EU, which it wants to join.
“I want to go to Germany to make a good future for my children and my family,” he said in Kurdish, through an interpreter.
“Look at this room — it has bunk beds and nothing else. This is not a good place for a family,” he said.
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Congressman Denies Allegation in Misconduct Claim He Settled
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan ordered an Ethics Committee investigation Saturday after The New York Times reported that Representative Patrick Meehan had used taxpayer money to settle a complaint stemming from his hostility toward a former aide who rejected his romantic overtures.
The story, published online Saturday, cites unnamed people who said the Republican Pennsylvania representative used thousands of dollars from his congressional office fund to settle the sexual harassment complaint the ex-aide filed last summer to the congressional Office of Compliance.
Ryan’s office said the allegations must be investigated “fully and immediately” by the House Ethics Committee and that Meehan should repay any taxpayer funds used to settle the case. Ryan’s office also said Meehan was being removed from the committee.
The Times did not identify the accuser and said she did not speak to the newspaper.
In a statement, the four-term congressman denied that he’d sexually harassed or mistreated the ex-aide. He also said he had asked congressional lawyers who handled the case to ask her lawyer to dissolve the settlement’s confidentiality requirements “to ensure a full and open airing of all the facts.”
“Throughout his career he has always treated his colleagues, male and female, with the utmost respect and professionalism,” says a statement from Meehan’s office. It does not say whether Meehan used taxpayer money to settle the case.
The accuser’s lawyer, Alexis Ronickher, rejected that. Ronickher said Meehan had demanded the confidentiality provisions and was trying to victimize her client twice by revealing the woman’s identity and litigating the case in the media.
She called it a “dirty political maneuver” and an effort to save his career by making it look as if he’s being transparent. She also called the allegations “well-grounded” and “a serious sexual harassment claim.”
Ronickher also said the Ethics Committee investigation must include the fact that Meehan “knowingly breached confidentiality in his agreement by discussing the case and the terms of any potential settlement agreement.”
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Leading US Feminist Thinkers Expect ‘Messy,’ Litigious 2018
Leading U.S. feminist thinkers from across the political spectrum are anticipating a tumultuous 2018 after last year’s groundswell of high-profile sexual harassment claims, which brought down major figures in the worlds of entertainment, business and politics.
Preparing to mark the one-year anniversary of the January 21 Women’s March, which some activists have described as the primary catalyst for changes that improved the lives of women in 2017, they say the #MeToo movement, while certain to continue, is at risk of fragmenting.
“If history is a guide, 2018 will be very messy,” third-wave feminist Jennifer Baumgardner said in a recent interview with VOA’s Albanian service. “Historically, when there is a big upswelling of feminism, it is quickly accompanied by splits and Balkanization.”
Although Baumgardner said she welcomed the new climate in which women feel free to speak out about sexual harassment, “I do think that a lot of these cases that are making the news feel very insincere to me because they are being deployed for partisan purposes.”
“Claims of harassment can be weaponized in our political system in the United States … because we have a highly polarized political climate right now, a kind of ‘any means necessary’ to get your person in office is being deployed,” said Baumgardner, former editor of the left-leaning feminist periodical Ms. and producer of the influential 2013 documentary It Was Rape.
Anticipating that some men are bound to bring wrongful-termination or defamation suits into the courts, Baumgardner also predicted a “boom year for lawyers and HR [human resources] professionals.”
Threat of ‘sex panic’
In November, Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute and author of books including Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys, published an op-ed piece in the New York Daily News warning that a “panic in the air … could ruin the #MeToo movement.”
“The #MeToo movement has already changed the workplace for the better,” she told VOA via email on Friday. “There is a new resolve to bring it up to 21st century standards of equity and respect. But this worthy reform effort could [still] easily devolve into a sex panic. Panics breed chaos and persecution — they don’t solve problems. We need clear rules and reasonable definitions. What we don’t need is a war on men or policies that treat every awkward flirtation or off-color remark as fireable offenses.”
Clear rules and reasonable definitions, she added, include things such as workplace leadership that insists on “civility and respect,” clear anti-harassment policies and reliable mechanisms for reporting bad behavior.
Despite historic victories of the American women’s movement, which Sommers called a “broad-based vehicle for social equality,” she described today’s feminism as a “take-no-prisoners special-interest group.”
“It sees the world as a zero-sum struggle between Venus and Mars. But most women want equality — not war,” she said. “Men aren’t their adversaries —they are their brothers, sons, husbands and friends. So, my advice to the organizers of the Women’s March: Tone down the rhetoric. The #MeToo moment just might change the world for the better — but only if men and women of good will work together.”
Nuchhi Currier, president of the Washington-based Woman’s National Democratic Club, seemed to echo that sentiment in a recent interview with VOA’s Russian service, in which she called for improved communication between men and women, and between different generations of the feminist movement itself.
Shifting political landscape
Predicting that “women are going to be the story for the next decade,” Currier also said, “I think politics is going to change completely.”
“Because we seem to have gone to such an extreme in this country, there are such deep fissures that have emerged between, say, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, that I don’t think it’s sustainable,” she said. “Even within the Democratic Party, there are fissures between the extreme progressive wing and the establishment wing, and if those fissures get wider and wider, that’s no solution for the country. It weakens the country.”
Unlike the suffragists who were sometimes forced to fight physically for the right to vote, contemporary feminists, she added, enjoy the relative privilege of battling in a mostly verbal context. Like their suffragist founders, however, their fight for fair and equitable treatment will be long.
“I don’t think today can compare to what [the suffragists] had to go through,” she said. “That activism, which actually led to women getting the right to vote, that was a very bloody time for women.”
Once suffragists secured the right to vote, Currier added, it marked only the first step of a much longer journey. “We still have very poor representation in government and in high-level professional office. Women are in the majority. It’s not that they don’t work. It’s just that they don’t get to high positions frequently enough, and they don’t get paid enough.
“There are always roadblocks in their progress toward the top,” she added. “And unless women are sitting in boardrooms and sitting in seats where they actually affect policy, nothing will ever change. Because there is always going to be exploitation. That’s part of human nature.”
This story originated in VOA’s Albanian service. Anush Avetisyan reports for VOA’s Russian service.
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Debate Resumes Amid US Government Shutdown
Democrats and Republicans showed few signs of agreement Saturday, just hours after a funding bill was blocked in the Senate, beginning a partial shutdown of the U.S. government. Spending authority expired at midnight Washington time, triggering a halt of nonessential functions.
Lawmakers are at odds over a range of military spending and immigration issues, including a legislative fix for nearly 800,000 undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children.
Senators resumed debate Saturday afternoon on a temporary spending bill that would fund the government through February 8. Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, however, objected to the approval of a continuing series of temporary spending bills, saying such a practice “simply kicks the can down the road and fails to get the job done for the American people.”
‘Looks like a mess’
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted Saturday afternoon, “I know it looks like a mess — but there are many senators of good will who want to solve the problem.” He thanked Democratic senators for their “commitment to hard work and finding solutions last night.”
The House of Representatives stayed in session Saturday in the event the Senate negotiated a new continuing resolution that would require another vote. But neither side appeared to be in agreement on the terms for negotiating a resolution.
“The president will not negotiate on immigration reform until Democrats stop playing games and reopen the government,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Saturday afternoon.
The White House and congressional Republicans blamed Democrats for what it called the “Schumer Shutdown” — named for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York — accusing them of valuing illegal immigrants ahead of lawful Americans.
“Mr. Schumer is going to have to up his game a little bit and be a little bit more honest with the president of the United States if we’re going to see progress on that front,” federal budget director Mick Mulvaney said in a White House briefing Saturday afternoon.
Different accounts
Schumer met with Trump Friday afternoon to try to avoid a shutdown. The two sides’ accounts differed about whether Schumer offered President Donald Trump Democratic support for funding a border wall in return for a legislative fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump has rescinded. The Obama-era program provided protection from deportation to young immigrants brought to this country illegally as children.
Federal agencies, meanwhile, prepared to idle employees and halt major portions of their operations.
Democrats backed three previous short-term spending extensions late last year while bipartisan negotiations went forward on immigration and spending priorities. Last week, Trump rejected a bipartisan Senate immigration proposal, throwing congressional negotiations into disarray.
The U.S. government has shut down before, including in 2013, in a partisan deadlock over health care policy and funding. The shutdown lasted 16 days and furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
your ad hereThousands of Women March for Equal Rights, in US, Around World
Thousands of women gathered in cities across the United States and around the world on the anniversary of the inauguration of President Donald Trump to call for equal rights in pay and health care, to denounce sexual harassment and to encourage women to run for office.
Marchers also addressed such issues as racial equality, gun control, immigrant protections and conservatives’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
Crowd estimates for the march in Washington were down from last year’s gathering. But marches also were taking place in New York; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Chicago; Denver, Colorado; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Palm Beach, Florida, where the president has a vacation home.
Registering to vote
Las Vegas is holding its rally on Sunday to coincide with a voter registration drive. Organizers of the drive are targeting states where Democrats and Republicans have about an equal chance of winning, and they’re hoping to register 1 million new voters.
The rallies were meant to follow up last year’s women’s march that took place immediately after Trump’s inauguration. Many women at that march indicated their opposition to the current president, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 19 women.
Trump tweeted Saturday about the march:
Over the past year, stories about unequal pay for women and sexual harassment by powerful men have come to the forefront of the national conversation. Dozens of men, including movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, NBC morning news host Matt Lauer, and Democratic Senator Al Franken, lost or resigned their jobs over allegations of sexual harassment.
Women also marched Saturday in Rome; Kampala, Uganda; Frankfurt, Germany; and Osaka, Japan, to protest sexual harassment. Marches were planned in Beijing; Buenos Aires and Nairobi, Kenya.
March for Life
On Friday, anti-abortion activists held their own march in Washington, an annual event known as March for Life. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke to the crowd via video from the White House Rose Garden.
“We are with you all the way,” Trump told the anti-abortion demonstrators. Pence told the crowd the president was “the most pro-life president in American history.”
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Ethiopia Should Release All Political Detainees, UN Says
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says it welcomes Ethiopia’s decision this week to release 115 detainees, including several leading political figures. But it says the government should free all those imprisoned for holding opposing opinions.
One of those freed Wednesday was Merera Gudina, a senior leader of the Oromo Federalist Congress party. Gudina was arrested in late 2015 and charged with collusion with groups outlawed by the Addis Ababa government.
The Ethiopian government imposed a state of emergency in October 2016. That followed deadly anti-government protests by the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups, who are pressing for greater freedom.
U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell told VOA that about 20,000 people were arrested during the state of emergency, which was lifted in August 2017. She said a number of people subsequently were released, but that the number of people still in detention remained high.
“That is why we are welcoming the moves by the government to start releasing people and we are welcoming the comments that the government and prime minister have made with regard to setting up reviews for people who can be released, also setting up task forces to look into reported killings,” she said.
Discontinued cases
Throssell said her office also welcomed the government’s decision to discontinue cases against 400 other detainees. However, she said she was concerned that certain categories of prisoners would not be eligible for release. These include people suspected of committing murder, causing injury, destroying infrastructure and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by force.
“We appreciate the seriousness of some of the offenses that may have been committed, but we urge the government to review these conditions to ensure that they are neither interpreted nor implemented too broadly, thereby resulting in people being arbitrarily or wrongfully detained,” she said.
The U.N. human rights office is calling on the Ethiopian government to bring its anti-terrorism legislation and laws regarding civil society and the media in line with international human rights law and principles.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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Kidnapped Americans, Canadians Released in Nigeria
Nigeria’s Kaduna state police command says two Americans and two Canadians kidnapped by gunmen on Tuesday have been released.
Police say the four were kidnapped along Kwoi-Jere road in the Kagarko local government area, Kaduna state.
The gunmen are reported by Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper to have killed two Nigerian policemen who were escorting the foreigners. Kidnappings for ransom are common on the road between Kaduna and Abuja. Two Germans were abducted in the region last February but were later freed.
A Sierra Leone diplomat and former head of the army, Nelson Williams, was kidnapped along the road in 2016 and held for five days before his release.
State Commissioner of Police Agyole Abeh said one suspect has been arrested in connection with the abduction. He said the kidnap victims were released early Saturday, following a “massive manhunt” by police.
Their names have not been released.
Abeh said police are still searching for the remaining suspects in an effort to arrest them and bring them to justice.
State police spokesman Mukhtar Aliyu told reporters that the kidnap victims have been taken to the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and are undergoing medical observation.
Both spokesmen said no ransom was paid.
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Turkey Aims Airstrikes at U.S.-backed Kurdish Group in Syria
Turkish warplanes have launched airstrikes against a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in the Syrian enclave of Afrin.
Turkey says the offensive, which was expected, struck more than 100 targets, including the city of Afrin itself. The city has several hundred thousand residents.
The airstrikes were aimed at positions occupied by the YPG Kurdish militia. Ankara accuses the militia of ties to the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the offensive before it began. He said it would “clear our land up to the Iraqi border” of what he called “terror filth that is trying to besiege our country.”
US forces
Erdogan warned that, after Afrin, the Turkish military would target the YPG in the Syrian city of Manbij, where U.S. forces are deployed.
The U.S. backs the YPG in its fight against Islamic State militants. Washington has announced the intention to create a security force in Syria in conjunction with the YPG. The announcement has provoked outrage in Turkey.
The Syrian government has condemned the Turkish airstrikes, calling them “aggression” and a “brutal attack.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Saturday. The State Department did not provide details on what was said.
Last week the U.S. government urged Turkey not to attack the YPG. Russia, too, has called for restraint. Moscow says it will defend Syria’s territorial integrity diplomatically.
Russia, UN also weigh in
The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday that it received the information about the airstrikes “with concern” and added it is closely monitoring the situation.
Russia repeated its position that the search for solutions be based on preserving Syria’s territorial integrity, respect for its sovereignty, and pursuing a long-term political settlement.
On Friday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the U.N. has seen the reports of shelling in Afrin and reiterates the call on all concerned parties to avoid further escalation and any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people.
“All parties must ensure protection of civilians at all times, under any circumstances,” he said.
Political solution in danger
Shahoz Hasan, head of Syria’s main Kurdish political party, told VOA Saturday that the Turkish operation could get in the way of a political solution in Syria.
He said the people of Afrin were among those who helped defeat Islamic State militants in Syria. He said the world now needs to look after the people of Afrin.
VOA’s Turkish service contributed to this report.
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Russia Probe Dogs Trump’s First Year in Office
If there is one single word that has dogged and defined Donald Trump’s presidency, it is Russia. Several congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Trump campaign contacts with Moscow, focusing this week on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. VOA White House correspondent Peter Heinlein has a look at how Trump’s relationship with Russia, and the Kremlin’s role in his election, has hung over every moment of his first year in office.
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