Rights advocates at home and abroad are calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to use his first presidential visit to China to address the country’s deteriorating human rights situation.

Advocates are calling for the release of Liu Xia, the widow of the late Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, and many other Chinese political prisoners including four rights lawyers who are either awaiting trial or verdicts. They are also calling for the release of a Taiwanese rights activist detained in China for more than 230 days.

Failing to do so, they warn, will only worsen the situation Chinese rights defenders face. Room for dissent and alternative views in China has been shrinking rapidly since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.

Deteriorating rights conditions

“The international environment, in which few leaders are willing to stand up for human rights internationally and particularly in relations to China, has emboldened the Chinese government even further in undermining human rights at home,” Maya Wang, China researcher of Human Rights Watch, told VOA.

The most recent case that has gained the attention of rights advocates is the criminal detention of lawyer Li Yuhan. Li has been missing since early last month and officially charged with “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” in late October by the Public Security Bureau in Shenyang, Liaoning province, according to Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group.

It’s not clear if she will be able to hire a lawyer of her own choosing. And her family has also been denied any visits to her in prison.

Shenyang authorities have “made various attempts to revenge her as she used to report the police’s malpractices…. It is apparent to us that both power abuses and malfeasances form part of the case,” the Hong Kong-based rights group said in a written statement.

Retaliation by authorities

Li, 60, suffers from hypertension and has a heart condition. But despite that, she has taken up a series of sensitive cases including that of lawyer Wang Yu, one of the main targets of a massive nationwide crackdown on lawyers in China that began over two years ago. She has also taken on other religious freedom cases as well as the case of a wronged police officer in Anhui.

Rights advocates believe her decision to take on Wang Yu’s case is the main reason behind her detention.

“It may be related to her legal representation for Fengrui lawyer Wang Yu that maybe a possibility as a retaliation against her by the authorities” after she had visited the Wang’s in Mongolia, said Patrick Poon, China Researcher at Amnesty International, calling on the international society, including President Trump, to address Li’s case as well as other rights violation cases in China.

Amnesty International joined other international rights groups as well as 85 Chinese lawyers and citizens to call for the immediate release of Li while expressing concerns over her health and the possible use of torture against her.

Shaky trade relations

However, rights advocates at home and abroad said the chance that President Trump will criticize China’s human rights records is slim as he, like many other world leaders, is likely to put more emphasis on trade relations with China.

But true progress in trade, some argue, is dependent on advances in human rights.

“It’ll be a sad thing if [trade] cooperation with China is prioritized before [the improvement of] human rights. I believe human rights pave the core foundation for the world’s development. Without [the protection of] human rights, any such economic cooperation won’t be sustainable,” said Ou Biaofeng, a rights activist from Human province.

Under the banner of “America First” the Trump administration has pledged not to interfere in other countries domestic politics and that is sending a worrying signal, one analysts worry may heighten authoritarianism in the region.

International calls

United Nations’ human rights experts have urged Hong Kong to uphold the fundamental freedoms of expression and assembly before the court heard a final appeal of Joshua Wong and Nathan Law, who were granted bail on Oct 24, against their respective jail sentences of six months and eight months.

The top court in Hong Kong on Tuesday decided to grant a bid by Wong and Law to appeal their prison terms in a hearing to be scheduled in January.

In Taiwan, various non-governmental organizations gathered in Taipei on Tuesday to voice their support for the Taiwanese rights activist Lee Ming-che, whom China has detained since late March, pending a verdict.

Lin Hsiu-hsin, Taiwan Association of University Professors president, told the Associated Press that “China not only didn’t respect international regulations and human rights, but also didn’t care about its own laws because it has detained a Taiwanese citizen,” who hasn’t been freed yet.

Free Liu Xia

Meanwhile, last week, more than 50 internationally-celebrated writers, artists and supporters of PEN America, including Chimamanda Achibie, Margaret Atwood, and Khaled Hosseini, issued a written petition urging China to end all restrictions and surveillance imposed on Liu Xia, saying the only reason for her detention is her connection to her deceased husband.

The writers further called upon President Trump to seek the release of Liu, who was last seen in an online video in late August.

Also, international rights groups are concerned that thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are being held in re-education camps, which are now formally referred to as “Professional Education Schools,” without contact with their families under a policy designed to counter extremism in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, according to local officials.

 
…

The Trump administration has ended the immigration benefits for nearly 2,500 Nicaraguan nationals who are in the United States, but extended benefits for 57,000 Hondurans.

The Central American migrants were allowed to live and work in the U.S. under a program called Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

The Department of Homeland Security gave the Nicaraguans TPS recipients 12 months after the January 5 expiration of their protected status to arrange their affairs and either leave the country or obtain legal status through a different visa category.

The Nicaraguan and Honduran TPS recipients have been living in the U.S. under protected status since Hurricane Mitch killed 10,000 across Central America in 1998. That means many of them have been living in the United States for two decades.

Martha Irraheta, a Nicaragua native who arrived in the Miami area about 25 years ago and works as a cook at Islas del Caribe restaurant, said she fears having to return to her homeland. “I am very afraid. I don’t want to return to my country, with the violence the way it is – no way.”  She will have to leave behind a 22-year-old U.S.-born daughter who is a citizen.

Roger Castaño, U.S. representative of Nicaragua’s Permanent Commission on Human Rights said the government in Managua cannot guarantee the safety of those who would be forced to return. “How is the United States going to deport or send back all those thousands of people?” he asks.

Another 195,000 Salvadorans and 46,000 Haitians are awaiting the decision on their fate, as DHS must decide in coming weeks what to do with TPS recipients from those countries whose legal residency will expire early next year.  The TPS designation for Haitians expires on January 22, 2018, while that of the Salvadorans on March 9.  Federal officials are required to announce 60 days before any TPS designation expires whether it will be extended.

These immigrants are among more than 320,000 from 10 nations who have time-limited permission to live and work in the U.S. under TPS because of war, hurricanes, earthquakes or other catastrophes in their home countries that could make it dangerous for them to return.

VOA’s Spanish Service and reporter Jose Pernalete in Miami contributed to this report.

 
…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday defended his sizable business links to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, saying “there is no impropriety.”

Ross, a 79-year-old billionaire industrialist, has a 31 percent stake worth $2 million to $10 million in a shipping venture, Navigator Holdings, with connections to Putin’s son-in-law and an oligarch who is subject to U.S. sanctions and is Putin’s judo partner, according to newly leaked documents.

But Ross, a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, said on the sidelines of a business conference in London, “I think the media has made a lot more out of it than it deserves.”

Navigator earns millions of dollars a year shipping natural gas for Russian energy giant Sibur, which is partly owned by Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, and Gennady Timchenko, the oligarch who is Putin’s judo partner, according to the documents. Timchenko is subject to the U.S. sanctions because of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its subsequent support for pro-Russian separatists fighting the Kyiv government’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

‘Nothing whatsoever improper’

But in a pair of interviews with the BBC and Bloomberg TV, Ross dismissed concern about his involvement in the operation. He said the Sibur deal was arranged before he joined Navigator’s board.

“There’s no interlocking of board, there’s no interlocking of shareholders, I had nothing to do with the negotiation of the deal,” he said. “But most importantly the company that is our client itself, Sibur, was not then sanctioned, is not now sanctioned, and never was sanctioned in between. There’s nothing whatsoever improper.”

Ross told Bloomberg, “We have no business ties to those Russian individuals who are under sanction.” Ross said he has been selling his stake in Navigator, “but that isn’t because of this.”

Ross sold off numerous holdings when he joined Trump’s Cabinet earlier this year to avoid conflicts of interest while he promotes U.S. commerce throughout the world. But he kept his Navigator stake, which has been held in a chain of partnerships in the Cayman Islands, an offshore tax haven where Ross has placed much of his estimated $2 billion in wealth.

‘Paradise papers’

Ross did not disclose the Russian business link when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as commerce secretary, but it surfaced in a trove of more than 13 million documents leaked from Appleby, a Bermuda-based offshore law firm that advises the wealthy elite on global financial transactions as they look to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.  Appleby says it has investigated all the allegations and found “there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients.”

The cache of documents, called the Paradise Papers, was first leaked to a German newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and dozens of other media outlets around the world, including The Guardian in Britain, The New York Times and NBC News in the U.S., all of which reported on the Ross investment on Sunday.

The disclosure of Ross’ financial interests in Russia comes as a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, and three congressional panels are investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an effort the U.S. intelligence community has concluded was led by Putin in an effort to undermine U.S. democracy and help Trump win the White House.

Several Trump campaign associates have come under scrutiny, but until the disclosures about Ross’ holdings, there have been no reports of business links between top Trump officials and any member of Putin’s family and his inner circle.

The disclosures could put pressure on world leaders, including Trump and British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who have both pledged to curb aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

“Congress has the power to crack down on offshore tax avoidance,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “There are copious loopholes in our federal tax code that essentially incentivize companies to cook the books and make U.S. profits appear to be earned offshore. The House tax bill introduced late last week does nothing to close these loopholes.”
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Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam both claim momentum is on their side with one day to go before Election Day in Virginia’s high-stakes, closely watched race for governor.

The candidates are racing across the state Monday after a weekend spent trying to trying to rally supporters ahead of the Tuesday vote.

Northam felt strong enthusiasm from his supporters and said he was heartened by the high number of absentee votes that had been cast so far compared with four years ago, particularly in Democratic-leaning areas. Northam predicted turnout could be significantly higher than recent past gubernatorial elections.

“We may get well over 50 percent, which would be real good for our party,” Northam said.

Gillespie told supporters at a rally Sunday that Republicans were set to sweep statewide races.

“We no longer just have momentum — we have the lead,” Gillespie said.

Virginia is one of only two states electing a new governor this year, and the contest is viewed by many as an early referendum on President Donald Trump’s political popularity.

Democrats are eager to prove they can harness anti-Trump energy into success at the polls, while Republicans are looking to show they have a winning blueprint in a blue-leaning state. Most public polls have shown a close race to succeed Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who is term limited.

Northam, a pediatric neurologist and the state’s lieutenant governor, spent Saturday in voter-rich northern Virginia, where Democrats have run up huge leads in recent statewide elections. He attended rallies with union members, immigrant groups and others where he sought to use anti-Trump energy as a motivating factor.

“Do you all remember how you felt when you woke up on November the 9th of 2016?” Northam asked a group of canvassers in a supporter’s backyard in Ashburn, referring to the day after Trump won the presidential campaign. “We cannot take any chances and wake up like that again.”

National Democrats, still stinging from last year’s presidential race, are hoping a strong showing by Northam will help motivate the party ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections. A string of high-profile surrogates, including former President Barack Obama, have campaigned on his behalf.

Some volunteers helping Northam said Trump’s victory had spurred them to get involved in a political campaign for the first time.

“Really, a lot of us feel unsettled,” said Kee Jun, a Korean-American from Northern Virginia who helped introduce Northam to voters at a restaurant Saturday. “I feel an obligation to my children, Virginia residents and the nation.”

But some Republicans said they felt Trump’s victory has energized their party in a lasting way that will help Gillespie.

“People realize they can have a voice and can make a difference in an election,” said John Ancellotti, a retired Coast Guard captain and federal agent who attended a Gillespie rally Sunday.

Gillespie, a White House adviser to President George W. Bush and former lobbyist, has kept Trump at a distance and has not campaigned with him. But in a bid to rally Trump supporters, Gillespie has run hard-edge attacks ads against Northam focused on immigrants in the country illegally and preserving Confederate statues. The approach has drawn bipartisan criticism, but Gillespie supporters say he’s been unfairly maligned for taking positions that are popular with voters but may not be politically correct.

“Ed is willing to take those arrows,” said U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who campaigned with Gillespie on Sunday.

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said Saturday that Gillespie’s tack to the right will help him “pull this out,” according to the pro-Trump website Breitbart News.

Gillespie did not mention the president during Sunday rallies in Williamsburg and Virginia Beach, instead focusing his message on his plan to boost the state’s economy.

Republicans said a controversial last-minute ad by the Latino Victory Fund, which features a Gillespie supporter chasing down children of different minority groups in a pickup truck, has helped galvanize Gillespie supporters at a key time.

“That was God’s way of helping him,” said Robin Milewski, a York County Republican volunteer.

 
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller pushed back on Sunday against Paul Manafort’s efforts to avoid house arrest, arguing that President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager needed to further detail the finances behind his proposed $12 million bail agreement.

In a court memorandum, Mueller and his attorneys argued that the court should only agree to a bail agreement if Manafort fully explains his finances to the court.

Prosecutors said his team had not been able to substantiate the value of one of the three properties, as well as several life insurance policies, Manafort wants to pledge for bail.

Manafort, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign for several months last year, and associate Richard Gates pleaded not guilty last week to a 12-count indictment by a federal grand jury. They face charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. The two are currently under house arrest, and prosecutors have argued they could pose a flight risk.

The charges are part of Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the 2016 election in Trump’s favor and potential collusion by Trump associates, allegations that Moscow and the Republican president deny.

In a Saturday court filing, Manafort offered to limit his travel and pledged life insurance worth about $4.5 million as well as about $8 million in real estate assets, including a property on Fifth Avenue in New York that was identified by some media outlets as an apartment in Trump Tower.

But prosecutors said they needed an independent appraisal of that Fifth Avenue property, since Manafort was claiming a fair-market value of the unit that appeared to exceed other outside estimates.

Prosecutors also argued they needed time to talk to Manafort’s insurance company about his policies. The prosecutors noted that Manafort would be required to forfeit one of those policies, worth $2.6 million, should he be convicted, creating additional questions about its value in a potential bail agreement.

In the document, Mueller said his team was in talks with Manafort’s counsel about striking a bail agreement but that Manafort had not provided enough detail yet on his finances.

“Those discussions are best described as ongoing, and the government is not prepared to consent to a change in the current conditions of release at least until Manafort provides a full accounting of his net worth and the value of the assets that he proposes to pledge,” Mueller said in the court memorandum.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said on Thursday that initial bail terms would remain in place and set a bail hearing for Monday to consider changes.
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While President Donald Trump continues an Asia trip with high geo-strategic stakes, Republicans in Washington are promoting an ambitious tax reform bill that could bring enormous fiscal, and political, consequences. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, a tax cut is Trump’s last hope for a major legislative victory in his first year in office, something Republicans desperately need and something Democrats are determined to deny them.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross shares significant business interests through a shipping venture in Russia with President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and an oligarch subject to American sanctions, newly leaked documents showed Sunday.

Ross, a 79-year-old billionaire industrialist, has an investment in partnerships valued at between $2 million and $10 million in the shipper, Navigator Holdings, according to his government ethics disclosures.

The shipping company earns millions of dollars a year transporting natural gas for Sibur, a Russian energy company that is partly owned by Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, and Gennady Timchenko, the oligarch who is Putin’s judo partner, according to the documents. Timchenko is subject to the U.S. sanctions because of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its subsequent support for pro-Russian separatists fighting the Kyiv government’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

Ross sold off numerous holdings when he joined President Donald Trump’s Cabinet earlier this year to avoid conflicts of interest while he promotes U.S. commerce throughout the world. But he kept his Navigator stake, which has been held in a chain of partnerships in the Cayman Islands, an offshore tax haven where Ross has placed much of his estimated $2 billion in wealth.

‘Paradise Papers’

Ross did not disclose the Russian business link when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as commerce secretary, but it surfaced in a trove of more than 7 million internal documents leaked from Appleby, a Bermuda-based offshore law firm that advises the wealthy elite on global financial transactions as they look to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.  Appleby, says it has investigated all the allegations, and found “there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients.”

The cache of documents, called the Paradise Papers, was first leaked to a German newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media, including The Guardian in Britain, The New York Times and NBC News in the U.S., all of which reported on the Ross investment on Sunday.

Ross, through a Commerce Department spokesman, said he removes himself as secretary from matters related to trans-oceanic shipping and consults with the agency’s ethics officials “to ensure the highest ethical standards.”

The disclosure of Ross’ financial interests in Russia comes as a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, and three congressional panels are investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an effort the U.S. intelligence community has concluded was led by Putin in an effort to undermine U.S. democracy and help Trump win the White House.

Several Trump campaign associates have come under scrutiny, but until the disclosures about Ross’ holdings, there have been no reports of business links between top Trump officials and any member of Putin’s family and his inner circle.

The disclosures will likely put pressure on world leaders, including Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who have both pledged to curb aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

“Congress has the power to crack down on offshore tax avoidance. There are copious loopholes in our federal tax code that essentially incentivize companies to cook the books and make U.S. profits appear to be earned offshore. The House tax bill introduced late last week does nothing to close these loopholes,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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President Donald Trump on Sunday began his first official visit to Asia. His first stop is Japan, followed by South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Here’s what people in those countries have to say about their expectations for the visit.

JAPAN

Yoh Kawakami, employee at an information management solution company:

“I do wonder whether things will be OK, like, what will the world turn into? I wonder about his (Trump’s) response to North Korea and other things. There are things that scare me. He is becoming friendly with Prime Minister Abe, and I don’t know if that is right or not.”

“I do want him (Trump) to be more cool-headed. If he continues only provoking, the situation may actually become explosive.”

​Yumu Katsuyama, employee at nonprofit for international clinical childcare:

“Honestly when he first became president, I did question whether he was OK. But my American friends have said that after he became president, their lives and the economy has gotten better. Personally, I have started thinking that it may be a good thing that he became president.”

SOUTH KOREA

Ock Hyun-woong, company worker:

“President Trump is known to be a man of coercive control who makes controversial statements that get the attention of foreign media. While I don’t oppose President Trump’s visit to South Korea, I hope he can work well with South Korean-U.S. issues, like the economy.”

CHINA

Ding Chenling, technology investor and well-known tech blogger with 700,000 followers on China’s microblogging website Weibo:

“Well, maybe our system is not that perfect yet, but it’s like a kid to the teacher. We don’t want to be lectured by the teacher. We want to have our own way. We want to grow our own self by ourselves. So I think that’s the reason the Chinese people like Trump. He casts aside the political correctness. He says ‘Oh yeah, it’s good, America may do business, we want to do business, we want to make money together.”’

​Zhao Yingran, business development manager for a virtual reality video company:

“So I very much respect President Xi from the bottom of my heart and I think under his leadership, China will lead the world sooner or later especially with the focus on technologies and humanity. I think all of the policies executed by President Xi should set a good example for Donald Trump, which Donald Trump will need to learn to make United States great again.”

VIETNAM

Bach Ngoc Lien, development expert:

“Donald Trump is a controversial character. He often has negative comments about migrants, makes unfavorable policies about climate change, the areas where the U.S. used to be the leader and plays an important role internationally. Human rights, women’s rights are values that the U.S. used to uphold, but I find that these values are fading under Trump’s presidency.”

“During his campaign, President Donald Trump had a slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ and for his Asian trip, I have a slogan for him: ‘Make America Friendly Again’ because the U.S has always been a friendly country, being the dream of many people, up until now. I hope Donald Trump will not distance the U.S and isolate it from other countries. I hope he will make the U.S friendly again like it used to be.”

PHILIPPINES

Jeanne Vivar, student:

“I don’t like the conservative policies of Trump and obviously it has affected the Filipinos working in America. Ironically, there are a lot of people who are in favor of Donald Trump.”

“In Asia, especially the problem in North Korea is escalating, so my message will be when Trump arrives here in Asia and the Philippines, I hope the tensions will ease instead of him making it worse.”

​Lorenzo Nakpil, architect:

“My opinion on Trump is mixed. I don’t agree with some people in the West they say he is racist and he wants to build a wall blocking Mexico and he gives immigrants a hard time. He is very conservative in that sense but in a way I respect that. Where I agree with Trump is where he agrees with (Philippine President Rodrigo) Duterte and he supports the Philippines’ war on drugs. He doesn’t buy it that Duterte’s way of stopping drugs is a human rights violation. Our president with the support of Trump, they’re actually doing a good job.”
…

The U.S. president’s performance as leader of the American people has received failing grades from the public, according to a Washington Post-ABC News survey.

Donald Trump has been in office almost one year, and his approval rating is “demonstrably lower than any previous chief executive at this point in his presidency over seven decades of polling” says a report on the poll in The Washington Post. Only 37 percent of Americans, or fewer than 4 in 10, approve of Trump’s job performance as the U.S. chief executive.

His disapproval rating has reached a stunning 59 percent, and half of that group strongly disapproves of the job he is doing.

At 100 days into the presidency, 42 percent of Americans said they thought Trump has accomplished a great deal, but now that number has slipped to 35 percent.

The newspaper report said a 65 percent of those surveyed say Trump has accomplished “not much” or “little or nothing.”

The survey also indicated 51 percent of Americans trust Trump not at all in his handling of the threat posed by North Korea.

The Post reports that half of all Americans think the president has a bias against black people and more than half, 55 percent, think he is biased against women.

However, of those who voted for Trump in the election, 91 percent continue to approve of his performance.

The poll was conducted between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday told servicemen at Yokota Air Base in Japan that “no one, no dictator, no regime … should underestimate American resolve.” His remarks came at the start of a nearly two-week Asian trip that is expected to focus on North Korea.

Some of his comments, while directed at the American troops, could also be seen as a veiled warning to the isolated nation:

“You are the greatest threat to tyrants and dictators who seek to prey on the innocent.”

Message to North Korea

En route to Japan, the president spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One, where he was asked by VOA’s Steve Herman if he had any message for the North Korean people.

“I think they’re great people,” the president said. “They’re industrious. They’re warm, much warmer than the world really knows and understands, they’re great people. And I hope it all works out for everybody. It’ll be a wonderful thing if we can work it out for those great people and for everybody.”

Trump also indicated he expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in the Philippines later in the trip.

After his speech at Yokota, the president took a 25-minute flight on Marine One to the the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama prefecture (state) near Tokyo.

Asked by VOA News if he was ready to play golf, Trump responded “we’re ready.” He was then greeted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in front of the expansive clubhouse. The course will play host to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic golf tournament.

As club members ate lunch, Trump and Abe, in the dining room, signed white hats reading “Donald and Shinzo Make Alliance Even Greater.”

The two leaders, following lunch, went outside to the golf course to play nine holes with professional Japanese golfer Hideki Matsuyama at the private club founded in 1929.

​Stopover in Hawaii

Trump arrived in Japan after a stopover in Hawaii, where he paid a solemn visit to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, the site of the surprise Japanese naval attack in 1941 that plunged the U.S. into World War II. He also received a classified briefing by the military at the U.S. Pacific Command.

Before departing for Japan, his first stop on a multination tour of Asia, Trump stopped at his Trump International Hotel in Waikiki and spoke with some employees.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Trump “wanted to say hello and thank you to the employees for all their hard work.”

North Korea to dominate talks

Trump said he had wanted to spend another day in Hawaii at the end of what he called this “very important trip,” but canceled that plan to stay longer in the Philippines to attend the East Asia Summit, in addition to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting.

Before arriving in the Philippines, the 13-day trip will take Trump to Japan, South Korea, China and Vietnam, his longest journey as president. 

In Trump’s meetings with other Asian leaders, the president is expected to tell them the world is “running out of time” to stop North Korea’s nuclear warhead and ballistic missile development, which U.S. administration officials deem to be the biggest threat currently faced.

“The discussions will be around mainly what more we can do now to resolve this, short of war, recognizing that all of us are running out of time,” according to National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. “The United States, South Korea, Japan, China are running out of time on this.”
…

Government documents newly released Friday regarding John F. Kennedy’s assassination say allegations that Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the CIA were “totally unfounded.”

A 1975 CIA memo says a thorough search of agency records in and outside the United States was conducted to determine whether Oswald had been used by the agency or connected with it in “any conceivable way.”

The memo said the search came up empty. The memo also said there was no indication that any other U.S. agency used Oswald as a source or for recruitment.

Third document release

The National Archives released another 676 government documents related to the assassination, the third public release so far this year. Under law, all the documents were to be disclosed to the public last week.

Most of the latest release includes 553 records from the CIA that previously were withheld in their entirety. There also are records from the Justice and Defense departments, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the National Archives.

University of Virginia historian Larry Sabato complained that many of the documents in the latest release were heavily redacted. He tweeted about a 144-page record, titled “Material Reviewed at CIA headquarters by House Select Committee on Assassinations staff members,” that had writing on only a handful of pages.

President Donald Trump has ordered the release of all records related to the assassination, and they are expected to be made public on a rolling basis during the next three to four weeks. He also directed agencies to take another look at redactions and withhold information only in the rarest of circumstances.

​Oswald’s Mexico trip

One record showed how U.S. officials scrambled after the assassination to round up information about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City weeks earlier. Officials wondered whether Oswald had been trying to get visas at the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City in order to “make a quick escape after assassinating the president.”

A CIA message sent Nov. 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy was killed, said an “important question” that remained unsolved was whether Oswald had been planning to travel right away or return to the U.S. and leave later.

The message said that although it appeared Oswald “was then thinking only about a peaceful change of residence to the Soviet Union, it is also possible that he was getting documented to make a quick escape after assassinating the president.”

Another record dated April 11, 1964, recounted a visit to the CIA by three staff members of the Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination.

The memo said the staff members indicated that Thomas Mann, former ambassador to Mexico and then-assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, “still has the ‘feeling in his guts’ that (Cuban leader Fidel) Castro hired Oswald to kill Kennedy. They said, however, that the commission has not been able to get any proof of that.”

MLK document released

Also in the latest release was a 20-page FBI analysis of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. dated March 12, 1968, a month before he was assassinated April 4, 1968. One section alleges that King was attracted to former members of the Communist Party in America. It notes that two previous aides were party members and eight others, who helped shape King’s organization in its early stages, had communist affiliations.

The analysis said that in the early 1960s, the Communist Party was trying to get a black labor coalition to further its goals in the United States. It referenced a May 1961 issue of a communist newspaper that stated, “Communists will do their utmost to strengthen and unite the Negro movement and ring it to the backing of the working people.”

The FBI said King and his organization were “made-to-order” to achieve these objectives.

The FBI’s surveillance of King is well-known, and the analysis includes several pages about his sexual life. One document said a black minister who attended a workshop to train ministers in February 1968 in Miami “expressed his disgust with the behind-the-scene drinking, fornication and homosexuality that went on at the conference.”

“Throughout the ensuing years and until this date, King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction,” the FBI report said.
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U.S. authorities released a 10-year-old immigrant girl with cerebral palsy who had been detained by border agents after surgery because she is in the U.S. without legal permission.

The American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said that Rosa Maria Hernandez was returned to her family Friday. Her parents brought her into the U.S. from Mexico in 2007, when she was a toddler, and they live in the Texas border city of Laredo.

Surgery, then detention

A cousin who is an American citizen took Rosa Maria from Laredo to a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi on Oct. 24, where she was scheduled to have emergency gallbladder surgery. To get to Corpus Christi, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) away, she had to pass through an interior checkpoint in South Texas operated by the Border Patrol.

Border Patrol agents followed Rosa Maria and the cousin to the hospital, then took the girl into custody after the surgery and transported her to a facility in San Antonio for unaccompanied immigrant minors, under the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Border Patrol has said it had no choice but to detain Rosa Maria, arguing that she was considered an unaccompanied minor under federal law, the same as a child who crosses into the United States alone without legal permission.

ACLU sues; deportation still a threat

The ACLU sued the government on Rosa Maria’s behalf Tuesday, argued that the U.S. government violated federal law on unaccompanied minors and endangered Rosa Maria’s health by not sending her home.

“She never should have been in this situation in the first place,” ACLU lawyer Michael Tan said Friday. “There is no reason Border Patrol had to target a child.”

While Rosa Maria has been reunited with her family, she still faces the threat of deportation. Tan said Friday that Border Patrol agents had issued Rosa Maria a notice to appear in immigration court, but that the case had yet to move forward.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, declined to comment. HHS declined to comment on Rosa Maria’s case, but said the agency’s focus was “on the safety and best interest of each child.”

Leticia Gonzalez, an attorney for Rosa Maria’s family, said the 10-year-old had the mental capacity of a child closer to 4 or 5 years old because of her cerebral palsy. Priscila Martinez, an activist at the Workers Defense Action Fund, said the child had started to show signs of socially withdrawing while in detention and refusing to eat her favorite kind of bread.

Border patrol criticism

Federal immigration authorities have faced strong criticism from advocates and some Texas Democratic congressmen over their handling of the case.

Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said Friday that he had tried to see Rosa Maria earlier in the day and had spoken to federal officials about her case. He said Border Patrol agents could have chosen to let Rosa Maria pass through the checkpoint without following or detaining her.

But U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a previous statement after she was detained that “there is no discretion with regard to the law whether or not the agents should enforce the law.”
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President Donald Trump may be away on a nearly two-week trip to Asia. But back in Washington, special counsel Robert Mueller is digging up new details in his investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russians trying to influence the election. VOA’s Peter Heinlein at the White House has the latest.
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Prominent Democrats are expressing outrage over revelations from former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile that Hillary Clinton’s campaign rigged the primary election against rival Bernie Sanders.

Brazile, in an excerpt from her upcoming book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, claims that prior to securing the party’s nomination, Clinton, through a joint fundraising agreement signed with the DNC, agreed to finance the DNC in exchange for power over the organization’s operations.

Normally, a nominee wouldn’t exert control over the national party apparatus until after accepting the nomination. According to Brazile, though, the Clinton camp took control of DNC operations in August 2015, nearly a year before Clinton accepted the nomination.

Brazile said the arrangement was “not illegal, but it sure looked unethical.”

“If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity,” she wrote.

The DNC is, ostensibly, a neutral organization meant to facilitate the contest between Clinton and Sanders, though Sanders supporters had long claimed the party showed a clear preference for Clinton.

Several prominent Democrats were quick to pounce on Brazile’s claims. Senator Elizabeth Warren, when asked by CNN if she believes the DNC rigged the primary contest against Sanders, said one word: “Yes.”

Warren, who campaigned heavily for Clinton during the election, called the Clinton revelations “a real problem” for Democrats.

“What we’ve got to do as Democrats now is, we’ve got to hold this party accountable,” she said.

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who previously served as the DNC vice-chairwoman, called for a complete overhaul of campaign finance laws and a restructuring of the national party in response to the revelations the DNC rigged the nomination process in favor of Clinton.

“The DNC secretly chose their nominee over a year before the primary elections even occurred. This shines a light on how deeply broken our campaign finance laws are, and how they’ve weakened individual candidates while strengthening and empowering political parties and special interests,” Gabbard says in a video released Friday.

Gabbard said campaign finance laws “allowed the Clinton campaign to bypass individual campaign contribution limits by funneling millions of dollars through the DNC and state parties — taking control of the DNC in the process.”

Brazile laid out in her book, published by Politico, how the Clinton campaign used the DNC as “a fund-raising clearinghouse” in order to skirt election finance laws. Individuals are allowed to contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign, but the limits for state parties and the national committee are a lot higher.

Under the joint fundraising agreement Clinton signed with the DNC, individuals could write a check for $353,400 to the joint account. The money would first be deposited in state party accounts, before being transferred back to the DNC, and on to Clinton.

“Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn,” Brazile wrote, referencing the Clinton campaign headquarters in New York.

Ties to Obama

According to Brazile, former President Barack Obama and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz left the DNC $24 million in debt following the 2012 presidential election, which led to the “unethical” agreement with the Clinton campaign.

“What had happened?” Brazile wrote. “The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.”

The Clinton campaign cleared up the pre-existing debt left behind by the Obama campaign and, in return, the DNC agreed to let the Clinton campaign “control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile said.

Brazile took over as chairwoman of the DNC when her predecessor, Wasserman Schultz, was forced to resign after emails released by WikiLeaks appeared to show her coordinating party efforts with the Clinton campaign.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday federal probes into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election to help him win are a “disgrace,” and he questioned why investigators are not looking into a disclosure the Democratic National Committee acted improperly in favor of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during last year’s primary election season.

Trump raised questions about the DNC controversy in a series of tweets prior to departing for a 12-day trip to Asia, and one day after former interim DNC Chairwomen Donna Brazile disclosed an agreement between the DNC and Clinton’s campaign that effectively allowed Clinton to reign over the party’s finances and other operations before the primary elections began.

“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..,” Trump tweeted.

In a second tweet, Trump referred to Brazile’s revelation, which was made in her new book, and cited a number of other issues surrounding Clinton and the DNC.

“…New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus….”

In yet another tweet, the president then turned his attention back to federal investigators, whom he suggested are not doing their job effectively.

“….People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!”

Trump implied in his fourth tweet that allegations are untrue his presidential campaign colluded with Russia to capture the White House last year.

“The real story on Collusion is in Donna B’s new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!”

In an apparent reference to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, the president used his derogatory nickname for her, in reference to an interview Warren had with CNN Thursday, saying she believed the Democratic primary elections were rigged to help Clinton win.

“Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.”

Before leaving the White House for his trip to Asia — his longest foreign presidential trip to date — the Republican president criticized the probes into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and again turned his attention to the Democrats.

“There was no collusion, there was no nothing. It’s a disgrace frankly that they continue.” He added: “… they should be looking at the Democrats,” he said. “They should be looking at a lot of things and a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”

After Trump departed for his trip abroad aboard Air Force One, he resumed his tweeting, suggesting supporters of Clinton’s Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders are angry about his loss in the primary elections.

“Bernie Sanders supporters have every right to be apoplectic of the complete theft of the Dem primary by Crooked Hillary!”

“I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right.”

The president’s focus on the Democrats comes four days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged two former Trump campaign aides in connection with the probe into Russia’s attempt to influence last year’s presidential election.

Paul Manafort, who for three months was Trump’s campaign chairman last year, and former business associate Rick Gates, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington as part of Mueller’s criminal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. They were the first charges Mueller has made public in his five-month probe, although the allegations did not relate directly to the election.

Manafort was charged with conspiring against the U.S., money laundering, and lying to the government as part of a wide-ranging lobbying effort for former Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych.

In addition, Mueller disclosed that former Trump foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty October 5 to lying to federal agents in January about his contacts with people “he understood to have close connections to senior Russian government officials.”

As he spoke with reporters Friday at the White House, Trump said he has few recollections about a March 16 meeting with Papadopoulos, at which Papadopoulos allegedly offered to set up a meeting for the candidate with Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t remember much about that meeting. It was a very unimportant meeting. It took place a long time ago. Don’t remember much about it,” said Trump.

Trump’s flurry of activity on Twitter Friday came hours after one of his Twitter accounts, “(@realDonaldTrump),” was deactivated for 11 minutes Thursday evening.

Twitter initially said the account had been inadvertently deleted due to human error, but later said it was deactivated by an employee on the worker’s last day on the job.

“We are conducting a full internal review,” the company said.

 
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President Donald Trump said Friday the American public “deserves” a federal investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee over a joint fundraising agreement they signed in August 2015.

Trump launched a multi-part Twitter attack criticizing his former 2016 rival. Trump writes: “Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!” He adds it’s the “real story on Collusion.”

Trump’s accusation follows Politico’s publication of an excerpt from former acting DNC Chair Donna Brazile’s upcoming book. Brazile alleges she found “proof” that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged in Clinton’s favor. Brazile writes that she believes no laws were violated, but that a funding agreement “looked unethical.”

Late Thursday, Trump tweeted without evidence that he believed they had acted “illegally.”

In subsequent tweets Friday, Trump highlighted criticism of the DNC from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom he has mocked by calling her “Pocahontas.” He also called on federal authorities to launch an investigation.

“Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.,” he tweeted.

The fundraising agreement, signed in August 2015 during the primary process, was unusual for an open seat and, according to Brazile, gave the Clinton campaign oversight of some DNC decisions. Months later, Clinton’s chief challenger, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, signed his own agreement with the party.

Trump and his campaign are subjects of a wide-ranging investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The White House has repeatedly sought to turn the attention of the probe, which is looking into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, to Clinton and her campaign.
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Ivanka Trump, U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter and informal adviser, told a summit in Tokyo Friday that the world must boost women and minority participation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Ivanka Trump, seen as an important influence on her father, has made women’s issues one of her signature policy areas since beginning her role at the White House. Her comments came ahead of her father’s trip to Asia, his first since taking office in January, that begins in Japan on Sunday.

WATCH: Ivanka Trump on Women’s Participation in STEM Fields

“Female and minority participation in STEM fields is moving in the wrong direction,” she said at the World Assembly for Women summit. “We must create equal participation in these traditionally male-dominated sectors of our economy.”

She said her father’s tax reforms, unveiled by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, would benefit American families.

“We are seeking to simplify the tax code, lower rates, expand the child tax credit, eliminate the marriage penalty, and put more money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans,” she told a meeting room in a Tokyo hotel that had a number of empty seats.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government was aiming to mobilize women in Japan’s workforce and boost economic growth, launching policies such as improved childcare in his “Womenomics” program.

“We’ve put our full strength into creating an environment where it’s easy for women to work,” Abe said in an opening address to the conference. “I really feel that Japan has come a long way,” he said. 

Japan’s gender gap remains wide despite such efforts, with little progress made since Abe vowed at the United Nations in 2013 to create “a society where women can shine.”

Japan ranked 114 out of 144 in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap report, sandwiched between Guinea and Ethiopia and down 13 places since Abe took power.

Abe appointed only two women to ministerial posts in a Cabinet reshuffle in August, down from three and five respectively in his previous two Cabinets. Only 14 percent of Japan’s lawmakers are women.

Men also dominate decision-making in business in Japan. Only 3.7 percent of Japanese-listed company executives were women at the end of July, according to the Cabinet Office, barely changed from 3.4 percent a year earlier.

 
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President Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was “inadvertently deactivated” by a Twitter Inc. employee Thursday and was down for 11 minutes before it was restored, the social media company said.

“Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” the company said in a tweet.

“We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” it added.

A Twitter representative declined to comment further. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has made extensive use of messages on Twitter to attack his opponents and promote his policies, both during the 2016 presidential campaign and since taking office in January. He has 41.7 million followers on Twitter.

His first tweet after Thursday’s outage:

In a similar incident last November, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey’s account was briefly suspended as a result of what he said was an internal mistake.
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Facebook received several tongue-lashings during U.S. congressional hearings this week, but the world’s largest social network also got an assignment: Figure out how to notify tens of millions of Americans who might have been fed Russian propaganda.

U.S. lawmakers and some tech analysts are pressing the company to identify users who were served about 80,000 posts on Facebook, 120,000 on its Instagram picture-sharing app, and 3,000 ads that the company has traced to alleged Russian operatives, and to inform them.

The posts from Russia were designed to divide Americans, particularly around the 2016 U.S. elections, according to Facebook, U.S. intelligence agencies and lawmakers. The Russian government has denied it tried to meddle in the elections.

“When you discover a deceptive foreign government presentation on your platform, my presumption, from what you’ve said today — you’ll stop it and take it down,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed told Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday.

“Do you feel an obligation, in turn, to notify those people who have accessed that? And can you do that? And shouldn’t you do that?” Reed asked.

Stretch responded that he was not sure Facebook could identify the people because its estimates have relied on modeling, rather than actual counts, but he did not rule it out.

“The technical challenges associated with that undertaking are substantial,” Stretch said.

Critics of Facebook on social media and in media interviews have expressed skepticism, noting that the company closely tracks user activity such as likes and clicks for advertising purposes.

Facebook declined to comment on Thursday.

As many as 126 million people could have been served the posts on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram, according to company estimates.

Social media critics

Many of them will not believe they were manipulated unless Facebook tells them, said Tristan Harris of Time Well Spent, an organization critical of advertising-based social media.

“Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene, and they’re the only ones with access to what happened,” Harris, an ex-Google employee, said in an interview Thursday.

The 2.1 billion people with active Facebook accounts often get notifications from the service, on everything from birthdays and upcoming events to friend requests and natural disasters.

Shortly before 6 p.m. EDT on Thursday, more than 83,000 people had signed a Change.org online petition asking Facebook to tell users about the Russian posts.

Lawyers for Twitter and Alphabet’s Google also said their companies would consider notifying customers.

The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Senator Mark Warner, drew an analogy to another industry.

“If you were in a medical facility, and you got exposed to a disease, the medical facility would have to tell the folks who were exposed,” Warner said.

IN PHOTOS: A Look at Russian Social Media Election ‘Meddling’

‘Duty to warn’

U.S. law includes a concept known as “post-sale duty to warn,” which may require notifying previous buyers if a manufacturer discovers a problem with a product.

That legal duty likely does not apply to Facebook, said Christopher Robinette, a law professor at Widener University in Pennsylvania. He said courts would likely rule that social media posts are not a product but a service, which is exempt from the duty. Courts also do not want to interfere in free speech, he said.

Robinette added, though, that he thought notifications to users would be a good idea. “This strikes me as a fairly significant problem,” he said.
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Facebook, Twitter and Google executives testified in public before Senate and House investigations into Russian election interference for the first time Wednesday, amid disclosures that Russian influence on social media platforms was much wider in scope than previously understood. The lawmakers had tough questions for the Silicon Valley executives as VOA’s Katherine Gypson reports from Capitol Hill.
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As U.S. authorities seek motives that might have led 29-year-old suspect Sayfullo Saipov to run down and kill innocent pedestrians and cyclists in Lower Manhattan, New York’s Uzbek community believes his radicalization can be attributed in part to a lack of language and culture-specific inclusion among Uzbek nationals attempting to integrate into U.S. culture.
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Wednesday, Nov. 8, marks the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s election as the 45th U.S. president. Trump’s surprise election sent shockwaves across the country and around the world, but his first nine months in office have often been chaotic. Trump has followed through on some of his election promises, but failed on others. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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According to a tweet by President Donald Trump Wednesday morning, the Uzbek attacker who killed at people Tuesday night in Manhattan came to the United States on a diversity immigrant visa.

For would-be Americans who don’t have family in the U.S., or an employer to sponsor them, or who aren’t refugees, the diversity visa, also known as the green card lottery, is the only option. It requires a high school degree or a few years of work experience just to qualify.

The State Department noted, however, that visa information is confidential under U.S. law, and that they could not comment on any specific visa application.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer played an important role in drawing up legislation for the program in the 1990s. In a statement released Tuesday, he said “I have always believed and continue to believe that immigration is good for America,” proposing that Trump focus on the “real solution” of anti-terrorism funding.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. State Department announced that all entries to the lottery this year had been lost and must be resubmitted.

Earlier this year, republican senators proposed scrapping the program altogether.

If the application to the Green Card lottery is valid, your number is chosen and you pass the other requirements for immigrants, you still need the money to get to the U.S. It’s a small portion of immigration to the U.S. every year, but larger than other cornerstones of the program, like employment-based immigrant visas.

In Fiscal Year 2015, the U.S. issued 48,097 diversity visas out of 531,463 total immigrant visas.

Natives of all countries qualify except Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. People born in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are eligible.
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Though the Trump administration has taken steps to undo regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, experts say economic forces are helping to push down U.S. emissions anyway.

U.N. climate negotiators will meet in Bonn, Germany, November 6-17. It will be their first gathering since President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

Trump considers efforts to fight climate change a barrier to economic growth. Promising to dominate global energy markets and put struggling U.S. coal miners back to work, he has taken a series of steps to roll back regulations aimed at fighting climate change. They include moving to revoke the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama’s primary tool for cutting carbon emissions from power plants.

Energy transition

Losing those regulations won’t stop the transition in energy sources that’s already underway, according to George Washington University Solar Institute Director Amit Ronen.

“We’re still going to meet the goals of the Clean Power Plan in most states, even if it’s withdrawn,” he said, “just because we’re substituting so much natural gas and renewables for coal.”

Coal-fired power plants — the most climate-polluting source of electricity — are shutting down across the country. More than 500 closed between 2002 and 2016, and additional plants are slated for closure, according to the Department of Energy. Electric utilities are replacing them with cheaper, cleaner natural gas.

And renewable sources, such as wind and solar, are booming. Prices have plummeted. Renewables are beginning to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Solar tariffs

Though electric utilities are choosing natural gas and renewables over coal, the Trump administration may influence energy markets in other ways.

A case before the International Trade Commission will soon give the president the authority to put tariffs on imported solar panels — and nearly all of them are imported.

The case is billed as an effort to help domestic solar manufacturers. While Trump has not embraced renewable energy, he has said he wants to support U.S. manufacturing jobs.

But solar manufacturing is mostly automated. Far more people work in labor-intensive installation. The Solar Energy Industries Association has opposed measures limiting imports, saying it would cost jobs.

The International Trade Commission recommended tariffs smaller than what the plaintiffs asked for. But Trump gets the last word, expected before mid-January.

Even more severe trade restrictions would not extinguish the renewables industry, however.

“[A tariff] certainly adds cost and might stifle solar development,” said Rhodium Group analyst John Larsen. “But the overall clean energy picture doesn’t get hit too hard.”

That’s because many states and cities have policies requiring electric utilities to use renewable energy, Larsen noted. They are stepping up their efforts to cut greenhouse gases, even as the federal government is pulling back. If solar dips, wind may fill in the gap.

Subsidizing coal, nuclear

The proposal that could have a bigger impact on electricity markets comes from the Trump administration’s Department of Energy.

With so many coal plants shut down and eight nuclear plants on the brink of closure, Secretary Rick Perry said the reliability of the U.S. electric grid is in jeopardy.

Because coal and nuclear plants provide constant power and have their fuel supplies on-site, Perry suggested paying them more than other sources for their electricity.

The proposal has made unusual allies of the natural gas, solar and wind industries. They wrote joint comments opposing it. And critics across the political spectrum have blasted it.

“This has no intellectual depth. It’s unprofessional. It’s badly thought out,” said finance director Tom Sanzillo of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Sanzillo noted that the Department of Energy study on which Perry based his recommendations does not show that grid reliability is threatened. And Perry himself rejected a similar proposal as governor of Texas, where the growing influx of wind power was pushing coal plants out of business.

Not fast enough

Ultimately, experts say, the Trump administration has limited powers to save the coal industry.

While coal’s decline is helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, however, experts say they are not falling fast enough to avoid the worst of climate change.

Under the Paris climate agreement, nations agreed to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Former President Obama pledged that the United States would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Even the Clean Power Plan, plus other Obama-era regulations, still would have left the United States short of that goal, Larsen said.

“The current U.S. trajectory is not in line with Paris, and the U.S. commitment in Paris wasn’t necessarily on track for 2 degrees,” he said. “It was a starting point, a down payment.

“Hopefully, other countries step up to the plate to fill in some of that gap. But that’s a big if.”

The latest report from the U.N. Environment Program says pledged emission cuts worldwide add up to just one-third of what is needed to keep the planet below the 2-degree target.
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