U.S. Vice President Mike Pence criticized American companies for selling out U.S. values to protect their access to China’s profitable markets.  In a speech on trade Thursday, Pence singled out Nike and the National Basketball Association (NBA) for ignoring the abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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Journalists called Wednesday for a Palestinian court decision to close 59 websites and social media pages to be overturned, with activists saying it appeared to be aimed at silencing critics.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) court in the occupied West Bank on Monday ordered the sites, most of them Palestinian, blocked on the grounds they were threats to “national security and peace.”

International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the order included news sites with millions of Facebook followers, such as the Quds Network.

A lawyer for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Alaa Freijat, told AFP the court decision that came at the request of the attorney general had been appealed.

A suit had been filed challenging the constitutionality of a law allowing authorities to take such action if sites are viewed as threats to public order, national unity and social peace.

Mohammed al-Laham of the journalists’ union said that neither the PA’s information ministry nor the syndicate had been consulted in advance.

Dozens of journalists took part in a demonstration Wednesday, chanting, “Hands off of freedom of the press,” he said.

A PA spokesman, Ibrahim Melhem, backed the journalists, calling on “the relevant authorities and the attorney general to overturn the decision.”

Websites have been blocked via internet providers, said Ahmed Youssef, a journalist for one of the sites suspended, “Ultra Palestine.”

Sabrina Bennoui of RSF said in a statement that “blocking websites is clearly a violation of the right to news and information.”

“In so doing, the Palestinian Authority confirms its refusal to accept media pluralism and its desire to eliminate all opposition by making it invisible to the public.”
 

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Preliminary results show Mozambique’s president and ruling Frelimo party heading for overwhelming victories, as the opposition and some observers charge the elections were marked by intimidation, ballot stuffing and flawed vote-counting.

The opposition Renamo party has rejected the results of last week’s elections and called for the polls to be re-run.

Results from all Mozambique’s provinces, available Thursday but not yet ratified by the central electoral commission, show a landslide win for Frelimo, with the ruling party gaining an absolute majority in the elections for president, parliament and provincial representation.

President Filipe Nyusi appears to have garnered more than 70% of the votes and Frelimo also looks set to secure a two-thirds majority in parliament, which would allow it to change the constitution without needing support from the opposition.

 

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The American Express “Green Card” is turning 50, topping off half a century of being everywhere its card members wanted to be.
 
Launched in 1969, the Green Card gave travelers a sense of importance they didn’t feel carrying travelers’ cheques.
 
For many, it was their first AmEx card. Over time, however, the Green Card became neglected in favor of fancier siblings, the Gold and Platinum Cards.

Now, the Green Card is getting a much-needed revamp, with a new look and more travel benefits — and, yes, a higher annual fee, which rises to $150 from $95.

In probably the most radical change, the card will no longer be a charge card, but function more like a traditional credit card with the ability to revolve a balance and pay over time.

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Hong Kong’s 580,000 non-Chinese residents – many of whom have been here for generations – have so far played a very quiet role in the anti-government protests that have shaken this semiautonomous Chinese city. Slowly, they are making their feelings clear – many support the protests, but others say they are an inconvenience and want their adopted home to return to normal. Almost all say the actual demonstration line is one they will not cross, as they fear arrest – and therefore, deportation. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Hong Kong

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They pleaded ignorance, saying they’d not read the diplomat’s damning statement. They condemned the Democrats’ tactics as unfair. They complained that the allegations against President Donald Trump rested on second- or third-hand evidence.

Wednesday was a day of careful counterargument by congressional Republicans, the day after America’s top envoy in Ukraine gave House impeachment investigators an explosive, detailed roadmap of Trump’s drive to squeeze that country’s leaders for damaging information about his Democratic political rivals.

Most Republicans were still standing by Trump, but in delicately calibrated ways after Tuesday’s closed-door testimony by acting ambassador William Taylor.  And as lawmakers struggled to balance support for Trump with uncertainty over what might still emerge, some were willing to acknowledge the strains they were facing.

Asked if Taylor’s testimony was a rough day for the White House and Republicans, No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Thune of South Dakota said, “Probably one of many.”

“Obviously, we have a lot of incoming right now,” Thune said. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

White House officials, who have been treating unified Republican support for Trump as a given, have grown increasingly fearful of defections in a potential impeachment vote by the Democratic House and even in an eventual trial in the Republican Senate.

While officials don’t believe there will be enough votes to remove the president, as Democrats hope, the West Wing believes more must be done to shore up party support to avoid embarrassment and genuine political peril.

Some Trump allies also believe the White House must directly address the increasingly troubling revelations. They note that as more Trump appointees offer disparaging information to Congress, he will have increasing difficulty arguing simply that he is the target of a new “witch hunt.”

Several of these concerned supporters spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the growing private worries.

White House officials said they have added a regular call with select GOP lawmakers to discuss impeachment strategy, plus more meetings with Republicans at the White House and Camp David. They said communications teams from the White House and Congress coordinate three times a week with phone calls.

But there still are complaints from Capitol Hill about a lack of a sophisticated messaging strategy.

Two GOP aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal tactics, said White House coordination has been insufficient. They cited a lack of daily emails or White House briefings of reporters from which lawmakers could take a daily messaging cue.

Via tweet, Trump has asserted that witnesses haven’t said the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld, thus clearing him of accusations that he was insisting on a trade-off for political dirt.

“You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo,” he quoted Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, as telling Fox News.

However, The Associated Press and others have reported that Ukrainian leaders were indeed aware of the threat of losing aid that Ukraine needed to counter Russian military efforts. Closed-door testimony has shown that new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was worried that a White House meeting he desired with Trump was in jeopardy.

Trump lashed out Wednesday at critical members of his own party, tweeting, “Never Trumper Republicans” are “in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats.”

“They are human scum!” he fumed.

Reports of Taylor’s testimony led most newscasts, websites and newspapers late Tuesday and Wednesday. But underscoring the desire of Republicans to avoid focusing on the allegations about Trump’s actions, many asserted ignorance of what Taylor had said.

“I didn’t see it, I didn’t hear it and I’m not going to take a third-party description of it,” said Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho.

Taylor detailed conversations in which he said administration officials told him Trump was conditioning Ukrainian military aid and an Oval Office visit coveted by Zelenskiy on Ukraine probing Democrat Joe Biden and his son and allegations of interference in the 2016 election.

Taylor is a career diplomat who has served overseas for presidents of both parties. Under Trump, he was appointed to take charge of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv earlier this year after Trump had the ambassador removed.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, called Taylor’s testimony “just very devastating.”

Kasich, also a nine-term congressman, said he has noticed “a couple cracks” in the Republican wall that’s stood up for Trump and against impeachment.

“There’s no surprise in the fact, in an era of tribalism, that there is sort of a solid wall, (a wall) that appears to be getting weaker, in a way,” he said. “This is serious stuff”

The GOP drew more attention to the secrecy Wednesday when around two dozen House Republicans not directly involved in the investigation barged into a deposition of a Defense Department official. The move delayed the day’s interview by five hours and drew a slap from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called the tactic “nuts.”

Much of the House inquiry has so far unfolded behind the closed doors of secure offices in the Capitol Visitors Center. Alongside the Democrats, GOP members of the three House committees heading the investigation have been in the room as diplomats and other officials have testified. Democrats have said they expect to hold public hearings later in the process.

One administration official said Trump was aware of and encouraged the House effort to object to the secrecy of the impeachment proceedings Wednesday. That official was not authorized to discuss the issue by name and commented only on condition of anonymity.

In Taylor’s 15-page opening statement obtained by the AP and other news organizations, the diplomat named administration officials who he said told him Trump had demanded of the Ukrainians an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that once employed the son of former Vice President Biden. The elder Biden is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Trump also wanted Ukraine to probe a conspiracy theory about a Democratic computer server that was hacked during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has also complained repeatedly about the House process. He has used that argument to justify his order for administration officials not to comply with requests for documents and interviews.

ome continue to show up under House subpoena. Yet Trump’s officials, sticking to their guns, are counting on his complaints to resonate with voters next year.

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EU leaders are deciding on another extension to Brexit after lawmakers in Britain frustrated Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to leave the bloc by Oct. 31. After previously pledging to leave by that deadline, “do or die,” Johnson now seems determined to seek an election as soon as possible. But as Henry Ridgwell reports, it might not be that simple.

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The U.S. government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged Wednesday to jointly invest $200 million over the next four years to achieve affordable gene therapy-based cures for sickle cell disease (SCD) and HIV.

The administration of President Donald Trump announced earlier this year its intention to end the HIV epidemic over the next decade and has also identified SCD, which disproportionately affects people of African descent, as a condition requiring greater attention.

Gene therapy is a relatively new area of medicine designed to replace faulty genes in the body that are responsible for a disorder, and has been responsible for new treatments for blindness and certain types of leukemia.

But the treatments are complex and costly, ruling them out as an option for most of the world.

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said the collaboration would focus therefore on “access, scalability and affordability” to make sure the eventual treatments are available globally.

The NIH and Gates Foundation aim to achieve clinical trials in the United States and countries in sub-Saharan Africa within the next seven to 10 years.

Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited red blood cell disorders characterized by the presence of an abnormal protein in the red blood cells, causing the feet and hands to swell, fatigue, jaundice, and episodic or chronic pain.

Over time the disease can harm a patients’ vital organs, bones, joints and skin and it is currently only curable via a blood and bone marrow transplant, available to only a tiny fraction of people who have the disease.

When it comes to HIV, antiretroviral therapy (ART) are now able to reduce patients’ viral load to the point that they are undetectable and cannot be further transmitted.

But “a major goal is to find a cure, whereby lifelong ART would not be required,” said the NIH’s Anthony Fauci.

Though SCD is a genetically inherited disease, and HIV is acquired from infection, gene-based treatments are said to hold promise for both, and “many of the technical challenges for gene-based cures are expected to be common to both diseases.”

The goal for SCD is to achieve a gene-based intervention that either corrects the gene mutation responsible or promotes fetal hemoglobin gene expression to achieve normal hemoglobin function.

For HIV, the proposed cure would involve targeting the reservoir of proviral DNA that lurks inside a small number of cells even after many years of ART.

The NIH said that approximately 95 percent of the 38 million people living with HIV globally are in the developing world, with 67 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, half of whom are living untreated. Around 1.1 million Americans are affected

SCD affects approximately 100,000 Americans, according to official figures. Fifteen million babies will be born with SCD globally over the next 30 years, with about 75 percent of those births occurring in sub-Saharan Africans, said the NIH.

 

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Heavy rains that pummeled the capital of Cairo and other parts of the country, causing massive traffic jams and flooding many key roads, left at least eight people dead, including four children, authorities said Wednesday.

People captured images of Tuesday’s downpours and flooding on their mobile phones, posting images on social media, including scenes of cars submerged by flood waters.

In one dramatic video, a man on a bulldozer pulls the lifeless body of a little girl out of the water in a flooded area in northern Sharqia Province as shouts and screams are heard in the background. Another video shows a policeman, steps away from the presidential palace in Cairo’s district of Heliopolis, wading into a flooded street to unclog a sewage drain.

Authorities closed schools and universities in the greater Cairo area Wednesday and companies saw only skeletal staff show up at work. Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly said  school closures were limited to the greater Cairo area, including Giza and Qalioubia, as more rainfall was expected in the next couple of days, according to the country’s weather service.

The mayhem raised questions about Cairo’s ability to deal with such heavy rains as the city’s infrastructure and sewage and drainage systems have suffered from years of poor maintenance.

People took to social media to criticize the government’s lack of preparedness. Cairo, a city of some 20 million people, has been left for decades in neglect and decay, particularly its overcrowded neighborhoods.

Hashtags like “(hash)Egypt is sinking” were trending on social media, attracting many videos and pictures of the most affected areas in Cairo and elsewhere.

Five deaths occurred in the Nile Delta provinces of Sharqia, Gharbia and Kafr el-Sheikh, according to the Interior Ministry. Three of the victims, including two children, were electrocuted. The other two victims died falling from the rooftops of their flooded homes.

Local authorities in northern Sinai also reported two deaths. Moataz Taher, head of the el-Hassana municipality, said in a statement that a 47-year-old farmer and his 13-year-old daughter died early Wednesday in the flooding.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the heavy rain caused a three-story building to collapse Wednesday, killing a 7-year-old child and injuring her 19-year-old brother, according to the city’s civil protection authority.

In Cairo, the eastern suburb of Nasr City was hit the hardest, but so was Heliopolis, located near Cairo’s international airport. The government said the two suburbs had received at least 650,000 cubic meters cubic feet of precipitation in just 90 minutes on Tuesday, overwhelming the city’s sewage and drain systems.

Trucks fanned out across Cairo to drain water from flooded areas. A key highway connecting Cairo to other provinces was closed, the state-run al-Ahram daily reported.

EgyptAir said it had delayed some fights on Tuesday because passengers were stuck on the roads and unable to get to the airport. A part of the old Cairo airport terminal which has been under renovation was also flooded, with footage on social media showing rainwater pouring into the hallway.

The Civil Aviation Ministry said that terminal was only being used by a private carrier for one or two flights a day and shared photos of it after it was cleaned up.

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Two small helicopters collided Wednesday over a ranch in South Texas, and two men were killed, authorities said. 

Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Nathan Brandley said the helicopters struck in midair near Hebbronville, a community about 160 miles (260 kilometers) south of San Antonio. 
 
Brandley said one helicopter was able to land but the other crashed after the collision, killing both people aboard. One was pronounced dead at the scene and the other was pronounced dead at a hospital. 
 
He said one of the two people in the other helicopter was injured. 
 
Brandley said he didn’t know the cause of the crash or the identities of those involved. 
 
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety board were investigating. The FAA said the helicopters were Robinson R22 aircraft.

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Israel’s former military chief Benny Gantz was tasked Wednesday with forming the next government, but he has few options after last month’s elections left him in a near tie with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu was given the first opportunity to form a government after assembling a large right-wing bloc but announced this week that he had failed to build a 61-seat majority. Gantz faces similarly steep odds, raising the possibility that Israel will hold a third election in less than a year.

President Reuven Rivlin formally granted the mandate to Gantz, who will have 28 days to form a coalition. It is the first time in over a decade that anyone besides Netanyahu has been given the task.

Gantz vowed to form a “functioning” unity government that would “strive for peace but know how to defeat every enemy.”

A lifelong military man, Gantz has presented himself as a practical leader who can bridge Israel’s many divisions and address the various security threats it faces. His low-key campaign was in sharp contrast to Netanyahu’s, which was marked by breathless announcements about a suspected Iranian nuclear site and plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.

Gantz also presents himself as a more trustworthy alternative to the scandal-plagued Netanyahu and may hope to evoke past generals who became statesmen, including Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.

But he faces steep odds in every possible path to forming a government. He has been endorsed by just 54 lawmakers representing an array of parties that are unlikely to sit together in a coalition.

Both Gantz and Netanyahu say they favor a national unity government. Together, Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White control a solid 65-seat majority. But the two men are divided over who should lead any new government.

Netanyahu has insisted he head the government, at least for the first two years, and that it include his right-wing allies, conditions that Gantz has repeatedly rejected.

Netanyahu is likely to be indicted on corruption charges in the coming weeks, and Gantz has said Netanyahu should resolve his legal troubles before returning to the top post.

Blue and White nevertheless invited Likud negotiators to a meeting planned for Thursday.

Addressing Netanyahu on Wednesday, Gantz called him a “patriot” and said he hoped he could resolve his legal issues.

“It is clear to both of us that the elections outcome and the legal situation demand a change. Together with you and with the other good people at the Likud we must act with responsibility.”

One path for Gantz would be to try and break up Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance and recruit some of the smaller parties to his coalition. But that might be seen as a major betrayal by those parties’ voters.

Another option would be to form a minority government with Avigdor Lieberman, who emerged as kingmaker after his party won eight seats and has refused to endorse either Gantz or Netanyahu. Gantz might be able to convince the Arab Joint List, which won 13 seats, to support the coalition from the outside.

That would bring down Netanyahu but result in a highly unstable government. It’s also far from clear that Lieberman, a nationalist with a history of harsh rhetoric toward the Arab minority, would support such a scheme. No Arab party has ever sat in an Israeli government.

The political deadlock dates back to April, when Lieberman refused to join a right-wing coalition under Netanyahu, denying him a majority. In response, parliament voted to dissolve itself, leading to an unprecedented repeat election in September. A similar scenario could play out again.

The political deadlock has delayed the Trump administration’s release of its long-awaited peace plan. The Palestinians have already rejected the plan, accusing the administration of extreme and unfair bias toward Israel.

In giving Gantz the mandate, Rivlin once again implored Israel’s political leaders to come together, saying there is “no justification” to impose a third election on the country.

“If a government is formed, it is true that everyone will pay a price,” he said. “But if such a government is not formed, Israeli citizens will pay the heaviest price.”
 

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For the first time, U.S. health regulators have judged a type of smokeless tobacco to be less harmful than cigarettes, a decision that could open the door to other less risky options for smokers.

The milestone announcement on Tuesday makes Swedish Match tobacco pouches the first so-called reduced-risk tobacco product ever sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA regulators stressed that their decision does not mean the pouches are safe, just less harmful, and that all tobacco products pose risks. The pouches will still bear mandatory government warnings that they can cause mouth cancer, gum disease and tooth loss.

But the company will be able to advertise its tobacco pouches as posing a lower risk of lung cancer, bronchitis, heart disease and other diseases than cigarettes.

The pouches of ground tobacco, called snus — Swedish for snuff and pronounced “snoose” — have been popular in Scandinavian countries for decades but are a tiny part of the U.S. tobacco market.

Users stick the teabag-like pouches between their cheek and gum to absorb nicotine. Unlike regular chewing tobacco, the liquid from snus is generally swallowed, rather than spit out. Chewing tobacco is fermented; snus goes through a steamed pasteurization process.

Long-term data

FDA acting commissioner Ned Sharpless said the agency based its decision on long-term, population-level data showing lower levels of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related disease with the use of snus.

Sharpless added that the agency will closely monitor Swedish Match’s marketing efforts to ensure they target adult tobacco users.

“Anyone who does not currently use tobacco products, especially youth, should refrain from doing so,” he said in a statement.

Stockholm-based Swedish Match sells its snus under the brand name General in mint, wintergreen and other flavors. They compete against pouches from rivals Altria and R.J. Reynolds. But pouches account for just 5% of the $9.1 billion U.S. market for chew and other smokeless tobacco products, according to Euromonitor market research firm.
 
And public health experts questioned whether U.S. smokers would be willing to switch to the niche product.

“Snus products have a bit of a challenge” among smokers who are used to inhaling their nicotine, said Vaugh Rees, director of Harvard University’s Center for Global Tobacco Control.

U.S. smoking rate

The U.S. smoking rate has fallen to an all-time low of 14% of adults, or roughly 34 million Americans. But smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., responsible for some 480,000 deaths annually.

The FDA’s decision has been closely watched by both public health experts and tobacco companies.
 
Public health experts have long hoped that alternatives like the pouches could benefit Americans who are unable or unwilling to quit cigarettes and other traditional tobacco products. Tobacco companies are looking for new products to sell as they face declining cigarette demand due to tax increases, health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma.

The FDA itself also has much at stake in the review of snus and similar tobacco alternatives.

Congress gave the FDA the power to regulate key aspects of the tobacco industry in 2009, including designating new tobacco products as “modified risk,” compared with traditional cigarettes, chew and other products.
 
But until Tuesday, the FDA had never granted permission for any product to make such claims.
 
The FDA is reviewing several other products vying for “reduced risk” status, including a heat-not-burn cigarette alternative made by Philip Morris International. While electronic cigarettes are generally considered less harmful than the tobacco-and-paper variety, they have not been scientifically reviewed as posing a lower risk.
 

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A top U.S. Census Bureau official says the agency has pivoted away from verifying addresses and is now kicking off a campaign to recruit and hire as many as a half million temporary workers to help with the largest head count in U.S. history next spring.

Timothy Olson, the agency’s associate director for field operations, said Tuesday that 32,000 workers verified 50 million addresses over an almost two-month period that ended more than a week ago.

Olson called the address verification process a success.

The agency already has 900,000 people who have applied for 2020 Census jobs, but the bureau wants a potential pool of 2.7 million applicants to choose from.

The 2020 Census head count will be the first decennial census when respondents are encouraged to answer questions online.
 

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Iran will not be allowed to participate in any international judo competitions until it allows its athletes to face Israelis.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) on Tuesday issued an indefinite ban “until the Iran Judo Federation gives strong guarantees and prove that they will respect the IJF Statutes and accept that their athletes fight against Israeli athletes.”

IJF investigated Iran’s policy after Iranian Saeid Mollaei walked off the Iranian team during last year’s world championships in Tokyo. Mollaei, who was the reigning champion, claimed that he had been pressured to deliberately lose in the semifinals in order to avoid facing Israelis.

The IJF accused the Iranian government of pressuring its athletes and flouting international completion rules.

Iran has denied pressuring Mollaei, who is now in hiding in Germany.

But the IJF investigation into the incident found that Iran’s actions “constitute a serious breach and gross violation of the Statutes of the IJF, its legitimate interests, its principles and objectives.”

Iran is expected to appeal the ban to the Switzerland-based Court for Arbitration of Sport.

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Boeing is replacing the head of its commercial-airplanes division as it struggles with a crisis created by two deadly crashes of its newest airliner.

Boeing said Tuesday that Kevin McAllister is out as chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He is being replaced by Stanley Deal, leader of Boeing’s services division.

The shake-up in Boeing’s top ranks comes just days after the release of internal communications that showed a senior test pilot experienced serious problems while testing flight-control software for the 737 Max on a simulator.

That software, called MCAS, is at the center of investigations into two crashes that killed 346 people and led to grounding of the Max. Boeing is taking much longer than executives expected to change the software and get the plane flying again.

Boeing announced two other promotions, including a replacement for Deal, who has led Boeing Global Services since the division was created in 2016.

McAllister was recruited from General Electric Co.’s jet-engine operation to run Boeing’s biggest division in 2016, just months before the 737 Max went into service. Boeing did not specify whether he quit or was fired.

“The Boeing board fully supports these leadership moves,” Chairman David Calhoun said in a prepared statement.

Calhoun himself is new in his position. CEO Dennis Muilenburg also served as company chairman until the board stripped him of that job and elevated Calhoun two weeks ago.

In a statement, Muilenburg thanked McAllister for his service “during a challenging time, and for his commitment to support this transition.”

Boeing took a $5.6 billion pretax charge this summer to cover its estimate for compensating airlines that have canceled thousands of flights because of grounded planes. It has disclosed nearly $3 billion in other additional costs related to the grounding.

The company faces dozens of lawsuits by families of passengers killed in the Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. It is also the subject of investigations by the Justice Department and Congress.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. is scheduled to report its latest financial results on Wednesday.

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China has seized on an embarrassing revelation about U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser to score points and toughen its rhetoric in its long-running trade dispute with the United States.

At a briefing Tuesday in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the international community had been “in uproar and shocked” by revelations that U.S. trade adviser Peter Navarro used a fictitious analyst as a source of quotes in several books.

“Making up and peddling lies, even making policy based on lies, is not only ridiculous, but also extremely dangerous,” Hua was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

A day earlier, the state-run television network CCTV said in an editorial that Navarro “has put much of his fantasy into practice as one of the most important pushing hands behind the U.S.’s decisions to stage a trade war against China. He is also the most radical White House adviser to voice the China threat narratives.”

Navarro, an academic seen as one of the administration’s strongest advocates for a hard line on China trade, has been forced to admit that Ron Vara, a hawkish analyst quoted in several of his books, is in fact a made-up person whose name is an anagram of Navarro’s own.

The fiction was first revealed last week by Tessa Morris-Suzuki at the Australian National University, who wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Ron Vara’s name turned up a dozen times in at least six of Navarro’s books, but that no such person could be found.

Navarro subsequently admitted to having invented the character but defended his action in a press statement, saying the fictional analyst was a “whimsical device and pen name” devised purely for “entertainment value,” not as a source of fact.

Credibility

Nevertheless, analysts say the revelation has weakened Navarro’s credibility as a key player in efforts to resolve the trade dispute, and handed Beijing a cudgel with which to hammer the American negotiators. Navarro is considered among the architects of the U.S. trade policy and has been a regular participant in those talks.

Gao Mobo, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Adelaide, said academics need to be impartial and objective, supporting their assertions with empirical evidence or by citing credible sources. “You cannot just write up a statement or make an assertion without substantiation,” he said in an email to VOA.

Frank Xie, an associate professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina Aiken, suggested the Navarro episode had given Beijing an opportunity to do something it needed to do anyway — step up its rhetoric in the trade dispute.

China has to appear tough because its leaders realize their country is stuck in a trade war they cannot win, Xie said.

“If it caves in and accepts Trump’s deal, all the benefits for the privileged groups with vested interests and state-run enterprises will be gone. That will collapse the party,” Xie said. “But if it fights [the U.S.] by decoupling the Chinese economy from the U.S. economy, the party will also fall from power.”

Stall tactics

Stuck between two unpalatable alternatives, Xie said, China appears to be trying to stall the trade negotiations in the hope that Trump will be defeated in the 2020 election and they will be able to deal with a new American president.

China is also expected soon to convene a fourth plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party, an event that is long overdue, fueling suspicions of political undercurrents unfavorable to President Xi Jinping. That, Xie said, gives the Chinese leadership another reason to toughen its rhetoric and present a public image of strength.

Despite the commotion over the exposure of Navarro’s alter ego, some analysts doubt the revelation will have much impact on the U.S.-China trade talks.

“The Trump administration’s credibility cannot be hurt any further anyway,” argued Gao, the University of Adelaide professor. Neither will it harm future Sino-U.S. relations, which he said “aren’t based on this kind of credibility.”

Yen Chen-shen, an international relations professor at Taipei’s National Chengchi University, suggested that Navarro’s role in the talks is not that important because the U.S. president has his own agenda toward China and largely makes his own decisions.

The professor advised both the U.S. and Chinese governments to downplay Navarro’s role if they truly want to strike a trade deal.  
 

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Major League Baseball’s 116th World Series championship series begins Tuesday in Houston, Texas, when the hometown Astros will face off against the Washington Nationals.

Houston will send 19-game regular season winner Gerrit Cole to the mound for Game 1, while three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer gets the start for Washington.

The Astros reached their second World Series in three seasons last Saturday when they beat the New York Yankees 6-4 to win the American League Championship Series, thanks to a dramatic ninth-inning home run by star second baseman Jose Altuve. The Astros won the World Series back in 2017, outlasting the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 3 in the best-of-seven series.

The Nationals are the fairy tale story of this year’s Series — after beginning the season at 19-31, the Nationals reached the playoffs as a wild card (a team that fails to win their division despite having a winning record).  They proceeded to beat the Milwaukee Brewers and the Dodgers in the first two rounds before sweeping the highly favored St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games to win the National League Championship Series, thanks to dominant pitching from starters Anibal Sanchez, Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin.  

The Nationals are in the World Series for the first time in their 50-year history, beginning play as the Montreal Expos before moving to Washington in 2005.

The last time a World Series was played in the U.S. capital city was in 1933, when the Washington Senators lost to the New York Giants.  That team — also dubbed the Nationals  — was the second of three separate Senators franchises that played in Washington between 1891 and 1971, and the most successful, having won the Series in 1924.  

But that team fell on hard times over the next three decades, before moving to Minneapolis in 1960 and becoming the Minnesota Twins.  The third Senators franchise began play a year later, and remained in Washington until 1971, when they became the Texas Rangers.  

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The king of Thailand has stripped his royal consort of her titles less than three months after they were bestowed upon her.

An announcement in the Royal Thai Government Gazette said 34-year-old Sineenat Bilaskalayani was stripped of all her titles and military ranks for being “ambitious” and trying to “elevate herself to the same state as the queen.”

It said her actions “are considered dishonorable, lacking gratitude, unappreciative of royal kindness, and driving a rift among the royal servants, making misunderstanding among the people, and undermining the nation and the monarchy.”

King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who ascended to the throne in 2016, named Sineenat his royal consort just two months after he married his fourth wife, Queen Suthida.

This was the first time a Thai monarch has taken a consort in nearly a century.

Both Sineenat and Suthida had served as senior officers in palace security units. Suthida was previously a flight attendant with Thai Airways, while Sineenat was an army nurse.

Sineenat’s fate in the royal court is similar to that of the king’s second and third wives.

The king’s second wife fled to the U.S. after she was denounced by him. The kings has also disowned their four sons.

His third wife was also stripped of her titles and banished from the court. Their teenage son lives with his father.

The king’s first marriage also ended in divorce but that wife was also his cousin and part of the royal family so she didn’t share the fate of the others. 

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Canadian news outlets are predicting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party will win a second term in office, but will have to do so as a minority government.  

As of late Monday night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said Trudeau’s Liberals were either elected or leading in 146 of 338 legislative districts, versus just 118 for the Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer.  If the results hold, that would leave the Liberals short of the 170 seats needed for a solid working majority.  Trudeau would have to form a governing coalition with one or more smaller parties, most likely the progressive New Democrats. 

The 47-year-old Trudeau won a definitive parliamentary majority in 2015, leading the first Liberal government in 10 years. During his term, he has become a champion of liberals worldwide for his support of free trade, diversity, environmental policies and taking an active role on the world stage.
 
But Trudeau’s bid for a second term was threatened by a handful of scandals, both personal and political in nature. At least three photographs of Trudeau in blackface and brown face from the 1990s and early 2000s surfaced just weeks ahead of the vote.

 

In another scandal, Trudeau’s former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, said he pressured her to stop the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalian, a Quebec engineering company, under bribery charges. The firm was formally charged with corruption for paying Libyan government officials, including former dictator Moammar Gadhafi, millions of dollars for contracts between 2001 and 2011.

Wilson-Raybould said she resigned because of the pressure, and continued to receive “veiled threats” from a government official after her resignation.

Trudeau said he was standing up for jobs, but the scandals have benefited Scheer’s campaign.

Conservative supporters chanted “Lock him up! Lock him up!” at a rally Saturday after Scheer said he would investigate the possible corruption. He changed the chant to “Vote him out.”

If Conservatives win the most seats and fail to win a majority, they would probably try to form a government with the backing of Quebec’s separatist Bloc Quebecois Party.

A first-term Canadian prime minister with a parliamentary majority has not lost a bid for re-election in 84 years.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama made an unprecedented endorsement of Trudeau in an Oct. 16 tweet, urging Canadians to reelect the weakened prime minister.

 

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Iran says it has given the U.S. a list of detained Iranians whom it wants to be freed in a prisoner swap, drawing a vague public response from U.S. officials who have sought to discuss the issue with Tehran.

Speaking to reporters Monday in Tehran, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Iran had provided the names of the detained Iranians to the U.S. and was ready to do a trade. He did not specify who was on the list or how it was handed to Washington, with whom Tehran has no formal ties.

But Mousavi said the Iranian government believes about 20 Iranians have been detained by the U.S. on what it considers to be “baseless” charges of circumventing U.S. economic sanctions against Iran. He singled out one of them, Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani, as a cause for concern due to ill health.

U.S. authorities arrested Soleimani, a stem cell researcher, in October 2018 upon his arrival at a Chicago airport. He was charged with trying to export biological materials to Iran in violation of the sanctions.

Asked by VOA Persian to confirm whether it has received Iran’s list for a proposed prisoner swap, a State Department spokesperson declined to comment specifically and only restated U.S. policy, saying: “The recovery of hostages held by the Islamic Republic of Iran is a top priority for the U.S. government.”

Iran has been detaining at least four Americans for security-related offenses that their relatives and supporters have dismissed as trumped-up charges. The detainees include former U.S. soldier Michael R. White, Chinese-American Princeton University researcher Xiyue Wang, and Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his elderly father Mohammad Bagher Namazi.

A fifth American, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, went missing in Iran 12 years ago and his family has said they believe he remains in detention there, a contention denied by Tehran.

Previously, Reuters quoted a U.S. State Department official last month as saying Iran had received a U.S. letter sent earlier this year seeking talks about the fate of several Americans jailed by Tehran. The unnamed official said U.S. efforts to reach out to Iranian officials on the issue were ongoing.

The U.S. official cited by Reuters appeared to be referring to a letter that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he received from then-U.S. envoy for hostage affairs Robert O’Brien, who now serves as U.S. National Security Adviser.

U.S. news site Al-Monitor has reported that Zarif acknowledged receiving the letter while speaking to the press on an April visit to the United Nations in New York. It quoted Zarif as complaining that the letter merely asked for Iran to release the detained Americans rather than offering a deal.

A day before making those comments, Zarif told an Asia Society forum in New York that he had made an offer to the Trump administration in October 2018 to swap the detained Americans for Iranians held in the U.S., but heard nothing in response.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman’s latest statement about sending a list of detainee names to Washington does not reflect a change in policy, according to Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the Belgium-based International Crisis Group. But in a VOA Persian interview, Vaez said the Iranian official’s comment about the list is a sign that Tehran is raising the profile of its campaign for a prisoner swap.

“It’s one of most important levers that the Iranians have to get the Trump administration to the negotiating table,” Vaez said. “Since U.S.-Iran mediation efforts by world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have come to naught, Iran is trying to use the prisoner card to establish a communication channel, which could evolve into a broader discussion with the U.S. about how to resolve their current standoff,” he added.

In January 2016, U.S. President Donald Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama freed seven Iranians held in the U.S. in exchange for Iran releasing four Iranian-American prisoners, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.

While campaigning for the U.S. presidential election later that year, Trump criticized Obama for delivering a planeload of cash worth $400 million to Iran on the same day that it released the four Americans, calling it a ransom payment. The Obama administration said the money was previously owed by the U.S. government to Iran but acknowledged using it as leverage to win the Americans’ freedom.

“I know President Trump is reluctant (to do a prisoner swap), but the only solution to get these Americans back home is to engage in some quid pro quo with Iran,” Vaez said. “If the arrangement is limited to a swap of prisoners (and does not include a transfer of cash), it would be more palatable politically in Washington,” Vaez added.

Decades-old tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated since last year, when Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal between world powers and Iran to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for lifting international sanctions on the Iranian economy. Trump criticized the deal as not doing enough to stop Iran from engaging in malign behaviors and has been tightening U.S. sanctions against Tehran ever since to achieve that goal.

Iran has vowed to resist those sanctions and retaliate for any U.S. military action against it.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Cindy Saine contributed from the State Department.
 

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The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has started photocopying inmate letters and other mail at some federal correctional facilities across the U.S. instead of delivering the original parcels, in an attempt to combat the smuggling of synthetic narcotics like K-2, officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

The program is being implemented at a “number of Bureau facilities impacted by the increased introduction of synthetic drugs,” the agency said in a statement to the AP. At those jails and prisons, Bureau of Prisons employees are currently copying incoming mail and then distributing the copies to inmates, the agency said.

Officials would not say how many staff members are being assigned to make photocopies or whether they are removing correction officers to perform the task. The initiative raises questions about whether the agency, which has been plagued by chronic staffing shortages and violence, is reassigning staff members to spend time making photocopies instead of watching inmates.

The Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny since billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was able to take his own life behind bars at a federal facility in New York in August. Across the board, the agency has been down 4,000 jobs since 2017. Staffing shortages are so severe that guards routinely work overtime shifts day after day, sometimes being forced to work mandatory overtime.

 In the wake of Epstein’s death, Attorney General William Barr removed the agency’s acting director and named Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the prison agency’s director from 1992 until 2003, to replace him.

Officials did not provide details on the specific jails and prisons where the program is being implemented, but a person familiar with the matter told AP that one of the facilities is USP Canaan, a high-security penitentiary for male inmates in Pennsylvania. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss jail operations.

Officials say wardens at each of the facilities have discretion under current policy to order the photocopying because they “may establish controls to protect staff, inmates, and the security, discipline, and good order of the institution.”

The agency is also exploring the possibility of using an off-site vendor to scan general correspondence and then send it as electronic files to kiosks in the correctional facilities where inmates would be able to view and print the letters.

The choice to have mail photocopied depends on the size and security level of the correctional facility, as well as the “degree of sophistication of the inmates confined, staff availability, and other variables,” the statement said.

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Canadians began voting in a general election Monday, with surveys predicting a minority government as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party risks losing its majority or even being kicked out of office.

The Liberals and the Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer, could be set for a near dead heat with pundits calling it one Canada’s closest elections ever.

Polls opened at 1100 GMT in the provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, the first of the country’s six time zones. Polls will remain open in far western British Columbia until 0200 GMT Tuesday, although the first results are expected starting at 2300 GMT.

Some 27.4 million Canadians are eligible to elect 338 members of parliament after a tense and sometimes bitter election campaign.

Campaigning ended as it began some 40 days earlier, with polls showing a near perfect equilibrium.

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives — the parties that have led Canada since Confederation in 1867 — is forecast to win enough support to secure an absolute majority of seats in parliament.

Faded golden boy

At final campaign stops in westernmost British Columbia on Sunday, former golden boy Trudeau made an emotional appeal to voters to enable him to build on the achievements of his first term.

He warned against Scheer’s pledged rollback of environmental protections including a federal carbon tax that discourages the use of large amounts of fossil fuels.

“We need a strong, progressive government that will unite Canadians and fight climate change — not a progressive opposition,” Trudeau told a rally in a suburb of Vancouver after whistle-stops in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

“We need to unite as citizens. We need to unite as a planet.”

After winning in a 2015 landslide — in a repeat of the wave of support that in 1968 carried his late father Pierre to power — Trudeau’s star has dimmed while in office.

His image has been tainted by ethics lapses in the handling of the bribery prosecution of an engineering giant, while his campaign was rocked by the emergence of old photographs of him in blackface make-up.

Surging social democrats and resuscitated Quebec separatists have also chipped away at Liberal support.

Main parties both struggle

If Trudeau hangs on, it will be because Scheer has struggled to win over Canadians with his bland minivan-driving dad persona and a throwback to the thrifty policies of past Tory administrations.

Canadians “cannot afford” a Liberal government propped up by the third-place New Democratic Party (NDP), Scheer said at the end of a marathon last push from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans.

“We can only imagine what the NDP’s price would be to keep Justin Trudeau in power,” he said.

“Whatever it is, we know Trudeau would pay any price to stay in power and he’d use your money to do it.”

Campaign attack ads have included false accusations that Liberals would legalize hard drugs and the Tories would allow the proliferation of assault weapons.

At one rally, Trudeau was forced to wear a bulletproof vest.

Along the bruising way, Trudeau and Scheer traded barbs.

Trudeau evoked the bogeymen of past and current Tory parties fostering “politics of fear and division” and Scheer called the prime minister a “compulsive liar,” “a phoney and a fraud.”

Trudeau defends record

Trudeau defended his record: a strong economy and low unemployment, legal cannabis, the resettlement of 60,000 Syrian refugees, doctor-assisted deaths, a public inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and free trade deals with Europe, Pacific nations and North American neighbors.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama endorsed Trudeau, calling him an “effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.”

“The world needs his progressive leadership now,” Obama said in a tweet.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have stood alone among all of the parties in pledging austerity measures to return to a balanced budget within five years.

Scheer was shaken late in the campaign over revelations of his US dual citizenship and allegations that his party hired a communications firm to “destroy” the upstart People’s Party, led by former Conservative foreign minister Maxime Bernier.

The party has situated itself to the right of the Conservatives and could draw votes away.

On the left, the Bloc has come back from a ruinous 2015 election result, tapping into lingering Quebec nationalism to challenge the Liberals’ dominance in the province.

The Bloc and NDP have said they would not prop up the Tories if they secure a minority.

Who will govern may still be unclear for weeks after the polls close during alliance negotiations that could keep Trudeau in office even if his party loses.

 

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