This Friday, November 8th, marks the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s 2016 election as the 45th president of the United States.  Trump remains a force of nature in American politics, but the third anniversary of his rise to power comes at a time when he is facing the gravest threat yet to his presidency: an impeachment inquiry led by congressional Democrats over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.

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In the 30 years that have passed since the Berlin Wall came down and ended a decades-long division between the eastern and western parts of the city, it is artists who have injected new life into the abandoned buildings in what was communist East Berlin. And as Charles Maynes reports, this cultural scene became a driving force behind the reconciliation of East and West – a process that continues to this day.

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A new, unreleased book called “A Warning” paints the most damning public profile of Trump since he took office nearly three years ago.

Trump is “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower” and a senile old man running around with no pants, according to the book by an unnamed author.

The anonymous writer describes him or herself as a “senior official in the Trump administration” who decided to withhold their name to keep the spotlight on Trump.

Opinion piece to book

The author is the same person who wrote a New York Times opinion piece last year describing how some top officials are trying to protect the country from what was called an impulsive president.

According to an advance copy of “A Warning” obtained by The Washington Post, President Trump is cruel, inept, and a danger.

“He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but regularly,” according to the book.

The president is likened to a “12-year-old in an air traffic control tower pushing the buttons indiscriminately” as planes try to avoid a collision.

The writer speaks of what is described as Trump’s sexist comments about women, commenting on their make-up, dress and weight.

In one meeting, the president allegedly used a mock Hispanic accent to complain about female migrants crossing from Mexico, calling them useless and saying if they came with husbands, the men could be used to pick corn.

25th Amendment

Trump is also described as someone incapable of leading the country in a crisis, saying he tunes out intelligence and national security briefings and described as someone easily flattered who other world leaders regard as “a simplistic pushover.”

According to “A Warning,” senior administration officials had considered a mass resignation and say Vice President Mike Pence was ready to back a majority of Cabinet members if they tried to remove Trump through the 25th amendment.

Pence denies this, saying the book is “appalling” and said he never heard anyone in the White House talking about such a move.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham brushed off the book as “a work of fiction” and a “farce,” calling the writer a “coward” for wishing to remain anonymous.

But the author says many current and former administration officials share the unflattering views on Trump.

The writer also says he or she deliberately avoided talking about specific events in detail to protect his or her identity.

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The dramatic demise in Vietnam of two maps that show China’s claim to a disputed tract of sea herald a longer-term effort at expunging material that officials find politically offensive — and not just in Vietnam.

Both maps, one in a luxury Volkswagen car and the other in a DreamWorks film, show the nine-dash line that Beijing uses to demarcate its claims in the South China Sea. Vietnamese officials contest the line and say some of the waters within it are theirs. The two countries have sparred since the 1970s over maritime sovereignty.

Vietnam will probably keep censoring material that implies Chinese sovereignty over the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, Asia scholars say. They would effectively follow China’s continued use of authoritarian rule to ban websites and publications that violate its stances on international issues.

“I think this is but the latest series of essentially what I would call posturing,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. “You have to keep on emphasizing your sovereignty over a certain part, because if you don’t, then the international community will think that you are giving up.”

First a film, then a car

Vietnamese cinemas stopped showing the movie Abominable in mid-October because the animated scenes depict a map that delineates Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea, domestic media outlet VnExpress International reported. Vietnam disputes the Chinese claim.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also overlap Chinese claims in the sea that’s rich in fisheries and energy reserves. Chinese maritime activity angers especially Vietnam because China controls the 130-islet Paracel archipelago that both sides claim.

On Monday this week, Vietnamese customs decided to confiscate a $173,000 Volkswagen five-seater after its GPS map displayed China’s “illegal” nine-dash line, state-run Viet Nam News reported. The importer will be fined up to $2,600 and Volkswagen Viet Nam as much as $1,724.

“The General Department of Customs said that all competent government agencies in a meeting on the incident had unilaterally agreed that such a violation must be handled strictly,” Viet Nam News reported.

A private university in Vietnam decided on its own to jettison 500 to 700 books used by first-year Chinese language students because the texts carried the same kind of map, VnExpress International reported Sunday.

Chinese playbook

Beijing has asked dozens of foreign companies over the past two years to tweak wording on their websites so it reflects Chinese political views. Foreign firms have complied particularly by labeling self-ruled Taiwan as part of China, per Beijing’s stance.

China and Vietnam as communist countries are “very consistent” in their posturing, Oh said. Citizens in both often kick off a case by alerting authorities. Filmgoers spotted the map in Vietnam. In China, netizens had noticed foreign websites implying Taiwan was a country.

Vietnam, going forward, will probably play up and shoot down any pro-Beijing South China Sea references they see, analysts say.

“Now there is something like a general trend, every material, movie, media and book that has Chinese maps of the nine-dash line,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies (SCIS) director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City.

Maps are suddenly subject to review because of “heightened tension,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at market research firm IHS Markit. A Chinese survey vessel had fanned anger earlier in the year when it was frequenting waters near a Vietnamese offshore oil exploration site.

China has consecrated its claims throughout the sea over the past decade by using landfill to build islands.

Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines, as democracies, would find it harder to ban material.

However, the producer of Abominable decided against screening the film in Malaysia last month after censors there objected to the map. In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said the film’s map should be cut.

Vietnam’s limitation

Exporters of map-bearing material must mind their politics now, Biswas said.

“Somehow one has to avoid these sensitivities, but it’s very hard because everyone has their own claim, so if you portray anything there’s a danger that someone will object,” he said.

Vietnam, however, will avoid openly criticizing international companies too often because it depends on foreign factory investment for economic growth, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate politics and international studies professor at International Christian University in Tokyo.

China can tap into its much larger domestic market for economic stability.

“The last thing that I think Vietnam would like to be portrayed as is a bully or engaging in economic coercion, in the way that Beijing’s practices have created that image, so I think Vietnam will probably take a softer tone in order to preserve a relatively good image,” Nagy said.

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Human rights groups, lawyers and former defectors are criticizing South Korea’s decision to return two North Korean fishermen who are suspected of killing 16 of their colleagues and then fleeing to the South.

The two men were captured late last week after their squid fishing boat crossed the eastern sea border separating North and South Korea, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. The two confessed that they and another man killed the captain and then 15 other crew members.

South Korea rejected the men’s request for defector status on the grounds they are “heinous criminals” and returned them to North Korea through the Panmunjom border village Thursday.

The bizarre incident tests South Korea’s domestic and international legal commitments. The country’s constitution in theory recognizes North Koreans as South Korean nationals, and Seoul usually accepts fleeing North Koreans, pending an investigation into their background. But South Korean law also allows authorities wide latitude to reject incoming North Korean individuals, for instance, on national security grounds.

Despite the criminal allegations against the North Korean fishermen, some defector and human rights groups in Seoul say the men deserved the legal protections offered by South Korea, noting it is highly likely they will now be executed without a fair trial.

“The two defectors should be handled under the South Korean legal system. We can expect what punishment they will receive in North Korea,” said a statement from Saejowi, a Seoul-based defector support group.

No due process

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) also said it was “deeply concerned” about “the first deportation of North Koreans by South Korea since the 1953 Korean War Armistice.”

“This is the first time (South Korea) has sent North Koreans back against their will,” said HRNK. “In doing so, South Korea has undermined its national constitution, which recognizes all North Koreans as citizens of South Korea, granting them the right to live in the South and be protected by its legal system.”

“As we know from decades of research into how North Korea treats its citizens, there is no doubt that the two deportees have been returned to a place where they face no due process, harsh punishment, torture, and almost-certain execution,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of HRNK.

The two Koreas do not have an extradition agreement. While South Korea’s government technically claims judicial authority over the North, South Korean officials say that does not apply to this case.

Officials point to Article 9 of South Korea’s North Korean Refugees Protection and Settlement Support Act, which says authorities are not required to extend protection to those who commit “serious crimes such as murder.”

Grisly killings

Following a three-day investigation, South Korean investigators expressed confidence they have pieced together the details of the grisly slayings.

The fishing boat left the North Korean port of Kimchaek on Aug. 15 with a crew of 19, officials say. But late last month, three crew members killed the captain, allegedly because he had treated them harshly.

“The young men told investigators they decided to kill the other 15 crewmembers as well because they feared they would be punished for the murder if any witnesses were left alive,” reported South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo.

“They called out the others by twos every 40 minutes on the pretext of changing shifts and methodically slaughtered them with a blunt weapon and threw the bodies into the water,” the paper reported.

The three men initially tried to return to the same North Korean port, but after one of the men was arrested, the two others fled using the same boat and were subsequently detained by the South Korean navy, according to South Korean officials.

Joo Seong-ha, a prominent North Korean defector-turned journalist who lives in Seoul, supports the decision to deport the fishermen.

“Crimes against humanity must be punished everywhere,” Joo said in a public Facebook post. “I believe that the agents from NIS and Defense Ministry made a rational decision.”

International obligations

But while it may be difficult to sympathize with those accused of multiple homicides, the decision sets a bad precedent, said Seoul-based human rights lawyer Kim Se-jin, who said South Korea did not live up to its international obligations.

Specifically, Kim points out that South Korea is a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Torture, which prohibits the return or extradition of a person to another state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

“We respect the South Korean investigation, but the Convention Against Torture says if the criminal or suspect is expected to be tortured or threatened, then the government should not repatriate,” Kim said. “Even though the facts that constitute the crime are obvious, South Korea should have subjected them to judicial proceedings in South Korea.”

“It is de facto truth that the two criminals have a high chance of extrajudicial executions,” she said.

Defections slow

Since the end of the 1950s Korean War, which ended in a truce and not a peace treaty, around 32,000 North Koreans have fled to the South, most via China.

North Korean refugees are first interrogated by South Korean authorities to ensure they are not spies. They are sent to a government-run center to receive training meant to better equip them to live in South Korea.

In recent years, the number of North Koreans coming to the South has slowed. In 2018, 1,137 North Koreans entered South Korea. That is down from a peak of 2,914 in 2009.

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A top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer in Iowa has privately offered campaign contributions to local politicians in exchange for endorsing his White House bid, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the conversations.
 
The overtures from Pat Murphy, a former state House speaker who is serving as a top adviser on Steyer’s Iowa campaign, aren’t illegal – though payments for endorsements would violate campaign finance laws if not disclosed. There’s no evidence that any Iowans accepted the offer or received contributions from Steyer’s campaign as compensation for their backing.
 
But the proposals could revive criticism that the billionaire Steyer is trying to buy his way into the White House. Several state lawmakers and political candidates said they were surprised Steyer’s campaign would think he could buy their support.
 
Tom Courtney, a former Democratic state senator from southeastern Iowa who’s running for reelection to his old seat, told The Associated Press the financial offer “left a bad taste in my mouth.”
 
Murphy didn’t respond to a request for comment. Alberto Lammers, Steyer’s campaign press secretary, said Murphy was not authorized to make the offers and that the campaign leadership outside of Iowa was unaware that he was doing so until the issue was raised by The Associated Press.
 
Courtney declined to name Murphy as the Steyer aide who made the offer, but several other local politicians said they received similar propositions, and all confirmed the proposal came from Murphy himself. Most requested anonymity to speak freely about the issue. Another, Iowa state Rep. Karin Derry, said Murphy didn’t explicitly offer a specific dollar amount, but made it clear Derry would receive financial support if she backed Steyer.
 
“It was presented more as, he has provided financial support to other downballot candidates who’ve endorsed him, and could do the same for you,” she said.
 
Courtney described a similar interaction with Steyer’s campaign.
 
“Tom, I know you’re running for Senate. I’m working for Tom Steyer,” Courtney recalled hearing from the aide. “Now you know how this works. …He said, ‘you help them, and they’ll help you.”’
 
“I said, ‘it wouldn’t matter if you’re talking monetary, there’s no amount,’ ” Courtney continued. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”
 
Lammers, Steyer’s campaign press secretary, said the candidate hasn’t made any individual contributions to local officials in Iowa and won’t be making any this year. In an email, Lammers said Steyer’s endorsements “are earned because of Tom’s campaign message,” and distanced the candidate from Murphy.
 
“Our campaign policy is clear that we will not engage in this kind of activity, and anyone who does is not speaking for the campaign or does not know our policy,” Lammers said.
 
The overtures do not appear to have made much of a difference for Steyer. Aside from Murphy’s support, Steyer has received the endorsement of just one Iowan since entering the race in July – former state Rep. Roger Thomas.
 
Thomas did not respond to phone calls, but in a statement provided by the campaign, he said that he endorsed Steyer “because he’s the outsider who can deliver for Iowans on the issues that matter most: getting corporate corruption out of our politics and putting forth a rural agenda that revitalizes communities across Iowa.”
 
Thomas’ endorsement was issued in October after the close of the most recent campaign finance reporting period, which ended Sept. 30. The disclosure Steyer filed offers no indication that he directly gave Thomas any money.
 
Experts say a campaign could violate campaign finance laws if they don’t disclose payments for endorsements.
 
“It’s legal if you disclose a payment for an endorsement on your campaign finance report,” said Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. But, he added, “It would be unlawful if you don’t disclose it, or you disclose it but try to hide who the recipient is, or try to hide what that purpose was.”

A trio of former Ron Paul aides faced legal trouble in 2016 over similar issues during the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus campaign. Campaign chairman Jesse Benton, campaign manager John Tate and deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari were convicted in 2016 of charges related to arranging and concealing payments for then-Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson, who switched his support from then-Rep. Michele Bachmann to Paul just six days before the Iowa caucuses. Sorenson served 15 months in jail for his role in the scheme.
 
It’s unclear whether Murphy could face a similar legal complaint, but the issue could revive scrutiny of how Steyer is deploying his financial resources. The billionaire businessman built his fortune in banking and investment management before turning to politics, and though he’s never held public office he invested tens of millions of dollars in political activism and electoral politics before launching his presidential bid this year. Prior to his presidential run, Steyer’s most recent focus was a multi-million-dollar, pro-impeachment campaign, and as the U.S. House takes up the issue, he’s argued he’s put it on the national agenda.
 
Steyer has largely self-funded his presidential campaign, spending $47.6 million of his own money in the first three months since launching his bid, much of that on online fundraising and advertising. Steyer qualified for the November debate, but he remains at the back of the pack in early-state and national polls.
 

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A new book on Ruth Bader Ginsburg explores the Supreme Court justice’s thoughts on the (hash)MeToo movement and her hope that non-disclosure agreements, which have come under fire in sexual misconduct cases, “will not be enforced by the courts.”

Several women have spoken out about their encounters with disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile men despite the financial and legal risk of violating the agreements. Others, including former Fox news anchor Gretchen Carlson, want to be released from the confidentiality clauses, concluding they only serve to cover up abuse and keep victims silent.

In “Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law,” the 86-year-old feminist icon questions whether the (hash)MeToo movement will render the secrecy clause obsolete in such cases.

“One interesting thing is whether it will be an end to the confidentiality pledge. Women who complained and brought suit were offered settlements in which they would agree that they would never disclose what they had complained about,” Ginsburg said at a February 2018 event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia that’s included in the book.

“I suspect we will not see those agreements anymore,” she said at the time.

Ginsburg revised her thoughts in edits made this year, according to the book, which was written by National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen and released Tuesday.

“I hope those agreements will not be enforced by courts,” Ginsburg added.

Ginsburg had championed equal protection for women in the 1970s as co-founder of the Women’s Rights Projects at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Some lawyers who represent women today in sexual misconduct cases, including Debra Katz and Gloria Allred, pushed back on Ginsburg’s view of the non-disclosure agreements, known as “NDAs.” They called them essential to securing settlements and protecting their clients’ privacy.

“Employers would not be willing to pay the kind of settlement that they pay now if they believe that all other employees would know about (it),” said Katz, who represented Christine Blasey Ford in her Senate testimony against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Katz also fears the disclosures would make it hard for her clients to find work again.

For Carlson, the secrecy has left her unable to take part in media coverage of her lawsuit against Fox News. She received a reported $20 million settlement in 2016 after claiming late Fox News chief Roger Ailes fired her after she rejected his sexual advances.

“It’s really through NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and through other means of settling these kinds of cases of sexual harassment that we keep women silent,” Carlson told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Until that changes, she said, “we’re not going to eradicate this problem.”

Katz, though, insists it’s not up to victims to change the culture.

“The onus should be not on the person who’s brought a claim to . protect women in the future from sexual harassment. That’s the job of the employer,” Katz said.

Fox did not respond to requests for comment on the issue this week.

NBC Universal, in the wake of Ronan Farrow’s reports that the company had buried a string of sexual misconduct claims with confidential settlements, announced Oct. 25 that it would release current or former employees “from that perceived obligation” if they contacted the company.

Time’s Up and other (hash)MeToo activists lauded the move, but questioned why the accusers had to meet with the company at all.

At least two states, New York and California, have placed limits on the use of NDAs in sexual misconduct cases since the (hash)MeToo movement took off in 2017. The New York law allows them only if the victim prefers it.

But Allred, for one, sees no signs that courts will stop enforcing them. Often times, they’re sent straight to arbitration, she said.

Weinstein, who’s awaiting trial in January on rape and sexual assault charges, is not known to have sought damages from anyone speaking out.

At least one celebrity has, though not successfully.

Comedian Bill Cosby, as he awaited trial in 2016, filed suit against victim Andrea Constand, her mother and her lawyer after they cooperated with authorities who had reopened the case, a decade after he paid Constand a confidential $3.4 million settlement.

“We were adamant that you couldn’t do that,” said Constand’s lawyer Dolores Troiani, who said the agreement preserved their right to talk to police. “That is against public policy.”

Cosby, who later withdrew the complaint, was convicted last year and is now in prison.

Ginsburg, in a 2018 conversation recounted in the book, said she expects the (hash)MeToo movement to have staying power, and any backlash to be limited.

“There are still advances, a way forward, and I do think the more women there are in positions of authority, the less likely that setbacks will occur,” Ginsburg said.

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The U.N. General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn the American economic embargo of Cuba for the 28th year, rejecting U.S. concerns about human rights on the Caribbean island.
 
The vote in the 193-member assembly on Thursday was 187-3 with the U.S., Israel and Brazil voting “no” and Ukraine and Colombia abstaining. Last year, the assembly voted 189-2 with no abstentions.
 
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding and are unenforceable, but they reflect world opinion and the vote has given Cuba an annual stage to demonstrate the isolation of the U.S. on the embargo.
 
The United States imposed the embargo in 1960 following the revolution led by Fidel Castro and the nationalization of properties belonging to U.S. citizens and corporations. Two years later it was strengthened.

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The Trump administration is sanctioning three Nicaraguan officials accused of human rights abuses, election fraud and corruption.

The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday announced the sanctions, which block the officials from doing business with U.S. entities.

The officials are Ramon Antonio Avellan Medal, deputy director of the Nicaraguan National Police; Lumberto Ignacio Campbell Hooker, acting president of the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council; and Roberto Jose Lopez Gomez, director of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute.

Hundreds of Nicaraguans have been killed, jailed or forced into exile since protests against President Daniel Ortega erupted in April 2018.

Ortega officials have called opposition protesters “terrorists” and consider the demonstrations tantamount to an attempted coup.

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his German counterpart stressed the importance of the NATO alliance Thursday, saying that trans-Atlantic cooperation was critical in bringing about the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago and is still relevant today.

Their strong defense of the alliance came after French President Emmanuel Macron claimed in an interview that a lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of NATO.

Speaking after visiting the German village of Moedlareuth with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, which was divided into two during the Cold War, Pompeo told reporters it was the “remarkable work” of democratic nations that “created freedom and brought millions of people out of very, very difficult situations.”

“I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically one of the most critical, strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” Pompeo told reporters in Leipzig.

Maas also weighed in, saying he did “not believe NATO is brain dead,” adding “I firmly believe in international cooperation.”

Pompeo started his day visiting American troops in southern Germany in an area where he served as an Army officer during the Cold War.

Pompeo, who served as a tank platoon leader on the border with Czechoslovakia and East Germany in the 1980s, chatted with troops at the Grafenwoehr training area and nearby Vilseck and attended a live-fire exercise before heading north to Moedlareuth.

During the Cold War, Moedlareuth was split down the middle by the border between East and West Germany, with the southern part in Bavaria and the northern part in Thuringia, a partition that gave rise to its nickname, “Little Berlin.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans were stationed in West Germany during the Cold War, and the country was one of the U.S.’s closest allies. That relationship continued after the Nov. 9, 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, but ties have become strained recently under the presidency of Donald Trump over a series of issues.

Pompeo is visiting five German cities on the two-day trip. In Berlin, he will deliver a speech highlighting the U.S. role in helping eastern and central Europe “throw off the yoke of communism,” according to the U.S. State Department.

He will also unveil a statue of Ronald Reagan on an upper-level terrace of the U.S. Embassy, overlooking the site in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate where the Berlin Wall once stood. That is also where the former U.S. president gave his famous 1987 speech beseeching then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “open this gate” and “tear down this wall.”
 

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Gunmen attacked a convoy near a Canadian mining site in Burkina Faso, killing at least 37 people and wounding 60 others, the regional governor said late Wednesday. 

Montreal-based Semafo said the bloodshed happened about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from its Boungou mine in Burkina Faso’s Eastern region and involved five buses of employees who were being accompanied by a military escort. 

Col. Saidou Sanou, the region’s governor, gave the provisional casualty toll in a statement. The mining company said only that it was aware of “several fatalities and injuries.” 

“Boungou mine site remains secured and our operations are not affected,” Semafo said in its statement. “We are actively working with all levels of authorities to ensure the ongoing safety and security of our employees, contractors and suppliers.” 

The area has become increasingly precarious for Semafo, which operates two gold mines in Burkina Faso. Last year, an employee and subcontractor were killed when a bus was targeted by bandits, according to Canadian Press. Later last year, five members of Burkina Faso’s security forces were killed in an attack near the Boungou mine. 

Sylvain Leclerc, spokeswoman for the Canadian foreign ministry, said there were no reports of any Canadian citizen among the casualties. She added that Canada’s government condemns the attack and supports efforts to bring peace to Burkina Faso. 

The violence underscores the rapidly deteriorating security situation in once-peaceful Burkina Faso, which has been infiltrated by jihadists who have been active for years in neighboring Mali. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic extremists have staged dozens of attacks on churches and public officials across the north of Burkina Faso the last few years. 

Concerted military actions by five regional countries, along with a French operation, have failed to stem the growing violence. 

The country, which experienced its first major extremist attack in 2015, is a gateway south into coastal West Africa, and regional leaders worry the extremists could be moving into Togo and Benin. 

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The foreign ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan met Wednesday in Washington with President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to discuss the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) on Ethiopia’s Blue Nile.

In a joint statement issued after the meeting, the ministers — Sameh Hassan Shoukry of Egypt, Gedu Andargachew of Ethiopia and Asma Mohamed Abdalla of Sudan — noted the significance of the Nile to the development of the people of their countries, and “reaffirmed their joint commitment to reach a comprehensive, cooperative, adaptive, sustainable, and mutually beneficial agreement on the filling and operation” of the GERD.

The massive hydropower dam project has been the focus of an escalating feud between Addis Ababa and Cairo over water resources.

The unannounced meeting was not on Trump’s public schedule. The White House did not respond to VOA’s earlier request for clarification.

“The meeting went well and discussions will continue during the day!” the president tweeted on Wednesday.

Just had a meeting with top representatives from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan to help solve their long running dispute on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, one of the largest in the world, currently being built. The meeting went well and discussions will continue during the day! pic.twitter.com/MsWuEBgZxK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2019

The meeting, spearheaded by Mnuchin and also attended by World Bank Group President David Malpass, came about after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi requested that Trump mediate the conflict over the dam.

Countries at odds

All three countries are vitally important to U.S. interests, and the Trump administration’s efforts to facilitate the negotiations over the dam are not at all surprising, said Bronwyn Bruton, director of programs and studies at the Africa Center of the Atlantic Council.

“Any armed or proxy conflict between these nations over the GERD would have a profoundly destabilizing effect on a region that is already facing ethnic unrest, political transition and a rising threat from jihadi extremist groups,” Bruton said.

Observers of international transboundary water conflicts say an ideal outcome would be a commitment by the countries to work together to get to an agreed-upon solution.

“If countries come out of this meeting with an agreement on a process to get to a cooperative outcome, I think that would be a positive development from everybody’s perspective,” said Aaron Salzberg, director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina. Salzberg is the State Department’s former special coordinator for water in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, which deals with international transboundary water issues.

The ministers committed Wednesday to work toward completion of an agreement by Jan. 15, 2020.

In an Oct. 5 statement, the Ethiopian government condemned Egypt’s proposal for Nile water allocation, calling Egypt’s conditions for filling the massive reservoir of the GERD “unjustified” and disruptive to “the positive spirit of cooperation.”

Egypt and Ethiopia have disagreed for years about how to divert water from the Nile. Addis Ababa is proposing the reservoir behind the dam be filled over four to seven years. But Egypt wants to require Ethiopia to receive approval at various points of the filling process, a step Cairo said is necessary to avoid droughts.

“It’s possible that nothing changes,” said Salzberg. “It is also possible that those governments start to realize that this is a region that matters to the rest of the international community, and their approach to solving this problem could affect how partners work with them in the future.”

Sudan has a 1959 Nile Waters Agreement with Egypt, reached shortly before Egypt began constructing its own Aswan High Dam, but Ethiopia was not part of that agreement.

Egypt has long sought external mediation on the GERD, while Ethiopia wants to keep the negotiations on a tripartite level.

Prior to the meeting in Washington, the Ethiopian government said the talks “are not negotiations.”

Salem Solomon contributed to this report.

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Days of severe rains in central Somalia have killed at least 21 people and displaced more than a quarter million more as rivers burst their banks, flooding villages and towns.  Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports from Beledweyne, Somalia.

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James Dean hasn’t been alive in 64 years, but the “Rebel Without a Cause” actor has been cast in a new film about the Vietnam War.

The filmmakers behind the independent film “Finding Jack” said Wednesday that a computer-generated Dean will play a co-starring role in the upcoming production. The digital Dean is to be assembled through old footage and photos and voiced by another actor.

Digitally manipulated posthumous performances have made some inroads into films. But those have been largely roles the actors already played, including Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing, who first appeared together in “Star Wars” and were prominently featured in the 2016 spinoff “Rogue One.”

But the prospect of one of the movies’ most beloved former stars being digitally resurrected was met with widespread criticism after the news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Chris Evans, the “Captain America”actor, was among those who called the plans disrespectful and wrongheaded.

“Maybe we can get a computer to paint us a new Picasso. Or write a couple new John Lennon tunes,” said Evans on Twitter. “The complete lack of understanding here is shameful.”

Rights to Dean’s likeness were acquired by the filmmakers and the production company Magic City Films through CMG Worldwide. The company represents Dean’s family along with the intellectual property rights associated with many other deceased personalities including Neil Armstrong, Bette Davis and Burt Reynolds.

Mark Roesler, chairman and chief executive of CMG, defended the usage of Dean and said the company has represented his family for decades. Noting that Dean has more than 183,000 followers on Instagram, Roesler said he still resonates today.

“James Dean was known as Hollywood’s ‘rebel’ and he famously said ‘if a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live after he’s died, then maybe he was a great man. Immortality is the only true success,’” said Roesler. “What was considered rebellious in the `50s is very different than what is rebellious today, and we feel confident that he would support this modern day act of rebellion.”

Adapted from Gareth Crocker’s novel, “Finding Jack” is a live-action movie about the U.S. military’s abandonment of canine units following the Vietnam War. Directors Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh are to begin shooting Nov. 17. In an email, Ernst said they “tremendously” respect Dean’s legacy.

“The movie subject matter is one of hope and love, and he is still relevant like the theme of the film we are portraying,” said Ernst. “There is still a lot of James Dean fans worldwide who would love to see their favorite icon back on screen. There would always be critics, and all we can do is tell a great story with humanity and grace.”

Dean had just three leading roles before he died in a car crash in 1955 at the age of 24: “Rebel Without a Cause,” “East of Eden” and “Giant.”

…

Twitter said Wednesday that it was rolling out a feature that lets users follow topics the way they do people, starting with sports and K-pop, as part of its efforts to bring in and keep more users on the service. 
 
The new “Topics” option was expected to be available to Twitter users on mobile devices powered by Android or Apple software or through web browsers by Nov. 13. 
 
“We are starting with topics that have the most volume on Twitter for now — sports, K-pop — and you’ll see us add in even more on a week-to-week basis,” Twitter told AFP. 
 
Twitter earlier this year disclosed plans to provide users the option of following any of a small number of interests. 

Accent on conversations
 
The feature was to be rolled out internationally as the messaging platform prioritizes being an online venue for conversations rather than a pulpit for one-way broadcasting to the masses. 
 
“We are basically rewriting the entire conversation service,” Twitter product team leader Kayvon Beykpour said during a briefing at the company’s San Francisco headquarters in August. 
 
Twitter has always let users follow accounts, but the new feature will let users opt into following certain sports teams or categories on a curated list. 
 
For example, sending or interacting with tweets about a team might prompt a query over whether the user wants to “follow” that team or be kept in the know about what is being said on Twitter on the topics, the company explained at the briefing. 

‘Mute’ option
 
There will be an ability to “mute” topics to avoid seeing the score of a sporting match, for example. 
 
Topics people follow will show up in their profiles as long as they are signed up for the interest. 
 
Subjects designated “interests” by Twitter are meant to be lasting — such as football or cricket — rather than passing hot topics, according to Twitter. 

…

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.

…