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As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters vow to keep up their fight, churches remain on the front lines. Christian groups hold regular public gatherings and sing hymns at demonstrations, both as a way to protest and to de-escalate clashes between police and more aggressive protesters. As VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, many churches in Hong Kong fear a crackdown on religion as China expands its influence.
From: MeNeedIt
As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic mission to land humans on the surface of the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh presents this reflection of the monumental achievement through the eyes of the NASA astronauts themselves. In exclusive interviews Farabaugh gathered, the men of the Apollo program reflect on the path to the moon, and what lies beyond.
From: MeNeedIt
Congressional Democrats are pushing for new protections for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They unveiled legislation this week that reflects the lawmakers’ increasing anger and concern over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But Republicans accuse Democrats of refusing to acknowledge an immigration crisis exists and making the problem worse. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
From: MeNeedIt
The latest vegetarian meat alternatives that taste and cook like real beef are all the rage in the U.S. But there’s also a market for lab grown meat, which provides all the protein without the cruelty and the carbon footprint. But it’s proving a tougher sell than plant-based alternatives. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
From: MeNeedIt
China is criticizing a short visit by Taiwan’s president to the United States, saying it violates the “one-China” principle.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged the U.S. on Friday to cease official exchanges with Taiwan and not allow stopovers by President Tsai Ing-wen.
Tsai is already in New York on a two-night stay en route to an official visit to four Caribbean nations. She was scheduled to deliver a speech to a U.S.-Taiwan business summit on Friday and attend a dinner with members of the Taiwanese-American community.
The United States recognizes Beijing as the government of China, but provides military and other support to Taiwan. The self-governing island split from China during a civil war in 1949.
From: MeNeedIt
A reporter in Mississippi who was denied access to cover a candidate for governor because she is a woman is calling the rejection sexist and a violation of press freedom.
The candidate, Robert Foster, said in an emailed statement he was just following the “Billy Graham” rule where a man is never alone with a woman besides his wife. The reporter, Larrison Campbell, said she was told he was concerned about the optics for his campaign of being alone with a woman.
Foster’s campaign manager said people could use her presence as a smear tactic and it was too close to the primary election to risk it, according to the post Campbell published in “Mississippi Today”.
Campbell said in a phone interview she offered to wear a press pass the whole time, write the article quickly so the campaign could point to it as an explanation, and pointed out she wouldn’t be alone with him because the male campaign manager would be there all day.
Campbell told VOA this is an example of sexism and it hurts freedom of the press.
“The only reason you would think people might see a woman’s presence with a man as being improper is if you think that a woman’s presence in a political arena needs an explanation because she doesn’t belong there,” Campbell said. “Any time a reporter is denied access it hurts freedom of the press. It’s not a question of not being able to publish, it’s a question of there not being access.”
In a statement, Foster reiterated his decision was based out of respect for “my wife, character and our Christian faith.”
“Before our decision to run, my wife and I made a commitment to follow the ‘Billy Graham Rule’, which is to avoid any situation that may evoke suspicion or compromise of our marriage. I am sorry Ms. Campbell doesn’t share these same views,” Foster said in an emailed statement. “We don’t mind granting Ms. Campbell an interview. We just want it to be in an appropriate and professional setting that wouldn’t provide opportunities for us to be alone.”
Campbell said sexism in the industry can prevent women from getting the access they need.
“Your work should be what determines how well you do and if you get access to the bigger candidates you’re going to break bigger stories. It hurts you as you aren’t taken as seriously, that hurts your access to stories,” she said. “I have some fantastic sources, on both sides of the political spectrum. It does ultimately hurt your access and I’m definitely not the only woman who feels that way.”
Gaye Tuchman, a professor of sociology emerita at the University of Connecticut elaborated on the importance of access to the first amendment.
“The reason that a free press exists is because it enables people who read the press, or in the 21st century use other media, to find out things,” said Tuchman. “In that sense the constitution guarantees the right to find out things.”
Kayleigh Skinner, a colleague of Campbell’s at “Mississippi Today”, said she often finds the people she covers do not treat her with as much respect as her male colleagues. She also said after the #MeToo movement women might have more difficulty doing their jobs.
“Maybe now women are seen as threats, something to gain out of accusing someone. I think men are more cautious now of getting caught up in a compromising situation,” Skinner said. “This is not the way to handle it. We are just doing our jobs.”
Campbell said while this is the most overt sexism she has experienced, sexism is a problem everywhere.
“I think that this story is obviously getting traction. It’s in Mississippi, it’s a Mississippi Republican. This does fit a narrative,” she said. “But there’s a problem everywhere. It’s not going to change unless we talk about it and analyze it and understand it.”
From: MeNeedIt
President Donald Trump unloaded via Twitter on Republican former House Speaker Paul Ryan after Ryan’s comments critical of Trump appeared in excerpts from a new book.
Ryan condemns Trump in “American Carnage,” by Tim Alberta of Politico, in excerpts running in various publications. Alberta wrote the former speaker, who retired from Congress in 2018, could not stand the idea of another two years with the Republican president and saw retirement as the “escape hatch,” according to The Washington Post. Ryan is quoted saying: “I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government. I wanted to scold him all the time.”
Trump blasted Ryan as a “lame duck failure.”
“He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing,” Trump tweeted late Thursday. “Never knew how to go after the Dems like they go after us. Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!”
Ryan had no comment Friday on the president’s tweets about him, his spokesman Brendan Buck said.
Trump may have been angered by various revelations in the book, including accounts recalling widespread negative GOP reactions to his off-color videotaped comments in the “Access Hollywood” scandal in the closing weeks of the 2016 election campaign. Ryan’s reaction was particularly harsh.
The book recounted Ryan, who served in Congress for 20 years, saying Trump’s presidency was slipping as he was less willing to accept advice from Republicans to moderate his approach.
“Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time,” Ryan said. “We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.”
And Ryan, who often was Trump’s wing man on some congressional issues but had a strained relationship with him, was the main focus of Trump’s Twitter rage.
“Paul Ryan, the failed V.P. candidate & former Speaker of the House, whose record of achievement was atrocious (except during my first two years as President), ultimately became a long running lame duck failure, leaving his Party in the lurch both as a fundraiser & leader,” Trump tweeted.
Trump tweeted that when presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose Ryan as a running mate “I told people that’s the end of that Presidential run.”
“He quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win,” Trump tweeted. “They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!)…”
From: MeNeedIt
Outgoing British Prime Minster Theresa May has leveled a thinly disguised swipe at Conservative Party front-runner Boris Johnson as she underscored the necessity of character in taking on the country’s top post.
May told the Daily Mail in an interview published Friday that the job of prime minister is not about power but about public service. Though she didn’t mention Johnson by name, he has made a career out of being the biggest personality in the room.
“All too often, those who see it as a position of power see it as about themselves and not about the people they are serving,” she said. “There is a real difference.”
May stepped down from being Conservative Party leader after her failure to get Parliament to approve a plan for Britain’s departure from the European Union. Johnson and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are in a runoff for that post, which will also make the winner Britain’s next prime minister. The runoff vote will be announced July 23.
May underscored she had done all she possibly could to try to get her Brexit deal approved and did nothing to conceal her frustration with the fact that some of her most strident opponents on Brexit are those now backing Johnson.
She added it’s unlikely that her successor will negotiate further Brexit concessions from the EU.
“I had assumed mistakenly that the tough bit of the negotiation was with the EU, that Parliament would accept the vote of the British people and just want to get it done, that people who’d spent their lives campaigning for Brexit would vote to get us out on March 29 and May 27,” she told the Mail. “But they didn’t.”
May, who will return to Parliament as a lawmaker, also took issue with those who chided her for becoming emotional as she announced her departure from the post.
“If a male prime minister’s voice had broken up, it would have been said “what great patriotism, they really love their country.” But if a female prime minister does it, it is `Why is she crying?”’ she said.
From: MeNeedIt
Looking to steady his presidential campaign after a debate performance against other Democratic contenders that hurt him in public opinion polls, Joe Biden on Thursday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as erratic and extreme.
In his most extensive remarks to date on foreign affairs, the former vice president said Trump had damaged America’s “reputation and our place in the world, and I quite frankly believe our ability to lead the world.”
The Republican president has unsettled Washington’s allies by withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord, a nuclear deal with Iran and a trans-Pacific trade agreement, and has also threatened to leave the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
For Biden, who served in the U.S. Senate for 35 years, it was a much-needed return to firmer ground after weeks of having to defend his civil rights record, while allowing him to train his attention on Trump rather than other Democrats.
Kamala Harris, a black U.S. senator from California, assailed Biden, 76, in last month’s debate over his past stance on the use of busing to integrate schools and for remarks about his willingness to work with segregationists while in the Senate more than 40 years ago.
Biden apologized for those remarks, but he has seen some erosion in support from Democratic voters, with Harris largely reaping the benefit and the field tightening in general among those vying to win the party’s nomination to run against Trump.
Argument for collective action
In his address at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, Biden criticized Trump for abdicating the United States’ leadership role in the world, and he argued that collective action was necessary to confront threats posed by climate change, nuclear proliferation terrorism and cyberwarfare.
As president, Biden said he would pull most U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, end U.S support for Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen and reaffirm the nation’s commitment to NATO.
Domestically, he said he would terminate Trump’s travel ban against people from Muslim-majority countries and end the practice of separating migrant families at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Biden has sharply criticized Trump for walking away from the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran, which Biden would reinstate should Tehran comply with its provisions.
Biden said that as president he also would have the U.S. rejoin the Paris climate accord and would convene a global summit on climate change.
Biden said he also would push for more ironclad commitments from North Korea to abandon its nuclear program than Trump has so far demanded.
For his part, Trump has not held back from criticism of the Obama administration’s foreign policy record. Trump has contended, among other things, that the Iran deal was too lenient and that Obama and Biden did not do enough to contain China’s economic aggression.
Ahead of Biden’s speech, the Republican National Committee and a pro-Trump super PAC released lengthy critiques of Biden’s judgment on foreign affairs, pointing out that, among other things, Biden advised Obama to not go forward with the 2012 raid
that killed Osama bin Laden.
Not yet a target
Biden’s record has not yet been a front-burner issue among his rivals for the Democratic nomination, but his vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq while in the Senate has been denounced by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and others.
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in May, Trump defended his “America First” policies, telling his supporters that Biden “said that he’s running to quote ‘˜save the world.’ … Well, he wants to save every country but ours.”
From: MeNeedIt
Opposition lawmakers in Italy demanded Thursday to have Interior Minister Matteo Salvini appear in Parliament about allegations that a covert Russian oil sale scheme was devised to fund his pro-Moscow League party.
Democratic Party lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary inquiry following another media report with allegations that a former Salvini associate proposed an under-the-table arrangement to pump money into the right-wing party.
The alleged proposal for the multimillion-euro plan was made last year after the League became a partner in Italy’s populist coalition government and ahead of May’s European Parliament elections.
As he did when the allegations first surfaced earlier this year, Salvini shrugged off the latest version.
“Never took a ruble, a euro, a dollar or a liter of vodka of financing from Russia,” Salvini said after the BuzzFeed report was published Wednesday.
Salvini has openly admired Russian President Vladimir Putin and vigorously advocates an end to European Union economic sanctions on Russia.
The opposition lawmakers specifically want to question Salvini, the BuzzFeed journalist who reported the allegations, Italy’s ambassador to Moscow, and Russia’s ambassador to Rome.
They also want to hear from Gianluca Savoini, a League associate close to the Russians who allegedly championed the proposed deal.
Allegations
The BuzzFeed article about a Moscow meeting aimed at arranging such a deal in 2018 largely mirrored allegations that appeared months ago in Italian magazine L’Espresso.
BuzzFeed built on L’Espresso’s story, saying it had obtained an audio of the conversation about the purported deal among Italians and Russians at a Moscow hotel.
Both articles said the alleged deal would have involved a Russian energy company selling fuel to an Italian energy company. The fuel would be allegedly offered at a discount, with part of the difference purportedly going to the League’s coffers.
Both L’Espresso and BuzzFeed stressed the reporters had no confirmation the deal was sealed or evidence that fuel was delivered or funds channeled to the League.
Reaction from Salvini
Asked what role alleged middleman Savoini has in the League, Salvini replied brusquely, “I don’t know. Ask him. It’s ridiculous, all that I read in the papers.”
Milan daily Corriere della Sera quoted Savoini, in a text message exchange with the newspaper, as saying of the BuzzFeed account: “All conjecture! Nothing concrete because neither money nor funds ever came to the League from Russia. Never!”
The League is the junior partner in a populist coalition with the 5-Star Movement that had led the Italian government since June 2018.
Premier Giuseppe Conte told reporters he hadn’t listened to the audio linked to the BuzzFeed report but had faith in Salvini and welcomes any investigation.
The Italian news agency ANSA said that Milan-based prosecutors had started looking into possible international corruption after L’Espresso’s article in February.
Salvini contends sanctions against Russia unfairly hurt Italian exporters.
From: MeNeedIt