Protests in India against a new citizenship law claimed five lives on Friday as thousands of people defied bans on public gatherings and clashed with police even as authorities blocked the internet in several towns and detained hundreds of people.
  
The protests, now in their second week, have taken 13 lives as crowds have sometimes turned violent.
  
On Friday, police fired tear gas and used water cannon to control angry protesters in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and in the capital, New Delhi.
  
Five people were killed in violence that erupted in several towns of Uttar Pradesh where stone-pelting crowds clashed with police and set vehicles and a police post on fire. The state, with a large Muslim population, is a flashpoint for tensions between Muslims and Hindus.

In New Delhi, thousands gathered after prayers on a narrow street outside the city’s main mosque, the Jama Masjid, chanting, “Remove Modi” and calling on the government to scrap the law as police and paramilitary stood by.
  
Some waved Indian flags and “Save the Constitution” banners, while others carried placards that read, “Not to be violent, not to be silent.”
 
The largely peaceful march, however, was disrupted in the evening when some protesters pelted stones and torched a vehicle outside a police station, prompting officers to spray the crowd with water cannon. Dozens were injured.
  
Outside Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, slogan-shouting students launched a signature campaign demanding that the law be scrapped.

Section 144 
  
The protests that began on predominantly Muslim university campuses like Jamia Millia have widened as ordinary citizens and academics join with students. Bollywood stars were among those who raised their voices against the new law in Mumbai on Thursday at a huge rally in India’s financial capital.

Critics call the new law unconstitutional because it does not include Muslims among six religious groups that stand to receive Indian nationality if they have faced persecution in three neighboring countries — Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.     

While the immediate spark for the public fury is the citizenship law, anger is also growing for what is being decried as an attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to control dissent by preventing people from staging demonstrations.
 
Since the protests escalated, authorities have imposed a restrictive rule known as Section 144 in several parts of the country. It prohibits more than four people from gathering at one place, closed metro stations in the capital to prevent people from mobilizing, and shut down the internet and text messaging services in many places.
  
Blaming the government for coming down with a heavy hand on protesters, political analyst Neerja Chowdhury said, “You have 144 being imposed all over, you have the net shutdown, things that have been unprecedented. That is fueling the anger.”

Instead, she said, the government should have reached out to calm fears of “people who are unhappy, insecure, worried about the future and worried about where the country is headed.”

Government: ‘Lies and rumors’

Authorities defended the measures, saying they were necessary to control the volatile situation.

While critics see the new law as an attempt to turn India into a Hindu nation, the government has defended the controversial law as a humanitarian gesture meant for minority communities in neighboring Islamic countries. The prime minister has said that the law will not impact any Indian Muslim and blames opposition parties for sparking panic and spreading “lies and rumors” about it.

Besides the citizenship law, protesters are demanding that the government roll back plans for an identification plan that would involve all citizens producing records to show they or their ancestors lived in India. That would put Muslims at a disadvantage because they would risk losing their nationality if they cannot produce the records.

There was some relief for the northeastern state of Assam, which has also witnessed widespread protests against the law as data services, which had been switched off for almost two weeks, were restored following a high court order. The Assamese people oppose the law because they worry that it will pave the way for tens of thousands of migrants, who came from Bangladesh, to settle in their state, drowning their identity.   
 

…

As Venezuelans head to the polls next month, top U.S. officials are pressing for free elections for the National Assembly and the presidency, saying the vote is crucial to the country emerging from its deep political crisis.

U.S. officials also are urging authorities to “unconditionally release” all persons being detained for political reasons.

Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s 2018 reelection is considered to be illegitimate by many nations in the Western Hemisphere. The United States and more than 50 other countries now recognize National Assembly leader Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela.

On Jan. 5, the Venezuelan National Assembly will vote on its president for 2020. Guaido is seeking reelection, a year after declaring himself to be the country’s interim leader.

U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams sounded hopeful Friday that opposition leader Guaido will win.

“I think that at least as of now, he has the votes to be reelected,” said Abrams during a press briefing at the State Department.

Allegations of bribery

The U.S. envoy said the Maduro government is “using a combination of threats, arrests and bribes up to 500,000 dollars per vote” to stop the reelection but “it’s not widespread enough to change the outcome.”

U.S. officials took note that Russia and China, Maduro’s major supporters, have not offered any investment or loans to Venezuela in the last six months.

“I think it’s striking that they don’t seem to be willing to give him another dime because they know it will be stolen or wasted. I think they know the regime is going to go,” said Abrams.

A recent U.N. report painted a grim picture of Venezuela as a dysfunctional society. Citing data, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said thousands of people continue to flee the country as its political, economic and human rights crises deepen.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Jorge Valero, disputed the report’s findings, saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
 

…

The Taliban Friday ruled out participation in intra-Afghan negotiations until the United States signs an agreement with the insurgent group on the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.  

U.S. chief peace negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad paused peace talks with Taliban interlocutors in Qatar a week ago to give them time to consult with their leadership on reducing insurgent violence. The temporary suspension came a day after the Taliban attacked the largest U.S.-run military base, Bagram, north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

However, the Taliban indicated Friday it does not intend to stop hostilities until securing a foreign troop withdrawal deal with the U.S.

“Intra-Afghan negotiations will begin only after an agreement with America on the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan is signed,” tweeted Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban negotiating team.  

But top U.S. defense officials Friday gave no indication they were prepared to authorize such a comprehensive withdrawal.
“We have a mission in Afghanistan, that is to ensure that it never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at a Pentagon news conference. 
“Until we are confident that that mission is complete, we will maintain a presence to do that,” he added.

Khalilzad visited Kabul earlier this week and held discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, politicians outside the government and civil society representatives.  

“We discussed efforts to achieve reduced violence and pave the way to intra-Afghan negotiations… We’re approaching an important stage in the Afghan peace process,” Khalilzad tweeted on Thursday at the end of his two-day consultation.  He did not elaborate further nor did he say when U.S.-Taliban talks would resume.  

Taliban officials insist they don’t see the need for further negotiations with U.S. interlocutors because both sides have already negotiated a draft agreement after months of meetings and they just need to sign it in the presence of international guarantors.  

The proposed document outlines the Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees in return for a phased withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the country. The insurgents would then immediately engage in talks with the Afghans to find a political settlement to decades of hostilities in the country.

President Ghani wants the Taliban to observe a temporary cease-fire and insists his administration will lead peace negotiations with the Taliban.  

But the insurgent group so far has rejected calls for direct talks with the Kabul government, condemning it as an illegitimate entity and a “puppet” of America.

Shaheen insisted Friday that all Afghan sides will have their representation in the Taliban-Afghan negotiations when they begin.  

“This has been our consistent stance and we have shared it with media time and again,” Shaheen added.  

The Taliban has maintained negotiations with an inclusive Afghan delegation representing all political and ethnic groups in the country would also involve government officials but in their private capacity and not as envoys of Kabul.

The war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, has raged for more than 18 years, costing Washington nearly $1 trillion and the lives of around 2,300 U.S. troops.  

The conflict has killed an estimated more than 150,000 people, including foreign troops, Afghan and Taliban combatants and Afghan civilians.  

Uncertainty about the fate of peace talks comes as Afghan election officials say they are set to announce repeatedly delayed preliminary results of the September 28 presidential election in coming days. The Independent Election Commission announced on Thursday it has recounted and audited questionable votes in all 34 Afghan provinces.  

President Ghani and his governing partner, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, are the two front runners. 

…

The U.S. House of Representatives’ vote to impeach President Donald Trump broke along party lines Wednesday, reflecting the American public’s deep divide over the president. 
  
National polls showed public opinion remained evenly split on the president’s impeachment, moving little since the process began. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, 48% of those surveyed approved of the impeachment process, whereas an equal percentage opposed it. Those figures mirrored the president’s approval ratings, which also have fluctuated little since his first days in office. 
  
For some of the president’s biggest critics and supporters, impeachment brought an opportunity to publicly state their views outside the Capitol during the vote.  

“I think it’s a hoax, I think it’s a travesty, I think it’s damaging our democracy, I think it’s hurting our country. I think it’s really an invalid impeachment,” said Mark Kampf, a Trump supporter who came from Nevada to denounce what he considered a politically motivated process. 
 
Paki Wieland, however, joined the rally to call for the removal of Trump: “This president has broken so many laws and we need to hold him accountable. And to state to him and to the world that no one is above the law.” She also expressed concern that Republican partisanship was undermining the country’s democratic system of government. 
  
“I was here for the Nixon impeachment. Members of his party were much less partisan than members of the Republican Party are today,” Wieland said. 
 
Analyst Elaine Kamarck with the Brookings Institution in Washington said Americans have been divided politically for years, but Trump has tried to exploit those divisions for political gain. 
  
“Donald Trump has intensified the polarization. Throughout his presidency, he has played to his base. He has played to simply the supporters that he already has,” Kamarck said. 
 
Facts vs. opinions 

While public opinion shifted as evidence was uncovered in previous impeachment efforts, the testimony and evidence did little to shift opinions this time. That was in part because many Americans disagreed on the evidence itself. 
  
“There have been no facts. It’s only hearsay and innuendo,” Kampf, the Trump supporter, said. 
 
Adam from Maryland, dressed in an American flag shirt, shared the same view and said the process had only reinforced his trust in the president. 
 
“The only thing I am convinced about is when Trump released the transcript and proved the whistleblower completely wrong,” he said. 
 
And how people read the White House summary of the president’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appeared to reflect their view of impeachment itself. 
 
Supporters saw the president exonerated by the summary of the call, in which Trump asked for a “favor”: an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Critics saw it as a straightforward example of the president using his office for personal political gain. 

Kory Holmes from Maine said the Ukraine episode was the latest example of behavior that disqualifies the president from serving as the nation’s leader. 

Holmes said the testimonies and the documents released had provided sufficient proof that the president’s actions amounted to a pattern of misconduct that stretched back to the 2016 election. 
 
“This man constantly lies, breaks the law, violates every constitutional thing there is. He cheated with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin to steal the first election and he’s trying to cheat for the second one,” he said. 
 
Views on impeachment 
 
Trump is expected to survive a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, where lawmakers would decide whether to remove him from office. 
 
The process will only help cement support for the president, said Adam, who added that impeachment was another example of what he called an anti-Trump agenda the Democrats have followed since the president’s election. 
 
For their part, pro-impeachment voters did not seem disheartened by the expected results in the Senate trial. They said the process was about much more. 
 
Holmes, of Maine, said impeachment was a victory for the laws and the Constitution of the United States. 
 
“They [lawmakers] have got to do the job. They swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. The man broke the law. This has nothing to do with the election — this is the law,” he said. 

Analyst Kamarck said she saw a deepened polarization among American voters because of the impeachment. She said Trump used the process to further corrode people’s trust in the government. But she also said she thought impeachment reinforced the constitutional guarantees and protections for the American democratic system. 
 
“The most important reason to do this, even though he will not most likely be removed from office, the most important reason to do this is to preserve what we call in the United States the separation of powers. Had they not done this, what they would have done is ceded an enormous amount of power to the president of the United States, and that is a precedent that they simply could not make,” Kamarck said. 
 
The process has energized the political base of each party. Analysts, such as Kamarck, said they expected to see the highest voter turnout in U.S. history for the 2020 elections. 

…

LOS ANGELES — It was touch and go for a while, but the final Democratic presidential debate of the year is on for Thursday night, with seven of the leading contenders thrashing it out on stage at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

A labor dispute between a university contractor and a food services union representing roughly 150 workers threatened to torpedo the Democratic debate after all seven of the presidential candidates vowed not to cross a picket line to take part in the nationally televised Democratic National Committee event. However, the union and company reached agreement Tuesday on a new three-year contract, prompting a sigh of relief from Democratic officials who had feared the sixth debate of the year was in jeopardy.

The seven candidates include former vice president Joe Biden, the current front-runner in national polls, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. The three other lower-tier candidates are entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Senator Amy Klobuchar and billionaire activist Tom Steyer. These seven of 15 Democratic candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump next November survived a Democratic party winnowing process based on their showing in the polls and fundraising.

The high-profile debate, hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico, is occurring a day after Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ironically, the debate originally was scheduled to be held on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), but had to be moved to Loyola Marymount because of a separate labor dispute. For Loyola Marymount students, that change in venue was a pleasant surprise.

“When I found out that it was going to be on campus, my first, my first thought was to change my flight home so I could stay,” said Havana Campo, a Loyola Marymount biochemistry student from Texas.

The debate is being held a week after final exams. While most students will not get to see the debate in person, a few lucky ones, such as Emily Sinsky, who is volunteering the day before the debate, has been given a seat in the debate hall.

“It’s exciting. I couldn’t believe,” said Sinsky, a Californian who is studying international relations.

Super Tuesday factor

One reason the debate is being held in California is because the solidly Democratic state has gained significance due to its primary election date being moved up by three months. With 495 delegates at stake, California will play a bigger role in determining who will represent the Democratic Party in challenging Trump than in past elections.

“They [California’s primary elections] will be more relevant than they normally have been, because in most cases we know who the nominee will be by the time he got to California, and we were just ratifying what already had been decided,” said Michael Genovese, president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University. “That got a little old for most Californians. So now, we’re going to be very important and we’ll have a strong say.”

Primary voters in California will be going to the polls on Super Tuesday, which is March 3, 2020. Thirteen other states will also hold primaries that day.

Money tree

California is also highly attractive to candidates because of its donors with deep pockets.

“Los Angeles is a place where candidates do not campaign so much as come for the money, to shake the money tree,” Genovese explained. “The donors come from a rich variety of sources. You’ve got Hollywood. You’ve got a very strong component of the gay community.”

There are also tech companies, lawyers and donors in the corporate world from Los Angeles who would be willing to give to their preferred candidate.

Candidates and issues

With the top four contenders being Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg, “what’s unusual is that we have so many older candidates running and at first you thought maybe this is going to be a generational debate,” Genovese said. “The older voters and the older candidates versus the younger generations. It hasn’t quite worked out that way except maybe with Yang and Buttigieg.” Biden, Sanders and Warren are all in their 70s, while Buttigieg is the youngest candidate at 37.

Some younger voters are looking at their candidates from a broader lens outside of a candidate’s age.

“Age is not particularly a concern if the candidate that you’re supporting is more part of a greater movement, and if they select a vice president that really doubles down on their beliefs,” said Luke Hart-Moynihan, a screenwriting graduating student at Loyola Marymount University.

One candidate taking the debate stage that should be watched, analysts say, is Yang, who most likely will not make it to the top, but did qualify for the debate just before the deadline.

“He’s established himself as a player. So the question is not what will Yang do now, it’s what will he do in the next two, four, six, eight or 10 years,” Genovese said. “You can see him being in a Democratic president’s Cabinet, establishing himself as a person of weight and gravitas, and sort of channeling that to something bigger in the future.”

Diverse interests

Many of the Loyola Marymount students who are following the debates are focused on Sanders and Warren. The topics that interest them are as diverse as the students’ backgrounds.

“Three topics in this election that concern me the most would be climate change, health care and immigration reform. I come from a family of immigrants,” said Campo, who is the daughter of a Cuban mother and Colombian father.

“One thing that I feel I have not heard enough from the Democratic candidates is talking about both election security and election legitimacy, because over the past several decades, there have been a lot of concerns about gerrymandering of congressional districts, voter disenfranchisement through voter identification laws,” said Peter Martin, a political science student from California.

“We’re starting to hear a lot more about student debt. Issues that affect young voters, which is really important,” said Gabriella Jeakle, an English major from Washington state, voicing a concern of many of her schoolmates.

Sinsky, the student who plans to attend the debate, said if she had a chance, she would ask the candidates what they would do in their first 100 days in office.

“That really shows where their values are,” Sinsky said.
 

…

Russia has been working to establish a new military force in the Kurdish-majority, northeastern part of Syria with the aim to deploy those troops and hardware to areas along the Syria-Turkey border, local sources told VOA.

The military force reportedly would replace a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-armed group that Turkey claims are terrorists.

“The Russians have already opened recruitment centers in two towns in our region, including Amuda and Tal Tamr,” said a Kurdish journalist, requesting anonymity.

He told VOA he knows “several young people who have signed up to join this force,” adding that Russia is primarily “recruiting ethnic Kurds.”

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed to VOA that Russian efforts were under way to build an allied force in the Kurdish region.

Kurdish military officials said they were aware of Russia’s plans, noting the new fighters will largely be used for patrol missions, along with Russian troops in the area.

“Those joining the new force are our people,” said a senior commander with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “We want to make sure that we have a close military relationship with Russia,” he told VOA on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter to the media.

The SDF official ruled out any potential confrontation between the newly established Russian forces and the U.S.-backed SDF, since “we are essentially involved in the recruiting and vetting process of the new fighters.”  

The SDF is a Kurdish-led military alliance that has been an effective partner with the United States in its fight against Islamic State in Syria.

SDF officials have stated to VOA they have at least 85,000 fighters who have been trained and equipped by the U.S.-led coalition to defeat IS.

Following a decision in October by U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces near the Syria-Turkey border, the Turkish military and allied Syrian militias began an offensive in northeast Syria to clear the region from the Syrian Kurdish fighters Turkey views as terrorists.

Ankara says the SDF is an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The U.S., however, makes a distinction between the two Kurdish groups.  

‘Return of regime authority’ 

In response to the Turkish incursion into Syria’s northeast, Syrian Kurds have allowed the Syrian regime and Russian troops to deploy in the area in an attempt to halt the Turkish operation. Since then, Russia has been trying to increase its presence in the region, experts say.  

“Russia’s goal is the return of regime authority in the east of the Euphrates,” said Jonathan Spyer, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a U.S.-based think tank.

Syrian Kurdish forces took control of the area in 2012 after Syrian government troops withdrew to focus on fighting rebel groups elsewhere in the war-ravaged country.

With the U.S. withdrawal from some areas in northeast Syria, Syrian government forces appear to be poised to regain control of the Kurdish-held region.

Largely depleted after eight years of fighting rebels throughout the country, the Syrian military is unlikely capable of asserting its authority over this part of Syria.

Russia “understands that the regime is currently too weak to achieve this,” Spyer told VOA. “Hence, Moscow appears to be establishing new bodies to try to push the gradual reconnection of Kurdish forces in northeast Syria to the Syrian state.”

Long-term presence

Some experts, such as Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, think Russia’s recent move suggests it has plans for a long-term presence in the area.

“This is consistent with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s overall approach to the region — control by relying on local actors,” she told VOA. “The relationship with the Kurds is especially important because Syria’s oil right now is critical to control in Syria,” Borshchevskaya added.

Russia vs. U.S.

After mounting pressure from the U.S. Congress and U.S. foreign allies, Trump decided to keep about 500 U.S. troops in the area to protect the region’s oil fields, and prevent IS and Syrian regime troops from accessing them.

“As minuscule as Syria’s oil reserves are in terms of its global market share, oil revenue has become critical for keeping the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime afloat,” Borshchevskaya said. “U.S. and Kurdish-led forces collect oil revenue, but with the U.S. military withdrawal from Syria, the Kurds have little choice but to work more closely with Putin and Assad.”

“These latest Kremlin moves in Syria show that Putin is building additional leverage in Syria, with implications for the entire region — and U.S. interests,” Borshchevskaya added.
 

…

The Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump Wednesday. Lawmakers passed charges he abused the power of the presidency to benefit himself politically by a 230-197 vote, with one present. Charges Trump obstructed Congress’ efforts to investigate him also passed by a 229-198 vote, with one present. The historic vote fell almost entirely along party lines, sending the case for removing Trump from office to the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill

…

Minutes after the House impeached President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw uncertainty into the process by refusing to say, repeatedly, when or whether she would send two articles to the Senate for a trial.

Her comments came as a surprise in a news conference late Wednesday that was intended to express Democrats’ somber closing message after voting to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. She started by praising her fellow Democrats for having “moral courage” and said it was “a great day for the Constitution of the United States of America.”

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US House Impeaches President Trump 

On a near party-line vote, Democrat-controlled House approves two articles of impeachment against Trump, a Republican, making him only third US president to be impeached in country’s 243-year history 

But then she declined to say when she would send the articles to the Republican-led Senate. Until the articles are submitted, the Senate cannot hold the trial that is nearly certain to acquit the president.

Pelosi said House Democrats could not name impeachment managers — House prosecutors who make the case for Trump’s conviction and removal from office — until they know more about how the Senate will conduct a trial.

“’We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. “And I would hope that that will be soon. … So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected a proposal earlier this week from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to call several witnesses. McConnell also said that he is coordinating with the White House and declared that “I am not an impartial juror.”

Pelosi said that McConnell “says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury to be in cahoots with the lawyers of the accused. That doesn’t sound right to us.”

Schumer and Pelosi are set to meet Thursday morning, according to a person familiar with the planning who was not authorized to discuss the private meeting.

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Legacy Moment: Pelosi Leads ‘Somber’ Trump Impeachment

Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent much of the historic day within a few steps of the cloakroom door, away from better-lit seats where the managers and members were debating impeachment

Asked again if she could guarantee that she would send the articles to the Senate, Pelosi said at the news conference: “That would have been our intention.” But they will see what the Senate decides, she said.

“We are not having that discussion. We have done what we set out to do,” Pelosi said.

An aide to McConnell said he did not have an immediate comment on Pelosi’s remarks. But he tweeted that McConnell would speak about “House Democrats’ precedent-breaking impeachment of the President of the United States” on Thursday morning.

Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a member of Pelosi’s leadership team, said after her remarks that Democrats want impeachment proceedings that are “judicious and responsible and deliberative.”

He said that while Senate will decide its own procedures, “the speaker’s only point is before she sends it over she needs to understand what that is” because it will influence who the impeachment managers are.

Asked about never sending the articles over, Cicilline said, “I would not speculate that anyone’s even contemplating that.”

…

A year after the United Nation’s General Assembly adopted the Global Refugee Compact to deal with the world refugees crisis, world leaders gathered in Geneva to weigh the progress made, and pledged more than $3 billion to support refugees and about 50,000 resettlement communities.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said the Global Forum on Refugees divvied up the responsibility for dealing with the 25.9 million refugees who have fled war and persecution, mainly exiled in poor neighboring countries.

In addition to the $3 billion, Grandi said Germany, which has hosted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, pledged about $1.9 billion. The Inter-American Development Bank pledged $1 billion to communities hosting refugees in Latin America. The World Bank also increased its funding for projects supporting refugees by 10%, to $2.2 billion.

At the end of 2018, nearly 71 million people were living in forced displacement due to war, violence and persecution, including the nearly 26 million who had fled to other countries as refugees.

The meeting this week in Geneva stressed the need to share the economic and societal burden of nearly 80% of the world’s refugees living in poor and developing countries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country hosts a large amount of the world’s refugees, criticized wealthy nations for setting “tiny” refugee quotas and for not providing adequate financial support to Ankara.

Turkey hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees, about 3.7 million, following by Pakistan, with 1.4 million registered refugees.

“We cannot go into a world in which responsibility-sharing means some states keep all the refugees and some states pay all the money. We cannot do that, that is why we have resettlement, why we have different types of partnerships,” Grandi said Wednesday at the close of the two-day meeting.

Rising tide of refugees

The number of people fleeing their homeland has been surging. According to a new report by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), the number of global migrants has increased from 150 million, to 272 million, in the past 20 years.

Contributing to these burgeoning numbers are the reasons why large numbers of people are being forced out of their homes, Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said.

“People are being forced out for reasons — whether it’s gangs, whether it’s civil war, whether it’s a state collapse, whether it’s environmental degradation — things that a normal person would decide to flee from,” Selee said.

Along with the challenge of dealing with accommodating large amounts of refugees is the issue of who to let in. Countries are facing the question of who is a refugee and who isn’t. Some cases are clear cut, such as Turkey with the Syrians who are fleeing a brutal civil war; or Colombia with the Venezuelans fleeing their country’s revolution and subsequent economic meltdown.

But there are other cases, such as in Europe and the United States at the southern border with Mexico, in which they are trying to figure out who should be returned to their home country, and who actually has a legitimate claim for asylum or refugee protection.

“And, so some people say, OK, we’ll call all these people refugees. Then people say, let’s not expand the definition but at least accept that these people are forced migrants that aren’t leaving by choice,” Selee said. “They’re leaving because something has pushed them out. And there’s a recognition that we need to offer some protection to those people, whether or not we call them refugees.”

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Billions of Dollars and In-Kind Contributions Pledged at Global Refugee Forum

The Global Refugee Forum has ended with more than 770 pledges worth billions of dollars in financial and in-kind contributions

Mass migration

Another challenge facing host countries is the issue of mass flows of migrants, and the perception of migrants’ impact on communities.

Dany Bahar of the Brookings Institution said when you think of a refugee crisis today, you think about a huge inflow of people that come to a country in a very short period of time.

Bahar said economists who have been researching the effect of migration have found the perception people had — about how massive inflows of migrants and refugees have negative impacts on the local labor markets — is not really backed by research.

“When refugees are allowed to work, that helps a country that is receiving them to become more productive, to grow etc. When the country has the ability to integrate these refugees by allowing them to be part of society, take part in the public sector, health system and education systems, that is of course positive for everybody,” Behar said.

Lebanon has anestimated population is 5.9 million, with nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees. This makes it the country with the highest number of refugees per capita – with one refugee for every four nationals, according to the UN.
 

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UN: Ability to Get Lifesaving Aid to 4 Million Syrians at Risk 

Russia seeks to cut cross-border access points into Syria, which would create huge obstacles for humanitarian missions

These numbers have placed an enormous strain on the country’s already fragile economy, society and politics.

“So in the case of Turkey and Lebanon receiving a lot of Syrian refugees, or in the case of Colombia receiving a lot of Venezuelan refugees, or Ethiopia receiving Eritrean and Sudanese refugees — these are countries that, to begin with, are lagging behind in terms of their infrastructure,”  Behar said.

He said that is why international financing is so important, not only for humanitarian reasons to help people, but to get the services they need by sending financial aid to allow host countries to invest in infrastructure and capital, so that they can integrate these refugees.

All in all, more than 770 pledges were made at this week’s forum for financial support as well as improving refugee access to employment, education, electricity, infrastructure and promises of more resettlement spots for the most vulnerable.

Katherine Ahn and VOA Persian contributed to this report

…

India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the final appeal of one of the four men sentenced to death for the 2012 fatal gang rape of a woman on a moving bus in New Delhi, paving the way for the four to be hanged.

The gruesome case made international headlines and exposed the scope of sexual violence against women in India, prompting lawmakers to stiffen penalties in rape cases.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student whom Indian media dubbed “Nirbhaya,” or “Fearless,” because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified, was heading home with a male friend from a movie theater when six men lured them onto a bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries to her. The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family insists he was killed. The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

One of those sentenced to death, Akshay Kumar Singh, filed his review petition earlier this month after the other three had theirs rejected.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Singh’s appeal. India’s president can still decide to grant him mercy, but that is not expected to happen.

Activists say new sentencing requirements haven’t deterred rape, the fourth-most common crime against women in India, according to government statistics.

The last hanging in India was in 2013.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes amid a revived debate over sexual violence in India after several headline-grabbing cases in recent weeks. A woman in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was doused with gasoline and set on fire by five men, including two she had accused of gang rape and who were out on bail, on her way to attend a court hearing in her case. She died earlier this month at a hospital in New Delhi.

The burned body of a 27-year-old veterinarian was found in late November near the city of Hyderabad in southern India. Police later fatally shot four men being held on suspicion of raping and killing the woman after investigators took them to the crime scene, drawing praise from people frustrated by the pace of the 2012 case and condemnation from those who said it undermined the courts’ role.

…

A global shipping industry organization is proposing a research and development program to help cut carbon dioxide emissions, funded by about $5 billion from shipping companies over a decade.

The International Chamber of Shipping said Wednesday that it is proposing creating a nongovernmental organization to be known as the International Maritime Research and Development Board.

It would be overseen by member countries of the U.N. maritime agency and financed by shipping companies through a mandatory contribution of $2 per metric ton of marine fuel.

Environmental activists say that while shipping contributes only about 2% of global greenhouse gases, the industry’s efforts are essential to combating climate change.

Last year, members of the U.N. agency, the International Maritime Organization, reached an agreement to cut the shipping industry’s emissions.

The strategy envisions cutting total annual emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared with 2008. It foresees “pursuing efforts toward phasing them out entirely.”

The International Chamber of Shipping said that the proposed $5 billion “is critical to accelerate the R&D effort required to decarbonize the shipping sector” and to spur the development of commercially viable zero-carbon ships by the early 2030s. It added that “additional stakeholders’ participation is welcomed.”

The group said that governments will discuss the shipping industry’s proposal when the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee meets in London in March.

…

Farmers and construction workers protested across the Netherlands early Wednesday, driving in slow-moving convoys during the morning rush hour to demonstrate against government policies aimed at cutting pollution.

Traffic authorities warned commuters that the morning rush hour would be busier than usual and police issued fines to some farmers for driving their tractors on the highway as the latest in a series of protests clogged roads around the country.

Police closed off a major highway near Amsterdam when farmers drove tractors onto the road.

Protester Jacco van den Berg told Dutch national broadcaster NOS that the action was aimed at showing that construction workers are prepared to take action to protect their livelihoods, which they say are threatened by measures to reduce pollution.

“Something has to happen,” he said. “We’re coming up to Christmas and there are companies that won’t make it to Christmas.”

Many construction projects were halted earlier this year when a Dutch court ruled that the government’s policy on granting building permits breached European pollution laws.

The protests came a day after Dutch senators approved legislation to cut emissions of the pollutant nitrogen oxide. Measures include making farmers change the feed they give to livestock and extending a voluntary scheme to buy up pig farms.

The new legislation, which has already been approved by the lower house of Parliament, also lowers the maximum speed limit on Dutch highways from 130 kph (80 mph) to 100 kph (62 mph).

…

In conservative Pakistan, women’s sports still lag far behind their male counterparts. That has not stopped women who enjoy sports from pushing the boundaries and demanding change. In a poor neighborhood in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, young women are so passionate about football they have persisted despite the disapproval of their own families and society. But as Ayesha Tanzeem reports from Karachi, the young women still have doubts about a future in the sport.

…

Stirring a giant vat in a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian Christian Maryam Salem prepares a special festive dish — not for Christmas, but the St Barbara’s Day festival.

It is celebrated every December 17 in Aboud, which residents believe is the last resting place of Saint Barbara, a third century woman killed for refusing to renounce her Christian faith.

The special dessert, named after Barbara and given to hundreds of people, looks a little like rice pudding but includes wheat, anise, fennel, cinnamon, almonds, raisins and sugar.

Salem says it takes several days to prepare, starting with soaking the wheat for 24 hours.

“We cook it and gradually add the rest of the ingredients and keep stirring until the ingredients are well mixed,” said Salem, who has been preparing the dish for the festivities for 12 years.

The exact details of Barbara’s story are disputed but the legend of the story is well-known.

The beautiful daughter of a pagan born in the third century, she secretly converted to Christianity.

Once her father found out she fled but was eventually caught.

Her furious father murdered her but was struck by lightning and died shortly after.

The pastor of Aboud’s Greek Orthodox Church, Father Emmanuel Awwad, said some accounts suggest the final scenes took place in the village, while others placed them in the city of Baalbek in modern day Lebanon.

Bagpipes

Celebrations began before sunset on Monday, with a special prayer held in the church in the village centre.

Afterwards the clergy and local residents, both Christian and Muslim, marched through the village down streets flanked by olive trees and cactuses, while a group of scouts played bagpipes and drums.

The march culminated at the saint’s tomb, located on a rocky hill where on a clear day you can see through Israeli territory to the Mediterranean Sea.

There families and visitors lit candles in the darkened room in honor of the saint.

“We ascend to the tomb with a march befitting the saint’s standing and greatness as a martyr,” Awwad said.

He said the march was “affirming their affiliation to the land,” referencing Israeli attempts to take control of the area.

More than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law, alongside 2.7 million Palestinians.

Hanna Khoury, head of the village council, recalled how in 2002 during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Israeli forces blew up the site under the pretext it was being “used to prepare for commando operations.”

The army later apologized, saying it had not realized the religious significance of the site.

Muslims also eat the Barbara dish after a six-day fast and on other occasions, noted Hamzah al-Aqrabawi, a researcher in Palestinian heritage.

“Barbara is a popular ritual that Palestinian peasants have had for 2,000 years,” he said.

Eight-year-old Riad Zaarour was wrapped in a traditional Palestinian kuffiyeh, or scarf, as he waited for the dish.

“The best thing in the festival is Barbara. We eat it and celebrate. I feel happy.”

…

Danish scientists have managed to extract a complete DNA sample from a piece of birch pitch more than 5,000 years old, used as a kind of chewing gum, a study revealed Tuesday.

The Stone-Age sample yielded enough information to determine the source’s sex, what she had last eaten and the germs in her mouth. It also told them she probably had dark hair, dark skin and blue eyes.

And genetically, she was more closely related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those living in central Scandinavia at the time, they concluded.

“It is the first time that an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bones,” Hannes Schroeder of the University of Copenhagen, told AFP.

Schroeder is co-author of the study, which was published in the review Nature Communications.

They found the sample during an archaeological dig at Syltholm, in southern Denmark, said Tehis Jensen, one of the other authors.

“Syltholm is completely unique,” he said.

“Almost everything is sealed in mud, which means that the preservation of organic remains is absolutely phenomenal.”

The researchers also recovered traces of plant and animal DNA – hazelnut and duck – confirming what archaeologists already know about the people who lived there at the time.

But they were not sure why their subject chose to chew the bark: whether to turn it into a kind of glue, to clean her teeth, to stave off hunger – or simply as chewing gum.
 

…

A judge on Monday sentenced a woman to 10 months in prison for her role in a business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to give birth to children who would automatically receive U.S. citizenship.

U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the sentence in Santa Ana, to Dongyuan Li, who wiped away tears with her hand several times during the hearing.

Selna said he expected her to be released from custody later Monday due to time served.

Federal prosecutors opposed the sentence and said they believed Li should be sentenced to years in prison to deter others from helping women lie on visa applications and hide pregnancies in these so-called birth tourism schemes.

Li pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and visa fraud for running a birth tourism company in Southern California known as “You Win USA.”

Federal authorities said the company helped more than 500 Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver American babies, and that Li used a cluster of apartments in Irvine, California, to receive them.

Authorities said the company coached the women to lie on their visa applications and to hide their pregnancies when passing through customs in U.S. airports.

In a letter to the court, Li said she has taken English and music lessons and read books and exercised daily while in custody.

“I am very sorry for the mistakes that I have made,” she wrote in the Dec. 1 letter filed with the court. “I truly sincerely apologize for any harm that I have caused to the American society.”
 

…

A U.S. judge on Monday flatly rejected a last-ditch bid by President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn to get the criminal charges to which he already pleaded guilty dropped, brushing aside his claims of misconduct by prosecutors and the FBI.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Flynn to appear for sentencing on Jan. 28, concluding that the retired Army lieutenant general had failed to prove a “single” violation by the prosecution or FBI officials of withholding evidence that could exonerate him.

Sullivan’s 92-page ruling represented a major blow to Flynn, who has tried to backpedal since he pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn’s sworn statements in his plea agreement “belie his new claims of innocence,” Sullivan wrote.

“It is undisputed that Mr. Flynn not only made those false statements to the FBI agents, but he also made the same false statements to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and senior White House officials, who, in turn, repeated Mr. Flynn’s false statements to the American people on national television,” the judge wrote.

Flynn was one of several former Trump aides to plead guilty or be convicted at trial in then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy as well as numerous contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Sentencing delayed

Flynn was previously supposed to have been sentenced by Sullivan in December 2018, but Sullivan fiercely criticized Flynn and accused him of selling out his country.

At the time, Sullivan appeared poised to sentence Flynn to prison. But then Sullivan instead gave Flynn the option of delaying the sentencing so the former national security adviser could fully cooperate with any pending investigations, including testifying in the Virginia trial of his former business partner Bijan Rafiekian on charges of illegally lobbying for Turkey.

The plans for him to testify, however, later evaporated.

Flynn, who Trump fired just weeks after taking office, dismissed his former lawyers on the case and tapped Sidney Powell, a frequent Fox News guest who has often expressed hostility toward the FBI and Mueller.

Her combative and aggressive approach led to a falling out with prosecutors, who ultimately decided not to call Flynn as a witness in the Rafiekian trial after Powell contended that Flynn would not testify to “knowingly” submitting false statements to the Justice Department when he retroactively registered as a lobbyist for Turkey.

Rafiekian verdict overturned

A federal judge in September overturned a jury verdict convicting Rafiekian.

Powell has filed a flurry of requests with the court to try to force the Justice Department to turn over troves of records that she said would show the FBI conducted an “ambush” interview of Flynn and withheld evidence that could exonerate him.

“The court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea,” Sullivan wrote in the ruling. “The record proves otherwise.”

Sullivan took aim at Powell in his ruling as well, saying one of the lawyer’s legal briefs had plagiarized another source by lifting “verbatim portions from a source without attribution” and noted that such conduct violates the District of Columbia’s rules for attorneys.

FBI has support of judge 

The judge’s ruling bolstered the FBI’s handling of the Flynn

investigation a week after the agency was criticized by the Justice Department’s inspector general for the manner in which it handled its applications to a specialized court to obtain a 2016 wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Sullivan’s ruling came a day before another judge is scheduled to sentence Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who also pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller. Gates cooperated extensively with prosecutors.

…

Police in Central Sulawesi say they are continuing their hunt for members of a militant group suspected of attacking local police officers last week.

Authorities in the Indonesian province said Sunday the attack that killed one police officer was carried out by a group known as the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT).  

Five gunmen ambushed villagers and held them and police officers hostage. The officers had just returned from Friday prayers at a small mosque near a police station in Central Sulawesi’s Salubanga village, according to local police.

Local officials said the attackers immediately fled from the vicinity.

“Our members who were in the bulkhead post had a chance to fight back and ask for help from the closest post. As a result … one of our personnel on duty at the post by the name of Muhamad Saepul Muhdori has died,” said Sugeng Lestari, Central Sulawesi’s police commissioner.

The hostages reportedly managed to escape the scene as the militants exchanged gunfire with police.

What is MIT?

MIT, a U.N.-designated terrorist group, is mostly active in Indonesia’s Java and Sulawesi province, with some presence in eastern provinces.

While it is unclear how many fighters are in MIT, the group reportedly has ties with other terrorist groups in the country and abroad.

MIT has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and some of its members have traveled to Syria to join the extremist group.

Since 2012, MIT has targeted Indonesian government officials and security forces, while also killing civilians in multiple attacks. It has become increasingly bold in its attacks on security forces, which include beheadings and the use of explosives and shootings, according to the United Nations.

Indonesian officials say there are currently about 10 active militants affiliated with the MIT, especially after its former leader, Abu Wardah Santoso, was killed in a counterterrorism operation by the Indonesian military in 2016. Nearly 30 members of the group were reportedly captured or killed in the same operation.

Law enforcement officials in Indonesia believe MIT may have recruited new members in recent months.

Counterterrorism efforts

Indonesia, home to 230 million Muslims, has been targeted by terrorist groups in recent years.

Since the bombings on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, most of them foreigners, the Indonesian government has stepped up its crackdown on Islamic militants, who were blamed for the Bali attack.

New threats have emerged in recent years from IS-inspired extremists who have targeted security forces and locals.

Last month, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the Medan city police station, wounding at least six people. That attack came as Indonesia’s counterterrorism forces were cracking down on suspected Islamic militants, following the assault by a knife-wielding couple who wounded Indonesia’s top security minister in October.

U.S. cooperation

The U.S. has been working with Indonesian authorities to expand mutual cooperation in counterterrorism efforts in the region.

In September 2018, the U.S. and Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen and expand cooperation on counterterrorism, including the exchange of information on terrorist and militant groups.

In its October 2018 “Country Reports on Terrorism,” the U.S. State Department said Indonesia has been able to deny terrorist groups safe haven.
 
“Indonesia applied sustained pressure to detect, disrupt, and degrade terrorist groups operating within its borders and deny them a safe haven,” the report said.

Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.
 

…

A Mexican foreign ministry undersecretary says he did not negotiate a trade deal that would allow up to five U.S. labor inspectors into Mexico.

Jesus Seade posted in several tweets that there is a simple reason labor inspectors would not be allowed into Mexico.  Mexican law prohibits it, Seade said.

Last Tuesday, Mexico, the U.S., and Canada signed a revised United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Mexico’s Senate ratified the new deal two days later.

When legislation to implement the trade deal was introduced in the U.S. Congress, it contained language proposing the posting of up to five labor attaches to monitor Mexican labor reforms.

Seade quickly objected with “surprise and concern” and announced a trip to Washington.

His Mexican critics said that he and others in President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration had overlooked something in the new deal and had approved the pact too hastily.

But Seade said there was nothing in the ratified trade package that authorized the posting of U.S. labor inspectors in Mexico.  “It is a very good agreement for Mexico,” Seade said.  “That’s why the U.S. needs ‘extras’ to sell it internally that were not part of the package.” 

…

Police fired tear gas against protesters in Hong Kong before meetings Monday between the territory’s leader and Communist Party officials in Beijing, ending a lull in what have become regular clashes between riot squads and demonstrators.

Police said they fired the choking gas after unrest erupted Sunday night in the Mongkok district of Kowloon.

Protesters threw bricks at officers and tossed traffic cones at a police vehicle, police said. They also set fires, blocked roads and smashed traffic lights with hammers.

Video footage showed truncheon-wielding riot officers squirting pepper spray at a man in a group of journalists and ganging up to beat and manhandle him.

The violence and scattered confrontations in shopping malls earlier Sunday, where police also squirted pepper spray and made several arrests, ended what had been a lull of a couple of weeks in clashes between police and protesters.

The uptick in tension came as Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam was in Beijing on Monday to brief President Xi Jinping on the situation in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Hong Kong’s protest movement erupted in June against now-scrapped legislation that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts in mainland China.

It has snowballed into a full-blow challenge to the government and Communist leaders in Beijing, with an array of demands, including that Hong Kong’s leader and legislators all be fully elected.

…

The top US representative in talks with North Korea on Monday slammed Pyongyang’s demands as hostile and unnecessary as its end-of-year deadline approaches, but held open the door for fresh negotiations.

North Korea has insisted that Washington offer it new concessions by the end of 2019 with the process largely deadlocked since the collapse of a summit in Hanoi in February.

Pyongyang has issued a series of increasingly strident declarations in recent weeks, and US special representative Stephen Biegun told reporters in Seoul: “We have heard them all.”

“It is regrettable that the tone of these statements towards the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan and our friends in Europe have been so hostile and negative and so unnecessary,” he said.

“The US does not have a deadline, we have a goal.”

Pyongyang has said that if Washington fails to make it an acceptable offer, it will adopt a so-far-unspecified “new way.”

It has also carried out a series of static tests at its Sohae rocket facility this month, after a number of weapons launches in recent weeks, some of them described as ballistic missiles by Japan and others — which Pyongyang is banned from testing under UN sanctions.

Biegun added that the US was “fully aware of the strong potential for North Korea to conduct a major provocation in the days ahead.”

“To say the least, such an action will be most unhelpful in achieving lasting peace on the Korean peninsula,” he added.

Directly addressing “our counterparts in North Korea”, he went on: “It is time for us to do our jobs. Let’s get this done. We are here and you know how to reach us.”

…

Marathon international climate talks closed Sunday with negotiators postponing until next year a key decision on global carbon markets.

After two weeks of negotiations on tackling global warming, delegates from almost 200 nations passed declarations calling for greater ambition in cutting planet-heating greenhouse gases and in helping poor countries suffering the effects of climate change. But despite holding the longest climate talks ever in 25 nearly annual editions they left one of the thorniest issues for the next summit in Glasgow, in a year’s time.

Environmental groups and activists accused the world’s richer countries of showing little commitment to seriously tackling climate change.

…

Several thousand people shouting words of thanks to the police turned out in Hong Kong on Sunday in an unusual display of support for a force broadly criticized as abusive by the territory’s protest movement.

People made heart signs with their hands at officers, with some calling them heroes for their policing of six months of demonstrations.

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Five Held Over Man’s Death in Hong Kong Protests

The three males and two females aged 15 to 18 were arrested on Friday on suspicion of murder, rioting and wounding and had been detained pending further investigation, police said in a statement

The rally attracted a bigger crowd than a protest against the government a few hundred meters (yards) away. It brought together a few hundred people in a square.

There were also scattered small protests against the government in shopping malls.

Tensions flared in one mall after police arrested about eight protesters. Police used pepper spray when people threw bottles of water at them.

…

A strong earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Sunday, causing a three-story building to collapse and prompting people to rush out of shopping malls, houses and other buildings in panic, officials said.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the magnitude 6.9 quake struck an area about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of Padada town in Davao del Sur province. It had a depth of 30 kilometers (18 miles).

Ricardo Jalad, who heads the Office of Civil Defense, said his office received an initial report that a small three-story building collapsed in Padada as the ground shook and that authorities were checking if people got trapped inside. The building housed a grocery store, Jalad said without elaborating.

Officials in the southern cities of Davao and Cotabato, where the quake was felt strongly, suspended classes for Monday to allow checks on the stability of school buildings. Some cities and town lost their power due to the quake, officials said.

The Davao region has been hit by several earthquakes in recent months, causing deaths and injuries and damaging houses, hotels, malls and hospitals.

The Philippine archipelago lies on the so-called Pacific “Ring of fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

…

The promise of reparations  to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened new territory in a reckoning at U.S. colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes and public apologies. 

Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions. 

While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions received from the slavery economy are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream. 

The country has been discussing reparations in one way or another since slavery officially ended in 1865. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave, launching the violence afflicted on black people to prop up the Southern economy.

University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton said he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery but that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education. 

“It doesn’t have to be trillions of dollars … but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans and really everybody else, because this is an American-made institution. We didn’t immigrate here,” said Clinton, a descendant of slaves who lives in Bay Shore, New York. 

A majority of Georgetown undergraduates voted in April for a nonbinding referendum to pay a $27.20-per-semester “Reconciliation Contribution” toward projects in underprivileged communities that are home to some descendants of 272 slaves who were sold in 1838 to help pay off the school’s debts. 

Georgetown President John DeGioia responded in October with plans instead for a university-led initiative, with the goal of raising about $400,000 from donors, rather than students, to support projects like health clinics and schools in those same communities.

Elsewhere, discussions of reparations have been raised by individual professors, like at the University of Alabama, or by graduate students and community members, like at the University of Chicago. 

At least 56 universities have joined a University of Virginia-led consortium, Universities Studying Slavery, to explore their ties to slavery and share research and strategies. 

In recent years, some schools, like Yale University, have removed the names of slavery supporters from buildings. New monuments have gone up elsewhere, including Brown University’s Slavery Memorial sculpture — a partially buried ball and chain — and the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers under construction at the University of Virginia. 

“It’s a very diffused kind of set of things happening around the nation,” said Guy Emerson Mount, an associate professor of African American history at Auburn University. “It’s really important to pay attention to what each of these are doing” because they could offer learning opportunities and inform national discussions on reparations. 

Virginia Theological Seminary in September announced a $1.7 million endowment fund in recognition of slaves who worked there. It said annual allocations would go toward supporting African American clergy in the Episcopal church and programs that promote justice and inclusion.

The Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey followed with a $27.6 million endowment after a historical audit revealed that some founders used slave labor. 

“We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce,” seminary President M. Craig Barnes said in October. 

In an October letter to Harvard University’s president, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister noted the developments at Georgetown and the seminaries and asked the Ivy League school to consider how it could make amends for the oppression of Antiguan slaves by a plantation owner whose gift endowed a law professorship in 1815. Harvard’s president wrote back that the school is determined to further explore its historical ties to slavery. 

Harvard in 2016 removed a slave owner’s family crest from the law school seal and dedicated a plaque to four slaves who lived and worked on campus.

At the University of Buffalo, some have urged the public school to consider the responsibility it bears having been founded by the 13th U.S. president, Millard Fillmore, who signed the Fugitive Slave Act to help slave owners reclaim runaways. Students have not formally raised the idea of reparations, according to a school spokesman, but they led a discussion on the topic as part of Black Solidarity Week last month. 

William Darity, a Duke University public policy professor and an expert on reparations, said the voices of college students have helped bring attention to reparations in a way that hasn’t been seen since Reconstruction.

But he has warily watched what he sees as a piecemeal approach to an issue he believes merits a congressional response. 

“I don’t want anybody to be under the impression that these constitute comprehensive reparations,” Darity said. 

Supporting a reparations program for all black descendants of American slaves “would be the more courageous act,” he said. 

Few Americans support reparations, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. It showed that only 29% say the government should pay cash reparations to descendants of enslaved black people. 

University of Buffalo associate professor Keith Griffler, who specializes in African and African American studies, said he sees the cusp of a movement on college campuses. 

“And it’s probably not surprising that some of the wealthier private institutions have been the first to take those kinds of steps, because public universities still have their funding issues. 

“The conversations, just acknowledging these kinds of things,” Griffler said, “I think would go a long way toward making students feel that at least their voices are being heard.” 

…

Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about.

Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London.

In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”

Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K.

In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party’s “emphatic” victory showed that “the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is different to that chosen by the rest of the U.K.”

The SNP has campaigned for decades to make Scotland independent and almost succeeded in 2014, when Scotland held a referendum on seceding from the U.K. The “remain” side won 55% to 45%.

At the time, the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. But the SNP argues that Brexit has changed everything because Scotland now faces being dragged out of the EU against its will.

Sturgeon said Friday that Johnson “has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the EU” and Scotland must be able to decide its future in a new independence referendum.

Johnson insists he will not approve a referendum during the current term of Parliament, which is due to last until 2024. Johnson’s office said the prime minister told the Scottish leader on Friday that “the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected.”

The Scotsman newspaper summed up the showdown Saturday with front page face-to-face images of Sturgeon and Johnson: “Two landslides. One collision course.”

“What we’ve got now is pretty close to a perfect storm,” said historian Tom Devine, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He said the U.K. is facing an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” as Johnson’s refusal to approve a referendum fuels growing momentum for Scottish independence.

Politically and legally, it’s a stalemate. Without the approval of the U.K. government, a referendum would not be legally binding. London could simply ignore the result, as the Spanish government did when Catalonia held an unauthorized independence vote in 2017.

Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based political analyst, said Sturgeon “has said that she doesn’t want a Catalonia-style referendum. She wants to do this properly.”

There’s no clear legal route to a second referendum if Johnson refuses, though Sturgeon can apply political and moral pressure. Diffley said the size of the SNP’s win allows Sturgeon to argue that a new referendum is “the will of the people.”

Sturgeon said that next week she will lay out a “detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”

Devine said the administrations in Edinburgh and London “are in a completely uncompromising condition” and that will only make the crisis worse.

“The longer Johnson refuses to concede a referendum, the greater will the pro-independence momentum in Scotland accelerate,” he said. “By refusing to concede it, Johnson has ironically become a recruiting sergeant for increased militant nationalism.”

Northern Ireland has its own set of political parties and structures largely split along British unionist/Irish nationalist lines. There, too, people feel cast adrift by Brexit, and the political plates are shifting.

For the first time this week, Northern Ireland elected more lawmakers who favor union with Ireland than want to remain part of the U.K.

The island of Ireland, which holds the U.K.’s only land border with the EU, has proved the most difficult issue in Brexit negotiations. Any customs checks or other obstacles along the currently invisible frontier between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland would undermine both the local economy and Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The divorce deal struck between Johnson and the EU seeks to avoid a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules, which means new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

“Once you put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s going to be part of a united Ireland for economic purposes,” Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, told the BBC. “That will increase the tendency toward a united Ireland for political reasons, too.

“I think there is a good chance there will be a united Ireland within 10 years.”

In Scotland, Devine also thinks the days of the Union may be numbered.

“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think it’s more likely than not that the U.K. will come to an end over the next 20 to 30 years.

…

North Koreans with disabilities may face disproportionate risk due to efforts to curtail the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs. 

Some humanitarian aid groups providing medical, educational and material support to people with physical, sensory and other developmental impairments say United Nations sanctions, as well as the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, are limiting their ability to carry-out work in North Korea.  

Amid those restrictions, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are abandoning their programs altogether. 

Multiple sources involved in aid work tell VOA that Humanity & Inclusion (HI) is ceasing its North Korea operations. The French/Belgian organization, also known as Handicap International, has been active in the country since 2001 and works in conjunction with the state-run Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled, according to the non-profit’s website. 

HI declined to respond to VOA’s request for confirmation. 

North Korea’s opacity and the reluctance of many NGOs to publicly discuss their work there make it difficult for outside observers to obtain a full picture of the situation.  

But, Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, who lectures in humanitarian studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, says the “detrimental impact of sanctions” is primarily responsible for the departure of international organizations, like HI, from North Korea.

She explains that while humanitarian activity in North Korea is permitted under the sanctions, the lengthy process of applying for exemptions from member states and the UN Sanctions Committee as well as blocks on financial transactions lead to the erosion of partnerships that these organizations have spent years building with Pyongyang.   

“It’s really a tragedy,” Zadeh-Cummings says. “Because of time delays, uncertainty and difficulties in getting sanctions exemptions, those decades of trust and relations are being threatened.”

Among the relief agencies that have pulled-out or suspended work in North Korea are Finland’s Fida International, which closed its food security program earlier this year, and the Britain-based charity Save the Children, which left the country in 2017. Both organizations say the pressure brought on by sanctions forced their decisions.        

Zadeh-Cummings notes the closure of programs that benefit the disabled could be a lost opportunity.  She says that despite North Korea’s reputation as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, the regime “shows a willingness to engage” with the international community over the creation of such initiatives, which have gone from “non-existent to a space for collaboration” with aid groups in the past several years. 

“The people on the receiving end of this aid are the ones who are losing out,” due to the international sanctions, she adds.

The sanctions further complicate many NGOs’ ability to provide support for North Korea’s disabled due to a “dual use” ban on metallic objects because of concern these could end up in the hands of the country’s military. In turn, this measure could prohibit many medical supplies and adaptive equipment from entering North Korea, unless an import license and waiver are obtained, which some humanitarians say could take many months or years, if not at all. 
 
“I can’t send wheelchairs, crutches or canes because they all have metal in them,” says Sue Kinsler, whose California-based Kinsler Foundation has supported North Korean schools for the blind and has helped disabled athletes compete in recent Paralympics and other sporting events.  

She says her charity, which relies on small donations from churches in South Korea and the U.S., has not been able to raise sufficient funds or collect many donations in recent years.

“They all stopped helping me because of the sanctions,” she  says. “They’re afraid of breaking the rules.” 

Kinsler, who says she used to visit North Korea several times a year, adds that she hasn’t returned since Washington banned U.S. citizens from traveling to the country following the death of tourist Otto Warmbier in 2017. 

Some other American aid workers have obtained permits to enter North Korea to carry-out relief work. 

Dr. Kee Park, director of DPRK Programs at the Korean American Medical Association, says he travels to North Korea twice a year and performs surgeries with local physicians. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. 

Park, who lectures at Harvard and co-authored the recent report The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, says the difficulty in “navigating the regulatory hurdles” required to obtain permission to transport even the most basic of medical devices to North Korea could mean many patients will become permanently disabled.  

“If they have an injury and cannot obtain surgical care in a timely fashion they might end up with a disability,” he says, adding that sanctions could prevent performance of “simple operations” for disabling conditions such as cleft pallet, clubbed foot and cataracts. 

Park says that despite the lack of new surgical instruments, North Korean doctors are “masters at maximizing the utility of their medical supplies.”

“They reuse as much as possible until things become unusable,” he says. 

“Collateral damage” 

North Korea has given Washington an end of year deadline to drop what Pyongyang calls a “hostile policy” in order to resume stalled denuclearization talks. Some observers say the North wants relief from unilateral U.S. sanctions that have reduced its capacity to earn foreign sources of income – an indication that these measures are having their intended effect. 

Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korea expert at Tufts University, writes in an email to VOA that “targeted financial sanctions are a potent and fine-tuned, non-lethal instrument of coercion.”

Lee notes that while sanctions are not a “perfect instrument”, he argues that humanitarian concern should instead focus on the Kim regime’s “perverse priorities” as the root cause of the North Korean people’s “misery and hunger.” 

“There will invariably be negative trickle down effects on the innocent people and in procedural aspects related to the delivery of aid,” Lee writes.

Andray Abrahamian, a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Incheon, South Korea campus, agrees that North Korea is “unable or unwilling” to care for many of its citizens, including people with disabilities, and so has largely outsourced this responsibility to international aid groups. 

But Abrahamian, who previously worked for a North Korea-focused NGO, says the livelihood of this already disadvantaged population will continue to decline if recipients of humanitarian support  are seen as “collateral damage.”   

“The further you are away from political power the more vulnerable you are to sanctions-imposed scarcity,” he says.

…

Melania Trump on Friday appeared to condone her husband’s criticism of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, saying through a spokeswoman that her 13-year-old son, Barron, is in a different category than the teenage climate activist “who travels the globe giving speeches.”

“He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy,” spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in an emailed statement the day after President Donald Trump lashed out at Thunberg  because Time magazine had named her “Person of the Year.”

The first lady’s apparent acceptance of her husband’s actions stood in contrast to the work she’s doing through her “Be Best”  initiative to combat online bullying and teach children to be kind.

The president tweeted Thursday that “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!” He said it was “ridiculous” that Time had chosen her for the honor.

Trump mocked the teenage activist, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a week after the first lady tweeted angrily at Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan for mentioning Barron during her testimony as a Democratic witness at a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it,” Melania Trump tweeted.

At one point during her testimony, Karlan said that while Trump can “name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” Karlan was trying to make a point that Trump is a president and not a king. At the end of the hearing, Karlan apologized for the comment.

Grisham said the first lady will continue to use “Be Best” to help children.

“It is no secret that the president and first lady often communicate differently — as most married couples do,” Grisham said.

Former first lady Michelle Obama encouraged Thunberg, saying, “don’t let anyone dim your light.”

Michelle Obama wrote on Twitter from Vietnam, where she was traveling this week. “Like the girls I’ve met in Vietnam and all over the world, you have so much to offer us all,” she wrote. “Ignore the doubters and know that millions of people are cheering you on.”

…

Three months after being sworn into office, the civilian-led transitional government in Sudan has been trying to overcome political and economic challenges in the African country after decades under the former regime of Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled in April this year after months of popular protests against his government.   

One major objective for the new government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has been the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

During his recent visit to Washington, where he met with senior U.S. officials, Hamdok emphasized that removing his country from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism was essential for the success of the new government in carrying out necessary reforms.

“This issue has a lot of bearing on so many processes, not to mention debt and investment but also opening the country at large,” Hamdok said last week during remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“This is something, unless it is addressed, all these other processes will not take place,” he added, linking the removal of Sudan from the U.S. terrorism list to top priorities his government has taken on for the transitional period.

Sponsoring terrorism

Sudan was added to the U.S.  list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 over charges by Washington that Bashir’s Islamist government was supporting terrorism. The country was also targeted by U.S. sanctions over Khartoum’s alleged support for terror groups, including al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah.

“When Bashir took over the country [in 1989], and then the fundamentalists and Islamists gained more and more power, Sudan was harboring some very bad people, including Osama bin Laden,” said former U.S. Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, co-chair of the Sudan Task Force at the Atlantic Council, who was the U.S. chargé d’affaires to Sudan from 2011 to 2012.

“The more power the Islamists had within the government then, the more of whom we would call the bad actors [and] terrorists came to spend time in Sudan,” she told VOA.

But Sudanese officials maintain that it was the former regime that supported terrorism and that the Sudanese people shouldn’t be published for crimes committed by Bashir’s regime.

Normalized relations

Since the overthrow of Bashir, U.S. officials have expressed support for the new Sudanese government.

Earlier this month, U.S. and Sudan announced the warming of their diplomatic relations through an exchange of ambassadors for the first time in 23 years.

Pleased to announce that the United States and #Sudan have decided to initiate the process to exchange ambassadors for the first time in 23 years. This is a historic step to strengthen our bilateral relationship.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 4, 2019

This move, experts say, could be a gesture of goodwill as both sides are trying to open a new page in their relations.

“Having ambassadors in both countries will certainly make efforts to delist Sudan from the terrorism list more effective,” said al-Noor Mohammed, a Sudanese researcher based in Khartoum.

“It gives our government a great deal of legitimacy as it seeks to turn this opening into meaningful outcomes, such as the removal of Sudan from the U.S. [terrorism] list,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

Essential for Sudan’s economy

Experts believe lifting economic sanctions imposed on Sudan and removing the country from the terrorism list will significantly help alleviate economic hardships that Sudan has faced  for many years.

“The new government has inherited a country with an enormous debt of about $60 billion,” said Yousif al-Jalal, a Khartoum-based political analyst.

He told VOA that “removing the country from that list will allow Hamdok’s government to reach out to international monetary lenders to address the debt issue.”

The designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism bars the country from debt relief and financing from international financial lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Some groups such as the Sentry, an organization that monitors conflicts in Africa, have called on the U.S. government to accelerate the process of taking Sudan off the terrorism list.

Removing Sudan from the list “will help unlock essential financial support and bolster Sudan’s economic prospects,” the Sentry said in a statement Thursday.

“If it occurs in conjunction with meaningful economic, governance and human rights reforms, the prospects for economic recovery and democratic transformation in the country will grow exponentially,” it added.

U.S. conditions

U.S. officials say that one of the important steps in removing Sudan from the list is reaching a settlement with families of those killed in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Sudan’s Hamdok said in addition to settling with the victims’ families, his government was also pursuing a deal with those injured in the 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole.

Sudan is accused of providing material support to al-Qaida, which was responsible for all those attacks.

U.S. officials  have also expressed concerns about the presence of some military personnel in the newly established authority in Sudan who had ties with the former regime.

“Sudan needs to give assurances to Washington that these military people won’t have the power to take over the government at some point,” analyst al-Jalal said.

The U.S. also raised questions during Hamdok’s recent visit to Washington about Sudan’s intelligence agency and whether it has fully been transferred to a civilian leadership.

The delisting process

Removing Sudan from the U.S. State Department list requires approval from Congress after a six-month review.

“There is an interagency discussion that happens,” Yates said, adding that the State Department, Defense Department and the intelligence community discuss the outcome and “then they refer the decision to the president.”

She noted that Congress has to be notified after the process is over.

“But after a 45-day period, if the Congress does nothing, then [Sudan would be] delisted,” Yates said.

…

All seven Democratic presidential candidates who qualified for next week’s debate threatened on Friday to skip the event if an labor dispute forces them to cross picket lines on the campus hosting it. 
 
The Democratic National Committee said it was trying to come up with an “acceptable resolution” to the situation so the debate could proceed. 
 
A labor union called UNITE HERE Local 11 said it would picket as Loyola Marymount University hosted Thursday’s sixth Democratic debate of the cycle, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responded by tweeting they wouldn’t participate if that meant crossing the lines. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, environmental activist Tom Steyer and businessman Andrew Yang followed suit. 
 
“The DNC should find a solution that lives up to our party’s commitment to fight for working people. I will not cross the union’s picket line even if it means missing the debate,” Warren tweeted. 
 
Sanders tweeted, “I will not be crossing their picket line,” while Biden tweeted: “We’ve got to stand together with @UNITEHERE11 for affordable health care and fair wages. A job is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about dignity.” The other candidates used Twitter to post similar sentiments. 

Picketing began in November
 
UNITE HERE Local 11 says it represents 150 cooks, dishwashers, cashiers and servers working on the Loyola Marymount campus. It says it has been in negotiations with a food service company since March for a collective bargaining agreement without reaching a resolution, and “workers and students began picketing on campus in November to voice their concern for a fair agreement. The company abruptly canceled scheduled contract negotiations last week.” 
 
“We had hoped that workers would have a contract with wages and affordable health insurance before the debate next week. Instead, workers will be picketing when the candidates come to campus,” Susan Minato, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said in the statement. 
 
DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa said both the DNC and the university found out about the issue earlier Friday, but expressed support for the union and the candidates’ boycott, stating that DNC Chairman “Tom Perez would absolutely not cross a picket line and would never expect our candidates to either.” 
 
“We are working with all stakeholders to find an acceptable resolution that meets their needs and is consistent with our values and will enable us to proceed as scheduled with next week’s debate,” she said in a statement. 

University encourages resolution
 
Loyola Marymount said that it was not a party to the contract negotiations but that it had contacted the food services company involved, Sodexo, and had encouraged it “to resolve the issues raised by Local 11.” 
 
“Earlier today, LMU asked Sodexo to meet with Local 11 next week to advance negotiations and solutions. LMU is not an agent nor a joint employer of Sodexo, nor of the Sodexo employees assigned to our campus,” the university said in a statement. “LMU is proud to host the DNC presidential debate and is committed to ensuring that the university is a rewarding place to learn, live and work.” 
 
This is the second location site set to host the December debate. In October, the DNC announced it wouldn’t be holding a debate at the University of California-Los Angeles because of “concerns raised by the local organized labor community” and was moving the event to Loyola Marymount. 

…