Thousands of indigenous people converged on Ecuador’s capital on Tuesday as anti-government protests and clashes prompted the president to move his besieged administration out of Quito.   
 
The South American country of 17 million appeared to be at a dangerous impasse, paralyzed by a lack of public transport and blockaded roads that were taking a toll on an already vulnerable economy.
 
Violence, which began last week when President Lenin Moreno’s decision to cut subsidies led to a sharp increase in fuel price, has persisted for days. Several oil wells ceased production totaling 65,000 barrels daily because protesters seized installations, the energy ministry said.

On Monday, police abandoned an armored vehicle to protesters who set it on fire. Elsewhere, rioters smashed car windows, broke into shops and confronted security forces who fired tear gas to try to disperse swelling crowds.  

Some video footage has shown police beating protesters on the ground. Opponents have accused Moreno’s government of human rights abuses in its attempts to quell the disturbances.

Moreno said on national television late Monday that the government faces security threats and will operate from the port city of Guayaquil instead of Quito, the capital.

He said he was the target of a coup attempt, but would not back down from his decision to cut the subsidies.

Several military commanders in uniform stood behind Moreno during his address, underscoring the armed forces’ support.

Moreno said his leftist predecessor, Rafael Correa, is trying to destabilize Ecuador with the help of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Ecuador is among dozens of nations calling for Maduro’s ouster.
The Venezuelan government has not commented on Moreno’s allegation.
 
Correa and Moreno have traded allegations of corruption in recent months, and Correa says he and his allies are victims of political persecution.
 
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido echoed Moreno’s accusation, saying Maduro associates are trying to destabilize Ecuador.

Some 480 people have been arrested during the unrest. The government last week declared a state of emergency, allowing it to curb some civil liberties as it tries to restore order.

The disturbances have spread from transport workers to students to indigenous demonstrators, an ominous turn for the government. Indigenous protesters played a major role in the 2005 resignation of Ecuador’s president at the time, Lucio Gutierrez, though the military’s tacit approval was key to his removal.
 
The country’s biggest indigenous group, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, which also had mounted protests against Correa, said Moreno’s government had failed to address protesters’ concerns and the welfare of Ecuador’s “most vulnerable” people.
 
“Troops and police who approach indigenous territories will be detained and subjected to indigenous justice,” the group said in a statement.

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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday his administration’s proposal to boost the biofuels market next year would bring the amount of corn-based ethanol mixed into the nation’s fuel to about 16 billion gallons (60.6 billion liters).

“We’ve come to an agreement and its going to be, I guess, about, getting close to 16 billion … that’s a lot of gallons. So they should like me out in Iowa,” he told a news conference.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program currently requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year, but the corn lobby has said the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of waivers means the actual volumes blended are lower than that.

Trump’s EPA unveiled the plan here last week to boost U.S. biofuels consumption to help struggling farmers, but did not provide an exact figure. The plan cheered the agriculture industry but triggered a backlash from Big Oil, which views biofuels as competition.

The deal is widely seen as an attempt by Trump, who faces a re-election fight next year, to mend fences with the powerful corn lobby, which was outraged by the EPA’s decision in August to exempt 31 oil refineries from their obligations under the RFS. That freed the refineries from the requirement to blend biofuels or buy credits from those who do.

Biofuel companies, farmers and Midwest lawmakers complain such waivers undercut demand for corn, which is already slumping because of the U.S. trade war with China. Oil refiners say the waivers protect blue-collar jobs and have no real impact on ethanol use.

The RFS was intended to help farmers and cut U.S. reliance on foreign energy imports, but has become a constant source of conflict between the oil and corn industries – two crucial constituencies heading into next year’s election.

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The Trump administration is putting 28 Chinese agencies and companies on what it calls its Entity List because of alleged human rights violations against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.

Groups on the list are forbidden from buying various high-tech parts and components from U.S. companies without U.S. government permission.

The Commerce Department says all those on the list — including the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region security bureau — have been accused of being part of the Chinese government’s campaign of repression, arbitrary mass arrests, and spying against Muslim minorities.

“The U.S. government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. “This action will ensure that our technologies, fostered in an environment of individual liberty and free enterprise, are not used to suppress defenseless minority populations.”

China denies any deliberate campaign to oppress Muslim minorities, saying it is targeting those it calls religious extremists.

It also dismisses reports of brutal prison camps for Uighurs, calling them education camps and training centers where there is no mistreatment.
 

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Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said it may be forced to cut power to most of Northern California later this week in order to prevent wildfires.

Weather forecasters are predicting hot, dry offshore winds — known as Diablo winds — for the region Wednesday and Thursday. The National Weather Service has issued a fire weather warning.

The utility said power could be shutoff in as many as 29 counties in the Bay Area, the coastal areas and the northern Central Valley.

PG&E is exercising extreme caution after its power lines sparked a blaze that destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, killed 85 people and ravaged the town of Paradise last year.

Last month, the company paid $11 billion to insurance companies for claims stemming from wildfires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018, including the one in Paradise.
 

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After helping to defeat the Islamic State in Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were put in charge of guarding Islamic State fighters — many of them foreigners to Syria — and their wives and children, with tens of thousands of fighters, women and children stuck in prisons or camps across northeastern Syria, U.S. officials said.

For months, the U.S. has been urging countries, especially its Western allies, to take back and prosecute citizens who left to fight with IS, also known as ISIS or Daesh. They have also called up upon them to repatriate family members who traveled to or were born into the terror group’s self-declared caliphate.  But those calls have largely gone unheeded.

President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday of a U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria, paving the way for a Turkish military operation against a Kurdish militia in the area, leaves unanswered what will happen to those imprisoned fighters and their families.

Here are the numbers of fighters and their family members believed held in northeastern Syria:

11,000: Total estimated fighters in Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) custody, in more than 30 makeshift prisons, such as converted schools and hospitals, per U.S. officials.

More than 2,000: Total estimated foreign fighters in SDF custody, according to the U.S.

More than 2,200: Total estimated foreign fighters in SDF custody, according to the Syrian Democratic Council.

73,000: Total estimated IS relatives/family members in displaced person camps, per U.S. officials.

About 100,000: Total estimated number of displaced people in camps across northeastern Syria, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

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With U.S. troops pulling out from the Syria-Turkey border following U.S. President Donald Trump’s Sunday announcement, Kurdish officials and experts say that Syrian Kurdish forces could turn to other powers for protection against a possible Turkish incursion into northeast Syria.

The United States and the international coalition to defeat the Islamic State (IS) terror group have been the leading backers of Kurdish forces, but there are other options for local forces if the U.S chose to halt its support, a local Kurdish official said.

“While the U.S. has had a major role in the fight against terrorism in Syria in recent years, we as Kurds always maintained our relations with other international and regional powers,” Abdulkarim Omar, co-chair of the Foreign Department at the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in northeast Syria, told Arta FM radio station on Monday.

He didn’t specifically name any countries, but noted that their priority is to prevent Turkish forces from invading their region.

‘Between a rock and a hard place’

Since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Kurdish People’s Protection Units known as (YPG) have been in charge of running their areas in the country’s northeast after Syrian regime troops withdrew to focus on fighting rebel forces elsewhere in the country.  

Experts say the sudden U.S. decision to withdraw from areas near the Syria-Turkish border has placed Syrian Kurdish forces in a difficult situation.

“The Syrian Kurds are stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Nicholas Heras, a Syria expert at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

He said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has the option to allow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to return to the area to prevent any Turkish military operation that could occur as a result of the U.S. troop withdrawal.

“This would be a bitter pill, but if the United States is going to encourage Turkey to carry out its military operations in northeast Syria, there may be no other option for them to turn to,” Heras told VOA.

The YPG-dominated SDF has been an effective U.S. partner in the fight against IS in Syria. But Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, has opposed this partnership.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for greater rights in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast for decades.

Despite a U.S.-Turkey agreement in August to establish a buffer zone between Turkish military and Syrian Kurdish fighters, Turkey has been threatening to carry out an offensive in northeast Syria to remove YPG fighters from areas near its border.

The White House said Turkey “will soon be moving forward” with its plans to carry out the offensive.

“The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial Caliphate, will no longer be in the immediate area,” the White House said in a statement.

The United States currently has about 1,000 troops in Syria that have been instrumental in the fight against IS. Kurdish military officials said on Monday that U.S. forces “have withdrawn from border areas with Turkey.”

Russia as an option

Some experts, like Radwan Badini, a professor of political science  at Salahaddin University in Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, say the anticipated security vacuum in northeast Syria following the U.S. troop pullout could force the Kurds to search for another powerful ally like Russia.

“There is still a chance that Russia could play a mediating role between al-Assad and the Kurds,” he said.

“Having Russia on your side, even though it’s a close [Syrian] regime ally, is much better than letting Turkey occupy the Kurdish region,” Badini told VOA.

But analyst Heras says that Russia has already made it clear to Kurdish forces that “it will not be the lobbyist for the Syrian Kurds in Damascus.”

“Russia wants the SDF to surrender to Assad first, then be possibly protected from Turkey by Assad later. It is just as likely that Russia will sell the SDF out to Turkey, in order to weaken the U.S.-trained forces,” he said.

Change in US decision?

Heras noted that, “the only real hope for the Syrian Kurds is a change of heart in the White House.”

But attempting to halt the U.S. decision to withdraw from Kurdish-held Syria is not an easy task, other experts believe.

“If the U.S. decision can’t be reserved, [Syrian Kurds] choice is surrender to the regime or a bloody insurgency against Turkey,” said Jonathan Spyer, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a U.S.-based think tank.

He added that YPG fighters “cannot defeat the Turks in a conventional battle. It is not viable if the intention is to drive Turkey out. It may be viable if the intention is to bleed Turkey over the medium to long term.”

New refugee crisis

United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Panos Moumtzis said on Monday that civilians in northeast Syria must be spared in any Turkish military operation in the region.

Rights groups also say that any operation carried out by Turkish forces in Syria’s northeast could further destabilize a region already devastated by the eight-year civil war.

“A Turkish assault on northeastern Syria, a country ravaged by war and a humanitarian crisis would likely cause massive civilian harm and further displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians…,” said Philippe Nassif, Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

He told VOA that, “a new refugee crisis on top of the one that has already led to over 5 million Syrians feeling their country would be a tragedy of epic proportions.”

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Hong Kong struggled to recover on Monday, with the metro only partially functioning and infrastructure extensively damaged, after scores of protesters were arrested in violent clashes overnight that drew the first warning from the Chinese military.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched peacefully through the center of the Chinese-ruled city on Sunday, wearing face masks in defiance of colonial-era emergency powers that threaten them with a maximum of one year in prison for hiding their faces.

However, the rallies deteriorated into running clashes as night fell. Police fired tear gas and used baton charges in an attempt to disperse petrol bomb-throwing protesters in several locations across the Asian financial hub.

Scores of protesters were arrested and bussed away under the new emergency laws, which came into effect on Friday night, after some of the most violent clashes in four months of protests virtually shut the city down on Saturday.

The protests have plunged the former British colony into its worst political crisis in decades and pose the biggest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement early on Monday, a public holiday in the city, “public safety has been jeopardized and the public order of the whole city is being pushed to the verge of a very dangerous situation.”

Further protests are planned in different districts on Monday evening.

Hong Kong’s rail operator, MTR, said on Monday that, due to “serious vandalism”, most of the stations in the network were temporarily closed. That included typically busy stations such as Admiralty and Wan Chai, around the city’s bar district.

MTR’s announcement followed an unprecedented closure on Saturday and minimal operations on Sunday, which largely paralyzed much of the city.

The entire network, which carries around 5 million passengers a day, would shut at 6 p.m. (1000 GMT), more than four hours earlier than normal, to allow for repairs, it said.

Grocery stores that had shut early on Sunday were mostly open by Monday morning. Many businesses and stores have had to close repeatedly during the four months of protests and Hong Kong now faces its first recession in a decade.

Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers last used more than 50 years ago in the hope of quelling the protests but the move has had the opposite effect, sparking three nights of violence.

China’s Hong Kong military garrison warned protesters on Sunday they could be arrested for targeting its barracks with laser lights.

Chinese military personnel raised a yellow flag with the arrest warning written in large letters, a Reuters witness said, the first direct interaction between the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and protesters.

A few hundred protesters shone laser lights on the barracks walls, the first time they have targeted PLA facilities, and troops in fatigues on the roof shone spotlights at protesters in return. The protesters eventually dispersed.

What started as opposition to a now-withdrawn extradition bill has grown into a pro-democracy movement against what is seen as Beijing’s increasing grip on the city, undermining its “one country, two systems” status promised when Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997.

China dismisses such accusations, saying foreign governments, including Britain and the United States, have fanned anti-China sentiment.

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As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.

But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.

It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company.

But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

On Friday, according to the news site Axios, Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers that it had been Perry who had prompted the phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for a “favor” regarding Biden. Axios cited a source saying Trump said Perry had asked Trump to make the call to discuss “something about an LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant.”

While it’s unclear whether Trump’s remark Friday referred specifically to the behind-the-scenes maneuvers this spring involving the multibillion-dollar state gas company, The Associated Press has interviewed four people with direct knowledge of the attempts to influence Naftogaz, and their accounts show Perry playing a key role in the effort. Three of the four spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The fourth is an American businessman with close ties to the Ukrainian energy sector.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Energy Department said Perry, a former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, was not advancing anyone’s personal interests. She said his conversations with Ukrainian officials about Naftogaz were part of his efforts to reform the country’s energy sector and create an environment where Western companies can do business.

The Trump and Giuliani allies driving the attempt to change the senior management at Naftogazt, however, appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine. For example, they told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington, according to three of the individuals interviewed by the AP. One of the individuals said he was so concerned by the whole affair that he reported it to a U.S. Embassy official in Ukraine months ago.

The businessmen 

Ukraine, a resource-rich nation that sits on the geographic and symbolic border between Russia and the West, has long been plagued by corruption and government dysfunction, making it a magnet for foreign profiteers.

At the center of the Naftogaz plan, according to three individuals familiar with the details, were three such businessmen: two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III.

Parnas and Fruman have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to Republicans, including $325,000 to a Trump-allied political action committee in 2018. This helped the relatively unknown entrepreneurs gain access to top levels of the Republican Party _ including meetings with Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.

The two have also faced lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts. During the same period they were pursuing the Naftogaz deal, the two were coordinating with Giuliani to set up meetings with Ukrainian government officials and push for an investigation of the Bidens.

Sargeant, his wife and corporate entities tied to the family have donated at least $1.2 million to Republican campaigns and PACs over the last 20 years, including $100,000 in June to the Trump Victory Fund, according to federal and state campaign finance records. He has also served as finance chair of the Florida state GOP, and gave nearly $14,000 to Giuliani’s failed 2008 presidential campaign.

In early March, Fruman, Parnas and Sargeant were touting a plan to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company, Andrew Favorov, according to two individuals who spoke to the AP as well as a memorandum about the meeting that was later submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.

Going back to the Obama administration, the U.S. Energy Department and the State Department have long supported efforts to import American natural gas into Ukraine to reduce the country’s dependence on Russia.

The three approached Favorov with the idea while the Ukrainian executive was attending an energy industry conference in Texas. Parnas and Fruman told him they had flown in from Florida on a private jet to recruit him to be their partner in a new venture to export up to 100 tanker shipments a year of U.S. liquefied gas into Ukraine, where Naftogaz is the largest distributor, according to two people briefed on the details.

Sargeant told Favorov that he regularly meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and that the gas-sales plan had the president’s full support, according to the two people who said Favorov recounted the discussion to them.

These conversations were recounted to AP by Dale W. Perry, an American who is a former business partner of Favorov. He told AP in an interview that Favorov described the meeting to him soon after it happened and that Favorov perceived it to be a shakedown. Perry, who is no relation to the energy secretary, is the managing partner of Energy Resources of Ukraine, which currently has business agreements to import natural gas and electricity to Ukraine.

A second person who spoke on condition of anonymity also confirmed to the AP that Favorov had recounted details of the Houston meeting to him.

According to Dale Perry and the other person, Favorov said Parnas told him Trump planned to remove U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and replace her with someone more open to aiding their business interests.

Dale Perry told the AP he was so concerned about the efforts to change the management at Naftogaz and to get rid of Yovanovitch that he reported what he had heard to Suriya Jayanti, a State Department foreign service officer stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv who focuses on the energy industry.

He also wrote a detailed memo about Favorov’s account, dated April 12, which was shared with another current State Department official. Perry recently provided a copy of the April memo to AP.

Jayanti declined to provide comment. Favorov also declined to comment.

On March 24, Giuliani and Parnas gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington with Healy E. Baumgardner, a former Trump campaign adviser who once served as deputy communications director for Giuliani’s presidential campaign and as a communications official during the George W. Bush administration.

She is now listed as the CEO of 45 Energy Group, a Houston-based energy company whose website describes it as a “government relations, public affairs and business development practice group.”

This was a couple of weeks after the Houston meeting with Favorov, the Naftogaz executive. Giuliani, Parnas and Baumgardner were there to make a business pitch involving gas deals in the former Soviet bloc to a potential investor.

This time, according to Giuliani, the deals that were discussed involved Uzbekistan, not Ukraine.

“I have not pursued a deal in the Ukraine. I don’t know about a deal in the Ukraine. I would not do a deal in the Ukraine now, obviously,” said Giuliani, reached while attending a playoff baseball game between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins. “There is absolutely no proof that I did it, because I didn’t do it.”

During this meeting, Parnas again repeated that Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, would soon be replaced, according to a person with direct knowledge of the gathering. She was removed two months later.

Giuliani, who serves as Trump’s personal lawyer and has no official role in government, acknowledged Friday that he was among those pushing the president to replace the ambassador, a career diplomat with a history of fighting corruption.

“The ambassador to Ukraine was replaced,” he said. “I did play a role in that.”

But Giuliani refused to discuss the details of his business dealings, or whether he helped his associates in their push to forge gas sales contracts with the Ukrainian company. He did describe Sergeant as a friend and referred to Parnas and Fruman as his clients in a tweet in May.  

As part of their impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have subpoenaed Giuliani for documents and communications related to dozens of people, including Favorov, Parnas, Fruman and Baumgardner’s 45 Energy Group.

Baumgardner issued a written statement, saying: “While I won’t comment on business discussions, I will say this: this political assault on private business by the Democrats in Congress is complete harassment and an invasion of privacy that should scare the hell out of every American business owner.”

Sargeant did not respond to a voice message left at a number listed for him at an address in Boca Raton.

John Dowd, a former Trump attorney who now represents Parnas and Fruman, said it was actually the Naftogaz executives who approached his clients about making a deal. He says they then met with Rick Perry to get the Energy Department on board.

“The people from the company solicited my clients because Igor is in the gas business, and they asked them, and they flew to Washington and they solicited,” Dowd said. “They sat down and talked about it. And then it was presented to Secretary Perry to see if they could get it together.

“It wasn’t a shakedown; it was an attempt to do legitimate business that didn’t work out.”

The energy secretary

In May, Rick Perry traveled to Kyiv to serve as the senior U.S. government representative at the inauguration of the county’s new president.

In a private meeting with Zelenskiy, Perry pressed the Ukrainian president to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board. Attendees left the meeting with the impression that Perry wanted to replace the American representative, Amos Hochstein, a former diplomat and energy representative who served in the Obama administration, with someone “reputable in Republican circles,” according to someone who was in the room.

Perry’s push for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to change its supervisory board was first reported by Politico.

A second meeting during the trip, at a Kyiv hotel, included Ukrainian officials and energy sector people. There, Perry made clear that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced, according to a person who attended both meetings. Perry again referenced the list of advisers that he had given Zelenskiy, and it was widely interpreted that he wanted Michael Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-American businessman from Texas, to join the newly formed board, the person said. Also on the list was Robert Bensh, another Texan who frequently works in Ukraine, the Energy Department confirmed.

Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, then the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine, were also in the room, according to photographs reviewed by AP. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said he was floored by the American requests because the person had always viewed the U.S. government “as having a higher ethical standard.”

The Naftogaz supervisory board is supposed to be selected by the Ukrainian president’s Cabinet in consultation with international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the United States and the European Union. It must be approved by the Ukrainian Cabinet. Ukrainian officials perceived Perry’s push to swap out the board as circumventing that established process, according to the person in the room.

U.S. Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Perry had consistently called for the modernization of Ukraine’s business and energy sector in an effort to create an environment that will incentivize Western companies to do business there. She said Perry delivered that same message in the May meeting with Zelenskiy.

“What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” Hynes said Saturday. “That is fiction being pushed by those who are disingenuously seeking to advance a nefarious narrative that does not exist.”

Hynes said the Ukrainian government had requested U.S. recommendations to advise the country on energy matters, and Perry provided those recommendations. She confirmed Bleyzer was on the list.  

Bleyzer, whose company is based in Houston, did not respond on Saturday to a voicemail seeking comment. Bensh also did not respond to a phone message.

As a former Texas governor, Perry has always had close ties to the oil and gas industry. He appointed Bleyzer to a two-year term on a state technologies fund board in 2009. The following year, records show Bleyzer donated $20,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign.

Zelenskiy’s office declined to comment on Saturday.

In an interview Friday with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Perry said that “as God as my witness” he never discussed Biden or his son in meetings with Ukrainian or U.S. officials, including Trump or Giuliani.

“This has been a very intense, a very focused push to get Ukraine to clean up the corruption,” Perry said in the interview. “I can’t go in good faith and tell a U.S. company, go and invest here, go and be involved if the corruption is ongoing.”

He did confirm he had had a conversation with Giuliani by phone, but a spokeswoman for the energy secretary declined to say when that call was or whether the two had discussed Naftogaz.

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A series of memes that have gone viral in Bolivia show President Evo Morales combating raging forest fires with a toy water gun or a flame-thrower, while others superimpose his image on the original cast of the “Ghostbusters” film.

Many young Bolivians have used the memes to poke fun at South America’s longest-serving leftist leader and what they say was his delayed response to thousands of forest fires they blame on his push to develop areas with slash-and-burn agriculture. As the blazes raged, Morales appeared in televised images personally battling flames with a water-filled backpack and nozzle.

Supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president say that showed the lengths to which he will go to protect the country’s forests, but many young people don’t buy it. And with young voters making up about a third of Bolivia’s electorate, they could determine the Oct. 20 election in which Morales is seeking a fourth term.

“If the president would have acted before, we wouldn’t be mourning so much loss or the death of so many animals … I’m reconsidering my vote,” said Rolando Condori, 26, a chef at a restaurant in the city of El Alto.

Condori said he has cast ballots for the 59-year-old Morales since he became eligible to vote at age 18. But now he is listening to other candidates to see who can provide jobs and take care of the environment, which have become top issues ahead of the election.

Young Bolivians have been outraged by fires that consumed an estimated 4 million hectares (15,440 square miles) in the past two months, blazes that flew partly under the radar as world attention focused on fires in neighboring Brazil’s Amazon.

Most of the fires in Bolivia have been in dry forests, prairies and farmland in the southeastern Chiquitania region in Santa Cruz province, although some affected the country’s Amazon region.

“Before the fires, Morales had his triumph assured,” said Marcelo Carpio of the network of Leaders for Democracy and Development, a political science school.

Opponents say a decree issued by Morales’ administration in July allowing some controlled burns for agricultural purposes contributed to the environmental disaster. The government denies the forest fires were caused by the decree, saying farmers have cleared land with burns for years and most are still done illegally.

In Morales’ 14 years in office, poverty has dropped in South America’s poorest country and the president still maintains a broad base of support, even among the young.

“To me, (his re-election) would be good for our Bolivia,” said Aldair Hermoso, an 18-year-old who recently quit school to pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. “Evo Morales will be a good president.”

But this support has diminished following corruption scandals, allegations about manipulation of the justice system and his insistence on running for yet another term.

Opinion polls, which say many young voters are undecided, point to a competitive election, and the possibility of a runoff vote. To avoid a runoff and win outright, a candidate must get 50% of the votes plus one or get 40% and finish 10 percentage points ahead of the nearest challenger.

“This is the first election with Mr. Morales participating in which the chance of him losing is real,” said political analyst Franklin Pareja.

Adding to discontent among the young was last year’s decision by Bolivia’s top electoral court to accept Morales’ candidacy for a fourth term despite a constitutional ban and a referendum in which more than 51% of Bolivians rejected his intention to modify the constitution to allow him to run again. Many questioned the independence of the court.

“Morales is no longer fashionable,” said Clara Huanca, a 21-year-old university student.

She said he has failed to provide plans for improving education and that she grew disappointed with Morales when he ignored the constitutional ban on running for more than two consecutive terms.

“I voted for Evo,” Huanca, who is of Aymara origin, said at an internet cafe while she finished a project with some of her classmates. “I was influenced by my parents, but now I’m completely against it and I’m analyzing my vote carefully.”

Many young Bolivians have no recollection of a president other than Morales, and some say they are ready for change despite years of economic and political stability.

But the impact of the youth vote is unpredictable.

While many reject Morales, who started in politics as a coca growers’ union leader, they are equally disenchanted with his top rivals, who include former President Carlos Mesa and lawmaker Oscar Ortiz.

Morales has said he doesn’t believe in social media.

“Social media are like sewers,” he said recently during a public event.

But his campaign has nevertheless created a group of “digital warriors” to reach out to young voters and counterbalance his negative image online.

Young Bolivians make up about 70% percent of the country’s internet users, but candidates have failed to understand their needs, said Tonny Lopez, a local expert in social networks.

And after 14 years in power, there is a lot of material out there to use to poke fun at Morales, Lopez said.

“It’s now in fashion to want to remove Evo (from power), and many don’t know why,” said Edgar Totora, 19. “I think it’s because of what he said himself: `I’ll leave if I lose the referendum,’ and he hasn’t done it. It’s like he’s laughing in our face.”

 

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Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told Iowa voters on Sunday that they can help refute questions about her electability if they support her in the caucuses.

“Iowans have the ability to show our country what can be, even if we’ve never seen it before,” Harris said during an event on Iowa State University’s campus.

The visit to Ames marked her first to the state since Harris announced plans to recommit her focus on Iowa, as part of an effort to turn around a campaign that has thus far struggled to gain traction. The California senator is planning to campaign in Iowa for half the month of October, will double her campaign staff from 65 to 130 and add 10 field offices over the next month.

Harris told reporters after the event, however, that nothing overall would change about her strategy in the Hawkeye State beyond her plans to focus more of her time here.

“It’s the plan that we’ve always had, which is after Labor Day, double the resources here,” she said.

“It’s basically about doing what is, I think, an important part of the process, which is engaging with people on the ground, where they live, in their neighborhoods, in their homes to talk about the issues that concern them, and address them.”

The ISU event was smaller than many she’s had in Iowa. Asked if she was concerned about the crowd, Harris simply said, “I’m not into comparing crowd size.”

Some Iowa Democrats have questioned whether Harris’ decision to refocus on Iowa has come too late in the race, as a number of other campaigns have already built out 100-strong staffs and opened field offices across Iowa. But many voters in attendance at the Harris event said they were still making up their minds.

“I think I’m like a typical Iowan who expects to check out all the candidates,” said Kyle Poorman, a 38-year-old agricultural researcher from Ames. He said, however, that Harris didn’t win him over Sunday.

“I almost feel like she maybe is listening to too many advisers,” Poorman said, noting she didn’t offer many Iowa-specific answers to the questions she was asked. He also said “she probably has a great story that didn’t come out on the stump,” because in his mind she focused too much on President Donald Trump.

Katherine Worley, a 33-year-old international educator from Ames, said she still hadn’t decided on her top candidates and wasn’t sure if Harris would make the cut. “I have to see more people,” she said.

And the California senator’s decision to focus more of her time in the state didn’t impress Worley.

“There’s already energy and focus on Iowa, so I think that’s great, but I don’t know if it necessarily sways me,” she said.

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A total of 110 million toilets constructed for 600 million people in 60 months.

Citing these figures, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced October 2 that the open defecation in rural India has ended.

However, the results of the world’s biggest toilet-building program rolled out by his government five years ago are more mixed.

While huge progress has been made in providing toilets across hundreds of thousands of villages, experts say open defecation has not been eliminated in a country where venturing into the fields is accepted as normal and where not everyone has access to a toilet yet.

The experience of 37-year-old Komal Godiwal, who migrated from her village in the northern Rajasthan state to work as a housemaid in New Delhi, highlights the gains and shortfalls of Modi’s flagship $20 billion “Clean India” mission.

Two years ago, she rushed to her village when, like millions of poor people, she received a government subsidy of about $200 to build a latrine. Her sister, who lives in the same village but did not receive the subsidy, uses the toilet. Critics charge that the distribution of money to help build toilets has been uneven.

Despite being the proud owner of a toilet, Godiwal herself struggles with issues of sanitation in the urban slum that is home to thousands of poor migrants like her. She and her family share a bathroom with about eight other families. “I have to wake up before 5 am, otherwise they get very dirty and there is a huge line,” she says.

Five years ago India accounted for the most people in the world defecating in the open – 600 million.  They mostly lived in rural areas, where having a household latrine was never a priority because of centuries-old cultural resistance to a toilet under the same roof as the kitchen or the prayer room.

Since then, those numbers have fallen dramatically as India has raced to build millions of toilets using an inexpensive design that involves constructing a twin-pit latrine where waste is piped from one pit to another and decomposes over time.

 Critics, however, charge that overzealous government workers may have inflated numbers since a deadline had been set for declaring India open-defecation free by October 2 — the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence struggle.

“The entire movement happened in a mission mode. There were targets to achieve,” according to Nazar Khalid, a New Delhi research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a nonprofit that works on child and sanitation issues in India. He charges that in some places people were coerced to build toilets by local authorities who wanted to demonstrate progress.

A study conducted last year by the group in four of India’s biggest states found that access to household toilets increased from 37% in 2014 to 71% last year. However, roughly one-quarter of people who owned a toilet continued to defecate in the open – they considered it wholesome and healthy and an opportunity to get some fresh air or see their fields.   

The government has dismissed the study, saying that the sample size of 3,235 households was too small in a program that had targeted millions of homes.  

A publicity blitz by the Clean India mission has attempted to shift dogged age-old attitudes and get people to use inside toilets.

Nearly half a million volunteers at the village level took the message to the country’s vast rural areas about how open defecation is the source of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and worm infection. Catchy advertisements and even a Bollywood movie featuring a top star picked up the issue to emphasize how toilets at home improve security for women who venture into the fields in the cover of darkness.

Many sanitation experts emphasize that although problems persist, there have been massive gains.

“We have to look at it in the context of the massive scale of India,” according to V.K. Madhavan who heads the India affiliate of WaterAid, a global nonprofit organization working on sanitation issues.

“My sense is that while there are still areas for improvement and gaps, the progress that has been made and what has been achieved will shift the global indicators on sanitation.”

Godiwal, who grew up going into the fields, testifies to changes she has noticed during her visits to her village in the last two years, saying most younger people have stopped open defecation.

Nevertheless, age-old habits have been harder to break among the older people, she says.

“My brother scolds my mother if she goes out in the open, but she gets up early and goes out quietly because she prefers it,” she laughs. Meanwhile, she frets about the state of the toilet she is forced to use in her slum.  

The challenge of reaching the “last mile” also remains – coverage for the poorest and most marginalized, who often tend to be excluded from such programs.

“The point is that in our country so many people are so poor, life is a struggle and sanitation is not a priority,” says Madhavan.

At the same time, he is bullish about the program, saying there will be a point at which “it becomes aspirational for everybody to have a toilet.”

 

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Egypt has urged international mediation over what it called “deadlock” in talks in Sudan over a massive dam under construction on the Nile River, sparking fresh tensions with Ethiopia.

Negotiations between the three countries have been at a stalemate for years after Ethiopia began constructing the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile in 2012.

Ethiopia says the project is needed to provide electricity.

But Egypt is concerned the huge dam will severely reduce its water supplies and says it has “historic rights” to the river guaranteed by decades-old treaties.

Egypt “called for the involvement of an international party in the Renaissance Dam negotiations to mediate between the three countries,” the irrigation ministry said in a statement late Saturday after a new round of talks ended in Khartoum.

An impasse was reached after Ethiopia “rejected all the proposals that take Egypt’s water interests into account,” the ministry added.

It said Ethiopia presented a proposal that “lacked guarantees” of the minimum water flow as well as how to deal with possible droughts.

The Ethiopian foreign ministry rejected Egypt’s call for international mediation as “an unwarranted denial of the progress” of talks.

“It also goes against the consent and wishes of Ethiopia,” it added.

The Egyptian presidency called on the United States to play “an active role” in the issue, invoking the need for an international party to “overcome the deadlock”.

The White House had on Friday expressed “support” for the negotiations, urging all sides “to put forth good faith efforts to reach an agreement”.

Ethiopia however dismissed Cairo’s assessment of the latest negotiations.

“The allegation that talks ended in a deadlock is completely false,” Ethiopian Minister for Water and Energy Selishi Bekele told reporters on Saturday.

He said that “some progress has been made” but acknowledged that there were “pending issues”.

Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said Egypt’s approach in the talks was “another instance of a disruptive tactic it applied to halt the hydrology, environmental and social impact assessment” of the dam.

The Nile, which runs through 10 countries, is Africa’s longest river and a crucial artery for water supplies and electricity for all the countries.

Its main tributaries — the White Nile and the Blue Nile — converge in Khartoum before it flows through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.

Ethiopia has said the $4 billion dam will begin generating power by the end of 2020 and will be fully operational by 2022.

Analysts fear that the three Nile basin countries could be drawn into a conflict if the dispute is not resolved before the dam begins operating.

 

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Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Sunday he was seeking “non-aggression” agreements with Gulf Arab nations that do not formally recognize the country as a prelude to possible future peace deals.

Details of the proposal were not made public, but it was the latest sign of Israel’s push to improve ties with Gulf Arab nations with whom it has no formal diplomatic relations.

Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory has long served as a major factor preventing peace deals with Arab countries, but common concerns over Iran are widely seen as having brought them closer in recent years.

“Recently, I have been promoting, under the backing of the United States, a political initiative to sign ‘non-aggression agreements’ with the Arab Gulf states,” Katz wrote on Twitter.

“The historic move will put an end to the conflict and allow civilian cooperation until peace agreements are signed.”

Katz said he discussed the initiative with unnamed Arab foreign ministers and U.S. President Donald Trump’s outgoing envoy Jason Greenblatt while attending the U.N. General Assembly in late September.

A spokesman for Katz declined to provide further details for now, and it was not clear how much progress he has made in the endeavor.

Only two Arab countries — Jordan and Egypt — have peace treaties with Israel, but there have been overt signs in recent months of improved relations with Gulf nations.

A year ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held surprise talks with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos in Muscat.

Katz in July said he had met his Bahraini counterpart publicly for the first time during a visit to Washington.

In late June, a group of Israeli journalists attended the US-led economic conference on Israeli-Palestinian peace in Bahrain.

All did not go well, however, when a group of invitees from Arab states visited Israel in July.

Palestinians hurled abuse and chairs at a member of the delegation — a Saudi blogger — as he visited east Jerusalem’s Old City.

East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.

Israel sees the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

 

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Iraq’s Cabinet issued a new reform plan early Sunday following a night of clashes in which security forces opened fire on protesters killing at least 19 people.

The Cabinet met through the night Saturday in an effort to respond to five days of protests that have taken authorities by surprise and led to the deaths of nearly 100 people.

Cabinet officials released a series of planned reforms, which addressed land distributions and military enlistments as well as increasing welfare stipends for poor families and training programs for unemployed youth.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi told his cabinet late Saturday in televised remarks that he is willing to meet with protesters and hear their demands. He called on the protesters to end their demonstrations.
The protests in Baghdad and in several southern Iraqi cities have grown from initial demands for jobs and improved city services, such as water and power, to calls now to end corruption in the oil-rich country of nearly 40 million people.

On Saturday, the Iraqi parliament tried to respond to the crisis by calling an emergency session, however they were unable to reach a quorum because of legislators who are boycotting parliamentary sessions.

Former Shi’ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest opposition bloc in parliament, called Friday for the government to resign and said “early elections should be held under U.N. supervision.”
The protests are the first major challenge to Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi, who formed his government a year ago.

The government has blamed the violence on “groups of riot inciters” and has said security forces are working to protect the safety of peaceful protesters.

Iraq’s parliament has ordered a probe into the violence.

Many Iraqi citizens blame politicians and government officials for the corruption that has prevented the country from rebounding from years of sectarian violence and the battle to defeat Islamic State militants, who at one point controlled large areas in the northern and western part of the country.

 

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Thousands of demonstrators gathered in central Kyiv on Sunday to protest broader autonomy for separatist territories, part of a plan to end a war with Russian-backed fighters.

Protesters chanted “No to surrender!”, with some holding placards critical of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the crowd, which police said had swelled to around 10,000 people.

The country’s 41-year-old president is gearing up to hold his first summit with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in an effort to revive a stalled peace process to end the five year separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

This week Ukrainian, Russian and separatist negotiators agreed on a roadmap that envisages special status for separatist territories if they conduct free and fair elections under the Ukrainian constitution.

Zelenskiy’s critics fear that Putin will push the comedian-turned-politician to make damaging concessions in order to retain Moscow’s de-facto control of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

Protesters in Kyiv’s Independence Square said that agreeing to give broader autonomy to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic would mean surrendering Ukraine’s interests.

“We are against a betrayal,” protester Sergiy Lezvinsky, 58, told AFP.

“We want to put an end to the occupation, to the decisions that are being fast-tracked.”

The provisional agreement of a roadmap was a key condition set by Moscow for a meeting that will be hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and also involve German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The plan has been dubbed “the Steinmeier formula”, after the former German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who proposed it.

But many critics say the proposal favors Russia.

Zelenskiy’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko has called it “Putin’s formula,” claiming it will endorse the Russian annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s de-facto control of eastern Ukraine.

“The Steinmeier formula is a Putin project,” said protester Mykola Chepiga.

He said elections could take place in eastern Ukraine only if Kyiv restores control of the country’s borders in the east.

In an address to the nation earlier this week Zelenskiy said he respected the right of Ukrainians to protest but called on people not to “give in to provocations”.

He pledged not to betray the country’s interests.

The ex-Soviet country of 45 million people has gone through two popular uprisings in two decades and has been mired in a conflict with separatists since 2014.

The conflict — the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War — broke out after Russia annexed Crimea in March, 2014 and has claimed some 13,000 lives.

 

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Rights groups and opposition parties in Thailand are warning that a new center authorities plan to open by next month to combat the spread of fake news online may be misused to target and silence government critics.

Thailand emerged from five years of military rule after tainted elections in March that returned the leaders of a 2014 coup to power. The junta sued or arrested hundreds for peacefully protesting its rule and criticizing the military, often online.

Digital Economy and Society Minister Buddhipongse Punnakanta announced the center’s pending arrival in August, adding Thailand to the list of countries in the region fortifying their fronts against online fake news.

The state-run National News Bureau of Thailand later reported that the center would open by November 1 to vet dubious news found online and respond to any falsehoods jeopardizing peace and security with the facts via Facebook, the messaging application Line, and a dedicated website. It said the center would focus on natural disasters, the economy and finance, health products and hazards, and government policy.

However, opposition parties and rights groups say the track record of the junta and the government that has replaced it, led by the pro-military Palang Pracharath party, provide reason to worry.

“There are serious concerns that the proposed fake news center of the government will be yet another tool for censorship, because up until now all of the anti-fake news operation of Thai authorities focus exclusively on comments of critics and dissidents … while taking no action at all against misinformation and hate campaign from sources known to be connected to the military and Palang Pracharath party,” said Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Thailand.

Buddhipongse’s staff told VOA that no one was available to comment for this story.

Another common concern among critics is that the center will combine the government’s alleged bias with the power to sue and arrest.

The digital economy minister “has made it clear that the center will work as an interagency coordinating point and [be] authorized to prosecute people with various laws,” Sunai said. “So all this combined together are very draconian censorship tools that [the] Thai government has been using over the past five years under military rule. Now those rules have been consolidated into one center.”

Arthit Suriyawongkul, co-founder of the Thai Netizen Network, which advocates for online freedom, shared his worry.

“I still hope that they would do the right job. We would love to be positive about this, because in the end … we do think that fake news and disinformation in general, actually they do some harm,” he said, referring in particular of the spread of products speciously claimed to have medicinal value.

Arthit said, however, that authorities have too often applied the “fake news” label to what is really just critical opinion.

“We found that the effort, most of the time, is actually targeted [at] those [who are] anti-government or dissidents in general. And sometimes it’s not actually quite clear if [the] information is actually true or false,” he said.

“So I think they just use the term [for] their convenience, as an excuse to clamp down [on] expression.”

Thailand is not alone.

Lasse Schuldt, a lecturer with the law faculty at Thailand’s Thammasat University, said Southeast Asia has become something of a “world’s laboratory” for so-called fake news laws.

While Malaysia and Singapore have attracted the most attention for recent legislation taking the issue head-on, he said other countries in the region have their own laws covering fake news. In Thailand, the Computer Crimes Act specifically criminalizes the publication or sharing of false information online.

When Thailand’s anti-fake news center is finally up and running, Schuldt said it will be in the company of similarly dedicated operations in Vietnam and Indonesia.

The academic said a multilayered combination of developments was driving the trend, from the viral talk of “fake news” during the 2016 U.S. election to countries in Southeast Asia adopting and adapting the language for their own purposes.

“Local realities influence the discourse as well,” he said. “Singapore points in particular to its perceived vulnerability and the prevention of foreign influence. Protracted political division is the background in Thailand. And Vietnam is mostly concerned about the protection of the [Communist] Party and the state.”

The spread of fake news via social media has been blamed for sparking deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar and for stoking racial and religious tensions ahead of national elections in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, earlier this year.

 

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Hundreds of prisoners, including an opposition party leader, were freed Saturday in Cameroon after Cameroon President Paul Biya ordered a halt to court proceedings against them. 

Supporters sang and shouted at the Yaounde military tribunal as opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who claims he won the October 2018 presidential election, was freed along with other members of his party. Among them was 25-year-old Sabastien Ngomfoue, who was one of hundreds arrested last February in Douala for protesting what they called Kamto’s stolen election victory .

“I was arrested on the 28th of February. I have been in SED gendarme [detention] in Yaounde for seven months,” Ngomfoue said. “This is my first time in court and God almighty, I have been liberated. I plead that they should continue to do more [releases], we [prisoners] face lots of difficulties.”

On Friday night at the national dialogue called for by Biya to address the country’s crisis — especially the separatist war that has killed 2,000 people — the president ordered an end to court proceedings against some members of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) of Kamto.

Sosthene Medard Lipot, Kamto’s spokesperson, said they will continue pressing for Kamto to be officially declared the winner and recognized as president.

Lipot said president Biya should have ordered the justice system that he “manipulates” to hasten Kamto’s judgment. He said they wanted to prove in the military tribunal that Kamto’s insurrection charges were based on fabrications by the Biya regime.

Kamto and about 500 CRM members were arrested after taking part in peaceful protests against alleged irregularities in the voting process that Biya easily won to claim a seventh term. Official results said Kamto finished a distant second with 14 percent of the vote.

Amos Oum, a municipal counselor who took part in the national dialogue, said one of the strong recommendations made was that Biya should release all prisoners arrested in connection with the separatist war that has killed more than 2,000 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, as well as people arrested for protesting the poll results.

Oum said he is very happy that shortly after the president received the report, he ordered the release of the political prisoners — an indication that Biya also wants to restore peace.

Biya this week also pardoned 333 separatist fighters accused of misdemeanors. But separatist leaders, including Julius Ayuk Tabe, who were sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal in August, have not been released as requested by some at the national dialogue.

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Thousands marched in Edinburgh Saturday calling for Scottish independence, with a possible British exit from the European Union just weeks away and calls growing for a fresh vote in Scotland on breaking from Britain.

The demonstrators, many carrying Scottish flags, some wearing kilts and a few playing musical instruments – including bagpipes – set off from Holyrood Park in the heart of the Scottish capital.

Among them was lawyer and Scottish Nationalist (SNP) lawmaker Joanna Cherry, who was behind one of the successful legal challenges to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament.

She was also one of main backers of a law passed last month forcing Johnson to ask the European Union for more time to avoid crashing out of the EU without a deal.

The group organizing Saturday’s march, All Under One Banner, said were hoping to get 100,000 people to attend.

Scotland voted against independence in a 2014 referendum by 55 percent.

But nationalists argue that the 2016 British referendum in favor of Brexit means another independence referendum is necessary — because Scotland voted by 62 percent to stay in the EU.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, has argued that Brexit will devastate the economy.

Nationalists also argue that some people voted against independence thinking it would guarantee their place inside the EU.

Sturgeon, who wants a second independence referendum in 2021, was unable to attend the march, but tweeted a message of support.

Some independence activists also joined the march, while a few pro-Union protesters carrying Union Jack flags staged a small counter-demonstration.

 

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The International Organization for Migration has helped 143 Somali refugees, stranded in war-torn Yemen, return home earlier this week.  

The group of Somali refugees, including 56 children, set off by boat from the port of Aden on Monday and arrived at the port of Berbera in Somaliland the following day.

The U.N. migration agency’s spokesman, Joel Millman, said government officials and representatives from humanitarian agencies were on hand to greet them and provide assistance.

“With the conflict having effects on the economic and security situation in Yemen, many migrants and refugees find themselves without the means to provide for themselves and their families.  Stranded, they then turn to humanitarian organizations for return assistance,” Millman said.

The return project is funded by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center and the Kuwaiti government. Since it began last November, Millman said more than 1,500 Somali refugees have been repatriated.

Somalis comprise the bulk of the 250,000 refugees in Yemen.  Many have been there since the 1980s. That’s when civil war broke out in Somalia, leading to the overthrow of President Mohamed Siad Barre.

The safety enjoyed by Somali refugees in Yemen for many years has long since dissipated. Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war for more than four years that turned situation in the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.  The United Nations reports two thirds of the population, or 24 million people, is dependent on international aid for survival.

U.N. refugee spokesman Babar Balloch told VOA conditions in Somalia still are not conducive for returns.  But he adds the UNHCR will assist Somali refugees who voluntarily request help to return home.  

“With the prolonged conflict, the refugees have also been feeling the pressure.  And for those who want to go back home in spite of what is happening inside Somalia, we are able to help them… Once they reach Berbera, we are able to give them some assistance.  In terms of where they want to go and settle down, that is entirely up to the refugees,” he said.

Balloch said the UNHCR and IOM have jointly repatriated nearly 5,000 Somali refugees by boat from Yemen to Somalia since 2017.

 

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Iraqi officials say one person was killed in Baghdad as police fired on anti-government protesters Saturday, the first day of demonstrations since a two-day curfew was lifted.

Demonstrators began taking to the streets last Tuesday to protest unemployment, poor public services and corruption.
 
Saturday’s protests came one day after former Shi’ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest opposition bloc in parliament, called on the government to resign and said “early elections should be held under U.N. supervision.”
 
Iraqi forces have been opening fire on the protesters, and medical and security sources say at least 65 people have been killed this week.
 
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a statement Friday saying “the deaths of civilians and the growing number of wounded at the ongoing protests across the country is particularly worrying, as is the use of firearms for restoring public order.”

The ICRC has called on both sides to show restraint as it monitors developments on the ground.

‘Difficult choices’

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said Friday that the security measures, including the temporary curfew imposed were “difficult choices” but they were needed like “bitter medicine” that had to be swallowed.

In addition to those killed, hundreds of people have been wounded since the demonstrations began. The demonstrations have spread in Baghdad and in areas south of the capital.

The protests are the first major challenge to Abdul-Mahdi, who formed his government a year ago.

The government blamed the violence on “groups of riot inciters” and said security forces worked to protect the safety of peaceful protesters.

Iraq’s parliament has ordered a probe into the violence.

Many Iraqi citizens blame politicians and government officials for the corruption that has prevented the country from rebounding from years of sectarian violence and the battle to defeat Islamic State militants, who at one point controlled large areas in the northern and western part of the country.

At his weekly Cabinet meeting earlier this week, the prime minister released a statement promising jobs for graduates. He also ordered the oil ministry and other government agencies to apply a 50% quota for local workers in future contracts with foreign countries.

 

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Thousands of residents of Pakistan-held Kashmir rallied Saturday on board vehicles and motorbikes to press for their demand that India lift a two-month old controversial clampdown in its controlled portion of the disputed region.

The protest came on a day when U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen arrived in Pakistan after visiting India, where he was refused permission to personally visit Kashmir to assess the situation.

While speaking in the eastern Pakistan city of Multan, Van Hollen urged New Delhi to ensure protection of human rights, restore communications and release political prisoners in the disputed territory.

The protesters in Pakistani-administered Kashmir were calling for the region’s independence from both the countries and they were headed to the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the Himalayan territory, vowing to force their way into the Indian side.

“We want freedom on this [Pakistani] side and that [Indian] side,” chanted the slowly moving and charged up crowd that is expected to reach the boundary line on Sunday.

Local police have placed roadblocks just a few kilometers from the LoC, however, to prevent the rally from reaching the de facto border.

“I am going with this march to express solidarity with our Kashmiri brothers, who have been under curfew for two months now,” Ejaz Ahmed, a 64-year-old medical doctor by profession, told VOA.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government on August 5 unilaterally scrapped a decades old constitutional semi-autonomous status for the country’s only Muslim-majority state.

New Delhi has since deployed tens of thousands of additional troops, cut phone and internet services, and arrested nearly 4,000 people, including the region’s top political leadership, journalists and lawyers, amid serious allegations of torture and abuses.

The unprecedented lockdown to deter dissent and violent reactions by the local population has effectively isolated millions of Kashmiris from the rest of the world. India also has not permitted diplomats or foreign journalists to visit Kashmir. 

“We think it’s important that journalists and others be permitted to see exactly what’s going on with their own eyes. That’s why I had wanted to go there so that we can get the truth and get all the facts,” Hollen said. He is accompanied by U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan on the visit.

Modi has defended his actions in Kashmir, saying they are meant to bring development and prosperity to the violence-plagued region. Critics, including those in India, have rejected these assertions, though, calling for an immediate easing of the lockdown.

Saturday’s protest demonstration was being led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) group, which operates on both sides and has been seeking total independence from India and Pakistan. The leader of the Indian chapter of JKLF is also among those Indian authorities have detained on the other side of the border.

JKLF activists made a similar attempt to cross the disputed border in 1992, but a police crackdown prevented them from doing so and the ensuing clashes killed at least 12 people.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan asked the protesters to desist from crossing the Kashmir LoC, saying it would give India “an excuse to increase violent oppression of Kashmiris” on the other side. He warned that India also could use it to launch a cross-border attack on Pakistani-held part of the region, known as Azad (free) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

“I understand the anguish of Kashmiris in AJK seeing their fellow Kashmiris in IOJK [Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir] under an inhuman curfew for over 2 months,” Khan tweeted just before the rally began its march from the main city of Muzaffarabad.

Last week, while Khan was addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he emphatically urged member nations to intervene to persuade India to lift its siege of Kashmir before it results in another direct military conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations.

Khan asserted that Kashmiris would not accept the Indian moves and “what is going to happen when the curfew is lifted will be a bloodbath” for which Pakistan will be blamed, potentially drawing the two neighbors into war that could escalate into a nuclear exchange.

A new study released earlier this week warned that should a nuclear war ever occur between India and Pakistan, it would immediately kill up to 125 million people in both the countries, followed by mass starvation and ecosystem catastrophe far outside of the war zone itself. The research was jointly conducted by University of Colorado Boulder and Rutgers University.

The United States also has called on India to ease restrictions in Kashmir. Since the scrapping of the region’s special status by New Delhi, dozens of U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns over what they have described as the “humanitarian crisis” in Kashmir.

 

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North Korea’s underwater-launched missile has a longer-range than the missiles the country tested earlier this year and is designed to be launched from a submarine that has a potential to pose a threat to the U.S. allies in northeast Asia, experts said.

“The missile tested … has a maximum range of more than twice that of the shorter-range systems North Korea has been testing” this summer, said Michael Elleman, director of Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “It does not pose a threat to the continental U.S., but once fully developed, it will threaten U.S. allies and interests in northeast Asia.”

North Korea conducted an underwater launch of a new ballistic missile on Wednesday that flew about 450 kilometers off the country’s eastern coastal town of Wonsan before landing in the waters off Japan. It reached a peak altitude of 950 kilometers, South Korean’s Joint Chief of Staff said.

“It’s indeed the longest-range, solid-fueled missile North Korea has tested to date,” said Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “[North Korea] has not tested this kind of missile since 2016.”

Reaching South Korea, Japan

The missile tested Wednesday is considered to have a maximum range of about 1,900 kilometers at a standard trajectory. The range makes it possible to target all of South Korea and Japan’s four main islands. The missile is considered the Pukguksong-3, and the last time North Korea tested a Pukguksong-class missile was in August 2016. 

North Korea tested solid-fueled missiles this summer, in an apparent attempt to fine tune the technology. Missiles using solid fuel are harder to detect because the fuel can be loaded long before any launches and then be moved.

The mobile characteristic of the solid-fueled missiles makes it possible to upload the missiles on a submarine or an underwater barge before being launched. This is considered an improvement over liquid-fuel missiles, which have to be loaded immediately before missiles are fired.

 

“This missile is likely based on the Pukuksong-2, previously tested a few years ago,” Elleman said. “It appears some small improvements have been incorporated to enhance the missile’s maximum range by a few hundred kilometers and to fit into the smaller confines of the submarine launch tube.”

Williams said North Korea’s goal is to improve solid fuel missile technology and transfer it to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can reach the continental U.S.

“It’s one more piece of evidence that North Korea’s growing competency with solid fuel,” Williams said. “This knowledge would likely be applicable to a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, which I believe is Pyongyang’s ultimate goal in its missile development.”

Missile test results

North Korea said Thursday it had successfully conducted a missile test from a submarine, which differs from a U.S. assessment.

“The successful new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test-firing comes to be of great significance as it ushers in a new phase in containing the outside forces’ threat to the DPRK and further bolstering its military muscle for self-defense,” the country’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. DPRK is North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Contrarily, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea tested a missile from a sea-based platform.

“I am not going to get into specifics to what the actual missile was other than to say, again, it was a short — to medium — range and I would say that we have no indication that it was launched from a submarine but rather a sea-based platform,” spokesperson Patrick Ryder said Thursday.

Much of the threat from submarine-launched missiles depends on how advanced the submarine is, experts said.

“If that submarine is noisy and, thus, easily detectable, it may not pose much of a threat to anyone,” Williams said. “It would, however, require near-constant monitoring, which would tie up surveillance and undersea assets that might be assigned elsewhere.”

Elleman said North Korea has not fully developed its submarine technology to deploy a submarine far off the country’s coast.

“North Korea’s submarine will not venture far from the [Korean] peninsula, as the country lacks the supporting infrastructure, ships, logistics, and secure communications to operate them at long distance,” he added.

North Korea unveiled what it called a new submarine in July as a sign indicating Pyongyang was developing SLBM technology.

North Korea’s latest test came days prior to the resumption of the long-stalled working-level talks scheduled to take place Saturday in Sweden. The talks had been stalled since the failed Hanoi Summit in February, and since May, North Korea has been conducting multiple missile tests.

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