Why did President Donald Trump order the drone strike that killed one of Iran’s top generals? His administration says there was an “imminent threat” against Americans, but it has failed to convince many Democrats that the strike was necessary. Some critics see a political motive in the president’s decision to act as impeachment looms ahead of elections next year. VOA’s Brian Padden reports.
From: MeNeedIt
Two award-winning documentaries capture death and destruction in the war-torn Syrian cities of Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta through the eyes of women. Waad al-Kateab’s film “For Sama,” and Feras Fayyad’s film “The Cave,” document civilians’ struggle to survive in devastated cities where doctors in makeshift hospitals tend to throngs of injured and dying people. VOA’s Penelope Poulou interviewed both filmmakers and has more.
From: MeNeedIt
Norway says it will take 600 asylum-seekers recently evacuated to Rwanda from Libyan detention centers as the Scandinavian country wants to stop the sometimes deadly smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.
“For me it is important to send a signal that we will not back smuggling routes and cynical backers, but instead bring in people with protection needs in organized form,” Justice and Immigration Minister Joaran Kallmyr said in a statement emailed Thursday to The Associated Press.
“Therefore, the government has decided to collect 600 quota refugees from Libya, out of 800 in total, from the transit reception in Rwanda in 2020,” he added. Many of the asylum-seekers are from Horn of Africa nations.
Since the 2015 massive influx of migrants to Europe authorities, especially the European Union, have been trying to stop refugees and other migrants from crossing the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe. Thousands of people have died at sea. Many set off from Libya’s coast.
As part of an agreement signed between Rwanda, the African Union and the United Nations refugee agency in September, the East African country hosts a camp for people who have been evacuated from often chaotic, overcrowded detention centers in Libya.
About 800 are currently staying at an emergency transit center in Rwanda’s Bugesera district.
So far Norway and Sweden have offered to take some of them, according to Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, who said Wednesday that Sweden has taken in seven.
From: MeNeedIt
China’s economy czar will visit Washington next week for the signing of an interim trade deal, the government said Thursday.
Vice Premier Liu He, Beijing’s chief envoy in talks with Washington over their tariff war, had been expected to attend the signing but the Commerce Ministry’s statement was the first official confirmation.
Washington postponed planned tariff increases following the announcement of the “Phase 1” deal in October. But earlier punitive duties imposed by both sides on billions of dollars of each other’s goods stayed in place, dampening global trade and threatening to chill economic growth.
Liu will lead a delegation to Washington, Monday through Wednesday, said ministry spokesman Gao Feng.
Under the “Phase 1” deal, Beijing agreed to buy more American farm goods and Washington’s chief negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, said it would make changes to respond to complaints about its industrial policies. Details have yet to be announced, and Chinese officials have yet to confirm any regulatory changes or the size of purchases of American soybeans and other exports.
Both sides have soothed financial market jitters by announcing conciliatory steps, including postponing planned tariff hikes. Beijing also has resumed purchases of soybeans, the biggest American export to China, and pork.
Washington, Europe, Japan and other trading partners complain Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. Washington is pressing China to roll back plans for state-led creation of global competitors in robotics and other industries that its trading partners say violate its market-opening commitments.
President Donald Trump announced last month he would sign the “Phase 1” agreement Jan. 15 and travel to Beijing after that to start the second stage of talks.
Trump hailed the interim agreement as a step toward ending the tariff war, but Beijing has been more measured in its public statements.
Economists say concluding a final settlement could take years. Potential hurdles include Chinese insistence that U.S. tariff hikes be canceled once an agreement takes effect. The Trump administration says some must remain in place to ensure Beijing carries out any promises it makes.
From: MeNeedIt
A historically diverse Virginia General Assembly convened Wednesday, led for the first time in more than two decades by Democrats who promised to enact a litany of changes.
The House quickly elected Eileen Filler-Corn at the new speaker, the first woman to serve in that role. She is also the first Jewish speaker.
“A new torch is being passed today, one that ushers in a modern era representing all Virginians,” Filler-Corn said on the House floor.
Many Democratic lawmakers wore blue Wednesday, a nod to the November blue wave that helped them take full control of the General Assembly for the first time in a generation. Democrats have made strong gains in Virginia since President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, significantly changing the makeup of the General Assembly. Women, people of color and millennials have all made gains.
African American lawmakers are set to have most power at the legislature in Virginia’s 400-year history, including leading several powerful legislative committees.
“It is our time,” Sen. Jennifer McClellan, vice chairwoman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said Wednesday morning. She said the black caucus was committed to eliminate the “last vestiges of racism and white supremacy in Virginia law.”
Ghazala Hashmi, a first-time candidate who unseated a Republican incumbent to help Democrats flip the Virginia Senate, became that chamber’s first Muslim female member.
In the weeks since Democrats won majorities in the state House and Senate, they have laid out an ambitious agenda. It includes high-profile issues Republicans thwarted for years, including gun control measures and criminal justice reforms. They also have pledged to ease restrictions on abortion access, raise the minimum wage, prohibit discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community and make Virginia the next state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
Lawmakers also will be tasked with passing a two-year state budget and deciding whether to legalize casinos.
Gun issues figure to be the most high profile area of debate. Some of the new restrictions Gov. Ralph Northam and Democratic lawmakers want include universal background checks, banning assault weapons and passing a red flag law to allow the temporary removal of guns from someone who is deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others.
Republicans and gun-rights groups have pledged stiff resistance. Gun owners are descending on local government offices to demand that officials establish sanctuaries for gun rights. More than 100 counties, cities and towns have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and vowed to oppose any new “unconstitutional restrictions” on guns.
Democrats indicated early Wednesday that they were not going to pass a set of rules organizing how the House will operate, as is traditional on its first day. The delay allows Democrats to put off a contentious floor debate on whether to ban guns from the Capitol, which likely would have overshadowed much of Wednesday’s events.
The Equal Rights Amendment was expected to be another top issue. Democrats say their caucus unanimously supports ratifying the gender equality measure and have pledged to do so quickly.
Hundreds of advocates for what could become the next amendment to the U.S. Constitution staged a lively rally outside an entrance to the Capitol, where they cheered as Democratic lawmakers walked in and chanted “E-R-A” as several Republicans followed.
Opponents held a press conference Wednesday morning where they warned ratification would lead to the rollback of abortion restrictions as well as a host of negative consequences for women. Critics of the measure say the ERA is not lawfully before the states for ratification, in part because of a congressional deadline that passed decades ago.
ERA advocates’ efforts in Virginia “will be nothing more than political commentary. The time to ratify the ERA expired more than 40 years ago,” said Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president of the U.S. Legal Division and Communications for Alliance Defending Freedom.
Later Wednesday night, Northam, who has largely rebounded from a blackface scandal that almost drove him from office a year ago, is set to address lawmakers.
Wednesday also marks the return of Joe Morrissey, a former Virginia lawmaker who used to spend his days at the General Assembly and his nights in jail after being accused of having sex with his teenage secretary. Morrissey defeated a Democratic incumbent in a primary to win a Richmond-area senate seat.
Republicans have cast Democrats’ agenda as extreme, saying it would bring Virginia in line with liberal California or New York. They’ve promised to look for ways to hold the majority accountable, keep Virginia business friendly and exercise fiscal restraint.
“We think that very quickly, the voters of Virginia will begin to get buyer’s remorse about what they’ve done here,” incoming House Minority Leader Del. Todd Gilbert said.
From: MeNeedIt
When the nation’s largest electric utility preemptively shut off power last fall to prevent wildfires in California, customers lost more than just their lights — some lost their phones, too.
Data from the Federal Communications Commission shows 874 cellphone towers were offline during an Oct. 27 power shutoff that affected millions of people. That included more than half of the cell towers in Marin County alone.
The outages mean people who depend solely on cellphones couldn’t call 911 or receive emergency notifications, compounding the dangers associated with an unprecedented power outage in an era dominated by wireless communication.
On Wednesday, some Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would require telecommunication companies to have at least 72 hours of back-up power for all cell phone towers in high-risk fire areas. Telecom companies would have to pay for it.
Sen. Mike McGuire said he wrote the bill after meeting with telecom company officials last summer, where he said they assured him they had plans to prevent widespread outages during a power shutoff.
“As we all know, this wasn’t true. They were wrong. And, candidly, lives were put at risk,” McGuire said.
The federal government has tried to mandate backup power for cell phone towers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the industry successfully fought it.
“Do I believe we are in for a fight? Hell yes,” McGuire said, adding: “This is no longer a discussion about cost.”
McGuire announced his bill on the same day representatives from AT&T and Verizon were scheduled to testify before state lawmakers about the outages and ways to prevent them. It’s the second time lawmakers will have hauled in private companies to account for the effects surrounding the widespread blackouts in the fall, the largest planned power outages in state history.
In November, lawmakers questioned executives from the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, including the leadership of troubled Pacific Gas & Electric, whose equipment has been blamed for sparking the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed roughly 19,000 buildings. The company filed for bankruptcy last year.
Telecommunications outages have worsened as wildfires have become more common and more destructive. A report from the California Public Utilities Commission found 85,000 wireless customers and 160,000 wired customers lost service during the 2017 North Bay Fires.
Most recently, the FCC says up to 27% of Sonoma County’s wireless cell sites were offline during a fire in October.
In advance comments to the legislative committee, California’s four largest wireless companies — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — say they generally make sure their major telecommunication hubs have at least between 48 hours and 72 hours of on-site backup power. They use mobile generators at other sites, but said the generators don’t work at every cell tower.
Also, the companies said the electric company warns them about blackouts just two hours ahead of time, making it hard for them to get their mobile generators in place and to keep them fueled.
AT&T spokesman Steven Maviglio said the company is experienced in managing large-scale outages, but noted “the power companies’ decision to shut off power to millions of Californians in October was the largest event our state had ever seen.”
“Today, we are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in our network resiliency to address these new challenges and will continue to work to ensure our customers have the connectivity they need,” Maviglio said.
Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring telecommunications companies to report large outages to the Office of Emergency Services within one hour of discovering them. Officials are still developing regulations for that law.
From: MeNeedIt
Cardi B’s announcement that she wants to seek Nigerian citizenship has set off a Twitter feud between her West African fans in friendly rivals Nigeria and Ghana.
The Grammy-winning rapper visited both countries last month on her African tour.
Her announcement in a tweet on Friday criticized the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and sent Middle East tensions soaring.
“Its sad this man is putting Americans live in danger. Dumbest move Trump did till date … I’m filing for my Nigerian citizenship,” she tweeted.
Many in West Africa saw her tweet as proof that she preferred Nigeria.
Ghanaians were quick to point out the pitfalls of living in Africa’s most populous nation, where traffic jams and power cuts are more visible than opulent nightclubs and luxury hotels.
“Hope you have a generator to power your house (because) they don’t have light but we do,” one user tweeted, adding an emoticon of a Ghana flag.
Some fans in Ghana expressed concern for her safety, warning about the Nigeria-based Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.
Confusion, pride
But most Nigerian fans were quick to offer up a passport exchange, underscoring the mix of pride and confusion that the 27-year-old star would prefer Nigeria to America.
This week she asked fans to weigh in on whether her Nigerian name should be CHIOMA B or Cadijat.
Cardi B, who was born Belcalis Almanzar, is of Afro-Caribbean descent, tracing her roots to Trinidad and the Dominican Republic.
It was not immediately clear how the rapper might acquire citizenship in Nigeria, though a number of celebrities have recently been given honorary citizenship in other African countries.
British actor Idris Elba now has a passport from Sierra Leone, his late father’s birthplace. And fellow rapper Ludacris recently acquired citizenship in Gabon after marrying a woman from the Central African nation.
From: MeNeedIt
The head of the Democratic National Convention promised Tuesday that the event in Milwaukee this summer to choose the party’s presidential nominee will be focused more on substance than spectacle as part of a strategy to be more successful in key states such as Wisconsin.
Democrats failed in 2016 to communicate as effectively as they could have in key states, said Joe Solmonese, a longtime Democratic strategist and executive officer for the convention. He spoke to reporters at a media walk-through event Tuesday at the Fiserv Forum, six months before the July convention.
The event and more than 1,000-related events will bring an estimated 50,000 people to Milwaukee, bringing added emphasis to the importance of Wisconsin in the presidential race.
“We are the center of the political universe right now,” said Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Milwaukee native. He, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Treasurer Sarah Godlewski spoke with reporters at the event.
Evers said that in order to win, Democrats need a better turnout in Milwaukee and among young people than in 2016.
“The message is focusing on some really specific issues, making sure we do it in a pragmatic way,” Evers said.
Barnes said Democrats need to “show up everywhere” in Wisconsin, not just Milwaukee, and communicate better with their core supporters than they did during the last presidential campaign.
“That matters,” he said. “People need to know you care about them.”
Having the convention in Milwaukee is more than just a “great party,” it’s also an organizing opportunity to reach thousands of volunteers, said David Bergstein, battleground state communications director for the DNC.
“We can’t take anything for granted,” Bergstein said. “We have to reach out to every possible voter that we can.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Anna Kelly said holding the convention in Milwaukee will highlight Democratic policies and “only remind Wisconsin voters why they delivered their 10 electoral votes to President Trump in 2016 and why they will do so again in November.”
Wisconsin, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, are part of the so-called “blue wall” traditional Democratic strength that Trump broke through to win in 2016.
Both parties are pouring millions of dollars into the states, anticipating they’ll be just as critical in the 2020 presidential contest.
Milwaukee’s hosting of the convention has symbolic significance for Democrats, as the party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, never campaigned in the state after losing the primary. That was one of the factors cited as why she lost the state to Donald Trump by less than 23,000 votes. Holding the convention in Milwaukee sends a clear signal that Democrats don’t plan to overlook Wisconsin this time around.
Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the state since 1984. Other than Barack Obama’s two wins, Wisconsin has been decided by less than one percentage point in three of the past five presidential elections.
Solmonese pledged that the convention will reflect what voters in key states like Wisconsin will want to see and hear.
“When we bring the convention to Milwaukee, we’re going to remind the American people of what Democrats stand for,” he said.
Organizers painted Milwaukee as a vibrant, up-and-coming urban center, while giving a nod to its blue-collar roots.
To show off the city, convention organizers provided tours of Milwaukee landmarks and neighborhoods to hundreds of members of the media from around the world who will be covering the event July 13-16.
It will be the first time in more than a century that Democrats will nominate their presidential candidate in a Midwestern city other than Chicago. Instead, the spotlight will shine for a week on a metro area of about 1.6 million people.
The presidential campaigns have been relatively quiet in Wisconsin in recent months, but that’s going to change quickly. Trump has scheduled a Jan. 14 rally in Milwaukee, the same night as a Democratic presidential candidate debate in neighboring Iowa. Presidential voting kicks off in Iowa with its caucuses on Feb. 3. The Wisconsin primary is April 7.
Democrats will nominate their presidential nominee in Milwaukee. Republicans are set to gather in Charlotte, the largest city in battleground North Carolina, on Aug. 24-27.
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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP
From: MeNeedIt
Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden described President Donald Trump as “dangerously incompetent” Tuesday for the targeted killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani. Biden and his Democratic rivals have been heavily critical of the president’s decision and have warned about the consequences. More from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
From: MeNeedIt
The U.S. is standing firmly with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, as both he and a rival lawmaker, Luis Parra, claim to be the country’s parliamentary speaker after two separate votes. The constitutional crisis in Venezuela has deepened after security forces loyal to socialist leader Nicolas Maduro blocked Guaido from entering the National Assembly chamber on Sunday ahead of a leadership vote. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
From: MeNeedIt
American political analysts do not expect the U.S. tensions with Iran will turn into a full-fledged war. Iranians are mourning the death of General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed on Friday by a U.S. drone strike. Democrats in U.S. Congress want to curb the presidential war powers, which the Republican lawmakers reject. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports many Americans expressed their opposition to a war with Iran in street protests on Saturday and Sunday.
From: MeNeedIt
The United States has denied a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that would have allowed him to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, a U.S. official said.
Monday’s comments by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, came as tensions escalate between the two countries after the United States killed Iran’s most prominent military commander, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad on Friday.
Under the 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement,” the United
States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for “security, terrorism and foreign policy” reasons.
The U.S. State Department declined immediate comment. Iran’s mission to the United Nations said: “We have seen the media reports, but we have not received any official communication from either the U.S. or the U.N. regarding Foreign Minister Zarif’s visa.”
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric declined to comment on the U.S. denial of a visa for Zarif.
Zarif wanted to attend a meeting of the Security Council on Thursday on the topic of upholding the U.N. Charter. The meeting and Zarif’s travel had been planned before the latest flare-up in tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The Security Council meeting would have given Zarif a global spotlight to publicly criticize the United States for killing Soleimani.
Iran’s U.N. envoy, Majid Takht Ravanchi, has described the killing of Soleimani as “an obvious example of State terrorism and, as a criminal act, constitutes a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law, including, in particular … the Charter of the United Nations.”
Zarif last traveled to New York in September for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations – after the United States sanctioned him for implementing “the reckless agenda of Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
The sanctions block any property or interests Zarif has in the United States, but he said he had none.
Zarif also attended U.N. meetings in April and July. During his July visit, Washington imposed tight travel restrictions on Zarif and diplomats at Iran’s mission to the United Nations, confining them to a small section of New York City.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke with U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier on Monday. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement the pair discussed events in the Middle East and that Pompeo “expressed his appreciation” for Guterres’ diplomatic efforts.
From: MeNeedIt