TASIILAQ, GREENLAND — From a helicopter, Greenland’s brilliant white ice and dark mountains make the desolation seem to go on forever. And the few people who live here — its whole population wouldn’t fill a football stadium — are poor, with a high rate of substance abuse and suicide.

One scientist called it the “end of the planet.”

When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland, it was met with derision, seen as an awkward and inappropriate approach of an erstwhile ally.

Aladdin’s Cave of resources?

But it might also be an Aladdin’s Cave of oil, natural gas and rare earth minerals just waiting to be tapped as the ice recedes.

The northern island and the rest of the Arctic aren’t just hotter because of global warming. As melting ice opens shipping lanes and reveals incredible riches, the region is seen as a new geopolitical and economic asset, with the U.S., Russia, China and others wanting in.

“An independent Greenland could, for example, offer basing rights to either Russia or China or both,” said Fen Hampson, the former head of the international security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation think tank in Waterloo, Ontario, who is now a professor at Carleton University.

He noted the desire by some there to secede as a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

“I am not saying this would happen, but it is a scenario that would have major geostrategic implications, especially if the Northwest Passage becomes a transit route for shipping, which is what is happening in the Russian Arctic.”

Russia, China eye Arctic

In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward an ambitious program to reaffirm his country’s presence in the Arctic, including efforts to build ports and other infrastructure and expand its icebreaker fleet. Russia wants to stake its claim in the region that is believed to hold up to one-fourth of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas.

China sees Greenland as a possible source of rare earths and other minerals and a port for shipping through the Arctic to the eastern U.S. It called last year for joint development of a “Polar Silk Road” as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative to build railways, ports and other facilities in dozens of countries.

Uncertainty and danger

But while global warming pushes the cold and ice farther north each year, experts caution that the race to the Arctic is an incredibly challenging marathon, not a sprint.

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet creates uncertainty and danger for offshore oil and gas developers, threatening rigs and ships.

“All that ice doesn’t suddenly melt; it creates icebergs that you have to navigate around,” said Victoria Herrmann, managing director of the Arctic Institute, a nonprofit focused on Arctic security.

On the other hand, while mining in Greenland has been expensive because of the environment, development costs have fallen as the ice has melted, making it more attractive to potential buyers, she said.

Strategically, Greenland forms part of what the U.S. views as a key corridor for naval operations between the Arctic and the North Atlantic. It is also part of the broader Arctic region, considered strategically important because of its proximity to the U.S. and economically vital for its natural resources.

Trump’s idea not crazy

Hampson noted it was an American protectorate during World War II, when Nazi Germany occupied Denmark, and the U.S. was allowed to build radar stations and rent-free bases on its territory after the war. That includes today’s Thule Air Force Base, 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) south of the North Pole.

After the war, the U.S. proposed buying Greenland for $100 million after flirting with the idea of swapping land in Alaska for parts of the Arctic island. The U.S. also thought about buying Greenland 80 years earlier.

Trump “may not be as crazy as he sounds despite his ham-fisted offer, which clearly upset the Danes, and rightly so,” Hampson said.

Greenland is part of the Danish realm along with the Faeroe Islands, another semi-autonomous territory, and has its own government and parliament. Greenland’s 56,000 residents got extensive home rule in 1979, but Denmark still handles foreign and defense policies, with an annual subsidy of $670 million.

Its indigenous people are not wealthy, and vehicles, restaurants, stores and basic services are few.

Trump said Sunday he’s interested in Greenland “strategically,” but its purchase is “not No. 1 on the burner.”

Although Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called Trump’s idea to purchase Greenland an “absurd discussion,” prompting him to call her “nasty” and cancel an upcoming visit to Copenhagen, she also acknowledged its importance to both nations.

“The developments in the Arctic region calls for further cooperation between the U.S. and Greenland, the Faeroe Islands and Denmark,” she said. “Therefore I would like to underline our invitation for a stronger cooperation on Arctic affairs still stands.”

Rare earth minerals, oil and gas

Greenland is thought to have the largest deposits outside China of rare earth minerals used to make batteries and cellphones.

Such minerals were deemed critical to economic and national security by the U.S. Interior Department last year, and as demand rises “deposits outside of China will be sought to serve as a counterbalance to any market control that could be exerted by a single large producer,” said Kenneth Medlock, senior director at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

Off Greenland’s shores, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates there could be 17.5 billion undiscovered barrels of oil and 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, though the remote location and harsh weather have limited exploration. Around the Arctic Circle, there’s potential for 90 billion barrels of oil.

Only 14 offshore wells were drilled in the past 40 years, according to S&P Global Analytics. So far, no oil in exploitable quantities has been found.

“It’s very speculative, but in theory they could have a lot of oil,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc. “It’s perceived as being the new Alaska, where the old Alaska was thought to be worthless and turned out to have huge reserves. And it’s one of the few places on Earth that’s lightly populated, and it’s close to the U.S.”

Invest, don’t conquer

Michael Byers, an Arctic expert at the University of British Columbia, suggests there are better approaches for Washington than the politically awkward suggestion of purchasing Greenland.

“There’s no security concern that would be dealt with better if Greenland became a part of the United States. It’s part of the NATO alliance,” he said. “As for resources, Greenland is open to foreign investment. Arctic resources are expensive and that is why there is not more activity taking place. That’s the barrier. It’s not about Greenland restricting access.”

That’s been the approach taken by China, which has had mixed success. Greenland officials have visited China to look for investors but Beijing’s interest also has provoked political unease.

In 2016, Denmark reversed plans to sell Groennedal, a former U.S. naval base that the Danish military had used as its command center for Greenland after a Hong Kong company, General Nice Group, emerged as a bidder, according to defencewatch.dk, a Danish news outlet.

Last year, then-U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis successfully pressured Denmark not to let China bankroll three commercial airports on Greenland, over fears they could give Beijing a military foothold near Canada, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Beijing’s biggest Greenland-related investment to date is an ownership stake by a Chinese company in Australia-based Greenland Minerals Ltd., which plans to mine rare earths and uranium.

“People talk about China, but China can access Arctic resources through foreign investment,” Byers said. “And foreign investment is a lot cheaper than trying to conquer something.”

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VOA White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has expressed his appreciation to Denmark as a U.S. ally, after President Donald Trump canceled a state visit to the country.

The State Department said Pompeo spoke to his Danish counterpart by phone Wednesday and discussed “strengthening cooperation with the Kingdom of Denmark – including Greenland – in the Arctic.”

Trump earlier this week cancelled a planned visit to Denmark after his suggestion that the Danes sell Greenland to the U.S. was rejected.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Wednesday she regretted and was surprised Trump abruptly canceled his scheduled visit to Denmark for rebuffing his overture to buy Greenland, the strategic Arctic country with mineral wealth that is part of the Danish kingdom.

Trump later acknowledged he canceled the trip to Denmark because the country’s prime minister made a “nasty” remark in reaction to his suggestion regarding Greenland.

“I thought it was not a nice statement, the way she blew me off. She was blowing off the United States,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “She said ‘absurd’ – that’s not the right word to use.”

The United States has a military presence in Greenland at Thule Air Base under a U.S.-Danish treaty dating back to 1951.

When Trump recently floated the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark many there initially thought the suggestion was a joke.

Trump, late Tuesday on Twitter, called off the September 2-3 visit while saying that, “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people.” But he said that with Frederiksen declaring that “she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time.”

Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time….

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

Trump also thanked Frederiksen for saving “a great deal of expense and effort for both the United States and Denmark” by publicly stating ahead of time her views opposing any possible Greenland sale.

The Danish prime minister said that while she considers the United States to be her country’s closest strategic ally, “thankfully, the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over.”

 

 

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Experts are warning that a focus on alleged Islamist militant ties is hindering efforts to respond to insurgencies in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Local insurgent groups have claimed ties to Islamic State to increase their clout, but the groups operate autonomously, experts who study the regions say.

On April 18, a strike on an army base near the Congo’s border with Uganda left several Congolese soldiers dead and others injured.

It was the first attack credited to Wilayat Central Africa, previously known as the Allied Democratic Forces, a group that has pledged allegiance to IS.

A month later, an IS group took responsibility for attacks in northeastern Mozambique, part of a growing insurgency in the country led by several groups, including Ahlu Sunnah wa-Jama and al-Shabab. The latter group, consisting of about 1,000 fighters who operate in decentralized units, shares its name but no known connection with the Somali terrorist organization.

On July 24, IS released a video featuring a man named “Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman” who called for an end to division and infighting among Muslims in Central Africa. He also called for the creation of a caliphate. The video features heavily armed fighters in a forested area pledging allegiance to IS.

Some saw the proclamation as a sign of solidarity between the Mozambican and Congolese extremist groups. But experts are unsure whether links to IS signal a new threat or simply reflect the groups’ attempts to raise their profile.

Ryan O’Farrell, an extremism researcher studying at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said experts have found virtually no evidence that IS has trained, funded or equipped its African affiliates.

“It also doesn’t necessarily fit Islamic State’s model. They have affiliates all over the continent, and most of them haven’t received training or weapons from Islamic State Central,” O’Farrell told VOA.

“Pretty much all of its affiliates are local groups that have local recruitment networks and local financial capacity and local weapons procurement channels. And so, they affiliate themselves with Islamic State as a brand.”

Nearly daily attacks in the Cabo Delgado region have made the insurgency in Mozambique one of Africa’s deadliest. The group in the DRC has pulled off high-profile attacks, killing U.N. peacekeepers.

But at their core, they remain local insurgencies, O’Farrell said.

“Their targets are primarily local,” O’Farrell said. “That’s very rarely the MO for some of the more peripheral Islamic State affiliates. But within those zones or within any territory in North Kivu (DRC) and within Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique, they’re very active.”

Yussuf Adam, an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, said that rather than receiving arms or provisions from IS, insurgent groups in Mozambique are capturing them from the Mozambican Armed Forces.

“They kill two persons here, three persons there. They take ammunition, and so on. And it seems that they … feed themselves or, you know, feed their operations from guns they collect,” he told VOA.

Adam said the only international component to the insurgency is that some of the local fighters traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Russians in the 1980s. Unconfirmed reports suggest fighters received training in Somalia.

In a discussion on VOA’s radio interview program “Encounter,” experts said the insurgency in Mozambique is hard to understand because they have not made any public pronouncements. They are decentralized and likely include former street hawkers with links to organized crime.

Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the insurgency in Mozambique may have Islamist roots, but other factors fuel it. These include resentment over natural gas discoveries, which have not benefited the local population, and heavy-handed operations by security forces, resulting in civilian deaths.

“This is what I would call an insipid insurgency,” Devermont said. “That’s important because it means that there are opportunities here in the embryonic stage to address its concerns, snuff it out and bring back some of these individuals as part of society.”

Oil and gas companies hiring locals who might otherwise become frustrated and join the insurgency would help a lot, Devermont said.

Adam believes the insurgency cannot be addressed by looking at it internationally. Instead, he urged policymakers to look at the local grievances of northern Mozambique, which has long been cut off from the economic hubs of the country and underserved by the central government.

“Violence breeds violence,” Adam said. “What we need is to start working readily to see what are the problems, what is the political and economy of northern Mozambique.”

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Indonesia has arrested 34 people and cut internet access in its easternmost region of Papua to rein in violence after protesters torched buildings, a market and a prison over mistreatment of students and perceived ethnic discrimination.

Police have flown in 1,200 more officers to quell sometimes violent protests since Monday in towns such as Manokwari, Sorong, Fakfak and Timika, near the giant Grasberg copper mine operated by Freeport McMoran’s Indonesian unit.

The communication ministry has blocked the internet and telecoms data to prevent Papuans from accessing social media since Wednesday, although telephone calls and text messages are unaffected, said ministry spokesman Ferdinandus Setu.

“This is an effort to curb hoaxes and, most importantly, stop people from sharing provocative messages that can incite racial hatred,” he added.

A separatist movement has simmered in Papua for decades, with frequent complaints of rights abuses by security forces, but the recent anger appears to be linked to racist slurs against Papuan students who were detained last week.

The students were arrested in a dormitory in the city of Surabaya in East Java after being accused of disrespecting the Indonesian flag during an Independence Day celebration.

Smaller demonstrations and rallies in support of Papua flared nationwide on Thursday, while the chief security minister, police chief and military commander visited Sorong to inspect the sites of the most violent protests.

Official said two rallies in the Nabire and Yahukimo areas of Papua were peaceful, the Kompas news site said.

In Jakarta, the capital, more than a hundred Papuan students marched from army headquarters to the gates of the presidential palace, shouting pro-independence slogans demanding “Referendum for Papua” or “Freedom for Papua”.

Some held posters demanding the right to self-determination and an end to racism and colonialism in West Papua. Papuan students also held a smaller protest in the nearby city of Bogor.

President Joko Widodo told reporters he would invite religious and community leaders from across Papua for talks next week.

Widodo has urged the army and police chiefs to act against officers who behaved in a “racist manner” towards students, his chief of staff told news channel CNN Indonesia.

Police have arrested 34 people in Timika, where thousands of protesters threw stones at a parliament building, houses, shops and a hotel on Wednesday, police said. They accused 13 of being members of a pro-Papua independence separatist group.

Papua and West Papua provinces, the resource-rich western part of the island of New Guinea, were a Dutch colony that was incorporated into Indonesia after a widely criticised U.N.-backed referendum in 1969.

Widodo has sought to ease tension and improve welfare by building infrastructure.

He has visited the region more often than any of his predecessors, and plans to open a bridge next month in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, his secretariat said.

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Iranian state media said the government showcased a domestically built long-range, mobile surface-to-air missile system on Thursday.

The system’s unveiling came on Iran’s National Defense Industry Day and at a time of rising tension between Iran and the United States.

Iran developed a large domestic arms industry in the face of international sanctions and embargoes barring it from importing many weapons.

Concerns over Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program contributed to the United States last year leaving the pact that Iran sealed with world powers in 2015 to rein in its nuclear ambitions in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.

 

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A fresh push to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar fall flat on Thursday, with no one turning up to hop on five buses and 10 trucks laid on by Bangladesh.

Members of the Muslim minority, 740,000 of whom fled a military offensive in 2017, are refusing to return without guarantees for their safety and a promise that they will at last be given citizenship by Myanmar.

“The Myanmar government raped us, and killed us. So we need security. Without security we will never go back,” Rohingya leader Nosima said in a statement.

“We need a real guarantee of citizenship, security and promise of original homelands,” said Mohammad Islam, a Rohingya from Camp 26, one of a string of sites in southeast Bangladesh that are home to around a million people.

“So we must talk with the Myanmar government about this before repatriation.”

The vehicles provided to transport the first batch out of 3,450 earmarked for return turned up at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) at the camp in Teknaf.

But more than six hours later none had showed up and the vehicles departed empty. Officials said they would return on Friday.

“We’ve interviewed 295 families. But nobody has yet shown any interest to repatriate,” Bangladesh Refugee Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam told reporters.

He said that officials would continue to interview families.

• ‘Bengali interlopers’ –

The Rohingya are not recognised as an official minority by the Myanmar government, which considers them Bengali interlopers despite many families having lived in the country for generations.

UN investigators say the 2017 violence warrants the prosecution of top generals for “genocide” and the International Criminal Court has started a preliminary probe.

It has sullied the international standing of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and former political prisoner who has risen to be the top civilian official in Myanmar.

The latest repatriation attempt — a previous push failed in November with many of those on a returnees list going into hiding — follows a visit last month to the camps by high-ranking officials from Myanmar.

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry forwarded a list of more than 22,000 refugees to Myanmar for verification and Naypyidaw cleared 3,450 individuals for “return”.

Rohingya community leader Jafar Alam told AFP the refugees had been gripped by fear since authorities announced the fresh repatriation process.

They also feared being sent to camps for internally displaced people (IDP) if they went back to Myanmar.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told a TV channel in Dhaka that Thursday’s no-show was “very disappointing” but he hoped “good sense would finally prevail”.

“The Rohingya want to achieve all their demands by taking us (Bangladesh) as hostage. But I don’t know how long we can accept it,” he told Jamuna TV.

Chinese and Myanmar diplomats were also at the Rohingya refugee camp.

The latest repatriation attempt comes in the wake of July talks between Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

China is a key ally of Myanmar, and Hasina said then that Beijing would “do whatever is required” to help resolve the Rohingya crisis.

“Myanmar has yet to address the systematic persecution and violence against the Rohingya,” Human Rights Watch said Thursday. “So refugees have every reason to fear for their safety if they return.”

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Poland’s judges urged lawmakers Wednesday to investigate an online hate campaign against some of them that was apparently encouraged by a deputy justice minister who has resigned over the allegations.

The judges of the independent Iustitia association also demanded that Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro resign over the scandal revealed this week by the onet.pl news site. Ziobro is also the prosecutor general, which the judges say means he cannot be objective in the probe that Warsaw prosecutors have launched into the online hate campaign.

The judges said they were “shocked and saddened” by its revelations that a justice ministry official coordinated a hate campaign against them.

“We want the matter clarified to the core and we want all those responsible to bear the consequences,” the judges said.

Onet.pl reported that Deputy Justice Minister Lukasz Piebiak encouraged an online user, identified only as Emilia, to discredit some judges who had been critical of Poland’s right-wing nationalist government. He reportedly furnished Emilia with personal data of the targeted judges in violation of Poland’s privacy laws.

Piebiak, a judge himself, resigned Tuesday but said he plans to sue the portal for libel.

The revelations are highly embarrassing for the ruling party, Law and Justice, which has pushed changes to Poland’s judiciary, even at the price of a clash with European Union leaders who say the changes undermine the country’s rule of law. The EU has launched disciplinary proceedings against Poland over the changes.

The revelations come as Poland gears up for an Oct. 13 parliamentary election in which the ruling party hopes to strengthen its majority.

 

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will travel to the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo next week.

The DRC is no stranger to periodic outbreaks of the Ebola virus, but this most recent epidemic is the worst the African nation has seen in 40 years.

The World Health Organization says the country has recorded more than 2,800 confirmed cases and at least 1,900 deaths from the virus, which spreads primarily through contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected fruit bats or monkeys.

Guterres plans to visit the country for three days, arriving Aug. 31. His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that Guterres wants to assess the situation and mobilize additional support for the response. 

“In the province of North Kivu, he is scheduled to meet with Ebola survivors and health workers during a visit to an Ebola treatment center,” Dujarric said.

He also is to meet with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi in the capital, Kinshasa. 

In July, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern.

The majority of cases have been concentrated in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, in the country’s northeast, but cases have emerged in other parts of the country. 

At least three cases were also confirmed in June in neighboring Uganda. The people infected with the virus there had traveled from the DRC and had been in contact with a relative who died of Ebola. 

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Zimbabwe rights activists are calling for Western sanctions against the country to remain in place, despite calls this week by the Southern African Development Community for them to be lifted.  Government supporters say the sanctions are hurting ordinary people.  But critics say it is the government’s policies, not sanctions, that are to blame for the poor economy, and that lifting sanctions would send the wrong message about the country’s human rights record.  Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare.

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An ammunition dump belonging to Iraqi Shi’ite militia forces — known popularly as al Hushd al-Shaabi — exploded Tuesday evening, following Arab media reports of a drone strike on the area near Balad Air Base, 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Baghdad.

If confirmed, it would be the latest attack against a Shi’ite militia weapons depot in recent weeks. One attack took place Aug. 12, with another targeting a Shi’ite militia checkpoint near the Syrian-Iraqi border at Albukamel several days earlier.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the alleged drone attacks, but some analysts are pointing a finger at Israel.

Amateur video of the weapons depot explosion Tuesday evening showed a massive fireball erupting high into the sky, followed by heavy black smoke and a subsequent series of smaller blasts. Rockets and missiles reportedly continued to detonate long after the initial explosion.

Iraqi Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari told journalists after visiting the site of the blast that there were no civilian casualties.

Shammari also said all of the fires from the explosions have been extinguished by Iraqi civil defense forces, in coordination with the national police and Hushd militia forces. The area around the base is now on high alert.

Israel suspected

Pro-Iranian al Mayadeen TV quoted Iraqi member of parliament Karim al Alewi, who belongs to the parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, as saying that Israeli planes were “responsible for two previous ammunition dump explosions at Amerli and Saqf” during the past month.

Alewi also alleged that “the U.S. controls Iraqi air space” and that “no planes, including Iraqi jets or helicopters, can overfly the area without U.S. knowledge or permission.”

A number of Arab news channels also reported that Israel was behind Tuesday’s explosion near Balad Air Base, amid allegations that Iranian Fateh short-range missiles had been smuggled into Iraq.

Israel did not comment on the allegations, although Israel’s Channel 13 television outlet reportedly quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that “Iran will not be immune from attack, anywhere in the region.”

An article in the U.S. magazine Salon said the White House is allowing Israel to take out Iranian missiles and other weapons that the Revolutionary Guard forces (IRGC) have brought into both Iraq and Syria. Israel’s Y-net news website reported that “50 missiles exploded in the bombed storage facility” on Tuesday.

‘Targeted destruction’

Gulf and Middle East analyst Theodore Karasik told VOA that “attacks by Israel are highly significant because of the necessity to destroy equipment being shipped into the Levant from the Islamic Republic.” Levant refers to the area between the Mediterranean and Iran.

Karasik notes that some reports suggest the attacks were carried out by drone strikes, “which allow for high levels of targeted destruction.”

“Key state actors,” he said, “are relying on airstrikes and drone attacks in an increasingly important way that changes the scope of the fight.”

Yemen’s pro-Iranian Houthi militia claimed to have struck Saudi natural gas facilities in the east of the country using drones last week. However, several U.S. sources maintained the attacks may have been carried out by drones based in Iraq, not Yemen. 

Riyadh reported there was only minor damage from the attacks.

Another alleged Houthi drone strike on the Saudi Yanbu oil pipeline took place in May.

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Liberian President George Weah has proposed reducing term lengths for members of the executive and legislative branches of government.

Under his plan, the president and representatives would serve five years instead of six, while senators would sit for seven years rather than nine.

The idea, says Presidential Press Secretary Smith Toby, is to push officials to begin serving the people from the day they assume office, rather than putting off work until the close of their terms.

As he put it, “if you start [work] immediately on election day “[knowing] that you’ve got five years, you will not play around. They will start work immediately upon their election.”

Some legislators welcomed the idea at a meeting Weah called last weekend to introduce laws he’d like to see passed. He unveiled 25 proposed bills, one of which would allow Liberians to hold dual citizenship.

Representative Richard Nagbe Kunn said, “We embrace the idea [of this retreat which] was the first of its kind since the President took over.’’ He said it is meant to foster reconciliation between the branches of government rather than having “one group of the government strangulating the other.”

Representative Francis Doepoh from Rivergee County thinks the best way to solve some of Liberia’s major issues is to rewrite the constitution.

But his colleague Vincent Willie of Grand Bassa County said reforming the document will take time and resources.

“Rewriting the constitution,” he said, “is very much important but given the time interval, you cannot rewrite the constitution in just six months, you’re talking about a whole year. It’s a process not an event.”

This is not the first time the idea of shortening terms has come up.

A Constitutional Review Committee under former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf made similar recommendations several years ago. But after a nationwide consultation, the recommendations went nowhere.

Among the ideas floated then was limiting the president to two four-year terms instead of the two six-year terms currently allowed.

 

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President Donald Trump said Tuesday his government is talking to “various representatives” of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who also confirmed that discussions had been taking place. 
 
In a nationally broadcast appearance hours after Trump spoke, Maduro said that “secret” talks had long been under way between high officials in his government and the U.S. administration.

“I confirm that for months we’ve had contact with senior officials of the U.S. government,” Maduro said, adding that all talks had been carried out under his “direct authorization.”

The Associated Press reported over the weekend that the U.S. has made secret contact with socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello as close allies of Maduro’s inner circle seek guarantees they won’t face prosecution for alleged abuses and crimes if they cede to growing demands to remove him.

Maduro did not name any officials in his government participating in U.S. meetings. The socialist leader said that he’s ready to meet with Trump himself to normalize relations, an offer he’s made before. 

 
Venezuela was one of many topics addressed by Trump when he took questions from reporters earlier Tuesday during his meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.

Trump, however, refused to say whether such dialogue is being conducted with Cabello, considered the nation’s second most powerful politician after Maduro. 
 
“We’re talking to various representatives of Venezuela,” Trump responded when a reporter asked him whether the White House is talking to Cabello. “I don’t want to say who, but we are talking at a very high level.”

The U.S. considers opposition leader Juan Guaido to be the legitimate president of the country.

An administration official told AP the goal is not to prop up Cabello or pave the way for him to substitute Maduro, but to ratchet up pressure on the regime by contributing to the knife fight the U.S. believes is taking place behind the scenes among competing circles of power within the ruling party.

Norway talks

At a press conference Monday in Caracas, Cabello shied away from discussing any details of the meeting and at one point likened it to “a lie, a manipulation.” But he also said he has long stood welcome to talk to anyone, so long as any discussions take place with Maduro’s approval.

Talks sponsored by Norway between the opposition and government have been slow moving and were suspended this month by Maduro.

Trump repeated Tuesday that his government is helping Venezuela “as much as we can” so that the country resolves its political and financial crises, which he attributed to socialism.

“Fifteen years ago it was one of the wealthiest countries. Now it’s one of the poorest countries,” he said.

The U.N. estimates that at least four million Venezuelans have left their country because of hyperinflation and severe shortages of food and medicine.

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Argentina’s promises to defend its beleaguered peso gained credibility on Tuesday after the central bank poured $112 million of its reserves into dollar auctions, helping to boost the currency about 0.5% a day after steep losses.

In three interventions in the foreign exchange market, the bank acted in concert with statements from officials saying the government’s top priority was to stabilize the peso after it lost 18% of its value against the U.S. dollar last week.

“The interventions pushed the peso through the 55-per-dollar barrier,” to 54.50 pesos to the greenback, Gustavo Quintana, foreign exchange trader with Buenos Aires brokerage PR Corredores de Cambio, told Reuters.

The recession- and inflation-racked country was hit by a wave of uncertainty following an Aug. 11 primary election in which business-friendly President Mauricio Macri got thumped by center-left Peronist challenger Alberto Fernandez, who emerged the clear front-runner ahead of the Oct. 27 general election.

Minutes after being sworn in by Macri on Tuesday, Treasury Minister Hernan Lacunza said the government will stand by the peso and stick to its goal of erasing its primary fiscal deficit, despite a series of tax cuts and spending measures announced last week aimed at spurring growth.

“We want to leave a solid economic platform for whichever candidate wins” the presidential election, said Lacunza, former economy chief for Buenos Aires province. He told a press conference that Argentina had a primary fiscal surplus in July and he expected a surplus in August as well. 

Traders said the peso rallied to close at 54.74 per dollar after falling 1.2 percent in early trade. Local over-the-counter bonds and the Merval stock index remained in negative territory, still stung by the downgrade late on Friday of Argentina’s sovereign debt by ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s.

Monday was a holiday in Argentina, forcing investors to wait until Tuesday to react.

Nicolas Dujovne, the former treasury minister, quit on Saturday, saying he believed the country needed “significant renewal” of its economic team.

Macri, struggling to revive his campaign for a second term, is betting the new treasury chief can help stabilize the economy. 

Last week Macri, smarting from his primary election loss, announced a cut in taxes on food and personal income along with increased welfare spending. The measures raised concern his administration will miss fiscal targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund as part of a $57 billion loan deal.

Fernandez told local radio he was concerned about the state of government finances that he might inherit if he wins the presidency and takes office in December.Macri’s emergency relief measures were creating “a fiscal hole,” Fernandez said.

Those measures will have a slight negative fiscal effect, but not enough to further hurt the country’s credit rating, James McCormack, Fitch’s head of sovereign ratings, said on Tuesday.

IMF watching 

“We are closely following recent developments in Argentina and are in ongoing dialogue with the authorities as they work on their policy plans to address the difficult situation that the country is facing,” the IMF said in a statement.

“An IMF staff team will travel to Buenos Aires soon,” said the statement, which was signed by IMF spokesman Gerry Rice.

The IMF’s next review of Argentina’s economy on Sept. 15 should provide a sign of whether the lender of last resort still thinks the country can pay its debt obligations. Government bonds denominated in dollars are harder to pay when the peso weakens.

A crunch point will come in the second quarter of 2020, when Argentina is scheduled to make $20 billion in debt repayments, up sharply from $5.6 billion in the first quarter of next year.

Central bank chief Guido Sandleris told reporters on Tuesday the bank would continue to sell reserves in an effort to halt the peso’s slide.

Including last week’s interventions, the bank had auctioned off $615 million in dollar reserves as of Tuesday afternoon, traders said.

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Iranian women should be allowed to attend men’s World Cup qualifiers in the Islamic Republic later this year, a top Asian soccer official said Tuesday, ramping up pressure on Tehran to end a long-running ban.

Iranian women have long been barred from watching men’s teams play, but Tehran relaxed the rule last year to allow hundreds of women to watch the Asian Champions League final organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The AFC, the Asian football governing body which has 47 members that include Iran, said it was working to help world soccer governing body FIFA find an “amicable solution” that would allow them to attend future games.

“Everybody needs to be catered, it’s an inclusive game. Women play the game in Iran, men play the game, so everybody should be able to watch,” AFC general secretary Windsor John told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

“For us at the end of the day, we respect the local law, but we also want to promote the game,” he said at the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Female football fans have long campaigned that the ban, imposed under Iran’s Islamic law after the 1979 revolution, be lifted.

Increased pressure

Last year, some risked arrest by donning fake beards and wigs to attend a major game in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, while others traveled to Russia for the World Cup, plastering social media with photos of themselves cheering on their team.

FIFA wrote to the Iranian Football Federation in June asking it to provide a timeline toward women being able to buy tickets for the qualifiers, which begin Sept. 5.

John lauded the access for Iranian women at the Asian Champions League final last year, but said the current situation involved “different scenarios.”

“[The concern is] if it starts with football, will there be other ripple effects, will other forces or entities now ask for the same privilege,” said the No. 2 at the AFC.

“A lot of things are on the table at the moment, we really don’t know which direction it is going.”

There were hopes that the breakthrough last November would lead to a loosening of the ban, but female fans have been denied access to matches since.

In June, some were detained by security forces when they went to the Azadi Stadium for a friendly against Syria.

FIFA pledge

John said there was “huge potential” for women’s football to develop in Asia, with attitudes changing even in conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia, which lifted a ban on women attending matches last year.

FIFA has pledged to expand women’s role in the sport, appointing Fatma Samoura in 2016 as its first female secretary general, and this year’s women’s World Cup drew record crowds and television audiences.

John said a Saudi woman would be appointed to the AFC committee overseeing the development of women’s football, though he declined to identify the new member by name.

“It’s a huge, huge positive development for football development in Asia,” he said. 

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International donors have been significantly less generous in their support of Venezuelan migrants than other global refugee crises, Colombia’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, as he repeated a request for more aid money.

Colombia has borne the burnt of mass migration from its neighbor, which is mired in a deep political and economic crisis that has caused long-running shortages of food and medicines.

More than 1.4 million Venezuelans have fled to Colombia in recent years, pressuring healthcare services, school places and other basics like food and shelter.

The United Nations had called for global donations of $315 million in 2019 to help Colombia – itself a developing country – cope with the influx. But as of last week, it had received just 30 percent of that, said Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo in a statement.

“The international community has been much more generous in other cases,” said Trujillo, who met with U.N. representatives on Tuesday. “We are grateful for the cooperation that we have received but as the number of migrants keeps growing, so will the demand for services and resources.”

The funds received equate to around $68 per migrant, he said, comparing that to the between $500 and $900 donated per person for those fleeing crises in Syria, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Speaking to Reuters at the weekend, the head of the U.N. refugee agency Filippo Grandi said Venezuela was “one of the
most under-funded humanitarian appeals in the world for one of the biggest crises.”

Colombia said this month it would give citizenship to more than 24,000 children born to Venezuelan migrant parents to prevent the children from being stateless and less able to access education and healthcare.

The country of some 49 million has not put in place stringent immigration requirements, although restrictions are mounting in other parts of the region.

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged greater international cooperation to stop Iran’s objectionable behavior in the region and beyond while speaking at the United Nations Tuesday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies continue to foment terror and unrest in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, with devastating humanitarian consequences,” Pompeo told a Security Council meeting on Middle East security challenges. 

He underscored Iran’s recent resumption of uranium enrichment to levels exceeding internationally agreed to caps; its seizure of several tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz; and the test-firing of a ballistic missile. 

“Failing to confront [the] Iranian regime’s malign activities will only grow the regime’s multicontinental body count spanning the last 40 years,” Pompeo told reporters after the session. 

He also renewed his call for the Security Council to prevent an international arms embargo and a travel ban from expiring next year under a provision of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council  the United Kingdom, China, France, Russia and the United States  as well as Germany. 

U.S.-Iranian tensions have steadily risen since the Trump administration pulled out of the Obama-era agreement last year. 

“The international community will have plenty of time to see how long it has until Iran is unshackled to create new turmoil and figure out what it must do to prevent that from happening,” Pompeo said. 

Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Majid Takht Ravanchi, blamed the U.S. military presence in the region, its withdrawal from the nuclear deal and its “Iranophobic statements” for stoking regional tensions. 

“While we are not seeking confrontation, we cannot and will not remain indifferent to the violation of our sovereignty,” Ravanchi told the council. “Therefore, in order to secure our borders and interests, we will vigorously exercise our inherent right to self-defense.”

The U.S. has blamed Iran for several mine attacks in recent months on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the seizure of some tankers. Washington has launched an effort to protect international shipping in the strait, an important oil tanker transit point. 

“The interference of foreign forces in this strategic waterway, under whatever pretext, is destabilizing and thus unacceptable,” the Iranian envoy said. “Any attempt at artificial coalition building for securing navigation in this area will fail.”

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The United States is warning entities in the Mediterranean against working with an Iranian-flagged oil tanker now moving through the region after being freed from detention by Gibraltar.

The U.S. State Department repeated allegations that the Adrian Darya 1 was “transporting illicit oil to fuel the Iranian regime’s and Syrian regime’s campaigns of terror and oppression,” and it said those who assist it could be considered providing support to U.S.-designated terror organizations.

“We have conveyed our strong position to the Greek government on the matter, as well as ports in the Mediterranean that should be forewarned about facilitating this vessel,” it said in a statement Monday.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the decision by Gibraltar authorities to free the tanker after holding it on suspicions the vessel was taking oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions was “unfortunate.”  He told the U.S. cable network Fox News the eventual sale of the oil on board would benefit Iran’s Quds Force.

“If they are successful they will have more money, more wealth, more resources to continue their terror campaign, to continue their assassination campaign.  This is what we’re trying to stop,” Pompeo said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran was being non-committal about the eventual destination of the oil because he said the United States “illegally tries to bully others from purchasing our oil.”

He also said that while Iran believes the United States is seeking “more escalation” with Iran, the Islamic Republic is “happy this ordeal (over the oil tanker) has ended and I hope this will lead to less escalation.”

Marine tracking data on Tuesday showed the tanker continuing on course for a port in Greece with an expected arrival early next week.

Greek authorities said they have not received any official information about the tanker coming to Kalamata.

Gibraltar denied several U.S. requests to prevent the vessel from leaving the waters of the British territory, and said Iran had given written assurances the oil on board would not be shipped to Syria.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told reporters Monday that Iran had warned the United States through official channels against making any new attempt to seize the tanker, saying the result would be “heavy consequences.”

Mousavi also denied there was a connection between the early July detention of the Adrian Darya 1 and Iran’s move to seize the British-flagged Stena Impero tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

British officials have said they saw Iran’s action as a reciprocal move.

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An investment fund designed for animal rights advocates and environmentalists, the first of its kind according to financial experts, is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) next month.

VEGN, as it will show on the NYSE’s floor, enters the fray of hundreds of funds that consider environmental, social or governance (ESG) factors in their investment decisions but will be unique in going animal cruelty-free, experts said.

U.S. assets under management that follow ESG principles have been surging, representing one in four dollars last year, up from one in five in 2016, according to The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, a Washington-based non-profit.

Holding such investments is a way to pressure companies to change their behavior in order not to miss investors, said Tensie Whelan, who heads the New York University’s Center for Sustainable Business.

“It’s an interesting offering because it’s the only one of its kind,” she said in a telephone interview.

VEGN, the ticker symbol for the exchange-traded fund (ETF), whose full name is US Vegan Climate Exchange Traded ETF, will exclude stocks among the 500 largest U.S. companies that “rely on animal exploitation”, said its creator Beyond Investing.

It will be listed on the NYSE starting on Sept. 10.

Selecting companies whose businesses do not test products on animals, or use animal-derived products, fossil fuels, plastic or agrochemicals, has meant tossing out 43% of the top 500 companies, said Claire Smith, the Switzerland-based chief executive of Beyond Investing.

The fund’s portfolio guidelines mean it doesn’t include many pharmaceuticals, materials and consumer-sector stocks, said Smith.

“Things like clothing, shoe manufacture … (involve) so much animal products,” she said.

Still, a market index of stocks that a parent company of Beyond Investing launched in June last year and that VEGN will track – meaning it will be used to guide what stocks go into the fund – has outperformed the market this year, said Smith, after “a little bit of underperformance last year.”

Beyond Investing identifies companies that follow VEGN’s criteria by researching their business models, regulations and internal policies, said Smith.

In a report published earlier this month the United Nations called for diets less reliant on meat in order to combat climate change and ensure enough food for all.

Animal Rebellion, a group inspired by Extinction Rebellion’s non-violent civil disobedience climate activism, also is pushing for diets without meat.

Aniket Shah, a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment in New York, said a challenge environmental, social and governance-focused funds have typically faced was small scale.

One of the largest ESG funds, run by Blackrock, has more than $1 billion in investment, a relatively small amount compared to mainstream funds, Shah said.

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Russia’s Norilsk smelter complex and a town in South Africa’s eastern coal mining province have the highest sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the world, according to satellite data from U.S. space agency NASA.

The NASA-compiled data published on Monday was commissioned by environmental group Greenpeace India and used the space authority’s satellites to track anthropogenic sulphur dioxide emission hot spots around the world.

Scientists say that excessive exposure to SO2 particles causes long-term respiratory difficulties and stunted growth in infants among other problems.

Norilsk, 300km (186 miles) inside the Arctic Circle, has the largest individual SO2 emissions, followed by the South African town of Kriel, about 150km east of Johannesburg, Monday’s report found.
The industrial city of Norilsk is home to Norilsk Nickel, the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer.

The company is implementing  a massive program to improve the ecology of the city and its surroundings.

The first stage of the program is complete. After the closure of an old nickel plant and reconstruction of nearby plants, emissions in the city’s residential area fell by 30%, Nornickel told Reuters on Monday.

The second phase will involve a $2.5 billion sulphur project to help to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions in and around Norilsk by 75% from 2015 levels by 2023.

Under snow for up to nine months of the year and in darkness for more than a month in winter, Norilsk has acquired a reputation as one of the most polluted settlements in the world because of its metals plants. Prisoners from Joseph Stalin’s labor camps built the first smelters there 80 years ago.

Power Pollution

The South African town of Kriel, meanwhile, is home to state power utility Eskom’s 2,850 megawatt Kriel Power Station, a short distance from two other coal-fired plants – Matla and Kendel – as well as Sasol’s coal-to-liquid plants.

The town is part of a 31,000-sq-km area that covers three provinces and houses 12 coal power stations. It was declared a high-priority zone by the government in 2007 because of dangerously high pollution.

South Africa is Africa’s worst polluter and one of the world’s top 10 coal producers, with an estimated 3.5% of the world’s coal resources, according to the International Energy Agency.

Environmental and community groups sued the government in June for failing to tackle high pollution in the Highveld Priority Area. The groups want the court to force the government to implement an air quality management plan that was published by the environmental affairs minister in 2012.

Environmental ministry spokesman Albi Modise said the NASA report was worrying and that national air quality plans needed to be reviewed urgently but that economic growth also had to be protected.

“You can’t wake up and say you’re closing all the coal power stations; imagine what will happen to electricity supply and the communities around them? We have to balance growth with protecting the environment.”

Eskom, which provides 90% of the country’s power, relies on a fleet of aging coal-fired plants to power Africa’s industrialized economy and is struggling to meet its emissions target.

The utility implemented nationwide rolling power cuts this year because of capacity shortages.

($1 = 15.3404 rand)

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The first American spacecraft expected to land on the moon in nearly 50 years will be a robotic moon lander built by closely held Astrobotic Technology and launched in two years by United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, the companies told Reuters on Monday.

Astrobotic was one of nine companies chosen in November to compete for $2.6 billion to develop small space vehicles and other technology for 20 missions to explore the lunar surface over the next decade.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic picked Vulcan, being developed by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to launch its Peregrine lander from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in summer 2021. 

Barring schedule slips, Astrobotic said Peregrine would be the first American spacecraft to touch down on the moon since Apollo astronauts touched down in 1972.

The mission will ferry technology and experiments to the moon under a NASA program that will lay the groundwork for astronaut trips by 2024 under the optimistic schedule laid out by the Trump administration.

“Our first flight on Vulcan is also the first big step in going back to the moon,” United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno told Reuters ahead of the announcement.

Astrobotic said in May that NASA awarded it $79.5 million for the first mission, which will carry up to 28 payloads from eight different countries, including the United States and Mexico.

While the dollar value of the launch contract was not disclosed, it marks a high-profile victory for ULA’s flagship heavy-lift rocket, which Astrobotic said it chose over a rival bid by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

NASA is pushing to outsource the design, development and operations for some space activities to private companies under a strategy championed by Trump-appointed administrator Jim Bridenstine. He wants NASA to be one customer of many in the low-Earth and lunar marketplaces to pave the way for deeper space exploration.

For ULA, the launch serves as the first of two certification flights for the U.S. Air Force, a key test for a rocket that will replace ULA’s legacy Delta and Atlas rocket families, synonymous with space missions for the U.S. military for decades.

The Vulcan will be the backbone of ULA’s defense against rival boosters by SpaceX, which has slashed the cost of launches with its reusable rocket technology. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, whose BE-4 engines power the Vulcan, is also working on a heavy-lift booster.

ULA and Astrobotic acknowledge production problems or other factors could delay the launch schedule.

Many Moonshots

Other countries are also focused on the moon. A Chinese space probe successfully touched down on the far side of the moon in January, though Israel’s unmanned robotic lander Beresheet crashed on its final descent in April. India’s Chandrayaan-2 rover, launched in July, was on its way to the moon’s south pole, unexplored by any other nation.

“Everything that humans will do on the moon’s surface will be enhanced by robotic surface assets,” Astrobotic Chief Executive John Thornton told Reuters ahead of the announcement planned for Monday.

The Astrobotic contract marked the second time in a week that ULA beat SpaceX on a high-profile contract. On Wednesday, Sierra Nevada Corp picked Vulcan to launch its Dream Chaser space plane on cargo missions to the International Space Station.

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Walt Disney Co. said on Monday it will launch its Disney+ video streaming service in Canada and the Netherlands on Nov. 12, the same date as its previously announced United States launch.

Disney+ will also launch in Australia and New Zealand a week later, the company said in a statement, adding that the service will be priced between $6 to $8 per month in these countries.

Disney’s new service will exclusively stream its latest movies including “Avengers: Endgame,” “Aladdin” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” the company said. The service will also draw upon Disney’s library of its existing films.

The owner of ESPN and theme parks had announced earlier this month that it would offer a bundle of its three streaming services, Disney+, sports service ESPN+, and Hulu, at a discounted price of $13 per month. That price is the same as Netflix Inc’s most popular plan, which allows streaming on two devices simultaneously.

Video streaming competition is set to intensify, with Apple, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Comcast’s NBCUniversal planning to roll out new services. U.S. customers are increasingly cutting the cord on cable TV, but now must decide how much they want to pay for digital offerings.

Disney+ will be available on most major mobile and connected TV devices platforms, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Roku and Sony, the company said.

Following the launch, the company expects to take the ad-free streaming service to major global markets within two years.

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The leaders of the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada will come together to discuss major global challenges in France on Saturday at the annual meeting  of the G7 group of industrialized nations.As host, French President Emmanuel Macron, has made fighting inequality the theme of the summit, and has invited several other world leaders to attend. But Henry Ridgwell reports, any grand ambitions for the summit will likely be stymied by more pressing concerns.

 

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