Category Archives: News

Worldwide news. News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called “hard news” to differentiate it from soft media

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Facebook Removes Alex Jones Pages for Hate, Bullying

Facebook says it has taken down four pages belonging to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for violating its hate speech and bullying policies.

The social media giant said in a statement Monday that it also blocked Jones’ account for 30 days because he repeatedly posted content that broke its rules.

The company said it “unpublished” the four pages after receiving reports that they contained content “glorifying violence” and used “dehumanizing language” to describe Muslims, immigrants and transgender people.

Facebook is the latest tech company to take action against Jones, who has been facing a growing backlash on social media.

Last week, music streaming service Spotify removed some episodes of “The Alex Jones Show” podcast for breaching its hate content policy.
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China Lashes Out as Retaliatory Moves Fail to Stop Trump Trade Actions

Chinese state media are reacting to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade actions against China in diverse ways. While denouncing the U.S. leader’s actions, Beijing is also using its media to calm markets and express concern about the impact on the Chinese economy.

An editorial in the Communist Party’s People’s Daily said that by raising tariffs and then offering negotiations, the Trump administration is trying to use “carrot-and-stick diplomacy to bully China into unilateral trade concessions.” The paper went on to say “China will eventually defeat the trade blackmail of the U.S. and it is impossible to force China into surrender to the U.S. coercion.”

However, a Chinese senior official attached to the country’s Supreme Court recently expressed worry that the trade friction with the U.S. would result in bankruptcies for state-owned companies.

“It is hard to predict how this trade war will develop and to what extent,” Du Wanhua, deputy director of an advisory committee to the Supreme People’s Court said in an article also in the People’s Daily.

“But one thing is sure: if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Chinese imports following an order of $60 billion, $200 billion, or even $500 billion, many Chinese companies will go bankrupt,” he said.

Ineffective retaliation

Beijing recently slapped additional duties ranging from five to 25 percent on $60 billion worth of American goods. This was in response to Trump administration’s proposal of a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Experts said China has realized that retaliatory action would not persuade the U.S. President to stop his trade actions.

“They switched gear a bit because, I think, they realized that they have the weaker hand here in terms of their ability to retaliate, partly because they import far less from the U.S. than the U.S. imports from China, but also [because] a portion of [goods] they import from China is, you know, high-tech that are quite difficult to import from elsewhere,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics told VOA.

Washington says its actions are aimed at correcting the level playing field because the U.S. suffers from a severe trade deficit in its business with China.

Reassuring markets

Chinese officials are trying to reassure markets and the local population that the U.S. moves would have little impact. Huang Libin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently said there has not been any significant impact on industrial output.

“We hear complaints from [Chinese] companies that U.S. clients have requested a suspension of orders and deliveries, but so far it has had only a limited impact on the industrial sector,” he said.

The state-run Global Times, responded to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow’s remarks that China should not underestimate Trump’s resolve, saying that China was not afraid of “sacrificing short-term interests”. “China has time to fight to the end. Time will prove that the U.S. eventually makes a fool of itself,” the paper said.

The official China Daily has joined government officials in an effort to reassure the market. “Market participants foresee a relatively stable Chinese currency in the near term, without fear of impacts from the U.S.-China trade dispute. They expect solid economic growth momentum amid policy fine-tuning,” it said.

“Leading China’s economy on a stable and far-reaching path, we have confidence and determination,” another commentary in the main edition of the People’s Daily said.

Another reason China is worried is because Washington’s actions have come when the domestic Chinese economy is going through a bad time. The last three months have seen a series of corporate defaults besmirching China’s reputation for many fewer loan defaults as compared to most developed countries.

“[The] economy is now slowing and balance sheets are coming under strain after they tightened monetary policy last year and pushed up borrowing costs. This is the main reason why we are seeing this uptrend in bankruptcies and uptrend in corporate bond defaults,” Evans-Pritchard said. “I think the main driver is domestic. Obviously, the U.S. tariffs won’t help and they are going to cause some damage,” he said.

In its latest report, Capital Economics said that it would be naive to dismiss the possibility of financial instability given the rapid rise in debt levels in the country over the past decade. Chinese banks face the grave emerging scenario of bad loans and non-performing assets weighing heavily on their balance sheets, it said.

 
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Longtime PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is Stepping Down

Longtime PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi will step down as the top executive and the world’s second-largest food and beverage company.

Nooyi, who was born in India, is a rarity on Wall Street as a woman and a minority leading a Fortune 100 company. She oversaw the company during a turbulent time in the industry that has forced PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Co., Campbell Soup Co. and Mondelez International Inc. to shake up product portfolios that had been the norm for decades as families seek healthier choices.

 

Nooyi, 62, has been with PepsiCo Inc. for 24 years and has held the top job for 12.

 

Ramon Laguarta, who has been with the company for more than two decades, will take over as CEO in October, the company said Monday. Nooyi will remain as chairman until early next year.

 

“Today is a day of mixed emotions for me. This company has been my life for nearly a quarter century and part of my heart will always remain here,” Nooyi said in a prepared statement. “But I am proud of all we’ve done to position PepsiCo for success, confident that Ramon and his senior leadership team will continue prudently balancing short-term and long-term priorities, and excited for all the great things that are in store for this company.”

 

Nooyi took over as CEO in October 2006. Between 2007 and 2017, revenue at Pepsico has risen about 61 percent.

 

The 54-year-old Laguarta has held various positions in his 22 years at PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York. He currently serves as president, overseeing global operations, corporate strategy, public policy and government affairs. He previously served as CEO of the Europe Sub-Saharan Africa region. Prior to joining PepsiCO, Laguarta worked at confectionary company Chupa Chups.

 

Laguarta will be the sixth CEO in PepsiCo’s history, with all of them coming from within the company.

 

 
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Report: Russia Set Up Clandestine Network For N. Korea Oil Shipments

Russia engaged in more extensive oil exports to North Korea than had been previously reported, by setting up an illicit trade network that is likely still being used today to evade United Nations sanctions, according a South Korean research organization.

A recent report issued by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul used Russian customs data to document how “one North Korean state enterprise purchased 622,878 tons of Russian oil worth $238 million,” between 2015 and 2017.”

While China is North Korea’s main oil supplier, the ASAN estimate for Russian oil exports to North Korea is significantly higher than the $25 million in sales for the same period that was reported by the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) in Seoul.

“Smuggling has always been an important element in the cross-border trade between North Korea and it’s important allies. What the Chinese government and the Russian government to a lesser extent have been doing is to turn a blind eye to these activities,” said Go Myong-Hyun, a North Korea analyst with the Asan Institute For Policy Studies in Seoul.

Russian evasions

The Asan report comes amid allegations that Russia potentially violated international sanctions imposed on North Korea by granting thousands of new work permits to North Korean laborers. Moscow had denied any such actions.

The Trump administration also imposed targeted U.S sanctions on a Russian bank for allegedly doing business with a person blacklisted for involvement with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called the allegations against Russia, “very troubling.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on “the Russians and all countries to abide by the U.N. Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea,” while attending the ASEAN Regional Forum in Singapore on Saturday.

United Nations sanctions imposed in September of 2017 prohibit member countries from “providing work authorizations” permits to North Korean workers.

In December of 2017 the U.N. Security Council further strengthened the sanctions to cut North Korean oil imports by a third, and to impose a total export ban on North Korea’s $3 billion coal and other mineral industries, its $800 million clothing manufacturing output, and its lucrative seafood industry.

Shell companies

The ASAN report is centered on the activities of the Independent Petroleum Company (IPC), a Russian firm that the U.S. Treasury Department targeted in June 2017 for violating restrictions on selling oil to North Korea. IPC has since changed its name. 

IPC was found to have sold large quantities of oil to Russian affiliated companies, such as the Pro-Gain Group Corporation (PGGC) that was actually operating on behalf of North Korea’s state owned Foreign Trade Bank. The North Korean bank has been under U.S. sanctions since 2013.

“The entities involved tried to cover up the transactions by falsifying destination countries for the purchases,” said the ASAN report entitled The Rise of Phantom Traders.

The report notes that PGGC is owned by Taiwan citizen Tsang Yung Yuan. Tsang was sanctioned earlier this year by the U.S. for facilitating North Korean coal exports using a Russia-based North Korean broker. PGGC has headquarters listed both in Taipei and Samoa.

North Korea has also been accused of conducting illicit ship-to-ship transfers of oil, and to conceal these operations by disabling the Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder of vessels in order to hide their location. There have also been reports of North Korea changing vessel names and identification numbers, even painting over or altering the numbers on the ships’ exteriors.

Rajin-Khasan Exemption

A large number of oil shipments were also delivered to the Russian-North Korean border village of Khasan, which is connected by rail to the North Korean port terminal at Rajin.

The Rajin-Khasan rail project was exempted from U.N. sanctions to allow Russia to use the North Korean seaport to export Russian coal.

Trade records show that oil deliveries arriving in Khasan were on their way to China, but the report suggests it is more likely North Korea was the final destination. Since 2015, the ASAN report says, only PGGC and Velmur, two companies with ties to North Korea, listed Khasan as the point of delivery for oil shipments. 

According to the ASAN report, Moscow and Pyongyang are likely exploiting the Rajin-Khasan rail exemption to evade restrictions on North Korean oil imports.

In 2016, South Korea suspended its participation in the Rajin-Khasan rail project to comply with U.S. unilateral sanctions imposed on North Korea trade.

Recently some officials in Seoul have called for these sanctions affecting the Rajin-Khasan Project to be lifted, so that investment can proceed in connecting South Korean rail both to North Korea, and to the intentional railway system beyond that can reach Europe.

Sanctions effectiveness

The sanctions are intended to cut North Korea off from foreign currency and materials needed for weapons production, and to impose economic pain on the leadership to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile development programs.

Despite increased reports of sanctions evasions, Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea analyst with the Sejong Institute in South Korea, says the recent report of an 88 percent decline in North Korean trade in the first quarter of this year indicates the economic situation there is in dire condition.

“If the sanctions from the U.N. Security Council continue, economic breakdown in North Korea will be inevitable,” said Cheong.

Talks between Washington and Pyongyang have made little significant progress toward ending the North’s nuclear program since June, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore.

The U.S. insists that the North completely end it nuclear weapons program before any concessions are granted, while Pyongyang wants early sanctions relief.

On Sunday Pompeo said that North Korean Foreign Minster Ri Yong Ho reiterated a “very clear” commitment to denuclearize when the two met at the ASEAN conference in Singapore.

Lee Yoon-jee contributed to this report.
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Apple iPhone Chip Supplier Says Virus Will Delay Shipments

A company that makes semiconductors for Apple iPhones says it is recovering from a virus outbreak but expects the incident to delay shipments and raise costs.

Taiwan Semiconductor Co. Ltd. said 80 percent of the fabrication tools affected by Friday’s virus had been recovered by Sunday. TSMC expects full recovery on Monday.

The company didn’t detail the impact on Apple or other customers. Apple Inc. did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The semiconductor company blames the outbreak on a mistake during installation of software for a new tool, which was then connected to its computer network. It says confidential information was not compromised.

The company says the incident will cut third-quarter revenue by about 3 percent. But it’s confident it will get that back in the fourth quarter.

 
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Oregon Police Chief Orders Review of Use of Force at Protest

Portland police were accused Sunday of being heavy-handed against people protesting a rally by extreme-right demonstrators, reportedly injuring some counter-protesters and prompting the city’s new police chief to order a review of officers’ use of force.

Police in riot gear tried to keep the two groups apart, many of whom had come on Saturday dressed for battle in helmets and protective clothing. Dozens of the extreme-right protesters were bussed to Portland, one of America’s most liberal cities, from nearby Vancouver, Washington.

Saturday’s clashes were the most recent of several this year in the city as right-wing militants converged, met by counter-protesters, including members of anti-fascist, or “antifa,” groups. City officials have struggled with striking a balance between free speech and keeping events from spiraling out of control.

But on Saturday, some said police seemed to act mostly against those protesting the presence of the extreme-right demonstrators, using stun grenades and what appeared to be rubber bullets against them.

Police “targeted Portland residents peacefully counter-protesting against racist far-right groups, including white supremacists, white nationalists, and neo-Nazi gangs,” the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America said in a statement. It called on officials to investigate.

Police ordered the counter-protesters to disperse, then moved in behind a volley of stun grenades. One of the rounds reportedly hit a counter-protester in the head, becoming embedded in his helmet and injuring him. One woman was taken to a hospital after being hit in the arm and chest with a “flash-bang” grenade, local media reported. The blasts echoed through downtown Portland.

Four people were arrested.

Police Chief Danielle Outlaw, who assumed command less than a year ago as Portland’s first African-American female police chief, said in a statement Sunday she takes all use-of-force cases seriously.

Outlaw directed the professional standards division to begin gathering evidence to determine if the force used was within policy and training guidelines. The Office of Independent Police Review will be provided with the information for review and investigation.

Saturday’s incidents started with demonstrators aligned with Patriot Prayer and an affiliated group, the Proud Boys, gathering in a riverfront park. The Proud Boys has been characterized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.”

Hundreds of counter-demonstrators faced them from across the street, holding banners and signs with messages such as “Alt right scum not welcome in Portland.” Some chanted “Nazis go home.”

Officers stood in the middle of a four-lane boulevard, essentially forming a wall to keep the two sides separated.

The counter-protesters were made up of a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights advocates, democratic socialists and other groups.

Patriot Prayer also has held rallies in many other cities around the U.S. West, including Berkeley, California, that have drawn violent reactions.

Saturday’s rally, organized by Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson, was the third to roil Portland this summer. Two previous events ended in bloody fistfights and riots.

Gibson disputed the group’s classification as a hate group.

“We’re here to promote freedom and God. That’s it,” Gibson told Portland TV station KGW. “Our country is getting soft.”
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Trump Acknowledges Purpose of Meeting with Russian Lawyer

President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Kremlin-connected lawyer and his son was to collect information about his political opponent, casting new light on a moment central to the special counsel’s Russia probe.

Trump, amid a series of searing tweets sent from his New Jersey golf club, tore into two of his favorite targets, the news media and Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible links between the president’s campaign and Russia. Trump unleashed particularly fury at reports that he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr. and other senior campaign officials.

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” Trump wrote. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

But 13 months ago, Trump gave a far different explanation for the meeting. A July 2017 statement dictated by the president read: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.”

But since then, the story about the meeting has changed several times, eventually forced by the discovery of emails between the president’s eldest son and an intermediary from the Russian government offering damaging information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Betraying no surprise or misgivings about the offer from a hostile foreign power, Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Sunday’s tweet was Trump’s clearest statement yet on the purpose of the meeting, which has become a focal point of Mueller’s investigation even as the president and his lawyers try to downplay its significance and pummel the Mueller probe with attacks. On Sunday, Trump again suggested without evidence that Mueller was biased against him, declaring, “This is the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country.”

And as Trump and his allies have tried to discredit the probe, a new talking point has emerged: that even if that meeting was held to collect damaging information, none was provided and “collusion” — Trump’s go-to description of what Mueller is investigating — never occurred.

“The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated, and nobody has pointed to one,” said Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, on ABC’s “This Week.”

But legal experts have pointed out several possible criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States and aiding and abetting a conspiracy. And despite Trump’s public Twitter denial, the president has expressed worry that his son may face legal exposure even as he believes he did nothing wrong, according to three people close to the White House familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

Sekulow acknowledged that the public explanation for the meeting has changed but insisted that the White House has been very clear with the special counsel’s office. He said he was not aware of Trump Jr. facing any legal exposure.

“I don’t represent Don Jr.,” Sekulow said, “but I will tell you I have no knowledge at all of Don Jr. being told that he’s a target of any investigation, and I have no knowledge of him being interviewed by the special counsel.”

Trump’s days of private anger spilled out into public with the Twitter outburst, which comes at a perilous time for the president.

A decision about whether he sits for an interview with Mueller may also occur in the coming weeks, according to another one of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani. Trump has seethed against what he feels are trumped-up charges against his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, whose trial began last week and provided a visible reminder of Mueller’s work.

And he raged against the media’s obsession with his links to Russia and the status of Michael Cohen, his former fixer, who is under federal investigation in New York. Cohen has indicated that he would tell prosecutors that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting ahead of time.

Despite a show of force from his national security team this week as a warning against future Russian election meddling, Trump again deemed the matter a “hoax” this week. And at a trio of rallies, he escalated his already vitriolic rhetoric toward the media, savaging the press for unflattering coverage and, he feels, bias.

“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!”

The fusillade of tweets came from Bedminster, Trump’s golf course, where he is ensconced in a property that bears his name at every turn and is less checked in by staffers. It was at the New Jersey golf club where a brooding Trump has unleashed other inflammatory attacks and where, in spring 2017, he made the final decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the move that triggered the Russia probe.

Trump was joined for his Saturday rally in Ohio by former White House communications director Hope Hicks, who departed the administration earlier this year. Her unannounced presence raised some eyebrows as Hicks has been interviewed by Mueller and was part of the team of staffers that helped draft the original statement on the Trump Tower meeting.

Multiple White House officials have been interviewed while still working at the White House and have remained in contact with the president.
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Trump Defends 2016 Meeting Between Son, Kremlin-linked Lawyer

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday defended the 2016 meeting his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., held  with a Kremlin-linked lawyer to “get information” on his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, saying it was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”

In his most definitive statement on the meeting at his Trump Tower campaign headquarters in New York, Trump said on Twitter that he did not know about the talks ahead of time that his son held with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and that the meeting “went nowhere.”

President Trump a year ago dictated a misleading statement about the meeting his son held with Veselnitskaya, saying it was about the adoption of Russian children. The younger Trump later acknowledged that the meeting was set up on the premise that the Trump campaign would get incriminating information about Clinton, saying in one email that he would “love it” to get the anti-Clinton material.

Trump called news accounts in recent days “a complete fabrication” that he was concerned about the legal liability his son could face for arranging the Trump Tower meeting.

Trump’s latest denial that he knew ahead of time about the meeting comes in the face of news accounts saying his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that he heard Trump’s son tell his father in advance about the meeting.

“Too bad a large portion of the Media refuses to report the lies and corruption having to do with the Rigged Witch Hunt — but that is why we call them FAKE NEWS!” Trump said.

Mueller is in the midst of a 15-month investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump campaign ties to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion with Russia or any other wrongdoing.

The term “collusion” is not mentioned in the U.S. legal code of criminal offenses, but Mueller is believed to be investigating whether anyone in the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian officials, which could result in criminal charges if they conspired to interfere with the election.

Trump railed again Sunday about Mueller’s probe, calling it “the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country. Fortunately, the facts are all coming out, and fast!” 

In the midst of a working vacation at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey, Trump also unleashed a new barrage of attacks on the national news media, saying it was “very dangerous & sick!”

Trump’s latest offensive against stories he does not like about his 18-month presidency came hours after he rallied supporters in the Midwestern state of Ohio. He campaigned for a Republican candidate facing a tough race Tuesday for a seat in the House of Representatives, the last special election before the nationwide November 6 voting, when the entire 435-member House is being contested and a third of the 100-member Senate.

Republicans have held the seat in a suburban enclave just outside the Ohio capital of Columbus for three decades, but fear losing it could presage loss of their majority House bloc in the November voting.

“They’re talking about this blue wave,” Trump said referring to way Democrats are depicted on electoral maps. Shaking his head, he added, “I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

Trump described the Republican candidate, state legislator Troy Balderson, as “really smart” and a “really hard worker,” while disparaging his Democratic opponent, local official Danny O’Connor, as a would-be pawn of national Democratic officials and “a low-level person that did nothing.”

On Sunday, Trump also defended tariffs he has imposed on imports into the U.S.

“Tariffs are working big time,” he tweeted. “Every country on earth wants to take wealth out of the U.S., always to our detriment. I say, as they come,Tax them. If they don’t want to be taxed, let them make or build the product in the U.S. In either event, it means jobs and great wealth.” 

He claimed the tariffs would help pay down “large of the $21 Trillion in debt that has been accumulated” and “At minimum, we will make much better Trade Deals for our country.”
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Trump: US Media ‘Very Dangerous & Sick’

U.S. President Donald Trump, in the midst of a working vacation, unleashed a new barrage of attacks on the national news media Sunday, saying it was “very dangerous & sick!”

“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE,” Trump tweeted from his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey. “I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War!”

Trump called news accounts “a complete fabrication” that he was concerned about the legal liability his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., could face for arranging a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer said to have dirt on Trump’s opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere,” Trump said on Twitter. “I did not know about it!”

The president has denied knowledge of the meeting at his Trump Tower campaign headquarters in New York in the face of news accounts saying his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that he heard Trump’s son tell his father in advance about the meeting.

“Too bad a large portion of the Media refuses to report the lies and corruption having to do with the Rigged Witch Hunt – but that is why we call them FAKE NEWS!” Trump said.

Mueller is in the midst of a 15-month investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump campaign ties to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion with Russia or any other wrongdoing.

Trump railed again Sunday about Mueller’s probe, calling it “the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country. Fortunately, the facts are all coming out, and fast!”

Trump’s latest offensive against stories he does not like about his 18-month presidency came hours after he rallied supporters in the midwestern state of Ohio. He campaigned for a Republican candidate facing a tough race Tuesday for a seat in the House of Representatives, the last special election before the nationwide November 6 voting, when the entire 435-member House is being contested and a third of the 100-member Senate.

Republicans have held the seat in a suburban enclave just outside the Ohio capital of Columbus for three decades, but fear losing it could presage loss of their majority House bloc in the November voting.

“They’re talking about this blue wave,” Trump said referring to way Democrats are depicted on electoral maps. Shaking his head, he added, “I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

Trump described the Republican candidate, state legislator Troy Balderson, as “really smart” and a “really hard worker,” while disparaging his Democratic opponent, local official Danny O’Connor, as a would-be pawn of national Democratic officials and “a low-level person that did nothing.”

On Sunday, Trump also defended tariffs he has imposed on imports into the U.S.

“Tariffs are working big time,” he tweeted. “Every country on earth wants to take wealth out of the U.S., always to our detriment. I say, as they come,Tax them. If they don’t want to be taxed, let them make or build the product in the U.S. In either event, it means jobs and great wealth.”

He claimed that “because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 Trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration, while at the same time reducing taxes for our people. At minimum, we will make much better Trade Deals for our country.”

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Palestinian Girls Will Pitch Their App to Silicon Valley 

Four Palestinian high school friends are heading to California this week to pitch their mobile app about fire prevention to Silicon Valley’s tech leaders, after winning a slot in the finals of a worldwide competition among more than 19,000 teenage girls.

For the 11th graders from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the ticket of admission to the World Pitch Summit signals a particularly dramatic leap.

They come from middle class families that value education, but opportunities have been limited because of the omnipresent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, prevailing norms of patriarchy in their traditional society and typically underequipped schools with outdated teaching methods.

“We are excited to travel in a plane for the first time in our lives, meet new people and see a new world,” said team member Wasan al-Sayed, 17. “We are excited to be in the most prestigious IT community in the world, Silicon Valley, where we can meet interesting people and see how the new world works.”

​Twelve finalists

Twelve teams made it to the finals of the “Technovation Challenge” in San Jose, California, presenting apps that tackle problems in their communities. The Palestinian teens compete in the senior division against teams from Egypt, the United States, Mexico, India and Spain, for scholarships of up to $15,000.

It’s a life-changing experience for al-Sayed and her teammates, Zubaida al-Sadder, Masa Halawa and Tamara Awaisa.

They are now determined to pursue careers in technology.

“Before this program, we had a vague idea about the future,” said al-Sayed, speaking at a computer lab at An Najah University in her native Nablus, the West Bank’s second largest city. “Now we have a clear idea. It helped us pick our path in life.”

The teens first heard about the competition a few months ago from an IT teacher at their school in a middle-class neighborhood in Nablus, where IT classes are a modest affair, held twice a week, with two students to a computer.

The girls, friends since 10th grade, each had a laptop at home, and worked with Yamama Shakaa, a local mentor provided by the competition organizers. The teens “did everything by themselves, with very few resources,” Shakaa said.

The team produced a virtual reality game, “Be a firefighter,” to teach fire prevention skills.

​Blackouts and fires

The subject is particularly relevant in some parts of the Palestinian territories, such as the Gaza Strip, where a border blockade by Israel and Egypt, imposed after the takeover of the Islamic militant group Hamas in 2007, has led to hours-long daily power cuts and the widespread use of candles and other potential fire hazards.

The teens now hope to expand their app to include wildfire prevention. They will also present a business and marketing plan at the California pitching session.

After the competition, they will give the app to the Palestinian Education Ministry for use in schools.

“This prize has changed our lives,” al-Sayed said.

About the competition

The competition, now in its ninth year, is run by Iridescent, a global nonprofit offering opportunities to young people, especially girls, through technology. The group said 60 percent of the U.S. participants enroll in additional computer science courses after the competition, with 30 percent majoring in that field in college, well above the national rate among female U.S. college students. Two-thirds of international participants show an interest in technology-related courses, the group said.

Palestinian Education Minister Sabri Saidam counts on technology, along with a new emphasis on vocational training, to overhaul Palestinian schools, where many students still learn by rote in crowded classrooms.

Youth unemployment, particularly among university graduates, is a central problem across the Arab world, in part because of a demographic “youth bulge.” Last year, unemployment among Palestinian college graduates younger than 30 reached 56 percent, including 41 percent in the West Bank and 73 percent in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Unemployment is particularly high among female university graduates, in part because young women are expected to marry and raise children, while young men are considered the main breadwinners. However, employers also complain that graduates studying outdated or irrelevant courses often lack the needed skills for employment.

Saidam said Palestinian schools have received 15,000 computers in the last couple of years. His ministry has also established 54 bookless “smart schools” for grades one to six where students use laptops and learn by doing, including educational trips and involvement with their society.
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UK Trade Minister: EU Is Pushing Britain to No-deal Brexit

British Trade Minister Liam Fox said “intransigence” from the European Union was pushing Britain toward a no-deal Brexit, in an interview published on Saturday by the Sunday Times.

With less than eight months until Britain quits the EU, the government has yet to agree a divorce deal with Brussels and has stepped up planning for the possibility of leaving the bloc without any formal agreement.

Fox, a promiment Brexit supporter in Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet, put the odds of Britain leaving the European Union without agreeing upon a deal over their future relationship at 60-40.

“I think the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal,” Fox told the Times after a trade mission in Japan.

“We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen, but if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic well-being of the people of Europe, then it’s a bureaucrats’ Brexit — not a people’s Brexit — [and] then there is only going to be one outcome.”

It was up to the EU whether it wanted to put “ideological purity” ahead of the real economy, Fox said.

If Britain fails to agree the terms of its divorce with the EU and leaves without even a transition agreement to smooth its exit, it would revert to trading under World Trade Organization rules in March 2019.

Most economists think this would cause serious harm to the world’s No. 5 economy as trade with the EU, Britain’s largest market, would become subject to tariffs.

Supporters of Brexit say there may be some short-term pain for Britain’s $2.9 trillion economy, but that in the long term it will prosper when cut free from the EU, which some of them cast as a failing German-dominated experiment in European integration.

On Friday, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the chances of a no-deal Brexit had become “uncomfortably high.”
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Trump Reshapes Midterms to Some GOP Concern

President Donald Trump’s strategy of becoming aggressively involved in the midterm elections is prompting concern among some Republicans who worry he’s complicating the political calculus for GOP candidates trying to outrun his popularity.

Those Republicans worry their statewide candidates may rise or fall based on Trump’s standing, muddling their path to maintain control of Congress.

But Trump has no plans to step out of the spotlight. He held a rally Saturday night in Ohio and plans to host two fundraisers at the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey, next week, benefitting Senate and House candidates, according to a campaign official with knowledge of the president’s events. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details about the fundraisers that haven’t yet been publicly released.

​Star of the midterms

The president is casting himself as the star of the midterms, eagerly inserting himself into hotly contested primaries, headlining rallies in pivotal swing states and increasing his fundraising efforts for Republicans. Last week, Trump agreed to donate a portion of his re-election fund to 100 GOP candidates running in competitive House and Senate races.

He’s expected to be even more aggressive in the fall. White House officials say he’s reserving time on his schedule for a midterm travel and fundraising schedule likely to surpass that of former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“This is now about Donald Trump,” said Al Cardenas, a former Florida Republican chairman. “It’s a high-risk, high-stakes proposition.”

Enough to win?

The question facing Republicans is whether turning out those Trump loyalists is enough to win in toss-up congressional districts or if their path to victory depends more on capturing a share of independents and suburban women turned off by Trump’s tumultuous first term. It’s a dilemma they will confront in 2018 and beyond.

“If we lose the governor’s race for the first time in 20 years, all of a sudden President Trump’s chances of winning in 2020 diminish with a Democratic governor,” Cardenas said. “You can’t win a presidential election if you’re a Republican without winning Florida.”

Trump aides argue no one energizes Republicans like the president, pointing to the throngs of thousands who wait in long lines to attend his rallies — he’s held 17 since taking office. The aides say the White House is taking a two-pronged approach, sending Trump to mobilize the base while other officials, such as his daughter Ivanka, can generate local headlines and help with voters who may not like the president’s aggressive style. The goal is to ensure that the occasional voters who turned out for Trump in 2016 cast ballots in the midterms.

​Worrisome signs

But there are some signs that Trump’s unpopularity with the general electorate may hamper more than help individual Republican candidates.

While Republicans have won a series of special elections since Trump took office, they’ve captured smaller margins than in previous years.

The GOP is worried about a special congressional election Tuesday in a central Ohio district that Trump won by 11 percentage points in 2016. A Monmouth University poll released this week showed the race tightening, leaving Republican Troy Balderson with a 1-point edge. The survey found 46 percent of likely voters approved of Trump, while 49 percent disapproved.

Hoping to shore up GOP support, Trump is hosting a rally in the district Saturday night. His visit follows a Monday stop by Vice President Mike Pence.

The president’s team keeps a close eye on data assessing whether Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction under Trump. And they point to Trump’s strength among Republican voters and an upbeat attitude about the nation’s economic climate as evidence Republicans will avoid the rough midterm elections that have afflicted previous administrations.

But some Republicans warn Trump’s outsized media presence drowns out the messages of congressional candidates, who believe the path to victory lies with a focus on local issues, the Republican tax cuts and the prospect of Nancy Pelosi becoming House speaker again. In Ohio, Balderson and his GOP allies have tried to tie Democrat Danny O’Connor to Pelosi. O’Connor has repeatedly said he would like to see a new generation of leadership in the House.

“Part of the reason why the Nancy Pelosi attacks are so important is that they’re a way to motivate the Republicans who might not love Trump,” said Ohio GOP strategist Terry Casey.

Democrats energized

Still, Republicans are often forced to fend off questions about Trump-sparked controversies. In recent days, Trump publicly mused about a government shutdown sometime in the fall — a possibility that Republican congressional leaders fear would significantly hamper their electoral prospects.

In Pennsylvania on Thursday, Trump said he was “little bit torn” about whether it would be better to shut down the government before or after the midterm elections to secure funding for his border wall. 

“Whether it’s before or after, we are getting it or we are closing down government,” he told thousands of supporters at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

That kind of uncertainty only serves to further embolden Trump’s opposition, say Democrats.

“Clearly he lights the fire when it comes to energized Democrats,” said Ohio Democratic party chairman David Pepper. “He’s going to come and give a rambling, over-the-top speech that has nothing to do with this district or Troy Balderson. It may hurt more than it helps.”

The president’s decision to intervene in recent GOP primaries is also raising concerns among some state party officials and politicians, who fear he’s siding with candidates who could prove weaker in general elections. Trump has relished doling out endorsements, sometimes blasting out several a day, even for those who don’t need his backing right now.

On Thursday, he tweeted support for Rep. Steve Stivers, an Ohio congressman who chairs the campaign committee for the House GOP, urging people to back him in a primary contest next week. Stivers’ primary was held in May and he ran unopposed. The tweet was quickly deleted.

​Winning streak

The president has compiled a winning streak in recent primaries in which he has endorsed, helping favored candidates in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.

His rally this week in Tampa, Florida, represented his most ambitious attempt to nationalize two races crucial to Republicans’ midterm hopes.

Trump stood onstage with Rep. Ron DeSantis, a 39-year-old three-term congressman, imploring his supporters to back his campaign for governor. DeSantis was little-known to Republican voters until Trump first tweeted support for him in December. Since then, he’s made his ties to Trump a centerpiece of his primary race, focused on Fox News appearances and ads. In recent weeks, he’s opened up a double-digit lead against state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a longtime fixture in Florida politics.

DeSantis said he was grateful for Trump’s support but added, “I appreciate more the leadership you’re showing for our great country.”

The president also repeatedly praised Gov. Rick Scott, a Trump ally running for Senate, and attacked his opponent, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Trump, who spends winter weekends at his estate in Palm Beach, claimed the only time he sees the senator is “five months before every election.”

“After a while, you forget who’s the senator,” Trump said.
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Manafort Trial Concludes Active First Week 

The first week of Paul Manafort’s trial ended Friday, with prosecutors calling a bevy of witnesses to testify about the former Trump campaign chairman’s alleged financial crimes. 

Manafort, 69, is accused of filing false tax returns, failing to disclose foreign bank accounts to U.S. authorities, and obtaining fraudulent bank loans after his earnings dried up from his political consultancy business for pro-Russia politicians. 

The trial is the first to arise from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow. 

Manafort’s former business partner, Rick Gates, who was indicted along with Manafort, has pleaded guilty and has become a cooperating witness. Manafort’s lawyers, through their opening statement and cross-examination of witnesses, sought to pin the blame on Gates.

Here are highlights from the first four days of the trial:

Day 1: The trial started with the selection of a jury of six men and six women pulled from a pool of several dozen randomly summoned citizens. Manafort’s fate rests in their hands.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers then delivered their opening statements to the jury, laying out their sides of the story.

Prosecutor Uzo Asonye said Manafort committed tax and bank fraud, believing “the law did not apply to him.”

Manafort’s lawyers responded by blaming the crimes on Gates. “We’re primarily here because of one man. That man is Rick Gates,” defense lawyer Thomas Zehnle said in his opening statement.

The day featured testimony from the prosecution’s first witness, Tad Devine, a Democratic political consultant who worked with Manafort on campaigns in Ukraine. His testimony was aimed at demonstrating that Manafort worked for the Party of Regions and its leader, former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Day 2: The second day of the trial was focused on Manafort’s lavish lifestyle, with testimonies aimed at showing his taste for luxury and establishing his need for money and motive to commit fraud.

Several vendors, including a high-end New York men’s clothier, a landscaper and a home technology executive, testified how Manafort spent millions of dollars on luxury goods and services, almost always paying with wire transfers from foreign accounts.

Admonished by the judge on Tuesday that “it isn’t a crime to make a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” prosecutor Asonye said that while it isn’t “a crime to have a lot of money,” it is a crime to not pay taxes.

Asonye made a stir on Wednesday by suggesting Gates might not be asked to take the stand. But prosecutors later put the speculation to rest, saying they had “every intention” of calling Gates to testify.

Day 3: The prosecution’s focus shifted on the third day of the trial from Manafort’s extravagant lifestyle to his financial history, and how he kept his bookkeepers and tax preparers in the dark about his overseas accounts.

Longtime Manafort bookkeeper Heather Washkuhn took the stand, testifying that she did not know about Manafort’s foreign bank accounts and relied on him for determining whether to report something as income or a loan. Contradicting the defense’s argument that Manafort was too busy to be involved in his finances, she said Manafort “approved every penny of everything we paid.”

Day 4: Accountants Philip Ayliff and Cindy Laporte, who prepared Manafort’s tax returns for several years, testified that they had no knowledge that Manafort controlled foreign corporate entities and bank accounts. They told the jury they asked Manafort every year about his foreign holdings and he told them he had none.

Laporte testified that she changed Manafort’s tax return in 2014 to lower his taxes by as much as $500,000 and two years later helped him falsify documents in order to get bank loans.

Like several other witnesses, Laporte has been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

Defense lawyer Kevin Downing questioned the prosecution’s claim that Manafort willfully hid his foreign accounts from his financial advisers, saying the firm kept documents containing details about them. “Only a fool would give that information to his accountant if he was trying to conceal it” from the Internal Revenue Service, Downing said.

The trial resumes on Monday afternoon with the cross-examination of Laporte by defense lawyers.
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Police Move to Clear Rowdy Protests in Portland

Small scuffles broke out Saturday as police in Portland, Oregon, deployed “flash bang” devices and other means to disperse hundreds of right-wing and self-described anti-fascist protesters.

Just before 2 p.m., police in riot gear ordered people to leave an area downtown, saying demonstrators had thrown rocks and bottles at officers.

“Get out of the street,” police announced via loudspeaker.

There were arrests, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many. There was also debris left in the streets by various protesters.

Demonstrators aligned with Patriot Prayer and an affiliated group, the Proud Boys, gathered around midday in a riverfront park.

The hundreds of opposing demonstrators faced them from across the street, holding banners and signs. Many of them yelled out chants such as “Nazis, go home.”

Officers stood in the middle of the four-lane boulevard, essentially forming a wall to keep the two sides separated.

The counterprotesters were made up of a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights advocates, democratic socialists and other groups. They included people dressed as clowns and a brass band blaring music.

The rally organized by Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson was the third to roil Portland this summer. Two previous events ended in bloody fistfights and riots, and one counterprotester was sent to the hospital with a skull fracture.

This time, Gibson changed the venue from a federal plaza outside U.S. District Court to a waterfront park so some of his Oregon supporters could carry concealed weapons as they demonstrated.

Protesters saw a significant police presence that included bomb-sniffing dogs and weapons-screening checkpoints. In a statement, police said weapons might be seized if there was a violation of law and added that it is illegal in Portland to carry a loaded firearm in public unless a person has a valid Oregon concealed-handgun license. Many protesters were expected to be from out of state.

Gibson’s insistence on bringing his supporters repeatedly to this politically liberal city has crystallized a debate about the limits of free speech in an era of stark political division. Patriot Prayer also has held rallies in many other cities around the U.S. West, including Berkeley, California, that have drawn violent reactions.

But the Portland events have taken on outsized significance after a Patriot Prayer sympathizer was charged with fatally stabbing two men who came to the defense of two young black women — one in a hijab — whom the attacker was accused of harassing on a light-rail train in May 2017.

A coalition of community organizations and a group representing more than 50 tribes warned of the potential for even greater violence than in previous rallies if participants carried guns. The coalition called on officials to denounce what it called “the racist and sexist violence” of Patriot Prayer and protect the city.

Gibson, who is running a long-shot campaign to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state, said in a live video on Facebook earlier this week that he wouldn’t stop bringing his followers to Portland until they could express their right-wing views without interference.

“I refuse to do what Portland wants me to do, because what Portland wants me to do is to shut up and never show up again. So, yeah, I refuse to do that, but I will not stop going in, and I will not stop pushing, and I will not stop marching until the people of Portland realize that and realize that their methods do not work,” he said.

Self-described anti-fascists, or “antifa,” have been organizing anonymously online to confront Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys in the streets.

 A broader counterprotest organized by a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights groups and artists planned to gather at City Hall before the Patriot Prayer rally. Organizers say that while Patriot Prayer denies being a white supremacist group, it affiliates itself with known white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazi gangs.

“Patriot Prayer is continuing to commit violence in our city, and their events are becoming more and more violent,” said Effie Baum of Pop Mob, a coalition of community groups organizing the counterdemonstration. “Leaving them a small group to attack in the streets is only going to allow them to perpetuate their violence.”

Dueling protests a month ago ended with Portland police declaring a riot and arresting four people. A similar Patriot Prayer event on June 4 devolved into fistfights and assaults by both sides as police struggled to keep the groups apart.
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Election Crackdown Runs Into Speed-tweeting Human ‘Bots’

Nina Tomasieski logs on to Twitter before the sun rises. Seated at her dining room table with a nearby TV constantly tuned to Fox News, the 70-year-old grandmother spends up to 14 hours a day tweeting the praises of President Trump and his political allies, particularly those on the ballot this fall, and deriding their opponents.

She’s part of a dedicated band of Trump supporters who tweet and retweet Keep America Great messages thousands of times a day.

“Time to walk away Dems and vote RED in the primaries,” she declared in one of her voluminous tweets, adding, “Say NO to socialism & hate.”

While her goal is simply to advance the agenda of a president she adores, she and her friends have been swept up in an expanded effort by Twitter and other social media companies to crack down on nefarious tactics used to meddle in the 2016 election.

And without meaning to, the tweeters have demonstrated the difficulty such crackdowns face — particularly when it comes to telling a political die-hard from a surreptitious computer robot.

Last week, Facebook said it had removed 32 fake accounts apparently created to manipulate U.S. politics — efforts that may be linked to Russia.

Twitter and other sites also have targeted automated or robot-like accounts known as bots, which authorities say were used to cloak efforts by foreign governments and political bad actors in the 2016 elections.

But the screening has repeatedly and erroneously flagged Tomasieski and users like her.

Their accounts have been suspended or frozen for “suspicious” behavior — apparently because of the frequency and relentlessness of their messages. When they started tweeting support for a conservative lawmaker in the GOP primary for Illinois governor this spring, news stories warned that right-wing “propaganda bots” were trying to influence the election.

“Almost all of us are considered a bot,” says Tomasieski, who lives in Tennessee but is tweeting for GOP candidates across the U.S.

Cynthia Smith has been locked out of her account and “shadow banned,” meaning tweets aren’t as visible to others, because of suspected “automated behavior.”

“I’m a gal in Southern California,” Smith said. “I am no bot.”

The actions have drawn criticism from conservatives, who have accused Twitter, Facebook and other companies of having a liberal bias and censorship. It also raises a question: Can the companies outsmart the ever-evolving tactics of U.S. adversaries if they can’t be sure who’s a robot and who’s Nina?

“It’s going to take a really long time, I think years, before Twitter and Facebook and other platforms are able to deal with a lot of these issues,” said Timothy Carone, who teaches technology at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

The core problem is that people are coming up with new ways to use the platforms faster than the companies can manage them, he said.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has said it identified and challenged close to 10 million suspected bot or spam accounts in May, up from 3.2 million last September. It’s also trying to weed out “trolls,” or accounts that harass other users, pick fights or tweet material that’s considered inflammatory.

Twitter acknowledges that there will be some “false positives.”

“Our goal is to learn fast and make our processes and tools smarter,” Twitter executives said in a blog post earlier this year.

Tomasieski and her conservative friends use so-called Twitter “rooms” — which operate using the group messaging function — to amplify their voices.

She participates in about 10 rooms, each with 50 members who are invited in once they hit a certain number of followers. That number varies, but “newbies” might have around 3,000, Tomasieski says. Some have far more.

Everyone in the room tweets their own material and also retweets everyone else’s. So a tweet that Tomasieski sends may be seen by her roughly 51,000 followers, but then be retweeted by dozens more people, each of whom may have 50,000 or more followers.

She says she’s learned some tricks to avoid trouble with Twitter. She’s careful not to exceed limits of roughly 100 tweets or retweets an hour. She doesn’t use profanity and she tries to mix up her subjects to appear more human and less bot-like.

During a recent afternoon, Tomasieski retweeted messages criticizing immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Democratic socialists and the media. One noted an Associated Press story about an increase in the number of Muslims running for public office — news the user described as “alarming.”

Tomasieski says she loves to write. But most important is helping “my guy.”

“There is as much enthusiasm today as there was when Trump was elected. It’s very quiet, but it’s there. My job is to get them to the polls,” she said. “That’s rewarding. I go to bed feeling like I have accomplished something.”
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New Era in Space: NASA Astronauts Fly Commercial Spacecraft

A new era in American spaceflight was unveiled Friday, with NASA presenting the flight crews that will carry out the first test flights and operational missions aboard commercial spacecraft to be launched from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011. The test flights of the modules, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, are expected next year. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Polish Beekeepers Concerned When Banned Chemicals Temporarily Approved

Honeybees are essential to our food supply, but bee colonies around the world are declining. Among the main culprits are insecticides containing chemicals known as neonicotinoids, which are highly toxic to honeybees. In Europe, where about 80 percent of crops rely to some degree on insect pollination, the chemical is banned but exceptions allowed. Poland’s agriculture ministry has temporarily approved it for use in rapeseed crops, worrying the country’s beekeepers. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Report: Alleged Russian Agent Sought Ties With NRA, Trump Aide

The Washington Post is reporting that an alleged Russian agent who cultivated close ties with U.S. gun rights groups was also socializing with a former Trump aide in the weeks before the presidential election.

The paper said Maria Butina sought out interactions with J.D. Gordon, who served for six months as the Trump campaign’s director of national security and who was later offered a job with the presidential transition team. It said the two exchanged several emails in September and October 2016 and said Butina also attended Gordon’s birthday party in October 2016.

The Post says the new information puts Butina in closer contact with the Trump campaign than was previously known.

Prosecutors say Butina, 29, who was a graduate student at American University, attempted to infiltrate U.S. political organizations at the direction of a senior Russian official.

When asked by the Post for comment, Gordon said his contacts with Butina were innocuous.

“From everything I’ve read since her arrest last month, it seems the Maria Butina saga is basically a sensationalized click bait story meant to smear a steady stream of Republicans and NRA members she reportedly encountered over the past few years,” he said in a statement to the paper.

Federal prosecutors accuse Butina of conspiring with two American citizens, one of whom she cohabited with, and a top Russian official to influence U.S. policy toward Russia by infiltrating the National Rifle Association gun rights group and other conservative special interest groups potentially influential on the Trump administration.

Butina was charged last month with acting as an agent for the Kremlin, but was not formally charged with espionage, most likely because her role was not to steal state and military secrets but allegedly to insinuate her way into U.S. political circles to advance Russia’s policy aims.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, denied in a statement that she was “an agent of the Russian Federation.” He described Butina as a Russian national in the U.S. on a student visa.
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Accountant Testifies About Problems With Manafort’s Taxes

An accountant for Paul Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, testified Friday that she prepared his tax returns despite her concerns about the propriety of classifying money he had transferred from overseas as loans.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis asked the accountant, Cynthia Laporta, whether she was testifying under an immunity agreement with the government because she was concerned that she could be prosecuted. She answered, “Correct.”

Laporta testified she knew an accounting treatment for a loan was wrong when preparing Manafort’s tax return for 2014. “I very much regret it,” she told the courtroom.

Her testimony came on the trial’s fourth day as prosecutors sought to drive home their case that Manafort tried to hide millions of dollars he earned working for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Manafort, 69, has pleaded not guilty to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.

The trial in federal court in Alexandria is the first arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election.

Both Laporta and fellow accountant Philip Ayliff, her predecessor who handled Manafort’s tax filings at the firm KWC, testified that they had no knowledge that Manafort controlled foreign bank accounts. Such accounts must be reported to tax authorities if they contain $10,000 or more.

Laporta said she asked Manafort directly about any such holdings and was told there were none.

Prosecutors have tried to make their case first by presenting testimony about Manafort’s lavish lifestyle and then detailing his financial maneuvering.

Defense attorneys have signaled they will seek to blame the financial charges against Manafort on his business partner, Rick Gates, who was Trump’s deputy campaign chairman in the 2016 presidential election.

Alleged order from Gates

Laporta testified that Gates, in a conference call with her and another accountant at the firm, instructed them to alter a loan amount to lower Manafort’s tax bill because it was too high for Manafort to pay.

“Rick said it was too high” and that Manafort “didn’t have that money,” Laporta said in response questions by prosecutor Uzo Asonye.

Gates, who pleaded guilty in February of conspiracy and lying to the FBI, is cooperating with Mueller’s probe, and is expected to testify later in the trial.

The charges against Manafort largely predate the five months he worked for Trump, some of them as campaign chairman, during a pivotal period in the race for the White House.

Trial consultant Roy Futterman, who is following the trial but not involved in it, said, “The prosecution is doing a very good job of keeping a brisk pace, putting witnesses on for short direct examinations, keeping it lively and keeping very tight messages for each witness.”

Manafort’s defense attorneys do not seem to have scored a lot of points on cross-examination, Futterman said, but added that the witnesses who have testified so far are not “the main targets.”

Prosecutors asked Ayliff about Manafort’s accounting of a $1.5 million transfer in 2012 from Peranova Holdings Ltd. as a loan, even as records showed that no interest or principal was paid on it in subsequent years. Peranova is one of numerous Cypriot entities that prosecutors have said Manafort controlled.

Ayliff testified that KWC did not know Manafort controlled Peranova, and that if the transfer was a payment related to his consulting work, it would have been treated as income — not as a loan — on his tax returns.

Kevin Downing, Manafort’s attorney, signaled Friday that his defense strategy might also involve raising questions about whether Manafort in fact had willfully deceived his accountants. One way to do that could be to show that documents Manafort had provided to the accountant contained details about foreign bank accounts.

“Only a fool would give that information to his accountant if he was trying to conceal it” from the Internal Revenue Service, Downing said, referring to whether the accountant had names of the Cyprus-based entities in his files and had retained them for his records.

Late on Thursday, Manafort filed an objection to the government’s bid to block his legal team from raising the fact that he and his companies were never audited by the IRS. Mueller’s team has argued that any such civil action is separate from the criminal charges at hand.
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Chinese Proposed Tariffs Aim at US Energy Dominance Agenda

China’s targeting of U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports opens a new front in the trade war between the two countries, at a time when the White House is trumpeting growing U.S. energy export  prowess.

China included LNG for the first time in its list of proposed tariffs on Friday, the same day that its biggest U.S. crude oil buyer, Sinopec, suspended U.S. crude oil imports due to the dispute, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

On Friday, China announced retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, and warned of further measures, signaling it will not back down in a protracted trade war with Washington.

That could cast a shadow over U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy dominance ambitions. The administration has repeatedly said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to global allies, while Washington is rolling back domestic regulations to encourage more oil and gas production.

“The juxtaposition here is clear: It is hard to become an energy superpower when one of the biggest energy consumers in the world is raising barriers to consume that energy. It makes it very difficult,” said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and is poised to become one of the largest exporters of LNG by 2019. U.S. LNG exports were worth $3.3 billion in 2017. China is the world’s biggest crude oil importer.

China had curtailed its imports of U.S. LNG over the last two months, even before its formal inclusion in the list of potential tariffs. It had also become the largest buyer of U.S. crude oil outside of Canada, but Kpler, which tracks worldwide oil shipments, shows crude cargoes to China have also dropped

off in recent months.

It comes at a time when the United States has several large-scale LNG export facilities under construction, and after Trump’s late 2017 trip to China that included executives from U.S. LNG companies.

China became the world’s second-biggest LNG importer in 2017, as it buys more gas in order to wean the country off dirty coal to reduce pollution.

“This will not affect the trade but will simply make gas more expensive to Chinese consumers,” said Charif Souki, chairman of Tellurian Inc, one of several companies seeking to build a new LNG export terminal.

China, which purchased almost 14 percent of all U.S. LNG shipped between February 2016 and May 2018, has taken delivery from just one vessel that left the United States in June and none so far in July, compared with 17 in the first five months of the year.

“The U.S. gas industry will be much harder hit by this as China imports only a small volume whereas U.S. suppliers see China as a major future market,” said Lin Boqiang, professor on energy studies at Xiamen University in China.

Crude exports to China

Meanwhile, according to Kpler, crude exports to China dropped to an estimated 226,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, after reaching a record 445,000 bpd in March. Sinopec, through its Unipec trading arm, is the largest buyer of U.S. crude.

China would likely hike purchases from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq if the tariffs slowed U.S. flows, said Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency.

There will be “others who will be offering barrels to China, so it could find itself able to replace lost volumes from the U.S.,” Atkinson said.

With LNG demand expected to skyrocket over the next 12 to 18 months, there are still some two dozen firms seeking to build new LNG export terminals in the United States and tariffs may limit their ability to secure sufficient buyers to finance their proposed projects.

“Cheniere continues to see China as an important growth market and LNG as a “win-win” between the United States and China,” said Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman at Cheniere Energy Inc, which owns one of the two LNG export terminals currently operating in the United States. He added they do not see tariffs as productive.
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African Small Businesses, Farmers Get Protection with Micro-Insurance

George Kamau Githome uses a feather duster to clean off hardware and bootleg movies displayed for sale at his kiosk in Mathare, one of Nairobi, Kenya’s largest slums.

Githome and his family of 10 kids recently lost everything they owned in a fire. But he was able to rebuild because he had purchased micro-insurance, a new product making inroads among small-scale African farmers and business owners.

“When they came, they took photos, and saw how helpless I was. I had nothing,” he said. “Then they paid off my loan and supported me with something small. I started this business you see out here and the result you see inside.”

Most African farmers and small businesses operate with no way to protect themselves if disaster strikes. Insurers have been slow to tailor their products to the African continent, experts say, and their methods of operation, using complex contracts distributed through networks of agents, tends to only reach the urban elite.

But that may be starting to change. A handful of companies are now offering inexpensive, tech-driven micro-insurance and are making it easy for ordinary Africans to sign up.

 

The company Githome used, MicroEnsure, offers micro-insurance to small-business owners, ranging from farmers in the bush to small kiosk owners in downtown Nairobi.

 

The East Africa regional director for MicroEnsure, Kiereini Kirika, says mobile technology makes micro-insurance cheaper and easy to use.

“We enable them to be able to enroll as simple as using their mobile phone just by dialing a particular short code on their phone and then registering their product just by using their first name and their last name,” he said.

Henry Jaru, a smallholder farmer in northern Nigeria, is buying micro-insurance from another company, Pula, to protect his family farm from the impacts of poor rainfall, army worm infestations and other threats to their crops.

“Normally by this time the crops would have gone far but you see we’re still planting some of them,” he said. “So I think, we’re hoping that [will protect us if] we experience any shortcoming from the rain or the worms this year.”

 

Pula insures groups of farmers, using publicly available satellite data to track weather patterns, assess the risk and set prices.

 

“When Pula came into the country, they came with the idea of an index insurance, which means that you don’t need to necessarily visit every smallholder farmers,” said Samson Ajibola, Pula’s senior project manager in Nigeria. “You can insure aggregation of farmers under just one policy without necessarily needing to visit each of them.”

Pula also bundles the policies into small loans or purchases of fertilizer so small-hold farmers are automatically insured.

 

But older farmers, like Jaru’s father Thomas, are still skeptical because of bad experiences with insurance companies.

 

“Generally when the time comes for them to pay you, indemnify you, you will not find them,” said Thomas Jaru. “They begin to show you the small print — you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that out of the policy. So, it can ruin the whole thing and people get discouraged.”

 

Micro-insurance providers hope their services can change that perception  and turn a profit while giving Africa’s small farmers and businesses some protection if and when things go wrong.
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From Cancers to Obesity, Small Implant May Replace Life-Saving Drugs

Remembering to take medications can be challenging for some people. But one day an implant may replace medications that need to be taken orally in certain cases. One lab in Houston is developing refillable implants placed under the skin to potentially deliver life-saving medicine at a low cost for various diseases. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
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Pompeo: N. Korea Weapons Work Counter to Denuclearization Pledge

Less than two months after a landmark U.S.-North Korea summit in  Singapore, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew back to the city state on Friday and suggested that continued work on weapons programs by North Korea was inconsistent with its leader’s commitment to denuclearize.

Pompeo was asked en route to Singapore about his statement in the U.S. Senate last month that North Korea was continuing to make bomb fuel and reports that North Korea, led by Kim Jong Un, was building new missiles.

“Chairman Kim made a commitment to denuclearize,” Pompeo told reporters. “The world demanded that they [North Korea] do so in the U.N. Security Council resolutions. To the extent they are behaving in a manner inconsistent with that, they are a) in violation of one or both the U.N. Security Council resolutions and b) we can see we still have a ways to go to achieve the ultimate outcome we’re looking for.”

Pompeo thanked ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a meeting in Singapore for their efforts in enforcing sanctions on North Korea.

In a landmark summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12, Kim, who is seeking relief from tough sanctions, committed to work towards denuclearization, but Pyongyang has offered no details on how it might go about this.

Pompeo told a Senate committee hearing on July 25 that North Korea was continuing to produce fuel for nuclear bombs in spite of its pledge.

Renewed activity

On Monday, a senior U.S. official said U.S. spy satellites had detected renewed activity at the North Korean factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that North Korea appeared to be building one or two new liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles at the research facility, citing unidentified officials familiar with intelligence reporting.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho is also in Singapore and will attend the same regional meeting as Pompeo on Saturday, but the State Department has not said whether the two will meet.

Following his talks with Ri, China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said he hoped North Korea and the United States would continue to move forward to implement their leaders’ agreement.

“China all along has believed that the consensus reached by U.S. and North Korea’s leaders meeting in Singapore is very precious,” Wang told reporters.

“That is, at the same time as realizing denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, to establish a peace mechanism. This direction is without a doubt correct,” he said.

China is North Korea’s most important economic and diplomatic supporter and fought for the North in the 1950-53 Korean War against the U.S.-led United Nations forces that backed South Korea.

Previous talks

Pompeo, who has led the U.S. negotiating effort with North Korea, visited Pyongyang from July 5-7 for inclusive talks aimed at agreeing a  denuclearization roadmap. Pompeo said at the time he had made progress on key issues, only for North Korea to accuse his delegation hours later of making “gangster-like” demands.

Trump hailed the Singapore summit as a success and went as far as saying that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat, but questions have been mounting about Pyongyang’s willingness to give up its weapons programs.

Trump has pointed to North Korea’s freeze on nuclear and missile tests and its agreement to return the remains of American troops killed in the 1950-53 Korea War.

The White House said on Thursday Trump had received a letter from Kim and had responded with a note that should be delivered shortly. But it said no second meeting was currently planned.
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China Threatens New Tariffs as Pompeo Meets with China’s FM

China warned Friday it would impose new tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods if the Trump administration follows through with its latest trade threats.

The Commerce Ministry said the proposed tariffs of 5 percent to 25 percent on more than 5,200 U.S. goods are restrained and maintained it has the right to take retaliatory action in the escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s warning came shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Friday with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Singapore. The two men did not speak to the press after the meeting, and reporters were ushered out of the room before the talks began.

On Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Minister told reporters the U.S. needed to calm down and consider its own consumers, responding to threats by the Trump administration to raise its proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from the initially planned 10 percent to 25 percent. Wang Yi said raising tariffs would hurt U.S. consumers and businesses located in China.

“Instead of achieving one’s own goal by doing this, we believe it will only hurt one’s own interests,” said Wang.

The U.S. says it wants China to stop stealing U.S. corporate secrets and stop subsidizing Chinese companies with cheap loans that give them an unfair advantage.

Natural disasters

Before meeting with Wang, Pompeo co-chaired an ASEAN ministerial meeting with Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. Pompeo started off by expressing his sorrow for a number of devastating natural disasters in the region.

“On behalf of the United States, let me also offer my condolences to the people of Laos for the loss of life and devastation caused by the dam breach,” said Pompeo.

He said the U.S. government is providing assistance to respond to this disaster and welcomes the support already provided by the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Center. Pompeo also expressed his condolences to Indonesia, where a powerful earthquake struck; and to Myanmar, for the casualties suffered in recent flooding and landslides.

Security issues

Economic opportunities in the Indo-Pacific region are a major focus of Pompeo’s visit, but security issues also are high on the agenda of the ASEAN meetings, as Pompeo made clear.

“On security, we appreciate ASEAN’s ongoing efforts to promote peace and stability in the region, support the rule of law in the South China Sea, and to strictly enforce sanctions on North Korea. We are also working with ASEAN member-states to counter the threat of terrorism and violent extremism in the region.”

Pompeo wrapped up a full day with a meeting with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the Istana in Singapore.

Malaysia visit

He started his Southeast Asia tour Thursday in Malaysia.

Pompeo was the first senior U.S. official to visit Malaysia since Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad took office following a May election dubbed “quite historic” by a senior State Department official. Pompeo met with Mahathir early Friday, and congratulated the people of Malaysia on their democratic transition.

It was the first stop of his Asian tour, focused on promoting free trade and pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. After holding ASEAN meetings in Singapore, Pompeo will head to Indonesia.

Detained pastor

Earlier Friday in Singapore, Pompeo met with his Turkish counterpart in an effort to obtain the release of Andrew Brunson, a detained U.S. pastor who Turkey accuses of backing terrorism. The Trump administration has placed sanctions on Turkish officials because of Brunson’s detention. Turkey says the sanctions are unacceptable.

Pompeo and Mevlut Cavusoglu met on the sidelines of a meeting of regional ministers in Singapore.

The top U.S. diplomat said “Brunson needs to come home, as do all the Americans being held by the Turkish government. Pretty straightforward. They’ve been holding these folks for a long time. These are innocent people.”

Turkey has also detained three Turkish employees of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul.

The Turkish foreign ministry has called the sanctions a “disrespectful intervention in our legal system” that would harm “the constructive efforts toward resolving problems between the two countries.”

Wayne Lee, William Gallo and Fern Robinson contributed to this report.
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