Lebanon’s only English-language daily protested the country’s deteriorating economic and political conditions by publishing a blank edition Thursday, calling it an “alarm bell.” 
 
Each page of The Daily Star’s Thursday edition bore a single phrase referring to one of the country’s problems, including government deadlock, rising public debt, increasing sectarian rhetoric and unemployment. The back page had a photo of a cedar tree, a national symbol, with a caption reading: “Wake up before it’s too late!”

“We are sounding the alarm bell over the many challenges the country is facing,” the paper’s editor-in-chief Nadim Ladki told The Associated Press. “It’s a call on everyone — politicians, activists, ordinary people — to pull together in the same direction to resolve the crises and challenges.”

Lebanon has been in the grip of an economic crisis for months, and the government has not met since a June 30 shooting in a mountain village that escalated tensions between the Christian and Druze communities.

Rival groups in the Cabinet have been divided on how to proceed with the investigation of the shooting, which left two people dead.

The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Wednesday saying it supports a fair and transparent investigation into the shooting in the village of Qabr Shamoun.  
 
“Any attempt to use the tragic June 30 event in Qabr Shamoun to advance political objectives should be rejected,” the embassy said in an apparent reference to the militant Hezbollah group and its allies, who are seen as pressuring Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

Hezbollah on Thursday blasted the U.S. Embassy statement, calling it “a blatant and gross intervention in Lebanese internal affairs” and adding that it aims to “deepen divisions” within Lebanon. The group called the crisis a “local political issue” that the Lebanese judiciary is dealing with.

Lebanon’s government is the product of a power-sharing agreement that ended the devastating 1975-1990 civil war and which divides powers among various religious sects. The political scene is split between a pro-Western coalition, which includes Jumblatt and his followers, and a bloc dominated by Hezbollah that is aligned with Syria and Iran.

The political infighting has made it impossible to maintain the country’s crumbling infrastructure or provide adequate public services. The national debt is hovering around $85 billion, or 150 percent of gross domestic product.

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Expanding access to a promising but costly treatment, Medicare said Wednesday that it would cover for some blood cancers a breakthrough gene therapy that revs up a patient’s own immune cells to destroy malignancies. 

Officials said Medicare would cover CAR-T cell therapies for certain types of lymphoma and leukemia, uses that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The cost can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, not counting hospitalization and other expenses.

Medicare Administrator Seema Verma said the decision would provide consistent and predictable access nationwide, opening up treatment options for some patients “who had nowhere else to turn.”

Turbocharge, reprogram cells 

CAR-T uses gene therapy techniques to turbocharge the patient’s own immune system cells, reprogramming them to harbor a “receptor” that zeroes in on cancer, and then to grow hundreds of millions of copies. The revved-up immune cells are returned to the patient’s bloodstream and can continue to fight cancer for months or years.

Although side effects can be severe, studies have shown the treatment to be highly effective against certain types of cancers. Researchers are working to add more types to that list.

Medicare has been weighing the decision for months. The program often sets the tone for private insurance as well. 

Special program

In its announcement, Medicare said it would cover CAR-T when the treatment is provided in institutions that are enrolled with the FDA in a special program to promote safety. It will also cover the treatment for other uses, if they are recommended by agency-approved medical research literature.

CAR-T uses a different strategy than other gene-therapy techniques. Instead of trying to fix disease-causing genes, it focuses on the patient’s immune system, specifically the T cells that battle foreign substances in the body. The problem with cancer is that malignant cells can often evade detection by the patient’s T cells. CAR-T helps the body’s own T cells do a better job of spotting tumors.

Medicare covers more than 60 million seniors and people with disabilities.

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Samsung unveiled a new version of the Galaxy Note smartphone on Wednesday with fast 5G network connection and improved camera features, hoping the premium model helps it revive slumping profit and widen the gap with struggling rival Huawei.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has emerged as the biggest beneficiary  of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.’s trouble in the second quarter with a nearly 7% jump in smartphone sales, as the Chinese firm sold fewer phones in the global market after it was put on a U.S. trade blacklist in May.

With emphasis on improved video and photography features, which helped Huawei become the world’s No. 2 smartphone vendor, Samsung hopes the Galaxy Note 10 will appeal to YouTubers and fans of social media.

Along with its first foldable phone, the big-screen Note 10, unveiled at an event in New York on Wednesday, is the South Korean tech firm’s most important new product planned in the second half of this year to expand its mobile sales.

With two screen sizes of 6.3 inches and 6.8 inches, the Note 10 boasts enhanced video effects such as augmented reality and stabilization modes, and a front-facing camera centrally located at the top of the display for better selfies. It lacks a headphone jack, a tweak Apple Inc. made to its smartphones three years ago.

The Note 10 will be sold starting at $949.99 while the bigger Note 10 plus will start at $1,099. The Note 10 model with 5G capability will start at $1,299.99.

The phone will go on sale Aug. 23 and square off against Apple’s latest iPhones, which are widely expected to come out later this year.

Samsung declined to disclose its sales target for the new Note series, but said it expected to achieve higher sales volume than the predecessor Note 9 models.

Analysts expect similar shipments of about 9.6 million units, with price likely to be the most important factor in a weak market. The global smartphone market shrank 3% in the June quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

“It is hard to expect strong sales for the new Note with just a few upgrades in its camera features,” said Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities.

Samsung is reeling from sagging profits in its mobile division due to weak sales of flagship models, even as it boosted overall shipments by 6.7% and stayed on top with market share of 22% in the second quarter.

Its first foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold, is set to go on sale in September, but analysts say headlines about glitches with sample Folds will dampen consumer excitement around the launch.

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North Korea is encouraging its beauty-conscious middle class women to choose domestic cosmetics over foreign brands in an effort to boost self-reliance as international sanctions deepen. 

Promoting homegrown beauty has been a political strategy since the days of state founder Kim Il Sung, but has become more focused under his foreign-educated grandson, Kim Jong Un. 

The international popularity in recent years of South Korea’s K-beauty trend — innovative cosmetic products with natural ingredients such as ginseng and snail slime — has added momentum, say defectors who fled the North and experts who study the isolated state. 

But North Korea’s push has yet to translate to a winning formula, marred by quality issues and constraints in obtaining foreign ingredients because of sanctions over its nuclear program. 

Leader Kim Jong Un was once dismissive of domestic beauty products. 

“Foreign eye liners or mascaras stay on even after get into water, but domestic products make raccoon eyes even with just a yawn,” Kim said during his visit to a Pyongyang cosmetics factory in 2015, according to the Japan-based Choson Sinbo newspaper. 

But Kim has since visited cosmetics factories several times with his wife to promote the products. 

Earlier this year, North Korea’s state-run television KRT aired a video about Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory showing a woman replacing Chanel products with domestic products instead. 

“Lots of foreign customers living in the state visit our shop. Sheet mask, lipstick and cleansing products are best sellers,” Yang Su Jong, a sales assistant at Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory, told Reuters on a rare visit to the capital last year. 

Chanel, in response to Reuters’ questions, said it did not export products to North Korea and any items on sale there were likely counterfeits or diverted products. 

First lady and a girl band

North Korea has long regulated its citizens’ appearance. 

Hair dyeing, blue jeans and clothes with writing in English were banned under Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, as the reclusive country tried to keep Western influences out. 

But that has changed since Kim came to power in 2011 and began making public appearances with first lady Ri Sol Ju, a former member of a pop orchestra. 

Nam Sung-wook, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University, said the young first lady’s short haircut and colorful suits appealed to a desire for self-expression within the constraints of North Korea’s society. 

“There was no role for the first lady in Kim Jong Il’s era,” Nam said. “But the Kim Jong Un era gave rise to first lady Ri Sol Ju, who furthered the regime’s interest in cosmetics.” 

Kang Na-ra is one North Korean defector who said she used to buy South Korean cosmetics at private markets known as jangmadang that are the backbone of the North’s informal market economy.

“I really wanted to copy K-pop idol’s makeup style when I was in the North,” she said. 

Today women are encouraged to follow style trends set by the first lady or the ‘Moranbong’ band, Pyongyang’s all-female answer to K-pop.

“North Korea is such a tightly controlled society and a style we can follow is very limited. Ri Sol Ju or Moranbong band members are our only allowable role models,” said the 21-year-old Kang who fled to the South in 2014 and now runs a YouTube channel sharing tips on beauty and North Korean culture.

New markets and limits

Pyongyang Cosmetic Factory shipped its first batch of Unhasu brand cosmetics to a new boutique in Moscow in May, Russian media reported.

“Korean Care,” another Russian cosmetics shop selling South Korean products online, started importing North Korean beauty products directly from Pyongyang last year.

The company, which targets Russian women and has more than 10,000 customers, said the selling point for North Korean products was their natural ingredients and minimal preservatives.

“I am a fan of all kind of new cosmetics, and it was especially interesting because it’s North Korean,” said Margarita Kiselyova, 45, a Russian customer who bought aloe vera moisturizer and anti-ageing cream. “Overall, I am satisfied with the quality.”

However, Nam, the Korea University expert, and leading South Korean cosmetics firm Amorepacific tested 64 North Korean products and found quality issues in seven of them, including traces of potential harmful ingredients methylparabens, propylparabens and talc. 

Amorepacific told Reuters it did not have further details of the tests. 

Pyongyang Cosmetic Factory says its Unhasu line has received quality assurance certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), but Reuters could not independently verify those claims. 

“Developing new cosmetics products requires supplies of new materials and substances from overseas, but current U.N. sanctions prohibit the North from importing chemicals, which makes product development difficult,” Nam said. 

Most North Koreans still prefer higher priced South Korean products especially for gifts, said Kang Mi-jin, an economics expert who regularly speaks with North Koreans for Daily NK, a news website run by defectors.

“Even if it’s hard to get, people try to buy South Korean cosmetics for their fiancees as a wedding gift, since it is regarded as the best and symbol of wealth,” Kang Mi-jin said.
 

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Thousands marched Wednesday in Caracas in support of President Nicolas Maduro, two days after the United States imposed the toughest sanctions yet on Venezuela. 

National Assembly speaker Diosdado Cabello, considered the country’s second most powerful leader, called the latest sanctions “a new aggression amongst the madness of genocides that govern the United States.” 
 
Others at Wednesday’s rally accused President Donald Trump of wanting to “get his hands” on Venezuela. 
 
Reporters in Caracas said most of those marching were government workers and militia members. 
 
The Trump administration has banned all U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with the Maduro government as part of U.S. pressure to drive him from power. 
 
The U.S. was the first of more than 50 countries to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuelan president.  
 
Guaido declared himself Venezuelan leader in January, using his constitutional authority as the National Assembly president to declare Maduro’s  
re-election last year illegitimate because of fraud. 
 
Russia, China, Iran and Cuba are Maduro’s top defenders. 
 
Guaido’s popular uprising against Maduro earlier this year appears to have lost much of its steam, but the U.S. is still determined to see Maduro go and says military action is still on the table. 
 
The collapse of world energy prices, corruption and failed socialist policies have wrecked the oil-rich Venezuelan economy. Basic food staples and fuel are in severely short supply, and millions of Venezuelans have fled the country. 
 
Maduro has refused to consider early elections and has used violence against anti-government protesters. 

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A 5.9-magnitude earthquake rattled Taiwan on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The quake struck at 5:28 a.m. (21:28 GMT Wednesday) at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in northeastern Yilan county. Taiwan’s central weather bureau put its magnitude at 6.0.

High rises swayed in the capital Taipei, waking people up from their sleep.

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by quakes.

In April, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit the island, disrupting traffic and injuring 17 people.

Taiwan’s worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6-magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed about 2,400 people.
 

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President Trump is bringing a message aimed at national unity and healing to the sites of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. But the words he offers for a divided America will be complicated by his own incendiary, anti-immigrant rhetoric that mirrors language linked to one of the shooters.

It is a highly unusual predicament for an American president to at once try to console a community and a nation at the same time he is being criticized as contributing to a combustible climate that can spawn violence.

White House officials said Trump’s visits Wednesday to Texas and Ohio, where 31 people were killed and dozens wounded, would be similar to those he’s paid to grieving communities including Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas, with the president and first lady saluting first responders and spending time with mourning families and survivors.

“What he wants to do is go to these communities and grieve with them, pray with them, offer condolences,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Tuesday. He said Trump also wants “to have a conversation” about ways to head off future deadly episodes.

“We can do something impactful to prevent this from ever happening again, if we come together,” the spokesman said.

That’s a tough assignment for a president who thrives on division and whose aides say he views discord and unease about cultural, economic and demographic changes as key to his reelection.

At the same time, prominent Democrats have been casting blame on Trump more often than calling for national unity in the aftermath of the shootings, a measure of the profound polarization in the country.

Trump, who often seems most comfortable on rally stages with deeply partisan crowds, has not excelled at projecting empathy, mixing what can sound like perfunctory expressions of grief with awkward offhand remarks. While he has offered hugs to tornado victims and spent time at the bedsides of shooting victims, he has yet to project the kind of emotion and vulnerability of his recent predecessors.

Barack Obama grew visibly shaken as he addressed the nation in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre and teared up while delivering a 2016 speech on new gun control efforts. George W. Bush helped bring the country together following the Sept, 11 attacks, notably standing atop the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center, his arm draped over the shoulder of a firefighter, as he shouted through a bullhorn. Bill Clinton helped reassure the nation after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and the mass school shooting at Columbine High School.

Trump, too, has been able to summon soothing words. But then he often quickly lapses into divisive tweets and statements – just recently painting immigrants as “invaders,” suggesting four Democratic congresswoman of color should go back to their home countries, though all are citizens, and describing majority-black Baltimore as a rat-infested hell-hole.

In the Texas border city of El Paso, some residents and local Democratic lawmakers said Trump was not welcome and urged him to stay away.

“This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday’s tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso,” tweeted Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who served the area for three terms as a congressman. “We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here.”

In Dayton, Mayor Nan Whaley said she would be meeting with Trump on Wednesday, but she told reporters she was disappointed with his scripted remarks Monday responding to the shootings. His speech included a denunciation of “racism, bigotry and white supremacy” and a declaration that “hate has no place in America.” But he made no mention of new efforts to limit sales of certain guns or the anti-immigration rhetoric found in an online screed posted just before the El Paso attack.

The hateful manifesto’s author – police believe it was the shooter but investigation continues – insisted the opinions “predate Trump and his campaign for president.” But the words echoed some of the views Trump has expressed on immigration, including claiming that Democrats “intend to use open borders, free HealthCare for illegals, citizenship and more to enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters.”

Dayton Mayor Whaley said simply, “Everyone has it in their power to be a force to bring people together, and everybody has it in their power to be a force to bring people apart – that’s up to the president of the United States.”

Democrats vying to challenge Trump in the 2020 election have been nearly unanimous in excoriating him for rhetoric they warned has nurtured the racist attitudes of the El Paso shooter as they sought to project leadership during a fraught moment for a bruised nation.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was delivering a speech on gun violence and white nationalism Wednesday at the Charleston, South Carolina, church where nine black parishioners were killed in 2015. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, released a detailed plan for gun control and deterrence.

Gidley and other White House officials denounced suggestions that Trump’s rhetoric was in any way responsible for the shooting. They called it “dangerous,” ‘pathetic,” ‘disgusting.”

“It’s not the politician’s fault when somebody acts out their evil intention,” he said, pointing to other shooters who have expressed political preferences for Democratic politicians including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders.

“It is shameful that Democrats are unable to prevent themselves from politicizing a moment of national grief,” added Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh.

Trump himself, quoting one of the hosts of his favorite “Fox & Friends” show, tweeted: “Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of control. Mass shootings were happening before the president even thought about running for Pres.”

Warren spokeswoman Kristen Orthman said leaders have an obligation to speak out.

“Let’s be clear,” she said in a statement. “There is a direct line between the president’s rhetoric and the stated motivations of the El Paso shooter.”

Recent Pew Research Center polling found 85% of U.S. adults believe the tone and nature of political debate in the country has become more negative, with a majority saying Trump has changed things for the worse. And more than three quarters – 78% – say that elected officials who use heated or aggressive language to talk about certain people or groups make violence against those people more likely.

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Ayaz Gul in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

As Kashmir remained locked down for a second straight day, India’s parliament approved scrapping the special status that gave Kashmir significant autonomy, and passed a bill to split the state. 

Plunged in a communications blackout and a virtual shutdown, it has been difficult to ascertain the reaction local residents to the radical steps.

Curfew-like restrictions continued on Tuesday. Troops patrolled deserted streets with barbed wire barricades in the capital, Srinagar, while the internet, mobile and landlines remained suspended to stem protests in the region wracked by a violent separatist struggle for three decades.   

The measures passed by an overwhelming majority in the lower house of parliament are being seen as a message that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a tough stance on Kashmir and with rival Pakistan, with whom India has a long-running dispute over control of the Himalayan region. 

After the vote, Modi called it a “momentous occasion in our parliamentary democracy.” In a tweet he said, “Together we are, together we shall rise, and together we will fulfill the dreams of 130 crore Indians!”

The steps fulfill a long-standing pledge of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to end the constitutional provision that allowed Kashmir to have its own constitution and draft its own laws on all matters except foreign affairs, defense and communications. 

Kashmir also will be split into two federally administered territories, effectively tightening New Delhi’s grip on the region. One will comprise of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and Hindu-majority Jammu, and the second of Buddhist-majority Ladakh. All Indian laws will now apply in Kashmir. 

Barring the main opposition Congress Party and a handful of regional parties, the BJP has won wide support for overturning Kashmir’s autonomous status. 

Defending the radical moves, Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament the special status granted to Kashmir was responsible for fomenting terrorism in the region, and revoking it would break down the wall created with the rest of India. He said it did not mean that India had given up its claim to Pakistani Kashmir. 

The most significant difference now is that with Kashmir placed on par with the rest of the country, outsiders can buy land and live in the region, which was banned earlier. The government says this would open up the area to investment and spur development.

Divided support

But opinion remains sharply divided on whether these steps will help New Delhi meet its goal of integrating Kashmir with the rest of the country and ending an armed rebellion, or whether it will exacerbate tensions in the region where anti-Indian sentiment runs deep. 

Congress Party leader Shashi Tharoor warned that it would give a “fresh lease of life to terrorism” and would make Kashmir, where Muslim insurgents have been waging a separatist struggle, more vulnerable to militant groups like Islamic State.

Several political commentators say Kashmiris will view the steps as a ploy to take away their special “identity.” 

“India will now come across as the hard Indian state instead of the soft Indian state,” said independent political analyst Neerja Chowdhury, pointing out that previous governments had always tried a “carrot and stick” policy. She says the measure could deepen alienation among Kashmiris. 

In New Delhi, most newspapers carried banner headlines on what most hailed as a “bold” move, but also warned that it carried risks and said it was a politically and communally contentious step.

“India’s decision is sure to spark unrest in Kashmir, and especially in the Kashmir Valley, once the Indians end their lockdown there,” said Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based expert on South Asian affairs. He told VOA the move “could even spark a new phase of insurgency, that is if India gives insurgents enough space to operate.”

The word “historic” has reverberated in parliament during the two-day debate, but in different contexts. Ruling party benches have said they have corrected a “historic” injustice done to Kashmir, while the opposition Congress Party has slammed it as a “historic blunder.” 

The move has infuriated pro-India parties in Kashmir, who call it a betrayal of trust. Three Kashmiri political leaders under detention in a government guest house have warned the step will backfire and deepen anger among Kashmiris.

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The Buddhist enclave of Ladakh cheered India’s move to break it away from Jammu and Kashmir state, a change that could spur tourism and help New Delhi counter China’s influence in the contested western Himalayas.

Beijing, though, criticized the announcement, made on Monday by the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of a wider policy shift that also ended Jammu and Kashmir’s right to set its own laws. In a statement on Tuesday, China said the decision was unacceptable and undermined its territorial sovereignty.

Ladakh is an arid, mountainous area of around 59,146 square kilometers (22,836 square miles), much of it uninhabitable, that only has 274,000 residents. The rest of Jammu and Kashmir is roughly 163,090 square kilometres (62,969 square miles) with a population of some 12.2 million.

China and India still claim vast swaths of each other’s territory along their 3,500 km (2,173 mile) Himalayan border.

The Asian rivals had a two-month standoff at the Doklam plateau in another part of the remote Himalayan region in 2017.

“The fact that India took this move … can be seen as one way that India is trying to counter growing Chinese influence in the region,” said Sameer Patil, a Mumbai-based fellow in international security studies at the Gateway House think-tank.

In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China contests the inclusion of what it regards as its territory on the Indian side of the western section of the China-India border.

“India’s unilateral amendment to its domestic law, continues to damage China’s territorial sovereignty. This is unacceptable,” Hua said.

In response to a question about Hua’s statement, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said on Tuesday the Ladakh decision was an internal matter.

“India does not comment on the internal affairs of other countries and similarly expects other countries to do likewise,” said Kumar, without directly mentioning China.

Patil from Gateway House said monks he interviewed in Ladakh told him China-endorsed monks had been extending loans and donations to Buddhist monasteries in the area in an apparent bid to win influence.

Reuters was not able to contact any monks in Ladakh.

“Our Own Destiny”

By announcing it would turn Ladakh into its own administrative district, the Indian government fulfilled a decades-long demand from political leaders there.

Ladakh locals were tired of being hurt or ignored because of the many years of turmoil in the Kashmir Valley resulting from separatist militant activity and the Indian military’s moves to crush them.

Local politicians and analysts expect the change to bring Ladakh out of the shadow of Kashmir, which has long been a flashpoint with Pakistan. It could also help the area pocket more government funding as it seeks to build up its roads and facilities to lure tourists.

“We are very happy that we are separated from Kashmir. Now we can be the owners of our own destiny,” Tsering Samphel, a veteran politician from the Congress party in Ladakh, said on Tuesday. He added the area felt dwarfed by Jammu and Kashmir – which is a majority Muslim area – and that the regions had little in common culturally.

In Ladakh’s city of Leh on Monday, members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party danced in the streets and distributed sweets, Reuters partner ANI reported.

Ladakh will be governed by a centrally-appointed lieutenant governor, handing New Delhi stronger oversight over the area.

However, while Ladakh will become a Union Territory, it will not have its own legislature – a sore point for some locals.

“Hopefully we will be getting that also, slowly,” said Samphel, 71, adding that local politicians would put that demand to New Delhi.

Ladakh’s economy, traditionally dependent on farming, has benefited from tourists visiting ancient monasteries and trekking up mountain peaks.

P. C. Thakur, general manager of The Zen Ladakh hotel in Leh, hopes that dissociating from Jammu and Kashmir will further attract visitors. He expects the hotel’s occupancy to jump by up to 7 percentage points from an average of around 80-85% currently.

“Next year will be good,” he said.

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Small-satellite launch firm Rocket Lab announced on Tuesday a plan to recover the core booster of its Electron rocket using a helicopter, a bold cost-saving concept that, if successful, would make it the second company after Elon Musk’s SpaceX to reuse an orbital-class rocket booster.

“Electron is going reusable,” Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck said during a presentation in Utah, showing an animation of the rocket sending a payload into a shallow orbit before speeding back through Earth’s atmosphere. “Launch frequency is the absolute key here.”

The Auckland, New Zealand-based company is one of a growing cadre of launch companies looking to slash the cost of sending shoebox-sized satellites to low Earth orbit, building smaller rockets and reinventing traditional production lines to meet a growing payload demand.

Electron, which has flown seven missions so far, can send up to 496 pounds (225 kg) into space for roughly $7 million.

Medium-class launchers such as Los Angeles-based Relativity Space can send up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) into space for $10 million while Cedar Park, Texas-based firm Firefly can do it for $15 million.

Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which reignites its engines to land steadily back on Earth “propulsively” after much larger missions costing around $62 million, Rocket Lab’s Electron will deploy a series of parachutes to slow its fall through what Beck called “the wall” – the violently fast and burning hot reentry process the booster endures shooting back through Earth’s atmosphere.

A helicopter will then hook the booster’s parachute in mid-air as it descends over the ocean and tow it back to a boat for recovery, Beck said.

“The grand goal here is, if we can capture the vehicle in wonderful condition, in theory we should be able to put it back on the pad, recharge the batteries up, and go again,” Beck said.

Some launch companies, such as Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance which flies its Atlas V rocket, are skeptical of the economic case for reusing first-stage boosters propulsively, arguing that the fuel spent landing the rocket through the dense atmosphere and back on Earth would be better used to launch heavier payloads.

Beck said propulsive recoveries like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 “don’t scale well” with Electron’s smaller build, anyway. A spokeswoman would not say how much money Rocket Lab expects to save from its foray into hardware reusability, but said “cost reductions could flow from this in time.”

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Advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday in an effort to block a rule published last month that expands the number of migrants who can be subject to a sped-up deportation process without oversight by an immigration judge.

The rule, published in the Federal Register on July 23, broadened the practice of “expedited removal” to apply to anyone arrested anywhere nationwide who entered the United States illegally and cannot prove they have lived continuously in the country for at least two years.

Previously, only migrants caught within 100 miles of a U.S. border and who had been in the country for 14 days or less were subject to the fast-track process.

Under expedited removal, migrants are not entitled to a review of their cases in front of an immigration judge or access to an attorney.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Council on behalf of three immigration rights groups, claims the government did not go through the proper procedures in issuing the rule and says it violates due process and U.S. immigration laws.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the filing.

President Donald Trump has struggled to stem an increase of mostly Central American families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to overcrowded detention facilities and a political battle over immigration that is inflaming tensions in the country. 

In El Paso, Texas, last weekend a gunman killed 22 people after apparently posting an anti-immigrant manifesto online.

Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally could be quickly deported under the new rule, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“Hundreds of thousands of people living anywhere in the U.S. are at risk of being separated from their families and expelled from the country without any recourse,” Anand Balakrishnan, an attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

The government has said increasing rapid deportations would free up detention space and ease strains on immigration courts, which face a backlog of more than 900,000 cases.

People in rapid deportation proceedings are detained for 11.4 days on average, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. People in regular proceedings are held for 51.5 days and are released into the United States for the months or years it takes to resolve their cases.

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2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans to be brought to what is now the United States, arriving in the English colony of Virginia. In Ghana, the anniversary has been dubbed the “Year of Return,” and the country is welcoming the African diaspora with expedited visas and numerous events to discover their roots, even if they don’t know their lineage is Ghanaian.  Esha Sarai went to Accra to speak with some of the people bridging the gap between the continents.

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In Angola, young people people are learning about the history of the slave trade in the classroom, as VOA’s Mayra de Lassalette and Betty Ayoub found when they traveled to the African nation.  Mayra de Lassalette narrates their report.

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Four hundred years ago, the first enslaved Africans landed in what is now the United States. Those first African captives came from the Portuguese colony of Angola, brought to the shores of Virginia in 1619 by an English pirate ship that had seized them from a Portuguese slave ship. Some 6 million enslaved Africans came from Angola, most of them sent to Portugal’s colonies, though some ended up in North America.  VOA’s Mayra de Lassalette and Betty Ayoub traveled to Angola where they heard accounts of the fierce resistance to the slave trade.  Mayra de Lassalette narrates their report.

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says the main cause of escalating tensions between Japan and South Korea is a loss of trust over court rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate South Koreans for forced labor during World War II.

Japan has imposed export controls on key materials for South Korea’s semiconductor industry and moved to downgrade the country’s trade status. It has insisted that the measures were related to national security concerns and were not in retaliation for the court rulings.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony until the end of the war, and insists that all compensation issues were settled under a 1965 agreement normalizing ties.

Abe, responding to a question Tuesday about the escalating tensions, urged Seoul to take appropriate actions to stop the court procedures.

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This year marks the 400th anniversary since the first enslaved Africans set foot in what is now the United States.  The arrival in the British colony of Virginia in August 1619 of a ship carrying Africans from Angola marked the start of more than 200 years of slavery in America. VOA’s Mayra de Lassalette and Betty Ayoub traveled to Angola to learn more about one of the origins of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its lingering impact on the region.  Mayra de Lassalette narrates their report.

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Sudan’s Transitional Military Council and opposition coalition finalized a power-sharing agreement Sunday that aims to stabilize the country for the first time since the military ousted Omar al-Bashir in April after months of mass demonstrations. 

The final agreement came after weeks of tense talks and repeated attacks on pro-democracy protesters by TMC security forces. 

Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Khartoum on Sunday to celebrate the signing of the deal.

Israa Mohamed applauded the agreement, saying it will be a base for a civilian country. However, he added, the only thing that guarantees the agreement’s success is to keep an eye on the revolution demands. 

Protester Abdallah Ali has been demanding political change since December. He said the agreement is a step forward, but not the end of the journey. 

“Signing the constitutional draft was an important step to resolve the political turmoil, but it was not our ultimate goal,” he said.

The military and opposition agreed the transitional decision-making body, known as the sovereign council, will contain an equal number of military figures and civilians. The head will be a civilian with a military background. 

The sovereign council will be established Aug. 20, with the TMC being dissolved on the same day. 

Analyst Mohamed Abdurrahman believes the agreement is a crucial step to resolve Sudan’s political crisis, but is concerned about the division between forces in the transitional period.

In addition, he’s worried the peace process might be hurt by armed movements resisting the agreements, including rebel groups in Sudan’s Darfur, Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, which battled for years against the Bashir regime.  

There is also uncertainty regarding the pro-Bashir group called the Revolutionary Front and its reaction to a new, unelected government in Khartoum. 

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The Greek Orthodox Church says it has filed a new lawsuit against a Jewish settler group in a bid to overturn an Israeli Supreme Court decision upholding the sale of three properties in predominantly Palestinian parts of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Patriarchate claimed in a statement Monday that it had “clear proof” of corruption in the long-disputed 2004 sale of Old City properties, including two Palestinian-run hotels.

In June, the court ruled in favor of the Israeli organization, which seeks to increase the Jewish presence in Palestinian areas of the contested holy city.

Most Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem are Palestinian, and the sale of the properties to Israelis sparked outrage.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians seek it as capital of a future state.

 

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The United States might seem more divided than ever, but that could be because Americans have a distorted impression of people with opposing political views.

“Democrats and Republicans overestimate the proportion of people on the other side of the political aisle who hold extreme views by a factor of about two,” says Daniel Yudkin, associate director of research at More in Common.

“So, another way of saying that is that there are about half as many people with extreme views on the other side than Democrats and Republicans think.” 

For example, 87% of Republicans say “properly controlled immigration can be good for America.” But Democrats believe only about half of Republicans would agree with that statement.

And while Republicans think almost half of Democrats believe “most police are bad people,” the reality is that far fewer Democrats, 15%, agree with that supposition.

A recent More in Common report finds that this perception gap is created by extremists in both parties who tend to have the loudest voices, in part because they are extremely active on social and traditional media.

“So, when people are learning and hearing the voices of the people they think are on the other side, they’re actually hearing the voices of the most extreme contingent of those groups,” says Yudkin, a co-author of the report.

“And so, they come to believe that those voices are representative of the people on both sides, when in fact, there’s quite a lot of complexity and nuance that gets missed.”

These false assumptions are detrimental to Americans because the greater the misperceptions, the more people begin to view people on the other side as hateful, brainwashed or ignorant. That negativity makes it difficult for Americans with opposing political views to cooperate on the issues where they do see eye to eye.

“There are a lot of issues that Americans actually agree about,” Yudkin says.

“We agree that we should have a properly controlled immigration system that’s compassionate but also efficient. We agree that racism remains an issue in America right now. Most of Americans believe there’s rampant inequality and that there should be higher taxes on the wealthy, for example. But these shared issues are undermined in the political process when sides come to see the other as the enemy.”

People tend to consume news that reinforces and confirms their biases about people in opposing constituencies, according to the report, which also finds that when conservatives and liberals consume news that runs counter to their own views, they make fewer false or exaggerated assumptions about the other side.

The bottom line is that Americans are less divided than they believe, according to Yudkin, and reducing the perception gap starts with understanding the reality of just how big — or small — that gap actually is.

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China’s decision last week to stop issuing permits for independent tourists to Taiwan applies new economic pressure to their already strained relations, and analysts see three underlying reasons behind Beijing’s move.  

Beijing’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism cited the “current mainland China-Taiwan relations” as cause to stop permitting indie travelers after about a decade. China regards self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory rather than a state, but Taiwan prefers at least today’s level autonomy over the Chinese goal of unification. That schism has caused the two sides to chafe for 70 years.

Here are three reasons China cut off travel permits:

Taiwan’s president opposes China despite earlier pressure to get along

Suspending the travel permits lets China remind Taiwan of its economic clout, some analysts say.

The permit shutdown ends a process that generated on average more than 82,000 arrivals per month last year, which boosted the island’s service economy.

Since 2016, China has flown military aircraft near Taiwan and persuaded five Taiwanese diplomatic allies to switch their allegiance from Taipei to Beijing. The Communist leadership hopes to pressure Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s government to bargain with China as her predecessor did — on the condition that acknowledges both sides are considered part of the same country.

Despite the military and diplomatic pressure, the government in Taipei openly opposes rule by China. Tsai in January condemned the “one country, two systems” idea that Chinese President Xi Jinping had proposed then as a way to rule Taiwan.

China is “more than furious” that Tsai openly backs anti-Beijing protesters who have taken to the streets in Hong Kong since June, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York.

China upped its warnings by calling off Taiwan-bound independent travel, said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of the Taipei research organization Polaris Research Institute.

“The headline news will create some psychological effects,” Liang said. “I believe their motivation should be that mainland China wants to say ‘as well as using military threats we can also hold you back economically.’”

Taiwan’s president faces a tough reelection bid in 2020

China hopes the tourism suspension will remind Taiwanese that “there are riches to be had” if they reject Tsai’s reelection bid in January, King said.

Tsai is running against Han Kuo-yu, a mayor who supports opening talks with China to bolster economic and investment ties. His party, when in power from 2008 to 2016, accepted Beijing’s condition that each side see itself as part of China for negotiation purposes. The two governments inked 23 deals.

Tsai rejects the one-China condition, and China cut off talks after she took office.

China hopes the cut in travel permits will addle the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

Hotels near tourist hotspots will take the biggest hit from the loss of self-guided tourists, though many had expected business to taper due to the decline in political relations, said Peter Lin, chief executive officer of the Topology Travel Agency in Taipei. Losses from the travel suspension are estimated at about $1 billion per year.

“The Chinese do want to show that DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] is not doing good things and want to punish the DPP,” Sun said. “They want to squeeze the election, and tourism is a very convenient channel. The tourism industry in Taiwan will be hit pretty hard.”

Chinese tourists would get close to Taiwan’s political heat

China’s official television network said on its Weibo social media website Wednesday that independent travel permits had been suspended because of increasing “risks” for travelers before the election.

Beijing frets about its tourists being drawn to Taiwan’s democratic institutions including its unfettered mass media, King said. Relations with China are shaping up as a core presidential campaign issue with daily media coverage.

“There’s the incidental bonus for Beijing of having fewer of its citizens exposed to the island’s vigorously open political culture,” King said. “This fact cannot be overlooked, especially given the protests in Hong Kong, uncensored coverage of which mainland visitors get to see on their Taiwan hotel television screens.”  

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Colombia will grant citizenship to at least 24,000 children born to Venezuelan parents and at risk of statelessness.

President Ivan Duque announced Monday that in a gesture of solidarity his government will begin recognizing those born in Colombia as citizens.

Colombian law does not offer birthright citizenship to children whose parents are not legal migrants. Many of the 1.4 million Venezuelans now in Colombia entered illegally, meaning their children born in the neighboring Andean country didn’t qualify.

Children born to Venezuelan parents abroad are entitled to Venezuelan citizenship but many have been unable to access that right because of severed diplomatic ties with Colombia.

Colombia has received more Venezuelan migrants than any other nation form an unprecedented exodus.
 
The new measure is expected to remain in place for two years.

 

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France and Germany on Sunday condemned a Russian police crackdown on a banned opposition rally that saw hundreds detained, with Paris criticizing an “excessive use of force” after a second weekend of protests over the exclusion of opposition candidates from local Moscow polls next month.

Berlin said the police action on Saturday “violated” Russia’s international obligations and undermines the right to fair elections in the country.

The arrests on Saturday were “out of all proportion to the peaceful nature of the protests against the exclusion of independent candidates” from city elections in Moscow, the German government said.

Crowds had walked along the capital’s central boulevard in a protest “stroll” over the refusal by officials to let opposition candidates run in September polls for city parliament seats — a local issue that has turned into a political crisis.

Police say 1,500 people took part in the demonstration.

AFP observed dozens of arrests along the route, as police formed human chains and grabbed people indiscriminately.

Sobol detained again

An ally of detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, who is currently three weeks into a hunger strike after being barred from taking part in the election, was dragged from a taxi and detained as she set off for the rally.

Hours later she was taken to court where she was fined 300,000 rubles ($4,600) for a gathering on July 15, and held for further questioning over the protest last weekend, her team said.

A French foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement that Paris “insists on freedom of expression in all its forms, including that of demonstrating peacefully and taking part in free and transparent elections.”

France “calls on Russia to immediately free the people incarcerated in recent days and to conform to its commitments as a member of the OSCE and the Council of Europe,” the statement said.

Berlin condemned “the repeated interference in the guaranteed right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression” which “violates Russia’s international obligations and strongly questions the right to free and fair elections”.

Sunday’s statements from Berlin and Paris follow an appeal last Monday calling on Moscow to release 1,400 other protesters detained after a similar demonstration on July 27.

Navalny criminal probe

According to the independent protest monitor OVD-Info, some 828 people were detained during the latest rally on Saturday in Moscow.

Authorities also upped the pressure on Navalny, a top Kremlin critic, by launching a criminal probe into his anti-graft group on Saturday.

Navalny was rushed from his cell to hospital last weekend in an incident his personal doctor said could be poisoning with an unknown chemical substance.

A state toxicology lab said no traces were found.

President Vladimir Putin has yet to comment on the situation in Moscow.

 

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