Online shopping giant Amazon revealed a carbon footprint Thursday that rivals that of a small country and vowed to reduce the damage to the planet by cutting its use of fossil fuels.

The company, which ships more than 10 billion items a year on fuel-guzzling planes and trucks, said it has ordered 100,000 electric vans that will start delivering packages to shoppers’ doorsteps in 2021. It also plans to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030. That’s up from 40% today.

“We’ve been in the middle of the herd on this issue and we want to move to the forefront,” said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who announced the initiatives at an event in Washington.

Amazon said it emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, a number that comes close to pollution rates of some small nations.

“Its greenhouse gas emissions are about 85% of the emissions of Switzerland or Denmark,” said Gregg Marland, a professor at the Research Institute for Environment, Energy and Economics at Appalachian State University.

Amazon’s employees have pressed the company to do more to combat climate change. Earlier this year, more than 8,000 Amazon staffers signed an open letter to Bezos, demanding that Amazon cut its carbon emissions, end its use of fossil fuels and stop working with oil companies who use Amazon’s technology to find drillable oil faster. More than 1,500 employees are planning a walkout Friday to support the Global Climate Strike, a worldwide climate change protest.

Amazon plans to be carbon neutral by 2040 and wants other companies to join it. Bezos unveiled a climate pledge and said he would talk with CEOs of other large companies to get them to sign it.

“We want to use our scale and our scope to lead the way,” Bezos said.

Amazon workers get ‘huge win’

A climate change advocacy group founded by Amazon workers said the company’s announcement amounted to a “huge win” and proved that employee pressure works. In a statement, Amazon Employees For Climate Justice said that it would keep pushing the issue as long as Amazon continues working with oil and gas companies and donating to politicians who deny climate change.

Bezos defended Amazon’s work with the oil and gas industry, arguing that “we need to help them instead of vilify them,” and said Amazon would take a “hard look” at campaign contributions to climate deniers. However, he stopped short of saying such donations would stop.

Employees from other big tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, also planned to walk out Friday. Their gripes mirror those of Amazon’s employees, including that their companies provide technology to the oil industry. Ahead of the strikes, Google made its own announcement Thursday, saying it would buy enough renewable energy to spur the construction of millions of solar panels and hundreds of wind turbines across the world.

Comprehensive carbon footprint

To measure its carbon footprint, Amazon looked at emissions from all of its businesses, including the planes it operates and the energy it uses to make Echos, Kindles and its other devices. Amazon even included customers’ trips to Whole Foods, the grocery chain it owns.

“It’s very comprehensive,” said Beril Toktay, professor of operations and supply chain management at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. She said she would like to see Amazon include the carbon footprint of the products it sells on its website, which could help drive people to shop for items that are less damaging to the environment.

Robin Bell, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said it was exciting to see Amazon taking meaningful steps to reduce its carbon footprint.

“They’re blazing a trail for other companies to follow suit,” Bell said.

…

The U.S. military is joining federal, state and local officials on the frontlines of the battle to protect the country’s elections from foreign interference.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper made the announcement Thursday, saying that, from now on, election security will be one of the military’s enduring missions, and that his department will seek to take the fight to the country’s enemies.

“The lines between war and peace have now blurred,” Esper said, citing an exponential expansion of dangers in cyberspace. “Our paradigm for war has changed.”

“Our adversaries see cyberwarfare as a way to take on the United States and impose costs without confronting our traditional strengths,” he said.

Election security

The decision to make election security a core part of the military’s mission comes with campaigning for the 2020 U.S. presidential election well underway, with more than a dozen candidates looking to unseat President Donald Trump.

It also represents a significant expansion of the military’s role in protecting the integrity of U.S. elections, which until now had been more modest.

Despite concerns about Russian and Chinese efforts to meddle in last November’s midterm elections, the Defense Department was in the background, standing up a handful of cyber protection teams that could have been called upon to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), if needed.

“There would not be any independent DoD teams. We would operate in concert with DHS for incident response for election security,” Ed Wilson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, said at the time, emphasizing Homeland Security officials would be in the lead.

But Esper said the growing threat landscape necessitated a larger military role.

“We need to do more than just play goal line defense,” he said. “The Department of Defense has an important role in defending the American people from this misinformation, particularly as it pertains to preserving the integrity of our democratic elections.”

For months now, current and former U.S. intelligence and security officials have warned that Russia is actively working to interfere in the 2020 elections, whether with disinformation campaigns or by targeting U.S. election infrastructure, such as voter databases.

“It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here,” former special counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections, told lawmakers this past July. “And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”

Intelligence officials’ warnings

Mueller also echoed warnings from top intelligence officials that in 2020, Russia would not be alone.

“Many more countries are developing capabilities to replicate what the Russians have done,” he added.

Esper agreed.

“Our adversaries will continue to target our democratic processes,” he warned Thursday. “This is already happening in preparation for the 2020 elections.”

In addition to Russia, officials have said evidence shows Iran and China tried to meddle in the 2018 elections. And they expect the list to grow.

“2018 was maybe a playoff game; 2020 is the Super Bowl with election security,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Thursday.

“State and local election officials are standing on the frontlines of a renewed conflict, defending our nation’s election systems against state and criminal actors,” he said. “I’m committed to ensuring that they do not stand alone.”

For state and local election officials, more help may soon be on the way.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday agreed to support legislation that would provide states with an additional $250 million for election security.

Congressional approval needed

The measure still needs approval from the full Senate and from the House of Representatives, as well as Trump’s signature, for the funds to be doled out. But while lawmakers and officials see McConnell’s support as a positive sign, other security officials worry it, by itself, will not be enough.

“I think (it’s) a great step forward. But what’s next?” Chris Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said to reporters.

“Because if it’s these inconsistent, mass injections of cash every 10 years or eight years, that creates some disruption,” he said. “The thing they (state officials) want more than anything with funding, whether it comes from their state or whether it comes through the federal government, is consistency.”

At least one key lawmaker believes the U.S. is at least on the right track.

“I’m quite confident in 2020, in terms of the election being legitimate and secure,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

“Russia has always been trying to interfere. They always have, always will. Iran, China. We just have to be more discerning as consumers,” he said.

…

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Thursday with President Donald Trump and other critics of the tech industry, the Senate’s most vocal detractor offered a challenge: Sell your WhatsApp and Instagram properties to prove you’re serious about protecting data privacy.

It may have been more than Zuckerberg expected from his private meeting with Sen. Josh Hawley, a conservative Republican from Missouri, in his Capitol Hill office. Zuckerberg left the hourlong meeting — one of several with lawmakers on Capitol Hill — without answering questions from a throng of reporters and photographers pursuing him down a hallway.

Hawley, though, had plenty to say. “The company talks a lot. I’d like to see some action,” he told reporters. “I will believe Facebook when I see some real action out of Facebook.”

Rather than moving users’ personal data from properties such as WhatsApp and Instagram to the core Facebook platform, the company should put a wall around the services or, better yet, sell them off, Hawley said he told Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg, who requested the meeting, “did not think that was a great idea,” he said.

Zuckerberg “had a good, constructive meeting with President Trump at the White House today,” a Facebook spokesman said. On Facebook and Twitter, Trump posted a photo with the caption, “Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today.”

Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of @Facebook in the Oval Office today. https://t.co/k5ofQREfOcpic.twitter.com/jNt93F2BsG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2019

No details were given on the meeting, first reported by the Axios website.
 
Trump has persistently criticized social media companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and his platform of choice, Twitter, embracing conservative critics’ accusations that they censor religious, anti-abortion and politically conservative views. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the companies are “against me” and even suggested U.S. regulators should sue them on grounds of anti-conservative bias.  
 
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Hawley’s remarks concerning his meeting with Zuckerberg.

The popular services WhatsApp and Instagram are among some 70 companies that Facebook has acquired over the past 15 years or so, giving it what critics say is massive market power that has allowed it to snuff out competition.

Zuckerberg’s discussion with Hawley touched on industry competition, data privacy legislation, election security and accusations by conservatives that Facebook and other social media giants are biased against right-leaning content.

During his visit, Zuckerberg also met with other senators including Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Mike Lee, R-Utah, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee; and John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark. He also declined to answer reporters’ questions when he left Lee’s office earlier in the afternoon.

Lee’s office said the two discussed bias against conservatives on Facebook’s platform, regulation of online services, enforcement of antitrust laws in the tech industry and data privacy issues.

Congress has been debating a privacy law that could sharply rein in the ability of companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to collect and make money off users’ personal data. A national law, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., could allow people to see or prohibit use of their data.

‘New rules’ needed

Acting preemptively, Zuckerberg last spring called for tighter regulations to protect consumers’ data, control harmful online content, and ensure election integrity and data portability. The internet “needs new rules,” he said.

It was Zuckerberg’s first public visit to Washington since he testified before Congress last spring about privacy, election interference and other issues.

Facebook, a social media giant based in Menlo Park, California, with nearly 2.5 billion users, is under heavy scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators following a series of privacy scandals and amid accusations of abuse of its market power to squash competition.

The Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee are all conducting antitrust investigations of the big tech companies, and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general has opened a competition probe specifically of Facebook.

At Facebook’s request, Warner helped organize a dinner meeting in Washington on Wednesday night for Zuckerberg and a group of senators.

Warner told The Associated Press he wanted Zuckerberg to hear his Senate colleagues’ “enormous concerns about privacy and about protecting the integrity of our political system.”

Their message for the Facebook chief was “self-regulation is not going to be the answer,” Warner said. “I think Zuckerberg understood that.”

Warner and Hawley have proposed legislation that would force the tech giants to tell users what data they’re collecting and how much it’s worth. The proposal goes to the heart of Big Tech’s hugely profitable business model of commerce in users’ personal data. The companies gather vast data on what users read and like, and leverage it to help advertisers target their messages to individuals they want to reach.

The tech companies view with particular alarm a separate legislative proposal from Hawley that would require them to prove to regulators that they’re not using political bias to filter content. Failing to secure a bias-free audit from the government would mean a social media platform loses its long-held immunity from legal action.

…

With world leaders about to gather in New York for a U.N. Climate Action Summit next week, millions of young people from Australia to Iceland will take off from school or work on Friday to demand urgent measures to stop environmental catastrophe. 

Protests, inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 16, are planned in 150 countries. The aim is for students and others from around the world to speak in one voice about the impending effects of climate change on the planet. 

“Soon the sun will rise on Friday the 20th of September 2019. Good luck Australia, The Philippines, Japan and all the Pacific Islands. You go first!” Thunberg posted Thursday on Instagram. 

Solo start

Thunberg has galvanized young people around the world since she started protesting alone with a sign outside the Swedish parliament building in August 2018. Over the past year, young people in other communities have staged scattered strikes in solidarity with her Fridays for Future movement. 

In conjunction with the U.N. summit this week, organizers on Friday will hold coordinated strikes around the world for a third time, with Thunberg spearheading a march and rally in New York, home of U.N. headquarters. 

In a show of support, New York City education officials will excuse the absences of any of its 1.1 million public school students who want to participate. 

Demonstrators will gather in Lower Manhattan at noon and march about a mile to Battery Park at the edge of the financial district for a rally featuring speeches and music. 

Thunberg, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in March, sailed to New York from England aboard a zero-carbon-emissions vessel to partake in the U.N. summit. 

It brings together world leaders to discuss climate change mitigation strategies, such as transitioning to renewable energy sources from fossil fuels. 

Effects being felt

Global warming caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels has already led to droughts and heat waves, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and floods, scientists say. 

Carbon emissions climbed to a record high last year, despite a warning from the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October that output of the gases must be slashed over the next 12 years to stabilize the climate. 

Organizers said the demonstrations would take different forms, but all aim to promote awareness of climate change and demand political action to curb contributing factors to climate change, namely carbon emissions. 

Demonstrators in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, planned to dance on the beach in a celebratory pledge to protect their natural heritage. Protesters in Istanbul were heading to a public park for a climate festival with concerts and workshops scheduled throughout the day. 

On Wednesday, Thunberg appeared before several committees of the U.S. Congress to testify about the next generation’s view on climate change. In lieu of testimony, she submitted a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that urged rapid, unprecedented changes in the way people live to keep temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees C by 2030. 

“I want you to unite behind the science. And then I want you to take action,” she said. 

…

Christy Lee contributed to this report, which originated with VOA’s Korean Service.

WASHINGTON — Increased international cooperation is essential for curtailing the ship-to-ship transfers that Pyongyang continues to use to evade sanctions, said a former United Nations panel expert on North Korean sanctions enforcement.

“Every member state (of the United Nations) has one or two pieces of the puzzle,” said Neil Watts, a maritime expert who served as a member of the United Nations panel that monitors North Korea sanctions compliance from 2013 to 2018. “And if they all cooperate, they can put together the full picture.”

North Korea seemingly is receiving a steady supply of oil through illegal transshipments, said Watts, as indicated by fuel prices that he said have been stable for the last 18 months in North Korea.

Two essential tactics

Watts told VOA’s Korean Service Tuesday that two things are essential for going after Pyongyang’s illicit ship-to-ship transfers at sea: Identify key North Koreans driving illicit transshipping networks, and follow the money trails.

Watts said there are a handful of key North Korean individuals whom the country relies on to operate illicit networks for ship-to-ship transfers.

“It’s an activity that involves a number of characters. But you can be sure that there are only a few trusted individuals from (the) North Korean side that are making these arrangements with complicit actors.”

Then, Watts suggested following the money trail to disrupt North Korea’s networks that involve numerous front companies and banks in different countries that coordinate deceptive shipping practices to evade sanctions.

“One needs to find the money trails,” he said, “because it’s substantial amounts of money involved. They always make sure that the money is deposited beforehand. … The key is also to find which companies are involved so that you can identify the banks involved and thereby contact the banks to curtail the banks keeping the money for these North Korean entities that are used to pay for the transactions.”

Watts said this is possible only when U.N. member states investigate and share information among themselves and with the maritime and shipping industries.

“One can go a lot further in terms of cooperation between the member states and the maritime industry involving the brokers or the commodity brokers, the shipping industry,” he said.

According to Watts, North Korea operates its illegal networks across borders to make it difficult for authorities to track down foreign individuals and companies involved in ship-to-ship transfers. This setup also makes it difficult to find North Korean entities overseeing the activities designed to evade sanctions.

“The North Koreans, knowing full well that should they involve companies and entities that are in multiple jurisdictions, it makes it very hard to follow the trails back to these individuals that are driving it from the North Korean side,” he said.

Watts said North Korea uses ship-to-ship transfers as a primary method to evade sanctions and obtain fuel because it knows monitoring and interdicting illicit practices in international waters are difficult.

“International waters are often in disputed areas of jurisdiction, also, and they take advantage of that, as well,” he said.

North Korea uses several deceptive shipping practices such as removing a flag, name, and identification number of a vessel it uses. It also turns off the transponders, called an automatic identification system (AIS), that sends off its location and identification to nearby ports and ships.

“What has been done in the commercial sector is to get companies to include in contracts no switching off AIS as a clause to say that there’ll be severe penalties,” Watts said. “In the case of insurers,” he added, “they would lose the insurance.”

Illegal history

There is a history to North Korea’s use of illicit ship-to-ship transfers.

In 2017, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution banning sales of Pyongyang’s key export commodities, including coal and seafood, in order to cut off its foreign sources of income — money needed to support its nuclear weapons program. In the same year, the council also prohibited North Korea from importing more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum per year.

More recently, on Aug. 30, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted two Taiwanese-based individuals and two Taiwanese-based companies, and a Hong Kong-based company, for helping North Korea evade sanctions. It also listed a tanker suspected of transferring oil to North Korean ships and in connection to all three companies and two individuals. 

In its interim report released in August, the U.N. Panel of Experts said North Korea exceeded the cap on refined petroleum in the first four months of the year and continued to violate sanctions through illicit ship-to-ship transfers.

In June, the U.S. and dozens of other countries claimed North Korea violated a U.N. sanctions cap on fuel imports by using at least eight illegal ship-to-ship transfers and 72 illegal deliveries.

…

A quiet strip of land in northern Syria contains a volatile mix of troops from various nations and militias allied with some of those countries, but viewed as enemies by others.  In an attempt to keep this powder-keg from blowing up, the U.S. and Turkey brokered a deal last month to create a “safe zone” between Turkey and Kurdish areas. But Turkey now says the original deal still leaves it in danger, and analysts warn there is no long-term strategy to peaceful coexistence.  VOA’s Heather Murdock has this story from Manbij and al-Bab in Syria.

…

A new poll shows Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren surging into second place in the Democratic presidential race behind former Vice President Joe Biden.  The NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found Biden leading the Democratic field with 31% support, followed by Warren at 25% and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in third place with 14%. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has the latest on the Democratic primary race from Washington.

…

More than 150 world leaders are preparing to attend the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit in New York beginning Sept. 25, with the aim of agreeing on a new agenda to tackle global poverty. But a new report warns that African children are being left further and further behind and will make up more than half of the world’s poor by 2030. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the report authors are critical of both African governments and the international community for failing to adequately tackle the problem.
 

…

The American Dream is many things to many people. For the Savchuk family who came to the U.S. from Ukraine more than 15 years ago, achieving their dream meant opening a small business and making a decent living. VOA’s Iryna Matviichuk met with the family and saw their dream come true.
 

…

Israelis went to the polls again this week, but unofficial results show another deadlock. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party nor challenger Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party can form a governing coalition. Many in Israel say the two large parties must unite despite their differences. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem.
 

…

President Donald Trump has named Robert C. O’Brien as his new National Security Adviser, replacing John Bolton who was fired last week.

“I am pleased to announce that I will name Robert C. O’Brien, currently serving as the very successful Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, as our new National Security Advisor. I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!,” Trump said on Twitter Wednesday.

I am pleased to announce that I will name Robert C. O’Brien, currently serving as the very successful Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, as our new National Security Advisor. I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2019

Trump had said Bolton had been a “disaster” on North Korea policy, “out of line” on Venezuela, and did not get along with important administration officials.

…

Spain’s acting prime minister asked voters Wednesday for an even bigger victory for his Socialist party after his failure to form a government triggered a new election in November.

Pedro Sánchez told opposition parties in parliament that “when we will be forced back to the polls, I hope that the Spanish people give the Socialist Party an even bigger majority so that you … cannot block the formation of a government that Spain needs.”

He spoke a day after King Felipe VI announced that there was no viable candidate who could win parliament’s endorsement before a Sept. 23 deadline.

The Nov. 10 election will be Spain’s fourth in four years.

Spain to Hold Snap Election on Nov. 10 After Party Talks Fail

Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez acted after King Felipe VI said there were no viable candidates to lead a new government

Sánchez’s Socialists won the April 28 election, but fell short of a majority and he was unable to win the support of any major rival parties. The far-left United We Can party both refused to enter into a coalition government or to endorse his formation of a single-party government. The center-right Citizens party also wouldn’t negotiate until a last-minute effort that flopped.

Sánchez’s rivals criticized his unwillingness to win them over.

Popular Party leader Pablo Casado, the conservative opposition leader, said that Sánchez “wanted new elections from the start, but you have spent five months playing with the Spanish people.”

Early polls show the Socialists again winning the most votes, but still coming nowhere near the outright majority of 176 seats. Now they have 123 deputies in the 350-member lower chamber.

That means it is very likely the parties will have to change tact and find a way to strike a deal to get a government in place after the new vote.

Spain’s caretaker government has limited powers and can’t propose laws to the parliament.

The upcoming political campaign will likely coincide with a highly-anticipated verdict from the Supreme Court for a rebellion case against 12 of the leaders of Catalonia’s 2017 secession attempt. A guilty verdict would likely spark protests from separatists in northeastern Catalonia.

Spain is also facing a slowing economy and, like the rest of Europe, the likelihood of further economic troubles caused by the planned exit of Britain from the European Union scheduled for Oct. 31.

…

Iran has been suspended from international judo competitions because it boycotts bouts with Israeli athletes.

Less than a month after world champion Saeid Mollaei walked off the Iranian team in protest at the boycott policy, the International Judo Federation said Wednesday that Iran is suspended ahead of a full hearing.

Iran’s judo federation is accused of discriminating against Israeli athletes and breaking rules over manipulating competition results.

“The IJF Executive Committee considered that such a conduct is intolerable,” the federation said.

Mollaei has said he was repeatedly ordered by Iranian officials to lose matches or withdraw from competitions, including last month’s world championships, so as not to face Israelis. He is currently in hiding in Germany.

Iran does not recognize Israel as a country, and Iranian sports teams have for several decades had a policy of not competing against Israelis.

It’s not yet clear if the IJF will seek to stop Iran competing in the 2020 Olympic judo events. Meanwhile, the IJF is exploring ways to allow Mollaei to compete on the International Olympic Committee’s team of refugees.

The IOC has signaled a harder line on boycotts in recent years.

In June, IOC president Thomas Bach criticized governments who “clearly abuse sport for their political purposes,” noting a case in May of a Tunisian court blocking four Israelis from competing at the taekwondo junior world championships. 

…

It’s a common sight in Los Angeles. Thousands of people living in tents on sidewalks, sometimes with trash piled outside their makeshift shelters, conditions that breed typhus and other diseases. 

Analysts say the problem is complex, has been decades in the making and that a response requires coordination at many levels of government. President Donald Trump and his White House Council of Economic Advisers have recently weighed in, and Trump, on a flight to California for political fundraisers on Tuesday, said California’s largest cities are destroying themselves through an inadequate response to the problem. On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom and local officials asked Trump for help in providing emergency rent vouchers.

Homelessness has risen 12% in Los Angeles since 2018, despite a healthy economy that some critics say has left too many behind. Nearly 60,000 people were living without shelter in the most recent count of the country’s homeless residents in January.

“What’s unusual now is that you had a massive surge of jobs and wealth back into the cities after this long trend of suburbanization,” said Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute’s Center for Regional Economics and California Center. He says sprawling commuter cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco viewed their downtown regions as business hubs, not residential ones. That pushed housing prices up and drove workers ever further from their jobs, while cities failed to create incentives for building new housing.

The result in Los Angeles, Klowden says, are emergent shantytowns in the form of tent cities.

For many residents, sudden unemployment or major health problems, sometimes compounded by drug and alcohol addiction, can leave people with few options.

“As soon as something catastrophic happens, then they’re liable to be pushed over the edge,” said John Maceri, CEO of The People Concern, a nonprofit social service agency. 

That happened to Robert Venegas, 58, who fell on hard times after the death of his wife and spent two years on the streets.

“I was living in a tent, wherever I could lay my head,” he recalled.

He is now staying in a 45-bed shelter called El Puente, one of a series of shelters being established throughout the city. This one near L.A.’s historic center overlooks a busy freeway that carries commuters to and from the suburbs.

Last year, Los Angeles moved more than 21,000 people from the streets and into permanent housing financed by two measures approved by city and county voters.

“The fact that they can put their head down at night and be able to sleep and feel that they’re safe and secure where they are, versus having to be up all night worrying about whether they’re going to be attacked on the streets,” that makes a big difference, said Daniel Xavier, who manages the El Puente housing facility where Venegas was staying. 

Housing backlog

Many homeless people like Venegas are awaiting permanent housing.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a public agency set up by the city and county, is tasked with tackling the problem. The organization has a backlog of tens of thousands of people “ready to be housed,” lacking only housing units, said executive director Peter Lynn.

Lynn said Los Angeles is not the most expensive city in the United States, but it has the biggest gap between incomes and cost of living, and is “the least affordable housing market in the United States.” The root cause? “We have under built housing for decades,” said Lynn.

One reason is the aversion of Californians to high-density housing. But most agree that such attitudes will have to change, since there is limited space for sprawling, single-level homes close to the city center.

New York, a city of high-rise apartments, has done better with its homeless than Los Angeles or San Francisco, said Klowden, who noted that a harsher winter climate is part of the reason.

“When you know that people are going to die on the streets because they’re going to freeze, you’re incentivized to act,” he said. In Los Angeles, “people have been able to push the problem down the road for a long time.”

Homelessness in Los Angeles is reaching crisis proportions, however, and “we need to really look at all the tools in the toolbox and find ways to streamline housing production,” Maceri said. 

Experts agree that getting people off the streets requires changes in policy at every level of government, and creative thinking.

The Trump administration is weighing in. The White House Council of Economic Advisers has prepared a report that blames the housing crisis in California — where nearly half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless live — on overregulation of the housing market, including zoning regulations, rent controls, historical preservation or environmental mandates. 

In a Sept. 10 letter to Trump, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti cited other causes of homelessness: “An ever-higher cost of living, a national economy that has hollowed out our middle-class and federal government cuts to vital housing funds and social services.”   

“We hope,” Garcetti added, “the federal government can be part of the solution.”

…

South Korea has followed through with a pledge to remove Japan from a preferred list of nations that enjoy fast track trade status, the latest chapter in an escalating diplomatic dispute tied to Japan’s 20th century occupation of the Korean peninsula.

Tokyo’s removal from a so-called “white list” of nations enjoying minimal trade restrictions means South Korean companies would have to wait as many as 15 days to win approval to export sensitive materials to Japan, compared to five days under the fast track status.  

Wednesday’s action comes just weeks after Tokyo removed South Korea from its “white list” of trusted trade partners.  The decision restricts exports of hi-tech materials to South Korea that are used to produce semiconductors and displays in smartphones and other electronics that serve as the backbone of South Korea’s export-driven economy.

Seoul has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over a separate move by Japan to tighten export controls on those materials.

Tokyo’s decision to rescind Seoul’s fast track trade status are widely seen as retaliation for recent court rulings in South Korea ordering Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who were forced to work in Japanese plants du. The companies have not complied with the rulings, leading some victims to begin the legal process to seize or liquidate the companies’ assets in Korea.

South Koreans are still bitter over Japan’s brutal military rule of the Korean peninsula that lasted from 1910 until 1945, when Japan surrendered to Allied forces to end World War II.  Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were subjected to numerous atrocities, including the so-called “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels.

The issue of compensation for the victims has been an escalating source of friction between Japan and South Korea. Tokyo says the reparations issue was resolved with a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral relations between the nations.  Tokyo has complained that subsequent South Korean governments have not accepted further Japanese apologies and attempts to make amends.  

…

The crowds of 10,000-plus that Elizabeth Warren has attracted lately in places like Seattle, Minneapolis and Manhattan don’t happen by accident.

They are the result of the careful collection of information on would-be supporters and a multi-step process to turn that data into rally attendees who often become worth far more to the campaign than simply making for impressive television crowd shots.

There’s a science to the art of campaign crowd building. And few places is it on better display than in the well-honed system employed by the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

Warren’s growing rallies have coincided with her rise in Democratic presidential primary polls.

President Donald Trump also attracted huge crowds in 2016. But the ability to stage a massive rally doesn’t always translate to Election Day wins.

…

Two Dutch tourists who wanted to take video of Area 51 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespass and illegal parking following their arrests at the secure U.S. government site in Nevada.

A judge on Monday sentenced Govert Sweep and Ties Granzier to three days in the Nye County jail and fined them $2,280 apiece.

They also surrendered computer and camera equipment and an aerial drone.

In a Nye County sheriff’s office video news release, Sweep and Granzier say they’ll return to the Netherlands after their expected release Thursday.

They were arrested Sept. 10 in a car inside the Nevada National Security Site near Mercury.

That’s more than 20 miles (32.2 kilometers) from Area 51, the focus of events this weekend inspired by a hoax Facebook post inviting people to “see them aliens.”

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The United States filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked secret documents about U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance, saying his new book violates non-disclosure agreements.

The Justice Department said Snowden published his memoir, “Permanent Record,” without submitting it to intelligence agencies for review, adding that speeches given by Snowden also violated nondisclosure agreements.

The United States is seeking all proceeds earned by Snowden for the book, the Justice Department said. The lawsuit also names the “corporate entities” behind the book’s publication as nominal defendants.

Is NSA Leaker Edward Snowden a Traitor?

US experts are split on whether NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now a political exile in Russia, is a traitor, a whistleblower or a defector

A spokesman for Snowden could not immediately be reached, and book publisher Macmillan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Snowden has lived in Russia since he revealed details of U.S. intelligence agencies’ secret surveillance programs.

Though Snowden is viewed by some as a hero, U.S. authorities want him to stand in a criminal trial over his disclosures of classified information.

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Corey Lewandowski, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and close confidant, on Tuesday stoutly defended his former boss and lashed out at Democrats during testimony to a U.S. congressional panel considering whether to impeach Trump.

“We as a nation would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing,” Lewandowski said in his opening remarks to the Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

The White House on Monday told Lewandowski not to discuss conversations he had with Trump after he became president including an exchange that Democrats view as evidence that Trump committed obstruction of justice by trying to interfere in a federal investigation and may need to be impeached.

Lewandowski was the first impeachment witness to appear before the committee since former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified in July about his inquiry that detailed Russian 2016 election interference and Trump’s actions to impede the investigation.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, began the hearing by slamming the White House’s legal team for instructing Lewandowski to limit the scope of his testimony by invoking a doctrine called executive privilege.

“We should call this what it is: an absolute cover-up by the White House,” Nadler said.

“The White House is advancing a new and dangerous theory: the crony privilege,” Nadler added. “… Where are the limits?”

The hearing appeared likely to produce more political theater than factual revelations.

Lewandowski assailed the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2020 election.

“It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda – to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States. As for actual “collusion” or “conspiracy,” there was none. What there has been however, is harassment of the president from the day he won the election,” Lewandowski added.

Lewandowski is considering a run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in New Hampshire. Mueller’s report described Lewandowski as a Trump “devotee” with a “close” relationship with the president.

Trump in August sought to boost Lewandowski’s potential Senate bid, calling his former aide “a fantastic guy” who would make a “great senator” and that “I like everything about him.”

“This isn’t a campaign rally. This is the first hearing where you can tell the American people how you participated in the president’s effort to obstruct justice,” Democratic Representative David Cicilline wrote on Twitter.

Democrats, who hope to decide whether to recommend Trump’s impeachment to the full House by year’s end, had intended to grill Lewandowski about the president’s effort to persuade then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to redirect the Mueller probe away from the 2016 Trump election campaign.

The episode is among a number of incidents contained in Mueller’s 448-page investigative report made public in April that Democrats view as evidence that Trump obstructed justice.

Mueller made no determination about whether Trump obstructed justice but did not exonerate him of wrongdoing.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the House has the power to vote to impeach a president while the Senate then would hold a trial on whether to remove him from office. The House is controlled by Democrats and the Senate by Trump’s fellow Republicans.

White House assertion

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee in a letter on Monday that Lewandowski could not testify about conversations with Trump after he became president or with his senior advisers.

The White House also directed two other witnesses, former Trump White House aides Rob Porter and Rick Dearborn, not to testify. Cipollone’s letter said they were “absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony with respect to matters related to their service as senior advisers to the President.”

In June 2017, Trump met Lewandowski, then a private citizen, at the White House and dictated a message he was to deliver to Sessions. The message said Sessions should shift the Russia probe’s focus to future elections despite his recusal from the investigation.

At a second meeting a month later, Trump asked about the status of the message and said Lewandowski should “tell Sessions he was fired” if he would not meet with Lewandowski, according to the Mueller report.

Trump fired Lewandowski as his campaign manager in June 2016 but the two remained close. During the campaign, Lewandowski had often generated controversy including when he was charged with misdemeanor battery after being accused of forcefully grabbing a female reporter in Florida. The charge was later dropped.

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Older Americans aren’t moving as much as they used to. 

The migration rate of people over 55 has dropped steadily over the past two decades from a high of 6% in 1996, to 4.3% between 2017 and 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Moving rates for Baby Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — have rebounded a bit since the Great Recession of 2007-2009, but they remain slightly below pre-recession rates.

“The idea is if the economy’s not so good, they may just want to stay working for a little bit more before they retire,” says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution.

“Their decision is when can they retire, when is it affordable to retire? And more importantly, from the migration standpoint, does it make sense to to pick up stakes and move somewhere else? If the housing crunch is there, they’re not going to have too many bidders for their homes, so the idea of selling your house to move somewhere else is not going to be as easy.”

When they do retire, Baby Boomers are still heading to traditional sunny retirement haunts like Phoenix, Tampa, Riverside [California], Las Vegas and Jacksonville [Florida].

The lure of the big city isn’t calling to these older folks. The cities that experienced the biggest net loss of seniors include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco.

For all ages, short-distance moves far outnumber long-distance moves, especially for seniors. Those who move a short distance might be interested in being close to their adult children and grandchildren.

Typically, those who move far away are attracted by the weather, lower costs and services geared toward older people. However, there may be movement to back to their kids when they get beyond the early senior years.

“I’ve got to call them the yuppie elderly, in good health and still have some disposable income, they’ll move to places where they have some amenities for older people,” Frey says. “But when things are not going so well, they may then move back to areas where they have more friends and family that can help take care of them.”

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A U.S. service member was killed in action in Afghanistan on Monday, NATO said, without providing further details.

Last week, President Donald Trump abruptly called off talks with the Taliban to end American’s longest war, citing the killing of a U.S. service member in a Taliban attack days earlier.

Monday’s death was the 17th U.S. combat death in Afghanistan this year, according to the Pentagon’s count. There also have been three non-combat deaths this year. More than 2,400 Americans have died in the nearly 18-year war.

Across Afghanistan, militant attacks and more violence killed at least seven people as the country prepares for presidential elections later this month, Afghan officials said.

At least five civilians, including women and children, were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in western Farah province on Sunday, according to Mohibullah Mohib, spokesman for the provincial police.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which occurred near the city of Farah, the provincial capital, but the Taliban are active in the province.

Earlier this month, the Taliban launched an attempt to take the city of Farah, briefly seizing an army recruitment center and setting it on fire. Airstrikes were called in and the Taliban were eventually forced out of the city.

Separately, a magnetic explosive device attached to a mini bus belonging to a university in Ghazni province exploded and killed the bus driver. Arif Noori, spokesman for the provincial governor, said five Ghazni University students were also wounded in the blast.

In eastern Logar province, a schoolgirl died in the crossfire during a battle in the Mohammad Agha district between the Taliban and the security forces, the police said. A second student was wounded.

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani cancelled his first electoral debate with his main electoral rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s chief executive. Both men are partners in the national unity government.

Ghani’s electoral team, in a statement released just before the start of the debate, claimed Abdullah has no political program and that Ghani did not want to debate him.

Abdullah, who was present at the TV studio where the debate was to be held, said Ghani “should have come and shared his plans.”

Around 100,000 members of the country’s security forces will provide security on election day, Sept. 28. Around 72,000 security personnel will be on duty around the 4,942 polling centers across Afghanistan while nearly 30,000 additional troops will serve as reserve units.

Approximately 20,000 American and allied troops remain in Afghanistan. Between 14,000 and 13,000 U.S. troops are currently in the country.

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A Chinese American couple has been arrested and charged with stealing scientific trade secrets from a children’s hospital in Ohio in the latest federal prosecution aimed at clamping down on China’s alleged theft of American intellectual property.  

The couple — Yu Zhou, 49, and Li Chen, 46 — worked in separate labs at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, for 10 years, stealing proprietary research for use in personal business ventures, law enforcement officials announced Monday.

The purloined exosome-related trade secrets play a key role in the diagnosis and treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions, including liver cancer and a condition found in premature babies, according to a 27-page federal indictment.

The indictment alleges that the couple founded a company in China in 2015 without the hospital’s knowledge or authorization, marketing products related to exosome isolation. Two years later, Zhou helped found an American biotechnology company, advertising products including a kit developed with a trade secret created at one of the hospital’s research labs. Shortly before resigning from the hospital in 2017, Zhu allegedly announced in a press release his new company’s plans to distribute “proprietary exosome isolation systems” from its Central Ohio headquarters.

“Nationwide Children’s Hospital devoted years of work and its own money to researching exosomes in order to promote honorable medical advances,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Benjamin Glassman said in a statement.  

In a statement to VOA, the hospital said, “When we discovered this incident, we alerted the FBI and have been actively collaborating with them.”

Zhou and Chen were arrested in July. The 27-count indictment was unsealed Thursday at their arraignment in federal court in Columbus. The charges carry 10 to 20 years in prison.  

Lawyers for the couple did not immediately respond to an email from VOA seeking comment. 

U.S. crackdown 

The indictment is part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on China’s alleged theft of American property and other predatory practices that are at the heart of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

In the last 10 months, the Justice Department has brought charges against Chinese nationals and entities in at least seven separate economic espionage cases, up from three during the prior 10 months. In addition, the department has obtained guilty pleas and convictions in six older espionage cases, while charging four Chinese nationals for evading sanctions against North Korea.

“The theft of trade secrets is a growing threat that severely impacts our economy and our national security,” stated FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge Todd Wickerham.

Separately, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Chinese government employee on conspiracy charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. visas for fellow government workers.

Zhongsan Liu was arrested Thursday in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and later presented before a U.S. magistrate in federal court in New York.

“We welcome foreign students and researchers, including from China, but we do not welcome visa fraud  especially on behalf of a government,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of National Security. “We will continue to confront Chinese government attempts to subvert American law to advance its own interests in diverting U.S. research and know-how to China.”

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