Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, has been referred to the U.S. Treasury Department for possible sanctions violations tied to his recent trip to Venezuela for a meeting with a top aide of President Nicolas Maduro, two senior U.S. officials said.There’s no indication that Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, will be sanctioned for the meeting last month in Caracas with Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 27, 2019.But the fact the visit was flagged underscores the concern of officials in the Trump administration over what appeared to be an unauthorized diplomatic outreach to Maduro. This, as support for opposition leader Juan Guaido inside Venezuela — if not Washington — appears to be waning.The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Little has been revealed about Prince’s surprise trip to Caracas last month. But the mere presence in Venezuela of a businessman with longstanding ties to the U.S. national security establishment prompted questions about whether he was there to open a secret back channel to Maduro on behalf of the Trump administration, something the State Department has strenuously denied. It also marks something of a reversal for Prince, who earlier in 2019 was thought to have been pitching a plan to form a mercenary army to topple Maduro.A person familiar with Prince’s visit said he had been asked to travel to Venezuela by an unidentified European businessman with longstanding ties to the oil-rich nation. The person said Prince did not discuss any business nor receive anything of value during his trip — actions that would’ve violated U.S. financial sanctions on Maduro’s socialist government.The purpose of the trip was to meet key players in the crisis-wracked nation, not to serve as an emissary for the Trump administration, according to the person, who isn’t authorized to discuss the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity.The person said Prince, a former Navy SEAL, continues to support the Trump administration’s goal of removing Maduro but believes State Department efforts to reach that goal have failed and new alternatives — which the person did not specify — need to be tried.Before traveling, Prince notified the National Security Council and Treasury Department about his plans and received no objections, the person said.In a statement, Prince’s attorney didn’t provide any details about the trip or whom his client may have alerted in the U.S. government.“Before traveling to Venezuela as a private citizen, Erik Prince received clear legal guidance, which he scrupulously followed,” Matthew Schwartz said in the statement. “There is nothing unlawful about simply visiting Venezuela and participating in non-business discussions, which is all that Mr. Prince did. We would be better served by focusing on measures that might actually restore peace and prosperity to Venezuela rather than worrying about who paid a visit to whom.”Neither the National Security Council nor the Treasury Department responded to a request for comment.Rodriguez is a key aide to Maduro and also one of more than 100 Venezuelan government insiders who have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. In addition, the Trump administration this year has imposed sweeping sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and a ban on U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with the Maduro administration.While in Caracas, Prince also met members of the opposition, although the person familiar with his trip declined to say whom.FILE – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, gestures as he speaks during an extraordinary session of Venezuela’s National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 17, 2019.An aide to Juan Guaido said no such meeting with anyone in the opposition took place. But the aide was unable to provide the same assurances for a small faction of minority parties that recently split from Guaido and initiated negotiations with Maduro that the U.S. considers a time-wasting sideshow.A year after the U.S. recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was fraudulent, the 36-year-old lawmaker is under increasing pressure from friends and foes alike to articulate a fresh vision for unseating the socialist leader, who has grown more confident as the economy stabilizes under a flood of black-market U.S. dollars.Another person familiar with the visit said Prince, in his late November dinner at Rodriguez’s home, urged the release of six executives of Houston-based Citgo held for more than two years on what are widely seen as trumped-up corruption charges. Two weeks later, the six men — five of them dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizens — were granted house arrest. The person also spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities surrounding the trip.Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela, said Dec. 20 that Prince was not a messenger for the U.S. government, nor was the U.S. engaging in any secret talks with Maduro.“I have yet to find an American official who says he or she was briefed by Mr. Prince, and I have asked,” Abrams told a press briefing. “So, I don’t know if he briefed an American official, and if so, who it was.”Prince has been accused of acting as a back channel on behalf of Trump before. In 2017, he met with an official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles, islands off the coast of east Africa. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation said the meeting was set up ahead of time with the knowledge of former White House aide Stephen Bannon.Prince soared to notoriety after Blackwater employees in 2007 shot and killed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square during the Iraq war. After the scandal the company’s name was changed and Prince sold his shares to a private equity fund. Today he heads a private equity fund focused on investments in emerging markets.
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Month: December 2019
NYPD: Times Square Safest Place on Earth for New Year’s Eve
New York City’s counterterrorism czar expects Times Square to be “the safest place on the planet Earth” on New Year’s Eve.Thousands of police officers will be on duty for Tuesday night’s festivities, along with specialized units armed with long guns, bomb-sniffing dogs and other measures.For the first time, police drones are expected to keep watch over the big, confetti-filled celebration — a year late after rain grounded the department’s unmanned eye-in-the-sky last year.This year’s forecast calls for some clouds, but no rain and none of the bitter cold that iced out spectators two years ago.The NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, John Miller, said stacking various security tools and techniques gives police “multiple chances to catch something coming through.””Times Square is probably going to be the safest place on the planet Earth on New Year’s Eve because nobody else puts that kind of effort into an event like this,” Miller said.FILE – The “air worthiness” of confetti is tested by Planet Fitness, in partnership with Times Square Alliance, prior to Times Square’s New Year’s Eve 2020 celebration in New York City, Dec. 29, 2019.Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said there are no specific, credible threats to the event, which brings hundreds of thousands of people to midtown Manhattan and attracts millions of TV viewers. Post Malone, BTS and Alanis Morissette are scheduled to perform on stages in the heart of Times Square.Shea said spectators should feel safe but encouraged them to remain vigilant and to alert an officer or call a police hotline if they feel something is amiss.”This is going to be one of the most well-policed, well-protected celebrations in the entire world and we’ll have another safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve,” Shea said.Safety measuresStreets in and around Times Square will be closed to car traffic hours before the ball drops and police cars and sand-filled sanitation trucks will be positioned to stop vehicles from driving into the crowd.Everyone showing up for the confetti-filled festivities should expect to be wanded with metal detectors before being ushered to one of 65 viewing pens set up around Times Square to prevent overcrowding.Backpacks, chairs and coolers are banned, as well as personal drones. And don’t think about popping champagne or lifting a Maddog 20/20 to ring in 2020. The NYPD says alcohol is strictly prohibited.There aren’t any bathrooms, and anyone leaving won’t be allowed back to their original spot.Some revelers are sure to end up featured on Ryan Seacrest’s “Rockin’ Eve” broadcast, especially if they’re wearing those kitschy “2020” glasses, but there’s a good chance everyone in Times Square will be caught on one camera or another.Police will be monitoring more than 1,000 security cameras, along with feeds from police helicopters and the drones.Several of the NYPD’s drones are equipped with thermal-imaging and 3D-mapping capabilities and strong camera lenses that can greatly magnify a subject.Since last year’s New Year’s Eve rainout, they’ve been used at other big events in the city, such as the Women’s March and St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
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Experts: N. Korea’s ‘Christmas Gift’ Might Come Another Day
North Korea’s “Christmas gift” might be still to come as Pyongyang is likely to ramp up military tensions and the threats of missile launches to gain concessions from the U.S., said experts, as tensions heighten on the Korean peninsula.”I think we would be a bit premature in saying that North Korea did not deliver a ‘Christmas gift,'” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp. research center, adding that the North Korean leader “could still commit a provocation of some kind in the coming days and call it a ‘Christmas gift.'”Although North Korea has not sent a “Christmas gift” it warned of earlier in December, the U.S. is continuing to monitor actively for any signs of provocations on the Korean peninsula amidst concerns that it would launch a long-range missile.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks with reporters at the State Department, Nov. 26, 2019 in Washington.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the U.S. is “watching what [the North Koreans] are doing here in the closing days of this year.”The U.S. has intensified its surveillance on North Korea for several weeks by sending aFILE – National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien, right, talks with White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney during a meeting in New York, Sept. 23, 2019.Pyongyang made the warning about the “gift” as it issued a series of ultimatums that demanded the U.S. change its negotiating stance in denuclearization talks by the end of the year. Otherwise, Pyongyang said it will seek a “new way.”At a ruling Workers’ Party meeting on Sunday, People watch a TV screen showing a file image of a ground test of North Korea’s rocket engine during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 9, 2019.North Korea conducted 13 missile tests since May and twice tested rocket engines earlier in December that experts believe are for long-range missiles.”What Kim Jong Un is trying to do is to be able to operate within that gray zone, where he can conduct provocations without crossing any red line,” said David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel and current fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The U.S. has not publicly stated what the red line is, but experts think testing a nuclear weapon or a long-range missile could draw a strong U.S. action.A kind of North Korean provocation that Maxwell said will certainly prompt the U.S. to take a military counteraction against the country would be testing a nuclear tipped long-range missile.”If [the North Koreans] demonstrate that they can put a nuclear weapon on an ICBM, that completely changes the calculus,” said Maxwell.He continued, “If they were able to do that, what that means is that we would have to assume every future ICBM launch could have a nuclear weapon on it and could target the United States. And then we would have to consider conducting a preemptive strike to defend the United States from a nuclear attack.” Aside from testing missiles, North Korea could raise other kinds of threats using its military, according to Maxwell.”I think they will use the military as part of their tools for provocations when they deem it necessary and productive from a North Korean strategic perspective,” said Maxwell.After conducting its second test in December, Pak Jong Chon, chief of the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army, on Dec. 14, said, “Our army is fully ready to thoroughly carry out any decision of the Supreme Leader [Kim] with action.” Pak said earlier in December that North Korea could use its military force against the U.S. as “the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only.” The statement was made in reaction to Trump’s remarks of using possible military forces against North Korea. On Dec. 3, Trump said, “We have the most powerful military we’ve ever had.” He continued, “And hopefully, we don’t have to use it. But if we do, we’ll use it.”U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participate in a round table meeting during a NATO leaders meeting, Dec. 4, 2019.North Korea held a military meeting on Dec. 22 to discuss “military steps to bolster up the overall armed force of the country.” Kim guided the meeting. The kinds of military threats Maxwell said North Korea could raise include large-scale maneuver exercises along the inter-Korean border of the demilitarized zone. It could also carry out artillery firing and military buildup of islands north of an inter-Korean maritime demarcation line in the West Sea.”All of those are indications of things that could take place from a conventional military perspective, again, to raise tensions, and use provocations to gain political and economic concessions,” said Maxwell. In November, Kim Jong Un ordered his troops to practice artillery drills on the inter-Korean border island of Changrin. Back in 2010, North Korea fired artillery shots from the same island at a South Korean island, killing four people. John Bolton, left, and others attend an extended bilateral meeting between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, in Hanoi, Vietnam Feb. 28, 2019.Kim’s goal of raising provocations is to extract sanctions relief from the U.S., according to Maxwell, who said Kim is believed to be under increasing pressure from his regime after the failed February summit in Hanoi where Trump denied Kim’s demand for sanctions relief.”Kim Jong Un, I think, is under a lot of pressure because he has failed to get sanctions relief,” said Maxwell. “He feels he has to do something and try to force the United States to make concessions.” If pressure coming from his government threatens his leadership, Bennett said Kim could take the drastic action of launching an attack against South Korea.”If [Kim] thinks he’s about to be overthrown by his military or security service, he may decide to go to war in an effort to rally everyone behind him,” said Bennett. “If the North decided to do something like that, the North Korean regime is probably in trouble already, facing internal problems because they would be taking a serious risk.”
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CIA Devised Way to Restrict Missiles Given to Allies, Researcher Says
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has devised technology to restrict the use of anti-aircraft missiles after they leave American hands, a researcher said, a move that experts say could persuade the United States that it would be safe to disseminate powerful weapons more frequently.The new technology is intended for use with shoulder-fired missiles called Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS), Dutch researcher Jos Wetzels told a cybersecurity conference in Leipzig, Germany on Saturday. Wetzels said the system was laid out in a batch of CIA documents published by WikiLeaks in 2017 but that the files were mislabeled and attracted little public attention until now.Wetzels said the CIA had come up with a “smart arms control solution” that would restrict the use of missiles “to a particular time and a particular place.” The technique, referred to as “geofencing,” blocks the use of a device outside a specific geographic area.Weapons that are disabled when they leave the battlefield could be an attractive feature. Supplied to U.S. allies, the highly portable missiles can help win wars, but they have often been lost, sold, or passed to extremists.For example, Stinger MANPADS supplied by the United States are credited with helping mujahedeen rebels drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in a conflict that spanned the 1980s and 1990s. But U.S. officials have since spent billions of dollars to clear the missiles from the country — and from other conflict zones around the worldWetzels said it was unclear whether the CIA’s design ever left the drawing board or where it was meant to have been deployed, but he noted that the apparent period of development in the documents’ metadata — 2014 to 2015 — roughly coincided with media reports about the deployment of MANPADS to rebels in Syria. Geofencing might have been seen as a way of ensuring the missiles were used on the Syrian battlefield and nowhere else, he said.The CIA declined to comment.Outside experts who reviewed Wetzels’ analysis said they found it plausible.N.R. Jenzen-Jones, who directs the British-based ARES intelligence consultancy, said geofencing has long been discussed as a safeguard to allow powerful weapons “into the hands of friendly forces operating in high-risk environments.”Wetzels said geofencing was no panacea, running through a list of security vulnerabilities that could be used by insurgents to bypass the restrictions.”It’s not a watertight solution,” he said.
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Spain: Socialists Pin Future Government on Catalan’s Release
Spain’s state attorney called Monday for an imprisoned Catalan politician to be allowed to be sworn in as a member of the European Union parliament, a step that could ease the way for a center-left governing alliance to take office in the country.The European Union’s top court ruled this month that Oriol Junqueras, who served as Catalonia’s vice president until 2017, had the right to parliamentary immunity when he was elected to the bloc’s parliament in May, when he was already on trial.In response to the ruling, the Spanish state attorney’s office on Monday said that Junqueras should be allowed to leave prison to take his seat. But it said that a request should be made immediately for the European Parliament to drop the separatist politician’s immunity, so that he would serve the 13-year prison term for his role in a secession bid two years ago.The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in coming days.FILE – Spain’s Socialist leader and acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a rally to mark the kick off his campaign ahead of the general election in Seville, Spain, Oct. 31, 2019.Junqueras remains the leader of the Catalan ERC party, whose 13 lawmakers’ abstention from the 350-seat Congress of Deputies would allow the Socialists of caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the anti-austerity United We Can (Unidas Podemos) to form a minority coalition government after months of political impasse in Spain.The state attorney’s move could lead ERC to abstain from the confidence vote, expected as soon as next week. ERC has said it will make its final decision in a party meeting next week.Governing agreementIn a further sign of an impending end to the political deadlock, Sanchez and United We Can leader Pablo Iglesias were set to announce later on Monday their governing agreement, a 50-page document outlining more taxes for high-earning individuals and companies, plans to water down a labor reform passed in 2012 at the height of the financial crisis, as well as increases to spending on social policies.FILE – Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias speaks during a plenary session at Parliament in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 11, 2019.They also plan to roll back a national security law passed by a previous conservative government and increase the minimum wage, which stands at 1,050 euros (1,176 dollars), according to Spanish daily El Pais, which obtained a copy of the document.Spanish laws allow minority governments to be formed as long as they receive more votes in favor than against in the parliament’s lower house. But even with the support of a small Basque nationalist party, Sanchez and Iglesias need ERC’s abstention. They have been widely criticized by other parties for relying on the help of an imprisoned separatist.The 50-year-old Junqueras was convicted of sedition and misuse of public funds in October for his role in promoting the illegal 2017 secession bid of the prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia, which includes the city of Barcelona.He was under trial already when he decided to run in the European elections in May. Spain’s Supreme Court denied Junqueras permission to get out of jail at the time to take his position.’Against the interests of Spain’Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative Popular Party that for decades took turns in power with the Socialists, said that Sanchez was being opaque in the negotiations and that, as an interim prime minister over the past few months, the Socialist leader had governed “against the interests of Spain.””You can’t negotiate the government of Spain with those who want to break it apart,” Casado told reporters.The Popular Party, the fast-rising far-right Vox party and the center-right Citizens (Ciudadanos), which suffered a big defeat in the Nov. 10 repeated general election, together hold 150 seats in the lower chamber.
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Eritrean Footballers’ Defection in Uganda Sparks Conversation About Youth Migration
After another defection of Eritrean football players during a tournament in Uganda, an official said that it has become expected that athletes from the Horn of Africa country will flee when traveling abroad.”It’s been kind of routine over the past several years whenever there is an event, sports event, where the Eritreans take part, it’s almost a must that some of them won’t return home,” said Ismail Dhakaba, spokesperson for Uganda’s National Council for Sports.Seven Eritrean footballers defected during a regional tournament known as the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup. This followed the October defection of four players from Eritrea’s under-20 team who were competing in Uganda.Dhakaba said he has been told by an Eritrean footballer that team members are required to sign a letter promising to return home while playing in foreign tournaments. He also said the team travels with a group of bodyguards meant to prevent defections. However, athletes find ways to escape. Dhakaba said Uganda’s relatively welcoming stance toward refugees and economic opportunities make it an attractive destination.”It’s a very easy country to live in. You’ll always find a place to start and you don’t need to have a lot of money to live in Uganda normally. You can go with a bare minimum, so they find life here much better than their country. And that’s why most of them decide to stay,” he said.Eritrean Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel has tweeted about the success of the team during the tournament. However, he has not commented on the players who defected. Government officials did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the matter. Additionally, Alemseged Efrem, the Eritrean football coach, was invited to appear on a sports show on state-owned media for a discussion about the tournament, but there was no mention of the players who did not return.’Basic human rights’Kimberley Motley, an American attorney representing the four football players who defected in October, said she has been told by her clients that life inside Eritrea is heavily restricted. Most people enter military service between the ages of 16 to 17, and can be forced to serve indefinitely. Arbitrary arrests are commonplace and footballers are hesitant to congregate while not on the pitch for fear of arousing suspicion. She said her clients fear for the safety of their families at home.”They very much, unfortunately, are under the thumb of the government like everyone in Eritrea. And they’re very, very concerned about their families,” she told VOA.Motley said her clients are fearful that they will be returned to Eritrea by Ugandan authorities or attacked by Eritrean agents in Uganda.”These are good young men, most of them teenagers, who are simply fighting for their own freedom. And the freedom to live. The freedom to play sports. The freedom to just be who they want to be,” she told VOA, speaking about the conditions of the football players. “They just want their basic human rights [to] be honored, which everyone on this planet should be entitled to.”
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Conservation Groups Keen to Lend Hand in Botswana’s Anti-Poaching Fight
With wildlife poaching on the rise in Botswana, the country’s government has appealed to conservation groups and the private sector to lend a hand to help protect targeted species. More than a dozen rhinos have been killed in the country since October, forcing the government to deploy more armed troops in affected areas.Botswana’s government says more soldiers will be deployed in the vast Okavango area, to the northwest of the country. This is where at least 13 rhinos have been killed in the past 12 weeks. At least 31 of the animals have been killed since October 2018.The Botswana Defense Force (BDF) anti-poaching units killed seven poachers, recovering rhino horns and weapons, in the process.Botswana has asked conservation groups and the private sector to play a more prominent role in protecting its estimated 400 rhino population. And some conservation groups are more than willing to help the government repel poachers. Kalahari Conservation Society chief executive officer Neil Fitt says the private sector has an important role to play.”Some NGOs and CSOs as well as the private sector are involved, but at a very low level, in assisting the government with poaching in Botswana, mainly around the Delta. Other NGOs and other Botswana-based CSO, will be very willing to assist the government, if the government opens the door and allows us to,” Fitt said.Map Ives of the group Rhino Conservation says it is partnering with the government in the fight against poaching.”Rhino Conservation Botswana monitoring teams are assisting the BDF by supplying trackers and aircraft to fly over the areas and see if we can locate the poachers, who appear to be foreign-based,” Ives said. Last year, the government disputed reports that the rise in poaching was due to the disarming of some anti-poaching units. Former President Ian Khama believes the move contributed to the rise in poaching. “I was surprised that soon after I left office, they were disarmed, their weapons were taken away. Those poachers, from my experience in the BDF, they are not shy to take on those who are protecting our wildlife,” Khama said.But officials insist they have zero tolerance for poaching and are prepared to adopt stern measures to protect the country’s wildlife. A rhino horn fetches more than $50,000 on the black market, particularly in Asian countries, where it is believed to have medicinal value.
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Plus-Size Yoga Teacher Breaks Stereotypes, Boundaries
There’s no doubt that many people around the world see – in magazines and on social media – unrealistic beauty standards and end up feeling unhappy with how they look. But Jessamyn Stanley has never let her body image get in the way of her dream of teaching yoga. Karina Bafradzhian reports from Savannah, Georgia.
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In Pursuit of Florida Latinos, Democrats Fight Socialist Tag
From a tiny studio in the sprawling Miami suburb of Doral, a popular Venezuelan-born radio host recently pressed one of Florida’s best-known Democrats on a touchy topic: socialism.”Older voters associated you with socialists,” host Julio Cesar Camacho told Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost a bid for governor last year. Gillum blamed Republicans for preying on “sensitivities” of Latinos in Florida, as Camacho translated his complaint into Spanish for listeners.The conversation wasn’t just a rehash of another narrow Democratic loss in the battleground state. Camacho’s weekly show is funded by the Florida Democratic Party — part of a statewide effort to bolster its standing with Florida’s Latinos ahead of the 2020 presidential election.While Latino voters nationally have leaned Democratic, Republicans in Florida continue to find strong backing in the nearly 2 million Floridians of Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan origin — voters whose deep skepticism of socialism has been shaped by Latin American authoritarian leaders. Democrats are trying to shake the label.”We waited a bit too long before we started to push back,” Gillum told The Associated Press, saying the party wasn’t aggressive enough in 2018. “Now we know better. You see more Latino voices in radio and print who are elevating this conversation around socialism.”Republicans are elevating the attacks, too. President Donald Trump and his allies have been hammering Democrats as leftists and anti-capitalists — knowing such labels call up images of corruption and poverty.At a news conference earlier this year, Trump mockingly said there was a “rumor” the Democratic Party was changing its name to the “Socialist Party.” In June, Vice President Mike Pence visited Miami to launch “Latinos for Trump” and warned the Hispanic crowd about Democratic presidential hopefuls.Democrats are trying to take the accusation head-on, calling it misleading and dangerous.”It’s a strategy that we have to expose because they insist on these politics of fear. It’s a return to McCarthyism,” said Leopoldo Martinez, the first Venezuelan-born member of the Democratic National Committee.They’ve also tried to shift the conversation to Trump’s policies that affect the state’s Latinos, such as the rise in deportation of Cubans, and the challenges for Cuban families who have been unable to bring relatives because of Trump’s decision to pull most embassy staff out of the island in 2017.When Democrat Joe Biden campaigned this fall in Little Havana, Cuban exiles’ historic neighborhood, he blasted Trump for opposing a bill to grant protection from deportation to thousands of Venezuelans living in the U.S. Almost 9,500 of the 237,000 Venezuelans who live in Florida are in deportation proceedings, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.Democrats are also trying to convince Latino voters that prominent left-wing figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist running for president, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York don’t represent the views of everyone in the party.To be sure, some of the Democratic presidential candidates advocate sweeping new programs to expand the federal government’s role in health care, and at least two top-tier candidates — Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — have directly put the ultra-rich on notice over wealth taxes to combat income inequality.But none are proposing the socialism of Latin American countries where authoritarian governments have seized banks and nationalized major industries.Biden campaign spokeswoman Isabel Aldunate said Republicans were seeking to “capitalize on the traumatizing past that many South Florida Latinos experienced.”Warren has said her proposals are aimed at saving people money, even though every time she mentions them, “there´s somebody who wants to call me a socialist or a radical.”Opinion columns written by Gillum and other strategists have appeared on The Miami Herald and multiple Spanish newspapers. Advocacy group Alianza for Progress held a seminar recently to talk about how Latinos react to the socialist name-calling and suggest how to change the narrative.”We have to claim our stake in this, and to say unapologetically that we believe in capitalism, except we believe in a more compassionate form of it,” Gillum said.Even small improvements with Latino voters can have a big impact in the swing state.Hispanics make up about 16% percent of the electorate in Florida. According to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the U.S. electorate, 44% of Florida Latinos voting in the 2018 midterms voted for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, compared to the 32% of Latino voters who supported Republican House candidates nationally. Much of that difference was driven by Cuban voters in Florida, 57% of whom voted for DeSantis.Several political strategists said Democratic candidates took the Latino vote for granted in 2018, failing to mobilize early enough and not using enough Spanish.”You cannot go to a sword fight with a spoon,” said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a Colombian-American political consultant who worked with Gillum’s campaign.Florida Democrats have trained 150 Spanish-speaking surrogates influential in Hispanic media and created a legislative affairs group of Puerto Ricans focusing on rebuilding the island after Hurricane Maria. But Republicans have outpaced Democrats by adding 23,000 voters affiliated to their party between January and September — more than double what Democrats have added, according to state elections data.Camacho’s show “Democracia al Dia,” or “Democracy Up to Date,” airs on Actualidad Radio every Saturday. He invites guests to discuss topics such as the impeachment proceedings, and rules aimed at denying green cards to low-income immigrants.Camacho says his birthplace doesn’t dictate his politics, and that he has aligned with the Democrats in the U.S. despite opposing leftists in Venezuela.”I can celebrate that they [Republicans] are backing the Venezuelan opposition, but I won’t support other policies that I think are absurd,” Camacho said.
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Observers: Cambodian Government Tightened Grip on Power in 2019
This past year, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, consolidated his power, observers say, pointing to intimidation of the opposition and a minimal improvement of human rights following the European Union’s threat to withdraw the trade agreement Everything But Arms. The deal grants free access to the EU single market for all products, with the exception of arms and armaments.“We’re seeing the real Cambodia and the real Cambodian government, which is rights abusing, corrupt and non-democratic,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “The situation has just not improved in any way, shape, or form over the past year.”Exiled acting opposition leader Sam Rainsy first announced earlier in 2019 that he was returning home, but then in August stated he would be back on November 9, Cambodia’s Independence Day. The government responded with a prompt crackdown on opposition activists, arresting scores on charges of “plotting against the state.” This was one of the major indicators that the ruling party consolidated its power during 2019, Robertson said.”The biggest change is a lot more people arrested and political prisoners held in pre-trial detention and then sent to long prison terms for exercising their civil and political rights,” he said. “You’ve got Cambodia surging up to the level of almost 100 political prisoners during the course of 2019…in part because the government has tried to bend over backwards to suppress any display of support for the opposition (Cambodia National Rescue Party) CNRP.”A spokesman for Hun Sen’s Cabinet, or Council of Ministers, Phay Siphan, could not be reached for comment.FILE – Self-exiled Cambodian opposition party founder Sam Rainsy speaks during an interview with Reuters at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 10, 2019. REUTERS/Lim Huey TengThe government deployed thousands of troops on November 9 to prevent Sam Rainsy from returning, and had previously announced that airlines were barred from bringing opposition members into the country, albeit seemingly retracting that statement later. CNRP Vice President Mu Sochua was briefly detained in Kuala Lumpur.Dozens of passports of opposition members who are abroad have been revoked.The arrests, Robertson said, seemed to continue a trend from 2017 and 2018. The two years saw opposition leader Kem Sokha arrested, his party CNRP dissolved, 118 party members banned from politics, English language newspapers The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post closed and sold to an investor with ties to the government, respectively, and journalists arrested. During the 2018 parliamentary elections, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party won all 125 seats.Mu Sochua said her party had to learn from the failed return when planning their return for 2020.“Nine November was a point that we could look at not exactly negatively – but in the long run, does it sustain democracy?…We have to be honest with ourselves about where Nine November could improve,” she told VOA in a phone interview. “We realize that this culture of waiting for the leader is not quite productive for democracy as a whole if we want to make democracy sustainable.”Political analyst Markus Karbaum said that the CNRP had lost its influence when it was dissolved in 2017.“The CNRP has become a zombie party, neither dead nor alive. While Sam Rainsy will continue to operate as a nuisance from abroad, he won’t be able to return to Cambodia as a free man as long as Hun Sen is in politics,”Karbaum said, adding that party leader Kem Sokha could exercise influence by reaching an agreement with the government. “The CNRP will never ever return as it has been before its dissolution,” he said.Astrid Norén-Nilsson, associate senior lecturer at the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University in Sweden, echoed this assessment. “Everything looks headed for either a situation in which, at best for some among the opposition, a faction headed by Kem Sokha can operate, or, at worst, status quo is maintained and a lengthy trial against Kem Sokha will follow,” she said.But Mu Sochua rejected those scenarios and said November 9 had shown that the CNRP still had strong grassroots support in the country – and that the opposition leaders would return to the country in 2020.“You don’t wait for democracy to come to you crawling and knocking at your door, you have to knock at the door of democracy. Any measure that you can take, even the smallest sound you can make, you make,” she said.Citing human rights concerns, the European Union formally launched the withdrawal procedure of its Everything But Arms Agreement in February.Yet, although facing a threat of EBA withdrawal, the Hun-Sen-led government had only granted minimal concessions, like releasing some political prisoners, Robertson said.“They’ve certainly consolidated power… It’s all about trying to keep the opposition marginalized and out of the country and keeping them away from the people of Cambodia,” he said. “I would say would be really hard pressed to see where the EBA is actually contributed to positive outcomes. What we’ve seen from Hun Sen and his government is open defiance.”Despite the court releasing 74 of the about 100 opposition activists on bail following a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen, the sentences still hung above their heads, he said.FILE – Leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) Kem Sokha shakes hands with French Ambassador to Cambodia Eva Nguyen Binhin at his home in Phnom Penh, Nov. 11, 2019.On November 10, a day after Sam Rainsy’s announced return and a few days before the European Commission was due to submit its report on the situation in Cambodia to the Cambodian government, the court issued an order to release Kem Sokha from house arrest. He remains barred from any political activities and from going abroad.Katrin Travouillon, researcher at the Australian National University who focuses on Cambodia in her work, said that while some EU demands had been met, such as the release of some political prisoners, long-term improvements were unlikely to occur.“I am much more skeptical when it comes to the long-term effects of this process or its ability to effectively counter the ongoing decline in political freedoms,” she told VOA in an email. “For example, if you look at the government’s use of arbitrary arrests at the occasion of Kem Ley’s commemoration, or the recent crackdown on the opposition after Rainsy’s return announcement, it certainly didn’t appear as if the potential loss of the EBA was the first thing on the authorities’ mind.”FILE – Tens of thousands of people attend a funeral procession to carry the body of Kem Ley, an anti-government figure and the head of a grassroots advocacy group, “Khmer for Khmer” who was shot dead on July 10, to his hometown, in Phnom Penh.Travouillon was referring to Kem Ley, one of Cambodia’s most prominent political commentators, who was assassinated in July of 2016. Kem Ley was gunned down just days after making comments about a critical report by London-based Global Witness about corruption linkages of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling family. A suspect has been arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.With Kem Sokha’s trial scheduled for January 15 and the European Union’s decision expected in February, major decisions are expected at the beginning of the new year.Although Everything But Arms had only shown marginal effect so far, Robertson said, this could change if it were withdrawn.“And I think that ultimately, what’s going to happen is that only when you know the blood is on the floor – because of the partial or complete suspension of EBA benefits – will the Cambodian government and Hun Sen realize that actually, they really do need to compromise if they want these things,” Robertson said.
“[But] the democratic so-called democratic landscape in Cambodia is not going to change until there’s a new election in 2023.”
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Thai Official Warns of Water Shortages Due to Weather, Dams
Thailand should brace for serious water shortages when the hot season begins in March after a year with unusually little rainfall, one of the country’s top water management officials said Monday.Retention of water by dams in upstream areas of the Mekong River also is seen as contributing to record-low water levels in the river, affecting the region’s ecology.Somkiat Prajumwong, director-general of Thailand’s Office of National Water Resources, said the river will experience record-low levels, after already recording new records this past year.His agency is warning people along the Mekong to beware of river bank slides and prepare for serious water shortages in March and April, when temperatures in Thailand usually peak.Tests of China’s new upstream Jinghong dam on Jan. 1-3 are expected to lead to a drop in the the Mekong’s water level by as much as 1 meter (3.3 feet) along eight northern and northeastern Thai provinces, said the water resources agency.Restrictions on water use from some Thai dams were imposed by late December, according to a report in the Bangkok Post newspaper. It quoted the head of Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department, Thongplew Kongjun, as saying that water from the Ubol Ratana and Chulabhorn dams was being reserved for consumption and ecological conservation, rather than for growing crops, because of their low levels.The Mekong River Commission already warned that severe to extreme drought was expected to hit Thailand and Cambodia at least until January. The regional agency, to which Laos and Vietnam also belong, blamed insufficient wet season rainfall, an abbreviated period of monsoon rains and unusually high temperatures and evaporation caused by El Nino, a cyclical climate phenomenon originating with warming water in the Pacific Ocean.The commission said in a paper issued at its annual meeting in November that the long-term prognosis was bleak, as the Lower Mekong Basin for the past few decades “has been experiencing severe drought hazards with serious economic losses due to damages of agricultural crops, negative impacts on the environment, and effects on people’s livelihoods.””The duration and magnitude of the impacts have significantly increased over the past two decades if comparing the drought hazards from one event to another,” it said.It warned that, depending upon factors involving the climate, the lower Mekong basin “is likely to see more severe droughts in the next 30, 60 and 90 years due to less precipitation, high air temperature,” as well a high percentage of evaporation from ground and plants.The issue involving dams was vividly illustrated about a month ago, when the Mekong River acquired an aquamarine color due to the water becoming clear and reflecting the sky, replacing its usual yellowish-brown shade that is due to the sediment it normally carries downstream.Experts blamed the large Xayaburi hydroelectric dam upstream in Laos that began operating in October for causing the color change.The dam blocks much sediment from moving farther downstream, which accounts for the water becoming clear, Pravit Kanthaduang, a fishery official in Thailand’s Bueng Kan province, said earlier this month. Less sediment means less nutrition for plants and fish in the river, threatening the ecological balance, he said.”The current has less sediment, which unleashes energy onto the river banks downstream,” said Chainarong Setthachau of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Thailand’s Mahasarakham University. “This so-called ‘hungry water’ will cause much more erosion to the banks, uprooting trees and damaging engineering structures in the river.”The dam’s developers said they spent more than 19.4 billion baht ($648 million) to mitigate negative impacts on the environment.Environmental activists have expressed urgent concern about the upstream dams.”Thai riverine communities living along the Mekong, downstream of dams in China and Xayaburi dam in Laos, have never experienced ecological changes at this scale,” Pianporn Deetes of the conservation group International Rivers said Monday. “Amidst drought, dams exacerbate the destruction of the Mekong’s fragile ecosystem, especially for unseasonal water fluctuation that means impacts on aquatic lives, fisheries, food and income security, water supply, navigation and more.”
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Eighteen Killed in New Militia Attack in Eastern DR Congo
Eighteen people in eastern DR Congo’s troubled region of Beni have been killed in a fresh attack by a notorious armed group, a local official said on Monday.”There was an incursion in Apetina-Sana by the ADF last night,” Beni administrator Donat Kibwana told AFP, referring to the Allied Democratic Forces militia.”[They] hacked 18 civilians to death.”Apetina-Sana is 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of Oicha, the chief administrative town in the Beni region.It is a point on the so-called Death Triangle, along with Mbau and Eringeti — the worst-hit area for attacks.ADF fighters have killed more than 200 people since the army launched an offensive against the militia on October 30, according to a toll compiled by civil society groups.The toll has sparked anger over the authorities’ response.”The authorities were tipped off on Sunday evening about the presence of suspicious men west of Oicha,” said Teddy Kataliko, a civil society activist in Beni.”We continue to ask the DRC armed forces to launch operations on the western side as well, to save civilians.”There have also been demonstrations in the city of Beni, where local people accuse the U.N. peacekeeping force MONUSCO of failing to protect them.The ADF began as an Islamist rebellion hostile to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.It fell back into eastern DRC in 1995 and appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its recruits today are people of various nationalities.
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Pompeo to Travel to Ukraine in January
U.S. top diplomat Mike Pompeo will travel in January to Ukraine, the country at the heart of the ongoing impeachment process against President Donald Trump, the State Department said Monday.Pompeo, who will also visit Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus, will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.The trip will make Pompeo the most senior U.S. official to visit Ukraine since the scandal over a controversial phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy erupted earlier this year.Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress Dec. 18 and faces trial in the Senate.Pompeo, a staunch Trump defender, was personally implicated by several witnesses during the impeachment inquiry.Trump is accused of having withheld nearly $400 million in assistance to Ukraine and a White House meeting with Zelenskiy to push Kyiv to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.Despite testimony from 17 officials that Trump leveraged his office for political gain, the president has maintained his innocence throughout the impeachment inquiry — denouncing it as an “attempted coup” and an “assault on America.”The statement does not mention corruption in Ukraine, although the White House has insisted this was the main reason Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was then serving on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company.Ortagus only suggested that this issue could be discussed by referring to talks on “the investment climate, and the government’s reform agenda.”The visit comes after Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists battling the government’s forces exchanged 200 prisoners on Sunday, a further sign of the fragile detente that has begun since Zelenskiy was elected in April.Pompeo’s trip aims to “reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ortagus said.
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France, Egypt Urge ‘Restraint’ to Avoid Libya Escalation
France and Egypt called Monday for the “greatest restraint” by Libyan and international authorities to avoid escalating the conflict in Libya, a statement from President Emmanuel Macron’s office said.Macron held talks late Sunday with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sissi when both agreed that warring Libyan powers need to negotiate a political solution under U.N. auspices.The statement comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed readiness this month to send troops to Libya if requested by the country’s Government of National Accord (GNA).The GNA is backed by the U.N., but the addition of Turkish troops could further inflame tensions in a country torn by the devastating campaign of strongman Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army.More than 140,000 Libyans have fled their homes since April when Haftar’s forces launched an assault on Tripoli.U.N.-sponsored talks on the conflict are set for January in Berlin to try to end the fighting, sparked by the NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.Neighboring countries like Egypt have been on high alert since then, not least against the potential for rival regional powers to exploit the turmoil.Macron and Sissi also criticized a recent deal between Turkey and Libya over maritime boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean, calling it “against the rules of maritime law”.Critics say the deal, part of a security and military cooperation accord with the GNA, would greatly extend Ankara’s territorial claims.
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Family: Hanukkah Stabbing Suspect Had Mental Illness History
A man accused of storming into a rabbi’s home and stabbing five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City was raised to embrace tolerance but has a history of mental illness, his family said.”Grafton Thomas has a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations. He has no history of like violent acts and no convictions for any crime,” his family said late Sunday in a statement issued by attorney Michael Sussman. “He has no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races. He is not a member of any hate groups.””We believe the actions of which he is accused, if committed by him, tragically reflect profound mental illness,” the statement said.”Finally, we express our deepest concern and prayers for those injured physically and otherwise deeply affected by the events of Saturday night. … We thank those who rendered medical attention to each of those injured.”
Police tracked a fleeing suspect to Manhattan and made an arrest within two hours of the attack Saturday night in Monsey. Thomas had blood all over his clothing and smelled of bleach but said “almost nothing” when officers stopped him, officials said.Republican President Donald Trump condemned the “horrific” attack, saying in a tweet Sunday that “We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism.”The stabbings on the seventh night of Hanukkah left one person critically wounded, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. The rabbi’s son was also injured, he said.Thomas, 37, was arraigned Sunday and pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary. Bail was set at $5 million, and he remains jailed.Thomas’ criminal history includes an arrest for assaulting a police horse, according to an official briefed on the investigation who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. A lawyer representing Thomas at the arraignment said he had no convictions.The Greenwood Lake street where Thomas lived with his mother, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Monsey, was blocked with police tape Sunday as FBI agents and police officers carried items from their home.The FBI was seeking a warrant to obtain his online accounts and were scouring digital evidence, the official said.
The attack was the latest in a string of violence targeting Jews in the region, including a Dec. 10 massacre at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey. Last month in Monsey, a man was stabbed while walking to a synagogue.Cuomo said Saturday’s savagery was the 13th anti-Semitic attack in New York since Dec. 8.According to the official briefed on the investigation, authorities do not believe Thomas is connected to recent anti-Semitic incidents in New York City.The Simon Wiesenthal Center said it wants the FBI to create a special task force.Monsey, near the New Jersey state line about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of New York City, is one of several Hudson Valley communities that has seen a rising population of Hasidic Jews in recent years.At a celebration in Monsey on Sunday that was planned before the shooting, several members of the community stood guard armed with assault-style rifles. They refused to give their names when approached by an AP journalist, but they said they were there to defend their community.”The Jewish community is utterly terrified,” Evan Bernstein, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey, said in a statement. “No one should have to live like this.”
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North Korea May Force Trump to Change Course in 2020
U.S. President Donald Trump regularly says his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un remains positive. But Trump may soon have little choice but to change his approach toward Kim, who within days may unveil a new, hardline policy toward the United States. Kim, who has given the U.S. an end-of-year deadline for nuclear talks, is set to deliver a New Year’s Day speech that may give major clues about North Korea’s direction in 2020. Kim is also presiding over a symbolically important meeting of the country’s ruling party this week.While no one is sure what Kim will announce – there is always a possibility of a last-minute breakthrough in talks – North Korea has strongly hinted it will raise pressure on Trump in the new year, and Kim has vowed to take his country a “new way” if talks with the United States don’t advance.Over the past several months, North Korea has threatened to resume intercontinental ballistic missile tests or other major provocations, even warning of an unspecified “Christmas gift” to the U.S. that so far remains undelivered. Trump has shown an unusual tolerance for North Korean provocations, at least by the standards of other recent U.S. presidents. But as evidence mounts that Trump’s personal outreach to Kim is not leading to progress in nuclear talks, many Trump critics and allies are calling for him to change course.
“From no angle – policy or political – does it make sense for Trump to keep things as they are,” said Rebecca Heinrichs, who focuses on nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the conservative Hudson Institute. This undated picture released by North Korea’s Central News Agency on Oct. 31, 2019, purportedly shows the launch of projectiles that landed in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.Change how?The question is whether Trump should become more or less conciliatory.Heinrichs, who has defended aspects of Trump’s unorthodox outreach to Kim, says the United States should expand sanctions on North Korea and reinstate U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which were scaled back to preserve the talks.”In the course of giving Kim diplomatic space, sanctions enforcement and readiness with regional allies have slipped while Kim’s nuclear program and image have improved,” she says.”The whole approach is on the thinnest ice.”Another ideological camp prefers a less aggressive approach. They say there’s no evidence sanctions will convince Kim to give up his nuclear program, but will only further raise tensions.Instead, Trump should work toward an interim deal, in which the United States offers limited sanctions relief, a formal suspension of military exercises, or both, possibly in exchange for a permanent moratorium on North Korean ICBM and nuclear tests, said Joshua Pollack, a North Korea researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.”We’ve repeatedly suspended combined military exercises in South Korea, so why not finally put them on the table?” asks Pollack. “Then the two sides could take their time in talks.”It’s not clear North Korea would accept an interim agreement. The country’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this month declared that denuclearization is off the negotiating table and that talks with the United States are no longer needed. FILE – South Korean amphibious assault vehicles participate in a 2015 U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise.Trump downplays threatsThere’s also not much evidence Trump is committed to drastic change in either direction.Trump has rarely discussed North Korea in recent months, and when he has, it’s mainly been to stress his good relationship with Kim.Asked about North Korea’s threat to deliver a “Christmas gift” to the U.S., Trump responded: “Maybe it’s a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test.”Trump refused to criticize North Korea as it conducted 13 rounds of short-range missile tests in 2019, though the launches violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and threatened U.S. troops and allies in the region.For Trump, North Korean provocations are potentially embarrassing, in part because he has already claimed to have solved the problem.After their first meeting in Singapore, Trump said he knew “for a fact” that Kim would return home and start a process that would “make a lot of people very happy and very safe.””There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump tweeted while returning from the summit.U.S. officials, including Trump, have also repeatedly insisted that Kim agreed in Singapore to give up his nuclear weapons, though in reality the joint statement referenced the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” – a much vaguer description that indicates unspecified concessions from each side.By one estimate, North Korea has produced material for about 10 more nuclear bombs since Singapore, meaning it now has enough for around 40 total bombs.A view of what researchers of Beyond Parallel, a CSIS project, describe as specialized rail cars at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center in North Pyongan Province, North Korea, in this commercial satellite image taken April 12, 2019.Would Trump admit defeat?But Heinrichs insists it’s not too late for Trump to modify his North Korea policy, and that doing so doesn’t have to be a great political embarrassment.”I don’t think he needs to or will say the approach failed,” Heinrichs says. “It’s more likely he’ll blame Kim and the previous (U.S.) administrations for passing along the compounding problem.”Whereas Trump’s comments about Kim have been widely mocked in Washington for being contradictory or inaccurate, Heinrichs sees it differently. Such comments, she says, are an attempt to flatter Kim – essentially to soften him up for a big agreement. And Trump’s approach, she says, could easily be reversed. “Any other president would have a hard time going from ‘fire and fury’ to nice letters to a return to max pressure…I don’t think it would be as much of a challenge for Trump,” Heinrichs said. “He seems to be immune to the pressure of convention. Sometimes that creates rare openings for good things and sometimes it results in enormous headaches,” she added. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reads a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump, in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this picture released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, June 22, 2019.A bullet-point win? Others say Trump, a former reality television star and self-styled master negotiator, appears to be looking for a legacy-defining win on North Korea and won’t easily change course. “Absolutely he can’t admit failure,” said Pollack. “But he can spin it away.” According to Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer who has followed Trump’s real estate and other deals for decades, Trump has often prematurely declared victory or attempted deals even when victory is impossible.”He wants to be able to do something that’s like a moonshot,” said Blair.For Blair, Trump’s desire to reach a nuclear deal with North Korea – which has eluded U.S. diplomats for decades – is much like Trump’s recently declared wish to buy Greenland.”This would be adding the biggest thing since Alaska,” she says. “But no one was interested in selling.”So what will Trump do if Kim never agrees to denuclearize? Trump himself foreshadowed such a scenario in his post-summit press conference in Singapore.”Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,'” Trump said, before adding: “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of excuse.”
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Kim Calls for Measures to Protect North Korea’s Security
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for his military and diplomats to prepare unspecified “offensive measures” to protect the country’s security and sovereignty, the North’s state media said on Monday, before his end-of-year deadline for the Trump administration to make major concessions to salvage a fragile nuclear diplomacy.Kim during a ruling Workers’ Party meeting Sunday also “comprehensively and anatomically analyzed” problems arising in efforts to rebuild the North’s moribund economy and presented tasks for “urgently correcting the grave situation of the major industrial sectors,” the Korean Central News Agency said.The plenary meeting of the party’s Central Committee, which began on Saturday, is being closely watched amid concerns that Kim could suspend his deadlocked nuclear negotiations with the United States and take a more confrontational approach by lifting a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.The North has said the meeting, which will continue for at least another day, is intended for discussions on overcoming “manifold and harsh trials and difficulties.”North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in this undated photo released on Dec. 28, 2019 by North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).Kim, who has said the North would pursue a “new path” if Washington persists with sanctions and pressure, is expected to announce major policy changes during his New Year’s address on Wednesday.The KCNA report did not describe any decisions made at the meeting or mention any specific remarks by Kim about the United States.The North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper published photos of Kim, wearing a white dress shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, speaking from a podium as hundreds of government and military officials jotted down his comments.”Emphasizing the need to take positive and offensive measures for fully ensuring the sovereignty and security of the country as required by the present situation, [Kim] indicated the duties of the fields of foreign affairs, munitions industry and armed forces of the DPRK,” the agency said in its English report, referring to North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.KCNA’s Korean-language report said Kim called for “active and offensive” measures.Kim also “comprehensively and anatomically analyzed the problems arising in the overall state building including the state management and economic construction in the present time,” the agency said.”He stressed the need to reasonably straighten the country’s economic work system and order and establish a strong discipline and presented the tasks for urgently correcting the grave situation of the major industrial sectors of the national economy,” the report said.It added that Kim stressed the need for a “decisive” increase in agricultural production and gave out instructions for improving science, education and public health standards.Lee Sang-min, a spokesman of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said Seoul is closely watching the North Korean party meeting, but he didn’t speculate on what Kim’s call for active and offensive security measures would have meant.Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior analyst at South Korea’s private Sejong Institute, said it was the first time under Kim’s rule that a plenary meeting of the party’s Central Committee continued for more than a day.Kim has an urgent need to make major policy changes in the face of persistent U.S.-led sanctions and pressure, especially with a global crackdown on North Korean labor exports further straining his broken economy, Cheong said.It’s also likely that Kim during the party meeting reaffirmed a commitment to strengthen his nuclear and missile program, considering the commander of the North Korean army’s strategic force was seen during Saturday’s meeting, Cheong said.FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019.Kim has met President Donald Trump three times in two years of high-stakes summitry, but the diplomacy has progressed little beyond their vague aspirational goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. At their last meeting in June, they agreed to resume talks. A working-level meeting in Sweden in October broke down with the North Koreans blaming their American counterparts for maintaining an “old stance and attitude.”The North said earlier this month it conducted two “crucial” tests at its long-range rocket launch facility, raising speculation it has been developing a new long-range missile or preparing a satellite launch.
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US-China Trade Wars Mean Big Business For US Garlic Producers
A bad harvest and the U.S. China trade war have pushed U.S. farm debt to a record 416 billion dollars this year. But not all farmers are going through hard times – as VOA’s Calla Yu reports.
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Ukraine, Russia-Backed Rebels Swap Prisoners
Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east have completed an exchange of about 200 prisoners. Ukrainian officials say Ukraine received 76 captives while the separatists say they took 124 of theirs. The swap carried out on Sunday was brokered earlier this month at a summit of the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in Paris. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Sudanese-American Player Promotes Wheelchair Basketball in South Sudan
Wheelchair basketball is growing in popularity in South Sudan, offering hope for athletes with disabilities, some of whom lost legs from unexploded ordnance left from decades of conflict. U.S. professional wheelchair basketball players, including Sudanese American Malat Wei, this month helped eighty South Sudanese players take part in a week-long training program and tournament, as Sheila Ponnie reports from Juba.
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Putin Thanks Trump for Helping Foil Terrorist Acts in Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with President Donald Trump on Sunday to thank him for information that Putin said helped Russia foil terrorist attacks over the New Year’s holiday, the Kremlin said.Putin thanked Trump “for information transmitted through the special services that helped prevent the completion of terrorist acts in Russia,” the Kremlin said in a brief statement posted on its website.Based on the U.S. information, the Russian security forces detained two Russians suspected of preparing to carry out terrorist acts in St. Petersburg during the upcoming holiday, state news agency Tass reported, citing the Federal Security Service.The security service said it obtained the information from its “American partners.” It said it seized material from the suspects that confirms they were preparing terrorist acts, with no further details.There was no immediate comment from the White House.
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China Convicts Researchers in Gene-Edited Baby Controversy
Three researchers involved in the births of genetically edited babies have been sentenced for practicing medicine illegally, Chinese state media said Monday.The report by Xinhua news agency said lead researcher He Jiankui was sentenced to three years and fined 3 million yuan ($430,000).Two other people received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, but with a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000 yuan fine.He, the lead researcher, said 13 months ago that he had helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls born in November 2018. The announcement sparked a global debate over the ethics of gene editing.He also was involved in the birth of a third gene-edited baby.
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After Algeria’s Leadership Shakeup, Observers Look for Break With Past
Amid sudden changes in the upper echelons of Algeria’s government, the new President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is looking to establish stability and put his stamp on the country’s future.On Saturday, Tebboune appointed Abdelaziz Djerad as the country’s prime minister, FILE – Algerian chief of staff Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah arrives to preside over a military parade in Algiers, July 1, 2018.Throughout this time, the street protests that swept longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power have continued. The opposition boycotted the December elections and denounced Tebboune as a continuation of the past regime and a puppet of Lt. Gen. Gaid Salah. Less than 40% of eligible voters took part in the election.William Lawrence, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said the current president has work to do to win over the general Algerian public and protesting crowds. “He has an opportunity to make good with the protesters, for example, he could release all the leaders that have been arrested in recent months or lift other controls on freedom of expression or freedom to protest,” he said speaking to VOA’s Daybreak Africa radio program. “But so far, the gestures made by the new president have been fairly symbolic. For example, he’s asking the population to call him ‘Mr. President’ rather than ‘your excellency’ as if that was a major concession to the protesting crowd.”Lawrence also said the appointment of General Said Chengriha as acting Army Chief could mark a break from the past. He is from the east of the country, not a traditional power center, and does not have a connection to some of the corruption past Army officials have been associated with.”It will be interesting to see whether the new army chief has a little bit of a honeymoon period,” Lawrence said. “He’s sort of a strategy guy, an infantryman and not really connected to, let’s say, the army deals and other aspects of the military which tend to provoke the protesters.”Lawrence said future concessions from the current government may involve bringing back some older figures who were associated with earlier democratic movements in Algeria. Much will depend on how strong and sustained the protest movement is in the coming months. “If you’re still getting a million people in the streets of various cities, that means the protest movement still has a lot of legs,” Lawrence said. “But if that starts to wane, if the crackdown seems to be working, if the protest crowds are smaller, then we’re probably seeing the beginning of the end of this round of protests.”
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Pentagon Chief: Airstrikes on Iran-Backed Group ‘Successful’
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday said airstrikes against a pro-Iran militant group in Iraq and Syria succeeded, and he did not rule out additional action “as necessary.””The strikes were successful. The pilots and aircraft returned back to base safely,” Esper told reporters after F-15 jet fighters hit five targets associated with Kata’ib Hezbollah in western Iraq and eastern Syria.The targets were either command and control facilities or weapons caches for the Shi’ite militia group, he said, hours after the Pentagon announced the strikes.The U.S. action followed a barrage of 30 or more rockets fired on Friday at the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, an oil-rich region north of Baghdad. That salvo killed a U.S. civilian contractor and wounded four U.S. service members as well as Iraqi security forces.Esper said that he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had traveled to Florida, where President Donald Trump has been spending the Christmas holidays, to brief him on the latest Middle East events.”We discussed with him other options that are available,” Esper said. “And I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran.”
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