U.S. Democrats claimed an upset win in Kentucky on Tuesday over a Republican governor backed by President Donald Trump and seized control of the state legislature in Virginia, where anti-Trump sentiment in the suburbs remained a potent force.

The outcomes of Tuesday’s elections in four states, including Mississippi and New Jersey, could offer clues to how next year’s presidential election could unfold, when Trump will aim for a second four-year term.

In Kentucky, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, whose father, Steve, was the state’s last Democratic governor, scored a narrow victory over Governor Matt Bevin despite an election-eve rally headlined by Trump.

In a speech in Lexington, Kentucky, on Monday night, Trump – who won Kentucky by 30 percentage points in 2016 – told voters that they needed to re-elect Bevin, or else pundits would say the president “suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world.”

The remarks reflected the extent to which Bevin, 52, sought to nationalize the campaign, emphasizing his support for Trump amid a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry of the Republican president in Congress.

While the result was a significant setback for Trump, who remains relatively popular in Kentucky, it may have had more to do with Bevin’s diminished standing in the state. Opinion polls showed Bevin may be the least popular governor in the country, after he waged high-profile fights with labor unions and teachers.

Beshear’s upset win could also bolster Democrats’ slim hopes of ousting Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is on the ballot himself in the state next year.

At a rally on Tuesday night, Bevin refused to concede, citing unspecified “irregularities,” even as Beshear called on the governor to honor the results.

Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement that the president “just about dragged Gov. Matt Bevin across the finish line” while helping Republicans win several other statewide races.

Meanwhile, Democrats wrested both chambers of Virginia’s legislature from narrow Republican majorities, which would give the party complete control of the state government for the first time in a quarter-century.

Trump has avoided Virginia, where Democrats found success in suburban swing districts in last year’s congressional elections, as they did in states across the country. Tuesday’s election, which saw Democrats prevail in several northern Virginia suburbs, suggested the trend was continuing.

In Mississippi, where Republican Governor Phil Bryant was barred from running again due to term limits, Republican Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves defeated Attorney General Jim Hood, a moderate Democrat who favors gun rights and opposes abortion rights.

Like Bevin, Reeves campaigned as a staunch Trump supporter in a state that Trump easily won in 2016. The president held a campaign rally in the state last week alongside Reeves.

In New Jersey, Democrats were expected to maintain their majority in the state’s general assembly, the legislature’s lower chamber.

Virginia in the spotlight

The Virginia contest drew heavy attention and money from both parties. Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential front-runner, visited Virginia over the weekend to campaign with several statehouse candidates, and Republican Vice President Mike Pence held a rally on Saturday.

Other Democratic presidential contenders, including U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, have also campaigned with local candidates.

In one notable race, Democrat Shelly Simonds, who lost a state House of Delegates race in 2017 via random draw after the election ended in a tie, won a rematch against Republican David Yancey.

Virginia’s Democratic gains came despite a year of scandal for the party’s top officials in the state. Governor Ralph Northam barely endured a political firestorm after his yearbook page was shown to have photos of someone in blackface and another person in a Ku Klux Klan costume, while Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface himself in college.

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, meanwhile, has denied two accusations of sexual assault.

The legislative wins likely mean that Democrats can pass a raft of bills that Republicans had resisted, including new gun limits. Democrats will also control the redistricting process in 2021, when lawmakers draw new voting lines for state and congressional elections after next year’s U.S. Census.

…

The latest wave of endorsements for new Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has U.S. intelligence officials taking notice.

IS media operatives Tuesday disseminated more photographs of fighters from the group’s various affiliates giving bay’ah, or loyalty, to Qurashi, including a series of 16 photographs from IS-Khorasan, as Afghan affiliate is known.

The photos appear to show several groups of fighters, from different locations, carrying IS banners and raising their fists or their guns as they pledge their allegiance to the newly named caliph.

BREAKING: #ISIS#Khorasan pledges Bay’ah to new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-#Qurashi, per photos being distributed by ISIS media channels

… courtesy of @JihadoScopepic.twitter.com/LDICBD932O

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 5, 2019

“Of all of the branches and networks of ISIS, ISIS-K is certainly one of those of most concern,” Russell Travers, acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism center, told a panel of lawmakers late Tuesday.

U.S. and Western intelligence officials have long pointed to IS-Khorasan as one of the most resilient of the terror organization’s affiliates, surviving repeated attempts by U.S. and Afghan forces to annihilate its leadership and fighters.

It is also one of the most ambitious.

“They have attempted, certainly, to inspire attacks outside of Afghanistan,” Travers said, adding, “they certainly have got the desire” to carry out the attacks themselves.

But beyond simply having deadly ambitions, officials fear IS-Khorasan has the manpower and could soon have the capabilities to put their plans into action.

Having seen it numbers fall into the low hundreds after the U.S. dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal — a GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast — on a cave and tunnel system in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, IS-Khorasan has rebounded.

Travers said Tuesday IS-Khorasan likely has about 4,000 fighters, though U.S. military officials warn the figure could be closer to 5,000, making it one of the largest IS affiliates.

Its size, combined with its reputation, could give Qurashi a boost as the newly named IS leader tries to cement his standing with the terror group’s other branches.

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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.

“Their message seems to be that it’s business as usual and that nothing has changed except for their leader,” said Raphael Gluck, co-founder of Jihadoscope, another company that monitors online activity by Islamist extremists.

“They want to show they can mobilize and fast, and that the caliphate is still there,” he said.

The release of the photos from IS-Khorasan is the latest in the terror group’s campaign to create the appearance of momentum, having already shown five other affiliates back Qurashi as he takes the helm.

Early pledges

The first of the pledges came Saturday — media officials distributing three photographs from IS-Sinai showing about 25 masked fighters gathering in a sparsely wooded area in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with guns raised.

BREAKING: #ISIS#Sinai releases photos showing fighters pledging bayah/allegiance to new ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al #Hashimi al #Qurashi

Via @siteintelgrouppic.twitter.com/xJGVPHa315

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 2, 2019

Hours later, IS media officials released a series of photographs showing a group of about seven or eight masked fighters, allegedly from Bangladesh, pledging their loyalty.

Similar photographs have also surfaced from Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as from Syria’s Daraa province.

Photos from #ISIS of fighters in #Somalia, #Pakistan, #Bangladesh pledging bay’ah to al #Qurashi, courtesy of @JihadoScopepic.twitter.com/FOAaNJ72Es

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 4, 2019

“Some of this is, we’re seeing some of the weaker affiliates rapidly realign with Islamic State,” said Katherine Zimmerman, project manager with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project of the initial pledges of loyalty.

“Four of the five are actually pretty small affiliates — Yemen, Somalia, Bangladesh and Pakistan — that haven’t really had a massive presence on the ground and don’t seem to have the sort of global pull that other ISIS branches have had,” she added.

The exception is IS-Sinai, seen by Western intelligence officials as one of the terror group’s most dangerous affiliates, capable of fielding anywhere from 500 to 1,200 fighters.

But while there has been a sense in the intelligence community that most of the IS affiliates eventually will fall in line behind Qurashi, some affiliates may be trying to feel out the terror group’s core leadership to see if financial and logistical support will continue.

They also may want more information about Qurashi’s true identity, to evaluate whether he can bring the same cachet as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who helped guide IS from a struggling insurgency into one of the world’s most feared terror organizations.

‘Risk of defections’

Officials and analysts say it may be telling if or when fighters with some of IS’ African affiliates, including IS-West Africa, with an estimated 3,500 fighters, come forward to pledge their loyalty to Qurashi.

“There is also the perception that ISIS was simply gaining ground in the world of jihadism,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and CEO of Valens Global, told VOA prior to Thursday’s announcement that Qurashi is now in charge.

“If the new leader is not seen as a sufficient replacement for Baghdadi, then they do face the risk of defections,” he said.

But early indications are that the strategy of gradually building momentum appears to be working.

“ISIS supporters on social media platforms seem to have a renewed sense of belonging since the announcement of the new caliph,” according to Chelsea Daymon, a terrorism and security researcher at American University.

“Supporters are definitely keeping track of what’s being written and said,” she added.

…

Sakshi Chauhan has not left her house in a quiet inner-city slum in the Indian capital for the past six days on her doctor’s orders.

The 22-year-old call center operator is recovering from a severe throat infection and the thick smog now blanketing New Delhi has made even breathing dangerous.

“The moment I step outside, I can’t breathe properly,” she said. “I have never seen this level of pollution in my entire life.”

The 20 million residents of New Delhi, already one of the world’s most polluted cities, have been suffering for weeks under a toxic haze that is up to 10 times worse than the upper limits of what is considered healthy. The pollution crisis is piling public pressure on the government to tackle the root causes of the persistent haze.

Air pollution in New Delhi and northern Indian states peaks in the winter as farmers in neighboring agricultural regions set fire to clear land after the harvest and prepare for the next crop season. The pollution in the Indian capital also peaks after Diwali celebrations, the Hindu festival of light, when people set off fireworks.

A declared public health emergency has remained in place in the city for the past five days. Schools have stayed closed and authorities have been handing out free anti-pollution masks to children.

New Delhi’s government has introduced a system that restricts many private vehicles from taking to the roads for two weeks. It has ordered firefighters to sprinkle water from high-rise buildings to settle the dust, tried to snuff out garbage fires and ordered builders to cover construction sites to stop dust from enveloping the area.

India’s health minister earlier played down the health consequences of the dirty air, insisting it is mainly a concern for those who have pre-existing lung conditions. Doctors in the capital, however, say many of their patients these days are complaining of ailments that stem from the filthy air they breathe.

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Dr. Salil Sharma, a throat specialist, said that 95% of the patients he has been treating over the last 10 days are sick because of the foul air.

“I have patients from all age groups and most of them are nonsmokers who complain of breathlessness, chest congestion, fatigue and weakness,” Sharma said. “In some cases, I had to put some patients on a ventilator because they couldn’t breathe.”

“We are right in the middle of a health emergency,” he said.

A study published in The Lancet estimated that in 2017, air pollution killed 1.24 million Indians — half of them younger than 70, lowering the country’s average life expectancy by almost 1.7 years.

India’s Supreme Court on Monday said the capital choking every year “could not be allowed in a civilized country.”

In a ruling that followed petitions filed by activists, the top court’s judges ordered an immediate halt to the practice of farmers burning their fields in the neighboring states surrounding the capital.

Some people distraught over the pollution are considering leaving the city for good.

Devendra Verma, a street vendor, did not go to work for three days last week. He said he was too weak to leave his house as filthy air made him feel fatigued.

“The city is not livable anymore,” he said. “Sometimes I think I should pack my bags and leave Delhi for once and all.”

…

Brazil’s carbon emissions have remained stable despite an increase in deforestation because they were offset by a larger use of clean energy sources such as ethanol and wind power, a report said on Tuesday.

Brazilian emissions of gases blamed for global warming reached 1.939 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2018, 0.3% more than seen in 2017, according to SEEG, the most comprehensive study on the topic in the country.

Emissions from the energy sector fell 5% last year when compared to the previous year to 407 million tons of CO2e as renewable power continues to increase its share in the energy mix.

In contrast, emissions from the destruction of forests rose 3.6% to 845 million tons of CO2e, leading that source to increase its share in total Brazilian emissions to 44%, more than the combined participation of the industrial and energy sectors.

Clean energy contribution, however, is unlikely to avoid a larger carbon dioxide increase for 2019, as deforestation sharply increased this year to the highest level in a decade.

And while emissions were stable, there is no compensation for the losses to wildlife as hundreds of species are extinguished as fires rage.

The data places Brazil as number 7 in the ranking of the world’s largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, which is led by China followed by the United States and the European Union.

“Brazil should be in a much better position. Its energy matrix is getting even cleaner than it was. If it stopped deforestation, its emissions would be a third of that,” said Tasso Azevedo, the study’s coordinator.

“There will be a significant increase,” said Ane Alencar, science director at Ipam, the organization collaborating with data on land use changes for the SEEG study.

Deforestation leads to some curious findings. Unlikely other countries where states with higher concentration of industries lead emissions numbers, in Brazil that ranking is led by Pará and Mato Grosso states, for example, countries partly located in the Amazon, with industrialized Sao Paulo state in a distant fourth place.

Livestock activity contributed to those states’ increase in emissions numbers, besides deforestation.

“There is a large difference in the origin of emissions in Brazil when compared to most countries,” said Ricardo Abramovay, an economist at the University of Sao Paulo.

“While in countries such as United States and Japan a change to a society with less emissions will require large investments to modify production models and consumption habits, in Brazil we only need to cut deforestation, a very small investment,” he said.

…

Mexico’s Congress approved a raft of constitutional changes on Tuesday that include permitting the right to a recall vote on the president, overriding opposition concerns it may open the door to allowing re-election of the country’s leader.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pressed for the recall provision, arguing it should serve as a democratic check on his record. The president’s term is limited to six years and he has said several times he will not seek to change that.

The opposition argued he wanted a recall vote to put himself onto an electoral ticket again midway through his term. To avoid that, the Senate agreed last month that any recall vote must be held after the legislative elections in 2021.

Concluding the approval process, the lower house of Congress voted by 372-75 to endorse the constitutional changes, which also establish the rules for conducting referendums on issues of public interest.

Under the changes, the recall vote would be organized by the national electoral institute, provided it had the support of at least 3% of voters on the Mexican electoral register.

To become law, the measures must still be approved by a majority of state legislatures. The president’s ruling party controls a majority of Mexico’s state congresses.

…

Italy will next year become the world’s first country to make it compulsory for schoolchildren to study climate change and sustainable development, Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti said.

Fioramonti, from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, is the government’s most vocal supporter of green policies and was criticized by the opposition in September for encouraging students to skip school and take part in climate protests.

In an interview in his Rome office on Monday, Fioramonti said all state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year, almost one hour per school week, to climate change issues from the start of the next academic year in September.

Many traditional subjects, such as geography, mathematics and physics, would also be studied from the perspective of sustainable development, said the minister, a former economics professor at South Africa’s Pretoria University.

“The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the center of the education model,” Fioramonti told Reuters in the interview conducted in fluent English.

“I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school.”

Fioramonti, 42, the author of several books arguing gross domestic product should no longer be used as the main measure of countries’ economic success, has been a target of the right-wing opposition since becoming a minister in the two-month-old government of 5-Star and the center-left Democratic Party.

His proposals for new taxes on airline tickets, plastic and sugary foods to raise funds for education were strongly attacked by critics who said Italians were already over-taxed.

He then sparked fury from conservatives when he suggested crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms to create a more inclusive environment for non-Christians.

Despite the criticism, the government’s 2020 budget presented to parliament this week included both the plastic tax and a new tax on sugary drinks.

“I was ridiculed by everyone and treated like a village idiot, and now a few months later the government is using two of those proposals and it seems to me more and more people are convinced it is the way to go,” Fioramonti said.

ANTI-SALVINI

Surveys showed 70-80% of Italians backed taxing sugar and flights, he said, adding that coalition lawmakers had told him they would table budget amendments to introduce his proposal to hike air ticket prices before the budget is approved by end-year.

Fioramonti said targeted taxes of this kind were a way of discouraging types of consumption which were harmful to the environment or individuals, while generating resources for schools, welfare or lowering income tax.

In this vein, he suggested other levies on various types of gambling and on profits from oil drilling.

His progressive positions on the economy and the environment are the antithesis of Matteo Salvini’s hard-right League, which has overtaken 5-Star to become easily Italy’s most popular party, with more than 30% of voter support.

…

Five years ago, a car bound for the Ho Chi Minh City airport from downtown might get stuck in a couple of quick jams, costing just an extra minute. Now big swathes of the Vietnamese financial center are congested, and not just during rush hour. That stationary traffic, with engines idling among canyons of high-rises, are contributing to the country’s first major air pollution problem.

The glut of cars reflects people’s rising wealth, which is the byproduct of fast economic growth fueled by a boom in export manufacturing. Cities in Vietnam including the capital Hanoi are the latest Asian cities to become smothered in smog. Mega-cities such as Bangkok, Beijing and Jakarta have been grappling with dirtier air, and for longer, mainly because of vehicular exhaust and factory emissions.

“This is something the Vietnamese government is pretty aware of and I think policy makers and anyone who’s living here can kind of see is becoming more and more of an issue as more people start pouring into the city,” said Maxfield Brown, senior associate with Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

Crops, fires and industrialization

Vietnamese authorities initially assumed smoke wafting north from crop burning in Indonesia had caused the dirty air. They also looked into the role of low rainfall and local crop burning, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates said in an October 2019 country briefing.

“If you go up in an airplane, it’s amazing,” said Frederick Burke, a partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City. “One burning from one field pollutes a whole valley or a whole series of plains. It really has a wide-reaching effect.”

Urban burning of garbage including,  plastics,  adds to the foul air, Brown said. Burning is illegal, he said, but enforcement hasn’t caught up to the law.

A major cause is industry, the consultancy says. Over the past decade, coal consumption tripled and oil consumption rose 70%, the country briefing says. Vietnam depends on coal-fired plants for electricity, and,  because a lot of their northern locations depend on coal,  they give Hanoi “deteriorating air quality,” it says.

Vietnam’s $300 billion economy is forecast to grow up to 6.8% this year, SSI Research in Hanoi says. It expanded 7.1% in 2018, the fastest in 11 years.

Ho Chi Minh City smog

Humidity plus automotive pollution and “waste from industries” creates smog in the south, particularly from September into October, Dezan Shira says. Construction of urban residential buildings, shopping malls and office buildings further addles air in the south, it says.

On Monday, Ho Chi Minh City received a World Air Quality Project score of 149, which falls in the “moderately polluted” range. That means children, the elderly and people with certain diseases should avoid strenuous outdoor activities. At times of the day, the sky takes on a pasty white hue. Hanoi got a rating Monday of 129, also in the unhealthy category.

People living in Ho Chi Minh City point to a growing urban population of workers and students, meaning more vehicles on the road. The population stands at 9 million.

“It seems like we don’t have any regulations to limit the pollution from (buses), form cars, from motorbikes,” said Phuong Hong, a Ho Chi Minh City travel sector businessperson with a 30-minute daily motorcycle commute. “We even have some motor bikes from the 1980s, which means they are 30 years of working.”

Construction work also kicks up dust, and projects across the city have forced the removal of trees, she added. In their place are high-rises for housing and office-commercial space.

A year ago the Vietnamese company Vinfast began selling electric motorcycles, but few appear on the streets now. Ho Chi Minh City dwellers say the electric bikes cost more than gasoline-powered motorcycles and that the city lacks battery charging stations. Two-wheelers are staple transport for commuters.

Metro lines due to open in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City within the next two years should ease some pollution, Brown said. City officials are working toward a ban on motorcycles in central Ho Chi Minh City by 2030, local media say.

Dirtier elsewhere in Asia

Vietnamese city planners probably consider air pollution a problem to solve over the next decade as they watch more severe cases in other cities and learn from them, Brown said.

India, Bangladesh and China have the world’s dirtiest air, with Jakarta fast approaching Beijing levels, Asian media outlet Eco-Business reported in March. Cities in India and China dominated the world’s 50 dirtiest in 2018, according to the air quality monitoring service AirVisual. None were in Vietnam.

…

North Korea may have stormed away from nuclear talks with the United States, set an end-of-year ultimatum, and fired missiles at a record pace in the second half of this year. But that is not stopping U.S. President Donald Trump from portraying his outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a major foreign policy achievement as the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign gains momentum.

A Trump campaign email sent out this week included North Korea in a list of eight “HUGE wins” during Trump’s first term in office. The fundraising email, signed by Trump, claimed that the president has “initiated the denuclearization of North Korea.” 

Experts immediately disputed the claim. Not only has North Korea failed to give up a single nuclear weapon, Pyongyang has likely produced enough fissile material for perhaps up to 18 more nuclear weapons since Trump first met Kim in June 2018, estimates Vipin Narang, a nuclear expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Things may soon get more tense. Last month, North Korea issued a veiled warning it could resume longer-range missile or nuclear tests. And the North has been loudly emphasizing its end-of-year deadline for Trump to offer more concessions in nuclear talks.

The situation poses a dilemma for Trump: how to handle a signature foreign policy priority — one Trump claimed to have already solved immediately after his first meeting with Kim — when the situation on the Korean peninsula appears to be deteriorating by the week.

Trump and Kim may decide to maintain some version of the status quo, relying on their personal relationship to limit tensions. But North Korea appears adamant about forcing Trump’s hand, said Jeffrey Robertson, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University. 

“The Trump administration faces a choice: a weak agreement that solidifies North Korea’s gains, offers more and keeps the calm until November 3rd, or a return to ‘fire and fury,’” Robertson said. 

Trump downplays provocations

For now, a big part of Trump’s approach seems to involve not overreacting to North Korea’s provocations. 

In recent months, Trump, who is fighting a congressional impeachment inquiry, has rarely mentioned North Korea, other than to stress that his relationship with Kim remains strong and may eventually result in a deal. 

Trump has consistently shrugged off North Korea’s missile launches as unimportant, calling them “very standard” short-range missiles that many countries test. 

The North has proceeded to test the short and medium-range missiles at a dizzying pace. 

Since May, North Korea has conducted 12 rounds of missile launches — firing 24 projectiles in total. That equals the record high number Pyongyang tested in 2016, said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Federation of American Scientists. 

“If North Korea launches another missile this year, it’ll be the busiest missile testing year in its history,” said Panda, who closely follows North Korea’s nuclear and weapons program.

More turbulent times ahead?

In recent weeks, North Korea has also intensified warnings over its end-of-year deadline for nuclear talks.

Last week, a senior North Korean official warned the United States against using the Trump-Kim relationship as a “delaying tactic.” 

“No substantial progress has been made in the DPRK-US relations,” said the official, Kim Yong Chol, who warned Washington is “seriously mistaken” if it tries to ignore Pyongyang’s end-of-year deadline.

Underscoring the threat, Kim Jong Un last month went on a symbolism-filled ride on a white horse up his country’s highest mountain, with state media warning of a “great operation to strike the world with wonder.” 

Though the state media coverage of Kim’s horse ride was widely mocked on social media, analysts say the move was designed to both prepare Kim’s domestic and international audiences that there are dangerous times ahead.

“The North Korean leader does not ride a white horse to the top of Baekdu mountain because he is satisfied with the status quo,” said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. 

North Korea may now use nuclear and ICBM tests as leverage in an attempt to extract concessions before the 2020 U.S. election, said Easley. “Pyongyang wants sanctions relief without giving up its weapons, so why not create a crisis and get paid to de-escalate it?” he said.

Sanctions relief enough?

But even if Trump offers North Korea some sanctions relief, it’s not clear it will be enough. According to some analysts, Kim appears confident that he can do without a nuclear deal, at least in the short-term. 

A growing number of analysts say there is evidence North Korea may instead focus on expanding its relationship with Russia and China. 

According to a recent report in NK News, a North Korea-focused website, North Korea has benefited from a surge in Chinese tourism since 2018. The report’s author, Chad O’Carroll, estimates that around 350,000 mainland Chinese tourists visited North Korea in 2019, providing about $175 million in extra revenue for Pyongyang. 

By comparison, North Korea was estimated to bring in only $120 million a year from the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a now shuttered inter-Korean industrial zone that Seoul and Pyongyang are pushing to reopen as part of nuclear talks. 

“So that’s quite good for the DPRK without sanctions changes,” O’Carroll said in a tweet. 

Trump in February rejected Kim’s offer to dismantle a key North Korean nuclear facility in exchange for significant sanctions relief. The disagreement helped lead to the breakdown of talks.

Though North Korea agreed to hold working-level negotiations last month in Stockholm, they abandoned the discussions after just one day, blaming the United States’ “hostile” policy. 

Since then, the North has consistently delivered negative messages. 

On Tuesday, North Korea’s foreign ministry lashed out at the United States for mentioning Pyongyang in its annual report on state sponsors of terrorism. 

“The channel of the dialogue between (North Korea) and the U.S.,” it warned, “is more and more narrowing.” 

…

It has captured the attention of teenagers, celebrities and global brands.

And now U.S. lawmakers and regulators are interested in TikTok, the video app downloaded by 1 billion people.

According to Reuters, the U.S. government is launching a national security review into the Chinese company ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of U.S. app Musical.ly. ByteDance is the parent of TikTok, which makes it easy for users to make videos 15 to 60 seconds long.  

National security concerns

The move comes at a time when lawmakers have called for increasing scrutiny of Chinese companies and their investments in the United States. Some lawmakers question whether TikTok censors users and how safe U.S. user data is if it is held in the hands of a Chinese company.

ByteDance has repeatedly defended itself. In a recent blog post, it said that U.S. user data is stored in the United States. As for content moderation, the company said its “U.S. moderation team, which is led out of California, reviews content for adherence to our U.S. policies—just like other U.S. companies in our space.”

In China, ByteDance owns Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok.

Making a viral video

For users of TikTok, the app is a way to make a short vertical video, similar to Vine, which Twitter shut down in 2017. Video editing tools are built into the TikTok app, with a music library to choose from, so that a video can be made and posted in a school hallway between classes.

Scrolling through TikTok videos is a window into pranks played on parents and friends, dance routines in school bathrooms or in backyards. Users say that watching the videos are addictive and a quick check of TikTok can lead to hours spent watching video after video.

Silicon Valley takes note

Competitors such as Facebook and Snap, the parent of Snapchat, have not missed TikTok’s rise. They are either imitating the company or looking to acquire a similar one. Facebook has its own service called Lasso. Google, which owns YouTube, has had talks about buying a TikTok competitor, The New York Times reported.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, recently said that “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries.”

This isn’t TikTok’s first run in with U.S. regulators. Earlier this year, it paid a $5.7 million fine to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over how it had illegally collected information about children under 13.

…

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Tuesday that Iran would begin injecting gas into centrifuges at its Fordo facility, the latest in steps that go against what it agreed to in a 2015 agreement on its nuclear program.

Rouhani said the injection of uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges was set to start Wednesday.

The text of the nuclear deal that Iran reached with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany called for Iran to convert Fordo into a research facility, while allowing it to spin two of six cascades of centrifuges without uranium.

Iran previously went past limits on the amount of enriched material it is allowed to stockpile and the level to which it is allowed to enrich uranium.

Rouhani said in his televised address Tuesday that all the steps Iran has taken so far are reversible if the other parties to the nuclear deal uphold their commitments to provide Iran with relief from economic sanctions.

The announcement came a day after Iran marked the 40th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by saying it is speeding up uranium processing.

“We see this as a continuation of nuclear blackmail,” a senior U.S. official remarked after Iran’s nuclear chief claimed Monday the country is now operating dozens of advanced centrifuges —  a move that further goes against the 2015 agreement.

The U.S. official said Tehran is attempting to get the worried European signatories of the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Agreement (JCPOA) to make concessions to Iran.

U.S. President Donald Trump, asked later Monday by VOA what should be done about the new, advanced centrifuges, replied: “We’re looking into that. We’ll see.”  

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told state television that Iran is operating the IR-6 centrifuges, which allow the processing of uranium much faster than the IR-1 centrifuges Iran was allowed to use under the JCPOA.

Salehi also said Iran is working on the development of even faster centrifuges called the IR-9, which he claimed will work 50 times faster than the IR-1.

This is “a big step in the wrong direction,” a senior administration official said adding, “We call on nations to condemn Iran’s escalatory steps.”

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday rolled out new sanctions against Tehran, adding to the more than 1,000 already imposed on Iran’s oil exports, its banks, financial transactions and the military leadership of the Islamic Republic.

Among those targeted by the new sanctions are the heads of the armed forces general staff and the Iranian judiciary, as well as the son and the chief of staff of Ayatollah Ali Khameini — Iran’s supreme leader. 

“These individuals are linked to a wide range of malign behaviors by the regime, including bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994, as well as torture, extrajudicial killings and repression of civilians,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement. “This action further constricts the supreme leader’s ability to execute his agenda of terror and oppression.”

Trump administration officials contend the regime in Iran is fundamentally the same as it was in 1979 when a group of protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy, sparking a 444-day crisis that only abated when the 52 American diplomats and citizens who had been taken hostage were released.

“Forty years later, the revolutionary regime in Tehran has proven time and again that its first acts after gaining power were a clear indication of its evil character,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement issued Monday. “The regime continues to unjustly detain Americans and to support terrorist proxy groups like Hezbollah that engage in hostage-taking.”

A senior administration official on Monday called for Tehran to “immediately release, on humanitarian grounds, all Americans held on Iranian soil.”

The request came as the State Department announced a new reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the safe location, recovery, and return of Robert Levinson, who was taken hostage in Iran 13 years ago with the involvement of the Iranian government. Levinson, a retired agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the longest-held hostage in U.S. history.

Washington and Tehran find themselves on opposite sides in the Middle East. The Iranians have been activating their proxies and allies on numerous fronts, raising fears that miscalculations could lead to open and direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.

Officials in Washington reiterate the policy of the U.S. government is to change the Iranian government’s malign behavior. But when it comes to forcing regime change in Tehran, “that’s not our policy,” a senior administration official told reporters Monday.

“The task of ‘confronting’ Iran has become highly complex for the U.S. Iran has often seemed to master the escalatory cycle, including this past summer,” said Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Barbara Leaf, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates who also was the first director of the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs. “The Trump administration has brought together in a jarring, discordant fashion these conflicting impulses to engage/confront, ironically in a formula least likely to produce the oft-stated U.S. policy goals.”

Leaf told VOA that U.S. engagement with Iran “has been reduced to presidential tweets and public musings about Trump’s ardent desire for a meeting — from Tehran’s view, a meaningless photo op without a clear payoff. Confrontation has been reduced to strangling economic sanctions which have in no measurable way moved the regime away from its destructive regional policies. ”

Trump’s own oft-repeated aversion to using force, according to Leaf, “has removed any fear by the regime that its use of asymmetrical tools against U.S. partners will have any repercussions  — further encouraging Tehran to believe in the success of its own approach to the region.”

…

The Daily Orange isn’t daily anymore.

The student-run newspaper that has covered Syracuse University since 1903, and trained generations of journalists, now prints three issues per week. Editor-in-chief Haley Robertson wonders where she’ll find advertisers, worries about firing friends, and searches for alumni donors who will pay to send reporters on the road to cover the university’s sports teams.

These are problems not unlike those that bedevil executives two or three times her age — evidence of how the news industry’s woes have seeped onto campuses that try to harness youthful energy and idealism to turn out professionals who can inform the world.

Meanwhile, college journalism educators are changing the way they teach in a race against obsolescence. They’re emphasizing versatility and encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship.

After some brutal years, there are signs of life. Much as the journalistic pursuit of a crooked president in the 1970s inspired a generation, another leader who denounces reporters as enemies on a nearly daily basis has given birth to a new resolve: Enrollment in journalism programs is up.

“When I look at local news and see what’s happening, I’m pessimistic,” said Kathleen Culver, journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “When I look at 18- and 20-year-olds and see what they want to do, I’m optimistic.”

Thousands of young journalists train for the future on a dual track, in classrooms and in student-run newsrooms that are models for the places they hope to work someday.

For Robertson, that means hours a day in a dingy office with yellowed headlines glued to the wall, metal file cabinets signed by editors dating back nearly 50 years and a ripped upholstered couch carried from the Daily Orange’s old office, now a parking lot.

College publications occasionally make national news while chronicling the rhythms of campus life, as happened this fall when Arizona State University’s student newspaper had a scoop on the resignation of Kurt Volker, U.S. envoy to the Ukraine. Volker runs Arizona State’s McCain Institute.

The Daily Orange in 2018 first posted video of racist and sexist comments made at a Syracuse fraternity, leading to embarrassing headlines for the university across the country. Robertson’s managing editor, Catherine Leffert, sat on the floor at a campus meeting as that story swirled, tapping out updates on her mobile phone, and slept on the office couch in two-hour intervals. The fraternity was suspended.

Journalists of all ages understand the adrenaline rush.

“Seeing the layoffs and seeing newsroom cutbacks is really disheartening,” Leffert said. “But what keeps me wanting to be a journalist and wanting to do it here is seeing the effect that the D.O. has. It’s really cool and exciting.”

Few college publications have shut down the way local newspapers in towns and cities across the country have, said Chris Evans, president of the College Media Association and adviser to the University of Vermont newspaper. Many are supported by student fees and pay their staff members little if anything.

Thirty-five percent of school papers say they have reduced the frequency of print issues to save money, according to a CMA survey taken earlier this year. Five percent have gone online-only, as the University of Maryland’s Diamondback said that it would do early next year. Half of the newspapers that haven’t abandoned paper, like the Daily Orange, say they’re not printing as many copies.

Robertson touts the transition as a way to follow the industry by going more digital, and the D.O. has an active web site and social media presence. Yet there’s only so much staff members can do. They are students, after all.

The University of North Carolina’s Daily Tar Heel switched to three days a week in 2017 when its directors suddenly realized they were going broke, said Maddy Arrowood, the paper’s editor-in-chief. The newspaper cut the pay of staff members and moved into a new, smaller office above a restaurant.

The Daily Tar Heel is testing out newsletters targeted at people with special interests, and its reporters are trying to attract off-campus readers and advertisers by covering news in the surrounding community of Chapel Hill, N.C.

“I spend most of my time very aware of our financial situation,” Arrowood said. “We’re always trying to tell the newsroom that your goal is to produce the best content that you can and be an indispensable resource for our readers.”

One small victory: last year the Daily Tar Heel reported a tiny profit.

Struggling with a $280,000 debt, the Hilltop at Howard University printed its first edition this semester in mid-October. The Maneater at the University of Missouri used to print twice a week, then once. Now it’s down to once a month. It operates separately from a newspaper run by faculty and students that covers the town of Columbia.

Staff members are now charged annual dues — in other words, they must pay to work there, said Leah Glasser, the paper’s editor. They can avoid the dues if they find an alumni sponsor or sell enough advertising to cover it.

The paper has a web site, and Glasser and her staff are slowly getting used to the new monthly schedule.

“It’s so difficult to hear, `we don’t have enough money,”‘ she said. “We hear that a lot. As a generation, that doesn’t make us turn around and go home.”

Newspapers like the Daily Orange and Daily Tar Heel don’t take money from the university or fellow students, believing that to be a conflict of interest. Most publications do, however. Tammy Merrett, faculty adviser to the Alestle at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, doesn’t know how her paper would survive without it.

Fat with slick ads taken out by military recruiters, Planned Parenthood and local supermarkets, the Alestle’s ad revenue was around $150,000 a year in 2008. Now, the paper struggles to make $30,000 a year in ad sales.

“At some universities, they have to approach student government directly and ask for funds, and there have been some instances where student government doesn’t like the coverage, so they deny it,” Merrett said. “Luckily, that doesn’t happen here.”

Despite the worries, North Carolina’s Arrowood says her experience makes her more interested in a journalism career, not less. Her optimism “comes from knowing that people still need news, they still need information, and I’ve gotten to see that in a lot of ways,” she said. “I’m willing to meet people where they are.

“What I want to do is still something that people need,” she said.

With that, she has to cut the conversation short.

Arrowood has a class to attend.

If they’re being honest, most journalism educators have at some point wondered to themselves: Am I preparing young people for a dying industry? Even if I try to retool for a modern age, who will be interested in my school?

At the turn of the century, Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication routinely welcomed 48 new students each year into its master’s program in journalism. A few years ago, that number slipped into the teens, said Joel Kaplan, who runs the program. Nationally, the number of undergraduates in college journalism programs dropped 9 percent between 2013 and 2015, according to the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication.

Newspaper newsroom jobs across the country sank from 52,000 in 2008 to 24,000 now, according to the University of North Carolina. There’s more to journalism than newspapers, of course, but the number of jobs in digital, nonprofit and broadcast newsrooms can’t make up for that kind of contraction.

Try selling a specialized education at an expensive private school to prospective students and parents with those grim statistics as a backdrop.

“It’s one thing to go into debt if you’re an engineer or a graphic artist, because you know the jobs are going to be there,” Kaplan said.

As a school with a broader communications program, Newhouse started emphasizing its advertising and public relations majors. Syracuse used to have a separate newspaper journalism major; now it’s the magazine, news and digital journalism program.
If anyone can adapt, it’s young people.

“My students don’t even remember a day when the paper was delivered to their house,” said John Affleck, a professor of sports journalism at Penn State.

Universities are focusing more on specialized programs like Affleck’s; the University of Florida halted its own decline by starting a sports media program. Several schools invest in data journalism. They’re feeding a greater interest in watchdog reporting.

Penn State just hired its first innovator-in-residence, part of a national trend to emphasize entrepreneurial skills to students who may have to create their own career paths.

The school’s Donald Bellisario College of Communications is itself a testament to keeping an open mind professionally, as it’s named for an alumnus who studied journalism and made a fortune creating and producing television dramas like “NCIS.”

Schools are also breaking down internal barriers that once kept writers, broadcasters and photographers separate. University of Maryland journalism school dean Lucy Dalglish just authorized the purchase of 50 new cameras, since all students there must now take at least two classes in video or still photography. Wisconsin’s Culver recalls a student who grumbled about being forced to take a class in digital journalism; she’s now an executive at Facebook.

“How much should the medium dictate the way we educate a student?” she asked. “The answer is, `not much.”‘

Maryland emphasizes creative, real-world experience. A journalism major worked with a computer science student to produce a map of the most dangerous traffic intersections in the state, Dalglish said. Students also collaborated with National Public Radio on a Baltimore project.

Many educators say their schools should be considered by students who don’t necessarily want media jobs. J-school students learn communication, critical thinking and writing while getting a solid liberal arts education, said Marie Hardin, dean of Penn State’s Bellisario College.

David Perlmutter, dean of Texas Tech’s College of Media & Communication bets that a majority of journalism school graduates over age 35 are no longer in the profession but use the skills they learned.

“Personally, I think that’s what’s going to keep the journalism major alive,” he said.

A “Trump bump” is an unexpected positive. Undergraduate enrollment in journalism programs went up nearly 6 percent between 2015 and 2018, the AEJMC said. Journalism is the most popular major for Bellisario’s incoming class at Penn State, after having been surpassed by advertising and PR four years ago.

Kaplan’s master’s program at Syracuse welcomed 35 new students this fall.

“When Trump starts calling journalists the enemy of the people and fake news, these kids get ticked off,” Dalglish said.

Years ago, graduates beat a familiar path into low-level reporter jobs at newspapers or television stations. That still happens, but when Kelly Barnett, head of the Newhouse school’s career counseling program, scrolls down the list of jobs taken by recent alumni, she sees titles like digital editorial assistant, social media producer, video streamer, social media specialist.

So there’s work, but students shouldn’t be blind to the challenges.

“What I’m not going to tell an incoming student or parent is that there are so many kinds of alternatives out there, that there are just as many jobs out there,” Hardin said, “because I don’t think that’s true.”

…

Dubai-based Mara Group launched in October what it calls Africa’s first smartphone manufacturer in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.  Mara Phone says its device is the first high specification, affordable smartphone made in Africa to compete in a market dominated by South Korean and Chinese brands.  As Ruud Elmendorp reports from Kigali, customers are starting to notice the African phone brand.

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An enterprising Minnesota college student who drove to Iowa every weekend to buy hundreds of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that he then sold to his own customers in the Twin Cities area has been warned by the confectionary giant to stop.

There have been no Krispy Kreme stores in Minnesota for 11 years.

Jayson Gonzalez, 21, of Champlin, Minnesota, would drive 270 miles (430 kilometers) to a Krispy Kreme store in Clive, Iowa, pack his car with up to 100 boxes, each carrying 12 doughnuts, then drive back up north to deliver them to customers in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

He charged $17 to $20 per box. He said some of his customers spent nearly $100 each time. Gonzalez said he did not receive a discount from the store in Iowa where he bought the doughnuts.

But less than a week after the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on his money-making scheme, Gonzalez received a phone call from Krispy Kreme’s Nebraska office telling him to stop. The senior studying accounting at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul said he was told his sales created a liability for the North Carolina-based company.

In a statement Sunday night, Krispy Kreme said it’s looking into the matter.

“We appreciate Jayson’s passion for Krispy Kreme and his entrepreneurial spirit as he pursues his education,” the statement read.

Gonzalez, also known as “The Donut Guy,” would have made his 20th run to Iowa on Saturday. He told his Facebook followers on Thursday that he has been told he has to shut down operations.

“Life happens, and it could be a sign that something else it meant to be,” Gonzalez posted.

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As the US House of Representatives continues to march forward with an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, voters are speaking out in the political battleground state of Wisconsin. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Madison

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The U.N. Security Council on Monday joined regional voices calling for restraint and dialogue to end the latest political crisis in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau.

Guinea-Bissau President Jose Mario Vaz triggered the latest escalation in an ongoing power struggle with the ruling PAIGC (African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) party, of which he was once a member.

Last Tuesday, he dismissed Prime Minister Aristides Gomes and named a replacement from a minority political party.

But Gomes has refused to step down, escalating tensions ahead of an already delayed presidential election scheduled for November 24.

The 15-nation West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, called Gomes’ firing “illegal.”  While the U.N. Security Council did not go as far as ECOWAS, it did issue a consensus statement Monday in which it refers to Gomes as prime minister and “in charge of conducting the electoral process.”

In its statement, read by Council president Ambassador Karen Pierce of Britain, the U.N.’s most powerful organ said there is an “urgent need” to hold the elections on time for a peaceful transition of power.

“The Security Council also reminds all actors that the Council’s possible reconsideration of the existing sanctions regime will depend on their orderly conduct as well as that of other political actors,” Pierce said. “It also reminds stakeholders that it will consider taking appropriate measures against those who undermine stability.”

South African envoy Jerry Matjila expressed hope stability would prevail.

“We hope the army will remain in the barracks, that the protestors will tone down a bit, and then you will have free, fair elections around the country,” Matjila said.

At least one person was killed and several injured Saturday in a pre-election protest.

Guinea Bissau has a history of instability and coups since becoming independent in 1974, although President Vaz, elected in 2014, has been able to complete his five-year term.

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A radio host who helped spread the word in the fight against Ebola has been stabbed to death at his home in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, the army said Sunday.

The motive for the murder in the town of Lwemba in the troubled Ituri region was unknown, but it came as health authorities were set to introduce a new vaccine against the disease in unaffected areas.

The attackers killed 35-year-old Papy Mumbere Mahamba and wounded his wife before burning down their home late Saturday, General Robert Yav, the commander of Congolese army forces in the Ituri town of Mambasa, told AFP.

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Ebola Virus in DR Congo Significantly Contained, But Remains Dangerous

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Professor Steve Ahuka, national coordinator of the fight against Ebola, confirmed a local worker in Lwemba had been killed.

A journalist at Radio Lwemba, the local radio station where Mahamba worked, also confirmed the details.

“Our colleague Papy Mumbere Mahamba was killed at his home by unknown attackers” who stabbed him to death, Jacques Kamwina told AFP.

The Observatory for  Press Freedom in  Africa (OLPA), based in the DRC, called on the Ituri authorities to conduct a “serious investigation” into the murder.

DR Congo declared an Ebola epidemic in August 2018 in the conflict-wracked eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

The highly contagious haemorrhagic fever has so far killed 2,185 people, according to the latest official figures.

Efforts to roll back the epidemic have been hampered not only by fighting but also by resistance within communities to preventative measures, care facilities and safe burials.

It is the DRC’s 10th Ebola epidemic and the second deadliest on record after an outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014-16, claiming more than 11,300 lives.

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In Congo, an Ebola Survivor With a Motorbike Helps Ease Fear

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Health workers have repeatedly come under attack.

A Cameroonian doctor from the World Health Organization (WHO), Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, was shot dead in April in an attack on a hospital in North Kivu province.

A nurse and a police officer were killed in similar circumstances since the start of the epidemic.

In September, militiamen torched around 20 homes of health workers fighting Ebola in the area around Mambasa.

Dangerous burial traditions

The WHO has warned violence undermines the fight against Ebola, notably impeding safe burials of the highly contagious bodies and the administering of vaccines.

People often refuse to forgo traditional burial rites involving kissing, washing and touching of the dead body.

Funerals can become “super-spreading events” with up to 70 people infected in a single ceremony, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

To prevent contagion, health workers and volunteers form safe burial teams but deep mistrust of outsiders often hinders access to bereaved families.

Many people see Ebola as a hoax invented by medical personnel in order to land well-paid jobs.

New vaccine

On Saturday, the authorities said they had received 11,000 doses of a second anti-Ebola vaccine from Belgium, the DRC’s former colonial power.

The Ad26-ZEBOV-GP vaccine – an experimental product– is to be used to protect those living outside of direct Ebola transmission zones.

The vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson will be administered only to those who want it, the ministry said.

It will complement a first vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV-GF, manufactured by the US firm Merck Sharpe and Dohme (MSD), used in Ebola-infected areas to protect those who may have come into contact with victims of the disease.

Nearly 250,000 people have been vaccinated since the start of the program in August 2018.

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McDonald’s chief executive officer has been pushed out of the company after violating company policy by engaging in a consensual relationship with an employee, the corporation said Sunday.

The fast food giant said former president and CEO Steve Easterbrook demonstrated poor judgment, and that McDonald’s forbids managers from having romantic relationships with direct or indirect subordinates.

In an email to employees, Easterbrook acknowledged he had a relationship with an employee and said it was a mistake.

“Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on,” Easterbrook said in the email.

McDonald’s board of directors voted on Easterbrook’s departure Friday after conducting a thorough review. Details of Easterbrook’s separation package will be released Monday in a federal filing, according to a company spokesman. He will also be leaving the company’s board. Easterbrook was CEO since 2015.

McDonald’s would not provide details about the employee with whom Easterbrook was involved, and an attorney for Easterbrook declined to answer questions.

The board of directors named Chris Kempczinski, who recently served as president of McDonald’s USA, as its new president and CEO.

Two weeks ago, McDonald’s reported a 2% drop in net income for the third quarter as it spent heavily on store remodeling and expanded delivery service. The company’s share price has dropped 7.5% since, though it’s still up 9.2% for the year. The burger chain also has been plagued by declining restaurant traffic.

The leadership transition is unrelated to the company’s operational or financial performance, the company said in a news release.

McDonald’s decision to act may be a sign of progress on workplace issues that have come to light in the #MeToo era, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

“Other companies don’t always act on that kind of information or fire their CEO for that, and so it seems like they trying to enforce a pretty strict policy in this situation,” Tobias said.

Among other challenges at its restaurants, McDonald’s has faced workplace harassment charges. In May, McDonald’s said it was enhancing training and offering a new hotline for workers after a labor group filed dozens of sexual harassment charges against the company.

Fight for $15, the group which filed the charges, said McDonald’s response to its sexual harassment complaints has been inadequate, and “the company needs to be completely transparent about Easterbrook’s firing and any other executive departures related to these issues.”

Kempczinski joined McDonald’s in 2015. He was responsible for approximately 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. He was instrumental in the development of McDonald’s strategic plan and oversaw the most comprehensive transformation of the U.S. business in McDonald’s history, said Enrique Hernandez, chairman of McDonald’s board, in a statement.

Kempczinski described Easterbrook as a mentor.

…

A U.S.-based medical relief group operating in northeast Syria was targeted Sunday in a mortar attack allegedly by Turkish-backed Syrian militia fighters near the town of Tal Tamr, killing one medical worker and wounding at least one other.

David Eubank, founder of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), said the attack targeted his team as they were trying to enter the embattled town.

“Zau Seng was from Burma,” Eubank told local media after the attack, referring to a member of his team.

“He was hit in the head by shrapnel and in the back. He died right away.” Eubank said. The wounded volunteer is an Iraqi national, he added.  

The attack occurred outside the northeastern Syrian town of Tal Tamr, where Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been fighting Turkish-backed Syrian militia fighters.

FBR, which is active in several conflict zones, has been involved in humanitarian work in northeast Syria since the beginning of Turkey’s military incursion in the region on October 9.

“Yesterday we took out two wounded [civilians] and today we were there. The Free Syrian Army [Syrian rebels] and the Turks were mortaring in front of us… this mortar came behind us and hit this vehicle,” Eubank, a U.S. Special Forces veteran, said on Sunday.  

He noted that the wounded medics were immediately taken to a nearby hospital run by the Kurdish Red Crescent.

An official at the Kurdish Red Crescent confirmed the news to VOA.  

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t save one of them. His wounds were too deep,” said Kemal Dirbas of the Kurdish Red Crescent, adding that they “don’t have the right medical supplies and equipment for such cases.”

Dirbas added that FBR has done a “unique job to save civilians lives in this conflict.”

“The FBR has been doing a brave work in our region,” he said. “Its volunteers go to very dangerous places to rescue civilians caught in the fighting. They go to frontlines to carry out their humanitarian mission. They face death every day.”

Medical workers have been targeted since the beginning of the Turkish offensive into northeast Syria.

On October 14, a doctor with the Kurdish Red Crescent was reportedly killed in a Turkish airstrike near the town of Tel Abyad.

On the same day, at least four other medical workers were kidnapped by Turkish-backed fighters as they were on way to rescue wounded people, local news reported at the time.

Turkey defends its military operation in Syria and charges that its objective from the ongoing incursion is to remove Syrian Kurdish forces, considered as terrorists by Ankara, from the Turkey-Syria border area.

The United Nations says the Turkish offensive has forced more than 180,000 Syrian civilians to flee the border areas, including into neighboring Iraq.

Local doctors in northeast Syria say at least 206 civilians have died in the fighting, with another 1,086 people injured.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, more than 850 medical workers have been killed throughout the country, medical groups estimate.

…

Dense, noxious smog enveloped the Indian capital and surrounding area Sunday, causing residents to suffer from burning eyes, sore throats, and shortness of breath.

Pollution levels in New Delhi hit a three-year high, forcing 37 flights to be diverted from the city’s international airport due to low visibility.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said the capital’s average air quality index (AQI) hit 494 at 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, the highest since November 6, 2016, when it was 497.

Air quality is considered good when the AQI is below 50 and satisfactory when it’s under 100.

AQI between 301 and 500 is considered “hazardous”  for all population groups. It is not measured past 500.

Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted that the pollution level was “unbearable” and urged the central government to intervene.

Pollution has rched unbearable levels across N India. Del govt taken many steps. Delhiites hv made many sacrifices. Del suffering for no fault of theirs. Punjab CM also expressd concern. Centre shud take immediate steps 2 provide relief. V will support Centre in all initiatives https://t.co/Vx85xYlDId

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 3, 2019

New Delhi, ranked the world’s most polluted city by Greenpeace and AirVisual, routinely gets more polluted at this time of the year. The air quality gets noticeably worse as winter approaches and farmers clear their fields by burning scrub. The pollution is also made worse by smoke from firecrackers lit all across the region to celebrate Diwali, Hinduism’s biggest holiday.

The local governments have ordered all schools and colleges to remain closed at least until Tuesday.  Drivers in the city of more than 18 million people and 8.8 million registered motor vehicles have been asked to follow the odd-even road rationing plan until November 15. Under the plan, cars will only only drive on odd and even dates that correspond with the last digit of the license plate number.

…

Democrats and Republicans continue to spar as the US House of Representatives prepares for public hearings in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington

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The transfer of migrants from overcrowded camps on the islands to the Greek mainland continued over the weekend, with authorities saying 415 arrived at the port of Eleusis west of Athens Saturday afternoon and another 380 expected around noon Sunday.

The migrants had been living on the island of Lesbos, at the Moria camp where almost 15,000 migrants still live in a space designed for 3,000. They were being transported by Greek Navy ships usually used to transport tanks.

A senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about certain aspects of government policy told The Associated Press that the government plans to move 5,000 migrants to the mainland over the next 15 days.

The official said the migrants will be housed in hotels, as the peak tourist season is over. He said some parts of the mainland, such as northern Greece, will be exempted because there are many migrant camps, or hotspots, there already.

He added that the government would cap the number of migrants at 0.8 percent of the local population per prefecture. He did not mention whether more permanent locations would be used in the future.

Greece is divided into 54 prefectures, but about half of them would be exempted from the migrant resettlement scheme, including all islands.

Several of Greece’s eastern islands, all close to the Turkish coast, as well as the land border with Turkey in the northeast, are migrants’ preferred entry points.

The large presence of migrants on those islands – about 35,000 in all – has aroused the hostility of parts of the local population. Local authorities complain the islands are turning into dumping grounds for migrants while the processing of asylum requests is very slow and expulsions of those deemed ineligible for asylum very few. The government has promised to speed up both processes.

Early Saturday, inhabitants of the eastern island of Kos, led by their mayor, prevented 75 migrants from disembarking from a regularly scheduled passenger ship that had picked them up from the remote island of Kastellorizo.

The municipality had blocked the landing with tractors and other vehicles. The mayor said that the government should transfer some of the 4,500 migrants already on the island instead of sending new ones.

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In October, California became the first US state to ban sales of animal fur products – the state’s governor signed a series of laws that ban sales of new clothing and accessories made of fur, as well as prohibiting wild animals at circuses. The decision made animal lovers happy but isn’t selling well with stores that sell fur. Angelia Bagdasaryan has the story narrated by Anna Rice. 

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