Environmentalists and climate change activists worldwide are hailing Time magazine’s decision to make Greta Thunberg its 2019 Person of the Year. The teenage activist has attracted the world’s attention with her eloquent calls on political and industrial leaders to make courageous decisions on climate change. Her actions have inspired young people worldwide to fight for the protection of the planet. But as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, there are critics who say Thunberg’s mission and her celebrity status are all wrong

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Top American officials say the U.S. is hopeful that the recent prisoner exchange will lead to a broader discussion on consular affairs between the U.S. and Iran.

In an interview with VOA on Wednesday, Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, recalled some of the emotional moments of witnessing the release of Xiyue Wang, a Chinese American detained in Iran, and said Wang will be “working with us and doing everything we can to get out people like Bob Levinson and then the Namazis and others.”

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Wang was freed Saturday after being held in Iran since 2016 on spying charges, in return for the U.S. releasing Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani.

Hook said Wang is “in excellent condition” and is at Ramstein Air Force Base with his wife and son.

While the top U.S. envoy said the rare prisoner exchange between the two nations is “a good first step” toward more dialogue, he called Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s proposal via a tweet for “a comprehensive prisoner swap” not helpful.

“We don’t think it’s all that helpful for any sort of talking about prisoners in public. We just try to do this in quiet diplomacy and bring Americans back home,” Hook said.

The following are excerpts from the interview.

VOA: First, congratulations on bringing detained American home. You were there to witness the release of Xiyue Wang, the Princeton Ph.D. candidate. Could you please share with us your firsthand story and some of the most memorable moments?

Hook: It was a big day for American diplomacy, but it was an even bigger day for Xiyue Wang. And so the United States has been working on releasing all Americans who are detained in Iran for the last three years. We’ve been working to win their release. We’ve been trying to get a consular dialogue going with Iran so that we can get Americans out. And then about three or four weeks ago, we started getting some more positive signals from the Iranians, and then working through the Swiss, I’ve been working with the Swiss, was able to negotiate the release of Xiyue Wang. And so when we were in Zurich, it was a really powerful moment to welcome Xiyue back home and out of Iranian custody, out of Iranian prison.

He is a brave and amazing man. He is currently at Ramstein Air Force Base with his wife and son. They’re now reunited. And I think he’s getting great medical care there. He is in excellent condition. And he emerged from this, he’s very strong. He’s, I really admire his toughness and when he’s ready, after we get through I think just the period of just the medical evaluation and reuniting with his family, then he’ll be coming back to the United States.

VOA: What was his first ask when he met you?

Hook: He just said it’s great to be an American. Those were his first words. And it was a very emotional moment, very powerful. And I really admire him. And I know his wife, Hua, and she’s at Princeton. And she has been tireless in advocating for his release and I had met with her. We’ve spoken by phone a number of times.

Now, there are other families who also have loved ones in Iran who are, we are still trying to get out.

One of the things that Xiyue made very clear to me was he wants to get all of them out. And I know that he’ll be working with us and doing everything we can to get out people like Bob Levinson and the Namazis and others. And we work on it every day.

VOA: Xiyue Wang was born in Beijing. He’s now a U.S. citizen. His wife is a Chinese citizen. During the process, did the Chinese government provide any help or play any role in securing his release?

Hook: Not that I’m aware of. I’m not aware of any role that China played securing his release.

VOA: After the recent swap of Xiyue Wang and Soleimani, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that Iran is fully ready for a comprehensive prisoner exchange. What is your take? How serious is the U.S. taking his pitch?

Hook: Foreign Minister Zarif unfortunately has a long history of creating a sense of false hope with American families. On a regular basis, he says things that we then follow up and test the offer, and then we discovered that there is no offer.

Now we were able to get a successful exchange this time, and it was a fair negotiation. So we’re very pleased with the outcome. We don’t conduct trying to get our hostages out of Iran in public. And so I didn’t, I didn’t talk to the media or to anybody during the last three or four weeks when I was negotiating the release of Xiyue Wang. That is the proper way to handle this.

So we don’t think it’s all that helpful for any sort of talking about prisoners in public. We just try to do this in quiet diplomacy and bring Americans back home.

But I am going to follow up with the Iranians, this was a good first step. I’ll work through the Swiss, the Swiss have been fantastic. They are protecting power. We don’t have an ambassador in Iran. So we rely on the Swiss to represent us in Iran. And they were great. Markus Leitner, the Swiss ambassador to Iran, was a great partner in helping to get Xiyue Wang out of prison. I’ll continue to work with him and the Iranians.

It is a good first step, and I hope this leads to bigger and better things.

VOA: Does the recent swap open any door?  Is there any indication that Iranians may be willing to come to the table to discuss all outstanding issues?

Hook: I don’t think the diplomats in Iran that I met with have any mandate from the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] to talk to the Americans. I was certainly open to having a conversation with them, but that’s been American policy. The president, the secretary of state have all made clear that we’re, we want to resolve our diplomatic differences bilaterally, through diplomacy, not through military force, which is what Iran has been choosing, and they’ve been making the wrong choice because their economy is in a free fall and the regime is becoming more diplomatically isolated.

But unfortunately, look, I think there are a lot of people in Iran’s foreign ministry that would like to talk to United States and would like to come to the table, but the supreme leader doesn’t give them much of a leash. And I think that became clear in Zurich. And so we hope at some point the supreme leader will start making better choices for his own people instead of making bad choices.

VOA: Is the U.S. advocating for a regime change in Tehran?

Hook: For the 1 millionth time, I’ve said this, the United States policy is a change in behavior. It is not a change in regime. And everybody knows that we have a list of 12 demands. Most of them are based on U.N. Security Council resolutions that were passed unanimously, with votes by China and Russia. These were the international standards before the failed Iran nuclear deal. We are trying to restore those standards. Most of the things that we’re asking for you can find in a U.N. Security Council resolution. It’s not an unrealistic list. It’s very realistic.

And those who think it’s too ambitious, I would ask those people to identify what of the 12 things they would like Iran to keep doing? Do they want Iran to keep enriching nuclear material? Do they want Iran to be proliferating ballistic missiles and sending billions of dollars to Assad and to the Houthis so that they can bomb other countries? This is the right list, this is the right approach. We’re very pleased with the success of our maximum pressure campaign.

VOA: Do you see a Berlin Wall moment in Iran, given the ongoing protests?

Hook: It’s very hard to predict how things go in any country around the world. We do know that Iran is facing its deadliest political unrest in the history of the 40 years of the Islamic Republic. And so we stand with the Iranian people. The Iranian regime has murdered as many as 1,000 Iranians. And the supreme leader calls his own people thugs. And now you’re seeing the regime has lost almost every constituency supporting its revolutionary policy. And now they cling to power with just brute force. And so, we know the Iranian people are demanding the same things that we are, and other nations around the world: stop prioritizing proxies over people. The Iranian people want a better life and they’re tired of all their money being spent in foreign wars.

VOA: For many years, the U.S. has been asking for a consular dialogue with Iran. Has there been any progress? What is the U.S. asking for? What are the sticking points?

Hook: “When I met with Iran’s deputy foreign minister 2 1/2 years ago, Abbas Araghchi, I asked for a consular dialogue and he said no. There have been other times, we’ve asked for it repeatedly and Iran keeps saying no. We’re gonna continue to ask for it.

As I said, I’m really pleased that we were able to make a fair deal with the regime over the release and the exchange of Soleimani for Xiyue Wang. So let’s make this a first step, and I hope that the regime takes advantage of this moment, and let’s build on it.

VOA: Thank you so much for talking to VOA.

Hook: Thank you.

VOA’s Tom Bagnall contributed to this report.

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For the first time since the early 20th century, more Americans are choosing to die at home rather than in a hospital.

A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday found deaths in nursing homes also have declined.

Researchers studied data on natural deaths complied by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics from 2003 to 2017.

In that period, the number of people dying at home increased from 543,874 (23.8%) to 788,757 (30.7%).  

At the same time, the number of deaths in a hospital fell from 905,874 (39.7%) in 2003 to 764,424 (29.8% ) in 2017.

“It’s a good thing. Death has become overly medicalized over the last century,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Haider Warraich of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.  

The rise of home hospice services has helped more people spend their last days at home, Warraich said.

“I have met many patients who just want to spend one day at home, around their dog, in their bed, able to eat home food,” he said.

Hospice provides terminally ill patients with end-of life care, including pain management and emotional support for the patients as well as their families.

In 2003, 5,395 people died in hospice, in 2017, the number rose to 212,652.

The study found the cause of death also reflected where the person died.

Cancer patients were most likely to die at home, and dementia patients in a nursing home.

The rise in at-home deaths “reflects that perhaps we’re able to honor more people’s wishes and help them pass away in a place that’s most familiar to them,” Warraich said.

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French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the minimum retirement age will remain 62, but workers will have to work until 64 to get a full pension. 

In a sweeping speech Wednesday, he said the implementation of the pension changes will be delayed. The new pension system will only apply to people born after 1975. 

The measures will start being implemented for new workers entering the labor market in 2022, which is the final year of President Emmanuel Macron’s current term.

The government says a minimum pension of 1,000 euros (about $1,100) per month will be put in place for those who have worked all their life.

The government’s announcements come on the seventh straight day of a crippling transport strike and after hundreds of thousands of angry protesters have marched through French cities. 

The government is hoping that the plan might calm tensions as hundreds of thousands of angry protesters have marched through French cities. 

On Wednesday in the Paris region, authorities measured around 460 kilometers (285 miles) of traffic jams, and all but two of the city’s metro lines closed. Commuters also used means other than cars to get to work, such as shared bikes and scooters.

Many French commuters still express support for the strikes despite the chaos, owing to fears their pensions will shrink under Macron’s plan.

Unions fear that a new system, which replaces a national pension system with special privileges for some in the transport sector, will force people to work longer for smaller pension allocations. The government says it won’t raise the age of retirement up from 62.

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With fewer than 24 hours to go until the ballot boxes open in Britain for the general election, the latest polling shows a sharp drop in support for the ruling Conservatives. While most polls still suggest Prime Minister Boris Johnson will win a majority — it’s by no means certain that he’ll still be in 10 Downing Street after the election.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined an early morning milk round in the northern city of Leeds Wednesday. 

Johnson’s Conservatives are hoping to make gains in these northern seats — that were once safe opposition Labour seats  but which voted strongly for Brexit.

“We can get Brexit done. We are ready to go,” he said. 

But with fewer than 24 hours to go the latest polling has checked Johnson’s momentum. One of the largest surveys involving over 100,000 voters predicts a Conservative majority of 28 MPs — down sharply from two weeks ago.

And the margin of error means a hung parliament, with no one party gaining a majority, is still a possibility.

Some Conservative opponents are urging people to vote tactically — for whichever candidate is most likely to beat the Conservatives in their constituency.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t given up hopes of victory.

“We’re not into coalitions or tactical voting. We are determined to win this election,” he said. 

Britain’s politics is being uprooted. Polls show the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats could take seats in the south of Britain that were once solid Conservative territory – but which voted strongly to remain in the EU.

Brexit remains the defining issue of the election, says Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government.

“The Conservatives really have to get an outright majority if they want to pursue their sort of Brexit on their timeline because they’re very short of potential allies in parliament,” said Rutter.

Opposition parties are targeting the seats of several government ministers, with even the prime minister’s constituency among those up for grabs.

Results are due Friday morning — when we’ll know whether a Conservative-led Britain is heading for Brexit — or whether Boris Johnson himself could be out of power and out of parliament.

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Israel is on its way to a third general election in the span of a year as the leaders of the two biggest parties in parliament remain unable to bring together a governing majority.

Members of parliament gave preliminary approval to a dissolution measure Wednesday, and are expected to finalize the process through several other rounds of voting throughout the day. That would set a new election for March 2.

Voters cast ballots in April and September, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and former military chief Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party ended up nearly deadlocked with neither having enough seats for a majority.

After both elections, both party leaders were given a chance to try to form a coalition, but failed.

Recent opinion polls suggest the situation will be similar for the March election with support for the two parties remaining about the same.

Netanyahu and Gantz have blamed each other for the inability to find a solution. One possibility under discussion was an agreement between the parties to get together for a coalition with the position of prime minister changing sides on a rotating basis.

For now, Netanyahu, who is facing bribery and fraud charges that he denies, will remain in the role as a caretaker prime minister.
 

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Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi denied her country committed genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslims, telling the United Nations’ top court Wednesday the mass exodus of the minority stemmed from “an internal conflict started by coordinated and comprehensive armed attacks.”

She told the International Court of Justice in The Hague that “Myanmar’s defense services responded” to the attacks, creating an armed conflict “that led to the exodus of several hundred thousand Muslims.”    

Appearing before the court in her official role as Myanmar’s foreign minister, the Nobel Peace laureate reiterated her government’s claim that the military was targeting Rohingya militants who had attacked security posts in western Rakhine state in August 2017.    

Myanmar’s military launched a scorched earth campaign in response to the attacks, forcing more than 700,000 Rohingyas to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.  A U.N. investigation concluded the campaign was carried out “with genocidal intent,” based on interviews with survivors who gave numerous accounts of massacres, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and the torching of entire villages.
 
The case against Myanmar was brought to the IJC by the small West African nation Gambia on behalf of the 57-member Organization for Islamic Cooperation.  Lawyers for Gambia recounted numerous acts of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military during the crackdown during Tuesday’s opening session.

Aung San Suu Kyi called the allegations made by Gambia “misleading” during her opening statement.  

Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told reporters Tuesday he wants the IJC to order special measures to protect the Rohingyas until the genocide case is heard in full.

“We are signatories to the Genocide Convention like any other state. It shows that you don’t have to have military power or economic power to stand for justice,” Tambadou said.

Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her pro-democracy stand against Myanmar’s then-ruling military junta, which placed her under house arrest for 15 years until finally freeing her in 2010.  But her defense of the military’s actions against the Rohingyas has wrecked her reputation among the international community as an icon of democracy and human rights.  

The Rohingya were excluded from a 1982 citizenship law that bases full legal status through membership in a government-recognized indigenous group. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, effectively rendering the ethnic group stateless.

A ruling from the court to approve measures to protect the Rohingya is expected within weeks. A final ruling on the accusation of genocide could take several years.

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An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan on Wednesday indicted Hafiz Saeed, the suspected planner of the 2008 attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai, along with his four senior aides on terror financing charges. 

Saeed, the founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group and the head of its banned charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has been designated as a global terrorist by the United States for his alleged role in the Mumbai strikes that killed more than 170 people. 

The Islamist cleric was present in the court in the eastern city of Lahore when the charges against him and his partners were read. The court will conduct the next proceedings on Thursday. 

Saeed and his associates rejected as baseless the prosecution’s charges that they were using JuD charities and trusts to raise funds to finance terrorism.

Saeed has also consistently denied his involvement in the Mumbai attacks. 

Indian authorities accuse him and his LeT of planning and executing the carnage. The Islamist cleric maintains he had ended his association with LeT before it was outlawed by the Pakistani government in 2002.

Washington has placed both LeT and JuD on its list of global terrorist groups, offering $10 million for information that would help bring Saeed to justice.

Wednesday’s indictment comes ahead of a meeting of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February to decide whether to blacklist Pakistan for not doing enough to curb money laundering and terror financing, as well as activities of groups such as LeT and JuD on its soil. The agency is leading the fight against the funding of terrorism and money laundering. 

If Islamabad fails to deliver on commitments under an action plan agreed to with FATF, the agency could move Pakistan to its blacklist, fueling economic troubles for the country because it would make it extremely difficult for Pakistan to deal with global financial institutions and bring in much needed foreign investment.

Pakistan has long been accused of harboring militant groups plotting attacks in Afghanistan and India. 

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, however, has vowed not to allow anyone to use Pakistani soil against another country. 

Authorities have recently intensified a crackdown on outlawed groups and taken control of JuD-run welfare hospitals as well as religious seminaries across the country. 

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A man who served as secretary of public security in Mexico from 2006 to 2012 has been indicted in New York City on drug charges alleging he accepted millions of dollars in bribes to let the Sinaloa cartel operate with impunity in Mexico.

Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, a resident of Florida, was charged in Brooklyn federal court with three counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and a false statements charge, authorities said in a release.

Garcia Luna was arrested Monday by federal agents in Dallas. Prosecutors in Brooklyn said they will seek his removal to New York. The arrest and charges were announced Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said Garcia Luna took millions of dollars in bribes from the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, “while he controlled Mexico’s federal police force and was responsible for ensuring public safety in Mexico.”

 “Today’s arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes,” he said.

Garcia Luna received millions of dollars in bribes from 2001 to 2012 while he occupied high-ranking law enforcement positions in the Mexican government, authorities said.

From 2001 to 2005, Garcia Luna led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency, and from 2006 to 2012 served as Mexico’s secretary of public security, controlling the nation’s federal police force, authorities said.

They said the bribes paid to Garcia Luna cleared the way for the Sinaloa cartel to safely ship multi-ton quantities of cocaine and other drugs into the United States while getting sensitive law enforcement information about investigations and information about rival drug cartels.

There was no immediate comment from representatives for Garcia Luna.

Garcia Luna was once seen as a powerful ally in the American effort to thwart Mexican cartels from flooding the U.S. market with cocaine and other illegal drugs. But he had also previously come under suspicion of taking bribes.

In 2018, former cartel member Jesus Zambada testified at El Chapo’s New York trial that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to Garcia Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

The cash was delivered during two meetings at a restaurant in Mexico between the start of 2005 and the end of 2007, he said.

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A new rehab technology company helps patients maximize physical therapy and regain movement after paralysis – through gaming. Deana Mitchell checks it out.

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When can a U.S. intelligence community worker “blow the whistle?” VOA Explains.

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The Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to rule that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama.

 Several justices indicated their agreement with arguments from the insurers that they are entitled to the money under a provision of the “Obamacare” health law that promised the companies a financial cushion for losses they might incur by selling coverage to people in the marketplaces created by the health care law.

The program only lasted three years, but Congress inserted a provision in the Health and Human Services Department’s spending bills from 2015 to 2017 to limit payments under the “risk corridors” program. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have argued that the provision means the government has no obligation to pay.
 
“Are you saying the insurers would have done the same thing without the promise to pay?” Justice Elena Kagan asked Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler. Kneedler said the health care law created a “vast new market” of customers, most of whom would qualify for subsidies.

“The primary point was to encourage companies to go on the marketplace,” Kneedler said.

Paul Clement, representing companies who sold insurance in Alaska, Illinois, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington, called the government’s refusal to pay a “massive bait-and-switch.”

The companies cite HHS statistics to claim they are owed $12 billion.

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The president of the United States is terming as a “witch hunt” the two impeachment counts unveiled against him Tuesday morning by House Democrats.

Trump referred to that often used term again in a two-word tweet following the announcement by House committee chairs to proceed with the punitive legislation process against him.

WITCH HUNT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2019

Trump also rejected House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s statement on Tuesday that he had pressured Ukraine to interfere in next year’s presidential election.

“Both the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said, many times, that there “WAS NO PRESSURE,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Nadler and the Dems know this, but refuse to acknowledge!”

Nadler just said that I “pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 Election.” Ridiculous, and he knows that is not true. Both the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said, many times, that there “WAS NO PRESSURE.” Nadler and the Dems know this, but refuse to acknowledge!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2019

Nadler says his committee will meet this week to consider the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The committee will need to vote on the articles of impeachment before they can be sent to the full House, controlled by the Democrats, for consideration.

Lawmakers of both the Democratic and Republican parties predict Trump will be impeached in the House but not found guilty in a trial by the Senate, which is controlled by the president’s party.

White House officials also view the president’s impeachment as inevitable and predict it will not harm — and perhaps could even embolden — the base that supports him by the time of next November’s national election.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats in Congress of having planned to oust Trump since he was inaugurated in January 2017.

“The announcement of two baseless articles of impeachment does not hurt the President, it hurts the American people, who expect their elected officials to work on their behalf to strengthen our Nation. The President will address these false charges in the Senate and expects to be fully exonerated, because he did nothing wrong,” says Grisham.

Trump is also criticizing the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation following the release of the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report examining the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

The report found fault with the bureau’s handling of the probe but found no direct evidence of political bias for its launch.

Director Christopher Wray “will never be able to fix the FBI,” Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Wray, the previous day, said he accepts the findings of the 435-page report.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr, however, is insisting despite the report’s finding, the FBI launched “an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

Trump takes the side of the attorney general and is disagreeing with the FBI director, both of whom the president appointed.

“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”

I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2019

The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election and has expressed concerns that Moscow will try to do the same again in 2020.

Trump, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is scheduled to meet at the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later Tuesday.

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Argentine bond prices rose on Monday in the first session since President-elect Alberto Fernandez named debt restructuring expert Martin Guzman as economy minister, the central figure in a cabinet that will start serving after Tuesday’s inauguration.

Over the counter bond prices popped an average 2.1% higher and country risk spreads tightened, showing the market took Fernandez’s cabinet picks in stride.

Guzman, 37, will be responsible for sparking growth, taming inflation and steering restructuring talks with creditors and the International Monetary Fund over about $100 billion in debt.

Creditors had feared that Peronist Fernandez might take a tough stance in upcoming restructuring talks. But Guzman, who sees the problem as one of liquidity rather than solvency, has advocated for a debt revamp based on a suspension of payments that would preserve eventual repayment of principal.

Such an approach would avoid a “haircut,” or outright cut in the return of creditors’ principal investment.

“There had been uncertainty about the debt restructuring proposal. Guzman does not want to implement a haircut on the principal. So this clears some of the fear that had been priced into bonds,” said Gabriel Zelpo, director of economic consultancy Seido.

Sovereign risk spreads tightened 123 basis points to 2,194 over safe-haven U.S. Treasuries on JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus, having blown out from the 480 basis points where the index stood when outgoing President Mauricio Macri, a proponent of free markets, took office in late 2015.

Inflation has risen under Macri, and the peso has lost 83.75% of its value while Latin America’s No. 3 economy has stalled. Consumer prices are up more than 50% so far this year after a 47.6% rise in 2018. The peso was stable on Monday at just under 60 to the dollar.

Guzman, an academic and protégé of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, is an expert in bond restructurings.

He opposed Macri’s austerity drive, which included public utility subsidy cuts that jacked up power and heating bills paid by Argentine families and businesses.

Those utility bill increases fueled the inflation that dogged Macri’s four years in power, killed his once-high popularity and undermined his re-election campaign.

Markets had been on edge since Fernandez thumped Macri in the August primary election. The lopsided victory signaled a shift away from Macri’s strict pro-business policy stance. The inauguration will take place around midday on Tuesday.

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A Maryland law approved by state legislators to prevent foreign interference in local elections is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law targets political expression and compels certain speech, and affirmed a lower court’s ruling to strike down the law.

Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that the changing nature of elections and novel technological challenges have made it harder for states to manage elections. But, he wrote, the legislation approved by Maryland’s General Assembly in 2018 went too far.

“Despite its admirable goals, the Act reveals a host of First Amendment infirmities: a legislative scheme with layer upon layer of expressive burdens, ultimately bereft of any coherent connection to an offsetting state interest of sufficient import,” Wilkinson wrote in the ruling released Friday.

The law’s sweeping scope sparked a First Amendment outcry from more than a half dozen newspapers, including The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun.

Newspapers’ arguments

The newspapers and the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association argued in a lawsuit the the statute violates the First Amendment because it requires them to collect and self-publish information about the sponsors of online political ads. It also requires them to keep records of the ads for inspection by the state Board of Elections.

“In the end, each banner feature of the Act — the fact that it is content-based, targets political expression, and compels certain speech — poses a real risk of either chilling speech or manipulating the marketplace of ideas,” Wilkinson wrote.

In January, U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm ruled that parts of the law appeared to encroach on the First Amendment and granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from enforcing those provisions.

One provision required online platforms to create a database identifying the purchasers of online political ads and how much they spend. The law, written to catch ads in smaller state and local elections, applied to digital platforms with 100,000 or more monthly visitors.

That made the threshold in the Maryland law very broad when compared to a similar law in New York, which applies to digital platforms with at last 70 million monthly visitors.

The newspapers contended the law amounted to the government telling the press what to publish, which violates the First Amendment. They also argued the law wouldn’t prevent the kind of foreign interference seen during the 2016 election, when free postings on social media — not paid political ads on newspaper websites — were the primary means used to try to sow discord in the U.S. electorate.

More than a dozen news organizations and press advocacy groups, including The Associated Press, filed legal briefs supporting the newspapers’ challenge.

State arguments

The state argued that the law does not infringe on the newspapers’ right to exercise their editorial control and judgment.

“These modest burdens do not outweigh the State’s important interests in electoral transparency, deterring corruption, enforcing the substantive requirements of the campaign finance laws, and protecting against foreign meddling in the State’s elections,” Assistant Attorney General Andrea Trento wrote in a legal brief.

Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, wrote in an email Monday that the attorney general’s office was reviewing the decision.
 

…

Deaths among journalists killed in the line of duty are lower this year, but a journalism advocacy group said Monday that one reason appears to be that media workers are refraining from going to the most dangerous areas.

The International Federation of Journalists said that 49 journalists have been killed so far this year, down from 95 deaths last year. The group said that even if journalists are showing more caution, it also means the public is less informed about some of the most deadly conflicts and human rights abuses. Another reason for the lower number of deaths is decreased fighting in Iraq and Syria.

“Although we welcome the fewer losses of lives that we have recorded, we mourn the fact that these conflicts are no longer properly covered by professionals,” the IFJ’s head of human rights and safety Ernest Sagaga told The Associated Press.

Mexico is the most dangerous place for a journalist to work, with 10 on-the-job slayings that account for more than half of Latin America’s 18 killings this year. The Asia Pacific region had 12; and Africa, nine. The figures may still slightly rise in the last weeks of the year, Sagaga said. It will likely remain the lowest year since 2000 when 37 media staff were killed.

Sagaga said emphasized that the better numbers was not the result of steps being taken by governments to protect journalists. In fact, the increased lawlessness and lack of protection for journalists has resulted in some shying away from the most dangerous assignments.

“Due to the extreme violence, many journalists are now reluctant to go to these conflict areas,” said Sagaga. “So that would explain the drastic reduction that we have seen during 2019.”

The IFJ released the list a few weeks ago to mark Human Rights Day.  The IFJ represents 600,000 media professionals from 187 trade unions and associations in more than 140 countries.

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Russian and Ukrainian leaders agreed to implement a ceasefire and a prisoners’ swap by years end, following four-way talks in Paris on Monday that also included France and Germany. 

The four heads of state said they had made progress and that just talking was a key step forward. They are to meet again in four months.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was confident of the ceasefire would take place this month. He outlined both steps forward and progress still to be made during a late night press conference, echoing similar remarks made by other leaders there.

“It’s not a frozen situation,” Zelensky said. “And to answer your question, yes I do feel we will meet again in another four months, and be in a position to go forward and address other questions on the basis of our achievements.”

This is the first meeting between Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin since the Ukrainian actor took office earlier this year. It’s the first such four-way summit since 2016 that also includes France and Germany.

Putin said describing a possible thaw between Russia and Ukraine was correct.

“We’ve have had progress on most issues,” Putin said. “All of this does suggest that things are going the right way.”

The talks aim to pave a solution to the ongoing conflict between the two countries that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014. Both sides have since accused the other of failing to honor a 2015 peace agreement.

President Zelensky, a political newcomer, has made ending the conflict a priority.

But many Ukrainians are worried he may concede too much. Ahead of the Paris meeting, thousands demonstrated in the capital Kyiv against any so-called “capitulation” to Moscow.

The talks are also seen as a diplomatic test for host Emmanuel Macron. The French President wants to re-engage with Russia after several years of European Union sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. But that has gotten pushback from EU members like Poland. 

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A Bangladeshi girl who escaped being married at the age of 12 and went on to win an international athletics competition said on Monday that girls in the conservative country could “achieve anything” if they overcame their fears.

Ety Khatun, 14, the daughter of a sweet-seller, defied her parents attempts to marry her in 2016 as they struggled to get by in a remote village in western Bangladesh.

On Monday, Khatun won a third gold medal in archery at the South Asian games in Nepal, a rare sporting success for Bangladesh which has yet to land an Olympic medal.

“My parents wanted me to get married. I cried a lot and didn’t eat for two days. I forced them to send me to Dhaka to take part in an archery training camp,” Khatun told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Nepal.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage, according to the United Nations.

The country has banned the practise and in 2018 launched a phone app to digitally verify the ages of brides and grooms.

Still, more than half of all girls are married before they are 18.

Khatun may have become one of them had she not been spotted by scouts from the Bangladesh Archery Federation.

“We had selected about 60 potential archers from various regions and she was one of them,” said national coach Ziaul Hoque.

Smaller in stature than her peers, many underestimated Khatun.

“Not much was expected from her,” Hoque said.

But she proved mentally strong, and, in 2018, won bronze at a national archery competition.

“That’s when my parents stopped pressurising me to get married,” said Khatun.

Today her parents back her and revel in her achievements.

Her father remains the family’s sole breadwinner, something Khatun hopes to change.

“(He) has allergy issues and can’t work in winters. If something happens to him we don’t know what we will do. I hope archery can help me support my family and bring peace to them,” she said.

Urging young girls from her village to follow her path she said: “If you work hard, anything is possible. If you are scared and sit back, nothing will work.”

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In the Vietnamese action blockbuster “Furie” viewed mostly on Netflix, the protagonist puts her gang days behind her and becomes a debt collector. The fact that filmmaker Veronica Ngo, whose recent credits include the Star Wars film The Last Jedi, chose this as a plot detail reflects how debt collection is a fairly well known part of life in Vietnam.

As with the protagonist’s past, some aspects of real life debt collection have become sordid and even dangerous, such that authorities are wondering if it should even be a legal business sector anymore. Critics worry that desperate borrowers have resorted to loan sharks, who could use illegal means to collect debt. Others say people with poor borrowing histories still need access to loans, especially when turned away by traditional banks. 

The debate, which began last month in Parliament, is similar to one that was had in the U.S., amid the payday loans and predatory lending that contributed to the subprime mortgage crisis. Now the debate has come to Vietnam, as consumer demand grows for housing, vehicles, and even smartphones, all of which can be bought through loans. 

“This business has created many negative consequences for society,” Pham Huyen Ngoc, a Member of Parliament, said. He and his colleagues were discussing whether to add debt collection to the list of business sectors that are restricted or prohibited by law. 

It is not hard to walk around Vietnam and find lenders in the gray economy. They post flyers on street lamps, or write their numbers directly on walls enclosing yards or construction sites, offering loans. There is even a slang term for this practice: “tin dung cot dien,” or credit from an electric pole. 

The social impact of debt burdens also attracted public attention after October, when authorities in Essex, England found 39 Vietnamese had suffocated to death in a truck. That led to discussions about human trafficking and the debts that migrants take on when they pay brokers to take them to places like England. Another social issue that concerns authorities is gambling, a common reason that people get into debt. 

When vulnerable borrowers get in over their heads, a single life event, like a hospital bill, can easily lead to a missed loan payment. That adds more late fees and interest, leading to a debt trap. Officials like Ngoc worry that if these loans come from illegal lenders, they will threaten borrowers. 

However it may not be realistic to outlaw debt collection altogether. For as long as there has been money, there have been people borrowing it, whether they qualify for legal bank loans, or resort to other lenders. 

“I believe that the issue is that the relevant authorities, including the police and local government, have to have tight management and regulations,” Bui Thi Quynh Thoa, a Member of Parliament, said.  

She also worried about the potential for violence as part of debt collection. However the business must be regulated rather than prohibited, she said. 

Vietnam faces a difficult predicament. It wants to protect vulnerable borrowers from possibly dangerous money lenders. However it is hard to do away with the gray economy altogether. Solutions are hard to come by though it might help to look at what other places are doing. For instance,  at a church in Philadelphia, a city in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States,  members form groups to help pay off each other’s debt. That helps to prevent individuals from missing a single payment, which could get them into a cycle of debt, and increases the odds that everyone’s debt will be paid off collectively. How a whole nation can address the debt problem, however, is a bigger question.
 

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One person is confirmed dead and the toll is likely to rise after a volcano began erupting Monday afternoon off New Zealand’s North Island, one of the country’s two main islands.

While several people are still missing and some of the injured have been transported to the area hospitals, emergency teams say it is too dangerous to continue the rescue operation.

Emergency officials say around 50 people were on White island when the eruption began, fewer than initially reported by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who said 100 tourists were “on or around” the White Island volcano, also known as Whakaari in the Maori language.

AFP reports that cameras providing a live feed from the volcano showed a group of tourists walking on the crater floor moments before the eruption occurred.

White Island sits 50 kilometers northeast of the town of Tauranga on North Island.

Authorities urged people to avoid areas on North Island near to the eruption. 

GeoNet agency classified the volcanic eruption as moderate and raised its alert level to four, on a scale where five represents a major eruption.

GeoNet says White Island is New Zealand’s most active cone volcano and about 70 percent of the volcano is under the sea.

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Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign launched new attacks on Donald Trump on Sunday, advocating a reevaluation of U.S.-Saudi relations and calling North Korea’s apparent weapons test a “rebuke” to the U.S. president in a statement to Reuters.

The statement comes as Trump faces pressure to examine his administration’s approach to Riyadh after law enforcement officials said a Saudi Arabian Air Force lieutenant killed three people at a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, before being fatally shot.

The man was on the base as part of a Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies.

Authorities said they believe the man acted alone. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Trump on Sunday the kingdom would aid an investigation into the shooting, the Saudi state news agency reported.

Still, the incident put a spotlight on the Trump administration’s warm ties with the Saudis as fallout continues from the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year at a Saudi consulate in Turkey, as well as Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen and tensions with Middle East rival Iran.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo said the Trump administration has written Saudi’s kingdom “a blank check to act with impunity around the world.”

Biden would “reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia to ensure it is fully aligned with American values and priorities” if he beats Trump in a November 2020 election, Ducklo said. Biden believes the investigation into the Florida shooting should run its course, the spokesman added.

Ducklo also said a test at North Korea’s Sohae rocket-testing ground after Trump called U.S.-North Korean relations “very good” were a “clear rebuke to Trump” and showed that “Trump’s made-for-TV summits have achieved little, while North Korea continues to advance its dangerous capabilities.”

He added that Biden, as president, “won’t be sending Kim Jong Un any love letters,” a reference to an exchange of personal correspondence between Trump and Kim since their first summit in Singapore in June 2018, when the North Korean leader pledged to dismantle the missile installation where its latest test took place.

Trump’s reelection campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Sunday.

The former vice president has been highlighting his foreign policy credentials as he battles rivals for his Democratic party’s presidential nomination but also as he looks ahead to an election fight against Trump. In a widely viewed video posted online on Wednesday, Biden characterized the sitting president as a joke among world leaders.

Trump’s presidential campaign was based partly on the argument that other countries were taking advantage of the United States due to diplomacy Biden advocated when he was Barack Obama’s vice president.
 

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Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released information on Sunday about her past legal work, showing nearly $2 million in compensation from dozens of clients, as a dispute intensified with her rival Pete Buttigieg over transparency.

Warren, a leading candidate among the 15 Democrats vying for the party’s nomination to take on President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, had already put out 11 years of tax returns in April and called on other candidates to follow suit.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has said in recent days that Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, should release older tax documents detailing her corporate legal work.

In return, Warren has called on Buttigieg to allow media coverage of his private donor events and to disclose information about his past work at the consultancy company McKinsey. Warren does not hold big-ticket fundraisers and has focused her campaign on combating Washington corruption and corporate greed.

Buttigieg’s campaign said on Saturday it was working on making the details of his employment at McKinsey “fully transparent” and called on Warren to match that by releasing her tax returns covering her corporate legal work.

On Sunday, in a 15-page document, Warren’s campaign provided examples of her legal work, some of which dated back to 1985, in capacities including as a counsel, consultant and expert witness, giving information about the cases and how much she was compensated.

The document included dozens of cases, some of which Warren took on a pro-bono basis and was not compensated for. In some cases, she worked with a group of consultants. The document showed a total of nearly $2 million in compensation.

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll on Thursday showed that support for Warren dropped nationally to its lowest level in four months, as she came under attack over her proposal to extend government-paid healthcare to all Americans, deemed too costly by her rivals for the nomination.

Warren, 70, is still among the leaders in opinion polls in Iowa, which kicks off the Democratic nominating contests on Feb. 3, and in other early voting states. Buttigieg, 37, who had campaign stops this weekend in Iowa, has surged into the lead in recent opinion polls there.

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