Category Archives: News

worldwide news

Trump Loses Bid for Total Secrecy for Cohen Probe Documents

A federal judge said U.S. President Donald Trump should publicly file his objections to findings of a court-appointed special master reviewing documents seized in a probe of the business dealings of his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

In an order issued on Friday, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan rejected efforts by Trump, the Trump Organization and Cohen to file their objections entirely under seal.

She agreed with the government that the filings should be public except as to portions that “divulge the substance of the contested documents.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller

Wood said she would decide later which portions could be sealed.

Joanna Hendon, a lawyer for Trump, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Todd Harrison, a lawyer for Cohen, did not immediately respond to similar requests.

The criminal probe into Cohen’s business dealings stems in part from a referral by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to influence that year’s U.S. presidential election.

Trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion, and Russia has denied interference. Cohen has not been criminally charged.

Former judge reviews seized materials

The special master, former federal judge Barbara Jones, is reviewing materials seized in April raids of Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, to determine which are subject to attorney-client privilege.

On Monday, she said in a report that 162 files, out of more than 292,000 reviewed so far, were privileged or partially privileged, and seven were “highly personal.”

Roughly 3.7 million files were seized, Cohen’s lawyers have said. Jones is reviewing only those that lawyers for Trump, the Trump Organization and Cohen believe might be privileged.

The case is Cohen v U.S., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-mj-03161.

Muhammad Ali Attorney Calls Trump Pardon ‘Unnecessary’

President Donald Trump said Friday he is considering a pardon for the late heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who died in 2016 — despite the fact that Ali’s conviction for refusal of military service was overturned in 1971.

Trump told reporters Friday that Ali is on a list of 3,000 people he is considering for pardons because, in his words, they “really have been treated unfairly.”

Ali’s attorney, Ron Tweel, thanked the president, but noted that a pardon was not necessary. He told NBC News: “We appreciate President Trump’s sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971.”

Ali — who changed his name from Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam in 1964 — said his refusal to be drafted in 1966 was based on his religious beliefs and his opposition to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

Ali was arrested and convicted in federal court in 1967 for violating selective service laws. He was stripped of his boxing titles and license and fined $10,000. He faced a five-year prison sentence, but was allowed to remain free while appealing the decision. During the four years in which he could not fight, he was a social activist, speaking out against the war and in favor of racial equality.

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction in a unanimous decision, accepting Ali’s argument that he should be excused on religious grounds. His license to fight was also reinstated and Ali spent the next 10 years fighting professionally, cementing his reputation as one of the country’s most prominent athletes.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter, on his first day in office, issued a blanket pardon for all of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War. Had the 1971 court action not already cleared Ali’s name, experts say, the Carter decision would have done so.

A presidential pardon does not render a person legally innocent of a crime, but it can clear the way for living pardon recipients to regain civil rights usually denied to ex-felons: the right to vote, to run for office, to serve on a jury, and to own a firearm, among others.

A pardon for the deceased can provide no such reinstatement of rights and thus is seen as merely symbolic. The U.S. Department of Justice says, in general, it does not accept applications for posthumous pardons because its time can be better spend on living persons.

But it notes that it has granted three posthumous pardons in recent years, in response to requests by President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and Trump, who last month pardoned boxer Jack Johnson, who died in 1946.

Sheryl Sandberg Uses Facebook’s Woes as Lesson for MIT Grads

Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg didn’t shy away from her company’s ongoing privacy scandal in a Friday commencement speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead, she turned it into a lesson about accountability.

Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, repeatedly warned graduates that even technology created with the best intentions can be twisted to do harm, a lesson that she said hits close to home, “given some of the issues Facebook has had.”

“At Facebook, we didn’t see all the risks coming, and we didn’t do enough to stop them,” Sandberg said. “It’s hard when you know you let people down.”

Echoing previous comments from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sandberg went on to emphasize the importance of taking full responsibility for mistakes.

“When you own your mistakes, you can work hard to correct them, and even harder to prevent the next ones,” she said at the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s my job now. It won’t be easy, and it’s not going to be fast, but we will see it through.”

Facebook has faced backlash in the wake of a privacy scandal involving British data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica. In April, Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to apologize for the site’s role in foreign interference in the 2016 election.

The furor continued with recent revelations that Facebook shared user data with device makers including China’s Huawei, and that an unrelated software bug made some private posts public for up to 14 million users over several days in May.

Sandberg said she’s still proud of the company, noting its power to help organize movements like the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter. But she warned graduates that technology has a flipside, and isn’t always used for the sake of good.

“It also empowers those who would seek to do harm,” she said. “When everyone has a voice, some raise their voices in hatred. When everyone can share, some share lies. And when everyone can organize, some organize against the things we value the most.”

Sandberg, an alumna of Harvard University, is a former vice president at Google and was chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. She has written three bestselling books on leadership and resilience.

Much of her speech was about the role of technology in society, a common topic at MIT, a school known for its tech prowess. But her advice also drew on broader topics that have captured the nation’s attention, including tensions tied to race and gender.

“Build workplaces where everyone — everyone — is treated with respect,” she said. “We need to stop harassment and hold both perpetrators and enablers accountable. And we need to make a personal commitment to stop racism and sexism.”

Report: Chinese Hackers Breach US Navy Computers

Chinese government hackers breached the computer system of a Navy contractor and stole large amounts of sensitive data, The Washington Post reports.

The Post said the hacking took place in January and February, according to U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It said the stolen information amounted to 614 gigabytes of material, including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020.

Other information stolen included signal and sensor data for submarines, information relating to cryptographic systems, and a Navy electronic warfare library. The Post said details on hundreds of mechanical and software systems were compromised in the hacking.

The paper said the data was highly sensitive despite being on a contractor’s unclassified computer network. It said U.S. officials did not identify the contractor, but said he worked for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a U.S. military organization headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Navy is investigating the breach along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Post. Investigators told the paper the hack was carried out by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a civilian spy agency.

U.S. officials believe China has for years carried out hacking attacks on the U.S. military, the U.S. government and U.S. companies.

China has recently made it a priority to increase its development of undersea warfare to diminish the gap in the U.S. superiority in this area.

Trump Hosts Iftar Dinner in Switch from Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

President Trump hosted a dinner at the White House this week marking the end of the daily fast during Ramadan, the first since he took office in 2017. The guest list included the diplomatic corps but not American Muslim organizations, who held their own “Counter-Iftar” outside the White House. Patsy Widakuswara has more.

House Republicans Scramble to Avoid Immigration Fight

House Republican leaders Thursday tried to hammer out a deal on border security and the fate young undocumented immigrants protected from deportation in a last-minute meeting intended to unite a party divided on immigration. Without a deal, a group of moderate Republicans likely has enough signatures to force an immigration vote using a rare procedural move. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.

North Korea Uses US Tech for ‘Destructive Cyber Operations’

North Korea’s senior leadership has been exploiting loopholes in international sanctions to obtain the U.S. technology that Pyongyang uses to conduct “destructive cyber operations,” according to a global cyberthreat intelligence company.

Recorded Future, based in Massachusetts, found that while export bans and restrictions are somewhat effective in keeping North Korea from acquiring technology for its nuclear weapons program, sanctions fail when it comes to regulating computer products from entering into North Korea.

“Because of the globalized nature of technology production and distribution, the traditional export control is not really working for [computer] technology,” said Priscilla Moriuchi, one of the authors of “North Korea Relies on U.S. Technology for Internet Operations.” “It may work quite well for ballistic missile parts or fissile material, but the system is not designed to limit technology transfer, and it’s not optimized for that.”

​Upcoming summit

In the report, Moriuchi and her co-author, Fred Wolens, call for a “globally robust unified effort to impose comprehensive sanctions” on North Korea, warning that without this Pyongyang “will be able to continue its cyberwarfare operations unabated with the aid of Western technology.”

The report was released days before North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Singapore for a summit focused on ending the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic incentives and security guarantees.

But some consider North Korea’s cyberthreat capabilities as damaging as the threat of its nuclear weapons, Morgan Wright, a former a senior adviser in the U.S. State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program, wrote in The Hill.

Even as advance teams prepared for the June 12 summit, North Korean cyberattacks continued, Moriuchi told Cyberscoop. On May 28, it reported the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a joint alert about Hidden Cobra, which is associated with North Korea’s hacking activities.

FireEye, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity company, detected cyberattacks by Lazarus, the North Korean hacking effort responsible for stealing millions of dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank in 2016. Lazarus is also believed responsible for the 2014 Sony Picture’s hack and last year’s WannaCry ransomware attack.

​Defining ‘luxury goods’

How did U.S. technology reach North Korea? Part of the answer lies in “international inconsistencies in the definition of the term ‘luxury goods,’” according to the Recorded Future report. The U.S. “effort to restrict technology exports at the national and international level” has not reaped results because of “varied definitions by nations and [their] inconsistent implementations,” said Moriuchi, a former East Asia analyst for the National Security Agency.

While the United Nations did not include electronics in Resolution 2321, which covered exports to North Korea, when it was issued in 2016, each member nation was allowed to interpret luxury goods. The U.S. has defined luxury goods to include laptop computers, digital music players, large flat-screen televisions and electronic entertainment software. China, in particular, does not “honor the luxury goods listed by other countries when it exports to” North Korea, according to the report.

US exports OK

Another factor is that for seven years in the period spanning 2002 to 2017, “the United States allowed the exportation of ‘computer and electronic products’ to North Korea,” according to the report. The total for those seven years was more than $430,000 of legal exports, and according to Recorded Future, “at its peak in 2014, the U.S. exported $215,862 worth of computers and electronic products to North Korea.”

The Recorded Future report, citing the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), said that category includes “computers, computer peripherals (including items like printers, monitors and storage devices), communications equipment (such as wired and wireless telephones), and similar components for these products.”

Much of that equipment remains in use, according to Recorded Future, and North Korea’s ruling elites, including party, military, and intelligence leaders and their families, have long been known to use products manufactured by U.S. companies such as Apple, Microsoft and IBM to access the internet.

A third element in how the U.S. tech went astray is what the report called North Korea’s “sophisticated sanctions evasion operation, which uses intermediaries and spoofs identities online.”

As an example, the study points to North Korea’s shell company Glocom with which Pyongyang “used a network of Asian-based front companies to buy computer components from electronic resellers, and the payment was even cleared through a U.S. bank account.” The United Nations found that Glocom was tied to Pan Systems Pyongyang, whose director, Ryang Su Nyo, reports to Liaison Office 519 in the North Korean intelligence agency’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.

​Just like us

North Korea’s elites surfed and browsed just like users outside North Korea until recently when the Recorded Future researchers found “a stark change” in the elite’s usage patterns as they “migrated almost completely” from Facebook, Google and Instagram “to their Chinese equivalents — Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu,” and over the course of a few months “dramatically increased” their use of internet obfuscation services, such as virtual private networks (VPN), virtual private servers (VPS), transport layer security (TLS) and the Onion Router (Tor).

While tracking the change in activity from December 2017 to April 2018, researchers found “the overwhelming presence of American hardware and software on North Korea networks and in daily use by senior North Korean leaders.”

While U.S. exporters are responsible for understanding and adhering to export regulations, the study indicates even the implementation of robust compliance procedures were insufficient in preventing banned U.S. computer products from reaching North Korea.

U.S. export enforcement rests with the Office of Foreign Asset Control, the Office of Export Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. The U.S. is one of the only countries that enforces its export laws outside of its national boundaries, placing federal agents in foreign countries to work with local authorities.

Widespread international sanctions were imposed beginning in 2006, when North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test. In response, the U.N. passed two resolutions (Resolution 1695 and 1718) banning a broad range of exports to North Korea by any U.N. member states. The U.N. subsequently expanded those sanctions through a number of resolutions that prohibit and restrict exporting items ranging from missile material to oil to North Korea.

The case of ZTE

The Recorded Future report mentions Chinese manufacturer ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) as a case where the implementation of export regulation failed, pointing out that the U.S. had the chance to enforce its export laws when the company was under Export Administration Regulation (EAR), a dense set of laws regulating exports.

ZTE was initially placed on the so-called Entities List for violating U.S. sanctions for selling products containing U.S. goods to Iran and North Korea in March 2016. For two years, the company and the U.S. government attempted to reach an agreement over penalties and how to verify that ZTE had stopped violating U.S. sanctions.

The Department of Commerce (DOC) ended the negotiations and imposed a denial order that banned U.S. companies from selling to ZTE for seven years.

In May, the DOC lifted the denial order, which would have put ZTE out of business, and allowed ZTE to purchase components from U.S. companies. The move came after threats of a trade war and Trump’s intervention.

Moriuchi said if the U.S. had let ZTE fail, it would have sent “a huge message to the rest of the world that there is no [company] too big to fail” and that “the U.S. government takes export control very seriously.”

In the end, “an opposite message ended up being sent with the administration’s deal with China, and that there are companies too big to fail especially if that company … has significant interest with the United States,” she said, adding the case demonstrated that “you can circumvent U.S. export control as a company and in the end, survive.”

The U.S. enforces its export laws through the DOC and regulates them through EAR, which not only restricts commercial goods and technologies from reaching hostile countries but also regulates the re-export of U.S. goods and technologies from one foreign country to another.

Until 2008, U.S. sanctions prohibiting exports to North Korea were implemented through the Trading with the Enemy Act, through which the U.S. government banned any exports to designated countries including North Korea.

Subsequently, the Obama administration issued the North Korea Sanctions Regulations and a number of Executive Orders (13551, 13570, 13687, and 13722) to further prohibit various measures, including exports of “goods, services or technology to North Korea.”

Additionally, numerous U.S. sanctions were imposed against North Korea under Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, especially in 2017 during Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests, which also saw the U.N. issue new sanctions.

VOA’s Christy Lee contributed to this report.

Ex-Senate Aide Charged With Lying About Reporter Contacts

A former employee of the Senate intelligence committee, one of the congressional panels investigating potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, has been indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about contacts he had with reporters, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

James A. Wolfe, the longtime director of security for the panel, was charged with three counts of false statements after prosecutors say he denied having disclosed classified information to journalists.

In reality, according to the Justice Department, Wolfe was in regular contact with multiple journalists, including meeting them at restaurants, in bars and in a Senate office building.

Wolfe, of Ellicott City, Maryland, has been arrested and is to be in court Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

The prosecution comes amid a Trump administration crackdown on leaks of classified information. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have decried such disclosures, and announced a sharp increase in leak investigations.

Wolfe’s position on the committee gave him access to classified and top secret information.

Fog Catchers Conjure Water Out of Moroccan Mist

Growing up on Mount Boutmezguida in southwest Morocco on the edge of the Sahara desert, Khadija Ghouate never imagined that the fog enveloping the nearby peaks would change her life.

For hours every day and often before sunrise, Ghouate and other women from nearby villages would walk 5 km (3 miles) to fetch water from open wells, with girls pulled out of school to help and at risk of violence on the lonely treks.

But with groundwater levels dropping due to overuse, drought and climate change, the challenge to get enough water daily was becoming harder, and almost half of people in the local area sold up and quit rural life after generations for the city.

As the future of the traditional Berber region by Mount Boutmezguida floundered, a mathematician whose family came from the area had a eureka moment gleaned from living overseas – using fog to make water.

Now Ghouate’s village is connected to the world’s largest functioning fog collection project, alleviating the need to collect water that fell mainly on women, and with state-of-the-art equipment setting an example for other projects globally.

“You always had to go to the wells, always be there, mornings, evenings,” said Ghouate, a mother-of-three, as she prepared lunch for her family, showing off the tap in her home.

“But now water has arrived in our house. I like fog a lot.

The project, running since 2015 after nine years of surveys and tests, was founded by the Moroccan non-government organization Dar Si Hmad, which works to promote and preserve local culture, history, and heritage.

It was the brainchild of mathematician and businessman Aissa Derhem whose parents were originally from Mount Boutmezguida where the slopes are covered in mist on average 130 days a year.

Derhem first came across fog collection when he learned of one of the world’s first projects – in Chile’s Atacama Desert – while he living in Canada in the 1980s studying for his PhD.

But it was not until visiting his parents’ village years later that he realized the mountainous location, situated at the edge of the Sahara and about 35 km (22 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, was perfect for fog.

Ideal Location

Mist accumulates in coastal areas where a cold sea current, an anticyclone and a land obstacle, such as a mountain range, combine.

“When the sea water evaporates, the anticyclone … stops it from becoming rain, and when it hits the mountain, that’s where it can be gathered,” Derhem told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, looking out from the top of Mount Boutmezguida besides a small building used as a fog observatory and tool deposit.

“If we look at the planet, we see this happening in all tropical regions … In Chile and Peru in Latin America. The Kalahari desert in Africa. In Western Australia. Around the Thar desert in India and in California,” he listed as examples.

Developed in South America in the 1980s, fog collection projects have since spread globally to countries including Guatemala, Ghana, Eritrea, Nepal and the United States.

In Morocco, Dar Si Hmad has built a system of nets stretching about 870 square metres – about 4.5 tennis courts.

These nets are hung between two poles and when wind pushes the fog through the mesh, water droplets are trapped, condense and fall into a container at the bottom of the unit with pipes connecting the water to reservoirs.

Derhem hopes the success of the Mount Boutmezguida scheme can help other areas in West Africa and in North Africa – where the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says fresh water resources are among the world’s lowest.

Studies show climate change impacting water patterns globally and Derhem said in Morocco levels have dropped to about 500 cubic meters a person a year from about 1,500 cubic meters a person in the 1960s on calculations based on government figures.

Challenges Too

The principles behind fog collection are simple, and throughout nature examples exist of creatures capturing moisture from the air in the most arid conditions, ranging from beetles in the Namib Desert to lizards in the Australian outback.

But creating a water collection project on a large scale comes with challenges, as the research and development, as well as the infrastructure and technology involved in expanding and developing fog collection projects, can be costly.

The project at Mount Boutmezguida, however, has been a trailblazer for other projects due to its equipment, according to its founders.

The original nets used were insufficiently resistant to the high winds and tore but a partnership with the German non-profit Water Foundation allowed Dar Si Hmad to develop a stronger net.

The CloudFisher was described by the WaterFoundation as the first maintance-free fog collector that can withstand wind speeds of up 120 kph with flexible troughs following the movement of the net in the wind.

Now collected water is filtered and combined with underground water before being distributed to villages on the grid with homes paying for water through a pre-paid system.

The initial pilot project served five villages. At present, the 870 square metres of nets installed reach about 140 families – 14 villages – while a second set of nets is being built.

“Fog is like aeroplanes at the start. At the beginning they were only little toys but, with some effort, things have changed … but it needs investment,” said Derhem.

“Along the coast, there is three times as much fog as there is available on Mount Boutmezguida. The government spends millions for water desalination processes. This is something that is worth exploring.”

For with dry wells comes anxiety and risk but also the unraveling of traditional livelihoods and communities.

Mohamed Zabour, president of the local municipality, said more than 60 percent of the inhabitants of the region live without running water in their homes.

Between 2004 and 2014, 2,000 of the 5,000 local residents moved to cities.

“Our region is rich but it needs infrastructure. And water is one of the priorities,” said Zabour.

“If we don’t find a solution in the next 10 years, it’s going to be a catastrophe … It’s going to be like a desert. Empty.”

For Ghouate, the fog scheme has improved village life.

“When we were kids, we didn’t even know what it meant to need water  … Now there is less rain and if I still had to go to the wells, I wouldn’t find much water now,” she said. “Everything is about water, everything. I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

Ukraine Approves Anti-Corruption Court, Fires Finance Minister

Ukraine’s parliament has voted to establish an anti-corruption court in an effort to meet the criteria to receive $17.5 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

 

Before the IMF releases the funds needed to shore up Ukraine’s struggling economy, it will have make sure the court’s laws are IMF compliant. The West has repeatedly called on Ukraine to reform it political system and establish an independent body to fight corruption.

 

“What we’ll be looking to see is that it ensures the establishment of an independent and trustworthy anti-corruption court that meets the expectation of the Ukrainian people,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said at a briefing Thursday.

 

President Petrol Poroshenko said the court was in line with Western recommendations and Ukrainian law.  

 

Last year Poroshenko rejected the need for an anti-corruption court, saying such institutions are needed in “Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia and Croatia” but not in Western Europe or the United States.

 

While the approval of the court was seen as a positive, Ukraine also likely dismayed the West by firing Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, a respected reform advocate.

Danylyuk’s ouster came after he took on Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, accusing him of stalling reforms of the state tax service that are needed to combat corruption.

 

Before the parliament voted on his ouster, Danylyuk addressed the lawmakers, telling them he had been accused of “defending the interests of international organizations.”

 

But, “I am defending the interests of Ukrainians,” he said.

Construction Planned to Prepare Alaska’s Arctic Refuge for Oil Drilling

The Trump administration said Thursday it would spend $4 million on construction projects in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in preparation for oil drilling in the nation’s biggest wildlife park.

In an announcement that touted planned improvements to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor facilities, the Department of the Interior said it has approved spending on projects for “Oil Exploration Readiness” in the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge.

The Trump administration is pushing for an oil lease sale in the refuge as early as next year. The tax-overhaul bill passed by the U.S. Congress last December includes a provision mandating two oil lease sales, each offering at least 400,000 acres (161,874.26 hectares), within seven years.

True wilderness refuge

The 19-million-acre (7.7 million-hectare) Arctic refuge, the largest in the U.S. national wildlife refuge system, contains some of the wildest territory in North America. There are no roads, established trails or buildings within the refuge border, and no cell phone service, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This is a true wilderness refuge,” the Arctic refuge website advises.

Political and business leaders in oil-dependent Alaska have tried for decades to pry open the refuge’s coastal plain, which is believed to hold potential for billions of barrels of oil.

But the plain, between the mountains of the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean, is prized for its importance to caribou, polar bears and other wildlife. Oil development there had been banned until Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski led a move to insert a pro-drilling provision into the 2017 tax bill signed by President Donald Trump.

Some Alaskans opposed

In Alaska, the development plan is largely embraced, but not universally so. Drilling opponents gathered outside of last week’s Anchorage and Fairbanks hearings about the proposed lease sales to protest the plan.

Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift, in an email, said the $4 million “will be used to support six projects designed to improve and construct existing outbuildings, facilities and research operations.”

That work will include improvements to facilities outside the refuge, in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik and at Galbraith Lake along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor, she said in the email.

Large appropriation

The $4 million appropriation for Arctic refuge projects is one of the largest single items in a total of $50 million in planned DOI construction spending.

“The president is a builder, he loves to build and he loves our public lands, so it is a natural fit that the Trump administration is dedicating so much attention to rebuilding our aging Fish and Wildlife Service infrastructure,” Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement Thursday.

A partnership of three companies is seeking to do seismic surveys in the refuge starting this winter. That plan, from SAExploration and two Alaska Native corporations, was panned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Washington Post reported last month.

There has been no decision on that application, Swift said Thursday. “It was a draft application. The department does not make decisions based upon early drafts,” she said by email.

Facebook Says Privacy-setting Bug Affected as Many as 14M

Facebook said a software bug led some users to post publicly by default regardless of their previous settings. The bug affected as many as 14 million users over several days in May.

 

The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world’s largest social media company.

 

It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new posts public, even if they had previously restricted posts to “friends only” or another private setting. If users did not notice the new default suggestion, they unwittingly sent their post to a broader audience than they had intended.

 

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the bug did not affect past posts. Facebook is notifying users who were affected and posted publicly during the time the bug was active, advising them to review their posts.

 

The news follows recent furor over Facebook’s sharing of user data with device makers, including China’s Huawei. The company is also still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm got access to the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users.

 

Jonathan Mayer, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University, said on Twitter that this latest privacy gaffe “looks like a viable Federal Trade Commission/state attorney general deception case.” That’s because the company had promised that the setting users set in their most recent privacy preferences would be maintained for future posts. In this case, this did not happen for several days.

 

Facebook’s 2011 consent decree with the FTC calls for the company to get “express consent” from users before sharing their information beyond what they established in their privacy settings. Even if the bug was an accident on Facebook’s part, Mayer said in an email that the FTC can bring enforcement action for privacy mistakes.

 

Facebook, which has 2.2 billion users, says the bug was active from May 18 until May 27. While the company says it stopped the error on May 22, it was not able to change all the posts back to their original privacy parameters until later.

 

The mistake happened when the company built a new way for people to share “featured items” on their profiles. These items, which include posts and photo albums, are automatically public. In the process of creating this feature, Facebook said it accidentally made the suggested audience for all new posts public.

 

When people post to Facebook, the service suggests a default distribution for their posts based on past privacy settings. If someone made all posts “friends only” in the past, it will set their next post to “friends only” as well. People can still manually change the privacy level of the posts — anywhere from “public” to “only me” — and this was the case while the bug was active as well.

Argentina Clinches $50B IMF Financing Deal to Speed Up Cuts

Argentina and the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that they had reached an agreement for a three-year, $50 billion standby lending

arrangement, which the government said it sought to provide a

safety net and avoid the frequent crises of the country’s past.

Argentina requested IMF assistance on May 8 after its peso currency weakened sharply in an investor exodus from emerging markets. As part of the deal, which is subject to IMF board approval, the government pledged to speed up plans to reduce the fiscal deficit even as authorities now foresee lower growth and higher inflation in the coming years.

The deal marks a turning point for Argentina, which for years shunned the IMF after a devastating 2001-02 economic crisis that many Argentines blamed on IMF-imposed austerity measures. President Mauricio Macri’s turn to the lender has led to protests in the country.

“There is no magic. The IMF can help but Argentines need to resolve our own problems,” Treasury Minister Nicolas Dujovne said at a news conference.

Dujovne said he expected the IMF’s board to approve the deal during a June 20 meeting. After that, he said, he expects an immediate disbursement of 30 percent of the funding, or about $15 billion.

Argentina will seek to reduce its fiscal deficit to 1.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2019, down from 2.2 percent previously, Dujovne said. The deal calls for fiscal balance in 2020 and a fiscal surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2020.

“This measure will ultimately lessen the government financing needs, put public debt on a downward trajectory and, as President Macri has stated, relieve a burden from Argentina’s back,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement.

Higher inflation, for now

Speaking alongside central bank governor Federico Sturzenegger, Dujovne noted that the agreement was well above Argentina’s IMF quota. A minimum $20 billion had been expected based on Argentina’s quota.

The interest rate will be from 1.96 to 4.96 percent, depending on how much Argentina uses. The South American country must pay back each disbursement in eight quarterly installments, with a three-year grace period.

As widely expected, the government will also send a proposal to Congress to reform the central bank’s charter and strengthen its autonomy. The central bank will also stop transferring money to the treasury, a practice known locally as the “little machine” that is seen as a major driver of incessant

inflation.

“The little machine has been turned off. It has been unplugged,” Sturzenegger said.

The IMF’s backing was expected to boost Argentine assets, which have sagged in recent months amid a global selloff in emerging markets.

Neighboring Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has also seen its currency weaken in recent days to its lowest level in more than two years on fears about the county’s fiscal outlook and political future.

“It is convincing and greatly exceeds expectations. Markets should react very positively tomorrow,” Miguel Kiguel, a former Argentine finance secretary who runs local consultancy Econviews, said in a Twitter post. “It is clear the country has capacity to pay.”

But the short-term economic picture for Argentina remains more complicated than it appeared several months ago. Dujovne said economic growth was expected at 1.4 percent for 2018 and between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent for 2019, down from prior expectations above 3 percent in both years.

The central bank will also abandon its 2018 inflation target of 15 percent and will not target any particular level this year, Sturzenegger said. Argentina agreed to new, looser inflation targets of 17 percent for 2019, 13 percent for 2020 and 9 percent for 2021, down from 25 percent currently.

“They are mortgaging the future for our children and grandchildren,” Martin Sabbatella, a politician aligned with former populist President Cristina Fernandez, wrote on Twitter.

Both Argentina and the IMF said the deal would protect the most vulnerable.

In a separate statement, the president’s office said it had clinched agreements for an additional $5.65 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and the CAF development bank over the next 12 months.

Trump ‘Will be Sticking to His Guns’ During G7 Showdown

U.S. President Donald Trump “will be sticking to his guns” at the upcoming Group of Seven summit despite criticism of his trade policies from allies, one of his key economic advisers told reporters on Wednesday.

“The president is at ease with all these tough issues,” said Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council. “There’s always tension about something” between the United States and other G7 members.

The comments in the White House press briefing room came shortly after both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is hosting the G7 summit in Charlevoix, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel forecast difficult discussions on Friday and Saturday.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), said, “This is essentially a recipe for a G6 plus one.”

Protecting American workers

Kudlow, in his remarks, denied the United States is now engaged in a trade war with its strategic partners, as well as China, but that the United States will do what is necessary to protect American workers and industries.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it is too early to call the tariffs dispute a trade war and contended the United States is justified in demanding “fair and reciprocal” trade with its partners.

Mattis said disputes in the economic arena with allies are not expected to damage military and security relations.

Setting the stage for the G7 discussions in the province of Quebec, Kudlow declared, “The world trading system is a mess. It’s broken down.” But, he added, “don’t blame Trump. Blame the nations that have broken away from those conditions.”

It is now clear that the United States and the other G7 countries are “no longer singing from the same hymn book” and that has serious ramifications for the global trading order, said Lynn Fischer Fox, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy and negotiations in the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration.

Fischer Fox, who led negotiations for a number of trade remedy disputes during former President Barack Obama’s administration, describes Trump’s approach to trade as upsetting and unpredictable.

Asked by VOA News if the administration will respect decisions of the World Trade Organization filed against the United States over recent tariffs imposed by Trump, Kudlow replied: “We are bound by the national interests here more than anything else. International multilateral organizations are not going to determine American policy.”

While there have been tensions between the United States and other G7 leaders previously on strategic issues, such as the placement of nuclear weapons in Europe and the Iraq War, this rift appears far more fundamental, according to some analysts.

International rules

The United States has always followed the international rules, Fischer Fox tells VOA News. “And we’ve confronted other nations that use this kind of tactic of saber-rattling or hostage-taking, as it were, to try to get what they want out of the international system, outside of the rules,” she says.

Fischer Fox contends, “Violating the rules doesn’t give you a means to negotiate around the rules. If they (the Trump administration) want to negotiate the rules to be different, that’s what they should be putting on the table.”

The leaders of the other countries have no political choice now but to confront Trump, the Peterson Institute’s Kirkegaard tells VOA News.

“If you do not sanction an American president who behaves like this, every president and administration after this will think that trade policy is something you can easily mess with,” Kirkegaard says.

Speaking in the Bundestag on Wednesday, Merkel warned that G7 countries “must not keep watering down” previous summit conclusions committing the group to fair multilateral trade and rejecting protectionism.

“There must not be a compromise simply for the sake of a compromise,” Merkel said. If an acceptable agreement can’t be reached, a “chairman’s summary” by the Canadian hosts “is perhaps a more honest path — there is no sense in papering over divisions at will.”

University of Denver international affairs professor Jonathan Adelman said the G7 meeting is relevant and that it is possible the members will make progress in less public moments.

“I think that one possibility is that when the doors are closed and the media isn’t there anymore that there will be some effort to negotiate something that is rational and reasonable,” Adelman told VOA.

Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said on Wednesday that steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the United States coming into force on July 1 are illegal and the Canadian response will be measured and proportionate.

Trump will be seeing many of the G7 leaders again soon. He is set to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May in the United Kingdom next month. And he is also expected to attend the annual NATO summit to be held in Brussels in mid-July.

Trump’s Solar Tariff Costs US Companies Billions

President Donald Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels has led U.S. renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of more than $2.5 billion in large installation projects, along with thousands of jobs, the developers told Reuters.

That’s more than double the about $1 billion in new spending plans announced by firms building or expanding U.S. solar panel factories to take advantage of the tax on imports.

The tariff’s bifurcated impact on the solar industry underscores how protectionist trade measures almost invariably hurt one or more domestic industries for every one they shield from foreign competition. 

Trump announced the tariff in January over protests from most of the solar industry that the move would chill one of America’s fastest-growing sectors.

​Utility-scale projects

Solar developers completed utility-scale installations costing a total of $6.8 billion last year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Those investments were driven by U.S. tax incentives and the falling costs of imported panels, mostly from China, which together made solar power competitive with natural gas and coal.

The U.S. solar industry employs more than 250,000 people, about three times more than the coal industry, with about 40 percent of those people in installation and 20 percent in manufacturing, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“Solar was really on the cusp of being able to completely take off,” said Zoe Hanes, chief executive of Charlotte, North Carolina solar developer Pine Gate Renewables.

Companies with domestic panel factories are divided on the policy. Solar giant SunPower Corp opposes the tariff that will help its U.S. panel factories because it will also hurt its domestic installation and development business, along with its overseas manufacturing operations.

“There could be substantially more employment without a tariff,” said Chief Executive Tom Werner.

​Lost profits, jobs

The 30 percent tariff is scheduled to last four years, decreasing by 5 percent per year during that time. Solar developers say the levy will initially raise the cost of major installations by 10 percent.

Leading utility-scale developer Cypress Creek Renewables LLC said it had been forced to cancel or freeze $1.5 billion in projects, mostly in the Carolinas, Texas and Colorado, because the tariff raised costs beyond the level where it could compete, spokesman Jeff McKay said.

That amounted to about 150 projects at various stages of development that would have employed 3,000 or more workers during installation, he said. The projects accounted for a fifth of the company’s overall pipeline.

Developer Southern Current has made similar decisions on about $1 billion of projects, mainly in South Carolina, said Bret Sowers, the company’s vice president of development and strategy.

“Either you make the decision to default or you bite the bullet and you make less money,” Sowers said.

Neither Cypress Creek nor Southern Current would disclose exactly which projects they intend to cancel. They said those details could help their competitors and make it harder to pursue those projects if they become financially viable later.

Both are among a group of solar developers that have asked trade officials to exclude panels used in their utility-scale projects from the tariffs. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it is still evaluating the requests.

Other companies are having similar problems.

Stockpiling panels

For some developers, the tariff has meant abandoning nascent markets in the American heartland that last year posted the strongest growth in installations. That growth was concentrated in states where voters supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

South Bend, Indiana-based developer Inovateus Solar LLC, for example, had decided three years ago to focus on emerging Midwest solar markets such as Indiana and Michigan. But the tariff sparked a shift to Massachusetts, where state renewable energy incentives make it more profitable, Chairman T.J. Kanczuzewski said.

Some firms saw the tariff coming and stockpiled panels before Trump’s announcement. For example, 174 Power Global, the development arm of Korea’s Hanwha warehoused 190 megawatts of solar panels at the end of last year for a Texas project that broke ground in January.

The company is paying more for panels for two Nevada projects that start operating this year and next, but is moving forward on construction, according to Larry Greene, who heads the firm’s development in the U.S. West.

‘A lot of robots’

Trump’s tariff has boosted the domestic manufacturing sector as intended, which over time could significantly raise U.S. panel production and reduce prices.

Panel manufacturers First Solar and JinkoSolar , for example, have announced plans to spend $800 million on projects to increase panel construction in the United States since the tariff, creating about 700 new jobs in Ohio and Florida. Last week, Korea’s Hanwha Q CELLS joined them, saying it will open a solar module factory in Georgia next year, though it did not detail job creation.

SunPower Corp, meanwhile, purchased U.S. manufacturer SolarWorld’s Oregon factory after the tariff was announced, saving that facility’s 280 jobs. The company said it plans to hire more people at the plant to expand operations, without specifying how many.

But SunPower has also said it must cut up to 250 jobs in other parts of its organization because of the tariffs.

Jobs in panel manufacturing are also limited because of increasing automation, industry experts said.

Heliene, a Canadian company in the process of opening a U.S. facility capable of producing 150 megawatts worth of panels per year, said it will employ between 130 and 140 workers in Minnesota.

“The factories are highly automated,” said Martin Pochtaruk, president of Heliene. “You don’t employ too many humans. There are a lot of robots.

Blockchain Advances Could Revolutionize Daily Life

As the internet continues to revolutionize communications, the next world-changing technology may already be here. Blockchain, a way of recording data and automatically storing it on computers around the world, has the potential to change everything from collecting crime scene evidence to creating new digital currencies. VOA’s Jill Craig visited a blockchain hackathon in Memphis, Tennessee, to learn more.

First Lady Appears Before Media for First Time in Nearly a Month

Making her first public appearance in nearly a month, first lady Melania Trump attended a FEMA briefing alongside her husband in Washington on Wednesday. This comes after weeks of public speculation over the first lady’s whereabouts and extended absence, following the first lady’s hospitalization for kidney surgery in May. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has more.

NASA Chief: US Will Always Have Astronauts in Orbit

Major changes could be ahead for the International Space Station but there will always be an American astronaut in orbit, NASA’s new boss said Wednesday.

The space agency is talking with private companies about potentially taking over the space lab after 2025, but no decision will made without the other 21 countries that are partners in the project, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said in his first briefing with reporters.

President Donald Trump’s recent budget requests have put discussions about the station’s future “on steroids,” he said. Under Trump’s 2019 proposed budget, U.S. funding for the space station would end by 2025. The U.S. has spent more than $75 billion on the space station.

Options include splitting the station into different segments or reducing its size by breaking it up and discarding one part.

Always a US astronaut in orbit

But no matter what happens, there won’t be any gap when Americans aren’t in space, Bridenstine vowed. It won’t be as it was after the Apollo moon program closed or even the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, which has forced NASA to pay Russia to ferry astronauts to the station.

“There are kids graduating from high school this month, that their entire lives, we’ve had an astronaut in space,” Bridenstine said. “And we want that to live on in perpetuity forever. No gaps.”

Companies are interested in running the station and “there’s a range of options” that are just now being examined, he said.

The first station piece was launched in 1998. The complex was essentially completed with the end of the shuttle program in 2011. It is about the size of a six-bedroom house, complete with two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window. It usually has a crew of six.

Climate change

In wide-ranging remarks, the former Oklahoma Republican congressman said he generally supports NASA’s Earth science missions, including missions that monitor heat-trapping carbon dioxide. He said at least three climate science satellites that the Trump administration had tried to cancel earlier in budget proposals “could all end up in very good shape” and that he supported them in Congress, crossing party lines.

“We’re going forth with missions that are going to do carbon monitoring,” he said, ticking off a couple of projects. “We’re committed to that.”

When told that a Pew Research poll out Wednesday said that 63 percent of Americans said NASA’s top priority should be monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate, Bridenstine said “good” and reiterated his acceptance of human-caused climate change as a threat to national security and the globe.

Back to the moon

Bridenstine also said he hopes NASA will put some kind of small robotic landers on the moon next year, followed at some later date by humans. Astronauts should use the moon as a “proving ground” for future missions to Mars, especially checking out potential health issues for living far away from Earth for a long time. He said he worried about balance, vision, bone loss and heart issues that have been reported with space station astronauts.

“We do not want to go to Mars and have our astronauts to be marshmallows on the surface of Mars,” Bridenstine said. “The moon is our best opportunity to be successful when we go to Mars.”

Emirates Seeks to Lead the Way to Windowless Planes

Passenger jets of the future will be safer, lighter, faster, more fuel-efficient and … windowless.

So predicts Emirates Airlines chief Tim Clark. The Dubai-based airline has already introduced virtual windows in the first-class suites of its newest planes. 

Instead of being able to see out a conventional window, the passengers will be able to enjoy the view on a full display of windows that will project live camera feeds on a high-definition screen. 

Clark said the images are “so good, it’s better than with the natural eye.”

Clark told the BBC that the ultimate goal was to have a completely windowless plane. 

“Now you have a fuselage which has no structural weaknesses because of windows. The aircraft are lighter, the aircraft could fly faster, they’ll burn less fuel and fly higher,” he said.

But Emirates’ experiment has raised concerns that might not win it the votes of safety regulators. Some passengers have expressed concerns of possibly feeling claustrophobic on windowless planes. 

Cambridge Analytica Boss Admits Getting Facebook Data From Researcher

The former head of Cambridge Analytica admitted on Wednesday his firm had received data from the researcher at the center of a scandal over Facebook users’ personal details, contradicting previous testimony to

lawmakers.

Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump in 2016, has denied its work on the U.S. president’s successful election campaign made use of data allegedly improperly harvested from around 87 million Facebook users.

Former chief Alexander Nix, in earlier testimony to parliament’s media committee, also denied the political consultancy had ever been given data by Aleksandr Kogan, the researcher linked to the scandal.

On Wednesday he said it had received data from Kogan.

“Of course, the answer to this question should have been ‘yes,'” Nix said, adding that he thought he was being asked if Cambridge Analytica still held data from the researcher.

He denied deliberately misleading British lawmakers and said the company had deleted the data, which had been of no use.

The committee is investigating fake news, and focusing on the role of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in the 2016 Brexit vote as well as the Trump election.

In lengthy, and often testy, questioning by lawmakers, Nix apologized for an undercover film in which he said Cambridge Analytica’s online campaign played a decisive role in Trump’s election win.

But he defended the now-defunct consultancy’s reputation and said he felt victimized.

Cambridge Analytica said after the film was broadcast by Channel 4 television in March that the comments did not “represent the values or operations of the firm.”

Lawmakers asked Nix to return to face questions about inconsistencies in his evidence.

Kogan had told lawmakers he did give Cambridge Analytica the data.

Facebook says Kogan harvested it by creating an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270,000 people, providing access not only to their own but also their friends’ personal data.

Facebook said Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica.

Embarrassed but vindicated

Nix apologized for his comments in the film, saying he had been foolish and had made exaggerated claims in order to attract what he thought was a potential client.

“It’s not only deeply embarrassing, but it’s something I regret enormously,” he said.

Nix said that Channel 4 had heavily edited the footage to portray him in a worse light. “All Mr Nix’s comments carried in our reports were used in context, including any caveats,” the broadcaster said in a statement.

On other matters, Nix was less apologetic.

He said that he was vindicated in saying Cambridge Analytica had not been involved in the Brexit campaign by a report by the Electoral Commission, and that whistleblower Christopher Wylie had lied about the consultancy’s involvement in Brexit.

Wylie had told the committee that Cambridge Analytica played a pivotal role in the campaign.

On Wednesday he told Channel 4: “I actually backed up everything I said with documents. I am quite comfortable standing by the statements that I made.”

Nix denied a story in the Financial Times that he had withdrawn $8 million from Cambridge Analytica before its collapse last month.

Asked about a Guardian report that a Cambridge Analytica employee visited Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2017, he said he had been unaware of the meeting.

House Speaker Rejects Trump Claim FBI Spied on His 2016 Campaign

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that the Federal Bureau of Investigation planted a “spy” in his 2016 campaign.

Trump has been calling the FBI’s use of an informant who passed on details of his conversations with three Trump campaign associates “Spygate.”

The Republican president claimed the FBI planted a spy in his campaign in an effort to undermine his presidential bid. Media reports identified the man as Stefan Halper, an American-born professor at Britain’s University of Cambridge,

Ryan, leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, recently reviewed classified information underlying the FBI’s use of an informant as part of its investigation of Russian meddling in the election. Ryan told reporters that he agreed with the assessment of another key Republican lawmaker, Congressman Trey Gowdy, who reviewed documents in the case and concluded that the FBI did nothing wrong.

Gowdy said last week, “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”

The South Carolina congressman said he had “never heard the term ‘spy’ used” and did not see evidence of it. “Informants are used all day, every day, by law enforcement.”

Ryan said, “I think Chairman Gowdy’s initial assessment is accurate.”

However, Ryan added, “We have some more digging to do. We are waiting on some more document requests. We have some more documents to review. We still have someone answering questions.”

Asked last week about Gowdy’s comments, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president “still has concerns about whether or not the FBI acted inappropriately having people in his campaign.”

Trump continues to assail the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into allegations, denied by Trump, that his campaign colluded with Russian interests and that he obstructed justice when he fired FBI director James Comey last year as he led the agency’s Russia investigation.

In a Twitter comment Tuesday, Trump claimed there is evidence the FBI was running “a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015. SPYGATE is in full force! Is the Mainstream Media interested yet? Big stuff!”

In a tweet Monday, Trump asserted he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself if Mueller finds wrongdoing by him, but questioned why he would since he has “done nothing wrong.” He called Mueller’s investigation a “never ending Witch Hunt.”

Ryan said he does not know if Trump has the power to pardon himself, but added, “I think obviously the answer is he shouldn’t, and no one is above the law. I’ll leave it at that.”

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, speaking at an investors’ conference in Israel on Wednesday, accused Mueller’s lawyers of “trying very, very hard to frame [Trump] to get him in trouble when he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

 Trump Commutes Drug Offender’s Sentence after Kardashian Champions Her Case

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the life sentence for drug offender Alice Marie Johnson, whose case was championed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian West.

Kardashian West met with Trump at the White House last week and urged the president to pardon Johnson, 63, who was imprisoned for her role in a Memphis-based cocaine trafficking operation.

“BEST NEWS EVER!!!!” Kardashian West exulted on Twitter after hearing about Trump’s commutation of Johnson’s sentence. Johnson had not been eligible for parole.

Kardashian West voiced her gratitude “to everyone who has showed compassion & contributed countless hours to this important moment. … Her commutation is inspirational & gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance.”

A White House statement said Johnson, convicted in 1996 on eight criminal counts, “has accepted responsibility for her past behavior and has been a model prisoner over the past two decades.”

“Despite receiving a life sentence, Alice worked hard to rehabilitate herself in prison, and act as a mentor to her fellow inmates,” the statement said. “While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance.”

The 1994 indictment in Johnson’s case describes a drug-trafficking operation that involved more than a dozen people, including dozens of transactions and deliveries, many of them involving Johnson. Her bid for clemency had been rejected when former President Barack Obama was in office, although the reasons are unclear why.

She had sought her freedom in court petitions, at one point telling a judge, “I’m a broken woman. More time in prison cannot accomplish more justice.”

Trump, according to U.S. news accounts, has become enamored of his power to pardon or commute sentences of those he feels have been wronged by the criminal justice system. He seems particularly interested in cases advocated by conservatives, celebrities or those who once appeared on his reality television show, “The Apprentice.”

Last week he pardoned conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who had been convicted of violating a campaign finance law.

Earlier he had pardoned two other notable conservatives, former Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” convicted of engaging in a crackdown on illegal immigrants, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the one-time chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of lying about the unmasking of the identity of a CIA agent.

Trump said he is considering pardons or commutations of sentences for two other prominent figures convicted in recent years: lifestyle maven and television star Martha Stewart, who served five months in prison in a securities fraud case, and former Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who once appeared on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality television show. 

Blagojevich is in the midst of serving a 14-year term for trying to sell an appointment to the Senate seat in Illinois that Obama vacated when he was elected president. At the time of the TV show, Trump praised Blagojevich for his “tremendous courage and guts,” but then fired him on the fourth episode of the 2010 season.

U.S. presidents have wide discretion in their use of pardons.

Trump boasted this week of his “absolute right” to pardon himself in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but questioned why he would since he has “done nothing wrong.” 

 

US Lawmakers Slam Reported ZTE Deal

U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday slammed a reported deal between the Trump administration and Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE, which has been crippled since the United States punished the firm in April for selling American technology to Iran and North Korea.

“If the reports are true about a sweetheart deal for ZTE, President Trump has put China first, not America first,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. “Once again, President Xi has outfoxed President Trump.”

“#China on the verge of winning again,” Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio tweeted.

News reports say ZTE agreed to pay U.S. fines in excess of $1 billion, make high-level management changes, and provide guarantees against future violations of U.S. sanctions. In return, the firm reportedly will be allowed to resume purchases of American telecommunications components vital to its products.

The U.S. Commerce Department has yet to officially announce completion of the deal, which President Donald Trump hinted at last month, tweeting that U.S. technology companies as well as Chinese workers were being hurt by ZTE’s near-complete halt of operations.

On the Senate floor, Schumer said ZTE deserved to be put out of business.

“ZTE has repeatedly violated U.S. sanctions, lied to U.S. officials about their efforts to rectify those violations,” the minority leader said. “Their technology has been deemed a national security threat by the FCC, the FBI, and the Pentagon. Some reports suggest the Trump administration is forgiving ZTE to set up an exchange for a short-term limited purchase of U.S. goods from China. If that’s the case, what a terrible deal for America.”

ZTE is but one of many issues at play in trade discussions between Washington and Beijing. Trump has promised to negotiate better terms for U.S. agricultural exports and other goods.

“Big trade barriers against U.S. farmers, and other businesses, will finally be broken. Massive trade deficits no longer,” the president recently tweeted.

A vocal group of lawmakers, including some Republicans, is unimpressed with Trump’s trade efforts in general and the White House’s handling of ZTE in particular. Tweeting about the issue, Rubio said China is mocking the U.S.

Schumer urged swift passage of legislation blocking the reported ZTE deal. So far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has given no indication he would prioritize such a vote.

India’s Central Bank Raises Key Lending Rate to 6.25 Percent

India’s central bank raised its benchmark lending rate Wednesday to tamp down rising inflation following an increase in oil prices.

The increase of one-quarter percentage point to 6.25 percent is the first since January 2014 and comes at a time when consumer inflation is at a four-year high.

The Reserve Bank of India said it expects inflation of 4.8 to 4.9 percent in the first half of the 2018-19 financial year, which started April 1.

More rate hikes are likely in coming months, said Shilan Shah of Capital Economics in a report.

The bank said crude oil prices have been volatile, causing uncertainty to the inflation outlook. There was a 12 percent increase in the price of Indian crude basket, which was sharper than expected.

The bank forecast GDP growth for the 2018-19 financial year at 7.4 percent, up from the previous year’s 6.7 percent.

That increase has been underpinned by improved rural demand on the back of a bumper harvest and the government’s emphasis on rural housing and infrastructure.

The bank said the forecast of a normal June-September monsoon is a good sign for agricultural.