Elizabeth Warren raised $19.1 million in the second quarter, her campaign said Monday, cementing her status in the top tier of Democratic presidential contenders and a leading voice of the party’s liberal base.

The Massachusetts senator’s second-quarter contributions leave her behind only Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who reported nearly $25 million in donations, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who tallied $21.5 million since his candidacy began in late April.

Perhaps most notably, Warren’s donations exceeded those reported by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her closest rival, who is also vying for liberal voters and is the only other candidate who has joined her in swearing off high-dollar fundraisers.

Warren’s success underscores the threat she poses to both Sanders and California Sen. Kamala Harris, whose $12 million second-quarter fundraising got a major boost in the final days of last month from her performance in the first Democratic debate. While Sanders appeals to progressives seeking an ambitious Democratic agenda, Warren has staked a claim to his base with her now-trademark policy plans. And as Harris seeks a foothold with black voters as the primary’s lone black female candidate, Warren is making headway of her own with black women.

“To sum it up: We raised more money than any other 100% grassroots-funded campaign,” said Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager. “That’s big.”

Warren more than tripled the $6 million she raised in the first three months of 2019 , when she silenced some skeptics of her long-term fundraising viability following her decision to rely on grassroots rather than high-dollar donations. The campaign’s $19.1 million came from more than 384,000 contributors giving more than 683,000 donations.

That’s less than the nearly 1 million individual donations Sanders’ campaign reported, but comparable with the 725,000 online donations that President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign reported during the second quarter.

Warren’s extensive organizing apparatus, particularly in early voting primary states, remains both a formidable asset — and a significant cost — as the campaign prepares to report $19.7 million in cash on hand. Her operation currently counts more than 300 paid staff members, 60% of whom are in the four early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, according to the campaign.

While a staffing footprint of that size is likely to spark questions about Warren’s high spending rate among some of her presidential rivals, her team has already underlined its confidence that the campaign will have enough resources for the long term.

“Overall, the Warren operation has a six-figure number of people who own a piece of the campaign and an eight-figure amount of money to go execute the plan. So, game on,” Warren adviser Joe Rospars tweeted after her first-quarter fundraising tally emerged.

Warren has an energetic output of policy proposals on everything from education to climate change, a signature of her 2020 efforts that has helped her push past a rocky start in the primary. That fast pace isn’t likely to change as the Democratic campaign nears an expected winnowing from about two dozen candidates.

This week alone, Warren is scheduled to hold a town hall in Milwaukee after joining a half-dozen other Democratic presidential hopefuls at a gathering hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens. She’ll then head to Philadelphia for Netroots Nation, an annual conference for progressive activists.

“In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll keep growing our movement across the country and Elizabeth will keep rolling out new plans to level the playing field for working people,” Lau wrote in an email to supporters.

Warren was already a guaranteed presence in this fall’s Democratic primary debates, which require at least 130,000 donors as well as minimum polling performance according to rules set by the Democratic National Committee. She’ll likely be joined on that stage in the fall by a rival whose showing she praised after last month’s first debate: former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who reported on Monday that he had met the higher donor threshold needed to qualify.

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From: MeNeedIt

The first Democratic presidential debate for the 2020 elections brought a decades-old civil rights issue back into the public spotlight: whether to bus children to racially integrate schools.

One of the most defining moments of the debate came when U.S. Senator Kamala Harris challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record for not supporting the type of busing that she experienced as a black schoolgirl in California.

The exchange garnered headlines and brought the topic of busing, which had been a national issue in the 1970s but had largely fallen out of the public conversation, back into the spotlight.

What is busing?

Busing was a tool that many U.S. communities used to overcome racial segregation in public schools.

Following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, legal racial segregation in schools was outlawed across the United States. However, because of demographic trends and housing policies, many U.S. neighborhoods remained segregated, and as a result schools were effectively segregated because students attended schools in neighborhoods where they lived. 

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, courts ruled that local jurisdictions were not doing enough to promote desegregation in schools and began mandating busing to address the problem. Federal agencies oversaw and enforced busing efforts, including collecting data about the race of students and withholding money from noncompliant schools.

Who was bused?

Both black students took buses to majority-white schools and white students to majority-black schools in court-ordered busing.

However, Brett Gadsden, the author of a book about desegregation efforts in Delaware, “Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism,” said, “African American students disproportionally shouldered the burden” of efforts to desegregate schools.

Gadsden, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, said black students were forced to travel longer distances and for many more years than white students.

Why was it controversial?

Busing proved to be intensely controversial nationwide. Supporters argued busing was necessary to integrate schools and to give black and white students equal access to resources and opportunities.

Critics argued that busing was dangerous and costly, and many parents did not want their children to have to travel great distances to get to school. 

While much of the opposition to busing came from whites, the black community was also divided about its merits. 

Gadsden said black critics cited the burden their children had to shoulder in terms of distance traveled and time spent on buses. They also complained that historically black schools were closed, and black administrators and teachers lost their jobs as a result of busing policies, while similar demands were not made of white schools, Gadsden said. 

In Boston, anti-busing protests turned violent in 1974, with demonstrators throwing bricks and bottles at school buses.

Political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said in a Twitter post following the Democratic debate that busing was so unpopular in the 1970s that Democrats running for office often had a choice to “be a profile in courage and lose, or oppose busing in whole or in part & win to fight another day on stronger ground.”

Biden’s stance

During the 1970s when Biden was a freshman U.S. senator representing Delaware, he worked with conservative senators to oppose federally mandated busing. 

In a 1975 interview with a Delaware newspaper that was first resurfaced by The Washington Post, Biden said, “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’”

During the Democratic debate, Biden defended his position against mandated busing in the 1970s, arguing that he did not oppose voluntary busing by communities, only federal mandates. “I did not oppose busing in America; what I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education,” he said.

Harris responded by saying the federal government needed to be able to step in and mandate busing in some areas because “there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America.”

Schools today

While some communities still champion voluntary busing measures, most busing efforts ended by the turn of the century. Local and national court rulings in the 1990s said many communities had succeeded in improving the integration of their schools and allowed busing programs to end. 

The Civil Rights Project at UCLA said in a May report  to mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation in schools is again on the rise and has been growing “unchecked” for nearly three decades, “placing the promise of Brown at grave risk.”

The report said white students, on average, attend a school in which 69% of the students are white, Latino students attend schools in which 55% of the students are Latino, and black students attend schools with a combined black and Latino enrollment averaging 67%. 

Gadsden agreed there is “a lot of segregation in schools now” but said there is little political will to go back to the era of busing. “Federal courts now are not particularly sympathetic to challenges to school segregation,” he said, also noting there is no great appetite in the U.S. Congress to introduce measures to advance school desegregation.  

After the debate, Harris told reporters that “busing is a tool among many that should be considered.” however, when pressed on whether she supported federally mandated busing today, she said she would not unless society became as opposed to integration as it was in the 1970s.

Some critics say Harris’ position on busing today is not that much different from Biden’s.

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From: MeNeedIt

A 50-member delegation of Afghan elites is in Qatar for peace talks with Taliban leaders, with the hopes of ending the 18-year-long conflict in Afghanistan.

The two-day summit, facilitated by Germany and Qatar, is an “historic opportunity for all of them to bridge trust deficit, which will help pave the way for direct peace negotiations between Afghan government and the Taliban,” said Asadullah Zaeri, a spokesman of the country’s High Peace Council.

The delegation includes politicians, top members of the council, representatives of women’s groups and senior journalists, he said.

Although both sides have emphasized that members of Afghan government are attending in their personal capacity, not representing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government, their presence makes this conference different from the intra-Afghan conference in Moscow in April. At that gathering, the Taliban refused to sit at the table with anyone from the administration of President Ghani – an administration they insist is a “puppet” of the United States.

Ghani termed that conference a failure.

However, the United States seems to have succeeded in its efforts to get the Taliban to show flexibility.

“The Intra-Afghan Conference for Peace in #Doha has been a long time coming. It’s great to see senior government, civil society, women, and Taliban representatives at one table together,” tweeted U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The conference organizers are hoping this first step would pave way for a bigger breakthrough in future.

“A partial success is for people to continue to talk. A great success would be for them to come up with a framework that could lead into direct negotiations, Afghan-Afghan, and hopefully catch up with the speed in which the talks between the Taliban and the United States are progressing,” said Sultan Barakat, the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Doha Institute, who has been closely involved in organizing the event.
 
The Afghan meeting comes as the U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who’s already holding talks with the Taliban, is nearing an agreement over a timeframe for the U.S. and NATO troop withdrawal from the country.

 Both sides claim the talks are progressing well.

“The last 6 days of talks have been the most productive session to date,” tweeted Khalilzad on Saturday. The two sides will resume on the 9th after this intra-Afghan interaction which Khalilzad called “a critical milestone.”

A Taliban spokesman said in a future conference, the insurgent group may be willing to talk to top level Ghani administration officials.

“If someone is coming in his or her personal capacity and expressing his or her views on how to bring about peace in Afghanistan, we have not put any restriction on that,” said Suhail Shaheen when asked whether the Taliban could sit with government ministers or top-level officials.  

Afghan High Peace Council member Jamaluddin Badar said government representatives may be in Doha in their personal capacity but they “seemed to be giving the government’s point of view.”

He felt positive about the discussions held till late Sunday afternoon. The Taliban, he said, seemed to be willing to address some critical concerns of most Afghans, such as how to protect the gains made since the ouster of the insurgent group in 2001, particularly in terms of institution building and human rights.

“We might have disagreements with the Taliban on how to interpret those rights, but I don’t think they will be strong enough to lead to fighting,” he said. The Taliban, he added, have even been talking about the need to reduce violence against women.

He was not the only one who expressed optimism about the discussions with the Taliban.

“I think their attitude has changed tremendously. Last night they sat with women and we chatted. They tried to show that they are willing to talk to women,” said Asila Wardak, a women’s rights activist attending the conference.

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From: MeNeedIt

“We don’t need to eat,” said a young man held in a Libyan detention center five days after the compound was bombed killing more than 50 people and injuring at least 130.  “We didn’t touch the food. We need to be out of Libya.”  
 
The hunger strike in the detention center was on its third day Sunday, according to the protester communicating with VOA via phone and social media. He sent pictures of detainees holding signs like “We are in the grave” and “Save us from the next bomb. We are survivors, but still we are targeted.”

News and additional photographs of the protest came from other detainees communicating with hidden mobile phones.
 
The airstrikes hit the detention center late Tuesday, after international organizations warned both sides of Libya’s ongoing war that civilians were held at that location, which has been targeted before. Amnesty International says there is evidence the detention center is located near weapons’ storage, but Tripoli authorities say there is no legitimate military target in the area.

Officials say about 600 people were inside the detention center when the airstrikes hit a nearby garage, and then the center itself. Some survivors reported breaking open the doors of the detention center to escape, others escaped the bombing after guards let them out. Still others reported shots fired in the chaos.  
 
Five days later, migrants were still sleeping outside in the yard on Sunday, according to detainees, with part of the center destroyed and other parts appearing to be about to collapse.

The United Nations announced it would start evacuations over the weekend, but some protesters said moving to another detention center would only prolong the danger.

“If they are taking us to another detention center, we won’t go,” the protester told VOA on the phone. “We want to get out of this country or stay here.”

Escalating war
 
To wind up in a Libyan detention center, migrants travel from across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Asia in hopes of crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.  
 
Many people die on the trip to Libya alone and nearly 700 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2019 trying to cross to Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.
 
Thousands of survivors remain detained in Libya, hoping to try to cross to Europe and unwilling to return to the wars, violence and dire poverty they fled.  But as the war for Tripoli intensifies, some say Libya is as dangerous as the countries they fled.
 
“Sudan, Libya… they are the same,” said one woman outside the detention center only hours after last week’s bombing.  She had fled war and genocide in Sudan, only to find herself detained, impoverished and terrified in Libya, she said.

Libyan forces have been battling for the capital since early April, when Khalifa Haftar, the de-facto leader of eastern Libya declared he would reunite the divided country by force and marched on Tripoli in the west. Forces loyal to the Government of National Accord, which runs western Libya, have been defending the city since. Neither side appears to be backing down.
 
Nearly 1,000 people have been killed and 5,000 wounded, according to the World Health Organization, and more than 100,000 have fled their homes.
 
Protesters outside the detention center on Sunday secretly sent out pictures and videos, calling on the international community to rescue them and allow them to apply for asylum in safer countries.
 
“Doctors Without Borders came with medicine, but we don’t want medicine,” said the protester communicating with VOA via phone and social media. “The UNHCR evacuated some people but we don’t want to evacuate to another detention center.  
 
“We want to go to a safe country, or we will stay here.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Two remote California desert communities assessed damage after two major earthquakes hit the area at the end of last week, followed by thousands of smaller aftershocks.

Ridgecrest and neighboring Trona were hit hard by the magnitude 7.1 quake that rocked the Mojave Desert towns Friday. A day earlier, a magnitude 6.4 temblor hit the same patch of the desert.

The area, about 240 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles, is in recovery mode after the quakes crumbled buildings, ignited fires and cut power to thousands of homes and businesses.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Sunday there was just a 1% chance of another magnitude 7 or higher earthquake in the next week, and a rising possibility of no magnitude 6 quakes.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for the area and warned local governments to strengthen alert systems and building codes. “It is a wake-up call for the rest of the state and other parts of the nation,” Newsom told reporters.

The damage wasn’t worse largely because of how remote the area is, but Newsom cautioned after touring Ridgecrest that “it’s deceiving, earthquake damage. You don’t notice it at first.”
 
The Democratic governor estimated the damage at more than $100 million and said U.S. President Donald Trump called him to offer federal support for rebuilding.

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From: MeNeedIt

Concerted efforts continue to rebuild the Syrian city of Raqqa, nearly two years after it was recaptured from the Islamic State (IS) terror group. And while these efforts mostly focus on essential services in the city, several activist groups are trying to take on something different by restoring parks, playgrounds and public squares.
 
U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces liberated Raqqa from IS in October 2017.
 
During the 3-month-long battle, however, the city’s infrastructure was mostly destroyed, including dozens of public squares and parks that once were used by the terror group for the public execution of dissidents.
 
Activists who have taken on the mission to reconstruct these facilities say they are particularly focused on projects that could change the face of the city after years of horror under IS rule.

Ahed al-Hendi, head of the Syrian Foundation for Sustainable Development, a local organization that has been involved in several reconstruction projects in Raqqa, says that the idea behind supporting these efforts is to turn the former de facto capital of IS’ self-styled caliphate into a bright and colorful city.  
 
“Under IS rule, only one color was prevalent and allowed and that was black,” he told VOA. “The colors we use now while repairing these parks represent diversity and tolerance.”

 
Celebrating life after IS
 
During its reign, IS imposed strict social codes on the local population in Raqqa and elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.
 
Women in particular were required to wear black dresses covering their entire bodies and faces. Those who disobeyed such rules were given harsh punishments, including imprisonment and flogging.  
 
IS turned also the once bustling al-Naeem Square in downtown Raqqa into a major spot to carry out public executions that terrorized communities who lived under the group’s brutal rule in Syria and Iraq.
 
“What we are trying to do is to turn all these zones that once symbolized death into places that celebrate life to the fullest,” al-Hendi said.
 
Aslan Mamo, the lead artist who undertook the revamping of Raqqa parks, says that such projects bring hope and joy for the local population in Raqqa.

“We can’t just rebuild for the sake of rebuilding. We have to put an aesthetic touch on everything we build from now on, because IS destroyed people from inside and tried to kill their taste for beauty,” he said.
 
He told VOA that they have also done similar works at sport fields, elementary schools and other facilities in the city.
 
While many displaced people have already returned to their homes in Raqqa after its liberation from IS, experts charge that rebuilding modern facilities would entice more people to consider coming back into the city in the future.
 
“Restoring public services such as parks and recreational centers is a key factor of stabilizing the city,” said Khaled al-‘Abo, a local civil engineer who has been helping rebuild several parks in Raqqa.
 
He said in a phone interview with VOA that his team’s objective is to rebuild every park in the city that has been destroyed or used by IS for “evil purposes.”

 US contribution
 
According to activists, the initiative has been entirely funded the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a U.S federal government entity that is responsible for providing assistance to communities in need around the world.
 
The United States has been a major contributor to the reconstruction of Raqqa and other cities devastated by the war against IS.
 
In March of this year, the U.S. announced more than $397 million in additional assistance for Syria, including areas recently liberated from IS.
 
With this amount, the U.S. humanitarian assistance, in response to the Syrian crisis, reached more than $9.5 billion since the beginning of the country’s civil war in 2011.
 
In Raqqa, residents hope that such initiatives would encourage other international donors to invest more in rebuilding their city.
 
“With no prospects of self-funding at the moment, only international assistance can help bring back some sense of normalcy to this city,” said Hamoud al-Salih, a 39-year-old resident of Raqqa.

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From: MeNeedIt

Iraq’s security and paramilitary forces began Sunday a military operation along the border with Syria aimed at clearing the area of Islamic State group militants, the military said in a statement.

Although Iraq declared victory against IS in July 2017, the extremists have turned into an insurgency and have carried out deadly attacks in the country.

The military said the operation that began at sunrise was being carried out by Iraqi troops and members of the Popular Mobilization Forces that largely consist of Iran-backed militias.

It said the operation will last several days and was the first phase of the Will of Victory Operation securing the western province of Anbar and the central and northern regions of Salahuddin and Nineveh.

“We press on the hands of our heroic forces that will achieve victory with the will of its heroes against the gangs of Daesh,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. “May God protect you and make you victorious.”

IS once held large parts of Syria and Iraq where it declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremists lost in March the last territory they controlled in Syria.

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From: MeNeedIt

Iran announced Sunday it will raise its enrichment of uranium, breaking another limit of its unraveling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and further heightening tensions between Tehran and the U.S.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei told a news conference that Iran will go beyond the limit of 3.67% enrichment Sunday and that the new percentage “will be based on our needs,” without specifying.

Iran made the decision a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal. Iran has repeatedly warned Europe in recent weeks that it would begin walking away from an accord neutered by a maximalist American campaign of sanctions that blocked Tehran’s oil sales abroad and targeted its top officials.

Sunday’s decision came less than a week after Iran acknowledged breaking the deal’s 300-kilogram (661-pound) limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile. Experts warn higher enrichment and a growing stockpile narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material for an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

In a last-minute diplomatic bid, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, by phone Saturday, saying he is trying to find a way by July 15 to resume dialogue between Iran and Western partners. 

Hopes for saving the faltering deal appear increasingly dim, as the Europeans have been unable to offer Iran any effective way around U.S. sanctions. While the steps are concerning to nuclear non-proliferation experts, they could be easily reversible if Europeans offer Iran the sanctions relief it seeks. 

Tensions began rising in May when the U.S. rushed thousands of additional troops, an aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and advanced fighter jets to the Mideast. Mysterious oil tanker blasts near the Strait of Hormuz, attacks by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen on Saudi Arabia and Iran shooting down a U.S. military drone have raised fears of a wider conflict engulfing a region crucial to global energy supplies.

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From: MeNeedIt

Sofia Lysenko’s parents moved to the United States from the Ukraine when she was 3 years old. Today, at 17, some of the biggest American pharmaceutical companies want to team up with this teenage science prodigy because she has created an artificial macromolecule robot that can deliver drugs directly to the brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Iryna Matviichuk met with Sofia to learn more. Anna Rice narrates her report.

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From: MeNeedIt

Emergency workers in Ridgecrest, Calif., are assessing the damage after a second major earthquake struck the desert community northeast of Los Angeles on Friday night. No deaths or major injuries have been reported from either the Thursday or Friday quake, but as Mike O’Sullivan reports, Friday’s magnitude-7.1 temblor caused additional damage and left residents shaken.

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From: MeNeedIt

Hong Kong has long been seen as a good place to do business, thanks to its proximity to China and the one-country, two systems policy that provides a wide degree of economic freedom. But as Beijing expands its control, that reputation is at risk, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.

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From: MeNeedIt

A life-size rough wooden sculpture of U.S. first lady Melania Trump was unveiled Friday near her hometown of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia. 

Commissioned by Berlin-based American artist Brad Downey and carved with a chainsaw by local folk artist Ales Zupevc, the statue serves as a perhaps wry accompaniment to Downey’s exhibition in the capital, Ljubljana, exploring Melania’s roots in the small Alpine country. 

The blocky, rustic figure was cut from the trunk of a living linden tree whose base forms a tall plinth, in a field beside the Sava River in Rozno, eight kilometers (five miles) from Sevnica. 
 
There was no attempt to create an accurate likeness, to the point that the gallery in Ljubljana appears uncertain how seriously to take the statue.  

“Perhaps we are simply trying vigorously to make sense of things that might only be a slapstick prank,” it says in a leaflet. “Who knows?” 
 
Although the statue’s face is rough-hewn and unrecognizable, the figure is shown clothed in the pale blue wraparound coat that Melania wore at Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president. 
 
Downey said he wanted to “have a dialogue with my country’s political situation” and highlight Melania Trump’s status as an immigrant married to a president sworn to reduce immigration. 

The sculptor, known as Maxi, was born in the same hospital as Melania Trump, in the same month, and now mostly works as a pipelayer. 
 
“Let’s face it,” he says in a short film being shown as part of the exhibition, “she owns half of America while I have nothing.” 

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From: MeNeedIt