Yazidi families would not feel safe returning to their homes in Iraq until Islamic State militants accused of atrocities against the religious minority face justice, according to a doctor awarded Saturday for his work with Yazidi women and children.

Mirza Dinnayi, a Yazidi activist named the winner of the Aurora humanitarian prize for helping 1,000 Yazidi women and children seek medical treatment in Europe, said prosecutions were key to help the “completely traumatized” community.

“Yazidis need to trust the authorities in Iraq in order to establish peace and make a process of reconciliation and transitional justice. This has not happened,” Dinnayi said.

UN declares genocide

Islamic State rampaged through the Yazidi religious community’s heartland in Sinjar, northern Iraq, in 2014, slaughtering thousands of people, in what the United Nations has called a genocide.

About 7,000 women and children were kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters. Almost 3,000 of them remain unaccounted for, according to community leaders.

The jihadist group was driven out of the region in 2017, but many Yazidi still live in camps, afraid to return.

Some militants have faced trial in Iraq but on charges of belonging to a terrorist group rather than for alleged war crimes and genocide — something that has fueled a sense of distrust in authorities among the Yazidi community, Dinnayi said.

“The recognition of genocide is the first step in order to satisfy the victims,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Armenia where the award ceremony was held.

The problem was exacerbated by Iraqi laws allowing rapists to avoid prosecution by marrying their victims and the lack of a specific crime for sexual slavery, Dinnayi said.

Fears of IS escape

The 46-year-old added he was also concerned that a recent Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria could further hamper efforts to see justice done, by providing militants jailed there with a “big opportunity” to escape.

Kurdish officials have said almost 800 Islamic State-affiliated foreigners, many of them women and children, escaped from a camp after the Turkish incursion began last week.

There are also fears that jihadists held in jails in Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria could flee.

Prize money goes to aid groups

Dinnayi, who lives in Germany, was awarded the $1 million prize for his work helping more than 1,000 Yazidi women and children seek medical treatment in Europe.

The prize money would go to his organization, Air Bridge Iraq, and two other aid groups helping people who suffered at the hands of Islamic State militants, he said.

The Aurora prize runner-ups were Zannah Mustapha, a lawyer who set up a school for children affected by violence in northeastern Nigeria, and Yemeni lawyer Huda Al-Sarari, who investigated human rights abuses in the war-torn country.

The annual Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity was founded by Armenia-based 100 LIVES, a global initiative that commemorates a 1915 massacre in which up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Muslims.

…

Swiss voters elect their parliament this weekend, a challenge for the populist right that has been dominant until now and an opportunity for green parties as environmental concerns have swept up much of Europe this year. 

Political analyst Pascal Sciarini of the University of Geneva cited a “great unknown” in the vote: Will young Swiss who have poured into the streets to lament global warming also turn up at the ballot boxes? 

Voters are electing the 200-member National Council, parliament’s lower house, and the 46-member Council of States, the upper house, to four-year terms. Recent polls suggest two groups, the Greens and the Liberal Greens, stand to gain seats. 

Balloting ends at midday Sunday. Most voters in Switzerland cast their ballots by mail, avoiding a stop at polling stations. 

It’s an important electoral date for Switzerland, a rich country of 8.2 million where power-sharing and embedded checks and balances make for a stable political landscape, except when it’s occasionally shaken up by referendums. 

This year has been more dynamic than many: Students and others have marched on public offices repeatedly to echo concerns across Europe about climate change, and the first major women’s protest in Switzerland since 1991 drew tens of thousands to demand fairer pay, more equality and an end to sexual harassment and violence. Swiss media report a record number of women are standing for election this year. 

Environmental issues resonate here: A group called Glacier Monitoring Switzerland says the Alpine country has lost 15 percent of its glacier volume over the last decade, and warns that all Swiss glaciers could disappear by 2100 if warming continues. 

Immigration, EU

Worries about women’s rights and the environment are a far cry from the last election, when immigration and relations with the European Union were the main concerns and fanned gains for the populist, right-wing Swiss People’s Party that today holds the most seats in parliament. 

“There are two main stakes for this election: how significant will the predicted advance of the Greens be,” said Sciarini, “and how much will the [Swiss People’s Party] lose. That could signal losses for the right generally, and lead to more leftist policies.” 

The legislature picks the seven members of Switzerland’s executive branch: The Federal Council. The Swiss presidency rotates every year among those seven members, who make decisions by consensus — part of the Swiss “magic formula” of democracy that requires different political factions to cooperate, and govern from the middle ground. 

Greens don’t have any seats in the council now. The People’s Party, the Social Democrats, and center-right Liberal party each have two, and the Christian Democrats have one. But big electoral successes could boost the Greens’ argument that they would deserve one, too. 

…

Zana Omar reports for VOA from Qamishli that the International Red Cross and the Red Crescent traveled to Ras al-Ayn to extract the wounded civilians from the hospital there that had been under siege from the Turkish incursion into the region — both before and after the cease-fire.

…

Around 20 South Korean protesters broke into the residential compound of the U.S. ambassador to South Korea Friday, prompting U.S. officials to call for tighter security measures around diplomatic missions here.

Video of the break-in posted online shows a group of young, chanting protesters using ladders to scale the stone wall surrounding Ambassador Harry Harris’ house, which is in a central area of Seoul. 

A South Korean police official told Reuters that 19 students were taken to a police station for questioning.

After scaling the compound walls, the intruders attempted to forcibly enter the ambassador’s residence, but were detained by Seoul police, according to a statement by the U.S. Embassy issued Saturday.

Some of the protesters carried signs calling for Harris to leave Korea and characterized U.S. troops as an occupying force.

Pockets of anti-US sentiment

Although polls show South Koreans overwhelmingly support the alliance with Washington, pockets of anti-U.S. sentiment remain.

In 2015, a knife-wielding South Korean man with a history of militant Korean nationalism ambushed then-U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert outside a building in downtown Seoul. Lippert sustained cuts to his arm and face.

More sporadic, minor disturbances have occurred since then.

“We note with strong concern that this is the second instance of illegal entry into the ambassador’s residential compound in 14 months,” a U.S. embassy official in Seoul said Saturday. “We urge the Republic of Korea to strengthen its efforts to protect all diplomatic missions to the ROK.”

Seoul’s foreign ministry said attacks on diplomatic facilities will not be tolerated, adding it will take “all appropriate measures” to prevent further incidents. Seoul police said they will increase security around the U.S. Embassy, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Cost-sharing talks

The break-in comes at a particularly tense moment for U.S.-South Korea relations. The two countries next week will begin a second round of contentious negotiations over how to split the cost of the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

President Donald Trump has long complained that U.S. allies, and South Korea in particular, are not paying their “fair share” for the cost of U.S. troops.

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Trump Says South Korea to Pay ‘Substantially More’ for US Troops

Seoul hasn’t confirmed Trump’s announcement

In an apparent hardball negotiating tactic, Trump in August said South Korea agreed to pay “substantially more” for protection from North Korea. Seoul shot back, saying cost-sharing talks haven’t even begun.

South Korean reports say U.S. negotiators are demanding a fivefold increase in how much South Korea pays for U.S. troops. Harris appeared to indirectly confirm that figure in an interview last week.

He told the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that from the U.S. perspective, South Korea could be seen as having funded only one-fifth of the total defense cost, and that as the world’s 12th-largest economy South Korea should take on a larger share.

South Korean officials have reportedly rejected the demand, saying they are prepared to engage in “reasonable” negotiations before the current cost-sharing agreement expires at the end of the year.

Anti-US displays rare

Over the past decade, overt displays of anti-U.S. sentiment have become less common in Seoul than in previous decades.

According to a 2018 Pew Research poll, 80% of South Koreans have a favorable view of the United States. That same poll, however, suggested just 44% of South Koreans have confidence in Trump.

Historically, conservatives have been the most reliably pro-U.S. contingent in South Korea. Recently, though, there has been a small backlash against Trump among conservatives, many of whom are already skeptical of Trump’s outreach to North Korea.

The situation has been exacerbated by Trump’s comments on cost-sharing negotiations. Trump reportedly recently used an Asian accent to mock South Korea’s president over the issue. Earlier this year, Trump said a certain country, widely seen as South Korea, was “rich as hell and probably doesn’t like us too much.”

The Pentagon says roughly 28,000 troops are in South Korea to help deter North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

South Korea rejects Trump’s notion that it doesn’t contribute enough toward the cost of the U.S. troops, insisting it pays almost half of the total cost of $2 billion. That doesn’t include the expense of rent-free land for U.S. military bases, Seoul says.

…

Chile’s president declared a state of emergency in Santiago Friday night and gave the military responsibility for security after a day of violent protests over increases in the price of metro tickets.

“I have declared a state of emergency and, to that end, I have appointed Major General Javier Iturriaga del Campo as head of national defense, in accordance with the provisions of our state of emergency legislation,” President Sebastian Pinera said.

Throughout Friday, protestors clashed with riot police in several parts of the city and the subway system was shut after attacks on several stations.

Violent clashes escalated as night fell, and the ENEL power company building and a Banco Chile branch, both in the city center, were set on fire and several metro stations hit with Molotov cocktails.

The unrest started as a fare-dodging protest against the hike in metro ticket prices, which increased from 800 to 830 peso ($1.17) for peak hour travel, following a 20 peso rise in January.

Attacks on metro stations forced the closure of the entire subway system, which is the key form of public transport in the congested and polluted capital, carrying 3 million passengers a day.

“The entire network is closed due to riots and destruction that prevent the minimum security conditions for passengers and workers,” the metro operator said on Twitter, after attacks against nearly all the 164 stations where many gates and turnstiles were destroyed.

The Santiago Metro, at 140 kilometers (90 miles) the largest and most modern in South America, is expected to remain closed this weekend and could reopen gradually next week.

Closure of the metro forced many Santiago residents to walk home, sometimes long distances, resulting in scenes of chaos.

Protesters erected barricades in various parts of the city and clashed with police, who used water cannon and tear gas in the most violent street battle seen in the Chilean capital for a long time.

Pinera slammed the protesters as criminals. 

“This desire to break everything is not a protest, it’s criminal,” he said in a radio interview. 

On Thursday, 133 people had been arrested for causing damage to metro stations, estimated at up to 500 million pesos ($700,000).
 

…

Seasonal rains are bringing relief from a toxic haze that had blanketed Malaysia and Singapore. The air pollution disrupted the lives of millions of people and concerns remain about whether the problem will keep happening. Dave Grunebaum has the story from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
 

…

Seasonal rains have brought relief from the haze that blanketed much of Malaysia and Singapore.

The toxic air disrupted life for tens of millions of people.

Face masks were in common usage as people tried to protect themselves. Many Malaysian schools closed for days because the air was so hazardous.

Much of the smog stemmed from Indonesia, where fires were set to clear land for palm oil plantations, as well as pulp and paper. Some of the plantations are owned by Malaysian companies.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has a haze agreement to try to combat the issue, but it seems to have done little so far.

“The ASEAN trans-boundary haze agreement has largely been a case of being like a paper tiger,” said Nithi Nesadurai, president of the Environmental Protection Society Malaysia, a nongovernment organization. “It’s something there on paper, but really has very little effect.”

The haze happens almost every year, although health advocates say the pollution was worse this year compared with any since 2015. Local doctors reported a surge in illnesses.

Dr. Jessreen Kaur of Kuala Lumpur says she prescribed antibiotics and antihistamines to many patients.

“There are a lot of upper respiratory tract infections coming from the haze.” Kaur said. “More people are getting infected tonsils, infections of the pharynx and also lung infections.”

ASEAN ministers have talked about closer cooperation on the issue. In Malaysia, discussions are underway about drafting a law that would punish Malaysian companies that start fires in a foreign country.

“It enables the Malaysian government to take action against a Malaysian company which is causing pollution on foreign soil,” Nesadurai said. “This will be a means of deterrence, especially if one of them gets punished.”

Nesadurai adds that more needs to happen at the grassroots level. Environmental groups like his are calling for federal and local governments, as well as the companies that own the plantations, to partner with local communities to try to prevent the fires from happening in the first place.

“The most effective action can take place if the stakeholders work together,” Nesadurai said.

The Global Environment Center, a nongovernment organization, has worked in several communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. It connects with plantation owners and people who live near the plantations. It teaches techniques to help prevent fires and also provides firefighting equipment, as well as training, to help locals contain a land fire until professional firefighters arrive.

“This community approach makes a difference,” said Adelaine Tan, coordinator of outreach and partnership programs, at the Global Environment Center. “But we have a limited budget, so we can’t reach everywhere it’s needed.”

Malaysians can breathe easier for now, but concerns linger that this problem could ignite again next year.

“Something needs to be done,” said Manisa McCalman of Kuala Lumpur. “Whenever we have this problem, you don’t want to even go outside.”

…

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is battling to persuade lawmakers to back the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement he signed with the European Union ahead of a special session in the British Parliament scheduled for Saturday. The vote on the deal is set to go to the wire. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Brussels, Europe is doing all it can to try to get the deal passed.

…

Pakistan Thursday night blocked the Asia program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists from entering the country and forced him to return to the United States, claiming he had been blacklisted by the country’s Interior Ministry.

The global press freedom group Friday denounced the “baffling” expulsion of Steven Butler as “a slap in the face to those concerned about press freedom” in Pakistan.

The CPJ said in a statement that immigration authorities at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore denied entry to Butler although he had a valid journalist visa, citing “a blacklist managed by the Ministry of Interior.”

CPJ executive director Joel Simon has demanded a full explanation from Pakistani authorities.

“If the government is interested in demonstrating its commitment to a free press, it should conduct a swift and transparent investigation into this case,” said Simon.

The Pakistani government has not yet responded to CPJ.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was disappointed by the government’s decision to send Butler back from the airport and demanded the decision be re-evaluated.

“On one hand, the government claims to be building a softer image of Pakistan. On the other, it refuses entry to a reputed international journalist with a valid visa,” the commission said.

Amnesty International said Butler’s deportation is “an alarming sign that freedom of expression continues to be under attack in Pakistan.” It demanded that the decision be reversed immediately.

Butler was traveling to the country for a conference this week debating human rights in Pakistan. He has been regularly visiting the country to work with local media advocacy groups and activists. Butler’s expulsion comes amid growing censorship concerns in Pakistan, although officials decry them as misplaced.

Critics blame the powerful military for blocking media coverage critical of the institution’s increased role in Pakistani politics and abuses security forces allegedly committed during counterterrorism operations, particularly in the remote tribal districts near the Afghan border.

Army spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor has repeatedly rejected the charges as propaganda.

…

 The world’s first female spacewalking team made history high above Earth on Friday, floating out of the International Space Station to fix a broken part of the power network.
 
As NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir emerged one by one, it marked the first time in a half-century of spacewalking that a woman floated out without a male crewmate.

LIVE NOW: Tune in to watch the first #AllWomanSpacewalk in human history! ??‍?

Starting at approximately 7:50am ET, @Astro_Christina & @Astro_Jessica venture into the vacuum of space to replace a failed power controller. Watch: https://t.co/2SIb9YXlRh

— NASA (@NASA) October 18, 2019

 
America’s first female spacewalker from 35 years ago, Kathy Sullivan, was delighted. She said It’s good to finally have enough women in the astronaut corps and trained for spacewalking for this to happen.

NASA leaders – along with women and others around the world – cheered Koch and Meir on. At the same time, many noted that this will hopefully become routine in the future.
 
“We’ve got qualified women running the control, running space centers, commanding the station, commanding spaceships and doing spacewalks,” Sullivan told The Associated Press earlier this week. “And golly, gee whiz, every now and then there’s more than one woman in the same place.”
 
Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a three-time spacewalker who watched from Mission Control, added: “Hopefully, this will now be considered normal.”
 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine watched the big event unfold from NASA headquarters in Washington.
 
“We have the right people doing the right job at the right time,”he said. “They are an inspiration to people all over the world including me. And we’re very excited to get this mission underway.”
 
NASA originally wanted to conduct an all-female spacewalk last spring, but did not have enough medium-size suits ready to go. Koch and Meir were supposed to install more new batteries in a spacewalk next week, but had to venture out three days earlier to deal with an equipment failure that occurred over the weekend. They need to replace an old battery charger for one of the three new batteries that was installed last week by Koch and Andrew Morgan.
 
“Jessica and Christina, we are so proud of you. You’re going to do great today,” Morgan radioed from inside as the women exited the hatch.
 
Meir, making her spacewalking debut, became the 228th person in the world to conduct a spacewalk and the 15th woman.
 
It was the fourth spacewalk for Koch, who is seven months into an 11-month mission that will be the longest ever by a woman.

…

When the U.S. Congress seeks to condemn the actions of a president, a cabinet member, a lawmaker or a judge, lawmakers can vote on a motion to “censure” the individual.

Censure is a formal reprimand less severe than removing an official from their job. It requires a simple majority vote in either chamber of Congress, instead of the two-thirds majority required to remove a lawmaker from office.

What is the censure process?

The Constitution gives each house of Congress the ability to punish its members for disorderly behavior or criminal misconduct through a reprimand, censure or expulsion.  

A reprimand is the least severe punishment of the three, sometimes given privately.

Censure is a public condemnation that can result in lawmakers losing any committee chairs they may hold. Censures and reprimands are imposed in the House and Senate by a simple majority of members.

Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority and results in a member leaving office. Removing the president is a separate process that starts with impeachment in the House before moving to a trial in the Senate.

Members of the House or Senate introduce the resolution of censure, explaining why an individual merits the punishment, before voting on the resolution. Censured House members must stand in the well of the chamber while the Speaker or presiding officer reads the resolution aloud.

How often is censure used?

Since 1789, the Senate has censured at least nine of its members. Throughout its history, the House has censured 23 of its members.

Why do lawmakers sometimes favor censure over more serious punishments?

Censure is a less severe option than impeachment because it does not trigger the removal of the official.

What happens to censured politicians?

While censured members usually can hang onto their jobs through the remainder of their term, they typically are stripped of their committee assignments by the leadership and are shunned or scorned by their legislative colleagues. Some simply resign from Congress.

…

After a thousand days of President Donald Trump in the White House, official Washington found itself consumed by the twin crises of impeachment and Syria this week.

Even as the president is trying to fend off congressional Democrats moving toward impeachment, he also faces a fierce backlash from Democrats and many Republicans over his decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria.

Trump is used to weathering political storms, but this one is particularly intense and comes at a time when he is looking ahead to a re-election campaign next year.

Syria flap  

From the start, Trump has been on the defensive over his decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.

“We were supposed to be there for 30 days. We stayed for 10 years, and it is time for us to come home. We are not a policing agent, and it is time for us to come home,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the U.S. and Turkey had agreed to a cease-fire against Kurdish forces in northern Syria.  Trump welcomed the development during a trip to Texas, calling it “an amazing outcome.”

Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw from Syria drew fire from both opposition Democrats and several Republicans, including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, often one of the presidents most loyal supporters.

“So this is the president exercising his judgment in a way that I think is out of line with the advice he has been given, dangerous, and I hope he will reconsider,” Graham told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.

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Trump: I Did Not Green-Light Turkish Incursion Into Syria

US president tells reporters he does not want to get involved in a war between Turkey and Syria

The Syria controversy erupted as Trump was already busy fending off a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry in Congress spurred by his request to Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

Trump has blasted the impeachment investigation as a partisan witch-hunt and vented to supporters last Saturday in a speech to the Value Voters Summit.

“Impeachment! I never thought I would see or hear that word with regard to me. Impeachment. I said the other day, it is an ugly word. To me it is an ugly word.”

Impeachment undertone

With impeachment as a backdrop, tensions boiled Wednesday over at a White House meeting with Democrats about Syria.

During the meeting Trump called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “a third grade politician.” Pelosi described the president as having a “meltdown.” Trump’s comments targeting Pelosi prompted Democratic congressional leaders to walk out of the meeting, including Congressman Steny Hoyer, the House Majority leader.

“I have served with six presidents. I have been in many, many, many meetings like this. Never have I seen a president treat so disrespectfully a co-equal branch of the government of the United States,” said Hoyer.

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‘See you at the Polls’: Trump and Pelosi Have it out

He said she’s a ‘third-grade’ politician. She said he’s having a meltdown

There are signs the political pressure on the president over impeachment appears to be mounting, according to analyst John Fortier at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

“The president’s removal [from office] and the president’s reputation afterward is something that clearly he must be thinking about. But in terms of the way the White House is reacting, I do think that they have a similar way of fighting all sorts of controversies, and it is not to back down.  It is to really stand up and push back and that is what we have been seeing.”

Expect to see more of that aggressive political pushback as the impeachment drama moves on, even as both sides in the impeachment inquiry keep a close watch on public opinion.

“Republicans have to be very careful not to be seen as defending the indefensible,” said Brookings Institution scholar William Galston. “And if they take the position of denying that the president did anything wrong, I think they are going to lose ground with the American people.”

Recent polls have shown growing public support for the impeachment inquiry. But the surveys also show Americans remain divided on whether Trump should ultimately be impeached and subsequently removed from office.

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Case for Obstruction by White House Is Building, Schiff Says

Chair of House Intelligence Committee Speaks after Trump admin refuses to turn over documents in impeachment probe

Under the U.S. Constitution, the House can impeach the president for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. If a majority of the House votes impeachment, the president would face a trial in the Senate where a two-thirds majority is required for conviction and removal from office.

Trump the disrupter

Trump has proudly cast himself from the start as a political disrupter, and there could be more to come as the impeachment battle unfolds, according to University of Virginia historian Barbara Ann Perry.

“So far, he has bombarded and exploded all of the norms and all of the precedents of the previous 44 [presidential] administrations. So nothing to me seems out of bounds for this particular president,” Perry told VOA via Skype.

No matter how the impeachment battle turns out, one likely result is a deeper partisan divide, said Vanderbilt University Professor Thomas Schwartz.

“It will probably polarize the country even more. I think you will have a very divided country, in a way similar to what you saw in 1999 and 2000 after the Clinton impeachment and then the divisive election of 2000.”

All of this is coming as the country prepares for the next presidential election in 2020, with many political analysts predicting a record voter turnout amid intense interest and mobilization in both major political parties.

…

Amnesty International said in a report Friday that Turkish military forces and a coalition of Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups have shown a “shameful disregard for civilian life” during the offensive into northeast Syria.

According to the account, the “serious violations and war crimes” include “summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians.”

The report is based on witness testimony gathered from 17 people, a group that included medical and rescue workers, displaced civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

Amnesty said it uncovered “damning evidence of indiscriminate assaults in residential areas, including attacks on a home, a bakery and a school, carried out by Turkey and allied Syrian armed groups.”

The human rights group said the testimony included the “gruesome details of a summary killing in cold blood of a prominent Syrian-Kurdish female politician, Hevrin Khalaf, by members of Ahrar Al-Sharqiya, part of the Syrian National Army.”
 

…

A tentative four-year contract with striking General Motors workers  gives them a mix of pay raises, lump sum payments and an $11,000 signing bonus. 
 
In return, the contract allows GM to proceed with factory closures in Lordstown, Ohio, Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore. 
 
Details were posted Thursday on the union website as factory level union officials met to decide if they’ll approve the deal. 
 
No decision has been made. 
  
Workers went on strike Sept. 16, crippling the company’s U.S. production and costing it an estimated $2 billion. 
  
The Detroit Hamtramck plant that GM wanted to close will stay open and a new electric pickup truck will be built there. 
  
There are retirement incentives and buyouts for workers at the closed plants who don’t transfer to other GM factories. 
 
The deal also shortens the eight years it takes for new hires to reach full wages and gives temporary workers a full-time job after three years of continuous work. Workers hired after 2007 who are paid a lower wage rate will hit the top wage of $32.32 per hour in four years or less.   
  
It also has a $60,000 early retirement incentive for up to 2,000 eligible workers. 

Template for other talks
 
The deal now will be used as a template for talks with GM’s crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. Normally the major provisions carry over to the other two companies and cover about 140,000 auto workers nationwide. It wasn’t clear which company the union would bargain with next, or whether there would be another strike. 
 
The strike at GM immediately brought the company’s U.S. factories to a halt, and within a week the stoppage started to hamper production in Mexico and Canada. Analysts at KeyBanc investment services estimated the stoppage cut GM vehicle production by 250,000 to 300,000 vehicles. That’s too much for the company to make up with overtime or increased assembly line speeds. 
 
GM and the union have been negotiating at a time of troubling uncertainty for the U.S. auto industry. Driven up by the longest economic expansion in American history, auto sales appear to have peaked and are now heading in the other direction. GM and other carmakers are also struggling to make the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles. 
 
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and his tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have raised costs for auto companies. A revamped North American free-trade deal is stalled in Congress, raising doubts about the future of America’s trade in autos and auto parts with Canada and Mexico, which last year came to $257 billion. 

Seeking payback
 
Amid that uncertainty, GM workers wanted to lock in as much as they could before things get ugly. They argue that they had given up pay raises and made other concessions to keep GM afloat during its 2009 trip through bankruptcy protection. Now that GM has been nursed back to health — earning $2.42 billion in its latest quarter — they wanted a bigger share. 
 
The union’s bargainers have voted to recommend the deal to the UAW International Executive Board, which will vote on the agreement. Union leaders from factories nationwide will travel to Detroit for a vote on Thursday. 

…

The White House said Thursday it has chosen President Donald Trump’s golf resort in Miami as the site for next year’s Group of Seven summit.

The announcement comes at the same time that the president has accused Joe Biden’s family of profiting from public office because of Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine when his father was vice president.

The G-7 summit will be held June 10 to 12. The idea of holding the event at Trump’s resort has been criticized by government ethics watchdogs.

Trump has touted his resort, saying it’s close to the airport, has plenty of hotel rooms and offers separate buildings for every delegation.

A team looking at the sites reported that it was “the perfect physical location to do this,” acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said. He said about a dozen potential sites were narrowed to a list of four finalists before Doral was selected.

“It’s almost like they built this facility to host this type of event,” Mulvaney said.

Holding the event at Doral would also be dramatically cheaper than other sites, he said.

“There’s no issue here on him profiting from this in any way, shape or form,” Mulvaney said.

When the United States has hosted the summit before, it has been held in Puerto Rico; Williamsburg, Virginia; Houston; Denver; Sea Island, Georgia; and Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

…

Haiti’s embattled president was forced on Thursday to hold a private ceremony amid heavy security for what is usually a public celebration of one of the country’s founding fathers.
 
Jovenel Moise and other officials appeared at the National Pantheon Museum in downtown Port-au-Prince as hundreds of armed police officers closed down the surrounding area while protesters who demanded his resignation began to gather nearby.
 
“This is not how a government should be functioning,” said Mario Terrain, who is 29 and unemployed. “The president is in hiding.”
 
Moise did not speak to reporters and left after the brief ceremony to commemorate the death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose rule ended in 1806 following a military revolt. Protesters had prevented Moise from visiting Pont-Rouge, the site north of the capital where Dessalines was killed and where the ceremony is usually held.
 
Anger over corruption, inflation and scarcity of basic goods including fuel has led to large protests that began five weeks ago and have shuttered many businesses and schools.
 
A couple hundred protesters had already gathered at Pont-Rouge as they criticized Moise.
 
“We dare the president to come,” said 28-year-old Joel Theodore. “It will be his last day in office.”
 
The president held a surprise press conference on Tuesday and said he would not resign as he once again urged unity and dialogue. Opposition leaders, however, said protesters would remain on the streets until he steps down.

…

Two people face human smuggling charges after U.S. border agents found dozens of Mexican and Ecuadorian nationals hidden inside a chilled semitrailer in the U.S. state of Arizona this week.

The 31-year-old driver and a 30-year-old passenger, both U.S. citizens not named by border officials, were stopped at an immigration checkpoint Monday on Interstate 19, a highway that runs from the U.S.-Mexico border, through the city of Tucson.

After a working dog alerted agents, a heat scan showed that inside the 8-degree-Celsius refrigerated tractor-trailer were 32 people hiding among produce, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection statement issued Wednesday.

Ranging in age from 16 to 53, the migrants entered the U.S. without authorization and were processed for immigration violations, CBP officials said.

Photos tweeted by the White House show a group of men sitting in the trailer with their hands up, some covering their faces, as a light is shone at them.

Yesterday at an immigration checkpoint, @CBP agents found 32 illegal aliens locked in a semitrailer, where it was 47 degrees inside.

Smuggling humans in commercial vehicles is not only unlawful: It places the passengers in extreme danger. pic.twitter.com/g7AuCPhtP0

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 15, 2019

Informal smuggling networks along the southwest U.S. border regularly use trucks, cars, vans, and buses to transport people without authorization into the United States.

While trucks can be an appealing option, with protection from extreme temperatures and faster transportation, they also put travelers at risk, dependent on drivers and others involved in the operation for their safety.

Last year, a truck driver was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a smuggling operation that left 10 people dead in San Antonio, Texas.
 

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The Marine Corps has corrected the identity of another of the men who were photographed raising the American flag at Iwo Jima during World War II. 
 
The Marines said in a statement Thursday that after questions were raised by private historians who studied photos and films, they determined that Cpl. Harold P. Keller was among the men who raised the flag. The Marines said Pfc. Rene Gagnon had helped in the effort but for decades was mistakenly identified by the Marines as one of the flag-raisers. 
 
Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the iconic photograph atop Mount Suribachi during an intense battle between American and Japanese forces in 1945. 
 
In 2016, the Marines corrected the identity of another man in the photo after historians raised questions. 
 
NBC News, which first reported on the Marines’ more recent correction, said Keller died in 1979 in Grinnell, Iowa. 

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The United States is requiring all Chinese diplomats in the country and Chinese officials traveling to the U.S. on official business to give the State Department advance notice of meetings with local, state and federal officials, as well as educational and research institutions.

Chinese diplomats are not required to obtain permission for the meetings; they need only to notify the State Department in advance. In China, U.S. diplomats are required to obtain permission for such meetings.

“What we’re trying to accomplish here is just to get closer to a reciprocal situation, hopefully with the desired end effect of having the Chinese government provide greater access to our diplomats in China,” said a senior State Department official Wednesday in a phone briefing to reporters. 

“Unfortunately in China, U.S. diplomats do not have unfettered access to a range of folks that are important for us to do our job. That includes local and provincial-level officials, academic institutions, [and] research institutes,” said the official, adding that U.S. diplomats have to seek advanced permission from China, and that such requests are “frequently denied.”

Chinese object

The Chinese government was apprised of this requirement last week. The U.S. State Department received one such notification Wednesday.

The latest restrictions imposed by the US State Department on Chinese diplomats are in violation of the Vienna Convention.
So far, the Chinese side does not have similar requirements on American diplomats and consular officers in China.

— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) October 16, 2019

The latest action comes amid heightened diplomatic tension between the two nations over issues including Hong Kong, human rights and trade.

But U.S. officials told reporters that Wednesday’s announcement had been in the works for some time and was “not directly linked” to any other part of relations between the U.S. and China.

Last Monday, the U.S. put 28 Chinese organizations in the so-called “Entity List,” barring U.S. companies from doing business with them. The Chinese companies affected are involved in the abusive treatment over the Uighur ethnic minority in its western Xinjiang province, and include high-tech firms that do considerable global business.

Last Tuesday, the State Department announced new restrictions on visas issued to senior Chinese officials who are said to be responsible for the repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s Iran policy came under strong criticism at a Senate hearing in which Democrats and some Republicans accused him of emboldening Iran by pulling U.S. troops out of Syria.

Trump’s Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, the sole witness at Wednesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, rebuffed the criticism of the president’s decision earlier this month to begin a U.S. troop pullout from northern Syria shortly before Turkey launched a long-threatened offensive against U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish forces in the region. Since then, Syrian Kurdish forces have appealed for and received help from troops under the command of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia, both allies of Iran.

“The president’s decision with respect to Syria is not going to change our Iran strategy or the efficacy of it,” Hook said, referring to the U.S. strategy of imposing maximum pressure on Iran to stop perceived malign behaviors, including support for Shiite militias in Syria who have defended Assad from a years-long rebellion.

Hook said the administration’s regular tightening of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran over the past year has raised the cost of Iranian involvement in the Syrian conflict. “Iran doesn’t have the money that it used to, [in order] to support Assad and its proxies,” Hook said. “So Iran is going to face a dilemma. They can either support guns in Syria or prioritize the needs of their own people at home.”

“Withdrawing troops in northern Syria and green-lighting Turkey’s brutal incursion gives new life to [Islamic State militants] and hands over the keys of our national security to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Iran and Assad,” countered U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democratic member of the committee. “All the sanctions in the world aren’t going to fix that.”

Small contingents of U.S. forces had been training and fighting alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria in recent years, helping them to destroy the Islamic State’s caliphate in Syria and keep it from regrouping.

Hook also faced tough questioning from several Republican committee members who have been critical of Trump’s decision to withdraw the troops and leave the SDF to face Turkey’s offensive on its own.

“This is the most screwed-up decision I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “If we withdraw all of our forces [from Syria] and abandon the oil fields, Iran will surely go in and seize the oil fields. It will undercut the maximum pressure campaign, and our friends in Israel will be in a world of hurt,” he added.

Northeastern Syria is home to that nation’s largest oil fields. There have been no reports of Iran deploying its own troops to that region.

U.S. Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida also told Hook that they saw the U.S. troop pullout from Syria as emboldening Iran. But committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho did not raise the troop pullout issue, instead saying that he saw the U.S. maximum pressure campaign as working by reducing the funding that Iran has been able to provide to its proxies throughout the Middle East.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian service.

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A Cuban man who had sought asylum in the United States has died while being held at an immigration jail in Louisiana. 
 
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed Wednesday that Roylan Hernandez Diaz, 43, had died at a private detention facility of an apparent suicide. 
 
Hernandez Diaz applied for asylum at a border bridge in El Paso, Texas, in May. According to ICE, he was deemed “inadmissible” by border agents and had been in detention since. 
 
The Richwood Correctional Center near Monroe is one of eight Louisiana jails that now house mostly immigrants, including asylum-seekers. 
 
Of the 15,000 immigrants being held by ICE across the country, 8,000 are in Louisiana, the Associated Press reported. 
 
Hernandez Diaz was the second person to die in ICE custody this month. Nebane Abienwi, 37, of Cameroon died of a brain hemorrhage at a detention facility in San Diego. 

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Barack Obama is urging Canadians to reelect Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, an apparently unprecedented endorsement of a candidate in a Canadian election by a former American president.

Obama tweeted Wednesday that he was proud to work with Trudeau and described him as a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.

Obama says the “world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term.”

Trudeau is in a tough reelection fight ahead of Monday’s parliamentary elections.

University of Toronto history professor Robert Bothwell says an endorsement of candidate in a Canadian election by a former U.S. president has never happened before.
 

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