Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is making her first campaign hires in early voting Nevada, scooping up staffers who worked for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.

Klobuchar’s campaign announced Friday the Minnesota senator had hired Marina Negroponte to serve as state director and Cameron Miller to serve as Nevada political director. Both held similar roles in the state for O’Rourke’s campaign, which ended this month.

Negroponte helped organize the Hispanic community for the civil rights nonprofit We Are All Human Foundation and spent a decade working in international development for the United Nations.

Miller has worked on several state legislative campaigns in Nevada.

The state is third in line to vote next year on the Democratic presidential field.

Klobuchar has been working to build momentum after strong performances in the last two debates.

…

Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger and independent journalist Pham Chi Dung, a prominent government critic and VOA contributor, in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday.

In a statement posted online, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security accused Dung of “dangerous” anti-state actions, including “fabricating, storing, and disseminating information, as well as other materials opposing the Vietnamese government.”

State media said Dung carried out “anti-regime activities such as producing anti-state articles, [and] cooperating with foreign media.”

Dung, 53, president of the outlawed Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), could face a jail sentence of five to 20 years if found guilty, local media said.

Dung, who writes regularly on VOA’s Vietnamese Blog, faced similar allegations in 2012.

IJAVN vice president Nguyen Tuong Thuy told VOA that Dung’s arrest was “a dangerous move to silence dissenting voices and repress freedom of speech in Vietnam.”

IJAVN’s website has been blocked since Dung’s arrest. Thuy said he fears “the arrest will have a big impact on the group’s activities and its members,” as authorities continue to investigate the group.

Dung established IJAVN as a “civil society organization,” July 4, 2014, and has said that America’s Independence Day inspired him to create a platform to advocate for freedom of the press, freedom of expression and democracy.

“The arrest of Pham Chi Dung is the continuation of an intensified crackdown against political activists and bloggers in Vietnam,” freelancer Duong Van Thai, a Vietnamese political asylum seeker in Thailand and a former state-run media reporter in Vietnam, told VOA. “The arrest showed Hanoi’s desire to exercise greater control over the freedom of speech.”

Nguyen Tuong Thuy noted that Dung’s criticism of the government had intensified of late, likely triggering his arrest.

“He has written more aggressively in a stronger style, but Pham Chi Dung is still the same!” Thuy said

Dung resigned from the Communist Party in 2013, ending 20 years of membership. In the years since, Reporters Without Borders has lauded him as an “information hero.” In addition to VOA, he has contributed to NBC News and Nikkei Asian Review.

The Vietnamese government continues to ban independent or privately-owned media outlets. It exerts strict control over radio and TV stations and printed publications, and routinely block access to politically sensitive websites.

…

President Donald Trump on Friday promoted a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, a day after a former White House adviser called it a “fictional narrative” and said it played into Russia’s hands.

Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and said he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he withheld aid over the summer. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the center of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly $400 million.

He also worked to undercut witnesses at the hearings, including the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump recalled from her post in Kyiv. The president called her an “Obama person” and claimed without evidence that she didn’t want his picture to hang on the walls of the embassy.

“There are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like,” he said, adding that he asked why administration officials were being so kind to her. “‘Well, sir, she’s a woman. We have to be nice,’ ” he said they told him. Without providing details, Trump said he viewed her differently. “She’s very tough. I heard bad things,” he said.

He repeated his assertion that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime, a theory his own advisers have dismissed.

“They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” Trump said. “I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”

The president in the wide-ranging interview also claimed that he knows the identity of the whistleblower who filed the formal complaint that spurred the impeachment inquiry.

“You know who the whistleblower is. So do I,” Trump told the hosts.

Trump said he didn’t believe House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., who has maintained that he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower.

“If he doesn’t, then he’s the only person in Washington who doesn’t,” Trump said.

Trump said he does not expect to be impeached, claiming Democrats have “absolutely nothing” incriminating, despite days of public testimony by witnesses who said Trump withheld aid from Ukraine to press the country to investigate his political rivals.

“I think it’s very hard to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing,” Trump said, adding that if the House did vote to impeach him, he would welcome a trial in the Senate.

Trump’s claim on Ukraine being behind the 2016 election interference has been discredited by intelligence agencies and his own advisers.

CrowdStrike, an internet security firm based in California, investigated the DNC hack in June 2016 and traced it to two groups of hackers connected to a Russian intelligence service – not Ukraine.

One version of the debunked theory holds that CrowdStrike is owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. In fact, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born U.S. citizen who immigrated as a child and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The president repeated his claim one day after Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser on the White House National Security Council, admonished Republicans for pushing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill testified before the House impeachment inquiry panel. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Trump told “Fox & Friends” that “there was no quid pro quo,” in his efforts to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine.

The president’s assertion is at odds with sworn testimony by impeachment witnesses.

…

Prince Andrew is scaling back travel and facing an uncertain future as he steps away from the royal role he has embraced for his entire adult life.
                   
The latest blow came Friday afternoon when the board of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra announced that it was cutting ties to Andrew, who had been its patron.
                   
The 59-year-old prince has suffered numerous setbacks in the six days since the broadcast of a disastrous TV interview from Buckingham Palace during which he defended his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died in a New York prison in August in what the New York City medical examiner ruled was a suicide.
                   
The Times newspaper said in an editorial Friday that the debacle demonstrates the need for “urgent reform” of the royal household. The paper urged Andrew’s older brother and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, to take steps to streamline and make the royal family “more modest.”
                   
The disgraced prince scuttled plans for a trip to Bahrain that had been planned to support his Pitch(at)Palace project, according to the British news media, even though he is struggling to keep that enterprise going despite cutting ties to dozens of other charities.
                   
He did go horseback riding with his mother, 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, near Windsor Castle on Friday afternoon despite harsh November weather. The monarch has not commented publicly on her son’s troubles.
                   
There was a visceral public backlash to the TV interview _ particularly because Andrew did not express sympathy for Epstein’s young female victims that led politicians to debate the future of the monarchy in a televised debate ahead of the Dec. 12 national election. Shortly after the interview, Andrew announced that he was halting his royal duties “for the foreseeable future.”
                   
Up until now, Andrew, the queen’s third child, had been able to skate away from troublesome questions about his private life and his extravagant lifestyle. His association with Epstein had been known for more than eight years, but it only took him down after he went on TV to discuss it.
                   
Andrew is trying to find a way to keep alive at least one of his projects without relying on the prestige and real estate of the royal family.
                   
Buckingham Palace officials said Andrew would try to maintain Pitch(at)Palace as a non-royal charity that eventually would not be centered at any of the royal palaces. The prince founded the project in 2014 to link up young entrepreneurs with established business people. In the past, idea and product pitches for the program have taken place at St. James’ Palace.
                   
According to its website, Pitch(at)Palace has helped 931 start-up businesses and created nearly 6,000 new jobs. It boasts a 97% survival rate for new companies started by its alumni.
                   
Andrew was expected to remove himself from the many other charities with which he’s been involved over the years, a diverse group that sheds light on his interests and reflects the varied demands made on a senior royal.
                   
Among them have been the Army Officers’ Golfing Society, which promotes golf in the British Army, and the Maimonides Interfaith Foundation, which is devoted to the use of art and dialogue to improve relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians.
                   
The prince also was involved with a group fighting malaria and a charity helping deaf children throughout the Commonwealth, which includes Britain and many of its former colonies.
                   
The Falklands War veteran also was expected to drop his ceremonial role with many military units. In addition, he has resigned as patron of The Outward Bound Trust, an educational charity that helps young people have adventures in the wild with which he had been involved with for decades, and was to step down as chancellor of Huddersfield University, university officials said.
                   
Despite these many embarrassments and the dramatic drop in his work responsibilities, Andrew was not expected to face money pressures, although the details of his financial picture have not been made public.
                   
He has long received financial backing from the queen’s private accounts and there was no indication that this would change. He was likely, however, to close or severely downsize his well-staffed personal office at Buckingham Palace.
                   
When he served as Britain’s international trade envoy, Andrew relied extensively on public funding and was criticized for his deluxe travel style when going overseas on official business. He left that role in 2011, in part because questions were already being asked about his relationship with Epstein, who had already been convicted of sex offenses.

…

Heads of state and officials from the Central African bloc CEMAC are meeting in Yaounde to discuss the economies of the six-nation bloc, said to be the least developed on the African continent.

CEMAC’s development has been slowed by the spillover of the Boko Haram crisis into Cameroon, carnage in the Central African Republic and political tensions in countries that have some of the world’s longest serving leaders.

CEMAC consists of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville.

Hundreds of merchants from Gabon and Equatorial Guinea buy and sell goods at the Cameroon border market of Kiossi, located on the boundary line of the two neighboring states.

Cameroonian vegetable and fruits seller Ahmad Njimuluh says he’d like to see free movement of people between CEMAC member states.

He says between the western Cameroon town of Foumbot where he comes from, and Gabons capital of Libreville there are 68 regular police and customs check points and about 30 other control points which have been found to illegally extort money from commuters.

In November 2017, CEMAC heads of state meeting in Chad said they had reached a milestone agreement to lift visa requirements for its citizens traveling within the regional bloc.

But Gabon-born Roger Ngembou, political consultant with CEMAC, says that except for the border between Chad and Cameroon, where citizens travel freely, nothing has changed.

He says a survey carried out this year on why CEMAC’s growth is slow and projects are hardly implemented indicates that countries are reluctant to open up to each other due to security threats and corruption. He says it is imperative for CEMAC member states to make movement between its citizens visa-free so they can benefit from the opportunities their huge market of close to 60 million people offers.

The economic growth rate in central Africa is barely 1.5 percent. The president of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, says the region needs to reexamine some of its policies to speed growth.

Nguesso says for the sub-regional integration they have been asking for to be successful, he and his peers should first of all provide basic infrastructure like roads, rail and air transport, telecommunications and a viable electricity network. He says they have to tackle corruption which is making their countries poorer. He says while waiting for funding to develop the infrastructure, he and Cameroon’s President Paul Biya have decided to build a road linking the town of Pointe-Noire in his country and Douala in Cameroon.

CEMAC has plans to create a regional airline, roads that link the 6 countries, inter-state hospitals and universities. But Ngembou said he doubts their ability to execute the plans with the ongoing economic, social and political tensions in the region.

Cameroon, the region’s main economic engine, is dealing with Boko Haram, and a separatist crisis in two of its regions, and tensions over Biya’s 37 years in power.

In Equatorial Guinea, an attempt last year to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang, who has been in power for four decades, was foiled by his military.

And the Central African Republic has yet to stabilize since rebels overthrew the president there in 2013.

…

The U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry hearings picked up steam this week, as nine current and former U.S. officials testified about President Donald Trump’s controversial dealings with the Ukrainian government.

The historic impeachment inquiry was triggered by a whistleblower complaint about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump prodded Zelenskiy to undertake investigations that would help Trump politically, while the administration held up nearly $400 million of military aid to Ukraine.

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland delivered blockbuster testimony Wednesday, linking Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other senior officials to what he came to believe was a quid pro quo arrangement between the administration and Ukraine.

The highlights:

Three officials were on the July 25 call
Lawmakers heard from three officials Tuesday who listened in on the call and corroborated a White House transcript of the conversation. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, said he was shocked by how the call played out. Jennifer Williams, an aide in Vice President Mike Pence’s office, said she found the call “unusual and inappropriate.” Tim Morrison, who briefly served as director of Europe and Eurasia on the National Security Council, would only concede that “as a hypothetical,” the call would not be appropriate.

Transcript of the July 25 call
The whistleblower complaint alleged that White House officials were so worried about what had transpired during the call that they moved to lock down a transcript in an electronic system reserved for sensitive classified information. Vindman and Morrison, however, said they didn’t think there was anything nefarious about the move.

Vindman’s contact with an intelligence officer
Vindman disclosed that he discussed the July 25 phone call with a member of the intelligence community. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes pressed Vindman to identify the officer, suggesting that Vindman might have been in contact with the whistleblower. Committee Chairman Adam Schiff interjected, saying he wanted to protect the whistleblower’s identity.

Volker revises his testimony

Also testifying Tuesday, Kurt Volker, the former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine, acknowledged that Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had brought up the question of “investigations” during a key White House meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Volker had previously denied that the issue had come up, but he told lawmakers that Sondland made a generic comment about investigations which “all of us thought was inappropriate.”

Burisma/Biden investigation
Volker and Sondland contended they did not understand the connection between Burisma, the Ukrainian company where Hunter Biden was a director, and the push to investigate the Bidens until late this summer. Other witnesses have testified that most everyone involved in Ukraine policy was aware of the link well before the July 25 call. Volker said that had he learned that Burisma amounted to Biden, he would have raised objections.

Sondland links top officials to campaign
The most closely watched witness of the week, Sondland testified that everyone in the administration — Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — was “in the loop.”

“The suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false,” he testified.

Ukrainians inquired about the aid
Laura Cooper, the top Pentagon expert on Russia and Ukraine, testified Wednesday that Ukrainian officials asked the Defense Department on July 25 about the status of the frozen military aid, the same day Trump and Zelenskiy spoke by phone. While she couldn’t say whether the Ukrainians were aware of a hold on the aid package, the revelation could undermine a Republican claim that Trump couldn’t have “extorted” the Ukrainian leader if he wasn’t aware of the freeze.

Ukraine conspiracy theory

In a swipe at some Republicans on the committee, Fiona Hill, former director of Europe and Eurasia for the National Security Council, delivered a strong rebuttal of a discredited conspiracy theory about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, one of two issues Trump asked Zelenskiy to pursue.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill testified Thursday.

…

In the parts of Beirut where protesters camp out, financial institutions remained shuttered this week, with cartoons of pigs with dollar-sign eyes spray-painted on the walls next to graffiti calling for revolution.

In other parts of the city, the banks cautiously reopened, after being mostly closed for more than a month since daily anti-corruption demonstrations began in October.

Lebanon is now on the brink of financial collapse, according to economists, and the only way out is to build a government and end the upheaval. But the current leadership remains unable to agree on a prime minister or hold legislative sessions.

And protesters blame the chaos on corruption among the same stagnated political class, saying demonstrations will continue until they all resign and are replaced by nonpolitical “technocrats.”

“It’s not our fault,” said Kareem, 31, an optometrist who quit work to camp with other protesters near Lebanon’s parliament building. “It’s the politicians.”

Many employees are accepting half-salaries or losing their jobs, businesses are failing, and the banks are limiting the amounts of money people can withdraw or send abroad.

“We used to be two people working in this store but now it’s only me,” said Malak, 27, at a mobile phone shop on a busy Beirut highway. “I work harder and get paid less.”

Malak was paid in U.S. dollars before the crisis began, but now Lebanon is desperately short of the currency and he is paid in Lebanese pounds, which has rapidly lost value. Overnight, Malak’s salary was reduced by 20 percent.

The mobile phone shop, he added, lost 95 percent of its income. They cannot afford to buy more phones, even if they could sell them.

And renewed upheaval could easily close the banks again, deepening the crisis, said Walid Abou Sleiman, a prominent Lebanese economist.

“If we witness more instability, they will shut down,” he said. And that means, “you are shutting down the economy.”

Crisis long coming

Many of Lebanon’s economic woes began with the Syrian civil war in 2011, Sleiman explained.

Refugees streamed over the border, tourists stayed away and government services like electricity and water declined.

Over the years, Lebanese banks, once a “pillar of the economy,” also declined, as the private sector defaulted on more and more loans. Now, Sleiman said, there is a greater rate of bad loans in Lebanon than there was in the United States in 2008. And that rate was so great it sparked an international banking crisis.

“What happened is a wake-up call,” said Sleiman. “Reform is a must.”

Demonstrations began on Oct. 17 after lawmakers tried to impose a tax on the Whatsapp messaging service amid skyrocketing unemployment and poverty rates. Since then, Prime Minister Sa’ad al-Hariri has resigned, but promises of some reforms have not appeased the anger on the streets.

Even on off-hours, when only a few people roam the protest camps, new pop music calls for “the fall of the regime,” saying “all of them means all of them.”

As he stood alongside barbed wire barriers to the roads surrounding the parliament building, Kareem said demanding change is the only way to improve the situation in the long run, even as the economy rapidly declines.

“I will stay (as long as it takes)” to change the government, he said.

Insecurity

Meanwhile, the unrest has panicked many people, fueling the financial crisis that is fueling the unrest.

Billions of dollars were withdrawn from personal accounts since demonstrations began, forcing the banks to close. Banks now sharply limit the amounts of cash withdrawals and international transfers.

At a posh cigar shop in Beirut, Ayman, a father of two, said even his store, which appeals to wealthy clients, has lost nearly 50 percent of its business.

New sanctions against Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed military organization and U.S.-designated terrorist group, are further squeezing the population, he added.

“We are only buying necessities now,” he said. “And waiting to see if things get better.”

Demonstrations have been mostly peaceful so far, with the exception of sporadic clashes and the death of an activist earlier this month, but more protests are expected in the coming days.

And in this sharply divided country, experts say, rallies could easily dissolve into riots.

“I used to say the economic crisis will turn into a social crisis, and the social crisis could turn into a war,” said Sleiman, the economist. “But no one was listening.”
 

…

A report released Thursday said that last year, nearly 7,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war planted by rebel forces in at least six countries in conflict: Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen.   

The Landmine Monitor report provides an overview of developments in policies on banning mines and the production, trade and stockpiling of such weapons. This year’s edition, covering the 2018-19 period, was the 21st and looked back at efforts to fully implement the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which has 164 members and is considered by activists to be the most successful disarmament and humanitarian accord ever enacted.  

Over the past two decades, they note, only one country has violated the accord. That was Yemen in 2012. This year, the report said, only Myanmar, which is not a party to the treaty, used anti-personnel mines.  

Adherence to the treaty has resulted in a significant drop in the number of casualties, from 20,000 in 1999 to just a few thousand a year. 

Improvised explosive devices

The Monitor, however, noted that in recent years, a spike in the use of improvised personnel mines and explosive devices by rebel forces has been driving casualty numbers up again.    
 
Stephen Goose, the arms division director of Human Rights Watch, told VOA that Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Houthi rebels in Yemen have been responsible for most of the deaths and injuries.   
 
“The diminution of ISIS’s military power makes it much more likely that you will not have the same phenomenon occur anytime soon,” Goose said. “And we are very hopeful that if there is success in negotiating with the Taliban, part of that agreement will be a no-use-of-anti-personnel-mines clause.” 
 
Goose said the Afghan government is part of the Mine Ban Treaty and has committed itself to never using anti-personnel mines again. He noted that Taliban in the past had said they would not use landmines. Unfortunately, he added, the militant group has gone back on its pledge. 
 
The Landmine Monitor said civilians accounted for about 70 percent to 80 percent of those killed or maimed by landmines last year. About half of the victims were children. 

…

President Donald Trump was to pay respects Thursday to a pair of Army officers who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

Trump has said the responsibility of receiving the remains of fallen U.S. soldiers is “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.

As the final day of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry wound down, Trump left the White House for the short flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the remains of service members killed abroad are returned to U.S. soil.

David C. Knadle, 33, of Tarrant, Texas, and Kirk T. Fuchigami Jr., 25, of Keaau, Hawaii, died Wednesday when their helicopter crashed as they provided security for troops on the ground in Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan.

Both were assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. Each held the rank of chief warrant officer two.

Wednesday’s crash brought this year’s U.S. death toll in Afghanistan to 19, excluding three noncombat deaths.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, but the U.S military has dismissed that as a false claim. The crash remains under investigation.
 

…

One of the Islamic State’s most feared affiliates has suffered a significant setback, though U.S. officials caution reports that the terror group was “obliterated” are overblown. 
 
U.S. officials confirmed Thursday that Islamic State-Khorasan, as the terror group’s Afghan affiliate is called, collapsed in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province following months of fighting. 
 
“Afghan government and coalition operations against the group, along with the Taliban’s campaign … led to ISIS-Khorasan’s collapse in Nangarhar and the surrender of hundreds of fighters to Afghan forces,” a senior counterterrorism official told VOA, using an acronym for the group. 
 
“Surrendered [Islamic State] fighters said they were told to leave Nangarhar for Kunar [province], where we assess the group still maintains a presence, as well as the northern provinces of Afghanistan,” the official added. 

Afghans more optimistic

The U.S. assessment contrasted with some more optimistic pronouncements from Afghan officials, who touted the victory in Nangarhar as conclusive. 
 
“No one believed one year ago that we would stand up and remain in Nangarhar, and thank God that today we have obliterated Daesh,” President Ashraf Ghani said Tuesday during a speech in Jalalabad, using an Arabic acronym for IS. 
 
“It’s not possible that they once again equip themselves in other areas of Afghanistan and threaten other parts of the country,” Nangarhar Governor Shah Mahmoud Miakhel added. 
 
Just two days earlier, Taliban officials touted their own success against the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, calling the group’s defeat in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces the result of a “decisive and large-scale” campaign that began in September. 

‘Systematically uprooted’

“Over the course of the last five years, they were systematically uprooted,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement Sunday, adding the Taliban had “rescued the oppressed people of Nangarhar from this scourge.” 
 
Both the Taliban and Afghan government officials said almost 600 IS fighters had surrendered, along with women and children. 
 
Still, U.S. officials said the threat from IS-Khorasan, which is thought to have between 4,000 and 5,000 fighters across Afghanistan, was far from over. 

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US Takes Notice as More Islamic State Branches Back New Leader

Official calls IS-Khorasan — the latest affiliate to back Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi ‘certainly one of those of most concern’

The movement of the surrendered fighters to Kunar province and northern provinces of Afghanistan “suggests ISIS-Khorasan is still active in the country despite losing territory in Nangarhar,” the senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. 
 
The U.S. Defense Department declined to discuss the statements by Afghan officials regarding the status of IS-Khorasan but said the effort to defeat the terror group would go on. 
 
U.S. Forces-Afghanistan “will continue our work with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to ensure that ISIS in Afghanistan is destroyed,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell told VOA. 

‘Enduring defeat’ is goal
 
“The United States remains fully committed to the enduring defeat of ISIS, including ISIS in Afghanistan, which is critical to our national security,” he added. 
 
Over the years, IS-Khorasan has seen its fortunes waver, at one point seeing its ranks whittled to as few as several hundred fighters. 
 
But the IS affiliate has consistently found ways to bounce back, leading defense intelligence officials to label it as an “enduring threat” to both Afghanistan and the West. 

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Islamic State in Afghanistan Growing Bigger, More Dangerous

The collapse of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq is doing little to slow down the terror group’s branch in Afghanistan.Newly unclassified intelligence suggests IS-Khorasan, as the group is known, is growing both in numbers and ambition, now boasting as many as 5,000 fighters — nearly five times as many as estimates from last year — while turning its focus to bigger and more spectacular attacks.Military officials say the numbers, shared by U.S.

“ISIS-K has been a force that’s had staying power,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and CEO of Valens Global. 
 
“A lot of that staying power relates to the fact that you have a growing militant landscape in Afghanistan,” he said. “People who for whatever reason are disaffected with the Taliban have an alternative in ISIS-K.” 
 
There is also some thought that because of IS-Khorasan’s ambition and resiliency, the estimated thousands of remaining fighters could get a boost from the terror group’s core leadership in Iraq and Syria. 
 
“With the caliphate’s collapse, the core seems to be shifting some of its resources and attention to the affiliate group,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a global security analysis group. “ISIS-K in Afghanistan is very high on my list of places where the group would look to make a resurgence. 
 
“They know the United States won’t be there forever,” he added. “They’re laying the groundwork.” 

…

Two additional advisers will testify Thursday as the U.S. House of Representatives holds a marathon week of public hearings on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Former White House adviser Fiona Hill and career foreign service officer David Holmes are to testify Thursday.

On Tuesday Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former NSC official Tim Morrison testified.

On Wednesday, the most high-profile witness to appear, U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, testified for nearly seven hours. He was followed by career Pentagon official Laura Cooper and Undersecretary of State David Hale Wednesday afternoon.

All nine have testified previously in closed-door hearings about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served as a board member of a Ukraine natural gas company, and probe a discredited conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 president election. Three of the nine listened in on the July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Ukraine’s president.

Democrats hope the hearings will sway public opinion in favor of impeachment. Republicans have used them to discredit the impeachment proceedings and poke holes in the witnesses’ testimony.

Here is what you need to know about the witnesses Thursday and their role in the Ukraine affair.

Fiona Hill

A British-born American foreign affairs expert, Fiona Hill served as the National Security Council’s top Russia expert until June. The first former White House official to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, Hill told investigators in October that Marie Yovanovitch’s removal as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was the “result of the campaign that Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani had set in motion” and that she had personally been the target of similar smear campaigns. Hill also testified about a July 10 White House meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian officials at which Sondland announced that “we have an agreement with the chief of staff for a meeting (between Trump and Zelenskiy) if these investigations in the energy sector start.”

David Holmes

A career foreign service officer, Holmes has been the political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv since August 2017. In that capacity, he serves as the senior political adviser to the ambassador and has attended many meetings with Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials. Holmes is the diplomat who overheard a phone conversation between Sondland and Trump the day after Trump pressed Zelenskiy to carry out corruption investigations. During the call, Holmes testified last week, Trump asked Sondland, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” According to Holmes’ testimony, he heard Sondland reply that “he’s gonna do it” and that Zelenskiy would do “anything you ask him to.” The account establishes a direct link between Trump and the Ukraine pressure campaign.

…

The fifth Democratic presidential candidate debates took place Wednesday in Atlanta. The candidates answered questions on a range of issues, including the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, foreign policy and health care.

Here are some comments from each candidate:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, in answering a question about recent “Lock him up!” chants directed at Trump, said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we mock that, that we that we model ourselves after Trump and say, lock him up.’ … It’s about civility. We have to restore the soul of this country. That’s not who we are. That’s not who we have been. That’s not who we should be.”

Senator Cory Booker, in arguing against a “wealth tax” being pitched by Senator Elizabeth Warren, said, “I don’t agree with the wealth tax the way Elizabeth Warren puts it,” saying the Democratic Party should discuss how to “give people opportunities to create wealth, to grow businesses. … That’s what our party has to be about as well.”

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in talking about climate change, said, “American farming should be one of the key pillars of how we combat climate change. I believe that the quest for the carbon-negative farm could be as big a symbol of dealing with climate change as the electric car in this country. And it’s an important part of how we make sure that we get a message out around dealing with climate change that recruits everybody to be part of the solution, including conservative communities where a lot of people have been made to feel that admitting climate science would mean acknowledging they’re part of the problem.”

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How (Historically) Presidential Are the Democratic Candidates?

Here’s how the candidates’ experiences stack up against each other as well as U.S. presidents throughout history.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, in criticizing the Democratic Party, said, “It is a party that has been and continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment in Washington, represented by Hillary Clinton and others’ foreign policy, by the military industrial complex and other greedy corporate interests. I’m running for president to be the Democratic nominee that rebuilds our Democratic party, takes it out of their hands and truly puts it in the hands of the people of this country.”

Senator Kamala Harris, in answering whether she would make concessions to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said, “In all due deference to the fact this is a presidential debate, Donald Trump got punk’d. He has conducted foreign policy since day one borne out of a very fragile ego.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar, in addressing Saudi Arabia and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said, “When the president did not stand up the way he should to that killing and that dismemberment of a journalist with an American newspaper, that sent a signal to dictators … and that’s wrong.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, says he’s “pro-Israel “but that he is concerned about conditions for the Palestinians. “I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinian people as well with respect and dignity that they deserve,” he said. “What is going on in Gaza right now where youth employment is 70 or 80% is unsustainable.”

Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and environmentalist, discussed his plan to implement “structural reforms” to put power back in the hands of the American people through election reform and break the corporate stranglehold over government. “It’s time to push power back to the American people and take power away from the corporations who bought our government,” he said. “And I’m talking about structural reform in Washington, D.C. — term limits. You’re going to have to have new and different people in charge. I’m the only person on this stage who will talk about term limits.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, in discussing her proposed “wealth tax,” a tax on the country’s wealthiest people to pay for, among other things, her health care plan, said, “Doing a wealth tax is not about punishing anyone. It’s about saying, You built something great in this country? Good for you’ … All of us helped pay for it.”

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, in answering a question about child care and paid family leave, said, “There are only two countries in the world that don’t have paid family leave for new moms: the United States of America and Papua New Guinea. That is the entire list and we need to get off this list as soon as possible.”

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Susan Choi’s novel “Trust Exercise,” in which a high school romance is spun out into a web of memories and perspectives, has won the National Book Award for fiction.

Sarah M. Broom’s family memoir “The Yellow House” won in nonfiction and Martin W. Sandler’s “1919 The Year That Changed America” for young people’s literature. The winner for best translated book was Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet. In poetry, the winner was Arthur Sze’s “Sight Lines.”

The 70th annual National Book Awards were presented Wednesday night at a dinner benefit gala in downtown Manhattan, with winners each receiving $10,000. Finalists were chosen by panels of authors, critics, booksellers and others in the literary community. Publishers submitted more than 1,700 books for consideration.

Choi expressed gratitude not just for the award, but for the writing life, saying that writing and teaching showed her that the word was “its own reward.” Her other books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist “American Woman” and the PEN/Faulkner finalist “A Person of Interest.”

Other speakers offered emotional tributes to loved ones and cited the written word as a source of healing, action and community in an unsettling world. Kraszahorkai praised his translator, Muzlet, and marveled how the change from one language to another could make one “feel at home in the United States of America.”

Broom singled out her mother for awe and gratitude, remembering how she raised 12 children and absorbed words everywhere from the grocery store to package labels, “always wolfing down words. Insatiable.”

The prolific Sandler is an Emmy-winning television writer who has written dozens of books, and vows to write 60 more. Sze called poetry an “essential language,” helping us all to “slow down, see clearly, feel deeply” and understand what “truly matters.”

Honorary awards were given to Oren Teicher, longtime head of the American Booksellers Association, and Edmund White, the pioneering gay writer. Each celebrated the literary life in their own fashion.

Teicher, introduced warmly by author-bookseller Ann Patchett, spoke of his ever-renewing joy in helping bookstores commit a sacred, timeless “act of magic”: placing the “right book in a reader’s hands.” Teicher will soon step down after a decade as CEO of the independent sellers trade group and quoted W.B. Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends; and say my glory was I had such friends.”

White was introduced, mischievously, by the filmmaker-author John Waters, who celebrated his longtime friend with dirty jokes, entendres that mean one thing only and high praise for a man who “pissed off” both Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag.

White’s medal is for “Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,” but he was here to dish, joking that a writer’s typical 8-hour “work” day was maybe a half hour of actual writing and otherwise a well-met schedule of gossip, “too many emails,” cooking, pornography and drinking.

“So many writers are alcoholic because they can get away with it,” he said.

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After an explosive day of testimony in the U.S. House impeachment hearings, lawmakers are set to hear Thursday from Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former top Russia expert who previously told investigators the removal of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was the result of a campaign set in motion by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

Also scheduled to testify is David Holmes, a career foreign service officer who serves as the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, and who in his own earlier closed-door testimony said he overheard a phone call in which Trump asked U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be investigating former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump has been denying allegations that he held up nearly $400 million in badly needed military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv promised to investigate Biden, one of the president’s leading 2020 presidential rivals.

Sondland testified Wednesday that there was a quid pro quo between Trump and Ukraine.

In his opening statement, Sondland said impeachment investigators “have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously … the answer is yes.”

According to the ambassador, “it was no secret” and a number of senior Trump administration officials were “in the loop,” including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

WATCH: Sondland to US Lawmakers: Trump Conditioned Aid to Ukraine on Investigations

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Sondland talked about long and complicated behind-the-scenes machinations that took place between April, with the election of Zelenskiy, and September, when the aid to Ukraine was finally released after a 55-day delay.

Sondland said he joined Energy Secretary Rick Perry and special envoy Kurt Volker in following Trump’s “orders” to work with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election to help Democrats.

“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said. “Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine.”

WATCH AMBASSADOR SONDLAND HEARING ON-DEMAND

Aid released after whistleblower complaint

Sondland said Giuliani was acting at Trump’s behest when the lawyer told Ukrainian officials that the president wanted Zelenskiy to publicly commit to investigating the Bidens and the Democrats.

Sondland said efforts to push for the investigations were a quid pro quo in arranging a White House meeting for Zelenskiy.

Sondland said while Trump never told him directly that military aid to Ukraine was conditional on the investigations, he later concluded that had to be the reason because Sondland said there was no other credible reason Ukraine was not getting the money it had been promised.

Republicans on the impeachment inquiry have argued there could not have possibly been a quid pro quo with Ukraine because the military aid was eventually released and there were no investigations of Biden and the Democrats. They also say Ukraine was unaware that the money was being held up.

But in later testimony Wednesday, Pentagon official Laura Cooper said Ukrainian officials began asking questions about the aid in July. 

“It’s the recollections of my staff that they likely knew,” she said.

Trump released the aid to Ukraine on Sept. 11 after reports emerged that an intelligence community whistleblower told the inspector general he was concerned about July phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden. That whistleblower complaint is what led to the impeachment probe.

No evidence of Biden wrongdoing

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said that Sondland’s testimony “made clear” that in his calls with Trump, the president “clearly stated that he ‘wanted nothing’ from Ukraine, and repeated ‘no quid pro quo over and over again.’ The U.S. aid to Ukraine flowed, no investigation was launched, and President Trump has met and spoken with President Zelenskiy. Democrats keep chasing ghosts.”

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Ukraine got the money and there were no investigations only because Trump got caught.

Trump has alleged that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless it fired a prosecutor looking into corruption in Burisma, a gas company where Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat on the board.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has ever surfaced. Allegations that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help Democrats are based on a debunked conspiracy theory that likely originated in Russia.

July call central to inquiry

Trump’s July 25 White House call with Zelenskiy, in which the U.S. leader asked Zelenskiy to “do us a favor,” to undertake the politically tinged investigations, is at the center of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump.

It is against U.S. campaign finance law to solicit foreign government help in a U.S. election, but it will be up to lawmakers to decide whether Trump’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard in the U.S. Constitution sets for impeachment and removal of a president from office. Trump could be impeached by the full Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in the coming weeks, which would be similar to an indictment in a criminal trial. He then would face a trial in the Republican-majority Senate, where his conviction remains unlikely.

Sondland confirmed the essence of a cellphone conversation he had with Trump on July 26, the day after Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy, as he sat at a Kyiv restaurant with other State Department officials.

Late last week, David Holmes, an aide to William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, told impeachment investigations in private testimony that he overheard the Trump-Sondland call because Trump’s voice was loud and Sondland held the phone away from his ear.

Holmes said Sondland in the call assured Trump that Zelenskiy “loves your ass,” which Sondland said “sounds like something I would say.”

“So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Holmes quoted Trump as asking. Sondland, according to Holmes, replied, “He’s gonna do it,” while adding that Zelenskiy will do “anything you ask him to.”

Holmes said he later asked Sondland if Trump cared about Ukraine, with the envoy replying that Trump did not “give a s**t about Ukraine.” Sondland said he did not recall this remark but did not rebut Holmes’ account.

“I asked why not,” Holmes recalled, “and Ambassador Sondland stated that the president only cares about big stuff. I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the Biden investigation.”‘

Disdain from Trump

Before Sondland revised his testimony last month to say there had been a quid pro quo — the military aid for the Biden investigation — Trump had called Sondland a “great American.” But after Sondland changed his testimony, Trump said, “I hardly know the gentleman.”

Trump has repeatedly described the July 25 call with Zelenskiy as “perfect” and denied any wrongdoing. Trump has often assailed the impeachment inquiry but did not immediately comment on Twitter about Sondland’s testimony.

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Layleen Cubilette-Polanco had experienced some rough patches in her 27 years but had tried to change course, seeking to switch out of previous jobs as a go-go dancer and sex worker for employment in places like McDonald’s and Walgreens, her sister said.

She never completed that journey. Cubilette-Polanco died in June of complications from epilepsy in New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail where she spent her final two months, unable to make $500 bail.

On Wednesday, transgender advocates across the United States commemorated people like Cubilette-Polanco for the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Vigils such as one in New York that culminated in front of the Stonewall Inn LGBTQ landmark drew attention to at least 22 transgender people, almost all of them black women, who have been killed so far in 2019. A similar number have been killed in each of the past seven years, as tracked by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the United States.

Globally, at least 311 were killed in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, the second-highest total on record, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project of the Berlin-based group Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide.

Of those 130 were killed in Brazil and 63 in Mexico, the project said.

The U.S. campaign made special note of Cubilette-Polanco.

Though she was not a homicide victim, her story illustrates the insecurity of trans women of color, who are more likely to be unemployed and lack access to healthcare.

After a youth spent helping others, whether rescuing stray animals or bringing home runaway kids needing a place to stay, she decided to start helping herself, sister Melania Brown said.

“The last couple of months of her life, she wanted the change. She wanted to get a real job. She wanted to fulfill herself in society, and society let her down,” said Brown, who believed that discrimination never gave the Dominican-born U.S. citizen a fair chance in the job market.

Cubilette-Polanco was arrested in April on charges of misdemeanor assault and theft over an altercation with a taxi driver. Bail was set at $500 because of a 2017 prostitution arrest, local media reported, citing arrest records.

She lived with epilepsy and schizophrenia, according to a lawsuit her family filed against New York City’s Department of Correction.

The Human Rights Campaign has recorded at least 157 homicides of transgender people since 2013, nearly all of them women of color.

More than 100 demonstrators gathered in New York on Wednesday night to remember those slain, meeting at the Christopher Street pier, where transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson died in 1992, and marching to the Stonewall, site of the 1969 uprising considering the birth of the modern queer rights movement.

“We need to invest more in our trans community. Don’t just send me roses when I’m gone,” said Kiara St. James, executive director of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group.

The names of victims were read, and people dressed in white, their faces veiled, held up portraits of the dead.

Another speaker, who goes only by the name Synthia, said she had been the victim of a hateful act of aggression in which a man pulled a gun on her.

“I survived that day knowing my name could have been on the list I just read,” she said. “So for me, Transgender Day Remembrance is about living survivors that walk these streets daily just trying to survive.”

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The fate of four Eritrean football players seeking asylum in Jinja, Uganda, remains uncertain, weeks after they fled their hotel during a tournament.
 
The players had been set to compete with the Eritrean National Team in the Cecafa Under-20 Challenge Cup in October. For the past six weeks, they have been moving from house to house to avoid being caught by Eritrean agents in Uganda, their lawyer told VOA.

Kimberley Motley, an American attorney dealing with international law and representing the four men, said they fear being returned to Eritrea, where they could face imprisonment and torture.

“They simply want to be able to live free in a country that is not going to imprison them, and which is a great fear that they have if they’re sent back to Eritrea. And they’re very fearful that they will be sent back by the Ugandan authorities,” Motley said.

Ugandan officials didn’t respond to VOA’s requests for updates on the footballers’ case.

“They’ve been in hiding,” Motley said. “They’ve been moving from place to place, hoping that a country is kind enough to accept them as asylum seekers based on their very solid claim of being persecuted if they were sent back to their country.”

In a video posted by “One Day Seyoum,”  a group focused on human rights for Eritreans, the footballers said there is a campaign against them, and they fear being tracked and illegally detained by Eritrean agents in Uganda.

Hear from the 4 Eritrean footballers currently living in fear in Uganda. It has been more than 3 weeks since they defected & the UNHCR has still not relocated them to safety. Join our Twitter storm against @Refugees to pressure them to immediately #ProtectFleeingFootballerspic.twitter.com/GeYgdjsTgn

— One Day Seyoum (@onedayseyoum) October 29, 2019

“We are in grave danger,” Mewael Yosief, one of the footballers, said. “We are in need of help. Because if they catch us, when we go back home, it’s going to be an unimaginably severe danger for us, because we might face imprisonment — unimaginable punishments. And it might even cause us death,” the 19-year-old said.

In 2015, 10 players on the Eritrean national football team sought and secured asylum during a World Cup qualifying match in Botswana. In 2009, the team made worldwide headlines when the entire roster defected and refused to fly home after a match in Kenya.
 
To support the remaining players who did not defect during the Uganda tournament, some members of Eritrea’s diaspora started a GoFundMe drive that has raised more than $44,000 to allow “these young men to be able to enjoy their careers at home and allow them to enjoy their return.”

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The Israeli military says its warplanes struck dozens of Iranian and Syrian military targets outside of Damascus Wednesday in retaliation for a rocket attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights the day before.

The military says the targets, including surface-to-air missiles, weapons depots and troop headquarters, belonged to Iran’s elite Quds force, the overseas arm of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards.

Syria’s state-run media said two civilians were killed in the airstrikes, but the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has learned that 11 people died in the strikes.  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Wednesday that he has “made clear that whoever hurts us, we will hurt them.”

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U.S. Democratic presidential candidates hold their fifth debate Wednesday in Atlanta, with the showdown taking place amid shifting polls and a growing sense of uncertainty about where the primary race is heading.

A total of 10 contenders will be on stage in a race that of late has been overshadowed by the unfolding impeachment saga involving President Donald Trump in Washington.

The two leading contenders, according to national polls, former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, will be center stage in the Atlanta debate.

Buttigieg rising

But one candidate drawing extra attention at the moment is South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg has surged into the lead in the early voting state of Iowa, according to the latest CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa voters.

Buttigieg placed first with 25 percent support, followed by Warren at 16 percent, and Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders both at 15 percent. The rest of the Democratic field trailed in single digits.

Buttigieg said in Los Angeles that his campaign has been making steady progress for months.

“The more voters hear my message, the more supportive they become and the more we are able to grow our base,” he said.

Biden’s lead

Biden continues to lead in national polls and in a new Quinnipiac University survey of voters in South Carolina, which is also an early voting state in the primary process.

Bolstered by support from African-American voters, Biden leads in South Carolina with 33 percent backing, followed by Warren with 13 percent and Sanders at 11 percent.

On the campaign trail, the former vice president continues to argue he would be the strongest candidate to take on President Trump next year.

“Whoever among us ends up being the nominee for the Democratic Party, the next president is going to inherit two things for certain – a nation that is divided and a world in disarray,” Biden told a rally in Iowa last week.

Even though Warren remains near the top of the Democratic field, she finds herself on the defensive of late over her sweeping plan for a government health care program known as Medicare-for-all.

The senator recently announced a more phased-in approach to her health care plan as she rallied supporters in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“Come caucus for me and come fight alongside me, because this is our time to dream big, to fight hard and to win,” she told the crowd.

The newcomers

One new Democratic contender who will not be in the debate is former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who announced last week that he was entering the race.  

“This campaign, I think, is an opportunity to bring people together,” Patrick said.

The former two-term governor has had a long friendship with former President Barack Obama.

In addition, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering joining the race.

Analysts see both Bloomberg and Patrick as moderates who could pose a threat to Biden if they are able to gain traction in the campaign.

Even though Biden continues to lead in national polls, he trails in Iowa and is in a tight race with Warren and Sanders for the New Hampshire primary, another key early contest that comes one week after Iowa.

The interest among additional candidates to join the race raises questions about the current field of contenders, said University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato.

“It is obvious that many Democratic leaders are very worried about the top echelon (of the Democratic field). Each of the candidates has problems—too old, too young, over-experienced and under-experienced, and then too far left, too far right. You name it,” Sabato told Associated Press Television.

The other contenders who will be on stage in Atlanta include Sanders, California Senator Kamala Harris, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, billionaire Tom Steyer and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

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U.S. Democrats hold their fifth presidential debate Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia.  Ten Democratic contenders will debate each other in a presidential race that of late has been largely overshadowed by the impeachment drama in Washington involving President Donald Trump.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the Democratic race from Washington.

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From 2008 on, Vietnam was mostly protected from the global financial crisis, not because its banks were stronger than the U.S. banks that created the crisis, but because it was less integrated into global trade back then. More than a decade later, Vietnam does far more trade with foreign countries today, making its banks far more susceptible to global trends.  The government has taken steps to strengthen domestic banks.

In particular Vietnam is transforming banks to require that, when doing credit risk analyses, they take into account environmental, social, and governance risks, known as ESG. The State Bank of Vietnam has set a goal that by 2025, each bank will have created its own department dedicated solely to ESG analysis, and it will incorporate ESG factors into its overall risk analyses.

The central bank says it is making progress, noting that 17 banks in Vietnam have set up these mandatory departments to analyze the environmental and social impact of their lending, and that 25 banks have conducted such analyses so far, based on a survey in early 2019. 

“Vietnamese banks have shown their readiness in pursuing a sustainable finance agenda, which is essential for capturing new business opportunities,” Nguyen Quoc Hung, director of the department of credit policies for economic sectors at the State Bank of Vietnam, said. 

The push for banks and other businesses to consider their impact on the environment has given birth to buzz words like “green finance” and “green bonds” — but what do they actually mean? An important example would be for a bank to provide a loan to a small business that produces wind turbines. The development of wind power would be considered an environmental benefit in the bank’s credit risk analysis, in addition to the social benefit of supporting a small business rather than just working with major corporations.

The example matters particularly to Vietnam because it considers green finance one strategy in its fight to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and it considers itself one of the countries most susceptible to the threat of a changing climate. 

The government is moving to strengthen domestic banks as part of its membership in the Sustainable Banking Network, a network of 38 developing countries pushing ESG factors and supported by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
A benefit of the network is for countries to share best practices, according to Imansyah, who is a co-chair of an SBN working group and who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“Sharing lessons and knowledge among members has been an important catalyst to drive finance reforms,” Imansyah said.

His country, along with China, is leading the pack of 38 countries, having already implemented many of its planned ESG policies, such as government incentives for environmentally friendly investments. 

However Vietnam is catching up. For instance an October IFC report noted, “Vietnam is one of the few SBN members to require CIs [credit institutions] to report the quantities and values of their green loans.”

Besides the environment, Vietnamese officials are concerned about ensuring social and governance standards at its banks, given the banks’ history of complex cross-ownership and corporate board arrangements that create possible conflicts of interest and that the government aims to clean up. It has also been cleaning up the burden of bad debt, or bank loans that have gone unpaid for a certain period of time, which could threaten the stability of the banking sector.

Social impact is harder to measure at Vietnamese banks. They might look to their U.S. counterparts, which did not fully analyze the social risks of giving out too many subprime mortgages, to be packaged into financial products for investors before 2008. The defaults on those mortgages, leading up to the global financial crisis, are the kind of social impact Vietnam’s banks wish to avoid.

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Amnesty International says Iranian security forces have killed at least 106 people in nationwide anti-government protests since Friday, four times the death toll of Iran’s last mass protests two years ago.

In a Tuesday interview with VOA Persian, the London-based rights group’s Iran researcher Raha Bahreini said Amnesty determined that security forces killed 106 protesters based on eyewitness accounts, social media videos and reports of exiled Iranian human rights activists. She said Amnesty International soon would provide a breakdown of the number of protesters killed in various Iranian cities.

VOA Persian has independently confirmed the killings of at least seven protesters in shootings by Iranian security forces on Saturday. Iranian state media have said several people have been killed including at least one security force member in the demonstrations that began Friday and spread to dozens of cities. But the Iranian government has not published any official death toll.

The demonstrations erupted in response to the government abruptly raising the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% early Friday. Many Iranians see the increase as putting a further burden on their wallets at a time of worsening economic conditions.

Bahreini said Amnesty has called on the United Nations and European Union to make urgent appeals to Iran to end its violent crackdown on the protests and to respect Iranians’ rights to freedoms of expression and assembly.

Iran violently suppressed the last major wave of nationwide protests that swept the country from late December 2017 to early January 2018. At least 22 people were killed in the crackdown on those protests, which were fueled by public anger with government corruption and mismanagement.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
 

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DARPA, the main research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is funding researchers to develop wearable devices that would have military applications such as using the mind to control unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, commonly known as drones. Instead of using brain implants to achieve this, DARPA is looking for non-invasive to minutely invasive ways of interfacing with the machine. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee got a close-up look at one team’s work at Rice University.

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