U.S. President Donald Trump contended Wednesday that the government will still try to ask a question about citizenship in the once-a-decade census in 2020, a day after top officials announced they had given up on including the citizenship question following a Supreme Court ruling on the matter last week.

“The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!” Trump claimed on Twitter. “We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.”

The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE! We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019

But his comment sowed confusion about the inclusion of the question, coming after both the Department of Justice and the Commerce Department said they had abandoned the effort for the census that starts April 1. The government has said it already has started printing the questionnaires this week in order to have them all ready for use in nine months.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, “I respect the Supreme Court but strongly disagree with its ruling regarding my decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 Census,” for the first time since 1950. “The Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question. My focus, and that of the Bureau and the entire Department, is to conduct a complete and accurate census.”

In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberal justices in ruling that the reasoning the Trump administration offered for including the citizenship question — that the information was needed to protect minority voting rights — was “contrived” and did not meet the standards for a clear explanation of why it should be asked.

Government officials offered no explanation of why they were dropping their effort to include the question, but were confronting weeks and maybe months of new challenges to the question. The census is important because it determines how many seats in the House of Representatives each state is allotted and how $800 billion in federal aid is disbursed.

Trump’s Democratic opponents have claimed that including the question is a Republican ploy to scare immigrants in to not participating in the census out of fear that immigration officials might target them for deportation when they determine that they are in the country illegally. An undercount in Democrat-leaning areas with large immigrant and Latino populations could reduce congressional representation for such states and cut federal aid.

After the Supreme Court heard arguments on the citizenship question but before it ruled, documents emerged from the files of a deceased Republican election districting expert showing that the citizenship question was aimed at helping Republicans gain an electoral edge over Democrats.  

Although the citizenship question has not been asked in 70 years, Trump tweeted that it was”A very sad time for America when the Supreme Court of the United States won’t allow a question of ‘Is this person a Citizen of the United States?’ to be asked on the #2020 Census!” 

When the high court issued its ruling, Trump called it “totally ridiculous.”

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Baby spiders like to mingle, but adult spiders tend to eat each other.

New research published in PLOS Biology found that adult spiders seem to forget how to behave with each other after being alone too long, which causes them to become aggressive. These findings could help researchers understand why some spider species like to hang out together their whole lives but most would eat another spider if given the chance.

Regardless of how you feel about spiders, they’re an important part of many ecosystems. Despite that, they are often misunderstood, said Violette Chiara, a graduate student at the University of Toulouse, France, who led the study.

“Spiders are not just aggressive, cannibalistic monsters,” Chiara said. “There are spiders that are social at the beginning of their lives, and there are also some species that remain social during their whole lives.”

A friendly start in life

Baby spiders, known as spiderlings, begin their lives cozied up to their siblings — sometimes as many as several hundred. But when they grow up, they tend to live alone. Of the more than 40,000 known spider species, all but 30 lead solitary lives in adulthood.

It’s not clear why so few spider species remain social their whole lives. Many researchers believe that spiders become more aggressive as they grow, which drives them to avoid each other. Chiara decided to test which comes first: aggressive behavior or social isolation.

Chiara and team members Felipe Ramon Portugal and Raphael Jeanson studied labyrinth spiders, which are common in France. They observed that baby labyrinth spiders started to move away from each other five days after emerging from their eggs, which the researchers initially thought pointed to a natural increase in aggression.

However, they found that even spiderlings raised alone started to move around more after five days. In other words, the spiders weren’t fleeing from their siblings because they were worried they’d get eaten, they were just stretching their (many) legs and becoming more mobile as they grew.

If an increase in aggressive behavior doesn’t happen naturally as the spiders age, something must cause it. To test this, the researchers raised some spiders alone and others in groups. They then brought together pairs of spiders that weren’t familiar with each other to see if they reacted peacefully or violently.

Spiders that were raised in groups almost never tried to eat the unfamiliar spider, but those raised alone went on the attack 40% of the time. The more time they had spent alone, the more likely they were to try to eat the unfamiliar spider. The researchers concluded that isolation causes spiders to become aggressive and not the other way around.

Questioning assumptions

Jonathan Pruitt, an evolutionary ecologist who was not involved in the research, said that the study was a good example of “going back and scrutinizing what a lot of people have assumed but don’t even realize that they’ve assumed, and questioning it and finding a very different story.”

The researchers hope to learn what happens to the loners that makes them more likely to attack other spiders they encounter.

“We know that they’re more aggressive, but from a cognitive point of view, what is the change?” said co-author Raphael Jeanson.

One possibility is that when spiders spend too much time away from other spiders, they forget how to read social cues — in this case, chemicals in their “skin” that help them recognize each other. The researchers hope to explore this possibility by studying a species that is closely related to labyrinth spiders, but lives in groups all their lives.

Leticia Aviles, a specialist in social spiders who was not involved in the study, agreed that the lack of social interactions could lead spiders to become more aggressive.

“When they remain together, they are familiar with each other, they have these chemical cues that they can read from each other, so they remain tolerant. But when they have been isolated, the familiarity is lost, and that’s what leads to this intolerant and aggressive behavior,” Aviles said. “I think that has implications for all kinds of systems, not just spiders.”

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President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday pushed back against mounting criticism of its migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog issued a report detailing serious overcrowding at some facilities in Texas.

Conditions at these detention centers have become a flashpoint since May when an internal DHS watchdog warned of dangerous overcrowding at a facility in El Paso, Texas.

In a follow-up report issued on Tuesday after visits to five U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency facilities and two ports of entry, the watchdog said “serious overcrowding” and “prolonged detention” of children, families and single adults had been observed.

Members of a visiting congressional group on Monday said the migrants, many coming from Central America, were being kept in deplorable conditions and, according to U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told to drink out of toilets.

“I don’t know what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in an interview with Fox Business Network, calling members of CPB “some of the bravest men and women on the planet.”

“They put their lives in danger every single day. They provided three meals a day to people who are here illegally and unlawfully, two snacks in between,” Gidley said.

The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform announced that the panel has invited the acting heads of the Department of Homeland Security and CPB to testify on July 12 on the administration’s border policies including the conditions at detention centers.

“The Trump administration’s actions at the southern border are grotesque and dehumanizing,” Elijah Cummings said in a statement. “There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency.”

Trump has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda and 2020 re-election bid. But his efforts to build a wall on the southern border have been blocked in Congress, and he was forced last year to backtrack after his “zero tolerance” border policy of separating migrant children from their parents provoked widespread outrage.

The detention facilities have become an issue among Democratic candidates vying to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker would “virtually eliminate immigration detention” if he wins the White House, his campaign said Tuesday, including ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and minimizing the time unaccompanied children were in custody.

Migrant rights protests

Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a Texas pediatrician who has been providing health care to migrant families, said she recently saw a mother suffering from dehydration with a baby whose fingers and toes were still blue after time in a detention center.

“I asked her if in CBP custody she had been given water. She said no. I asked her if she asked. … She said no. She didn’t want to be a bother or a burden, she said,” Ayoub-Rodriguez told a news briefing in El Paso alongside other doctors who help migrants.

“I see this often in the population. This is a population that’s afraid to ask for help,” Ayoub-Rodriguez said.

Several hundred people gathered Tuesday in New York City to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants, part of a planned nationwide day of protests by rights groups targeting members of the U.S. Congress.

The demonstrations were fueled by fears that Trump’s administration is preparing to move forward with a round-up of illegal immigrants in U.S. cities. Last month, Trump delayed the raids by two weeks.

Criticism of the CPB intensified after a report Monday by the nonprofit news site ProPublica detailing offensive content posted on a private Facebook group for current and former CBP officers that included jokes about the deaths of migrants and sexually explicit references to Ocasio-Cortez.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a top Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter called the report was “horrific” and said the dehumanization of immigrants must end.

Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term New York Democrat who was part of a Congressional Hispanic Caucus visit to the border Monday, suggested in a Twitter post Tuesday that the CBP was a “rogue agency.”

CBP condemned the Facebook group and acknowledged that the group may include a number of the agency’s employees.

Reuters did not independently confirm the report.

Migration levels

The migration flows from Central America have dropped sharply since hitting their highest level in more than a decade in May, as Mexico deployed thousands of militarized police as part of a June 7 deal with the United States to avoid U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods and other enforcement measures. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday touted his country’s success in curbing the migrant crush, three days after Trump praised Mexican efforts.

“I am grateful that even President Trump is making it known that Mexico is fulfilling its commitment and that there are no threats of tariffs,” Lopez Obrador told reporters in Mexico City.
 

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Ethiopia’s mediator in the Sudan crisis urged the military rulers and the opposition coalition to hold direct talks on Wednesday to strike a deal on handing over power to civilians.

The Transitional Military Council, which has ruled Sudan since President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April, and the Forces of Freedom and Change opposition coalition have agreed on proposals presented by the Ethiopian and African Union mediators to solve the crisis, said Mahmud Dirir, the Ethiopian mediator.

But they still disagree over the structure of a sovereign council meant to lead the country during the transitional period, Dirir told reporters in Khartoum on Tuesday, urging the two sides to engage in face-to-face talks to clinch a deal.

Meeting place a secret

A time and a place for the meeting are set but will not be disclosed for security reasons, and both sides have already received invitations, he added.

“The two sides are just around the corner to reach an agreement but one issue remains disagreeable,” Mohamed El Hacen Lebatt, the African Union mediator to Sudan, told the press conference. “We call the two parties to reach a compromise on this remaining issue.”

Sudan’s military overthrew Bashir on April 11 after months of demonstrations against his three decades in office.

Opposition groups kept up protests as they pressed the military to relinquish power, but talks collapsed after members of the security services raided a sit-in protest camp outside the defense ministry on June 3.

Raid left 100 dead

A doctors’ group linked to the opposition said that more than 100 people were killed in the raid and ensuing crackdown.

The opposition alliance organized a major show of force on Sunday when tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

It said it was calling for another mass march on July 13 and a day of civil disobedience on July 14. Nine people were killed during Sunday’s protests and some 200 were injured, it said.

The military council has accused the opposition groups of being responsible for the violence and said at least three members of the security forces were injured by live fire.

Both the Ethiopian and African Union mediators urged both sides on Tuesday to avoid escalation to help reaching an agreement.

UAE calls for dialogue

Earlier on Tuesday, United Arab Emirates said it is important to continue dialogue in Sudan and avoid an escalation.

“Dialogue should continue without antagonism and towards an agreement on transition … It is necessary to avoid conflict and escalation,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash wrote on Twitter.

Sudan is strategically positioned between the Middle East and Africa and its stability is seen as crucial in a volatile region. Various powers including wealthy Gulf states are vying for influence in the nation of 40 million.

Egypt, which deems security and stability in its southern neighbor as important for its own stability, said on Tuesday its ambassador to Khartoum met a leader in the opposition coalition on Monday. Cairo is seen as a supporter of the army rulers.

“The ambassador stressed during the meeting that Egypt stands at the same distance from all the Sudanese parties,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

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An airstrike late on Tuesday hit a detention center for mainly African migrants in the Tajoura suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, killing at least 40 people and wounding 80, a health official said.

Pictures published by Libyan officials showed African migrants undergoing surgery in a hospital after the strike.

Libya is a main departure point for migrants from Africa and Arab countries trying to reach Italy by boat, but many get picked up by the Libyan coast guard supported by the European Union. Thousands are held in government-run detention centers in what human rights groups say are often inhuman conditions.

Tajoura, east of Tripoli’s center, is home to several military camps of forces allied to Libya’s internationally recognised government, which for three months has been battling eastern forces trying to take Tripoli.

On Monday, the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) said it would start heavy airstrikes on targets in Tripoli after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.

The LNA denied it had hit the detention center, saying militias allied to Tripoli had shelled it after a precision airstrike by the LNA on a camp.

The LNA has failed to take Tripoli in three months of fighting and last week lost its main forward base in Gharyan, which was taken back by Tripoli forces.

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Escalating tensions between the United States and Iran are exposing potentially contrasting U.S. assessments of the threat Tehran represents to Washington and its allies and interests in the region.

The narratives coming from top officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department portray an Iranian regime that is either weaker and more desperate or more brazen and emboldened.

The extent to which one of those narratives may be more accurate could be crucial in determining what happens next as Tehran seems intent on pushing back against the U.S. and its allies, following its announcement Monday that it had produced more low-enriched uranium than allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“They know what they’re doing,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Monday in response to Tehran’s move. “They’re playing with fire.”

On Tuesday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani fired his own verbal volley, slamming Trump’s intellect on state television.

“When you use the language of a bully against a civilized nation, they become more united,” he said.

A ‘weaker’ Iran?

For weeks, some U.S. officials have been working to portray such an Iranian response as an act of desperation, claiming success for the Trump administration’s policy of ramped-up sanctions — the so-called maximum pressure campaign — on Iran.

“Today, by nearly every metric, the regime and its proxies are weaker than when our pressure began,” State Department Special Representative for Syria Brian Hook told U.S. lawmakers in mid-June.

“Hezbollah and Hamas have enacted unprecedented austerity plans due to a lack of funding from Iran,” he said during a Congressional hearing. “The IRGC [Revolutionary Guards] has told Iraq’s Shia militia groups that they need to start looking for new sources of revenue.”

Just weeks earlier, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told reporters the administration’s pressure on Iran was causing its proxies, like those supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, to retreat.

“Iran is withdrawing Hezbollah fighters from Syria and cutting or canceling their salaries,” she said in late May.

But such claims of a weak, desperate Iran have been met with skepticism by former officials and analysts, who caution all may not be what it seems.

“It’s unwise for the State Department to be basing its pronouncements about Hezbollah’s supposed financial crisis on a misreading of Hezbollah’s rhetoric and on flimsy anecdotal evidence,” said Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who focuses on Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah.

“Have Iranian funds to the group been affected by sanctions on Tehran? The answer is most likely, ‘yes,’ but it misses the key point,” he said. 
 
“The more critical question is: Has Hezbollah’s ability to continue to run its operations, both military and nonmilitary, been substantially curtailed at this point in the maximum pressure campaign? There is no convincing evidence to suggest that anything like that is happening,” Badran said.

A calculated Iranian response?

Publicly, top U.S. defense officials have been more cautious in their assessments of Iran’s posture, noting that while Tehran was “lashing out” by using its Revolutionary Guards to go after Norwegian and Japanese oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in June, the acts were calculated.

“Almost all of the [IRGC] decisions are driven toward a senior commander,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, told reporters last month about the attacks, for which Iran has denied responsibility.

“It wasn’t done by an untrained, unsophisticated group of people,” he added. “It was done by a military trained and capable force.”

US Promises No Let-Up in Max Pressure Campaign as ‘All Evidence’ Points to Iran’ in Tanker Attacks

Warnings come as US President Donald Trump calls tanker attacks ‘very minor’ but warns that Tehran still risks war over pursuit of nuclear weapons

Concerns about what Selva described as the increasing Iranian “threat streams” even prompted the U.S. to authorize an additional 1,000 troops to defend U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria against potential attacks.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials have also warned that despite a funding crunch, Iran has been ramping up its operations in cyberspace, both in the Middle East and beyond.

“We’re seeing more activity in a much more aggressive manner,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy B. Edwin Wilson told an audience in Washington last week.

“It is also attempting to deploy cyberattack capabilities that would enable attacks against critical infrastructure in the United States and allied countries,” warned Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon.

Still, it would appear that back in the physical realm, in places like Syria, Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah have indeed withdrawn some forces.

But Phillip Smyth, a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, cautions it would be a mistake to uncritically believe the claims by some militia members that the withdrawal is the result of money running out due to U.S. sanctions.

“If we just look at the campaigns on the ground and the results they’ve achieved, there’s less of a need for these other forces,” he said. “If anything, they’re a hell of a lot more powerful with transnational mobilization these days than they were previously.”

There are also fears Iran is finding ways to make itself more capable and dangerous in Iraq, where Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi issued a decree Monday forcing Iranian-backed Shia militias to more fully integrate with Iraq’s security forces.

Aimed at asserting more control over the militias, some predict the move will backfire by exposing U.S. troops working with the Iraqi military to fighters who are essentially agents getting paid to do Iran’s bidding.

“This is exactly where [IRGC Commander] Qassem Soleimani wants the militias,” Michael Pregent, a former U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq, told VOA.

“The militia leaders will now have access to U.S. intelligence, U.S. funds, U.S. equipment,” he said. “They’ll know who the U.S. advisers are.”

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In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. Lazarus Chigwandali has long been performing on the streets of Lilongwe.  But after catching the eye of a Swedish producer, he began work on an album that is due out in August. He’s also about to embark on a nationwide tour to promote a documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, about the plight of albinos in Malawi. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.

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In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. 

As teens, Lazarus Chigwandali and his late brother, who also had albinism, played on the streets of Lilongwe, mostly to raise money to buy protective skin lotion.

He says in those days it was difficult to find skin lotion that would protect them from the sun, so they had sores all over their bodies. As a result many people discriminated against them because of the way their bodies looked.

Attacks continue

Discrimination and attacks against albinos like Chigwandali continue. Some Africans believe their body parts, used in so-called magic potions, will bring good luck.

At 39, Chigwandali began composing songs about the myths and misperceptions about people with albinism.

Then he heard music producers from abroad wanted to meet him at his home village to record his music, something that worried his wife, Gertrude Levison.

She says she was afraid that maybe they wanted to kidnap them all. But she realized that it was a peaceful move when she heard her husband talking with a friend of his on the phone.

The recording deal enabled Chigwandali to produce a 30-track music album, Stomp on the Devil, which denounces attacks on albinos. It is due out in August

Esau Mwamwaya, is Chigwandali’s manager.

“With the challenge which people with albinism face in Malawi we felt like, with his powerful voice, he can be an instrument to send the message across the world that you know, people born with albinism, are just like anybody else,” Mwamwaya said.

Much work to be done

While some of his songs are playing on local radio stations, Chigwandali says there is still a long way to go before the attacks end.

He says there are still others who ignore the messages in his songs. This means a lot of work. But, he says, “We will soon start a nationwide tour to screen my documentary which shows attacks on people with albinism in Malawi.”

The documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, is about the plight of albinos in Malawi.

His wife worries that Chigwandali’s growing fame could expose him and their two albino sons to potential attackers.

To ease their concerns, Chigwandali’s managers have launched a fundraising initiative to build a house for the family that will provide greater security.
 

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Iran announced Monday that it has exceeded its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit, violating the amount it agreed to hold in the 2015 international deal. The move is aimed at forcing the signatories of the nuclear deal to give Iran relief from U.S. sanctions. VOA’s Kurdish Service discussed the consequences of Iran’s action with two experts on Iranian issues. Zlatica Hoke has a summary of what they said.

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Forests are one of the planet’s best defenses against climate change. But trees are worth more to most people as building material or firewood than as sponges for planet-warming carbon dioxide. Conservationists are working to find ways to make forests valuable while protecting the livelihoods of people who earn a living from them. In the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, an environmental group recently bought 40,000 hectares of forest. But that will not mean an end to logging. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look.

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Upon returning from the G-20 summit, U.S. President Trump claimed foreign policy victory, saying that “much was accomplished.” But what exactly was achieved during the three-day trip? White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara unpacks the president’s whirlwind trip to Osaka and Seoul.

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The U.S. military says it has struck an al-Qaida leadership and training facility in northern Syria where attacks threatening Americans and others were being planned.

The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the strike occurred on Sunday near the northern province of Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, said Monday that the strike killed eight members of the al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din, which is Arabic for “Guardians of Religion.”

The Observatory says the dead included six commanders: two Algerians, two Tunisians, an Egyptian and a Syrian.

Al-Qaida-linked militants control wide parts of northern Syria, mostly in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.

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