A group representing French-American taxpayers said Thursday it had filed a suit against France with the European Commission, hoping to avoid strict US compliance rules that could see them blacklisted by French banks starting in January.

The “Accidental Americans” association has been battling for years to be exempt from a US demand that all its citizens overseas file bank details along with yearly tax returns.

The group says thousands of French and other foreigners are deemed Americans because they were born in the US, even though they may have lived there only a few months or years when they were young.

They want to be freed from the annual filing requirements with the Internal Revenue Service, and from seeing their banks forced to hand over their banking details to the US taxman.

In 2017, Washington accepted a partial moratorium on the rule, known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), set up to battle offshore tax evasion.

But the exemptions expire at the end of this year, and the French banking federation FBF has warned that 40,000 accounts could be closed come January if no accord is reached on the filing requirements.

In refusing to hand over information required by the United States, French banks would expose themselves to penalties.

Accidental Americans considers that a Franco-American agreement from 2013 which allows for FATCA’s application in France, “violates EU laws on data protection” by authorising “the transmission and storage of huge amounts of personal data in the United States,” it said in a statement Wednesday.

As a result, the advocacy group says French nationals with dual American citizenship face de facto discrimination, even though “most of these people have no links with the United States.”

It says the European Commission has a year to decide if it will launch any proceedings against Paris on the issue.

…

Hong Kong is considering an emergency measure that would include a ban on face masks in an attempt to quell the violent anti-Beijing protests that have rocked the financial hub since June.

Local news outlets say embattled chief executive Carrie Lam will announce the ban Friday after a meeting with the city’s Executive Council.  Many of the protesters have worn the masks to conceal their identities.   The face mask ban would be included in an emergency law that would include a curfew and other measures.  

The proposed emergency law is an apparent response to Tuesday’s violent clashes between pro-democracy demonstrators and Hong Kong security forces, which overshadowed Beijing’s carefully choreographed celebration marking the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China.  Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon at umbrella-carrying protesters, who hurled homemade gasoline bombs at them and set several fires throughout the main section of the city.

During Tuesday’s unrest, an 18-year-old student protester was shot at close range in the chest by a policeman as the student was about to strike the officer with a metal rod.  The shooting marked the first time Hong Kong police have used live rounds since the demonstrations began.  

Police say the shooting was justified because the officer feared for his life.  The student, identified as Tsang Chi-kin, is in stable condition at a Hong Kong hospital.  He was charged Thursday with rioting, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.  

Hundreds of demonstrators again clashed with police late Wednesday night in a repeat of Tuesday’s protests.  

The protests, which were sparked by a proposed bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China, mark a direct challenge to Beijing’s tightening grip on the autonomous city.  

Although Lam later withdrew the bill, the protests have since evolved into renewed demands for Hong Kongers to choose their own leaders, ending the current system where business elites with ties to Beijing select nearly half the legislative body.

The demonstrators are also demanding an independent inquiry into possible use of excessive force by police and complete amnesty for all activists arrested.  

In his National Day speech Tuesday, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed both Hong Kong and Macau’s one country, two systems autonomy, but emphasized that his government will continue to fight to reunify the entire Chinese population, which includes the autonomously ruled island of Taiwan.

…

Australia’s ban on Chinese telecoms giant Huawei’s involvement in its future 5G networks and its crackdown on foreign covert interference are testing Beijing’s efforts to project its power overseas.

In its latest maneuver, China sent three scholars to spell out in interviews with Australian media and other appearances steps to mend the deepening rift with Beijing — a move that appears to have fallen flat.

In a recent press conference at the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, Chen Hong, the head of Australian studies at East China Normal University, accused Australia of acting as a “pawn” for the United States in lobbying other countries against Huawei’s involvement in the nascent 5G networks.

“Australia has been in one way or another, so to speak, pioneering this kind of anti-China campaign, even some kind of a scare and smear campaign against China,” Chen said. “That is definitely not what China will be appreciating, and if other countries follow suit, that is going to be recognized as extremely unfriendly,” he said.

After meetings in Beijing last week, Richard Marles, the opposition’s defense spokesman, assessed the relationship as “terrible.”

A growing number of Australians are convinced that Beijing has been using inducements, threats, espionage and other clandestine tactics to influence their politics — methods critics believe Beijing might be honing for use in other western democracies.

“Australia is seen as a test bed for Beijing’s high-pressure influence tactics,” said Clive Hamilton, author of “Silent Invasion,” a best seller that focuses on Chinese influence in Australia.

“They are testing the capacity of the Australian democratic system to resist,” he said.

Still, Australian officials have downplayed talk of a diplomatic freeze. They must balance a growing wariness toward China and their desire for strong ties with the U.S. with the need to keep relations with their resource-rich country’s largest export market on an even keel.

Australia relies on China for one-third of its export earnings. Delays in processing of Australia exports of coal and wine at Chinese ports have raised suspicions of retaliation by Beijing.

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared to side with President Donald Trump on the issue of China’s trade status during a recent visit to Washington, he sought to temper suggestions by Trump that he had expressed “very strong opinions on China” in their closed-door meeting.

“We have a comprehensive, strategic partnership with China. We work well with China,” Morrison replied.

Trump and Morrison did agree that China has outgrown trade rule concessions allowed to developing nations, advantages it insists it should still be able to claim.

Australia also chose to side with the U.S, in shutting Huawei, the world’s biggest telecom gear producer, out of its next generation 5G rollout on security grounds.

Huawei, and the Chinese government, objected to that, saying the security concerns were exaggerated for the sake of shutting out competition. But Huawei still renewed a sponsorship deal with an Australian rugby team, saying it hopes the ban will be lifted.

Morrison, the prime minister, has won praise from the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times for standing up for Gladys Liu, the first Chinese-born lawmaker to be elected to Australia’s Parliament, when she was attacked for her associations with the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, whose mission is to exert influence overseas.

Hong Kong-born Liu, a conservative, was elected in May to represent a Melbourne district with a large population of ethnic Chinese voters. She says she has resigned from such organizations and any honorary positions she might have held, some possibly without her “knowledge or consent.”

Morrison accused her critics of smearing the 1.2 million Chinese living in Australia.

That was a “decent gesture,” the Global Times said. But while it seeks to control damage from the tensions with Beijing, the Australian government has been moving to neutralize its influence by banning foreign political donations and all covert foreign interference in domestic politics.

Opposition lawmakers likened Liu’s situation to that of Sam Dastyari, who resigned as a senator in 2017 over his links to Chinese billionaire political donor Huang Xiangmo.

Huang successfully sued Australian media outlets for defamation over the allegations of his involvement in Chinese political interference. But he lost his Australian permanent residency after it was discovered that his company had paid Dastyari’s personal legal bills. Huang also appeared with him at a news conference for Chinese media where Dastyari supported Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, contradicting Australia’s bipartisan policy.

Chen and the other two Chinese scholars recently dispatched to Australia to try to sway public opinion insisted China was without blame.

“If we’re talking about Australia-China relations, I think the responsibility totally is on the Australian side,” Chen said. “China always promotes friendship and mutual benefits between our two countries.”  

The Chinese scholars singled out for criticism Hamilton and another Australian author, John Garnaut, who has described Australia as the canary in the coal mine of Chinese Communist Party interference.     

 Hamilton’s book was published last year, but only after three publishers backed out, fearing retaliation from Beijing. It became a top seller. 

Hamilton told a U.S. congressional commission last year that Beijing was waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, undermining democracy and silencing its critics.  

In separate testimony, Garnaut, a former government security adviser, told the House of Representatives Arms Services Committee that China was seeking to undermine the U.S.-Australian security alliance.                   

In 2016, the government commissioned Garnaut to write a classified report that found the Chinese Communist Party has been seeking to influence Australian policy, compromise political parties and gain access to all levels of government.                 

He has said Australia is reacting to a threat that other countries are only starting to grapple with.                  

“This recognition has been assisted by the sheer brazenness of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s drive for global influence and by watching Russian President Vladimir Putin and his agents create havoc across the United States and Europe,” Garnaut wrote.                 

“In the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, it is far more difficult to dismiss foreign interference as a paranoid abstraction,” he added.     
              
Garnaut, whose friend Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun has been detained in Beijing since January on suspicion of espionage, declined to comment to The Associated Press.                  

China wants to make an example of Australia, said Chinese-born Sydney academic Feng Chongyi, who was detained for 10 days and interrogated about his friend Garnaut’s investigation while visiting China in 2017.                   

“For the last two decades, Australia has been taken for a soft target because of this myth of economic dependence on China, so they believe they have sufficient leverage to force Australia to back off,” said Feng, a professor of China studies at the University of Technology in Sydney.                 

“They are extremely upset that Australia somehow in the last two years has taken the lead in what we call the democratic pushback” against Chinese interference, he said.

…

A Virginia doctor who prosecutors said ran his medical practice like an interstate drug distribution ring was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison for illegally prescribing opioids.

Dr. Joel Smithers of Greensboro, North Carolina, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Abingdon.

Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Day Rottenborn said Judge James Jones sentenced Smithers to 40 years. He faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years and a maximum of life.

Smithers was convicted in May of more than 800 counts of illegally distributing opioids, including oxycodone and oxymorphone that caused the death of a West Virginia woman.

Authorities say Smithers prescribed more than 500,000 doses of opioids to patients from Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee while based in Martinsville, Virginia, from 2015 to 2017.

Smithers, 36, a married father of five, testified that he was a caring doctor who was deceived by some of his patients.

Some patients remained fiercely loyal to him, testifying that they needed the powerful opioids he prescribed for them to cope with chronic pain.

Smithers wrote in a court filing that he plans to appeal his convictions.
 

…

WINDSOR LOCKS, CONNECTICUT — A World War II-era B-17 bomber with 13 people aboard crashed and burned at the Hartford airport in an aborted takeoff attempt Wednesday, and a state official said at least five people were killed.

The four-engine, propeller-driven plane struggled to get into the air and slammed into a maintenance shed at Bradley International Airport as the pilots circled back for a landing, officials and witnesses said.

It had 10 passengers and three crew members, authorities said.

The state official who gave the death toll was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Connecticut Public Safety Commissioner James Rovella said hours after the crash that some of those on board suffered severe burns and “the victims are very difficult to identify.”

The retired, civilian-registered plane was associated with the Collings Foundation, an educational group that brought its Wings of Freedom vintage aircraft display to the airport this week, officials said.

“Right now my heart really goes out to the families who are waiting,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “And we are going to give them the best information we can as soon as we can in an honest way.”

The plane was a few minutes into the flight when pilots reported a problem and said it was not gaining altitude, officials said. It lost control upon touching down and struck the shed.

One person on the ground was injured, officials said. The airport — New England’s second-busiest — was closed after the crash.

Flight records from FlightAware shows the plane went down about five minutes after it took off. The data shows it had traveled about 8 miles (13 kilometers) and reached an altitude of 800 feet (244 meters).

Brian Hamer, of Norton, Massachusetts, said he was less than a mile away when he saw a B-17, “which you don’t normally see,” fly directly overhead, apparently trying to gain altitude but not succeeding.

One of the engines began to sputter, and smoke came out the back, Hamer said. The plane made a wide turn and headed back toward the airport, he said.

“Then we heard all the rumbling and the thunder, and all the smoke comes up and we kind of figured it wasn’t good,” Hamer said.

Antonio Arreguin said he had parked at a construction site near the airport for breakfast when he heard an explosion. He said he did not see the plane but could feel the heat from the fire, about 250 meters away.

“I see this big ball of orange fire, and I knew something happened,” he said.

Only a few of the roaring Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses are still airworthy. The planes, 74 feet long with a wingspan of 104 feet, were used in daylight strategic bombing raids against Germany during World War II — extremely risky missions that helped break the Nazis’ industrial war machine.

The Collings Foundation said that the same plane in Wednesday’s accident also crashed in 1987 at an air show near Pittsburgh, injuring several people. Hit by a severe crosswind as it touched down, the bomber overshot a runway and plunged down a hillside. It was later repaired.

The B-17 was built in 1945, too late for combat in World War II, according to the foundation.

It served in a rescue squadron and a military air transport service before being subjected to the effects of three nuclear explosions during testing, the foundation said. It was later sold as scrap and eventually was restored. The foundation bought it in 1986.

“This is kind of shocking. It’s a loss to lose a B-17,” said Hamer, whose father served in the Air Force. “I mean, there aren’t very many of those left.”

…

The director-general of the World Health Organization is calling on the world to rally around the Bahamas in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, “which has not only cost many lives and livelihoods but caused severe damage to essential infrastructure.”

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO issued the statement after visiting the Bahamas to address the impact of the powerful storm.

“It breaks my heart to see the devastation to communities and families who have lost friends and loved ones as well as their homes, possessions and access to crucial services,” Tedros said.  

Early this month, Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the Abaco Islands and then moved on to Grand Bahama Island. The Category 5 hurricane stalled in the Bahamas for more than two days.  

A press release by the WHO said 1,500 people are still being housed in shelters, about 600 are still missing and 56 are confirmed dead.  

“The health sector in Abaco and Grand Bahama suffered a substantial blow, with equipment and medical supplies destroyed and electrical and water supplies interrupted. In Grand Bahama three health clinics have been destroyed and two in Abaco,” the statement said.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report earlier this month projecting climate change would have “sweeping and severe” consequences. The report highlighted natural disasters that are projected to worsen due to climate change.  

“Hurricane Dorian is another urgent reminder that we must address the drivers of climate change and invest more in resilient communities,” Tedras said. “The longer we wait, the more people will suffer. We need to keep the world and people safe.”

WHO called on countries to commit to cutting carbon emissions and significantly scaling up investment in climate change, during the Climate Action Summit in New York.

The World Health Organization has allocated $1 million for natural disaster relief from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies.  
 

…

Asli Pelit from VOA’s Turkish Service contributed to this report.

The killing of prominent Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi shook the world one year ago, when the public learned how a Saudi government team assassinated and dismembered him inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Khashoggi had criticized Saudi Arabia’s leaders for their repeated violations of human rights, persecution of critics and aggressive regional policies, including their role in Yemen’s four-year-long civil war.

The CIA concluded, according to published reports, that Khashoggi’s murder was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, which led U.S. lawmakers to publicly condemn the country and try to halt U.S. weapon sales to the kingdom.

U.S. President Donald Trump defied members of his party to push through an $8.1 billion weapons sale, maintaining friendly relations with the kingdom which he cites as a bulwark against Iran’s influence. Trump insisted the U.S. couldn’t afford to give up huge arms sales to its Middle East ally.

“We may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” Trump said in November 2018. “As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!”

Khashoggi’s fiancée says many countries including the United States failed to do the right thing and hold Saudis leaders responsible.

“Controlling (vast) energy sources shouldn’t be enough to get away with murder,” Khashoggi’s fiancee, Turkish author Hatice Cengiz, said in an interview with VOA.

The verdict in Cengiz’s mind was clear. Perhaps under different circumstances, absent “huge oil and arms deals” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi’s case would not be so easily dismissed at the highest level.

Instead, she was left to watch a Saudi court try to demonstrate that it is holding people accountable.

Eleven Saudi suspects would eventually stand trial in a Saudi Arabia courtroom. Five of them face the death penalty in the ongoing case, if convicted. But their roles in Khashoggi’s murder remain unclear to the public.

No matter the outcome, a United Nations human rights expert says the trial has amounted to nothing more than a sham — held behind closed doors and protected from independent scrutiny  — thus failing to meet international standards for an investigation conducted “in good faith.”

‘A slap in the face’

Following a six-month investigation, U.N. Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia was responsible for “premeditated execution” in the Oct. 2, 2018, death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Her report, released June 19, 2019, recalled gruesome details as assessed by Turkish Intelligence and other countries. These included the possible injection of a sedative, suffocation using a plastic bag, movement and heavy panting, and later, the sound of a bone saw dismembering Khashoggi’s body.

The report cited six violations of international law, including arbitrary deprivation of life, extraterritorial use of force, enforced disappearance and torture, and the killing of a journalist.

The international community was swift to embrace the report and condemn Saudi Arabia’s actions, Callamard told VOA. But that accountability was short-lived.

Ten days after the release of the report, Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders exchanged pleasantries with the Saudi crown prince.

That day, “we saw a number of political actors more than willing to embrace the crown prince, and to ensure that he was wrapped in the clothes of legitimacy during the G-20 meeting,” Callamard said.

“I took that exhibition of friendship for the crown prince as a slap in the face of the killing of the findings of my report, and of all those around the world that are facing attacks for their independence of mind,” she added.

‘It happened under my watch’

Callamard maintains that it is incumbent upon elected officials to stand up for freedom of expression. She has called for the upcoming G-20 summit, scheduled for November 2020 in Riyadh, to be relocated for fear it will “replenish the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia.”

In a PBS “Frontline” documentary that aired this week, Salman said he holds himself accountable for Khashoggi’s killing, the first such acknowledgment of responsibility. “It happened under my watch,” the crown prince told “Frontline.” “I get all the responsibility because it happened under my watch.”

But his words amount to “a pure political maneuver,” Cengiz charged at a United Nations event on human rights last week.

“By confessing this, he is also distancing himself from the killing of Jamal,” she said. “He’s saying that it happened under his watch, but he means he’s not involved in this crime.”

Callamard, equally skeptical, told VOA, “We now need to see more actions taken if (state responsibility for the killing) was the intention. In particular, we have to have an official apology to the family and the fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Callamard maintains that to achieve justice for crimes involving the highest levels of government is “a marathon, not a 50-meter race.” In the months ahead, she and Cengiz both say that world leaders’ actions, or inactions, may determine the fate of others like Khashoggi.

“[Khashoggi] was the kind of person that gave the U.S. the message, ‘Look, someone like this can also come from the Arab world,’” Cengiz said. “The murder of such a person is like killing those who think like him, that come after him, before they’re even born.”

…

Iran’s state TV says the constitutional watchdog has ratified a bill granting citizenship to children of Iranian mothers but non-Iranian fathers.

Wednesday’s ratification came after parliament approved the bill in May following decades-long demands by rights activists.

Under the new law, children born to Iranian mothers will be eligible for Iranian citizenship.

Until now, more than 100,000 children of Iranian women who had married foreign nationals, mostly Afghans and Iraqis but also men of other nationalities, weren’t recognized as Iranian citizens in the eyes of the law.

The new law is expected to go into effect in less than a month, guaranteeing these children the right to education, health care and other social benefits.

Hard-liners have long opposed the bill, saying it paves the way for foreign influence in Iran.

…

More than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died in the Mediterranean Sea this year, the sixth year in a row that this “bleak milestone” has been reached, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called for European Union (EU) member states to reactivate search and rescue operations and acknowledge the crucial role of aid groups’ vessels in saving lives at sea.

“The tragedy of the Mediterranean cannot be allowed to continue,” Charlie Yaxley, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement.

The bodies of five migrants were found on Morocco’s Atlantic coast near Casablanca on Monday, bringing to 12 the number killed when their boat capsized on Saturday, the state news agency reported.

The EU struck a deal with Ankara in 2016 to cut off refugee and migrant flows to Greece from Turkey. Departures, now also diverted largely via Libya and other parts of North Africa, have fallen sharply from a peak of more than 1 million in 2015 to some 78,000 so far this year, UNHCR figures show.

“Of course the number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean are much lower. So, that points to the fact that the journeys themselves are much more dangerous,” UNHCR spokeswoman Liz Throssell told Reuters Television.

“It is also worth highlighting that 70 percent of the deaths actually occur on the central Mediterranean, namely people attempting to get from Libya across to Italy or Malta.”

More than 18,000 people have lost their lives in

Mediterranean crossings since 2014, according to figures from both the UNHCR and the website of the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).

…

North Korea has conducted another apparent missile launch, hours after announcing it will hold working-level nuclear talks with the United States on Saturday.

The North fired an unknown number of projectiles from the coastal town of Wonsan in Gangwon province early Wednesday, South Korea’s military said in a statement.

Japanese officials described the projectile as missiles, saying one landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone off Shimane Prefecture. The other landed just outside Japan’s EEZ, Tokyo said.

If confirmed, it would be the first time in nearly two years that a North Korean rocket has landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

No further details about the launch were immediately available.

Since May

It is North Korea’s 11th round of launches since May, suggesting Pyongyang intends to continue its provocations even while engaging in negotiations about its nuclear weapons program.

Late Tuesday, North Korea’s vice foreign minister said Pyongyang and Washington have agreed to hold long-delayed, working-level talks on October 5. The two sides will have “preliminary contact” the day before, she said.

It’s not clear how the latest launch will impact the talks. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he has “no problem” with Pyongyang’s previous launches, since they were short-range.

North Korea has given varying justifications for its previous launches this year. Some of the launches, it says, were aimed at sending a warning to South Korea. Others were simply a test of its military capabilities and should not be seen as a provocation, it insisted.

Kim Dong-yub, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said the latest launch likely has a dual message: to increase leverage ahead of working-level talks with the U.S., and to respond to South Korea’s unveiling Tuesday of advanced weaponry, including the F-35A stealth fighter acquired from the U.S.

North Korea has repeatedly criticized South Korea and the U.S. for continuing military exercises and Washington’s sale of advanced weapons to Seoul.

Delayed talks

The North’s announcement of talks came almost exactly three months after Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas and agreed to resume working-level talks.

The talks have been stalled since February, when a Kim-Trump meeting in Vietnam broke down over how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program.

It’s not clear if either side has softened their negotiating stance, though recent developments suggest an increased willingness to work toward a deal.

Late last month, Trump said a “new method” to the nuclear talks would be “very good.” That is especially relevant since North Korean officials have for months said the only way for the talks to survive is if the U.S. adopts a “new method” or a “new way of calculation” or similar language.

Trump also recently dismissed his hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton, who had disagreed with Trump’s outreach to North Korea.

North Korea praised both developments, even while criticizing the U.S. for what it sees as provocative actions, including the continuation of joint military exercises with South Korea and weapons sales to Seoul.

“It was only last Friday that North Korea indicated it would not resume talks unless Trump made a ‘wise choice,’ so between September 27 and today, the Trump administration likely sent Pyongyang a sign that the U.S. would be open to the phase-by-phase approach that North Korea has consistently called for this past year or so,” says Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst with NK News.

Approach

North Korea has repeatedly said it is not willing to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons. Pyongyang instead prefers a phased approach, in which the U.S. takes simultaneous steps to relieve sanctions and provide security guarantees. Until now, most Trump White House officials have insisted they are not interested in a phased approach, and that North Korea must agree to completely abandon its nuclear weapons before receiving sanctions relief.

Kim and Trump have met three times since June 2018. At their first meeting in Singapore, the two men agreed to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. But they never agreed on what that means or how to begin working toward it.

Trump has said he is open to holding another summit with Kim. But it has long been unclear how the talks can advance without more substantive discussions — including technical experts — about what each side is prepared to offer and how to get there.

“I hope this will at minimum reacquaint the substantive negotiators with their counterparts and perhaps lead to some actionable leads,” says Melissa Hanham, a weapons expert and deputy director at the Open Nuclear Network. “Any substantive working-level talks are good. Diplomacy is like a muscle and it needs exercise.”

South Korea’s presidential Blue House released a quick statement welcoming the talks, and expressing hope that they will soon result in a process that brings lasting peace and full denuclearization to the peninsula.

…

At the edge of an ancient lava flow where jagged black rocks meet the Pacific, small off-the-grid homes overlook the calm blue waters of Papa Bay on Hawaii’s Big Island — no tourists or hotels in sight. Here, one of the islands’ most abundant and vibrant coral reefs thrives just below the surface.
 
Yet even this remote shoreline far from the impacts of chemical sunscreen, trampling feet and industrial wastewater is showing early signs of what’s expected to be a catastrophic season for coral in Hawaii.  
 
Just four years after a major marine heat wave killed nearly half of this coastline’s coral, federal researchers are predicting another round of hot water will cause some of the worst coral bleaching the region has ever experienced.  

“In 2015, we hit temperatures that we’ve never recorded ever in Hawaii,” said Jamison Gove, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What is really important — or alarming, probably more appropriately — about this event is that we’ve been tracking above where we were at this time in 2015.”
 
Researchers using high-tech equipment to monitor Hawaii’s reefs are seeing early signs of bleaching in Papa Bay and elsewhere caused by a marine heat wave that has sent temperatures soaring to record highs for months. June, July and parts of August all experienced the hottest ocean temperatures ever recorded around the Hawaiian Islands. So far in September, oceanic temperatures are below only those seen in 2015.
 
Forecasters expect high temperatures in the north Pacific will continue to pump heat into Hawaii’s waters well into October.  
 
“Temperatures have been warm for quite a long time,” Gove said. “It’s not just how hot it is. It’s how long those ocean temperatures stay warm.”
 
Coral reefs are vital around the world as they not only provide a habitat for fish — the base of the marine food chain — but food and medicine for humans. They also create an essential shoreline barrier that breaks apart large ocean swells and protects densely populated shorelines from storm surges during hurricanes.
 
In Hawaii, reefs are also a major part of the economy: Tourism thrives largely because of coral reefs that help create and protect iconic white sand beaches, offer snorkeling and diving spots, and help form waves that draw surfers from around the world.

Stressed corals

Ocean temperatures are not uniformly warm across the state, Gove noted. Local wind patterns, currents and even features on land can create hot spots in the water.  

“You have things like two giant volcanoes on the Big Island blocking the predominant trade winds,” making the island’s west coast, where Papa Bay sits, one of the hottest parts of the state, Gove said. He said he expects “severe” coral bleaching in those places.
 
“This is widespread, 100% bleaching of most corals,” Gove said. And many of those corals are still recovering from the 2015 bleaching event, meaning they are more susceptible to thermal stress.
 
According to NOAA, the heat wave’s causes include a persistent low-pressure weather pattern between Hawaii and Alaska that has weakened winds that otherwise might mix and cool surface waters across much of the North Pacific. What’s causing that is unclear: It might reflect the atmosphere’s usual chaotic motion, or it could be related to the warming of the oceans and other effects of human-made climate change.

Beyond this event, oceanic temperatures will continue to rise in the coming years, Gove said. “There’s no question that global climate change is contributing to what we’re experiencing,” he said.

For coral, hot water means stress, and prolonged stress kills these creatures and can leave reefs in shambles.
 
Bleaching occurs when stressed corals release algae that provide them with vital nutrients. That algae also gives the coral its color, so when it’s expelled, the coral turns white.

Gove said researchers have a technological advantage for monitoring and gleaning insights into this year’s bleaching, data that could help save reefs in the future.
 
“We’re trying to track this event in real time via satellite, which is the first time that’s ever been done,” Gove said.

Big picture

In remote Papa Bay, most of the corals have recovered from the 2015 bleaching event, but scientists worry they won’t fare as well this time.

“Nearly every species that we monitor has at least some bleaching,” said ecologist Greg Asner, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, after a dive in the bay earlier this month.

Asner told The Associated Press that sensors showed the bay was about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit above what is normal for this time of year.

He uses advanced imaging technology mounted to aircrafts, satellite data, underwater sensors and information from the public to give state and federal researchers like Gove the information they need.

“What’s really important here is that we’re taking these [underwater] measurements, connecting them to our aircraft data and then connecting them again to the satellite data,” Asner said. “That lets us scale up to see the big picture to get the truth about what’s going on here.”

Scientists will use the information to research, among other things, why some coral species are more resilient to thermal stress. Some of the latest research suggests slowly exposing coral to heat in labs can condition them to withstand hotter water in the future.

“After the heat wave ends, we will have a good map with which to plan restoration efforts,” Asner said.

Educating tourists

Meanwhile, Hawaii residents like Cindi Punihaole Kennedy are pitching in by volunteering to educate tourists. Punihaole Kennedy is director of the Kahalu’u Bay Education Center, a nonprofit created to help protect Kahalu’u Bay, a popular snorkeling spot near the Big Island’s tourist center of Kailua-Kona.

The bay and surrounding beach park welcome more than 400,000 visitors a year, she said.
 
“We share with them what to do and what not to do as they enter the bay,” she said. “For instance, avoid stepping on the corals or feeding the fish.”
 
The bay suffered widespread bleaching and coral death in 2015.
 
“It was devastating for us to not be able to do anything,” Punihaole Kennedy said. “We just watched the corals die.”
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump and some who want him impeached are trading accusations of “treason” and threats to national security amid warnings from analysts that such language could fuel irreparable harm to the nation’s civil and political fabric.      

“While talk about treason and potential armed insurrection might score political points for one side or the other, it is not only unhelpful, it is dangerous,” says John Malcolm, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government.

Trump has denounced a whistleblower and other officials as traitors for accusing him of pressuring Ukraine’s leader to investigate Trump’s chief political rival and suggested they should be executed. And over the weekend, the president retweeted a quote from a Texas mega-church pastor who warned that impeachment would create a “Civil War like fracture” that would never heal.

Senior Democratic House leaders have lashed back at Trump, including Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California — the first to call for Trump’s impeachment — who declared on Tuesday that Trump needs to be “imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement.”

“Even Lincoln, during an actual civil war, was careful about his language,” notes David B. Cohen, political science professor at the University of Akron. “That Trump is flippantly using terms such as ‘treason’ and ‘civil war’ is very dangerous and may be interpreted by his most potentially violent true believers as a call to action.”

Conspiracy theories

Trump is also accused of pushing largely debunked conspiracy theories, including trying to flip the Ukraine script, alleging origins in Kyiv of the investigation that drew links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Moscow.

The president also is demanding investigations of Joe Biden, a leading Democratic Party presidential candidate, for allegedly pressuring Ukraine’s government while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president on behalf of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.   

One of the president’s former advisers, Thomas Bossert, who served as Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said over the weekend that the president has been repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory was “completely debunked.” Bossert told reporters that he was “deeply disturbed” that the president continued to press Ukraine for information.

Presidents “have engaged in conspiratorial rhetoric before,” said Mark Cheathem, a history professor at Cumberland University, who also terms Trump’s language “extremely dangerous.”

President Andrew Jackson “believed that the national bank was using government funds to buy elections. Before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln warned Americans that a national conspiracy existed to defend the institution of slavery,” Cheathem told VOA. “The three previous presidents who have faced impeachment (Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton) also employed conspiratorial rhetoric in their own defense as they faced possible removal from office.”

Cheathem says Trump’s frequent use of conspiratorial rhetoric suggests “he is extremely gullible and simply repeats unsubstantiated conspiracy theories based on what he reads on social media or watches on television or is extremely crafty and thinks that Americans will believe whatever he tells them, even if it is unsupported by logic and evidence.”

If it is the former, Cheathem contends, then Trump is not using critical thinking to make decisions and “that possibility should frighten us all.” If it is the latter, then the president “is purposely lying to Americans in order to protect himself at all costs.”

Defenders on TV

Trump allies, on cable television and social media, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, describe the Democratic Party’s push toward impeachment as a “legislative coup d’etat.”

Trump, on Tuesday evening in a tweet, was even more blunt, declaring: “As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP…”

As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2019

In recent days, Trump has zeroed in on the congressman taking point on the impeachment inquiry in the Democrat-led House, Adam Schiff.

The president is questioning whether the intelligence committee chair should be arrested for treason for what Trump decries as Schiff’s false summarization of a phone call between him and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. 

That call and a related complaint from an intelligence community whistleblower – whom Trump wants to unmask — is at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

In the West Wing, there is unease but no acknowledgment of alarm about the increasingly hostile discourse between the president and his foes.

“It’s business as usual,” is how one deputy describes the situation. But the official, speaking to VOA on condition of not being identified, characterizes an aggrieved president trying to battle a “perfect storm” of pursuing re-election amid an impeachment inquiry pushed by an unrelenting “radical left” intent on removing him from the Oval Office.

White House officials say that is prompting increasingly ferocious tweets from Trump, who is an insatiable consumer of the cable TV news coverage about his imperiled presidency.

Trump will ignore any suggestions the tweets are too extreme, according to the officials.

September was Trump’s busiest month on Twitter since the 2016 election. And the inflammatory content of his recent tweets has prompted a Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. senator, Kamala Harris, to suggest Twitter should suspend the @realDonaldTrump account.

‘Cold Civil War’

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh informed his listeners last Friday that the country is in the middle of a “Cold Civil War” with Democrats fighting to overturn the 2016 election results.

Trump, himself, reposted a quote from a Southern Baptist pastor, Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor, who warned of an actual civil war if Democrats pursue removing the president from office.

“This is beyond repugnant,” responded Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the House foreign affairs committee. 

I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant. https://t.co/a5Bae7bP7g

— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) September 30, 2019

That presidential action on social media also crossed a line for one prominent law professor.

“This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment — a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power,” Harvard University’s John Coates wrote on Twitter.

This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment – a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power. https://t.co/JL9XzClGXf

— John Coates⚽️ (@jciv) September 30, 2019

There are calls for cooler heads to prevail across the political divide.

“The impeachment process is not intended to serve as a partisan political weapon. It is meant to address serious misconduct in order to immediately remove a president who is unfit for office,” Heritage Foundation’s Malcolm, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, tells VOA. “While other countries can remove a head of state following a ‘no confidence’ vote if the people no longer like that leader or his policies, we do not operate under a parliamentary system. Instead, we resolve our policy disagreements through elections and the legislative process.”

Cohen, a fierce critic of the president on Twitter (@POTUSProf), says he retains faith the United States “will escape this dark period in our nation’s history without succumbing to a second civil war.”

…

The United States has blocked the import of goods suspected to have been made with forced labor from five countries, including clothing from China and diamonds from Zimbabwe, officials said on Tuesday following a rare crackdown on slave labor abroad.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it seized five different products this week based on information indicating the goods were made using slave labor overseas.

The other items included rubber gloves made in Malaysia, gold mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and bone black — charred animal bones — manufactured in Brazil.

Under a 2016 law, it is illegal to import goods into the United States that are made entirely or in part by forced labor — which includes prison work, bonded labor and child labor.

“A major part of CBP’s mission is facilitating legitimate trade and travel,” said Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan.

“CBP’s issuing of these five withhold release orders shows that if we suspect a product is made using forced labor, we’ll take that product off U.S. shelves,” he said in a statement.

A company hit with a withhold release order can decide to reroute the shipment and try to sell their products elsewhere or persuade CBP to change its decision by providing documents to demonstrate due diligence and argue the goods are slavery-free.

More than $400 billion worth of goods likely to be made by forced labor enter the U.S. market each year, according to estimates by the Human Trafficking Institute, a non-profit.

Yet reporting by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in April found that only $6.3 million worth of goods had been blocked since the law banning slave-made imports was passed in 2016.

Prior to the latest crackdown, the CBP had issued seven detention orders since 2016, including chemical compounds, peeled garlic and toys from China, and cotton from Turkmenistan.

‘Significant step’

“It’s exciting to see CBP’s progress towards robust enforcement of this law,” said Annick Febrey, head of government and corporate relations at the Human Trafficking Institute, who in April described the agency’s impact until then as “minimal.” “This is a clear signal to companies that they need due diligence procedures in place that prevent forced labor in their supply chain if they want to sell in the United States.”

Neha Misra, senior specialist in migration and human trafficking for advocacy group Solidarity Centre, welcomed the “significant step” and said economic pressure could boost the drive for full labor rights for workers in global supply chains.

The U.S. Department of Labor said last year it was boosting its fight against slave-made goods “to safeguard American jobs” for its 325 million citizens and that it was playing a key role in protecting vulnerable workers from abuse worldwide.

About 25 million people globally are victims of forced labor, according to the U.N. International Labor Organization.
 

…

China showed off its military might in an elaborate parade marking the country’s 70th anniversary under Communist Party rule Tuesday.

Decked out in a gray suit in the style made famous by Party leader Mao Zedong, President Xi Jinping was joined by Premier Li Keqiang and other party officials as hundreds of troops marched throughout Tiananmen Square, where Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.  

In a speech carried live on national television, President Xi declared that “no force” can shake the foundation of China, nor stop the progress of the Chinese people.

Xi later climbed into a limousine and stood in the vehicle’s sunroof as it drove past rows of soldiers and military equipment, including truck-mounted missiles and armored personnel carriers.

A symbolic 70-gun salute then kicked off a parade showcasing China’s newest military capabilities, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile analysts say can carry multiple nuclear warheads over several thousand kilometers. 

Organizers planned to release 70,000 doves at the end as a symbol of peace.

…

Japan’s national sales tax was raised to 10% from 8% on Tuesday, amid concerns that the long-delayed move could derail the fragile growth path of the world’s third largest economy.

Officials said ample measures were taken to cushion the impact of the hike after previous tax increases – a 2-point increase to 5% in 1997 and another to 8% in 2014 – brought on recessions.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe postponed this hike twice but said it was unavoidable given rising costs for elder care and a growing national debt as the population ages and shrinks. After decades of fiscal deficits that have taken the debt to more than twice the size of the economy, Abe has promised a return to balance by 2025, but that will require growth to be sustained at a healthy pace.

The sales tax hike coincided with the release of data showing business sentiment among large manufacturers worsening in September to its worst level since 2013.

The result was better than expected, but the outlook is forecast to deteriorate further by December’s quarterly report of the Bank of Japan’s survey, called the “tankan.”

“Particularly affected are producers of basic materials, reflecting recent commodity market movements, as well as producers of general-purpose and production machinery, who are exposed to risks posed by recent re-escalation of US-China trade frictions,” Oxford Economics said in a commentary.

Other data released this week have shown industrial output decreasing in August, while unemployment remained at a 26-year low of 2.2%.

The economy expanded at an annual pace of 1.8 percent in April-June, faster than anticipated. But slowing exports and rising prices for oil are expected to drag growth lower in coming months.

The sales tax increase covers most goods and services from clothes, electronics to transportation and medical fees, but the government has sought to soften its impact with tax breaks for home and car purchases. It also kept the tax for groceries unchanged for low-income households and is providing free pre-school education to families.  

“We’ll take expeditious and utmost efforts to ward off any risk of a downward swing in the economy,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on the eve of the tax hike.

Analysts say the tax hike poses a deflationary risk at a time of growing uncertainty over trade tensions between the U.S. and China.  

That’s after years of ultra-loose monetary policy aimed at trying to convince businesses and consumers to spend more money. More than six years after Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda launched his “big bazooka” injections of billions of dollars of cash into the economy, aimed at prying the country out of its deflationary doldrums

“Considering the current economic conditions, the timing is bad,” said Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

He noted that the economy has slowed since late last year and that demand generated by the construction boom for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is fading. The fear is that might undo years of efforts to escape a deflationary rut where falling prices due to slack demand depress investment, a main driver of growth.

The tax hike will put an estimated additional burden on households of more than 2 trillion yen ($18 billion).

The exceptions and incentives built into the new sales tax regime are causing confusion. For instance, purchases “to go” at Starbucks Coffee outlets are still taxed at 8%, while customers choosing to dine in have to pay 10%.

Businesses are adapting with price cuts and rewards for cashless payments to attract customers. So economists said there was not a huge rush to beat the increase. That may mean the higher tax’s impact will be less severe than the blows of previous hikes.

“Stores seem to provide discounts, so I will go for those, plus, I don’t plan to buy luxurious goods with big price tags,” Junko Matsumoto, a homemaker in her 60s, said as she walked past a Tokyo train station. “I must admit the tax increase was unavoidable.”

Toru Yokoyama, a 31-year-old office worker, was less upbeat.

“The government could have taken measures other than tax increase, but it’s already done and there is not much I can do at this point,” he said. “I don’t think my shopping patterns would change very much, but I may not be able to go on trips as often as used to.”

…

Thousands of Vietnam’s ethnic Cham people met under rainy late September skies for their annual “Kate” festival that, according to the multi-faith community’s calendar, marks the end of one harvest season and the beginning of another.

The Cham are descendants of a powerful ancient kingdom that once spanned large parts of central and southern Vietnam a millennium ago.

They are a traditionally matriarchal society, which worships a female goddess and expects the youngest daughter to inherit family assets.

A rich history of trading and movement across Asia have made the Cham a uniquely multi-faith group, divided into predominantly Hindu and Muslim branches, all of whom come together to celebrate “Kate.”

The week-long festival, which began last Friday, marks the Cham calendar’s de facto new year, at the onset of a new harvest.

At the Po Klong Garai temple in the southern town of Phan Rang – a Vietnamese rendering of Panduranga, the Cham Kingdom’s ancient capital – dozens of men in bright red and white traditional costume paraded with a sacred garment.

The holy dress, which is kept in the nearby commune of Phuoc Ha, is brought to the crumbling, clay-brick 13th Century temple, within which lies a statue of the Hindu god, Shiva.

Behind a small door, the deity is dressed in the sacred Cham garments by religious leaders, who perform traditional rites and blessings. Others make offerings of fruit, boiled chicken and white rice on bamboo mats laid at the foot of the ancient temple.

…

The U.S. Secretary of Interior has extended the tenure of the Trump administration’s top steward of public lands, rebuffing Democrats’ calls for his termination.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday extended William Perry Pendley’s role as Bureau of Land Management Acting Director to Jan. 3.

Pendley has been in the post since July. Senate Democrats, including presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, had called for Pendley’s ouster over his longstanding support for selling public lands.

He previously worked as a property rights attorney with clients including mining, energy and agriculture interests. Earlier this month Pendley recused himself from work involving dozens of former clients following conflict of interest allegations.

Benhardt also extended the tenures of the acting heads of the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.

…

China warned on Monday of instability in international markets from any “decoupling” of China and the United States, after sources said the Trump administration was considering delisting Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges.

The move would be part of a broader effort to limit U.S. investment in Chinese companies, two sources briefed on the matter told Reuters last week, in what would be a radical escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions. The news had earlier been reported by Bloomberg.

A third source said the delisting idea was motivated by growing security concerns within the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump over Chinese companies’ activities.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday dismissed the reports as “fake news.”

“That story, which appeared in Bloomberg: I’ve read it far more carefully than it was written,” Navarro told CNBC. “Over half of it was highly inaccurate or simply flat-out false.”

Shares of U.S.-listed Chinese stocks reversed direction on Monday after a sharp fall on the delisting reports. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.Com Inc rose 2% each in early trading after tumbling more than 5% on Friday.

Also on Monday, e-learning firm Youdao Inc became the latest Chinese company to file for an initial public offering in the United States. Chinese online pharmacy Ecmoho filed to list its shares on the Nasdaq last week.

Ecmoho is planning to start pre-marketing next week, IFR reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The company was not immediately available for comment.

Earlier in the day, stocks in China fell to their lowest in almost a month on the reports, which came at a sensitive time ahead of celebrations on Tuesday to mark 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing on Monday he had noted the response from the U.S. Treasury, which said there were no plans to block Chinese listings “at this time.”

“Exerting maximum pressure and even seeking the forced decoupling of China-U.S. relations will harm the interests of Chinese and American companies and people, create turmoil in financial markets, and endanger global trade and economic growth,” Geng added. “This does not accord with the interests of the international community.”

Geng said he hoped that the United States would take a “constructive attitude” toward resolving differences.

The United States and China have been locked in an escalating trade war for nearly 15 months. They have levied punitive duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods, roiling financial markets and threatening global growth.

In June, U.S. lawmakers from both parties introduced a bill to force Chinese companies listed on American stock exchanges to submit to regulatory oversight, including providing access to audits, or face delisting.

Chinese authorities have long been reluctant to let overseas regulators inspect local accounting firms – including member firms of the Big Four international accounting networks – citing national security concerns.

China and the United States are due to resume high-level trade talks next week in Washington.

In advance of the talks, Chinese firms bought up to 600,000 tons of U.S. soybeans for shipment from November to January on Monday, two sources with knowledge of the deals said. The purchases form part of a tariff-free quota allotted for up to 2 million tonnes this week. China has frequently made goodwill purchases of U.S. agricultural goods ahead of trade talks.

China hopes Beijing and Washington will resolve their trade dispute “with a calm and rational attitude”, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, who has been part of China’s negotiating team, said on Sunday.

…

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has announced an “income inequality” plan calling for tax increases on companies that pay CEOs far more than their workers’ median salaries.
 
The Vermont senator’s proposal, unveiled Monday, would raise taxes 0.5 percentage points on companies paying top executives more than 50 times the median salaries of workers. Tax penalties would rise up to 5 percentage points for firms whose highest-paid official earns 500-plus times median worker pay.
 
The plan would apply to all private and publicly held corporations with annual revenues of $100 million. Sanders’ campaign says it would raise $150 billion over the next decade, which he would use to eliminate medical debt nationwide.
 
Sanders says the public demands that profitable corporations “pay their fair share of taxes.” 

…

The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.

Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.

“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”

But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.

He’s called them “disgusting” and “ugly” and “stupid,” denouncing them in hundreds of anti-wind tweets and public comments dating back more than a decade, when he tried and failed to block a wind farm near his Scottish golf course.

And those turbine blades. “They say the noise causes cancer,” Trump told a Republican crowd last spring, in a claim immediately rejected by the American Cancer Society.

Now, wind industry leaders and supporters fear that the federal government, under Trump, may be pulling back from what had been years of encouragement for climate-friendly wind.

The Interior Department surprised and alarmed wind industry supporters in August, when the agency unexpectedly announced it was withholding approval for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, a $2.8 billion complex of 84 giant turbines. Slated for building 15 miles (24 kilometers) off Martha’s Vineyard, Vineyard Wind has a brisk 2022 target for starting operations. Its Danish-Spanish partners already have contracts to supply Massachusetts electric utilities.

Investors backing more than a dozen other big wind farms are lined up to follow Vineyard Wind with offshore wind projects of their own. Shell’s renewable-energy offshoot is among the businesses ponying up for federal leases, at bids of more than $100 million, for offshore wind farm sites.

The Interior Department cited the surge in corporate interest for offshore wind projects in saying it wanted more study before moving forward. It directed Vineyard Wind to research the overall impact of the East Coast’s planned wind boom.

Interior Department spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said offshore energy remains “an important component” in the Trump administration’s energy strategy. But the strategy includes “ensuring activities are safe and environmentally responsible,” Goodwin said in a statement.

Wind power now provides a third or more of the electricity generated in some Southwest and Midwest states. And New York, New Jersey and other Eastern states already are joining Massachusetts in planning for wind-generated electricity.

Along with the U.S. shale oil boom, the rise in wind and solar is helping cushion oil supply shocks like the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities.

But the Interior Department’s pause on the Vineyard Wind project sent a chill through many of the backers of the offshore wind boom. Critics contrast it with the Republican administration’s moves to open up offshore and Arctic areas to oil and gas development, despite strong environmental concerns.

“That I think is sort of a new bar,” for the federal government to require developers to assess the impact of not just their projects but everyone’s, said Stephanie McClellan, a researcher and director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind at the University of Delaware. “That worries everybody.”

Thomas Brostrom, head of U.S. operations for Denmark’s global offshore wind giant Orsted and operator of the pioneering Block Island wind farm, said that “the last three, four years have seen unbelievable, explosive growth, much more than we could have really hoped for,” in the U.S., compared to Europe’s already established wind power industry.

Given all the projects in development, “we hope that this is a speed bump, and certainly not a roadblock,” Brostrom said.

Wind power and the public perception of it have changed since America’s first proposed big offshore wind project, Cape Wind off Cape Cod, died an agonizing 16-year death. Koch and Kennedy families alike, along with other coastal residents, reviled Cape Wind as a potential bird-killing eyesore in their ocean views.

But technological advances since then mean wind turbines can rise much farther offshore, mostly out of sight, and produce energy more efficiently and competitively. Climate change — and the damage it will do these same coastal communities — also has many looking at wind differently now.

Federal fisheries officials have been among the main bloc calling for more study, saying they need to know more about the impacts on ocean life. Some fishing groups still fear their nets will tangle in the massive turbines, although Vineyard Wind’s offer to pay millions of dollars to offset any harm to commercial fishing won the support of others. At least one Cape Cod town council also withheld support.

A rally for Vineyard Wind after the Interior Department announced its pause drew local Chamber of Commerce leaders and many other prominent locals. Massachusetts’ Republican governor, Charlie Baker, has been traveling to Washington and calling Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to try to win his support.

At Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, instructor Chris Powicki’s Offshore Wind 101 classes and workshop have drawn nuclear and marina workers, engineers, young people and others. People are hoping wind will provide the kind of good-paying professions and trades they need to afford to stay here, Powicki says.

“Cape Cod has always been at the end of the energy supply line, or at least ever since we lost our dominance with the whale oil industry” after the 19th century, the community college instructor said. “So this is an opportunity for Cape Cod to generate its own energy.”

On land, the wind boom already is well established. By next year, 9% of the country’s electricity is expected to come from wind power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The wind industry already claims 114,000 jobs, more than twice the number of jobs remaining in U.S. coal mining, which is losing out in competition against cleaner, cheaper energy sources despite the Trump administration’s backing of coal.

The Trump animosity to wind power has gone beyond words in some states, especially in Ohio. A Trump campaign official was active this summer in winning a state ratepayer subsidy for coal and nuclear that also led to cutting state incentives for wind and solar.

But despite the steady gales of condemnation from the country’s wind-hater in chief, wind is booming most strongly in states that voted for Trump.

Then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary, pushed his state to one of the current top four wind power states, along with Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa.

In Iowa, home to nearly 4,700 turbines that provided a third of the state’s electricity last year, wind’s popularity is such that Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley had a drone film him as he sat, grinning, atop one of the country’s biggest wind turbines.

Grassley had no patience for Trump’s claim in April that wind turbines like Iowa’s beloved ones could cause cancer.

“Idiotic,” Grassley said then.

On the East Coast, many developers and supporters of offshore wind politely demur when asked about Trump’s wind-hating tweets and comments.

But not on Block Island.

“We’re very fortunate that we got it. Very fortunate. It’s helped us,” McMahon, the retiree on Block Island, said of wind energy. “And don’t worry about the president. He’s not a nice man.”

…

The main rival of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, is claiming victory in Afghanistan’s presidential election, ahead of the release of any official results.

Abdullah told reporters Monday that he has “the most votes” in the election that was held Saturday.

Election officials however said that Abdullah’s declaration is premature as official results have yet to be announced.

The process of counting votes in Afghanistan is long. Ballot boxes have to arrive from far off places with little or no communication lines. The preliminary results are not expected for a few weeks.

The election was held Saturday amid repeated threats by the Taliban and fear of post-election chaos.

Unofficial estimates indicate the voter turnout was historically low. VOA teams found empty polling stations and empty ballot boxes in the capital Kabul and many other parts of the country.

Extreme threats from the Taliban, voter dissatisfaction with candidates, and confusion over whether the twice-delayed elections will be held this time, kept campaigns from gaining steam.  

Now that they were held, given Afghanistan’s track record, many fear a dispute over results that could devolve into a full-blown crisis.

Some candidates, like former warlord turned politician Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, seem to already be preparing for such a scenario.    

“The elections will result in increased violence. No one will accept the results other than those who were involved in widespread fraud. Naturally, it will result in a crisis,” he said.

“The law is very clear. If there is fraud, candidates and their followers can go to the Election Complaints Commission and register their complaints. The commission will decide upon them and we are committed to abide by its decision,” said Habibur Rehman, Secretary of the Election Commission.

The last presidential election was marred by allegations of fraud and the country became so divided that then-Secretary of State John Kerry had to step in and broker a power-sharing deal between the two leading candidates, Ghani and Abdullah.

Despite the introduction of more robust systems this time to avoid fraud, including taking finger prints and pictures of voters, allegations of fraud have already emerged from certain quarters.

If more voices join ranks, this could wreak havoc to an already fragile system.

Both election and security authorities insist that they are ready to deal with any scenario. And everyone is hoping for a smooth transition. But Afghanistan has a long history of post-election chaos.

…

Days ahead of the anniversary of the grisly slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that his country will press ahead with efforts to shed light on the killing.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Erdogan described the journalist’s killing by a Saudi hit squad as “arguably the most influential and controversial incident of the 21st century” and blamed the murder on a “shadow state within the kingdom’s government — not the Saudi state or people.”

The Turkish leader wrote: “We will keep asking the same questions… Where are Khashoggi’s remains? Who signed the Saudi journalist’s death warrant? Who dispatched the 15 killers, including a forensic expert, aboard the two planes to Istanbul?”

US TV: Saudi Prince Says Khashoggi Murder ‘Happened Under My Watch’

Prince Mohammed has come under huge international pressure after the US-based writer was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul

Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, to collect a document that he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Agents of the Saudi government killed Khashoggi inside the consulate and apparently dismembered his body, which has never been found.

Saudi Arabia initially offered multiple, shifting accounts about Khashoggi’s disappearance. As international pressure mounted, the kingdom eventually settled on the explanation that he was killed by rogue officials in a brawl inside their consulate.

The kingdom has put 11 people on trial in non-public proceedings. No one has been convicted so far.

Erdogan criticized the court proceedings in Saudi Arabia, which he said lacked transparency and maintained that some of Khashoggi’s murderers “enjoy de facto freedom.” The court proceedings “tarnish the image of Saudi Arabia,” Erdogan added.

Interview: UN Special Rapporteur Callamard on Khashoggi Report

Teaser Description

VOA’s Geneva Stringer Lisa Schlein interviews Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, regarding her report on the killing of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi

A U.N. report released earlier this year asserted that Saudi Arabia bore responsibility for the killing and that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s possible role should be investigated.

On Sunday, Prince Mohammed said in a television interview that he takes “full responsibility” for Khashoggi’s death but denied allegations that he ordered it.

“This was a heinous crime,” Prince Mohammed, 34, told “60 Minutes.” ″But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”

…