The World Trade Organization is being slowly strangled to death, a retiring trade judge whose replacement has been blocked by the United States said in his farewell speech, delivering a thinly-veiled rebuke to the Donald Trump administration.

Ricardo Ramirez-Hernandez served two terms as a judge on the WTO’s Appellate Body, which acts as the final court for trade disputes between countries. Since his departure last year, the United States has been blocking the process to replace him and other judges, throwing the WTO into crisis.

“This institution does not deserve to die through asphyxiation,” Ramirez-Hernandez said. “You have an obligation to decide whether you want to kill it or keep it alive.”

In a speech introducing Ramirez-Hernandez, WTO Deputy Director-General Karl Brauner said there was “no movement in sight” to unblocking appointments.

“This is frightening,” he said, adding that it was an illusion to believe the WTO could manage without its appeals judges. It remained to be seen if the WTO was an achievement of civilization or only a temporary experiment, he added.

Founded in 1995

The Geneva-based World Trade Organization, founded in 1995, is the final arbiter for trade disputes between its 164 member economies and the main global forum for discussing trade.

Its appellate body normally has seven members, but because of the Trump administration’s veto on new hires, only four of the posts are now filled. One judge is due for reappointment in September and two are due to leave next year.

Three judges are needed to hear any case, which means the court will cease to function altogether next year unless Trump lifts his refusal to fill vacancies.

‘Unfair’ treatment

Trump and his trade advisers take a tough and unorthodox line on what they see as “unfair” treatment by the trade body.

Ramirez-Hernandez did not point fingers directly at any particular country for the crisis, saying all WTO members were responsible for dealing with problems.

“It seems to me that the crisis we now face could have been avoided if it had been addressed face-on, as it began to escalate,” he said.
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President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plan to hold face-to-face discussions before a planned summit between Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.

“We agreed to meet before the U.S.-North Korea summit,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo following his Monday telephone call with Trump. 

In the call, Trump and Abe also “affirmed the shared imperative of achieving the complete and permanent dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missile programs,” according to a White House statement.  

Both Trump and Abe are set to attend the Group of Seven economic summit June 8-9 in Canada, but the two may meet at the White House prior to that, according to officials in Washington and Tokyo. 

The two leaders spoke Monday as American officials were in North Korea and Singapore to discuss arrangements for the prospective talks.

The phone conversation took place before Trump went to Arlington National Cemetery for a Memorial Day ceremony. There, the president made no reference to the situation on the Korean peninsula in his 22-minute scripted remarks.

Nearly 34,000 Americans died as a result of hostile action in the three-year war on the peninsula. Hostilities ceased in 1953 with an armistice but no peace treaty has ever been signed.

It is unclear when or where Trump and Abe will meet before the anticipated Singapore summit, which the U.S. president has said in recent days is likely to occur on June 12 after he declared last Thursday that the summit would not be held on that day.

Both Trump and Abe are set to attend the Group of Seven economic summit June 8-9 in Canada.

U.S. and North Korean officials met again Monday at the Korean demilitarized zone.

Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and former envoy to South Korea, is leading the U.S. delegation at the preparation talks.Reports say the meetings are expected to last until Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and others from theadministration took a flight Sunday to Singapore. 

“They traveled to Singapore to focus on logistics preparations,” a White House official confirmed to VOA News on Monday.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in could also be going to Singapore next month for a three-way summit with his U.S. and North Korean counterparts next month, a government official in Seoul said on Monday.

After a surprise meeting Saturday between Kim and Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president said the North Korean leader is still committed to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula. 

The U.S. has called for “complete, verifiable and irreversible” dismantling of the Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea has rejected unilateral disarmament and called for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula without defining what that entails.

For Kim “denuclearization can’t be a one-sided event that he’s giving some stuff up and not getting some comparable U.S. action,” according to Bruce Bennett senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation research group.

There could be division under Kim within North Korea’s hierarchy about the diplomatic approach to the Americans, according to Bennet.

“Kim Jong Un has been anxious for a long time, and his father before him, to meet with the U.S. president and develop the appearance for internal political purposes that he’s the peer of the American president.The nuclear weapons give him the feeling that he should be able to do that now,” Bennett tells VOA. 

Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CBS News said Sunday he is “not very optimistic” that Kim will agree to abandon his atomic arsenal. “These nuclear weapons are something he’s psychologically attached to.They are what gives him his prestige and importance.”

WATCH: Trump Holds Washington in Suspense Over North Korean Summit​

A former U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, also on CBS, expressed concern Pyongyang may demand the removal or scaling back of American troops in South Korea in exchange for denuclearization.

The North Koreans, after expressing initial enthusiasm about diplomacy with the United States, earlier this month did not show up for a preparatory meeting in Singapore, threatened to use nuclear force, and referred to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy.”

Pence had remarked that North Korea could wind up like Libya – a country mired in chaos since it gave up its nuclear ambitions and saw its longtime dictator killed years later by U.S.-backed rebels. 

But North Korean state media subsequently reported on Kim’s “fixed will” that a summit with Trump should go ahead.

During Moon and Kim’s second border meeting Saturday the two leaders exchanged views on how to prepare for the North’s possible summit with Trump. 

“It was like an ordinary encounter between friends,” Moon told reporters.“What’s uncertain for Kim is not his intention to denuclearize, but the U.S. stance in hostile relations with North Korea and whether the U.S. can really secure and guarantee his regime.”

VOA’s Ira Mellman contributed to this report.
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As they fight allegations that Connecticut FBI agents retaliated against employees for whistleblowing, federal government officials are refusing to release details of a legal settlement with a special agent and asking a judge to throw out another employee’s lawsuit.

Special Agent Kurt Siuzdak’s lawsuit, filed in 2014, exposed allegations of internal strife and dysfunction within the FBI’s main Connecticut office in New Haven. It also disclosed a 2013 visit to the New Haven office by then-Director James Comey, who apologized to employees for “the failure of the FBI’s executive management to correct the leadership failures” in Connecticut.

Siuzdak’s lawsuit was reported settled in court documents filed in March, but the FBI and Justice Department have declined to release the details and rejected recent requests under public records laws by The Associated Press for a copy of the deal. Officials would say only that there was no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement.

Federal officials are now battling another lawsuit by a second New Haven FBI employee, electronics technician Omar Montoya, according to court documents obtained by the AP. Montoya alleges the retaliation against him included his supervisors falsely labeling him an “insider threat” to the FBI, which sparked an investigation, and authorizing unwarranted surveillance of him.

Siuzdak and Montoya have declined to comment on the lawsuits, which were filed in federal court.

Officials at FBI headquarters in Washington and Patricia Ferrick, the special agent in charge of the New Haven office since 2013, also declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Thomas Spina, an assistant U.S. attorney representing the New Haven FBI office, said Justice Department policy prevented him from commenting on pending litigation and releasing details of settlements with employees. In court documents, federal officials denied the allegations in both lawsuits.

“We take the allegations seriously,” Spina said.

Montoya sued the FBI, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray in September. He said Ferrick and other supervisors began a campaign of retaliation against him after he began helping Siuzdak with Siuzdak’s internal complaint against Ferrick and other officials for alleged discrimination and retaliation. Montoya was Siuzdak’s volunteer equal employment opportunity affairs counselor.

Siuzdak, a 21-year FBI veteran, sued the Justice Department on allegations that Ferrick and her predecessor, Kimberly Mertz, blocked his pursuit of several management positions and started baseless internal investigations against him after he reported alleged workplace time and attendance fraud.

Montoya, an Army veteran hired by the FBI in 2010, said the retaliation and harassment against him began shortly after he interviewed Ferrick and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Kevin Kline in April 2015 as part of Siuzdak’s internal complaint, according to his lawsuit.

Montoya also had reported alleged abuse of power in the New Haven office to national FBI officials, which he said upset New Haven FBI leaders.

He said FBI New Haven officials authorized unnecessary surveillance of him, gave him bogus bad performance reviews and threatened to fire him on false allegations of attendance policy violations.

His lawsuit also said officials caused a “fraudulent and frivolous `insider threat’ investigation” to be started against him, by labeling him as someone who posed a “physical, terrorist, intelligence, or other security risk to the FBI.”

He said the stress from the retaliation and harassment caused health problems that made him miss work.

“He was discriminated and/or retaliated against and subjected to a hostile work environment because of his participation in civil rights,” Montoya’s lawsuit says.

In court documents, federal prosecutors denied Montoya’s allegations and asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May will urge U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid protesters in central London during his UK visit in July and instead meet her at her country residence, the Sun newspaper reported on Sunday.

The details of the plan will be given to the White House by Kim Darroch, British ambassador to the United States, the report said.

There are two proposals that will be made to the White House by Darroch upon May’s approval – one for a Downing Street visit or one based at Chequers, a 16th-century manor house 60 km (40 miles) northwest of London – the report said, citing a source, who added it would be made clear that May prefers the meeting take place at Chequers.

Trump will also be asked to have tea with Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, a royal residence west of London and not at Buckingham Palace, according to the report.

Darroch will suggest to the White House that Trump does not visit Britain’s houses of parliament, the Sun reported.

May’s office was not immediately available for comment. Trump will travel to Britain in July for a working visit with May, after months of back-and-forth over when the U.S. president would visit what traditionally has been the United States’ closest ally.

Many Britons have vowed to stage protests if Trump visits, with several politicians having previously voiced their opposition to Trump being granted a state visit.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said earlier in the year Trump was not welcome in London because of what he called Trump’s “divisive agenda”.

Trump cancelled a trip to London to open a new embassy earlier in the year. May was the first international leader to visit Trump in Washington after his inauguration last year.

 
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Leaders of a tribal executive board in Montana are asking U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for help battling meth addiction in their community.

The Billings Gazette reports that Zinke met with the executive board of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes on Sunday.

Fort Peck Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure told Zinke that law enforcement for the county and the tribe cannot keep up with the issues meth addiction has caused. For example, he blamed meth addiction in families for most of the children entering foster care.

Some board members suggested that a drug treatment center on the reservation would help.

Zinke says the Interior Department has focused on treatment of drug addiction for mothers and grandmothers, hoping it will have a broad impact on families and the community.

 
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Two U.S. Navy warships sailed near South China Sea islands claimed by China on Sunday, two U.S. officials told Reuters, in a move that drew condemnation from Beijing as President Donald Trump seeks its continued cooperation on North Korea.

The operation was the latest attempt to counter what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to limit freedom of navigation in the strategic waters.

While this operation had been planned months in advance, and similar operations have become routine, it comes at a particularly sensitive time and just days after the Pentagon uninvited China from a major U.S.-hosted naval drill.

The U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Higgins guided-missile destroyer and the Antietam, a guided-missile cruiser, came within 12 nautical miles of the Paracel Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.

The U.S. military vessels carried out maneuvering operations near Tree, Lincoln, Triton and Woody islands in the Paracels, one of the officials said.

‘Freedom of navigation’

Critics of the operations, known as a “freedom of navigation,” have said that they have little impact on Chinese behavior and are largely symbolic.

The U.S. military has a long-standing position that its operations are carried out throughout the world, including in areas claimed by allies, and that they are separate from political considerations.

Satellite photographs taken on May 12 showed China appeared to have deployed truck-mounted surface-to-air missiles or anti-ship cruise missiles at Woody Island.

Earlier this month, China’s air force landed bombers on disputed islands and reefs in the South China Sea as part of a training exercise in the region, triggering concern from Vietnam and the Philippines.

‘Routine’

The U.S. military did not directly comment on Sunday’s operation, but said U.S. forces operate in the region daily.

“We conduct routine and regular Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs), as we have done in the past and will continue to do in the future,” U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

China’s Defense Ministry expressed its anger, saying it had sent ships and aircraft to warn the U.S. warships to leave, saying they had entered the country’s territorial waters without permission.

The move “contravened Chinese and relevant international law, seriously infringed upon Chinese sovereignty (and) harmed strategic mutual trust between the two militaries,” it said. In a separate statement, China’s Foreign Ministry urged the United States to stop such actions.

“China will continue to take all necessary measures to defend the country’s sovereignty and security,” it added, without elaborating.

Contested sea

Pentagon officials have long complained that China has not been candid enough about its rapid military build-up and using South China Sea islands to gather intelligence in the region.

In March, a U.S. Navy destroyer carried out a “freedom of navigation” operation close to Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands.

Chinese officials have accused Washington of viewing their country in suspicious, “Cold War” terms.

China’s claims in the South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in shipborne trade passes each year, are contested by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The United States has said it would like to see more international participation in freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea.

 
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High-ranking military officials from the U.S., France and Germany have taken part in Memorial Day ceremonies at an American cemetery in northern France to mark the centennial of the battle of Belleau Wood, a turning point in World War I and a key moment in Marine Corps history.

The ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in the village of Belleau on Sunday included speeches by military officials, including Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, prayers, wreath laying, reading of poems and the national anthems of the three countries.

A crowd of more than 5,000 attended the event celebrating the fierce and deadly monthlong battle considered as the first major engagement of U.S. troops in the war, especially Marines whose bravery helped the Allied Forces win in Belleau.

 
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A flood of lawsuits over LGBT rights is making its way through courts and will continue, no matter the outcome in the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in the case of a Colorado baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Courts are engaged in two broad types of cases on this issue, weighing whether sex discrimination laws apply to LGBT people and also whether businesses can assert religious objections to avoid complying with anti-discrimination measures in serving customers, hiring and firing employees, providing health care and placing children with foster or adoptive parents.

The outcome of baker Jack Phillips’ fight at the Supreme Court could indicate how willing the justices are to carve out exceptions to anti-discrimination laws; that’s something the court has refused to do in the areas of race and sex.

The result was hard to predict based on arguments in December. But however the justices rule, it won’t be their last word on the topic.

Boost from Trump

Religious conservatives have gotten a big boost from the Trump administration, which has taken a more restrictive view of LGBT rights and intervened on their side in several cases, including Phillips’.

“There is a constellation of hugely significant cases that are likely to be heard by the court in the near future and those are going to significantly shape the legal landscape going forward,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Several legal disputes are pending over wedding services, similar to the Phillips case. Video producers, graphic artists and florists are among business owners who say they oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds and don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. They live in the 21 states that have anti-discrimination laws that specifically include gay and lesbian people.

In California and Texas, courts are dealing with lawsuits over the refusal of hospitals, citing religious beliefs, to perform hysterectomies on people transitioning from female to male. In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the state’s practice of allowing faith-based child placement agencies to reject same-sex couples.

Stark differences

Advocates of both sides see the essence of these cases in starkly different terms.

“What the religious right is asking for is a new rule specific to same-sex couples that would not only affect same-sex couples but also carve a hole in nondiscrimination laws that could affect all communities,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, which supports civil rights for LGBT people.

Jim Campbell of the Christian public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom said the cases will determine whether “people like Jack Phillips who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman, that they too have a legitimate place in public life. Or does he have to hide or ignore those beliefs when he’s participating in the public square?” ADF represents Phillips at the Supreme Court.

Civil rights complaints

The other category of cases concerns protections for LGBT people under civil rights law. One case expected to reach the court this summer involves a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee who disclosed that she was transitioning from male to female and dressed as a woman.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal civil rights law. That court is one of several that have applied anti-sex discrimination provisions to transgender people, but the Supreme Court has yet to take up a case.

The funeral home argues in part that Congress was not thinking about transgender people when it included sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A trial judge had ruled for the funeral home, saying it was entitled to a religious exemption from the civil rights law.

“Congress has not weighed in to say sex includes gender identity. We should certainly make sure that’s a conscious choice of Congress and not just the overexpansion of the law by courts,” Campbell said. ADF also represents the funeral home.

In just the past week, two federal courts ruled in favor of transgender students who want to use school facilities that correspond to their sexual identity. Those cases turn on whether the prohibition on sex discrimination in education applies to transgender people. Appeals in both cases are possible.

In the past 13 months, federal appeals courts in Chicago and New York also have ruled that gay and lesbian employees are entitled to protection from discrimination under Title VII. Those courts overruled earlier decisions. Title VII does not specifically mention sexual orientation, but the courts said it was covered under the ban on sex bias.

Trump changes course

The Obama administration had supported treating LGBT discrimination claims as sex discrimination, but the Trump administration has changed course. In the New York case, for instance, the Trump administration filed a legal brief arguing that Title VII was not intended to provide protections to gay workers. It also withdrew Obama-era guidance to educators to treat claims of transgender students as sex discrimination.

There is no appeal pending or expected on the sexual orientation issue, and there is no guarantee that the court will take up the funeral home’s appeal over transgender discrimination.

Changes on the court

The trend in the lower courts has been in favor of extending civil rights protections to LGBT employees and students. Their prospects at the Supreme Court may be harder to discern, not least because it’s unclear whether the court’s composition will change soon.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, has been the subject of retirement speculation, though he has not indicated he is planning to retire. When Justice Stephen Breyer turns 80 in August, he will join Kennedy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, as octogenarians on the bench.

If President Donald Trump were to replace any of those justices, the court probably would be much less receptive to LGBT rights. Even the landmark gay marriage ruling in 2015 that Kennedy wrote was a 5-4 decision.

“We’re very concerned about the composition of the federal bench. Under the Trump administration, we’ve seen a number of federal nominees who have been ideologues, who have taken positions about the very right to exist of LGBT people that is simply inconsistent with fitness to serve as a federal judge,” Taylor of Lambda Legal said.

The ADF’s Campbell said even with the current justices, he holds out some hope that the court would not extend anti-discrimination protections. 

“Justice Kennedy has undoubtedly been the person who has decided the major LGBT cases, but to my knowledge he hasn’t weighed in some of these other issues,” he said.
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