Kenyan rescuers digging through the rubble of a six-story building found two survivors alive Sunday, two days after it collapsed in Nairobi, as the death toll rose to 10.

When the survivors of Friday’s building collapse were found Sunday morning, a crowd of onlookers burst into cheers and claps.

A military member at the scene told The Associated Press they had been communicating with people believed to have been trapped in pockets of debris. He said some were screaming for help but the sounds of their voices had died down as time wore on. He insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

Nairobi Police Chief Philip Ndolo said four bodies were recovered from the scene Sunday including that of a child, while a fifth person died in a hospital. According to authorities, that brings the overall toll to 10 dead, 30 injured and 20 missing.

Ndolo said the rescue of a man and a woman had invigorated emergency workers with hopes of finding other survivors. He said the two were in stable condition in a hospital.

“Given we have rescued two people two days after the incident, we hope to find more survivors. Remember there is more than 20 people missing,” he said.

He said the heavy rains that Kenya was experiencing, more than 300% above normal, were slowing the rescue operation. It was not immediately clear what caused the building, which the Red Cross said housed 22 families, to collapse.

But building collapses are common in Nairobi, where housing is in high demand and unscrupulous developers often bypass regulations.

On Saturday, one person died and others were injured when the balcony of single-story building in Chuka in central Kenya collapsed.

In September, a school collapsed in Nairobi, killing at least seven primary students.

After eight buildings collapsed and killed 15 people in Kenya in 2015, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered an audit of all the country’s buildings to see if they were up to code. The National Construction Authority found that 58% of the buildings in Nairobi were unfit for habitation.

…

U.S. Representative Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has been a leading voice defending President Donald Trump throughout the congressional Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. 
 
But the 300-page impeachment report released Tuesday by the Democratic majority on the Intelligence Committee revealed that the California congressman has connections to the Trump-Ukraine scandal that have raised questions about his own official conduct. 
 
House Democrats obtained phone records of Nunes’ calls with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who Democratic investigators say led a shadow effort to subvert U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine in a manner that would benefit the president’s own political interests in the 2020 election campaign. 
 
Logs show five calls between Giuliani and Nunes on April 10, 2019. Two of those were missed calls and the longest was almost 3 minutes in duration. The phone calls occurred at a time when Giuliani has been accused of waging a smear campaign to oust U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as part of an effort to clear the way for pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce investigations of one of Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.  

The previously undisclosed phone records provided to the committee by AT&T and Verizon also showed Nunes spoke at least four times with Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American associate of Giuliani who has been indicted on charges of campaign finance violations. Parnas allegedly was part of Giuliani’s efforts to dig up damaging information on the Bidens. Parnas has pleaded not guilty to the campaign finance charges. 
 
The phone calls raised suspicions among House Democrats that Nunes was working behind the scenes to help the president. 
 
Nunes: Calls not suspicious 
 
Nunes told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that the timing of his calls with Giuliani, whom he has known for some time, should not be considered suspicious and were more focused on former special counsel Robert Mueller and his report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  

Asked about his contact with Parnas, Nunes said he found it unlikely he would be taking calls from random people. 
 
“l haven’t gone through all my phone records,” Nunes told Fox News. “I don’t really recall that name, I remember that name now because he’s been indicted.” 

According to the phone records in the impeachment report, Nunes spoke with Parnas at least four times on April 12, 2019, including one 8-minute phone call. 
 
Parnas has alleged through his attorney that Nunes used taxpayer funds for official travel to Vienna in 2018 to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, according to CNN reports. Parnas’ lawyer has also said his client is willing to testify that he met with a Nunes aide and Giuliani to discuss Biden. 
 
Nunes has called those allegations “fake.” He has filed a lawsuit against CNN for its reporting on his conversations with Parnas and has threatened internet publication The Daily Beast with similar litigation. 
 
“It’s not unusual for members of Congress to have contact with persons in foreign countries,” said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. 
 
Members of Congress routinely coordinate official trips through the State Department to learn more about areas receiving aid from the United States. “But this sort of freelance thing is pretty unusual,” Belt said. 
 
Nunes-Trump relationship 
 
Nunes is no stranger to defending his close relationship with the Trump White House. 
 
In 2017, during his time as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he investigated Trump’s tweeted claims that the Obama administration had him “wiretapped” in Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. 
 
Reporters discovered Nunes was coordinating with White House officials to release classified information supporting that allegation. 
 
Nunes later told reporters the incidental collection of intelligence was legal, part of routine surveillance of Trump campaign officials in discussion with foreign agents after the election. 

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

US House Intelligence Panel Weighs Future of Wiretap Probe

The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee met behind closed doors Thursday, a day after its investigation into wiretapping allegations involving President Donald Trump and his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, was thrown into disarray.Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, chairman of the panel, defended his disclosure Wednesday that legal, wiretapped conversations of foreign agents talking with Trump officials after the November election, but before he took office in late January led…

Nunes, however, was forced to recuse himself from the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and temporarily relinquish his chairmanship because of his apparent conflict of interest. A House Ethics Committee investigation subsequently cleared him. 
 
Belt said Nunes has a “really cozy relationship with the president.” 
 
Relevance to impeachment inquiry 
 
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters Tuesday that he would reserve comment on Nunes but said it was “deeply concerning” a member of Congress could be complicit in behind-the-scenes efforts to assist the president at the public’s expense. 
 
“There’s a lot more to learn about that, and I don’t want to state that that’s an unequivocal fact,” Schiff said. “Our focus is on the president’s conduct first and foremost. It may be the role of others to evaluate the conduct of members of Congress.” 
 
Belt noted Democrats would have to prioritize their investigations, focusing on the impeachment investigation into Trump rather than the allegations against Nunes. 
 
“The fact that they’re trying to move ahead as fast as possible really doesn’t give them much, you know, wiggle room to sort of revisit this,” he said. 
 
During the impeachment inquiry hearings, Nunes has consistently pushed the unfounded theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, arguing that the interference gave Trump a good reason to suspect the country’s motives and temporarily withhold military aid. 

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Top US Diplomat Open to Investigation of Ukraine for Election Meddling

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says US should ‘chase down’ any information related to possible election interference

That theory has been rejected by U.S. intelligence agencies, who conclusively found Russia meddled in the 2016 election. 
 
Democratic Representative Jackie Speier, another member of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted: “If Devin Nunes was using taxpayer money to do ‘political errands’ in Vienna for his puppeteer, Donald Trump, an ethics investigation should be initiated and he should be required to reimburse the taxpayers.” 
 
What’s next for Nunes? 
 
The House Committee on Ethics considers cases of misconduct by members of Congress and could likely end up weighing in on this matter. Unlike other House committees, membership is evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans. This ensures that each party has veto power over disciplinary action of a member of Congress. 
 
The committee cleared Nunes of wrongdoing in the 2017 wiretapping controversy. 
 
Members of Congress facing ethics investigations often resign to save political face. The committee can refer the matter to a full House floor vote, censuring or expelling the member of Congress, although such action is extremely rare. 

…

The Israeli military said Saturday that three rockets had been fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel. 
 
The military said air defenses had intercepted two of the missiles. 
 
There were no reports of injuries, and no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. 
 
Cross-border violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza has ebbed and flowed in recent years. Fighting last month was the most violent in months. 
 
Leaders from Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, and the smaller but more radical Islamic Jihad are in Cairo, talking with Egyptian officials about cementing a cease-fire. 

…

U.S. Democratic lawmakers met privately Saturday to work on the investigation into President Donald Trump, inching closer to an impeachment vote, possibly before the Christmas holiday recess. 
 
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were working through the weekend to review evidence against the Republican president and to draft charges that they could recommend for a full House vote as early as Thursday. 
 
The legislators disclosed a 55-page report Saturday that outlined what they viewed as the constitutional grounds on which the charges, known as articles of impeachment, could be based. 
 
On Friday, the White House said it would not cooperate with the remaining House impeachment proceedings against Trump.  

“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” read a letter from Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. 
 
The response was issued less than an hour before a Friday afternoon deadline for lawyers of the president to state whether they would represent him in the next round of the committee’s impeachment proceedings. 
 
“You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” Cipollone said in the letter. 
 
The counsel reiterated the president’s tweeted words that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business.” 

‘He cannot claim’ unfairness
 
Later Friday, Nadler expressed disappointment Trump had decided not to participate.   
 
“We gave President Trump a fair opportunity to question witnesses and present his own to address the overwhelming evidence before us. After listening to him complain about the impeachment process, we had hoped that he might accept our invitation,” the committee chairman said in a statement. “If the President has no good response to the allegations, then he would not want to appear before the Committee. Having declined this opportunity, he cannot claim that the process is unfair.” 
 
Democrats contend the Republican president defied the norms of conduct for the office and violated his sworn obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution by asking Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president running for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Trump next year, and his son Hunter. 

Trump contends his phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been perfect and he did nothing wrong. Republicans have defended the president, saying Trump was right to press Ukraine to scrutinize the work that Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian natural gas company. 
 
Republicans are also pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community concluded it was Ukraine’s neighbor, Russia, that was doing the meddling. 
 
Trump’s request to Kyiv came at a time when his administration was withholding $391 million in military assistance approved for Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. The aid was released in September without Ukraine opening investigations of the Bidens. 
 
The request for such an investigation in exchange for military assistance is expected to be among the articles of impeachment against Trump. 

Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. 

…

Pacific Gas and Electric says it has reached a $13.5 billion settlement that will resolve all major claims related to devastating wildfires blamed on its outdated equipment and negligence.

The settlement, which the utility says was reached Friday, still requires court approval. PG&E says it is a key step in leading it out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The settlement is to resolve all claims arising from the 2017 Northern California wildfires and 2018 Camp Fire, as well as all claims from the 2015 Butte Fire and 2016 Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland.

“From the beginning of the Chapter 11 process, getting wildfire victims fairly compensated, especially the individuals, has been our primary goal,” Bill Johnson, PG&E Corporation’s CEO and president, said in a statement. “We want to help our customers, our neighbors and our friends in those impacted areas recover and rebuild after these tragic wildfires.”

The settlement is still subject to a number of conditions involving PG&E’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plans, which must be completed by June 30, 2020.

Friday’s settlement figure responds to pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to give wildfire victims more than it originally offered, but it still relies on the bankruptcy judge’s approval as part of the proceedings. A February hearing at which an official estimation of losses will be made still looms for the utility and could upend any settlement deals.

“We appreciate all the hard work by many stakeholders that went into reaching this agreement,” Johnson said. “With this important milestone now accomplished, we are focused on emerging from Chapter 11 as the utility of the future that our customers and communities expect and deserve.”

PG&E said the proposed settlement is the third it has reached as it works through its Chapter 11 case. The utility previously reached a $1 billion settlement with cities, counties and other public utilities and an $11 billion agreement with insurance companies and other entities that have paid claims relating to the 2017 and 2018 fires.

…

He came to Afghanistan as Dr. Tetsu Nakamura in the 1980s to help treat leprosy patients in Afghanistan and refugee camps in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His body is leaving Afghanistan as “Kaka Murad” or Uncle Murad, revered by millions of people across the country who feel indebted to his three decades of humanitarian work in the war-torn country.

On Wednesday, Nakamura was on his way to work with five members of his aid organization, Peace Japan Medical Services, when his car came under attack by unidentified gunmen in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.

He and his staff were shot and killed, with Nakamura dying of his wounds on the way to Bagram Airfield, a U.S. military base in northern Afghanistan, local Afghan officials said.

Life’s work in Afghanistan

Nakamura, 73, had dedicated most of his adult life to working in Afghanistan, trying to save lives at times as a physician and at times as a mason, building water canals for people affected by drought.

“You’d hear a child screaming in the waiting room, but by the time you got there, they’d be dead,” Nakamura told NHK TV, Japan’s national broadcasting organization, in October.

“That happened almost every day. They were so malnourished that things like diarrhea could kill them. … My thinking was that if those patients had clean water and enough to eat, they would have survived,” he added.

Japanese Afghan citizen

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani bestowed upon Nakamura an honorary Afghan citizenship in October, and earlier this year residents of Nangarhar province campaigned on social media for him to become the mayor of Jalalabad city.

“This morning a terror attack against the reconstruction hero of Afghanistan, Japanese Afghan Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, resulted in his injury. His deep wounds unfortunately led to his death,” Ghani tweeted in Pashto earlier this week.

Ghani offered “our deepest condolences” to Japanese Ambassador to Afghanistan Mitsuji Suzuka, as well as to the families of the Afghans who were killed in the attack.

On Friday, Ghani met with Nakamura’s family in Kabul, the presidential office said.

#SorryJapan

#SorryJapan has been trending on Afghan social media networks with officials, activists and Afghan citizens expressing sorrow over Nakamura’s death and apologizing to Japan for not being able to protect him.

“#Nakamura I can’t stop my tears. My heart cries for you, my heart aches so much. I can’t forget you, you were the true servant of this land,” Basir Atiqzai wrote on twitter.

Bilal Sarwary, a former BBC reporter in Afghanistan, said Nakamura had great affection for the people of Afghanistan.

Sarwary tweeted he remembered “the joy and jubilation” on Nakamura’s face “after inaugurating the water canal. His friendly hugs with Gul Agha Shiraz and his laughter of joy shows his deep love for Afghanistan.”

Amrullah Saleh, the former chief of Afghan intelligence and Ghani’s running mate in September’s presidential elections, said the crime against Nakamura would not go unpunished.

Nakamura has become “a hero of compassion for all Afghans. He was an uncle for east Afg before. There is no way his murder will remain a mystery for ever. No way. He is too big to be cremated or buried. This high profile crime won’t go unpunished. We promise,” Saleh wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Vigils

Candlelight vigils have been held in several provinces in Afghanistan. Locals named a roundabout after Nakamura in Eastern Khost province with Kam Air, a local Afghan airline, putting Nakamura’s portrait on an Airbus 340 to pay tribute to the slain aid worker.

WATCH: Afghan Activists Hold Vigil in Honor of Slain Japanese Doctor

Afghan Activists Hold Vigil in Honor of Slain Japanese Doctor video player.

Embed

Copy

Link

Afghans living in the Washington, D.C., area are planning a candlelight vigil Saturday.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack against the group. The Taliban denied responsibility for it, but Afghan officials and civil society activists have blamed the insurgent group for it.

On Friday, a group of activists held a protest in Kabul in front of Pakistan’s Embassy to condemn the terror attack and criticize Pakistan’s alleged support for the Afghan militants.

Pakistan has not immediately reacted to the protest.

“Afghans will never forget his services for this country,” Rahimullah Samandar, a civil society activist, told Reuters. “The whole nation will love him and keep him in their memories.”

‘I couldn’t ignore Afghans’

Nakamura was born in western Japan. He was a physician by profession and left his country in 1984 to work at a clinic in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He treated Afghan refugees displaced by war and suffering from leprosy.

He eventually opened a clinic in Afghanistan in 1991. He found the health problems in Afghanistan overwhelming for his clinic and instead found another way to combat them: irrigation canals.

In 2003, borrowing tactics from Japan’s irrigation systems, he swapped his doctor’s tools for construction gear. He began building an irrigation canal to help address the drought issue in eastern Afghanistan. He and local residents spent six years completing the construction of a canal that has reportedly changed the lives of nearly a million people.

“As a doctor, nothing is better than healing patients and sending them home,” and providing water to drought-stricken areas did the same for rural Afghanistan, Nakamura told NHK TV.

“A hospital treats patients one by one, but this helps an entire village. … I love seeing a village that’s been brought back to life,” he added.

Since the construction of the irrigation canal, more than 16,000 hectares (about 40,000 acres) of desert has been reportedly brought back to life.

Nakamura was fluent in both Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan.

“I couldn’t ignore the Afghans,” Nakamura told NHK TV.

VOA’s Mehdi Jedinia and Rikar Hussein contributed to this story from Washington. Some of the materials used in this story came from Reuters.

…

Maritime sovereignty rivals China and Vietnam have started talking again after a prolonged standoff earlier this year, entering what analysts call a routine show of peace before more flare-ups.

China’s withdrawal of a survey ship from disputed waters in October and Vietnam’s ascent to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations led the reasons that the two began talking this month, political observers say.

On Wednesday, a Vietnam-China working group on maritime cooperation held its 13th round of talks in Ho Chi Minh City. The event brought in midlevel officials from each side’s foreign ministry, Viet Nam News reported.

“It seems to me they’re moving into a phase of talk, because the confrontation no longer serves any particular purpose,” said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialist emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia.

China and Vietnam have cycled through dozens of tiffs and talks over at least the past 20 years. Diplomacy normally comes after the two sides bury a specific issue and one or both wants to boost its image as a peacemaker — especially when a tense China-ASEAN dialogue looms — experts have said. Their talks do not solve underlying disagreements about rights to the resource-rich South China Sea.

“China’s still maintaining a firm stance on the South China Sea issue,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. “They will not make many concessions to push forward for negotiations with other countries in the region.”

The two neighbors with a centuries-long history of territorial disputes both claim western parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, although China is militarily and economically stronger, which has given it more clout at sea since the 1970s. Both countries are looking for potentially vast reserves of oil and gas under the seabed.

Cycle of spats, talks

Vietnam and China typically negotiate after China moves ships or a rig into contested waters, or the Vietnamese step up energy exploration. For example, talks picked up speed in 2014 as both sides wanted to get past an incident in which Vietnamese boats had rammed Chinese counterparts near the Gulf of Tonkin over Beijing’s approval for an oil rig. Then, during a meeting in Vietnam in 2017, senior officials from both sides agreed to manage disputes in the sea.

This year’s standoff began in June when a Chinese energy survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, began patrolling contested waters around Vanguard Bank, 350 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. In October a rig contracted by Vietnam said it had stopped work in the tract and a day later the survey ship retreated.

Reasons for talks this month

Vietnam should look like a negotiator, not a fighter, among regional leaders over the next year as ASEAN chair, analysts say. Beijing for its part hopes to get along with Vietnam through its term into late 2020, in case the 10-country bloc takes action on the South China Sea, they say.

“China has to confront an ASEAN with Vietnam at the chair, which has already been very, very strongly opposing China’s actions,” Thayer said.

The Vietnamese government wants its citizens to see it trying to work with China in case something goes wrong later, Nguyen said. Talks might produce more deals on fishing or energy exploration, he added.

“For Vietnam, because now it’s the ASEAN chair, so it doesn’t look good on Vietnam if it continues to adopt a more militant stance toward China, especially after China has already withdrawn that survey vessel from Vanguard bank,” said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In the future, though, China will still “coerce within a manageable threshold” and Vietnam will want China to stop, Koh said. The negotiations now mark a “repetition of the cycle” of struggle and reconciliation, he said.

…

Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
                   
He knew Lacchin, the name on his Kenyan birth certificate, was his dad’s name. He knew that Mario Lacchin abandoned him and his mother.
                   
When he was older, he learned that his father was an Italian missionary priest – and that in leaving, he had chosen the church over his child.
                   
What he did not know is that less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, another man was on a quest to prove that Mario Lacchin was his father, too.
                   
These two men would find each other thanks to an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page of Kenya’s main newspaper. All agreed that they bore a marked resemblance, but they underwent genetic testing to be certain.
                   
Were they indeed half-brothers, sons of the same Father?
                  
The Vatican only publicly admitted this year that it had a problem: Priests were fathering children. And it only acknowledged the problem by revealing that it had crafted internal guidelines to deal with it.
                   
“I don’t know how many children of priests there are in the world, but I know that they are all over the planet,” said Anne-Marie Jarzac, who heads the French group Enfants du Silence (Children of Silence), which recently opened negotiations with French bishops to access church archives so these children of priests can learn their true identities.
                   
Just as clergy sex abuse victims have long suffered the indifference of the Catholic hierarchy, many of these children of priests endure rejection multiple times over: abandoned by their fathers, deprived of their identities and ignored by church superiors when they seek answers or help.
                   
Steven Lacchin’s lineage was no secret. Members of Mario Lacchin’s order were well aware of it and exerted pressure on him to choose the church over his young family, according to his letters.
                   
His mother, Madeleine, kept a decade worth of correspondence with the priest, as well as meticulous records of her efforts to seek child support from the Consolata leadership and regional bishops after Steven was born June 21, 1980. (Steven Lacchin asked that his mother be identified only by her first name.)
                   
The two had met two years earlier in Nanyuki, about 200 kilometers north of Nairobi, where Madeleine was a school teacher at an all-girls school and Lacchin would celebrate Mass. Madeleine would later tell the Consolata regional superior that she first went to Lacchin with “a spiritual problem,” but that they then eased into a “friendly pastor-parishioner” relationship that grew into love.
                   
On July 28, 1979, Mario Lacchin wrote a birthday card to Madeleine in his neat cursive, promising to spend more time with her and her young daughter from a previous relationship, Josephine, despite the risks their union posed.
                   
“I do really love you with all my heart and body,” he wrote. “You are the only one who is giving me, not only physical satisfaction, but a lot more. You are telling me and teaching me how beautiful it is to love and be together no matter the sacrifices we have to make for it.”
                   
Soon after, Madeleine became pregnant. A few months before Steven was born, Lacchin wrote from Rome about meetings he held with the Consolata leadership at the order’s headquarters about his impending fatherhood.
                   
“I had a little trouble in Rome with my superiors,” he wrote Madeleine on March 4, 1980. “It is my impression that nobody is going to help me in the way I would like to go,” he wrote, adding: “How is the baby?”
                   
By the end of 1981, with Steven Lacchin a year old, the priest seemed determined to end his “double life” and devote himself to his family.
                   
“I took a courage to meet with my provincial superior about you, about Steven, about my readiness to leave the priesthood,” he wrote. “I want you, and I will fight until I will be with you, Steven and Josephine forever.”
                   
But in that same letter, Lacchin told Madeleine that his superior wasn’t at all on board with the plan. “He told me that he wants to save my priesthood, but I told him that I will never be able to continue in such a life knowing I had a child belong to me,” he wrote.
                   
Lacchin never left the Consolatas. His letters over the following years speak of his order’s “pressure” to remain a priest, as well as his own feelings of “failure” and his apologies for having promised Madeleine “a future which will never come.”
                   
While the Vatican was loath in those years to let a priest abandon his vocation, the Consolata’s deputy superior, the Rev. James Lengarin, insists that if a priest formally requested to be released from his vows because he had fathered a child, he would have been allowed to go.
                   
By 1985, Madeleine was increasingly unable to care for the children. She was ill, and shunned by her devout Catholic family because of her liaison with Lacchin.
                   
Lacchin, then stationed in Uganda, had left 1.7 million Ugandan shillings for her in the Ugandan diocese of Tororo that year (the equivalent at the time of $2,500), but in the midst of a civil war, Madeleine couldn’t access the money. Due to the upheaval, the money lost nearly all its value.
                   
Two years later, Madeleine wrote to Lacchin’s superiors seeking financial and bureaucratic help as she increasingly feared for Steven’s future. Who would pay for his education? And the child couldn’t get Kenyan citizenship because his father wasn’t Kenyan; Steven Lacchin’s birth certificate and other identity papers all bore Mario Lacchin’s name.
                   
The Consolata’s then-regional superior, the Rev. Mario Barbero, replied that he understood Lacchin had left money for Steven’s care in Uganda.
                   
“With this I think that Mario has given some contribution towards meeting the expenses for Steven’s upbringing, though I know that money is not enough to heal psychological wounds and frustrations you had to go through,” Barbero wrote.
                   
A year later, Madeleine took her case directly to Lacchin.
                   
“Even as I write, I find it difficult to believe that you, Mario, could turn me into the helpless beggar I am,” she wrote on Jan. 5, 1988.
                   
“I accepted your decision regarding me, and yet I cannot accept your hiding behind the priesthood to refuse to help a child you helped bring into the world,” she wrote. “I do not know what you think he will think of you and of your priesthood and other priests when he grows up and learns how you treated him.”
                  
By then, Mario Lacchin had been transferred north and was working at the Consolata mission in Archer’s Post, a onetime trading station in the Northern Rift Valley. There, he met Sabina Losirkale, a young girl in her final year at Gir Gir Primary School who cleaned the Consolata priests’ quarters after classes.
                   
Impregnated at 16, before the age of legal consent in Kenya, she would give birth to a boy, Gerald Erebon, on March 12, 1989. He was pale complexioned, unlike his black mother or siblings or the black man he was told was his father.
                   
When Sabina became pregnant, the Consolatas transferred Lacchin out of Archer’s Post, and he vanished from her life.
                   
Shortly before her death in 2012, family members say, Sabina told them Lacchin was Gerald’s father. The priest has denied it, and refused to take a paternity test. The order acknowledged nothing.
                   
The AP told Gerald Erebon’s story in October. That article led Steven Lacchin to reach out to Erebon on Facebook.
                   
“I saw your story and I feel for you,” he wrote. “I am letting you know, you are not alone.”
                   
Intrigued, but skeptical, Erebon responded. What did the writer want to share?
                   
“He is my dad too,” Lacchin replied.
                   
A few days later, the two met in Nairobi. It turns out they are practically neighbors, living in adjacent neighborhoods along Nairobi’s main Magadi Road. They marveled at how much they looked alike: two bi-racial men born to black African mothers, soft-spoken and pensive, though Erebon towers over Steven.
                   
Awkwardly, they hugged for the first time and looked over the documentation Steven had brought along detailing the years-long relationship between Lacchin and his mother and her efforts to hold him responsible for Steven’s upkeep.
                   
They shared the stories of their lives. Like Erebon, Steven Lacchin was brought up in the church and attended seminary for a time. Steven said he was kicked out once his bishop discovered that his father was a Catholic priest. Eventually he was able to put himself through law school, and now is married with three children.
                   
“I wouldn’t need a DNA to tell these two are brothers,” said Lacchin’s wife, Ruth. “If you look at Mario, you look at Steven, you look at Gerald, it’s one person. It’s one tree. They are brothers!”
                   
Still, they needed to know. The AP arranged for DNA tests.
                   
Two weeks later, the results were in: The findings were “entirely consistent with a direct male-line biological relationship,” the lab said.
                   
In other words, the men are almost certainly half-brothers, said Darren Griffin, a geneticist at the University of Kent who reviewed the lab results for AP.
                   
“The only thing I can say is welcome to the family!” Lacchin told Erebon, shaking his hand.
                   
“This is eternal,” Lacchin said. “We can’t run away from this. We may go our separate ways, but one thing, you know you have a brother out there.”
                   
Erebon said he had thought he was alone, and having “a relative, a family, someone you can call your own, makes it a bit easier for me now.”
                   
Mario Lacchin, who has taken a leave from his parish work in Nairobi to see his Italian relatives, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
                   
Lengarin, the deputy Consolata superior, said he searched the order’s Nairobi archives in 2018 after Erebon came forward and turned up no information about Erebon or Steven Lacchin. But he acknowledged that he only looked into the two years surrounding Erebon’s 1989 birth, and that the order doesn’t keep complete personnel files.
                   
He said AP’s inquiry about Steven Lacchin was the first the order in Rome and Nairobi had heard about a possible second son of Mario Lacchin.
                   
But Steven’s mother was in touch with the Consolata superiors in the 1980s. Steven sent letters to Consolata officials in Nairobi in 2010 and 2014, seeking financial assistance (he wanted to buy land to build a home for his family) along with help sorting out his citizenship status.
                   
Getting no response, starting in 2016 he made the same requests of Mario Lacchin’s bishop, Virgilio Pante, like Mario Lacchin, an Italian member of the Consolata order.
                   
Pante responded with an Oct. 14, 2017, text: “You look for something big. My diocese of Maralal now financially is suffering. True. Can I send you now a Christmas gift 25,000?” (In Kenyan shillings, the equivalent of around $250.)
                   
Steven still wants the church’s help in ironing out his Kenyan and Italian citizenship issues; Erebon wants Mario Lacchin to acknowledge his paternity, so the heritage of his own two children can be recognized and they can obtain Italian citizenship.
                   
“It started very long time ago and our father has to do the right thing, at least once,” Erebon said. “He needs to make it right. And the church should not continue with the cover-up. They should just make this right.”

…

Kenyan police arrested the Nairobi County governor, known for his chunky gold jewelry and impromptu raps, Friday on corruption charges, a high profile move in the government’s much trumpeted anti-graft push.

Chief public prosecutor Noordin Haji told a news conference that Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko and his associates were accused of conspiracy to commit corruption, failure to comply with laws related to procurement, unlawful acquisition of public property and laundering the proceeds of crime.

Sonko and his assistants did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Citizens and international investors have long complained of corruption in Kenya, East Africa’s business hub and richest economy.

President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Haji, a former deputy head of national intelligence, last year after years of taking little action to rein in widespread graft.

On Friday, Haji accused Sonko, who runs the Kenyan capital as Nairobi’s most senior regional politician, of “deploying intimidation tactics and using goons to threaten law enforcement officials” investigating the case.

Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of Sonko’s supporters when he was called into the anti-corruption office for questioning in November.

Flamboyant Sonko

Sonko, a former senator, was elected in 2017 after years of news splashes featuring his flamboyant lifestyle and flashy fashion, complete with ubiquitous chunky gold jewelry and eye-catching hairstyles.

After Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto faced charges of crimes against humanity following the disputed 2007 elections and subsequent violence, Sonko showed up to the proceedings at the Hague-based International Criminal Court with “Uhuruto Not Guilty” dyed into his hair.

He was recently photographed using a gold-plated iPad and matching iPhone and has appeared in rap videos gyrating in public offices wearing gold-colored trainers while insulting political opponents.

Gold-plated taste

He invited a storm of public criticism this month after he shared photos online of his dining room, featuring a gold-plated lion statue, and a gold-tinted dining table and chairs.

He has recruited hundreds of people into his “Sonko Rescue Team” who sweep out streets or appear at fires wearing “Sonko” branded red boiler suits in Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods.

On Thursday, Sonko received an award sponsored by the Kenya Red Cross and United Nations Volunteers for encouraging volunteering.

Sonko has been photographed handing out cash for things like hospital bills, but Nairobi has seen little improvement in public services under his watch.

Nairobi’s public schools and clinics are crumbling, roads are potholed and hundreds of thousands of people live in slums without access to electricity, sewage or services.

…

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Andrew Griffin formed the alternative rock band “Better Than Ezra in 1988.” As a songwriter, Griffin stands out as a five-time BMI Pop Award winner and ARIAA Award-winner with multiple number ones, including Sugarland’s “Stuck Like Glue” and Howie Day’s “Collide.” In October, he released his first solo album, “Anywhere You Go.”

…

BOLSOVER, ENGLAND — Dennis Skinner is a no-nonsense, unchanging socialist and the only British MP ever to heckle the Queen’s Speech Ceremony, when Britain’s lawmakers process from the Commons annually to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s address outlining the government’s legislative program.

Nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover,” a reference to the Derbyshire constituency he has represented since 1970, the 87-year-old Skinner has traditionally occupied the seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons, where invariably wearing a tweed jacket and red tie, he has harangued those he deems “class enemies,” earning himself a dozen cooling off’ suspensions for what was deemed “unparliamentary language.”

The son of a coal miner — his father was sacked after the historic coal strike of 1926 — and a former miner himself, his first brush with the Speaker of the House of Commons was in 1984 when he dubbed the leader of a group of Labour defectors a “pompous sod” and was ordered out of the chamber when he agreed to withdraw only the word “pompous.” In 1992, he incurred another suspension for describing the then Conservative agriculture minister as “a little squirt” and “a slimy wart on Margaret Thatcher’s nose.”

Skinner’s working-class constituents, many of them former coal-miners or the sons and daughters of miners, have been relentlessly behind their pugnacious tribune with the snappy bark, and they have been loyal to the Labour Party. The closure of local collieries by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s only deepened Bolsover’s allegiance to Labour and to their MP, who took a pay cut himself in support of the miners during a ferocious 1984-85 miners’ strike.

But the times are changing and the country’s oldest serving MP may became next week a casualty of electoral war thanks to the scrambling of British politics by Brexit and a makeover of the Labour Party, which has become more focused on metropolitan issues pushed by progressive urban recruits, irritating older and more socially conservative traditional Labour voters.

Britain’s ruling Conservatives hope Boris Johnson can pull off what his predecessor at 10 Downing Street, Theresa May, failed to do in a snap election 18 months ago. Their hope is that Johnson will breach the Labour Party’s so-called northern red wall,’ once thought to be impregnable, by persuading anti-European Union northern working-class voters to defect to the class-enemy Conservatives to “deliver Brexit.”

Skinner’s constituency is one brick in that wall and on the streets of Bolsover in the north east of the county of Derbyshire amid rolling hills, the talk is the December 12 general election may mark the end of the long-serving lawmaker’s political career. Locals say while they still admire their local MP, who’s been unable to campaign personally because of recent hip-replacement surgery, Brexit is driving them away from a Labour Party, which wants to hold a second Brexit referendum, if it wins power.

Bolsover voted 70 percent to Leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and because of that high proportion of pro-Brexit voters, the seat is a key target for the Conservatives. On a cold, breezy day when VOA visited the town center, which has the feel of left-behind desperation about it with boarded-up shops, shuttered pubs, neglected terrace houses and shabby cheap takeaways, it wasn’t difficult to find locals planning to switch their votes to either the Conservatives or the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage.

One former miner, Dave Michaels, a stocky 65-year-old wearing a flat cap, said, “I’ve been Labour all my life, as was my father, and I don’t like Johnson, don’t trust the man, but I think he’ll get us out of the EU and stop all the dithering.” He voiced annoyance at the influx of eastern European migrants to staff new warehouses and online retail distribution centers. Locals complain migration has altered the social cohesion of this corner of Derbyshire and strained already under-resourced public services.

Others expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that Skinner’s 5,000 majority may well collapse next week, adding to a possible seismic change in British politics that could see Labour and the Liberal Democrats snatch traditional Conservative seats in the pro-EU south of England and the commuter belt around London, but lose heartland seats of their own in the north, midlands and southwest of the country.

The Conservatives’ assault on the “red wall” will make or break Johnson’s dream of securing a parliamentary majority and dictate whether Britain leaves the European Union or not.

Daphne, a 52-year-old, who’d just finished shopping in a butcher’s shop, said she’ll be voting for Skinner’s Conservative rival Mark Fletcher. The mother of two grown up daughters, Lewis says she remains grateful to Skinner for all he’s done in the past, but he is “long in the tooth” and it is time for a change. “The Conservatives seem to have a goal,” she says.

The 34-year-old Fletcher, the grandson himself of a miner who was educated at state schools before heading to Cambridge University, says locals “want to get Brexit done and the Labour party has lost its way.” He’s convinced he can win Bolsover and that the Brexit Party won’t deny him victory by splitting the Leave vote. He is buoyed by a seat-by-seat opinion survey last week produced by the YouGov polling agency that predicted he will win the seat on December 12 with 42 percent of the vote, with Labour trailing 38 percent and the Brexit Party picking up 12 percent.

But the remaining days will be crucial before voting — in Bolsover, as well as in 49 other Labour seats in Wales, the midlands and northern England targeted by the Conservatives. At the last general election there were hints the ‘red wall’ isn’t as strong as Labour strategists suppose — two of Bolsover’s neighboring constituencies, North East Derbyshire and Mansfield, defected to the Conservative camp.

The Labour activists are hitting the doorsteps hard in the northern constituencies, though, trawling residual party support. And while the Conservatives are doing well when it comes to the issue of Brexit, they are on the back foot when it comes to public-service issues, and especially in regards to the under-staffed and under-funded National Health Service.

But Brexit isn’t Labour’s only problem in the north in what commentators describe as a “hold-your-nose election.” Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, seen widely as the most far-left leader the party has ever had, are vying in the unpopularity stakes, and according to opinion polls neither are trusted by voters. Johnson is the most disliked new prime minister in the modern history of opinion polling, while Corbyn is the most disliked leader of the opposition.

General election victory or defeat may come down to who is disliked the most.

…

Biogen Inc on Thursday presented new data on its experimental Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab that eased concerns raised by some experts but still left many questions unanswered as the company made its case about why it plans to seek U.S. approval after declaring the drug a failure in March.

Experts had been watching closely for any statistical abnormalities or excess safety issues that would affect how the drug is reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), likely in the second half of 2020.

It has been at least 15 years since the FDA has reviewed an application for a new Alzheimer’s treatment, and an agent that can slow progression of the mind-wasting disease is desperately needed.

Alzheimer’s experts on a panel organized by the company, who had seen the data previously, expressed confidence that the complicated study did show that the drug was able to slow progression of the disease.

“All of the data suggests this is a disease modification. That means the impact of the treatment will continue to accrue with time,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, an Alzheimer’s expert from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Ronald Petersen, an Alzheimer’s expert from Mayo Clinic who moderated the panel and has been a paid adviser for Biogen, said while one of the two studies, known as Emerge, was “overwhelmingly positive,” the twin study known as Engage, was not. “Overall, I think it’s more positive than negative,” he said of the results.

Petersen was not too worried about the rates of a brain swelling side effect, known as ARIA-E, which occurred in 33-35 percent of patients in the high-dose groups.

“The side effects are there. They’re not zero. They’re to be expected. But I think they’re manageable.”

Others, however, acknowledged that the affected sample size was small and the trials were cut short early. Only one of the two phase 3 trials showed a statistically significant benefit.

“This reinforces what I thought before. That we need a third study. The data are encouraging, but there are still questions about whether the drug has a clinical effect,” said Dr. Howard Fillit, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, who was at the meeting.

Fillit said the company only measured one timepoint – 78 weeks after treatment. “It still remains to be seen if this effect is sustained. It could be an anomaly.”

Dr. Eric Siemers, a former Alzheimer’s researcher for Eli Lilly and a consultant on drugs for neurodegenerative disease who was not involved with the study, said based on his read of the data, the patient responses are not happening by chance.

“The regulators will have a very difficult job. Do you look at the totality of the data, or require more study, which would be years away,” he said.

Stifel analyst Paul Matteis said in a note to clients that he saw aspects that were both “incrementally better and worse than expected,” and puts the probability of the drug winning approval at less than 50%.

Biogen’s shares had been halted prior to the presentation at a Alzheimer’s meeting, reopened lower, and then rose as investors tried to parse the meeting from the complicated study.

Biogen has partnered with Japan’s Eisai Co Ltd to develop aducanumab as well as BAN2401, which works in a similar way.

…

A Navy sailor shot three civilians, killing two of them, before taking his own life at Pearl Harbor just days before thousands were scheduled to gather at the storied military base to mark the 78th anniversary of the Japanese bombing that launched the U.S. into World War II.

Rear Adm. Robert Chadwick, the commander of Navy Region Hawaii, said the service would evaluate whether security should be upgraded before the annual ceremony. About a dozen survivors of the 1941 bombing were expected to attend, along with dignitaries and service members.

The shooter was identified Thursday as 22-year-old G. Romero, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that had not been made public.

Chadwick said he didn’t know the motive behind Wednesday’s shooting at the naval shipyard within the base. The third victim was hospitalized.

It wasn’t known if the sailor and the three male civilians had any type of relationship, or what the motive was for the shooting, Chadwick said.

“We have no indication yet whether they were targeted or if it was a random shooting,” Chadwick said.

The sailor was assigned to the fast attack submarine USS Columbia, which is at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for maintenance. 

He was identified as a 22-year-old enlisted sailor, according to a military official speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details that hadn’t been made public

It wasn’t immediately known what type of weapon was used or how many shots were fired. Chadwick said that was part of the investigation. Personal weapons are not allowed on base.

Names of the victims will not be released until next of kin have been notified.

“Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and everyone involved. I can say that we are mobilizing support services for naval shipyard personnel as well as everyone else who may be affected by this tragic event,” Chadwick said.

The base went into lockdown at about 2:30 p.m. when the first active shooter reports were received. The base reopened a few hours later. Witnesses were still being interviewed hours after the shooting.

The shipyard repairs, maintains and modernizes the ships and submarines of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which is headquartered at Pearl Harbor. The base is the home port for 10 destroyers and 15 submarines. It also hosts Air Force units.

Hawaii Gov. David Ige said the White House has offered assistance from federal agencies and that the state is also ready to help if needed.

“I join in solidarity with the people of Hawaii as we express our heartbreak over this tragedy and concern for those affected by the shooting,” Ige said in a statement.

Mass shootings and gun violence are rare in Hawaii. In 1999, a Xerox service technician fatally shot seven coworkers. In 2006, a man fatally shot his taxi driver and a couple taking photos of the city lights from a lookout point in the hills above Honolulu.

Hawaii had the lowest gun death rate among the states in 2017, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The islands have strict firearms laws, including a ban on assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines.

The shipyard is across the harbor from the wreckage of USS Arizona, which sank in the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack. It’s also across from the visitors center, which will host Saturday’s ceremony. More than 2,300 Americans were killed in the bombing.

The shipyard has played a key role in naval history, most notably during World War II. Shipyard workers were given just days to repair the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier severely damaged during the Battle of the Coral Seat in 1942, because the Navy needed to quickly send the ship to Midway to meet Japanese forces there.

Some 1,400 shipyard workers labored around the clock for almost 72 hours to patch the carrier together. The planes the Yorktown delivered to Midway sank one of the four aircraft carriers Japan sent to the battle and helped destroy two others. The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the war in the United States’ favor.

…

As he stood amid the thick old-growth forests in the coastal range of Oregon, Dave Wiens was nervous. Before he trained to shoot his first barred owl, he had never fired a gun.

He eyed the big female owl, her feathers streaked brown and white, perched on a branch at just the right distance. Then he squeezed the trigger and the owl fell to the forest floor, adding to a running tally of more than 2,400 barred owls killed so far in a controversial experiment by the U.S. government to test whether the northern spotted owl’s rapid decline in the Pacific Northwest can be stopped by killing its aggressive East Coast cousin.

Wiens grew up fascinated by birds, and his graduate research in owl interactions helped lay the groundwork for this tense moment.

“It’s a little distasteful, I think, to go out killing owls to save another owl species,” said Wiens, a biologist who still views each shooting as “gut-wrenching” as the first. “Nonetheless, I also feel like from a conservation standpoint, our back was up against the wall. We knew that barred owls were outcompeting spotted owls and their populations were going haywire.”

The federal government has been trying for decades to save the northern spotted owl, a native bird that sparked an intense battle over logging across Washington, Oregon and California decades ago.

After the owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, earning it a cover on Time Magazine, federal officials halted logging on millions of acres of old-growth forests on federal lands to protect the bird’s habitat. But the birds’ population continued to decline.

Meanwhile, researchers, including Wiens, began documenting another threat — larger, more aggressive barred owls competing with spotted owls for food and space and displacing them in some areas.

In almost all ways, the barred owl is the spotted owl’s worst enemy: They reproduce more often, have more babies per year and eat the same prey, like squirrels and wood rats. And they now outnumber spotted owls in many areas of the native bird’s historic range.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s experiment, which began in 2015, has raised thorny questions: To what extent can we reverse declines that have unfolded over decades, often partially due to actions by humans? And as climate change continues to shake up the landscape, how should we intervene?

The experimental killing of barred owls raised such moral dilemmas when it first was proposed in 2012 that the Fish and Wildlife Service took the unusual step of hiring an ethicist to help work through whether it was acceptable and could be done humanely.

The owl experiment is unusual because it involves killing one species of owl to save another owl species. But federal and state officials already have intervened with other species.

 — They have broken the necks of thousands of cowbirds to save the warbler, a songbird once on the brink of extinction.

— To preserve salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest and perch and other fish in the Midwest, agencies kill thousands of large seabirds called double-crested cormorants.

— And last year, Congress passed a law making it easier for Oregon, Washington, Idaho and American Indian tribes to kill sea lions that gobble imperiled salmon runs in the Columbia River.

In four small study areas in Washington, Oregon and northern California, Wiens and his trained team have been picking off invasive barred owls with 12-gauge shotguns to see whether the native birds return to their nesting habitat once their competitors are gone. Small efforts to remove barred owls in British Columbia and northern California already showed promising results.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has a permit to kill up to 3,600 owls and, if the $5 million program works, could decide to expand its efforts.

Wiens, who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, now views his gun as “a research tool” in humankind’s attempts to maintain biodiversity and rebalance the forest ecosystem. Because the barred owl has few predators in Northwest forests, he sees his team’s role as apex predator, acting as a cap on a population that doesn’t have one.

“Humans, by stepping in and taking that role in nature, we may be able to achieve more biodiversity in the environment, rather than just having barred owls take over and wipe out all the prey species,” he said.

Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, finds the practice abhorrent and said humans should find another way to help owl.

“There’s no way to couch it as a good thing if you’re killing one species to save another,” Bekoff said.

And Michael Harris, who directs the wildlife law program for Friends of Animals, thinks the government should focus on what humans are doing to the environment and protect habitats rather than scapegoating barred owls.

“We really have to let these things work themselves out,” Harris said. ”It’s going to be very common with climate change. What are we going to do — pick and choose the winners?”

Some see a responsibility to intervene, however, noting that humans are partly to blame for the underlying conditions with activities like logging, which helped lead to the spotted owl’s decline. And others just see a no-win situation.

“A decision not to kill the barred owl is a decision to let the spotted owl go extinct,” said Bob Sallinger, conservation director with the Audubon Society of Portland. “That’s what we have to wrestle with.”

If the experimental removal of barred owls improves the spotted owl populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife may consider killing more owls as part of a larger, long-term management strategy. Enough success has been noted that the experiment already has been extended to August 2021.

“I certainly don’t see northern spotted owls going extinct completely,” Wiens said, adding that “extinction in this case will be much longer process and from what we’ve seen from doing these removal experiments, we may be able to slow some of those declines.”

This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Heroic efforts to revive ecosystems and save species are being waged worldwide, aimed at reversing some of humankind’s most destructive effects on the planet. “What Can Be Saved?,” a weekly AP series, chronicles the ordinary people and scientists fighting for change against enormous odds — and forging paths that others may follow.

…

NASA’s sun-skimming spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is surprising scientists with its unprecedented close views of our star. 

Scientists released the first results from the mission Wednesday. They observed bursts of energetic particles never seen before on such a small scale as well as switchback-like reversals in the out-flowing solar magnetic field that seem to whip up the solar wind. 

NASA’s Nicola Fox compared this unexpected switchback phenomenon to the cracking of a whip. 

They're striking and it's hard to not think that they're somehow important in the whole problem, said Stuart Bale of the University of California-Berkeley, who was part of the team. 

Dust-free area

Researchers said they also finally have evidence of a dust-free zone encircling the sun. Farther out, there’s so much dust from vaporizing comets and asteroids that one of 80 small viewfinders on one instrument was pierced by a grain earlier this year. 

I can't say that we don't worry about the spacecraft. I mean, the spacecraft is going through an environment that we've never been before, Fox said. 

Launched in 2018, Parker has come within 15 million miles (25 million kilometers) of the sun and will get increasingly closer — within 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) — over the next six years. It’s completed three of 24 orbits of the sun, dipping well into the corona, or upper atmosphere. The goal of the mission is to shed light on some of the mysteries surrounding the sun. 

Parker will sweep past Venus on December 26 for the second gravity assist of the $1.5 billion mission and make its fourth close solar encounter in January. 

The findings in the journal Nature were made during a relatively quiet phase of solar activity. 

We're just starting to scratch the surface of this fascinating physics, said Princeton University’s David McComas, the chief scientist of one of the spacecraft’s instruments. 

Active phase ahead

As Parker gets even closer to its target, the sun will go through an active phase “so we can expect even more exciting results soon,” University College London’s Daniel Verscharen wrote in an accompanying editorial. Verscharen was not part of the mission. 

Over the summer, Fox shared these early results with solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 92, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, for whom the spacecraft is named. He expressed excitement — wow — and was keen to be involved. 

It’s the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a person still alive. Parker attended its launch last year from Cape Canaveral. 

…

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni led a march against corruption Wednesday, but critics were quick to dismiss the march as a publicity stunt. Uganda has one of the worst rankings in the world for corruption, with activists pointing fingers at the highest levels of government. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.

…

A U.K-based correspondent for Dawn, Pakistan’s main English language newspaper, filed a story on the terror attack last Friday in London and her choice of words triggered criticism by several Pakistani government authorities.

The attacker, Usman Khan, 28, a British citizen whose family originates from Pakistan, put on a fake suicide vest on Friday and started attacking people with knives before he was confronted by bystanders and shot dead by police officers near London Bridge. He stabbed five people, two of whom died later of the wounds sustained in the attack.

The reporter’s identification of the attacker as a British citizen of Pakistani origin was deemed as unpatriotic and defamatory because of the usage of the phrase “Pakistani origin” and the linkage to Pakistan.  

Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Science & Technology, took to his official Twitter page and criticized Dawn’s writers and editors for the story.

“Dawn walas [people] please have some mercy on this Nation, shocked on your cheap attempt to link a British terrorist to Pakistan, Anwar Al Awlaki and Anjem ch[Chaudhary] both are brit origin nothing to do with Kashmir or Pak, Britain should handle its problem within—irresponsible n cheap attitude,” Hussain wrote in a tweet on Sunday.

Dawn walas please have some mercy on this Nation, shocked on your cheap attempt to link a British terroist to Pakistan, Anwar Al Awlaki and Anjem ch both are brit origin nothing to do with Kashmir or Pak, Britain should handle its problem within—irresponsible n cheap attitude pic.twitter.com/tvldBCNMUd

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) December 1, 2019

Hussain’s tweet was retweeted by Shireen Mazari, Pakistan’s Minister for Human Rights and she accused Dawn of pursuing an agenda.

“Dawn has its own agenda – read The News where their UK based reporter has given details of the man’s life incl the fact he was born in UK!,” she said.

Following these tweets, social media in Pakistan has been trending the hashtag #BoycottIndianDawn, accusing the media network of being anti-Pakistan and pro Indian.

Riots in Islamabad

On Monday evening, angry rioters surrounded Dawn’s Islamabad office, and called for staffers to be hanged.

The crowd reportedly shouted, “Long Live Pakistan Army, Death to Dawn” and harassed employees for several hours until police arrived to dispel the crowd.

An employee of the newspaper, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he was physically assaulted.

“They pushed me around and cornered me; they said they wouldn’t let me pass through until I shouted “Long Live Pakistan Army-Death to Dawn,” the employee said.  

The newspaper has not issued a statement on the attack against its office. However, they did publish an article, giving the accounts of what transpired over the weekend. The original story that sparked the controversy has not been removed from the newspaper’s website as of Tuesday evening.

Rights Groups Reactions

Several international and local rights groups and organizations advocating for the freedom of press voiced concerns over the incident and urged Pakistani authorities to ensure the safety of Dawn’s reporters in the country.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) issued a statement Tuesday calling on Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights and Information Ministry to address the situation.

“HRCP has received alarming reports that access to @dawn_com’s office in Islamabad is being blocked by protestors shouting pro-army slogans. We are seriously concerned about the security of Dawn’s personnel and urge @mohrpakistan and @MoIB_Official to take immediate action.” HRCP said in a tweet.  

Paris-based Reporter Without Borders, a global watchdog monitoring press freedom around the world, also issued a statement Tuesday urging authorities to take immediate measures.

“Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Pakistani authorities to issue a public and unequivocal condemnation of last night’s siege of the Islamabad headquarters of Pakistan’s oldest English-language daily, Dawn, by an angry crowd of demonstrators calling for it to be banned on completely spurious grounds,” the statement said.

In statement sent to VOA, New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international organization defending reporters around the world, expressed concerns and urged Pakistan to investigate reports of death threats against journalists.  

“Pakistan authorities must prevent demonstrations against the Dawn newspaper from turning violent, and should investigate death threats made against its staffers,” CPJ said.

Local reaction

Some opposition figures also took issue with the threats made against Dawn.

Senator Usman Kakar, a member of Pakistan’s Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights and a member of the opposition party Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami (PMAP) party, deemed the incident as a serious threat to press freedom and urged the senate to discuss it.

“This issue needs to be brought up and discussed in the Senate. Media [in Pakistan] is scrutinized and under a lot of pressure…they are afraid of the establishment,” the senator told VOA.

Bilawal Bhutto–Zardari, the leader of Pakistan’s People’s Party, PPP, one of the main opposition parties in the country, criticized the government for tolerating attack against the media.

 “Visited the offices of @dawn_com today in Islamabad. Outrageous that a major media house can be attacked by a mob in our capital city right under the government’s nose. Senate Human rights committee has already taken notice of this latest attack on freedom of the press,” Zardari tweeted on Tuesday.

Government involvement

Some journalists in Pakistan allege that the Pakistani government organized the mob in an effort to silence an independent and credible news outlet in the country.  

Iqbal Khattak, the head of Freedom Network, a watchdog organization that monitors press freedom in the country, told VOA that the incident seemed pre-planned.  

“This incident was really dangerous. Journalists in Pakistan need to ask the government to investigate the matter and ask, ‘who these people were’ and ‘what their issue is’. It seems like the mob was staged,” Khattak said.

The ruling Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has not immediately reacted to the riot incident and threats against Dawn.

VOA’s Aurangzeb Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad. Some of the information used in this report came from Reuters.

…

The Organization of American States (OAS) should avoid “extreme” positions when confronting regional crises like Venezuela’s social and economic collapse and instead promote dialogue, a challenger for the body’s top job said on Tuesday.

Hugo de Zela, a longtime Peruvian diplomat and his country’s ambassador to the United States, is running to unseat the organization’s secretary-general, Luis Almagro, who is seeking a second five-year term. Almagro’s current term is set to end next May.

The OAS must push for problems to be solved within its member countries by facilitating dialogue between different factions, de Zela told Reuters on the sidelines of a diplomatic meeting in Bogota.

“If the organization puts itself on one of the extremes, it stops being effective at solving problems, it stops being present in the solution and it becomes part of the problem,” said de Zela. “That cannot happen.”

Venezuela’s economic and political crisis – which has led to widespread shortages of food and medicine and an exodus of people – has dominated recent OAS meetings, with some member states denouncing President Nicolas Maduro as a dictator, while others back him.

Member states have also tussled over the admittance to meetings of a representative sent by Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido, who argues Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate. Guaido this year invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency.

Almagro, a Uruguayan whose re-election bid is backed by the United States, Colombia and Brazil, has sought to ramp up pressure on Maduro, including refusing to rule out the use of force against his government last year.

“It’s evident that in Venezuela, there is an interruption of the democratic process, it’s evident that the Maduro regime lacks legitimacy, that’s not under discussion. But at the same time, to actively promote the use of force to solve the case of Venezuela is unreal and doesn’t help,” said de Zela.

“That is putting ourselves on an extreme. Talking constantly about the use of force to solve the issue of Venezuela is not an effective contribution or a realistic contribution.”

Venezuelans must solve their own problems through dialogue, de Zela added, saying free and fair elections must be held urgently in the oil-producing country.

“The OAS is not having, as it once did, an active role in cooperation to solve these things,” de Zela said. “There is a lack of dialogue between the member countries and the general secretariat.”

…

Representatives from over a dozen nations that are signatories to a Cold War-era defense treaty for the Americas moved Tuesday to further isolate close allies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with economic sanctions.

The 1947 Rio Treaty signatories concluded a meeting in Bogota by vowing to cooperate in pursuing sanctions and travel restrictions for Maduro government associates accused of corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering or human rights violations.

“The political, economic and social crisis in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela represents a threat for the peace and security of the continent,” Colombian Foreign Minister Claudia Blum said in the meeting’s final remarks.

While the United States and the European Union have targeted Maduro associates with economic sanctions, Latin American nations who are supporting opposition leader Juan Guaido have largely resorted to diplomatic pressure – and it will be up to each individual nation to decide how to move forward.

The promise of enhanced economic pressure against Maduro comes at a time when Venezuela’s opposition is faltering. Guaido has struggled to mobilize supporters onto the streets and dipped in popularity. Meanwhile, fissures within the opposition are coming to light amidst recent controversies involving alleged abuses of power.

David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the Rio Treaty’s resolution Tuesday marks a “small victory” for the opposition but “not enough to really put them in a different place.”

“Their strategy of maximum pressure seems to be stalling,” he said.

The 19 Rio Treaty member nations have been treading cautiously in pursuing economic restrictions against Venezuela while vowing not to invoke a provision in the accord that authorizes them to pursue a military intervention. The accord instructs signatories to consider a threat against any one of them a danger to all.

Colombian President Ivan Duque contends that Maduro is offering a safe haven to rebel factions of the National Liberation Army and dissidents with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, an assertion the Venezuelan leader denies. Duque urged that nations embark on tougher sanctions going forward.

“Here there’s no invitation for use of force,” he said.

Despite repeated remarks from Rio Treaty members indicating they will not pursue a military response, Venezuelan leaders contend the signatories are plotting to overthrow Maduro and warning citizens that an intervention could be imminent.

“The people should be prepared and alert on the streets,” Diosdado Cabello, head of Venezuela’s all-powerful National Constitutional Assembly, said Tuesday.

…

In announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination last week, former New York mayor and media tycoon Mike Bloomberg added a new wrinkle to the ongoing debate about President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, and perhaps further, to the entire relationship between Washington and Beijing.

Bloomberg represents something unique in the Democratic primary field — an unreconstructed free-trader who also takes a far less critical view of China’s repressive internal policies than many of his opponents.

Since well before declaring his candidacy, Bloomberg has been a loud critic of Trump on trade policy, saying the president’s sanctions-heavy approach to negotiation with China and other countries “set new benchmarks of incoherence and irresponsibility.”

During the Obama administration, Bloomberg voiced support for multilateral trade agreements that are now criticized not just by Trump, but also by many of the current Democratic presidential candidates.

Bloomberg, whose international media empire has long-established ties to China and regularly hosts high-profile conferences there, is also an outlier in terms of his thinking about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping.

Defends Xi’s government

In an interview for the PBS television show “Firing Line” in September, Bloomberg drew sharp criticism after seeming to defend Xi’s government as responsive to its people and fundamentally democratic.

“The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public,” he said. “Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”

At the time, mass pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were facing a violent response from the Chinese government, and news reports about the brutal repression of the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang Province were widespread.

When the host expressed her incredulity at his position, citing Xi’s repressive policies, Bloomberg dug in deeper.

“No, he has a constituency to answer to,” he said. “No government survives without the will of the majority of its people, OK? The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia, and they look for where the Communist Party is, and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to happen. So, they really are responsive.”

Avoids China human rights issues

Bloomberg seemed to base his belief in the Chinese government’s responsiveness to its citizens on its willingness to try to ameliorate the choking pollution that blankets many of its major cities. But he did not address the bedrock issues of political freedom and basic human rights.

On trade and the issue of China’s treatment of its own citizens, Bloomberg stands apart from most of the front-runners in the Democratic field.

Up to this point in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, candidates’ positions on relations with China have been complicated by the fact that some of the top contenders want to distance themselves from Trump in every respect, even when they seem to agree with his use of tariffs to force Beijing to reform its trade policies.

Differs from Warren and Sanders

Top contenders like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are explicitly open to protectionist trade policies, though they are quick to claim they would implement them differently.

Warren, in an outline of her trade policies, said that in her view “tariffs are an important tool.” But she criticized Trump’s “haphazard” implementation of them. Unlike Trump, she said, she believes tariffs “are not by themselves a long-term solution to our failed trade agenda and must be part of a broader strategy that this administration clearly lacks.”

Sanders has vowed to undertake a “full review” of Trump’s trade policies to determine “which tariffs are working.” He added, “Tariffs may be part of the answer, but the Trump administration lacks a serious strategy for reducing our trade deficit or bringing back U.S. jobs that have been shipped to low-wage countries. Instead of conducting trade policy by tweet, we need a complete overhaul of our trade policies to increase American jobs, end the race to the bottom, raise wages and lift up living standards in this country and throughout the world.”

Buttigieg far more critical of tariffs

Pete Buttigieg, the outgoing mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is more critical of tariffs in principle, but does not close the door on their use as a tool of trade policy. He has said he would use tariffs as “leverage” in trade talks. However, he told The Washington Post,  “Because tariffs can be de facto domestic taxes, imposing real costs on American workers and farmers, they should be employed only with a clear strategy and endgame, and in coordination with our allies.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads the Democratic field in national polls, has been inconsistent in his public statements about China. Shortly after announcing his candidacy last spring, he seemed to challenge the idea that the world’s most populous country was even a real economic competitor for the United States.

Biden sanguine about China threat

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden said at an appearance in Iowa. Arguing that Beijing is too busy with its internal problems to mount a serious economic threat to the U.S., he added, “They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”

The statement earned Biden immediate blowback from all sides, and forced him to acknowledge that China is “a serious challenge to us, and in some areas a real threat.”

Since then, Biden has maintained the position that the U.S. has to stand up to China on trade, but he has done so with vague statements such as, “My administration will bring our allies together to challenge China’s abusive behavior and rally more than half the world’s economy to hold China to account for their cheating. We also need to tighten up our economic defenses so that American companies don’t have to keep giving away technology to China, or having it stolen.”

On the question of China’s treatment of its own people, most of the Democrats in the field are far more willing to criticize Beijing than Bloomberg appears to be. All four of the top candidates have loudly condemned the treatment of the Uighurs and the repression of Hong Kong’s pro-Democracy movement.

Bloomberg’s reticence

Bloomberg’s restraint when it comes to criticizing China is not a new thing. In 2013, Bloomberg LP, the company that controls his global media empire, was found to have killed news stories revealing corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, prompting the resignation of a number of editors and reporters.

With U.S.-Chinese relations growing in importance, a Bloomberg candidacy will give Democratic primary voters a very different option than those currently on offer. What remains to be seen is if there will be many takers.

…

After two weeks of public hearings on U.S. President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are moving closer to formally impeaching the president on yet-to-be determined charges.

While a vote to impeach by the full House is not expected until before Christmas, the pace of the impeachment inquiry under way since late September picks up this week with the presentation of a Democratic report on their findings and recommendations.

Committee report

The report, prepared by the House Intelligence Committee which conducted the recent hearings, will outline the Democrats’ allegations that Trump abused his office by pressing Ukraine to investigate Trump’s Democratic political rival, Joe Biden, and a debunked theory about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report will allege Trump used hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid and a coveted White House meeting between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders as leverage. The report will also recommend specific articles of impeachment.

The exact charges remain unknown. Under the U.S. Constitution, a president can be impeached for bribery, extortion and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

What Are ‘High Crimes & Misdemeanors’? video player.

Embed

Copy

Link

Members of the intelligence committee will review a draft of the report late Monday. They are scheduled to meet behind closed doors Tuesday to adopt the report and incorporate the Republican response before forwarding it to the House Judiciary Committee, which votes on articles of impeachment. The report will then be made public.

A 110-page report prepared by Republicans on the Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees accuses Democrats of carrying out “an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system.”

“House Democrats have been trying to undo the results of President Trump’s historic election since before he was sworn in,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said, adding that Democrats have not found “a single legitimate reason” for impeachment.

“Instead, Democrats have relied on smears, hearsay, and presumption to build their false narrative,” he said.

The Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, reacted to the Republican report by saying the impeachment probe “will not serve as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 … or to facilitate the president’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm.”

Wednesday hearing

The Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public hearing for 10 a.m. Wednesday. It will focus on the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment. Four legal scholars will appear as witnesses. They are law professors Noah Feldman of Harvard University; Pamela Karlan of Stanford University; Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina; and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.

Last week, Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to Trump, inviting him and his lawyer to attend the Wednesday hearing and to ask questions of witnesses.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone said late Sunday the White House will not participate in the hearing “while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings.”

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Trump Says Won’t Send Lawyer to Impeachment Hearing

US president reiterates he did nothing wrong and Democrats’ impeachment probe is a hoax

Moreover, Cipollone criticized Democrats for scheduling the hearing while Trump is attending a NATO summit in London.

Monday, Nadler called the White House’s decision not to attend the Wednesday hearing “unfortunate,” saying “allowing the president to participate has been a priority for the House from the outset.”  

White House opportunity to participate

Nadler has also given the White House until Friday to indicate whether the administration will participate in additional impeachment hearings and what rights Trump wants to exercise at those hearings.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Deadline Set for Trump to Decide on Role in Impeachment Hearings

He has a week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence, call witnesses

Cipollone said the White House will respond by the Friday deadline, but indicated the administration will not participate short of major concessions by the Democrats, including allowing witnesses invited by Republicans.

Republican leaders want testimony from Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden, and the unidentified intelligence community whistleblower who alerted the inspector general about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Democrats have dismissed the demand.

“It is too late to cure the profound procedural deficiencies that have tainted this entire inquiry,” Cipollone wrote.

VOA’s Kenneth Schwartz contributed to this report.
 

…

Turkey’s tourism industry, a key pillar of the economy, could struggle to reach visitor and revenue targets in coming years after two new taxes come into force and sharp increases in costs continue to pressure businesses, tourism companies say.

Costs, which the industry says surged 35% last year, as well as the new taxes that will be reflected in prices could cause Turkey to lose customers to other Mediterranean countries.

Tourism is a major source of income for Turkey. It suffered a downturn in 2016-2017 after a coup attempt and a dispute with Russia, but returned to some 40 million tourists last year.

The government launched a tourism strategy in September that includes a 150% hike in tourism advertising funds to $180 million in 2020. A large part of that will be paid by tourism companies to the newly founded Tourism Promotion and Development Agency. Hotels will pay 0.75% of their total revenues.

In addition to that, Turkey also passed tax regulations this year introducing an accommodation tax, to be set at 1% until end-2020 and later be increased to 2%.

Armada International Hoteliers Chairman Kasim Zoto said increases in food, alcohol, natural gas and electricity prices have already resulted in a 35-40 percent rise in total input costs and will result in higher prices for customers.

“Turkey is a price-sensitive destination. Every 1 euro increase in prices lessens chances of sales in Turkey’s tourism sector,” he said.

Data published by the Hotel Association of Turkey (TUROB) showed that the average daily rates in Istanbul are 91 Euros, rising to 98 Euros in the southern province of Antalya, while they are 142 Euros in Athens, 151 Euros in Milan and 150 euros in Barcelona – all of which are Turkey’s competitors.

Turkey aims to reach 75 million tourists and $65 billion in revenues in 2023, but TUROB said it may miss its targets due to the new costs after just having recovered its competitiveness following the downturn in previous years.

…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed legislation requiring all smartphones, computers and smart TV sets sold in the country to come pre-installed with Russian software.

The law, which will come into force on July 1 next year, has been met with resistance by some electronics retailers, who say the legislation was adopted without consulting them.

The law has been presented as a way to help Russian IT firms compete with foreign companies and spare consumers from having to download software upon purchasing a new device.

The country’s mobile phone market is dominated by foreign companies including Apple, Samsung and Huawei. The legislation signed by Putin said the government would come up with a list of Russian applications that would need to be installed on the different devices.

Russia has introduced tougher internet laws in recent years, requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services and social networks to store user data on servers in the country.
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump is striking an optimistic tone on reaching a trade deal with China, despite Beijing’s opposition to a law Trump recently signed that expresses support for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

“The Chinese want to make a deal. We’ll see what happens,” the president told reporters Monday, as he departed the White House for the NATO summit in London.

The U.S. leader signed the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” last week, prompting stern protests from China.

The trade deal between the U.S. and China has stalled as a result, according to the news website Axios.

The news site quotes a source close to Trump’s negotiating team as saying the trade talks were “now stalled” because of the legislation, and time was needed to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “domestic politics to calm.”

China says it is also taking other steps to retaliate against what it sees as U.S. support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.  

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Monday it is slapping sanctions on U.S.-based non-governmental organizations that have acted “badly” during the recent protests in Hong Kong. NGOs affected by the sanctions include Human Rights Watch, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House.

China also announced Monday that it “has decided to suspend reviewing the applications for U.S. warships to go to Hong Kong for (rest and) recuperation as of today.”

A foreign spokeswoman said, “China urges the United States to correct its mistakes, stop any deeds and acts of interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly called on the Chinese government to honor its promises to the Hong Kong people who say they want the freedoms and liberties that they have been promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a U.N.-registered treaty.

“The United States stands firmly in support of asking the Chinese leadership to honor that commitment, asking everyone involved in the political process there to do so without violence, and to find a resolution to this that honors the one country two systems policy that the Chinese leadership signed up for,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told an audience Monday at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

In another development, Reuters reports that hundreds of Hong Kong office workers came together during their lunch break Monday, the first in a week of lunchtime protests to show their support for pro-democracy politicians who were handed a resounding victory in district polls last week.

Protests erupted in Hong Kong in June over the local government’s plans to allow some criminal suspects to be extradited to the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong officials withdrew the bill in September, but the street protests have continued, with the demonstrators fearing Beijing is preparing to water down Hong Kong’s democracy and autonomy nearly 30 years before the former British colony’s “special status” expires.

…

Cyber Monday sales were on course to bring in a record $9.4 billion, according to early estimates, building on a bumper Black Friday weekend for retailers driven by earlier-than-usual promotions and free shipping.

Shoppers have already had nearly a month of special offers and deals as retailers look to draw out their vital holiday
season, which is six days shorter this year due to a late Thanksgiving.

Estimates from Adobe Analytics on Monday predicted that some $72.1 billion has been spent online in the past month, with Cyber Monday – now traditionally the U.S. economy’s biggest internet shopping day – logging $473 million as of 9 a.m. ET.

Amazon.com Inc and other traditional retailers such as Target Corp and Walmart have beefed up delivery services to fulfill online orders faster as more customers shop on their mobile phones and tablets at home.

“At the end of the day, Cyber Monday is just Black Friday revisited so the momentum, and the deals, really started last
week,” said Carol Spieckerman president at consultancy Spieckerman Retail. “Retailers’ click and collect capabilities are running more efficiently, online shopping is more intuitive … Amazon isn’t the only one wearing the convenience crown this year.”

Penthouse protest

It may not all be smooth sailing for the world’s biggest online retailer. Amazon warehouse workers, community groups,
unions and elected officials, were set to march outside company chief Jeff Bezos’ Fifth Avenue penthouse, citing poor treatment of workers and rising climate emissions from the company’s push for speedier deliveries.

Activists also staged protests across France on Friday and tried to blockade a shopping mall in Paris, denouncing the
spread of Black Friday to European shores.

Target and Walmart have also taken aim at the company this year by making free shipping or same-day in-store pickups widely available. Commentators say those sorts of deals have proven a success over the past month.

The National Retail Federation estimates nearly 69 million Americans will scour the web on Monday for deals on everything from mobile phones to kitchenware, with Adobe estimating the biggest discounts were on televisions and computers.

Topping Adobe’s list of most popular products were Frozen 2 and Paw Patrol toys, L.O.L surprise dolls and Nintendo’s Switch mobile console.

“#CyberMonday2019 The day of the year 85% of the U.S. population pretends to actually be working,” tweeted Erika
Mayor, a user in Miami.

…

Unknown gunmen opened fire on a church in eastern Burkina Faso Sunday, killing at least 14 people.

Officials say the attack took place in the town of Hantoukoura, near the border with Niger.

Soldiers are hunting for the attackers who fled on motor scooters after gunning down worshipers during a Sunday mass.

No one has claimed responsibility, but Islamic extremists are suspected.

Christians and others had lived peacefully in the Muslim majority country until a series of attacks blamed on jihadists spilled over from neighboring Mali last year, leaving hundreds dead.
 

…

An Irish citizen, who converted to Islam, traveled to Syria to join Islamic State and ended up marrying a British militant, has been arrested on arrival at Dublin airport Sunday.

Lisa Smith, 38, who served in the Irish Defense Forces before going to Syria, had been deported from Turkey with her 2-year-old daughter.

“On her arrival in Dublin, Lisa Smith was met by An Garda Síochána,” Irish Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said, using the Irish name for the national police force.  “This is a sensitive case and I want to reassure people that all relevant state agencies are closely involved.”

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney told Irish national broadcaster RTE that officials had been trying to repatriate Smith since learning of her presence in a refugee camp in March. He said the primary concern was for the toddler who is an Irish citizen because of her mother’s nationality. The child is now with Smith’s relatives in Dundalk.

Authorities plan to question Smith extensively before deciding on what action to take. She has denied fighting for IS or training female soldiers for the militancy.

Many European countries and the United States have resisted bringing back their citizens who joined Islamic State.

…

Australia’s most populous state on Sunday rolled out traffic cameras that can detect a driver using a mobile phone.

Andrew Constance, New South Wales’ Minister for Roads said the “world-first” technology would target illegal cell phone use through “fixed and mobile trailer-mounted cameras.”

Officials say 45 cameras will be installed across the state over the next three years.

Transport for NSW, which manages the state’s transport services, said the cameras will operate round the clock and in all weather conditions.

For the first three months, drivers caught illegally using a cell phone will get a warning, after that offenders will receive steep fines and penalty points on their driver’s license.

Some 329 people have died this year on New South Wales’ roads, Reuters news agency reports. NSW officials hope to cut the number of road fatalities by 30% by 2021, the report said.

…

A Northern California high school football team has lost in a championship game one year after a deadly fire destroyed most of their town, including the homes of most players and coaches.

Paradise High School lost to Sutter Union High School 20-7 Saturday night in the Northern Section Division III championship game. The game comes just more than one year after the fire in Paradise burned roughly 19,000 buildings and killed 85 people.

In the end zone after the game, senior running back Lukas Hartley cried with his teammates, telling reporters “I didn’t cry this bad when my house burned down.” He said he plans to be a firefighter after he finishes high school.

“I’m just proud of all my brothers and thankful to God for putting me on this path,” he said.

Friday night tradition

Paradise coach Rick Prinz told the team after the game he was proud of his players.

“No one really knows how much they truly battled just to be at practice and to do what they did,” Prinz said. “They lost everything they owned a year ago. They are all living in different places. And to pull it together like this and help our community come together is truly amazing.”

Most of the people who lived in Paradise have moved away. But many have returned on Friday nights to watch the football team’s remarkable season.

The high school has a football tradition, consistently fielding competitive teams. The school produced Jeff Maehl, a wide receiver who played for the University of Oregon in the 2011 BCS national championship game and later played for two NFL teams.

Last year, the school was 8-2 and preparing to host a home playoff game when the wildfire swept through the town. The school survived, but nearly every player and coach on the team lost their homes. The team forfeited the playoff game, ending their season.

A season to heal

The team almost didn’t have a 2019 season. But the players were determined to play.

Erica Browe, 38, lost her home in the fire. She now lives in Redding. At first, her two teenage sons went to a new school. But she said they were miserable and their grades suffered. They now live in Paradise with some friends so they can attend their old high school and play football.

Returning to Paradise made a big difference in her sons’ lives, she said, and the team’s success encouraged the community nestled along a ridge in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

“It gives hope back to the ridge that we can still be strong and stick together,” she said.

Paradise High School finished the regular season undefeated, outscoring their opponents by a combined score of 469-73. But their magical season ended Saturday on a rainy, cold night.

…

A tiny wooden relic that some Christians believe to be part of Jesus’ manger arrived Saturday in its permanent home in the biblical city of Bethlehem 1,400 years after it was sent to Rome as a gift to the pope.

Sheathed in an ornate case, cheerful crowds greeted the relic with much fanfare before it entered the Franciscan Church of St. Catherine next to the Church of the Nativity, the West Bank holy site where tradition says Jesus was born.

‘A great joy’

The return of the relic by the Vatican was a spirit-lifting moment for the Palestinians. It coincides with Advent, a four-week period leading up to Christmas. Troubled Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is bracing for the occasion, where pilgrims from around the world flock to the city.

Young Palestinian scouts played bagpipes and the crowd snapped pictures as a clergyman held the silver reliquary and marched toward the church.

Christians make up a small minority of Palestinians and Bethlehem is one of the only cities in the West Bank and Gaza where Christmas is celebrated.

Brother Francesco Patton, the custodian of the Franciscan order in the Holy Land, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked Pope Francis to borrow the entire manger, but the pope decided to send a tiny portion of it to stay permanently in Bethlehem.

“It’s a great joy” that the piece returns to its original place, Patton said, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.

Manger moved to Rome

A wooden structure that Christians believe was part of the manger where Jesus was born was sent by St. Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Theodore I in the 640s, around the time of the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land.

On Friday, the thumb-sized wooden piece was unveiled to worshippers at the Notre Dame church in Jerusalem for a day of celebrations and prayer.

On Saturday evening, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and other officials attended a Christmas tree lighting in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity.

Hundreds of faithful and residents also gathered for the festive annual event, which included fireworks and songs. Crowds cheered as the giant tree was illuminated.

Revelers and worshippers alike will pack the same square for Christmas Eve festivities later in December.

…