PANAMA CITY — Panamanian authorities deported a group of migrants to Ecuador on a second flight financed by the United States, as part of an agreement between the U.S. and Panama to discourage irregular crossings and reduce the flow of mostly U.S.-bound migration.

The flight carrying 30 Ecuadoreans departed on Thursday evening en route to the coastal city of Manta, Ecuador, Panama’s migration service said, adding the migrants were deported for evading a migration checkpoint on the popular Darien Gap route.

Thousands of people every year cross the dangerous Darien Gap jungle on Panama’s border with Colombia on the way to the United States.

The flight on Thursday followed a maiden journey financed by Washington in mid-August, which returned around 30 migrants to Colombia.

The latest deportation comes days after Panama’s President Jose Mulino announced return flights for Indian migrants in September and for Chinese citizens on an unspecified date.
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new york — Donald Trump asked a federal court late Thursday to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, seeking a pathway to overturn his felony conviction and indefinitely delay his sentencing scheduled for next month.

Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee asked the federal court in Manhattan to seize the case from the state court where it was brought and tried, arguing that the historic prosecution violated Trump’s constitutional rights and ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.

Trump’s lawyers said moving the case to federal court following his May 30 conviction will give him an “unbiased forum, free from local hostilities” to address those issues. If the case is moved to federal court, Trump lawyers wrote, they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed. If it remains in state court, with sentencing proceeding as scheduled, it could amount to election interference, they said.

“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a 64-page U.S. District Court filing.

Trump was convicted in state court in Manhattan of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to bury affair allegations that threatened to cloud his 2016 presidential run. Even if the case isn’t moved to federal court, the potential delay caused by litigation surrounding Trump’s effort could give him a critical reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.

Separately, the state court judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, is weighing Trump’s requests to postpone sentencing until after Election Day, November 5, and to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

The high court’s July 1 ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the deal to pay hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity in a failed bid last year to get the hush money case moved from state court to federal court. A federal judge rejected that request, clearing the way for Trump’s historic trial in state court.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s claim that allegations in the hush money indictment involved official duties, writing in July 2023, “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event.”

“Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties,” Hellerstein added.

A message seeking comment was left with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case.
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Washington — Vietnam’s minister of national defense, Phan Van Giang, is set to visit Washington next month for a high-level meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, U.S. and Vietnamese officials tell VOA.

The minister is expected to visit Washington from September 7-9 to strengthen defense cooperation between the two countries, according to a Vietnamese defense ministry official and a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not been officially announced. 

During the talks, the sides are expected to discuss a range of defense-related topics, including training initiatives and the lingering legacies of the Vietnam War. Giang is also expected to sign an agreement to purchase military equipment from the U.S., though Vietnamese officials said the details of the deal are still being work out.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington has yet to comment on the visit.

This meeting marks the first encounter between the defense chiefs of Vietnam and the U.S. since the two countries upgraded their bilateral relations to a Strategic Comprehensive Partnership a year ago, coinciding with U.S. President Joe Biden’s historic visit to Vietnam. It also signals a strengthening of military ties and could pave the way for further cooperation between the two nations in the future.

The expected visit follows the 13th Political, Security, and Defense Dialogue held in Hanoi on August 26, the first such dialogue since the relationship upgrade.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Bonnie Jenkins, who led the U.S. delegation at the dialogue, emphasized the U.S. commitment to enhancing defense and security cooperation with Vietnam. This cooperation includes programs on military training, medicine, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, and cybersecurity.

The last face-to-face meeting between Giang and Austin took place in November 2023, during an ASEAN defense ministers’ meeting in Jakarta. During that encounter, the two discussed measures to boost bilateral defense cooperation, with a particular focus on efforts to address war legacies and provide humanitarian assistance.

Topics covered included demining and the removal of unexploded ordnances, dioxin cleanup, and accounting for Missing in Action (MIA) soldiers.

Vietnam’s defense minister also extended an invitation to U.S. defense companies to participate in Vietnam’s second international defense exhibition, scheduled for late 2024.

This article originated in VOA’s Vietnamese Service; Carla Babb is VOA’s Pentagon  correspondent.
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Washington — The U.S. economy expanded more than initially estimated in the second quarter this year, the Department of Commerce said Thursday, on stronger consumer spending than originally anticipated.

The world’s biggest economy grew at an annual rate of 3.0% in the April-to-June period, up from 2.8% according to an earlier estimate.

Analysts had expected no revision to the figure.

“The update primarily reflected an upward revision to consumer spending,” the Commerce Department said.

Unexpectedly robust consumption — even in the face of high interest rates — has helped to bolster the U.S. economy in recent times. But with households depleting pandemic-era savings, the anticipation was for consumption to pull back.

In the latest revision, the higher spending was partly offset by downward revisions in areas such as business investment, exports and government spending.

Imports, however, were revised higher.

The 3.0% figure for the second quarter this year was an uptick from 1.4% growth in the first quarter.

The Federal Reserve rapidly increased interest rates to tackle surging inflation in 2022. It is widely expected to make its first post-pandemic rate cut in September. This could provide a boost to the economy.
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Beijing — Top White House aide Jake Sullivan held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, after a senior military official warned the United States to stop “collusion” with Taiwan in a rare one-on-one meeting.

Sullivan, the first U.S national security adviser to visit China since 2016, stressed the importance of stability in the tense Taiwan Strait as he met with senior Chinese army chief Zhang Youxia at the Beijing headquarters of the Central Military Commission.

The White House adviser met Xi on Thursday afternoon, state media said, as he wrapped up three days of talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other high-ranking officials.

Sullivan’s visit came as China became embroiled in security rows with U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines.

“It’s rare that we have the opportunity to have this kind of exchange,” Sullivan told Zhang in opening remarks.

The two officials agreed to hold a call between the two sides’ theatre commanders “in the near future,” a readout from the White House added.

Sullivan also raised the importance of “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines have clashed in recent months, and “stability” in the Taiwan Strait, Washington said.

Zhang, in turn, warned that the status of the self-ruled island was “the first red line that cannot be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”

“China has always been committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” he said, according to a readout by Beijing’s defense ministry.

“But ‘Taiwan independence’ and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are incompatible,” he said.

“China demands that the U.S. halts military collusion with Taiwan, ceases arming Taiwan, and stops spreading false narratives related to Taiwan,” Zhang added.

He also asked Washington to “work with China to promote communication and exchanges between the two militaries and jointly shoulder the responsibilities of major powers.”

‘Destabilizing actions’

Thursday’s talks also saw Sullivan express “concerns about (Chinese) support for Russia’s defense industrial base,” the readout added — echoing long-standing U.S. claims that Beijing has rejected.

He also raised “the need to avoid miscalculation and escalation in cyber space, and ongoing efforts to reach a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza,” the White House said.

On Wednesday, Sullivan and Wang discussed plans for their leaders to talk in the coming weeks — and clashed over China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions.

Sullivan “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to defending its Indo-Pacific allies,” the White House said.

He also “expressed concern about (China’s) destabilizing actions against lawful Philippine maritime operations” in the disputed South China Sea, it said.

Chinese state media reported that Wang issued his own warning to Washington.

“The United States must not use bilateral treaties as an excuse to undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, nor should it support or condone the Philippines’ actions of infringement,” Wang told Sullivan, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Wang and Sullivan previously met five times over the past year and a half — in Washington, Vienna, Malta and Bangkok, as well as alongside U.S. President Joe Biden and Xi in California last November.

During their latest encounter, they also discussed the tense issue of Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island that China claims.

China has kept up its saber-rattling since the inauguration this year of President Lai Ching-te, whose party emphasizes Taiwan’s separate identity.
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Washington — The 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump in July was dead set on carrying out an attack but appears to have seen the former U.S. leader and current Republican presidential candidate as a “target of opportunity.”

Senior FBI officials shared the updated assessment of Thomas Matthew Crooks on Wednesday, saying the findings are based on almost 1,000 interviews and extensive analysis of his internet search activity and social media accounts.

“We saw through our analysis of all his — particularly his online searches — a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some event,” FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Rojek told reporters during a phone briefing.

“He looked at any number of events or targets,” Rojek said, adding that when the Trump campaign announced the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the shooter “became hyperfocused on that specific event.”

As for what motivated Crooks to carry out an attack in the first place, officials said that remains a mystery.

“At this time, the FBI has not identified a motive,” said Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

Wells also said the FBI investigation has found no credible evidence to suggest that the shooter told anyone of his plans or that he had any help from any individuals or foreign governments.

“I want to be clear. We have not seen any indication to suggest Crooks was directed by a foreign entity to conduct the attack,” he said.

The FBI officials further rejected conspiracy theories that have been circulating on social media regarding a potential second shooter.

They said a forensic examination of the shooter’s gun, an AR-style rifle, conclusively linked the weapon to all eight shell casings found on the roof of the building where he carried out the attack.

The FBI officials said only two other shots were fired — one by a local law enforcement officer, and one by a U.S. Secret Service sniper — which hit the shooter in the head, killing him.

FBI investigators have been scouring Crooks’ internet searches and social media activity, and talking to anyone who knew him, ever since he climbed on a roof of a building overlooking the Trump campaign rally in rural, western Pennsylvania and began shooting, leaving Trump with a bloody ear and killing a rallygoer and injuring two others.

Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that Crooks appeared to have become fixated on high-profile public figures and that just a week before the attempted assassination, he searched for information on the 1963 killing of U.S. President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.

“On July 6, he did a Google search for, quote, ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’” Wray said.

“That’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray added. “That is the same day that he registered for the Butler rally.”

FBI officials on Wednesday presented a more-detailed account of Crooks’ mindset and planning, saying the shooter appears to have started preparing to carry out an attack or shooting as far back as September 2023, using an online account to look at Trump’s campaign schedule.

Starting in April of this year, officials said, the shooter began researching campaign events for Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden.

“In the 30 days prior to the attack, the subject conducted more than 60 searches related to President Biden and former President Trump,” said the FBI’s Rojek, adding the shooter also looked up the dates and locations of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

But Rojek said that Crooks’ focus on carrying out an attack appears to go back even further, and that he began researching how to make explosives in September 2019.

He said there is also no indication, so far, that Crooks was motivated by any political leanings.

“We’ve seen no definitive ideology associated with our subject either left leaning or right leaning,” Rojek said. “It’s really been a mixture, and something that we’re still attempting to analyze and draw conclusions on.”

It also appears Crooks was clear-headed and methodical in his attempt to kill Trump.  Lab tests showed no signs he was using alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of the attack, FBI officials said.
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Washington — Jobs in the U.S. clean energy industry in 2023 grew at more than double the rate of the country’s overall jobs, and unionization in clean energy surpassed for the first time the rate in the wider energy industry, the Energy Department said on Wednesday.

Employment in clean energy businesses – including wind, solar, nuclear and battery storage — rose by 142,000 jobs, or 4.2% last year, up from a rise of 3.9% in 2022, the U.S. Energy and Employment Report said. The rate was above the overall U.S. job growth rate of 2% in 2023.

Unionization rates in clean energy hit 12.4%, more than the 11% in the overall energy business, it said. That was driven by growth in construction and utility industries and after legislation passed in 2022 including the bipartisan CHIPS Act and President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the department said.

Construction jobs in clean energy, driven by the legislation and private-sector investments, “is expected to continue for decades to build out the clean energy infrastructure that we need,” Betony Jones, the Energy Department’s head of energy jobs, told reporters in a call. While unionized members “might move from project to project, there is continuity of that work in order for workers to make a career in that industry,” she said.

Employment in the utility scale and rooftop solar industries grew 5.3% adding more than 18,000 jobs, it said. The solar installation industry in California, the country’s most populous state, says it has lost more than 17,000 jobs due to high interest rates and the state’s lowering of net meter rates that allow customers to be credited for excess power their rooftop panels generate.

New jobs in fossil fuels were mixed. The natural gas workforce grew by more than 77,000 or 13.3%, while jobs in petroleum fell more than 44,000 or 6%. Coal jobs fell nearly 8,500 or 5.3% as power generation continued to switch from coal to gas, wind and solar. White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi told reporters that the report showed the administration’s commitment to pursue both energy and climate security.

Energy remained a mostly male workforce with an average of 73% in 2023 compared with the national workforce average that was 53% male, the same numbers as in the previous year. Women accounted for about half the energy jobs added in 2022, but only 17% of the jobs added in 2023, the report said.

 
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Washington — The White House welcomed on Tuesday the rescue of an Israeli hostage abducted October 7 by Hamas and said a Gaza cease-fire deal is being finalized.

But even if an agreement is reached, a truce is unlikely to extend beyond the six weeks of phase one of the three-phase deal. The next U.S. administration will still inherit the role of managing tensions in the region.

Since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris has aimed to strike a balance between reaffirming U.S. support for Israel and advocating for Palestinian humanitarian needs — in essence, signaling a continuation of President Joe Biden’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war and, more broadly, the Middle East.

Harris summed up her position in her acceptance speech as the Democratic presidential nominee at the party’s convention in Chicago.

“President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” she said.

Democrats are enthusiastic about Harris, even though she has not yet laid out her own policies. And unlike Biden, a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, most of Harris’ exposure to foreign policy was during her tenure as vice president.

Not having “foreign policy baggage” might benefit Harris in the eyes of Democratic voters, said Natasha Hall, senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Hall pointed out that in October 2002, Biden was one of 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq, a decision that eventually became a liability for Biden, much as his staunch support for Israel has become the most divisive issue in his own party.

Adviser’s influence

Those looking to see whether Harris’ Mideast policy will diverge from Biden’s can look to her national security adviser, Phillip Gordon, who is expected to remain in the role if she is elected. He would be the principal adviser to the president on all national security issues, including foreign policy.

“Phil Gordon is the type of adviser that colors in the lines,” Hall told VOA. “He’s the kind of person that I think very much is sort of old-fashioned American foreign policy.”

Gordon was against ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. He chronicled American efforts to overthrow leaders in the Middle East in his 2020 book, “Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East.”

“The U.S. policy debate about the Middle East suffers from the fallacy that there is an external American solution to every problem, even when decades of painful experience suggest that this is not the case,” he wrote. “And regime change is the worst ‘solution.'”

Such an outlook would make a Harris administration “very, very cautious to deal assertively with Iran,” said Jonathan Rynhold, head of the Political Studies Department at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.

From an Israeli perspective, however, Harris’ direct involvement in the administration’s recent decision to deploy more military assets to the Middle East to deter Iran is good news, Rynhold told VOA.

“If that is the policy that she goes on to adopt, then that crosses the minimal threshold of what Israel needs on Iran,” he said. “It may not be what Israel desires, which is a more forceful approach, but it is not a passive one.”

Current Harris aides have told VOA that Harris she intends to stay on the path that Biden has laid out: working beyond a cease-fire toward a two-state solution without sacrificing Israel’s security.

Harris’ former national security adviser while she was in the Senate, Halie Soifer, agreed.

“The vice president and the president have supported U.S. military assistance to Israel, not just for the existing agreement that we have with Israel,” said Soifer, who is now the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “But also an increase this year because of their security needs,” she told VOA

Generational and personal background

Biden’s generation, with a more visceral sense of the Holocaust, views Israel as a tiny democracy surrounded by hostile Arab powers. People of Harris’ generation and younger see Israel for what it is today: a thriving democracy and the region’s top military power. While Biden and Harris may share the same goal for Israel’s security, there’s not the same emotional resonance, Rynhold said.

Younger Americans “don’t remember a time when Jews and Israel were extremely vulnerable,” he said. “So they don’t have a same sense of that continuing vulnerability that President Biden really has.”

And for the president, Israel is integral to the story of America’s role in the world.

“America is there to prevent the Holocaust. America is there to support democracies, and Israel is central to his way of understanding that role,” Rynhold said.

If elected, Harris would become the first person to hold the highest office in the land whose parents are both immigrants. Barack Obama’s father was born in Kenya, and Donald Trump’s mother was born in the U.K. Harris’ father came from Jamaica and her mother, from India.

Unlike Biden, who often underscores that he is a Zionist, a loaded term often viewed with scorn in many parts of the world, Harris may be more sensitive to views from the Global South.

In a 2018 speech to an Indian American group, Harris spoke fondly of childhood visits to the home of her maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, describing him as someone who had fought for “freedom and for justice and for independence.”

“She is aware of how the rest of the world may feel about the Middle East, about neocolonialism, neoimperialism,” Hall said. “I really hope that she has the opportunity to bring those experiences to bear if she becomes the president.”

But it’s hard to tell what a Harris doctrine would eventually look like.

“What she says now is directed to winning an election and keeping the Democratic Party together,” Rynhold said.

And since the party is evenly split between those sympathetic to Israel and those sympathetic to the Palestinians, she must express platitudes, he said.

“And that’s what she has done.”
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White House officials welcomed the rescue of an Israeli hostage held by Hamas Tuesday and said they are finalizing a Gaza cease-fire deal. But even if an agreement is reached, a future U.S. administration will still inherit the problem of managing tensions in the Middle East. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at potential U.S. policy under Vice President Kamala Harris should she win the November presidential election.
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FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — It’s been a wild week of weather in many parts of the United States, from heat waves to snowstorms to flash floods.

Here’s a look at some of the weather events:

Midwest sizzles under heat wave

Millions of people in the Midwest have been enduring dangerous heat and humidity.

An emergency medicine physician treating Minnesota State Fair-goers for heat illnesses saw firefighters cut rings off two people’s swollen fingers Monday in hot weather that combined with humidity made it feel well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius).

Soaring late summer temperatures also prompted some Midwestern schools to let out early or cancel sports practices. The National Weather Service issued heat warnings or advisories across Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Several cities including Chicago opened cooling centers.

Forecasters said Tuesday also will be scorching hot for areas of the Midwest before the heat wave shifts to the south and east.

West Coast mountains get early snowstorm

An unusually cold storm on the mountain peaks along the West Coast late last week brought a hint of winter in August. The system dropped out of the Gulf of Alaska, down through the Pacific Northwest and into California. Mount Rainier, southeast of Seattle, got a high-elevation dusting, as did central Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor resort.

Mount Shasta, the Cascade Range volcano that rises to 14,163 feet (4,317 meters) above far northern California, wore a white blanket after the storm clouds passed. The mountain’s Helen Lake, which sits at 10,400 feet (3,170 meters) received about half a foot of snow (15 centimeters), and there were greater amounts at higher elevations, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Shasta Ranger Station.

Tropical storm dumps heavy rain on Hawaii

Three tropical cyclones swirled over the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, including Tropical Storm Hone, which brought heavy rain to Hawaii; Hurricane Gilma, which was weakening; and Tropical Storm Hector, which was churning westward, far off the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico.

The biggest impacts from Tropical Storm Hone (pronounced hoe-NEH) were rainfall and flash floods that resulted in road closures, downed power lines and damaged trees in some areas of the Big Island, said William Ahue, a forecaster at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu. No injuries or major damage had been reported, authorities said.

Deadly Alaska landslide crashes into homes

A landslide that cut a path down a steep, thickly forested hillside crashed into several homes in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the latest such disaster to strike the mountainous region. Sunday’s slide killed one person and injured three others and prompted the mandatory evacuation of nearby homes in the city, a popular cruise ship stop along the famed Inside Passage in the southeastern Alaska panhandle.

The slide area remained unstable Monday, and authorities said that state and local geologists were arriving to assess the area for potential secondary slides. Last November, six people — including a family of five — were killed when a landslide destroyed two homes in Wrangell, north of Ketchikan.

Flash flood hits Grand Canyon National Park

The body of an Arizona woman who disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park after a flash flood was recovered Sunday, park rangers said. The body of Chenoa Nickerson, 33, was discovered by a group rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the park said in a statement.

Nickerson was hiking along Havasu Creek about a half-mile (800 meters) from where it meets up with the Colorado River when the flash flood struck. Nickerson’s husband was among the more than 100 people safely evacuated.

The flood trapped several hikers in the area above and below Beaver Falls, one of a series of usually blue-green waterfalls that draw tourists from around the world to the Havasupai Tribe’s reservation. The area is prone to flooding that turns its iconic waterfalls chocolate brown.
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