The dispatch of two Philippine coast guard ships to the Sulu Sea might normally register as a quick blip on the radar of world maritime movement. But shipments of illegal drugs and support for violent Muslim rebels cross that sea from other countries into the Philippines, which struggles to contain both. The Chinese navy is growing stronger not far away, too, and China disputes tracts of sea with the Philippines.

The Philippines has historically had a weak defense, especially at sea. Research database GlobalFirePower.com ranks the Philippine armed forces 64th strongest in the world. Neighbors China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam all rank higher.
 
Manila’s Sulu Sea patrol, which started November 18 and will also cover the adjacent South China Sea, shows the country is accelerating its defense buildup because of the offshore threats, , analysts believe. The severity of problems that reach the archipelago from abroad are giving officials extra willpower now, they say.
 
“If it’s not done fast, we won’t have a very potent, a very credible deterrent armed forces or coast guard, so we have to put our money where our mouth is,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization.
 
Drugs and rebels
 
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said in March that illegal drug use had worsened in part because supplies were being smuggled in, domestic news website Philstar Global reported. He swore when elected in 2016 to eradicate drugs, and his critics say thousands of drug suspects have already been killed without trial.
 

“Maybe Duterte realized his war on drugs cannot be won without stopping the inflow of drugs coming from Latin America and coming from the Mekong region, because a lot of drugs have been shipped in the back door and it’s quite difficult to police,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “So, fighting the drug war requires upgrading the coastal capabilities of the coast guard.”
 
The coast guard said on its website it helped last week detain the captain and crew of a merchant ship carrying 53,000 metric tons of a “toxic substance” from South Korea.
 
Sympathizers of the Middle Eastern terrorist group Islamic State use the Sulu Sea to reach Muslim antigovernment rebels in the southern Philippines, Duterte said last year. Violence there since the 1960s has killed more than 120,000 people.
 
Despite a 2014 peace accord with one dominant rebel group and the later creation of a semiautonomous Muslim region, terrorist attacks still flare up around the southernmost major Philippine island, Mindanao. In June, for example, suspected suicide bombers hit a military camp and killed three soldiers.
 
Checking China
 
And in the South China Sea, known in Manila as the West Philippine Sea, hundreds of Chinese vessels gathered near a Philippine-held islet in waters the two sides contest. A Philippine fishing vessel capsized in June after colliding with a Chinese ship. The Philippines holds 10 islets in disputed tracts of the sea.
 
“The fact they put priority into the Sulu Sea is important because it really is probably second only to the West Philippine Sea in importance when you look at it from the perspective of maritime activity,” said Jay Batongbacal: international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines. “There’s a lot of activity there, so it’s good that they’re pouring resources into it.”
 
Long-term modernization
 
Philippine officials have pledged military modernization since 1995 with an act of Congress approved that year, but budgeting has always been inconsistent.  Duterte’s predecessor used arbitration rather than a stronger defense to resist China at sea, Rabena said.
 
The  threats from offshore are giving those pledges extra impetus now, experts say. A three-way deal to patrol the Sulu Sea together with neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia should add to that momentum, Rabena said.

Last year Duterte earmarked $5.6 billion for defense modernization through 2022. Earlier this month an Armed Forces of the Philippines official told a House of Representatives briefing the country should raise defense spending to 2% of GDP, which was $331 billion last year. Its current 1.1% lags the regional average.
 
An expanding tax base is expected to help fund military improvements, Araral said.
 
Defense has been “accelerated” further by hardware donations from abroad, he said. Washington has donated military equipment in the past. Japan, another country that  wants to hold off China at sea, has pledged to send the Philippines two patrol vessels and lend it five surveillance planes.
 
The United States is helping the coast guard now develop a training center in several phases. There’s already a classroom, engine maintenance laboratory and barracks for outboard motor maintenance.  The U.S. Embassy in Manila said in October. U.S. Coast Guard teams will offer training.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump learned about a whistleblower complaint regarding his relations with Ukraine before he decided to unfreeze nearly $400 million in military aid, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday.

The Times cited two people familiar with the matter, saying White House lawyers told Trump about the complaint in late August as they worked to determine whether they were required to send it to Congress.

That battle formed the early stages of what has become the focus of the impeachment inquiry now playing out in the House of Representatives.  Lawmakers received the complaint in late September and made a version of it public.  

Since then, the Democrat-led House Intelligence committee has held both private and public sessions to hear testimony from current and former diplomats and other officials to examine allegations Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to commit to an investigation of one of Trump’s potential opponents in the 2020 election, Democrat Joe Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to send articles of impeachment to the full House for a vote, announced Tuesday it would hold its first hearing December 4 and invited Trump to attend.

The hearing will look into what the committee calls the “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment.”

The guidelines established by Democratic leaders say Trump and his lawyers would be given the chance to question the panel of still-to-be-named legal experts who will appear as witnesses.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to the White House inviting Trump to attend, calling it “not a right, but a privilege or a courtesy.”

“The president has a choice he can make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process,” Nadler said in a separate statement. “I hope that he chooses to participate in the inquiry, directly or through counsel as other presidents have done before him.”

Nadler assured Trump that he “remains committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”

Nadler is giving the White House until Sunday night to respond.

U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland testified last week that a number of senior Trump administration officials were “in the loop” about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine.

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Sondland Insists ‘Everyone Was in the Loop’ on Ukraine

The legion of top US officials well aware of President Donald Trump’s efforts this summer to get Ukraine to carry out investigations that would help Trump politically ranged from Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney

They include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

They have balked at testifying. A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump does not have the power to stop former White House counsel Don McGahn from complying with a subpoena to appear before the House committees.

Trump, who insists he did nothing wrong, tweeted Tuesday that he “would love to have Mike Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney and many others to testify about the phony impeachment hoax,” calling it a “Democratic scam that is going nowhere.”

Trump’s Republican defenders say no matter what the president did, it does not rise to the level of impeachment.

Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Kyiv fired a prosecutor investigating the Burisma gas company, on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has ever surfaced. Charges of Ukrainian election interference are based on a debunked conspiracy theory that originated in Russia.

…

Thanksgiving came early for a group of New York City commuters who enjoyed a holiday feast on a subway train.      

Video footage shows riders standing behind a white-clothed table covered with plates of turkey, mashed potatoes and cornbread in the middle of a Brooklyn-bound L train on Sunday.      

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Wintry Weather Threatens to Snarl US Holiday Travel

Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal under the best of circumstances, and a one-two punch of bad weather threatens to make it even more exhausting

Stand-up comedian Jodell “Joe Show” Lewis tells the New York Post he organized the Thanksgiving dinner to “bring a little excitement to commuters” and feed any New Yorkers who might be hungry.
       
Lewis says he chose the L train after he saw how “dreary and upset” riders were at the inconvenience of a construction project that has cut service on the line.

…

In September 1789, members of America’s first Congress approached the nation’s first president, George Washington, and asked him to call for a national Thanksgiving.

That seemingly benign request ignited a furor in Congress over presidential powers and states’ rights. Critics had two main concerns with the idea of a presidential proclamation to declare a national Thanksgiving. 

First, some viewed Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, which put it outside of the purview of the president. Secondly, opponents of the measure believed the president did not have the authority to call a national Thanksgiving because that was a matter for governors.

It was a challenging time for the young nation. America had won the Revolutionary War but the country — made up of the 13 former colonies — was not fully unified yet. Calling a national Thanksgiving was a way to bring Americans together. 

In the end, Washington did issue a proclamation, the first presidential proclamation ever, calling for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” He also came up with a solution designed to appease the opposition. 

“When he issued the proclamation, he sent copies of that to governors of each of the states, 13 at the time, and asked them to call a national Thanksgiving on the day that Washington specified, the last Thursday of November,” says Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of “Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience,” and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “And, of course, Washington’s prestige being what it was, every governor did.”

Yet the battle over a national Thanksgiving did not end there. 

As president, Thomas Jefferson refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, even though he had done so as governor of Virginia. John Adams and James Madison did issue proclamations calling for days of “fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving.”

However, after Madison, no U.S. president issued a Thanksgiving proclamation until Abraham Lincoln. He did so in the middle of the U.S. Civil War in 1863 in an effort to unify the country.

“The Battle of Gettysburg had been fought a few months earlier. It was becoming clear that the Union was going to win,” Kirkpatrick says. “Every family in America was deeply affected by that terrible war. In the midst of all that, he was talking about the blessings of the country and what we had to be grateful for. And then he asks the people to come together as one, with one heart and one voice, to celebrate the holiday.”

Since then, every president has called for a national Thanksgiving. 

It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who stirred the pot again in 1939, by moving Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November. Up until then, Americans had marked the holiday on the last Thursday in November, a date first specified by Lincoln.

The new date was Roosevelt’s bid to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the nation’s economic recovery after the Great Depression.

“It was very annoying to some businesses. For example, the calendar industry, which had printed its calendars for the next year already,” Kirkpatrick says. “But one of the most vocal groups were colleges and universities, specifically the football coaches, because a tradition had developed of having Thanksgiving football championship games on Thanksgiving weekend.”

The divide over when to celebrate the holiday was so deep that half of the states adopted the new day, while the other half stuck to the traditional day. Roosevelt eventually reversed his decision, and Congress ended the long national debate over Thanksgiving in 1941 by passing a law making the fourth Thursday in November a legal holiday.

Today, Thanksgiving continues to unify millions of Americans who gather to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. Many will serve traditional foods like turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. 

George Washington made a point of declaring that Thanksgiving should be celebrated by people of all faiths, a distinction that still resonates for Americans, including immigrants marking their first Thanksgiving. 

“It’s 398 years since the so-called first Thanksgiving. It’s America’s oldest tradition,” Kirkpatrick says. “It’s tied up with a lot of seminal events in our history, such as the Revolution and the Civil War, and it’s also a rite of passage for new Americans. The idea is that once you celebrate Thanksgiving, you know you are truly participating in a national festival that cements your position as an American.”

…

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order creating a White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives.
       
The task force will be overseen by Attorney General William Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. It is tasked with developing protocols to apply to new and unsolved cases and creating a multi-jurisdictional team to review cold cases.

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Alaska Natives: Expand Violence Against Women Act

Trump administration has shown little support for granting broader jurisdictions to tribal courts

       
Trump on Tuesday called the scourge of violence facing Native American women and girls “sobering and heartbreaking.”
       
The National Institute of Justice estimates that 1.5 million Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including many who are victims of sexual violence. On some reservations, federal studies have shown women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump Monday offered another conflicting account of a leadership shakeup at the Pentagon, while defending his decision to intervene on behalf of a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct during the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Iraq.

Asked about Sunday’s firing of the U.S. Navy’s top civilian, Secretary Richard Spencer, Trump told White House reporters, “We’ve been thinking about that for a long time.”

“That didn’t just happen,” he added during an appearance in the Oval Office with the Bulgarian prime minister. “I have to protect my war fighters.”

Trump also defended ordering Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday to cancel a review board hearing for Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.

Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury earlier this year of charges he murdered a wounded Islamic State terror group fighter during his deployment to Iraq in 2017. But he was found guilty of posing with the teenager’s body and demoted.

Earlier this month, Trump intervened, restoring Gallagher’s rank and pay.  But some Navy officials, including Spencer, had said Gallagher would still need to appear before a review board, which would decide whether he could still retire as a SEAL and keep the Trident pin awarded to members of the elite unit.

“They wanted to take his pin away, and I said, No,'” the president told reporters Monday, calling Gallagher a “tough guy” and “one of the ultimate fighters.”

Hours earlier, Esper defended Trump’s order to abort the review board hearing for Gallagher.

“The president is the commander-in-chief. He has every right, authority and privilege to do what he wants to do,” Esper told reporters at the Pentagon.

But Esper’s account of the events that led to Spencer’s dismissal as Navy secretary appears to differ from Trump’s characterization that the firing had been under consideration “for a long time.”

Specifically, Esper alleged he learned after a White House meeting on Friday that Spencer had gone behind his back and tried to make a deal regarding the Gallagher case with White House officials.

“We learned that several days prior Secretary Spencer had proposed a deal whereby if president allowed the Navy to handle the case, he [Spencer] would guarantee that Eddie Gallagher would be restored a rank allowed to retain his trident and permitted to retire,” Esper told reporters.

“I spoke with the president late Saturday informed him that I lost trust and confidence in Secretary Spencer and I was going to ask for Spencer’s resignation,” the defense secretary added. “The president supported this decision.”

But in a letter acknowledging  his termination Sunday, Spencer made no mention of trying to make a deal with the White House.  Instead, he argued he could not abide by the president’s desire to bypass the review board process as required by the military justice system.

“The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries,” he wrote. “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believes violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

And in an interview with CBS News, his first since his firing, Spencer said “What message does that send to the troops?” That you can get away with things.”

“We have to have good order and discipline. It’s the backbone of what we do,” he added.

Questioned about Spencer’s letter, Esper on Monday insisted it did not match with what the former Navy secretary had told him directly.

Esper also contradicted assertions Spencer made on Saturday that he had never threatened to resign.

I would like to further state that in no way, shape, or form did I ever threaten to resign. That has been incorrectly reported in the press. I serve at the pleasure of the President.

— SECNAV76 (@secnav76) November 23, 2019

“Secretary Spencer had said to me that … he was likely, probably going to resign if he was forced to work to try to retain the Trident [pin for Gallagher],” Esper said. “I had every reason to believe that he was going to resign, that it was a threat to resign.”

“I cannot reconcile the personal statements with the public statements with the written word,” the defense secretary added.

Already, the president’s intervention in the Gallagher case and the firing of the Navy secretary have some Democratic lawmakers calling for an investigation.

“Throughout my work with Secretary Spencer, I’ve known him to be a good man, a patriotic American, and an effective leader,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday.

“We have many unanswered questions,” Kaine said, calling Spencer one of several officials who “served our country well despite having to work under an unethical commander-in-chief.”

“We’re working to get the facts,” the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed, added in a separate statement. “Clearly, Spencer’s forced resignation is another consequence of the disarray brought about by President Trump’s inappropriate involvement in the military justice system and the disorder and dysfunction that has been a constant presence in this Administration.”

But the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, indicated late Sunday he was ready to move on.

The president and defense secretary “deserve to have a leadership team who has their trust and confidence,” Inhofe said, acknowledging, “It is no secret that I had my own disagreements with Secretary Spencer over the management of specific Navy programs.”

Trump has nominated Ken Braithwaite, a former admiral and the current U.S. ambassador to Norway, to become the next Navy secretary.

…

Turkey and the United States are seemingly closer to a collision course as Turkish media report Ankara testing a Russian anti-aircraft weapon system, despite threats of Washington sanctions.

Turkish F-16 jets flew low Monday across the Turkish capital, in a two-day exercise reportedly to test the radar system newly acquired Russian S-400 missile system.

Ankara’s purchase of the S-400s is a significant point of tension with Washington, which claims the system poses a threat to NATO’s defenses.

“There is room for Turkey to come back to the table. They know that to make this work, they need to either destroy or return or somehow get rid of the S-400,” a senior State Department official told reporters at a briefing Wednesday.

The official added that sanctions could follow if Ankara went ahead and activated the system.

Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 system violated U.S. Congress’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Despite September’s delivery of the S-400s, Washington appeared to step back, indicating that sanctions would only be imposed if Ankara activated the system.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reiterated Ankara’s stance, however, that the S-400 poses no threat to NATO systems.

“That’s what we have been saying since the beginning [of the dispute with the [U.S.]. [S-400s] will definitely be a ‘stand-alone’ system. We are not going to integrate this with the NATO systems in any way. It will operate independently,” Akar said Monday.

There is mounting frustration in Ankara with Washington over its stance, given President Barack Obama’s failure to sell U.S. Patriot missiles to Turkey.

“Russia has missiles, so do Iraq, Iran, Syria. So why doesn’t the U.S. doesn’t give us the patriot missile,” said Professor Mesut Casin, a Turkish presidential foreign policy adviser.

“Then we buy Russian S-400, and then you say you are the bad guy, you don’t obey the regulations, NATO principles, you buy Russian missiles.”

Congress called ‘anti-Turkish’

Monday’s testing of the S-400 radar system is widely seen as a challenge to Washington. Analysts claim it will likely add to calls in Congress to impose CAATSA sanctions and other measures against Turkey.

Sweeping new economic and political sanctions against Turkey are currently in Congress awaiting ratification.

“Congress is somehow has become so anti-Turkish. We have only a few friends remaining in the Congress,” said former Turkish ambassador Mithat Rende. “It so difficult to understand how they become so anti-Turkish so emotional.”

“CAATSA sanctions are waiting, and they are fundamentally important for the Turkish economy,” warned Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The Turkish economy is still recovering from a currency crash two years ago, triggered by previous U.S. sanctions.

Trump, Erdogan

Ankara will likely be looking to President Donald Trump to blunt any new efforts to impose sanctions against Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen to have built a good relationship with Trump.

Earlier this month, Trump hosted Erdogan in the White House for what he called a “wonderful meeting.”

“Turkish relations is so reduced to these two guys [Erdogan and Trump],” said Aydintasbas. “The entire relationship is built on this relationship and will rely on Trump to restrict Congress’s authority and make those bills go away.”

However, Ankara’s test Monday of S-400 components will make it unlikely Washington will end a freeze on the sale of the F-35 jet.

Trump blocked the Turkish sale, over concerns the fighter jet’s stealth technology could be compromised by the Russian missile’s advanced radar system.

The F-35 sale is set to replace Turkey’s aging fleet of F-16s. Ankara is warning it could turn to Russia’s SU 35 as an alternative.

“All should be aware that Turkey will have to look for alternatives if F-35s [fighter jets] cannot be acquired for any reason,” Akar said.

Role of Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin is courting Erdogan in a move widely seen as attempting to undermine NATO.

The two presidents are closely cooperating in Syria despite backing rival sides in the Syrian civil war. Bilateral trading ties are also deepening primarily around energy.

Analysts point out a large-scale purchase of Russian jets will likely have far-reaching consequences beyond Ankara’s S-400 procurement.

Training of Turkish pilots for the SU 35 would be in Moscow, as opposed to decades of U.S. training, while Turkey could find itself excluded from joint air exercises with its NATO partners.

Ankara, too, is warning Washington of severe consequences if it has to turn to Moscow to meet its defense requirements.

“Turkey will buy Russian aircraft if the F-35 freeze is not lifted,” said Casin. “If this happens, Turkey will not buy any more U.S. combat aircraft. This will be the end of the Turkish-U.S. relationship. I think like this; I am very serious.”

Putin is due to meet Erdogan in Turkey in January, an opportunity the Russian president is expected to use to try and confirm the SU 35 sale.
 

…

Indiana University’s South Bend campus is home to 5,000 students  almost 10 percent of whom are international. For the past decade, the school has put on a Thanksgiving dinner to bring international students and Indiana residents together. Esha Sarai has more.

…

Jessye Norman was remembered as a force of nature as thousands filled the Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday for a celebration of the soprano, who died Sept. 30 at age 74.

Sopranos Renee Fleming, Latonia Moore, Lise Davidsen and Leah Hawkins sang tributes along with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and bass-baritone Eric Owens that were mixed among remembrances of family and friends, dance performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and video of Norman’s career.

“Yankee Stadium is the house that Babe Ruth built and welcome to this house that Jessye Norman built,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “Of course Jessye wasn’t alone in filling this hallowed hall with her glorious voice. She was joined by rather important voices, from Leontyne Price to Luciano Pavarotti, but in her operatic prime in the ’80s and the 90s, her majestic vocal chords reigned supreme in the dramatic soprano and the mezzo range. Like Babe Ruth, who swung for the fences, Jessye swung for standing room in the family circle, and she always connected.”

Norman’s celebration took place shortly after a memorial to actress Diahann Carroll at the Helen Hayes Theater, about a mile south. On Thursday, author Toni Morrison was memorialized at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, a trio of black Americans who were leaders in their fields.

“Three monumental women who carried through and offered a bounty of gifts to the world,” actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith said.

Smith recalled signing letters “Little Sis” to Norman’s “Big Sis.” She remembered traveling to Norman’s performances around the world, focusing on one at the Festival de Musique de Menton on the French Riviera, near the Italian border. Organizers had arranged to stop traffic to clear the air for Norman but fretted over a train, asking whether Norman preferred they slow it down to lower the noise level in exchange for a lengthier time the noise would be audible.

“When the train came through Menton and Jessye was hitting the high note, I heard Jessye. She sang through it,” Smith said. “Until this morning, this very morning, I thought Jessye’s voice simply overrode that train. I don’t think so anymore. Now I understand that Jessye Norman had the ear, the timing, the love of song, the risk to share and the will to sing through – and with – the roaring train. In the same way, she integrated several musical histories to grace the world with the power of her voice.”

Speakers included Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Gloria Steinem.

Younger sister Elaine Norman Sturkey and brother James Howard Norman told stories of their youth in Augusta, Georgia, and later travels together.

“Travel with Jessye was no small feat,” Norman Sturkey said with humor in her voice. “These Louis Vuittons that she bought were so heavy before you could even put anything in them. Then she would pack them to capacity, so that when we got to the airport, they were all going to be too heavy. We’re not going to have two maybe big suitcases or even three, we were going to have 10. And she’s not lifting anything. That’s somebody else’s problem. And she’s carrying everything from a humidifier to a teapot. And we’re going to be back in less than two weeks, sometimes a week.”

Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson spoke of summoning the courage to ask Norman to curate a festival, which she readily agreed to and became “Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy” in March 2009.

“Clive, this is the project I’ve been waiting my entire life to do,” he quoted her as responding.

Former French Culture Minister spoke of the controversy over his decision to hire Norman rather than a French singer to perform “La Marseillaise” at the Place de la Concorde in 1989 to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His remembrance was followed by a video of Norman’s iconic, blazing rendition.

Fleming received a huge ovation after “Beim Schlafengehen (When Falling Asleep)” from Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” accompanied by pianist Gerald Martin Moore and Met concertmaster David Chan. Hawkins and Moore began and ended the program with traditionals, “Great Day” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand.” Bridges sang Duke Ellington’s “Heaven” and Owen performed Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walkuere.” Davidson, who is to make her Met debut Friday, sang Strauss’ “Morgen!”

…

The voting process Sunday of Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election was “peaceful, calm and orderly,” said Oldemiro Baloi, who heads international observers of the Community of Portuguese speaking countries. Results of the balloting are expected Thursday.

The West African country has seen hardly any political stability since independence from Portugal 45 years ago.

President Jose Mario Vaz, who is seeking a second five-year term, is the only president since independence to survive a full term without a coup or assassination.

“The people of Guinea-Bissau are sovereign and I will respect the verdict of the ballot box,” Vaz said after voting in the capital, Bissau.  “I have accomplished my mission of restoring peace and tranquillity.”

The president’s chief competitor was former Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, one of six prime ministers Vaz fired during his presidency.  

Pereira also vowed to “respect” the results of the election.  “These elections are crucial for future of the country,” he said.  

Twelve candidates – all men – were running for president.

Vaz fired Prime Minister Aristides Gomes in late October and named a new head of government. But Gomes refused to step down. The regional bloc ECOWAS intervened to prevent the country from exploding into violence.

Whoever becomes the country’s next president will face numerous challenges in one of the world’s poorest countries, including poverty, corruption, drug trafficking, and badly needed improvements in health care and education.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff December 29.

…

Despite a significant decrease in recent years of the number of deaths caused by terrorism, terror groups remain a major threat to peace and stability around the world, according to a new report on terrorism.

According to the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), deaths from terrorism fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2018, after reaching a peak in 2014. Since that time, the number of deaths has fallen by 52%, to 15,952 in 2018.

The annual report, published last week by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), focused on terror trends and activities around the world.  

Steve Killelea, executive chairman of IEP, said that “IEP’s research finds that conflict and state-sponsored terror are the key causes of terrorism.”

In 2018, more than 95% of deaths caused by terror-related activities occurred in countries that were already in conflict, he said.

“When combined with countries with high levels of political terror the number jumps to over 99%. Of the 10 countries most impacted by terrorism, all were involved in at least one violent conflict last year,” Killelea said in a statement to reporters.

IS down but not out

The GTI finds that the number of deaths from terrorism in Iraq fell by 75% between 2017 and 2018, with 3,217 fewer people being killed.

Major military gains against the Islamic State terror (IS) group, such as recapturing its strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in those two years, have resulted in less deaths caused by the terror group.

Following the declared defeat of IS’s so-called caliphate in March of this year by U.S.-backed forces in Syria, IS has lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.

“ISIL’s decline continued for the second successive year. Deaths attributed to the group declined 69%, with attacks declining 63 per cent in 2018,” the GTI said, using another acronym for IS.    

IS “now has an estimated 18,000 fighters left in Iraq and Syria, down from over 70,000 in 2014,” it reported.

Despite these significant successes, the terror group remains capable of carrying out terrorist attacks, experts said.

“It has not even been a year out from the fall of Baghuz [IS’s last pocket of control in eastern Syria], and IS is likely to reestablish areas of governance elsewhere in and around parts of Syria,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center in New York.

Clarke told VOA that while IS might not have the ability to make territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, it still represents a major terror threat worldwide.  

“Even if [IS] won’t be there as a state, it will certainly be there in the form of a low-level insurgency for the better part of next decade,” he predicted.

IS “may begin to seek a foothold elsewhere [and] shift resources to some of its affiliate franchise groups in places like the Sinai, Afghanistan or the Philippines,” Clarke said.

Turkey’s Syria invasion

The Pentagon’s Inspector General last week said in a report that Turkey’s military operation last month against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and the U.S. administration’s subsequent withdrawal has allowed IS to restructure itself and has increased its ability to launch attacks abroad.

The Defense Intelligence Agency said in the report that IS “has exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to reconstitute its capabilities and resources both within Syria in the short term and globally in the longer term.”

Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance that has U.S. backing, said it is holding nearly 11,000 IS fighters in at least 30 prisons across northeast Syria.

Some experts said failing to deal with these prisoners is yet another factor that could increase threats posed by IS in the future.

“The U.S. withdrawal, coupled with the Turkish invasion and the inability to deal with people that are in detention camps in Syria, all that together has breathed new life into the Islamic State, where it should have been on life support,” analyst Clarke said.

Taliban in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has replaced Iraq as the country most affected by terrorism, according to the 2019 GTI. The territorial defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq has resulted in the Taliban overtaking IS as the world’s deadliest terror group in 2018.

The study said terror activity by the Taliban rose sharply in 2018, as the militant group carried out attacks across the country.

The Taliban was responsible for 6,103 deaths in 2018, a 71% increase from 2017, the report found.

Experts estimate that approximately half the population of Afghanistan lives in areas either controlled or contested by the Taliban.

The number of deaths attributed to the Taliban rose by nearly 71%, to 6,103, and accounting for 38% of all deaths globally.

In addition to the Taliban, some IS-affiliated groups have had increased levels of terrorist activity in Afghanistan.

IS’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) was the fourth-deadliest terrorist group in 2018, with more than 1,000 recorded deaths, the majority of which occurred in Afghanistan. 

…

Security forces opened fire on protesters in southern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding dozens others, police and medical sources said, as weeks of unrest in Baghdad and some southern cities continue.

Protesters had gathered overnight on three bridges in the city, and security forces used live ammunition and tear gas canisters to disperse them, killing three, police and hospital sources said.

More than 50 others were wounded, mainly by live bullets and tear gas canisters, in clashes in the city, they added.

Two more people were killed and over 70 wounded on Sunday after  security forces used live fire to disperse protesters near the  country’s main Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, police and medical sources said.

Hospital sources said the cause of death was live fire, adding that some of the wounded are in critical condition.

The protesters had gathered to demand security forces open roads around the port town blocked by government forces in an attempt to prevent protesters from reaching the port’s entrance.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces dispersed by force protesters who had been blocking the entrance to the port and reopened it, port officials said.

Umm Qasr is Iraq’s largest commodities port and it receives imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar shipments that feed a country largely dependent on imported food.

At least 330 people have been killed since the start of mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Protesters are demanding the overthrow of a political class seen as corrupt and serving foreign powers while many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, healthcare or education.

The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

Medical authorities evacuated infants and children from a hospital in central Nassiriya overnight after tear gas spread inside hospital courtyards, two hospital sources said.

Protests continued in Nassiriya on Sunday, with some government offices set on fire, sources said.

Elsewhere in southern Iraq, hundreds of protesters burned tyres and blocked some roads on Sunday in Basra, preventing government employees from reaching offices, police said.

Iraqi security forces also wounded at least 24 people in the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala overnight after opening fire on demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the local government headquarters, medical and security sources said.

…

As climate change ramps up weather extremes, good forecasts are increasingly important. A new system makes weather predictions anywhere in the world with the same high resolution that previously was only available in wealthy countries. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.

…

“What do you want government to do for your life?” That’s the question Peggy Huang asks prospective voters at a Starbucks in Yorba Linda, California. Huang is a Republican running against first-term U.S. Representative Katie Porter, who last year became the first Democrat ever elected in California’s conservative 45th district.

Since then, Porter has gained national recognition through her sharp questioning of CEOs and government officials during congressional hearings in Washington.

“She’s more national,” admits Huang, but says in California, “we know politics and in all things, politics is local.”

Greg Raths, a retired United States Marine Corps fighter pilot, is another Republican candidate running against Porter. He says Porter doesn’t “fit the mold” of the area. Raths, the mayor of the largest city in the district, Mission Viejo City, contends it’s a “very conservative” district where “all 10 cities are run by Republican mayors and councils.”

Reelection realities

For a freshman member of the House of Representatives, it can be a shock having to concentrate on reelection before the first year ends. Already six Republicans and one Democrat have filed election papers to run against her, but one of those Republicans has already dropped out because of lack of funding. 

According to third-quarter reports from the Federal Election Commission, Porter leads the pack with $2,461,688 raised for her campaign, three times that of her closest competitor.

Impeachment vs conservative area

During her first year, Porter has proved to be a formidable force. In her first interview with VOA at the beginning of this year, she said she wanted to champion “issues of economic opportunity for working families, and for working parents, including thinking about how people can afford homes, build wealth, save for college, and save for retirement.”

As she arrived in Congress and was named to the House Financial Services Committee, she carved a niche for herself through tough, blunt questioning, often playing the role of a low- to middle-income American to highlight the witnesses’ inattention to regular citizens. This earned her kudos from the House Democratic leadership and an aspect of fame through regular appearances on cable TV news programs.

Porter connected to her constituents by regularly conducting town halls during the first half of the year, but has held them less frequently since then. She told VOA it is a challenge to find “venues that are large enough to accommodate everybody who would like to attend.”

WATCH: Rep. Porter Reflects on Successes, Failures of First Year

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In June, Porter became the first freshman House member from California to announce her support of an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Her competitors accused her of sowing seeds of divisiveness with her Twitter announcement. They predict it will cost her the election.

Ted Denney owns Synergistic Research, a niche research and technology company that employs 30 and has annual sales of $10 million. He says if Porter wins the district again in 2020, he will move his audio business elsewhere, part because of her support of impeachment.

“I don’t want this wall of resistance against the president,” Denney says. “I support his policies. Is he a perfect guy? No, but I don’t care. He’s effective.”

In a videotaped message to constituents, Porter acknowledged that launching an impeachment inquiry would be divisive but said she believes it is necessary.

“I know deeply what this means for our democracy,” she said. “But when faced with a crisis of this magnitude, I cannot with a clean conscience ignore my duty to defend the [U.S.] Constitution.”

Courting the young vote

Heidi Hu is asking about a clipboard. She’s sitting at an iron table outside a coffee shop in Santa Ana, California, learning about voter registration. She is being trained by Field Team 6, a nationwide group of volunteers, registering new voters for Democrats in 2020.

Hu drove an hour south from Los Angeles to sign up college students at the University of California at Irvine. Young voters helped propel Porter to victory in 2018. State figures show voters ages 18 to 24 rose by nearly 20% more than the previous midterm election in 2014.

Hu says the key to Porter’s reelection will be again turning out large numbers of college students. 

“Their values are more aligned with the Orange County of the future,” Hu said.

Porter prevailed in Orange County, an historically conservative portion of the 45th Congressional District, but Hu knows that Porter is vulnerable in that area and must build up her Democratic support among college students to offset Republican voters.

One of those students is Bryan Pham who will be voting for the first time in 2020. He says even though his family is conservative, “I have certain beliefs of my own and I identify with the Democratic party.”

Bills sponsored

In less than a year, Porter, a former law professor, has sponsored 23 bills in the House. In last year’s congressional session, the average for a first-year representative was 14 and the most introduced was 31, so Porter is well ahead of the curve.

One of Porter’s bills has passed the House but has yet to be introduced in the Senate. The “Help America Run Act” would give candidates more freedom to use campaign funds for child care, health care premiums and elder care. Porter, a single mother of three children younger than 12, said the bill would have helped her when she was a candidate. 

“The goal here is to make our Congress more diverse and to make it possible for any American who’s qualified and wants to serve in the U.S. Congress to have the opportunity to do that,” she said.

Porter report card

Nonprofit and special interest groups rate lawmakers’ voting records.

For first-year representatives, these are the first grades published during their two-year tenure. For Porter, the first two grades run along party lines. The conservative Heritage Action for America, typically aligned with Republicans, rates members’ votes on key conservative legislation. It gives Porter a zero.

Freedom Works, another conservative group, gives her a score of 8 out of 100, based on her votes on issues dealing with economic freedom.

The surprise was an “F” given by the group Progressive Punch, based on a formula that compares the voting record of a control group of 33 dominant progressive members of Congress with the representative’s voting record.

Most other groups will wait to publish grades at the end of the year.

Competitors will typically use the voting record and bills sponsored in their challenge to the incumbent. The incumbent uses the voting record to show how they are supporting the constituent needs in the district.

Reflecting on a hectic first year in Congress, Porter said, “I feel like I’m getting my sea legs under me … there is a learning curve to this job. And there should be. This is a big task [legislating] that the American people have trusted us with.”

The California primary to determine Katie Porter’s Republican challenger is in early March with the general election in November 2020.

…

An advocacy group says internet connectivity is rapidly being restored in Iran after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown in response to widespread protests.

The group NetBlocks said Saturday that connectivity had suddenly reached 60% Saturday afternoon.

It said on Twitter: “Internet access is being restored in (hash)Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests.”

Confirmed: Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests; real-time network data show national connectivity now up to 64% of normal levels as of shutdown hour 163 ??#IranProtests#Internet4Iran

?https://t.co/XQmiaOlRL7pic.twitter.com/eimWEIEmrI

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 23, 2019

There were reports that internet service remained spotty in the capital, Tehran, though others around the country began reporting they could again access it.

The order comes a week after the Nov. 15 gasoline price hike, which sparked demonstrations that rapidly turned violent, seeing gas stations, banks and stores burned to the ground.

Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”

…

When he left the house last week, Joseph, a 19-year-old Hong Kong college student, told his parents he was going to hang out with friends. That was only partly true.

In reality, Joseph was headed for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he and a group of hundreds of other young people barricaded themselves on campus, blocked a major highway, and stockpiled homemade weapons in preparation to battle police.

Night after night last week, the urban campus become a battlefield, as police rained tear gas and rubber bullets on students, who responded with Molotov cocktails, bricks, and whatever else they could find.

Though Hong Kong has seen five months of protests, this kind of violence is new. The pro-democracy movement that had been marked by massive street rallies now risks being overtaken by a smaller group of hardcore students who have shown they are willing to go beyond peaceful demonstrations and engage in prolonged battles with police in their push for democratic reforms.

“I would definitely admit that we’re using a certain level of violence,” says Joseph, who spoke via an encrypted messaging app. “But in order to protect the innocent protesters and create pressure on the government, a certain level of violence and power to fight back is necessary.”

In the minds of frontline protesters like Joseph, the violence is a last-ditch effort to preserve what is left of Hong Kong’s freedoms before the semi-autonomous territory is fully taken over by China in 2047. Hong Kong authorities accuse the protesters of engaging in violence that is incompatible with democracy.

VOA spoke with about 10 young protesters, all of whom were at Polytechnic University over the past week. Though the standoff is largely over, a couple dozen holdouts remain on campus. Most have either surrendered to police or escaped. Some of the protesters face possible riot-related charges that could land them in jail for 10 years. VOA has used pseudonyms to protect their identity.

‘We tried peaceful demonstrations’

“We tried peaceful demonstrations, but the government didn’t listen,” says Crystal, a Polytechnic student protester who has been on the run since leaving campus. She says she hasn’t been able to sleep a full night in more than a week.

“I’m scared, really scared,” she says.

Crystal wants to someday be an elementary school teacher, but for now she considers herself a revolutionary.

“Radical, I think, is a positive word for me, for us,” she says. “And most revolutions have violence.”

At this point, she’s unsure of whether to stay in Hong Kong and fight, or seek political asylum in another country.

“This is my place. This is my home. I need to protect it,” she says. “And I know that in 2047, I will become an old woman. But what about the next generation? And the next generation? What they will become? Brainwashed? Everything fake, like China?”

Outmatched

Most of the frontline students that fought at Polytechnic are in their teens or twenties. Some are new protesters. Others are veterans of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a student-led protest that unsuccessfully pushed for universal suffrage.

When it comes to brute strength, the students are outmatched, not only by the weapons of the Hong Kong police, but even more so by those of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest military. The PLA has thousands of troops in Hong Kong and many more just across the border, though they have not yet left their barracks to confront the protesters.

“We deeply understand we are not able to win in hand to hand fighting,” says Joseph. “But still, we shouldn’t be silent in the face of injustices.”

That is a common sentiment among frontline protesters, many of whom resent local and mainland Chinese media that accuse them of being naive children who are being pushed to the frontline by irresponsible adults. In reality, many of the more extreme protesters seem frequently self-aware, expressing a potentially dangerous mix of fatalism and determination.

In other words: they know they’ll likely lose, but they’re willing to fight anyway.

“We both know that it’s impossible to win, but only persistence can bring hope. If we never try, we know how this ends. We can’t just say no no, impossible. Why not just try?” says Crystal.

Another student on campus, who carried a bow and arrow, and donned a military-style camouflage helmet, acknowledged that his weapons are no match for the forces he is up against.

“All the protesters are scared—because maybe we will die,” he said, speaking in front of a pile of mangled classroom desks that had been stacked up to form a barricade against police. “But we think if we don’t stand up this day, [then] all the freedom in Hong Kong will lose. There is no way for us to go back now.”

“All of us here know what we are doing,” said another frontline protester at Polytechnic, who spoke through a black gas mask that distorted his voice. “Because our demands are not being addressed, that’s why we are having to escalate and upgrade our actions so as to get the results from the government,” he said.

Five demands

The latest round of protests erupted in June in opposition to an extradition bill. The proposal could have seen Hong Kongers tried in mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party and reports of torture and forced confessions are common.

Though authorities eventually abandoned the extradition bill, by then the protests had morphed into wider calls for democracy and opposition to the expanding influence of Beijing.

The protesters have adopted a list of five demands, including an investigation into police brutality, amnesty for arrested protesters, and direct elections for both the legislature and top executive.

But besides scrapping the extradition bill, Hong Kong authorities have refused to make concessions. Instead, as they have from the beginning, authorities dismiss the protests as riots.

“The rioters’ actions have far exceeded the call for democracy. They are now the enemy of the people,” Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly Chief Executive Carrie Lam said earlier this month.

‘Off the rails’

Though the protesters appear to still have the support of a large segment of the Hong Kong public, some are worried about the direction of the protests.

“This movement has come off the rails and is really out of control,” says Steve Vickers, the former head of the Royal Hong Kong Police Criminal Intelligence Bureau. “The violent element, the sharp end of it, is really destroying the message that the rest of them had established through large demonstrations, which were peaceful.”

Vickers points to instances where protesters have vandalized public infrastructure, such as subway stations and highway toll booths. In other cases, pro-Beijing individuals or businesses have been attacked or set on fire.

“Demanding five things or we will burn down your railway stations on a regular basis is not going to end happily anywhere in the world,” says Vickers, who heads the SVA Risk Consultancy.

In recent weeks, there have also been several attacks on pro-democracy figures, including one politician who had his ear partially bitten off by a knife-wielding man outside a shopping mall.

Election a referendum?

Sunday’s local elections could serve as a de facto referendum on the protest movement. Authorities had considered postponing the vote because of the violence, but they decided to move ahead, with a large police presence expected at polling stations.

“If the democrats really score a landslide victory, that will show very clearly that the public is in support of the movement, despite recent violence,” says Ma Ngok, a political scientist with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This will, I think … [create] much more pressure for the Hong Kong government to respond to the demands of the protesters.”

Polls suggest a generational divide between younger Hong Kongers, who are resentful of increasing Chinese influence, and older Hong Kongers, who prefer stability even if it means a lesser degree of freedom.

For frontline protester Joseph, whose father is pro-Beijing, that means sneaking out of the house to attend violent protests.

“We’ve had a few strong arguments, but I’m pretty sure there are many families struggling with that,” he says.

Although Joseph says he has no plans to stop protesting, he doesn’t expect the violence to get much worse, for now.

“Keeping pressure on the government,” he says. “That is our first priority at the moment.”

…

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, dubbed by critics “Putin on the Nile,” is set to boost his burgeoning relationship with Russia by dispatching his son, Mahmoud, to Moscow as a military attache, independent regional media outlets are reporting.

Russian officials say they welcome the prospect of Mahmoud el-Sissi being based in Moscow.  

The reassignment would coincide with an open rupture between Cairo and Washington over Egyptian plans to buy advanced Russian warplanes.

In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official Thursday threatened the Cairo government with sanctions if Egypt goes ahead with a $2 billion agreement to purchase more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets, a deal the relocated Mahmoud el-Sissi would likely oversee as military attache.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the Trump administration  was still discussing how to address its defense needs with Egypt adding that U.S. officials “have also been very transparent with them in that if they are to acquire a significant Russian platform like the Sukhoi-35 or the Su-35, that puts them at risk towards sanctions.”

The United States has provided billions of dollars in economic and military aid to Egypt, a longtime ally, whose military has been operating the U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter. Moving his son to Moscow is seen by Western diplomats here as a signal to Washington by el-Sissi of his intent to go ahead with buying the Su-35s.

“He’s playing hardball with Washington,” said a Western diplomat based here, who asked not to identified for this article.

According to independent media, Mahmoud el-Sissi’s reassignment, planned for next year, has the added benefit for Egypt’s president of moving his son out of the spotlight in Cairo. His role as a top official in the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Service, has prompted turmoil within that agency, as well as growing public criticism of his father for not curbing his son, who has also been drawing allegations of corruption.

General Intelligence Service sources told Mada Masr, an Egyptian online newspaper, the reassignment to Moscow is “based on the perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud el-Sissi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been intensifying his engagement with Middle Eastern and North African leaders, and seeking to rebuild Russian influence in the region, clout that was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to analysts. Some analysts see the re-engagement as an effort to safeguard established strategic interests.  They cite as an example Russian intervention in Syria, where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base and needed to prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad if it wanted to ensure its continuance.

Others say Russia’s renewed assertiveness is being overblown.

“Putin’s apparent victories in spreading Russian influence are mirages, some of which have come at a great cost,” according to Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. “Putin’s gambit in Syria had more to do with safeguarding a long-standing strategic investment that appeared imperiled than with outmaneuvering the United States,” he said in a Foreign Policy magazine commentary.

Nonetheless the dispatch of Mahmoud el-Sissi to Moscow is coming at a time of heightened disagreement between Washington and Cairo. Washington has told Cairo that buying the Russian warplanes would place U.S. and NATO military cooperation at risk. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote jointly to the Egyptian leader urging him to reverse the decision to buy Russian jets.

Ties between el-Sissi and Putin began warming in 2014, when the Obama administration curtailed military aid to Egypt after the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Cairo’s generals, smarting at Washington’s criticism of the coup that brought el-Sissi to power, talked openly of forging a “strategic realignment” with the Kremlin, evoking Egypt’s Nasser-era alliance with the Soviets.

Putin was quick to endorse el-Sissi as Egypt’s president, telling him during a 2014 visit to Moscow, “I wish you luck both from myself personally and from the Russian people.”

Putin also gave el-Sissi a black jacket with a red star on it, which el-Sissi wore during the Russian trip. Both men have much in common, coming from modest backgrounds and having gravitated toward the most powerful institutions in their closed societies, the KGB and the Egyptian army. They each rose cautiously up the bureaucratic ladder.

Last month, el-Sissi and Putin co-hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, held at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.  It was the third meeting between the two presidents this year. In October the Egyptian air force’s tactical training center near Cairo hosted joint Russian-Egyptian military exercises dubbed Arrow of Friendship-1. The two countries have held several joint naval and airborne counterterrorism exercises since 2015.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a visit to Cairo this month, “When we are in Egypt we always feel like at home.” The Russian military, he said, “is ready to assist in strengthening Egyptian military forces and defense capabilities.”

Shoigu’s delegation included top officials from Russia’s trade ministry, Rosoboronexport, Russia’s arms exporter, and the deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, prompting speculation among military analysts that Moscow and Cairo may be discussing arms deals other than the Su-35s and weapons systems co-production arrangements.

…

Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government, prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing the outage.

The #Iran internet shutdown is now in its 144th hour, keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians⏱

Subscribe to our network monitor channel to track national connectivity in real-time #IranProtests#Internet4Iran

?https://t.co/71lkPvV2e2pic.twitter.com/EHpyZflNSE

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 22, 2019

In a tweet late Friday, London-based internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the shutdown had lasted a full six days and was “keeping friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of Iranians.” A livestream of Iran’s internet connectivity rate on the group’s YouTube channel  showed a slight improvement to 20%, after having risen to 15% from 5% on Thursday.

Some Iranian officials have said they expect internet access to be gradually restored in the coming days. But there was no government announcement of a date for an end to the shutdown, which began in the evening of November 16 as authorities tried to stop Iranians from sharing images of nationwide anti-government protests that had erupted the previous day.

A news agency of Iran’s Islamic Azad University, a private national university network, said in a Thursday article  that seven other major universities in the country had their internet access restored. But it cited a public relations director for one of them, Sharif University, as saying the renewed access was “very slow.”

Iranian officials sparked the protests when they raised the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% on Nov. 15. The hike further strains the finances of many Iranians facing hardship in an economy already weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.

In its first punitive response to the internet shutdown, the Trump administration sanctioned Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Friday.

The Treasury Department said Azari Jahromi’s ministry has been responsible for restricting the Iranian people’s access to the internet, including popular messaging apps used by tens of millions of Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. It added Azari Jahromi to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, freezing his assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting Americans from any dealings involving those assets.

British rights group Amnesty International has said it documented the killings of 106 protesters in the crackdown by security forces during the period Nov. 15-19.

Tehran has rejected Amnesty’s death toll as speculative but has declined to issue its own tally of protester fatalities. Authorities said several security personnel also were killed in violence by “thugs” who attacked stores and burned buildings in cities around the country.

Iranian leaders have said they succeeded in crushing the unrest after several days, while blaming the protests on incitement by foreign “enemies” and exiled opposition groups. The internet shutdown made it difficult to verify whether the demonstrations have ended.

“The United States stands with the people of Iran in their struggle against an oppressive regime that silences them while arresting and murdering protesters,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Friday statement. “No country or company should enable the regime’s censorship or human rights abuses. The United States will expose these human rights abusers and record their shameful acts for history.”

A day earlier, Pompeo took the unusual step of tweeting an appeal, in Farsi and English, for Iranians to send “videos, photos and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protesters.” He said people could do so via the @RFJ_Farsi_Bot Telegram channel. It was not clear when the State Department would reveal any content that it has received.

Azari Jahromi, who has 168,000 followers on his verified Twitter account, tweeted late Friday for the first time since the protests began, issuing a defiant response to being sanctioned by Washington.

I’m not the only member of club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB children were there.
I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development.#EconomicTerrorism

— MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) November 22, 2019

“I’m not the only member of [the] club of sanctioned persons (Based on Trump’s fairytales). Before me, [there were] Iran ICT startups, Developers, Cancer patients and EB [skin disease] children,” Jahromi wrote.

Iran has said U.S. sanctions targeting its oil, banks and other major industries represent a campaign of “economic terrorism” against the Iranian people. Washington has said humanitarian trade with Iran is exempt from its sanctions, whose aim is to deny resources to the Iranian government for malign activity.

“I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development,” Azari Jahromi added.

A U.S. Treasury statement identified the 38-year-old as a former Iranian intelligence officer involved in surveillance operations that enabled the government to arrest protesters involved in peaceful opposition demonstrations in 2009. The Treasury said Azari Jahromi has been accused of personally interrogating multiple activists during that period.

In a VOA Persian interview, analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Azari Jahromi has been a key figure in Iran’s censorship apparatus.

“Targeting him is both symbolic and effective, but should not be the end of the stick. It should be a first step toward the U.S. going after Iran’s entire telecommunications infrastructure, and that could include its satellites,” Taleblu said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. Katherine Ahn contributed to this report.

…

About 250 Islamic State fighters have surrendered to Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province, a traditional IS stronghold. Dozens of women and children have surrendered as well. Officials told VOA they would work toward deradicalizing those of Afghan origin and eventually would unite them with their families. The Kabul government has yet to determine the fate of the non-Afghan detainees. VOA’s Zabihullah Ghazi reports.

…

China and Pakistan urged the United States on Friday “to sift fact from fiction” before questioning their bilateral infrastructure development program, which Beijing is funding under its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The reaction came a day after a senior American diplomat spoke critically of the multibillion-dollar collaboration, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and warned it would eventually worsen Islamabad’s economic troubles and benefit only Beijing.

Speaking to an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Thursday, Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said the U.S. offered a better model that would improve the fundamentals of Pakistan’s troubled economy. She also raised questions about the transparency and fairness of CPEC projects as well as related Chinese loans Islamabad has received.

Her remarks drew a strong response from Chinese and Pakistani officials on Thursday.

Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, Yao Jing, said Wells lacked “accurate” knowledge and relied primarily on Western media “propaganda” to level the accusations.

“I would like to remind my American colleague that if you are really making this kind of allegation, please be careful, show your evidence, give me evidence; we will take action,” Yao said while addressing reporters.

He said China and Pakistan are determined to ensure the infrastructure project is free of corruption.

The Chinese diplomat said CPEC is open to investment from anywhere in the world and China would happily welcome U.S. investment in it. Yao described Wells’ remarks as astonishing, saying he had personally briefed her twice on the program during her recent visits to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain described the allegations by Wells as disappointing. He noted that CPEC has ensured energy security for Pakistan and set the stage for an “industrial revolution” in the next stage of the massive project, which is already in progress.

“CPEC is central to Pakistan’s future and it’s a pivot of our strategic relationship with China and for which Pakistan has benefited already. We feel she had got her facts mixed up because of unfounded media reports. So, I think it is important to sift fact from fiction,” Hussain said.

Beijing has invested around $20 billion in Pakistan over the past five years to help upgrade and build ports, roads and power plants, effectively ending nationwide crippling electricity outages.

Most of the money has come as direct foreign investment, while some has been in the form of soft loans and grants. The overall investment of CPEC is estimated to grow to around $60 billion by 2030.

Critics in the U.S. and elsewhere see China’s BRI program as a “debt trap” for countries like Pakistan, which have struggling economies that would make it difficult for them to make Chinese loan repayments. Islamabad’s repayments are due in the next few years and analysts say that process will bring the country’s depleting foreign exchange reserves under pressure.

Ambassador Yao dismissed those concerns, saying unlike Washington and West-governed lenders like the International Monetary Fund, Beijing does not offer or suspend financial loans for “political” reasons.

“China will never ever ask for these loan repayments as long as you are in need of this money. If Pakistan needs it, we keep it here,” he told the audience.

Yao took issue with the U.S. for questioning Chinese aid or loans he said were meant only to help partner nations to improve and stabilize their economies.

“The United States is the biggest loan taker from the world, and even China gave them in credit about $3 trillion,” said the Chinese envoy.

Wells noted, however, that even if loan payments are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan’s economic development potential to hamper Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reform agenda.

She said CPEC relies primarily on Chinese workers and supplies, noting that local industry does not benefit from the initiative and that CPEC is not addressing the issue of rising unemployment in Pakistan.

Yao rejected the assertions, saying CPEC has provided more than 75,000 direct jobs to Pakistani workers and is expected to create as many as 2.3 million jobs by 2030.

The Chinese envoy said the project will have built several special economic free zones by then, enabling Pakistan to improve the quantity and quality of its exports to bring home much-needed dollars to boost its foreign exchange reserves.

Yao criticized Wells for using reported estimated costs of certain projects in her speech. He said those projects were still under discussion and their final cost had not been determined.

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Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion.

The pope was on his last full day of a visit to Thailand, where the dominant culture is closely tied to Buddhism, although the Catholic minority of fewer than 1% were generally treated well in modern times.

On Friday, Francis traveled to Wat Roman, a mostly Catholic area on the outskirts of the bustling capital of Bangkok.

World War II era priest

The pope visited a modern sanctuary built in honor of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, a Thai priest who died in 1944. The son of Christian converts from Buddhism, he was arrested for ringing a church bell during a period dominated by an anti-Western government suspicious of foreign influences, such as the French colonial powers in neighboring countries.

The priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison and died of tuberculosis in a hospital where he was treated badly and denied proper care because he was Catholic.

In a talk to priests and nuns gathered in the church, Francis expressed his gratitude to those he said had offered the “silent martyrdom of fidelity and daily commitment” in the past.

In 1940, seven Catholics, including three teenage girls, were killed by Thai police in the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom. Pope John Paul II later declared them martyrs.

The World War II period and other spells of persecution are considered aberrations and today relations between Buddhists and Catholics are generally very good.

During the reign of Thailand’s King Narai 350 years ago, the Vatican formally established its “Mission de Siam.”

Although missionaries failed to achieve mass conversions, they were largely tolerated by the Buddhist majority and particularly the royal court.

Thai face of Catholicism

Since the start of his pontificate in 2013, Francis has preached that the Church should grow by attraction and not by proselytizing, or conversion campaigns.

This has provoked criticism from some conservatives who favor an aggressive approach and largely oppose what is known as “inculturation,” or adapting Church teachings to local culture.

Francis urged priests and nuns to find more ways to talk about their religion in local terms, saying he had learned “with some pain, that for many people, Christianity is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners.”

He added, “Let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”

Meeting Thai bishops in the same shrine complex later, Francis once again talked about issues such as human trafficking and exploitation.

On Thursday he condemned the exploitation of women and children for prostitution in Thailand, which is notorious for its sex tourism, saying the violence, abuse and enslavement they suffer are evils to be uprooted.

Francis was scheduled to meet leaders of other religions and celebrate a Mass in Bangkok’s Assumption Cathedral on Friday afternoon, before leaving on Saturday for Japan.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle.

The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday.

The pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 and up, will have an estimated battery range of more than 500 miles.

With the launch, Tesla is edging into the most profitable corner of the U.S. auto market, where buyers tend to have fierce brand loyalty.

Brand-loyal buyers

Many pickup buyers stick with the same brand for life, choosing a truck based on what their mom or dad drove or what they decided was the toughest model, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

“They’re very much creatures of habit,” Gordon said. Getting a loyal Ford F-150 buyer to consider switching to another brand such as a Chevy Silverado, “it’s like asking him to leave his family,” he said.

Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers.

“The needs-based truck buyer, the haulers, the towers at the worksites of the world, that’s going to be a much tougher sell,” said Akshay Anand, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

However, it will help Musk fill out his portfolio and offer a broader range of electric vehicles.

“Elon Musk is trying to not be one-dimensional when it comes to automotive,” said Alyssa Altman, transportation lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. “He doesn’t want to look like he only has a small selection. He wants to build a brand with a diverse offering and in doing that he wants to see where he could enter in the market.”

Electric truck competition

Musk stands to face competition when his truck hits the market. Ford, which has long dominated the pickup landscape, plans to launch an all-electric F-150 pickup. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that its battery-electric pickup will come out by the fall of 2021.

Rivian, a startup based near Detroit, plans to begin production in the second half of 2020 on an electric pickup that starts at $69,000 and has a battery range of 400-plus miles (643.7-kilometers). The Rivian truck will be able to tow 11,000 pounds (4,989.5 kilograms), go from zero to 60 mph (96.6 kph) in three seconds and wade into 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water, the company said. Ford said in April it would invest $500 million in Rivian.

Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets.

“We have yet to see Tesla really make good on some of the very tight deadlines they imposed on themselves, and this has the added challenge of having architecture that is going to be challenging because we haven’t seen an EV pickup before,” said Jeremy Acevedo, manager of industry analysis at Edmunds.

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The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at an event at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, McCarthy said he ordered the assessment after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s use of the popular video app for recruiting American teenagers.

“National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy.

Schumer said he was especially concerned about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has previously emphasized its independence from China but has failed to assuage congressional concerns about the security of the personal data of U.S. citizens who use the platform and whether content on the platform is subject to any censorship from Beijing.

In a Nov. 5 blog post, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas, said that the company’s data centers “are located entirely outside of China.” She said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore.

ByteDance is one of China’s fastest-growing startups. About 60% of TikTok’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said this year.

Earlier this year, Schumer also called on the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a national security and privacy investigation into FaceApp, a face-editing photo app developed in Russia.

The potential for the sharing of army information through the use of apps was highlighted after researchers found in 2018 that fitness-tracking app Strava was inadvertently exposing military posts and other sensitive sites.

In 2017, the Army ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.

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South Korean startups are banking on their country’s similarities with Vietnam — a shared popular obsession with education, similar rituals, a history of a divisive civil war, and a current focus on manufacturing and integration with international trade — to give them an advantage in expanding their business there as Vietnam looks to follow in South Korea’s steps to become one of the next Asian tigers.

South Korea is already a big investor in the Southeast Asian nation, however now it is startups in areas like cosmetics and hotel smartphone apps that are joining in on the investment.

“I think Vietnam startup [investment] is really going up now,” Jisoo Kang, chief executive officer of Fluto, a South Korean startup that conducts user testing on digital products, said.

Next conquest

While South Korean behemoths have conquered international television and automobile markets, the next phase of growth is in developing nations such as Vietnam. Its gross domestic product growth rate is 7% annually, compared with South Korea’s growth rate of 2%.

However, the path taken by Korean behemoths could also help startups. A Korean logistics startup called 2Luck said it would look for opportunities to cooperate with companies already in Vietnam’s industrial sector.

“There are many Korean manufacturers here,” Kim Seungyong, chief executive officer of 2Luck, said.

His company aims to increase logistics efficiency by, for example, connecting truck drivers who have delivered cargo with clients for their return trips.

Other startups are looking at commonalities between Vietnam and South Korea; Vietnamese give high ratings for everything from Korean pop music to Korean drama shows, and intermarriage between the two nationalities is common.

Approach to education

One commonality is education. Just as Korean students obsess over tests and spend hours outside of school preparing for them, so too do their Vietnamese counterparts, and Vietnam has the high international test scores to show for it. The KEII Platform, an education company, calls itself South Korea’s first “edtech,” or education technology, business, and its services include teaching math to students via video and having students record themselves doing math on a smartphone app.

“We want to be the No. 1 education platform in Vietnam,” Peter Lee, chief executive officer of the KEII Platform, said in October.

However they have a lot of competition — they are not the first startup to seek opportunity in the market for education services. Vietnamese companies such as Topica, Elsa, and Yola are in the market here already.

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Two people were killed and 38 wounded early Thursday when Iraqi security forces fired tear gas canisters at protesters near two key bridges in Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

The cause of death in both cases was tear gas canisters aimed directly at the head, the sources said.

One protester was killed near Sinak bridge and the other near the adjacent Ahrar bridge, police said.

Hospital sources said some of the wounded protesters had injuries from live ammunition and others were wounded by rubber bullets and tears gas canisters.

More than 300 people have been killed since the start of mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The protests are an eruption of public anger against a ruling elite seen as enriching itself off the state and serving foreign powers, especially Iran, as many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, health care or education.

The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

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Australia’s second-biggest bank, Westpac, has been accused of 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing laws.

Westpac is likely to be hit with huge fines. The Australian banking giant is facing legal action from regulators who claim it flouted anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing laws.

Investigators allege that Westpac allowed institutions from countries including Iraq, Lebanon, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo access into Australia’s financial sector without proper checks.

This, according to the watchdog, potentially allowed criminals and terrorists to transfer money into or out of Australia.

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, or AUSTRAC, the country’s financial crime agency, has also alleged that Westpac failed to properly monitor thousands of transactions that could be linked to child exploitation in the Philippines. It also claimed the bank ignored warnings and for years enabled suspicious payments from convicted child sex offenders.

“Westpac failed to carry out appropriate customer due diligence on high-high-rise transactions to the Philippines and Southeast Asia concerning known financial indicators relating to potential child exploitation risks,” said Nicole Rose, AUSTRAC’s chief executive.

The U.S.-born boss of Westpac said the bank “should have done better” and promised to fix the problems.

Brian Hartzer says he was “disgusted” by the revelations but rejects the claim the bank has not treated the breaches seriously.

“We have absolutely not been indifferent on this topic,” he said. “So I just want to be really, really clear that as far as I am concerned at a senior executive level, for the board, for me personally, in no way have we been indifferent on this.”

In theory, Westpac could face multimillion dollar fines for each of the breaches, which could add up to a staggering penalty of $328 trillion U.S. Analysts, though, expect a “meaningful, painful but not catastrophic civil penalty” to be handed down by Australia’s Federal Court.

Last year, the Commonwealth Bank agreed to pay the biggest fine in Australian corporate history of $476 million U.S. for breaches of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing laws that resulted in vast amounts of cash going to drug traffickers.

Earlier this year, a public inquiry exposed widespread wrongdoing in Australia’s finance industry.

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Germany sought Wednesday to ease French worries about NATO by offering to set up a group of experts to examine the alliance’s security challenges after President Emmanuel Macron lamented the “brain death” of the military organization.

Macron’s public criticism of NATO — notably, a perceived lack of U.S. leadership, concerns about an unpredictable Turkey since it invaded northern Syria without warning its allies, and the need for Europe to take on more security responsibilities — has shaken the alliance.

At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Germany’s Heiko Maas said that the 29-nation trans-Atlantic alliance is “Europe’s life insurance and we want it to remain so.” He said the aim should be to prevent “break-away tendencies” within NATO.

To ensure that doesn’t happen, Maas told reporters, the “political arm” of NATO must be strengthened.

“We should get advice from experts, from people who understand these issues,” he said.

Maas declined to elaborate or comment on who might be part of this expert commission, saying he was more interested in how Germany’s partners react to the proposal. France’s response to the offer should indicate whether NATO’s internal differences can quickly be papered over.

Macron’s choice of words was rejected as “drastic” by German Chancellor Angela Merkel the day after they were published in The Economist magazine. Senior U.S. and European officials have since piled on, leaving France feeling isolated for speaking out.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg heads to Paris next week for talks with Macron, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 28. On the eve of the Brussels meeting, Stoltenberg said the best way to resolve differences “is to sit down and to discuss them and to fully understand the messages and the motivations.”

Asked Wednesday why Macron’s stance has angered allies or might hurt NATO, Stoltenberg said, without mentioning France, that “there is no way to deny that there are disagreements on issues like trade, like climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and also simply on how to deal with the situation in northeast Syria.”

But he added: “We have to overcome these disagreements, because it is so essential both for Europe and the United States that we stand united.”

The rift bodes ill for a Dec. 3-4 summit of NATO leaders in London, where U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to once again demand that the Europeans and Canada step up defense spending. That meeting comes amid impeachment hearings in the U.S., and in the heat of a British election campaign.

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President Donald Trump is getting out of Washington during the House impeachment probe. He’s headed to Texas to tour an Austin plant that produces Apple’s Mac Pro computer.

It’s Trump’s second visit to Texas in recent weeks as he highlights job growth in a state crucial for Republicans in 2020, both in terms of money and votes.

Trump’s visit follows Apple’s announcement in September that it would continue manufacturing the Mac Pro in Austin. The move came once the Trump administration agreed to waive tariffs on certain computer parts made in China.

Apple CEO Tim Cook pitched Trump on the problem that higher tariffs posed for Apple. Trump has said, “it’s tough for Apple to pay tariffs if they’re competing with a very good company that’s not.”
 

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Bolivian police and military forces used armored vehicles and helicopters to clear access to a major gas plant in the city of El Alto on Tuesday, a show of strength after blockades at the facility had cut off fuel supply to nearby La Paz.

Helicopters flew above roads around the Senkata gas plant, operated by state-run YPFB, which were blocked with piles of burning tires, according to a Reuters witness. Protesters are demanding the return of unseated leftist leader Evo Morales.

Morales resigned on Nov. 10 amid anti-government demonstrations and rising pressure over vote-rigging allegations after an audit by the Organization of American States (OAS) found serious irregularities in an Oct. 20 election.

But Morales supporters have since ramped up protests, calling for caretaker President Jeanine Anez to step down and for Morales to return. Mounting violence in the South American nation has seen 27 people killed in street clashes.

In what it said was a bid to restore calm, Bolivia’s congress, controlled by lawmakers from Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS), said on Tuesday it would cancel a contentious vote in the legislature that had been expected to reject Morales’ resignation.

The vote would be suspended “to create and contribute to an environment conducive to dialogue and peace,” the Legislative Assembly said in a statement, citing instructions from new Senate head and MAS lawmaker Monica Eva Copa Murga.

Eva Copa Murga later told reporters the assembly would prepare legislation to annul the Oct. 20 election and move towards new elections as soon as possible. The two chambers of Congress will convene separately on Wednesday.

“We do not want more deaths, we do not want more blood,” she said, flanked by the majority of the MAS party lawmakers, calling on the military and pro-Morales group to demobilize.

The country’s human right ombudsman said that three people have been killed in clashes with security forces around Senkata.

The military said in a statement they had carried out a “peaceful” operation after trying negotiation and dialogue.

The MAS party – which itself has been split over how to proceed – holds a majority in the congress and could have voted to reject Morales’ resignation, potentially creating dueling claims on the country’s leadership and raising pressure on Anez.

Morales has railed at what he has called a right-wing coup against him and hinted he could return to the country, though he has pledged repeatedly not to run again in a new election. He stepped down after weeks of protests led to allies and eventually the military urging him to go.

Desperate to Buy

Bolivians are feeling the pinch of the turmoil, with fuel shortages mounting and grocery stores short of basic goods as supporters of Morales blockade key transport routes.

In the highland capital La Paz, roads have grown quiet as people preserve gasoline, with long queues for food staples.

People lined up with gas canisters next to the Senkata plant on Tuesday. Images showed some fuel trucks moving through the area under a strong military and police presence.

“Unfortunately this has been going on for three to four weeks, so people are desperate to buy everything they find,” said Ema Lopez, 81, a retiree in La Paz.

Daniel Castro, a 63-year-old worker in the city, blamed Morales for what he called “food terrorism.”

“This is chaos and you’re seeing this chaos in (La Paz’s) Plaza Villarroel with more than 5,000 people just there to get a chicken,” he said.

The country’s hydrocarbons minister, Victor Hugo Zamora, said on Tuesday he was looking to unlock fuel deliveries for La Paz and called on the pro-Morales movements to join talks and allow economic activity to resume.

Juan Carlos Huarachi, head of the powerful Bolivian Workers’ Center union and once a staunch Morales backer, called on lawmakers to find a resolution. “Our only priority is to bring peace to the country,” he told reporters.

Jorge Quiroga, a former president and Morales critic, said Morales wanted to see Bolivia “burn,” echoing other detractors who say he has continued to stoke unrest from Mexico, which Morales denies.

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Thirty-eight more Colombian municipalities are considered free of landmines and unexploded ordinance, President Ivan Duque said Tuesday, as civilian and military efforts to remove improvised explosives continue despite ongoing conflict in some areas.

Colombia was once among the countries where people suffered the most injuries from landmines, one result of more than five decades of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, crime gangs, right-wing paramilitary groups and the government.

More than 700 of Colombia’s 1,122 municipalities once had landmines, but 391 of those are now certified as mine-free.

“Today we make history because we are freeing 38 municipalities from suspicion of mines,” Duque told attendees at a ceremony in the Andean country’s southwest. “Thirty-eight municipalities have said goodbye to this tragedy; they have the light of new hope.”

Mines, widely used by both rebels and crime gangs to impede military movements, have killed 2,297 people and injured another 9,492 since 1990, government figures show.

A 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels allowed de-mining work to accelerate in certain mountain and jungle areas which formerly had guerrilla presence, but remaining rebel group the National Liberation Army (ELN) and crime gangs continue to use improvised explosives, non-governmental organizations say.

Some 9.8 million square meters have been cleaned of mines and 7,100 explosive devices destroyed across the country of 48 million. The army and 11 civilian groups and NGOs, including the Halo Trust, are responsible for de-mining work.

Colombia, along with more than 160 other countries, is a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty, which forbids the manufacture, storage and use of landmines.

It has pledged to remove all mines by 2021 and will need to ask fellow signatories to approve an extension if it misses its removal target.
 

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