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The Minnesota National Guard says the three soldiers who were killed when their helicopter crashed near St. Cloud this week were part of a unit that returned last May from a nine-month deployment to the Middle East.
The Guard identified the men who were killed in Thursday’s crash as Chief Warrant Officers 2nd Class James A. Rogers Jr., 28, and Charles P. Nord, 30, and Sgt. Kort M. Plantenberg, 28.
The Guard tweeted that during their unit’s recent Middle East deployment, it conducted medical evacuations in support of operations Spartan Shield and Inherent Resolve.
All three soldiers were assigned to Company C, 2-211th General Support Aviation Battalion, which is based in the central Minnesota city of St. Cloud.
The soldiers were killed when their Black Hawk crashed in a field about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of St. Cloud, which is where it had taken off from. The Guard says the crash happened during a routine maintenance test flight.
A team from Fort Rucker, Alabama, was sent to Minnesota to determine why the crash happened.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who served in the Guard for 24 years, ordered flags flown at half-staff at state and federal buildings throughout Minnesota from 2:05 p.m. Friday until 2:05 p.m. Monday. That was the time on Thursday when the Guard lost contact with the crew.
The United States imposed sanctions Friday on three Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leaders over their alleged role in violently suppressing protests that have shaken Iraq.
The militia leaders are accused of ordering their forces to fire on civilians protesting government corruption and high unemployment. Since the protests began in October, around 400 protesters have been reported killed by security forces.
“Peaceful public dissent and protest are fundamental elements of all democracies,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement that announced the sanctions Friday.
In a subsequent statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “The Iraqi people want their country back. … They are calling for genuine reform and accountability and for trustworthy leaders who will put Iraq’s national interests first. Those demands deserve to be addressed without resort to violence or suppression.”
FILE – Iraqi anti-riot police try to prevent anti-government protesters from crossing the al-Shuhada (Martyrs) bridge in central Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 6, 2019.
The sanctions target two brothers, Qais al-Khazali and Laith al-Khazali, from the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Iran-backed militia, as well as Husayn Falih Aziz al-Lami, who was accused of running a militia on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Trump administration will consider imposing further sanctions if violence against Iraqi protesters does not stop, according to David Schenker, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
“We are not done. This is an ongoing process,” Schenker told reporters Friday.
The punitive measures also targeted an Iraqi businessman, Khamis al-Khanjar, for alleged bribery and corruption.
The sanctions allow the U.S. government to freeze any assets the men might have in the United States and bar Americans from doing business with them.
The protests in Iraq have led to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi, an ally of Iran. Along with economic concerns, the protesters are also demonstrating against what they perceive as increasing Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs.
Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernandez unveiled his cabinet on Friday evening, laying out his core team days before the center-left leader takes office facing a stalled economy, rising debt fears and painful inflation.
Fernandez named Martin Guzman as economy minister, who will need to help steer debt restructuring negotiations with international creditors and the International Monetary Fund over around $100 billion in sovereign debt.
Guzman, a young academic and protege of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, is considered an expert in the field of debt restructuring, though he has little hands-on experience in policy making.
Matias Kulfas, who previously held government and central bank positions, was named as production minister. Young political scientist Santiago Cafiero, heir to a historic Peronist family, was named Cabinet chief, and former Buenos Aires Governor Felipe Sola was tapped as foreign minister.
Peronist Fernandez, who takes over from conservative leader Mauricio Macri, will be sworn into office on Dec. 10.
Vice President-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a divisive former president, was not present at the event when Fernandez announced his picks.
President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration was looking into relaxing water-saving regulations for toilets, sinks and showers, saying consumers end up using even more water by flushing multiple times and trying to get clean with weaker water streams.
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water,” Trump said while talking with business owners about what he said were `’common sense” steps to end overregulation. “’The EPA is looking at that very strongly at my suggestion.”
Use of low-flush toilets started in the 1990s after President George H.W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. The 1992 law said new toilets could use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. The law went into effect in 1994 for residential buildings and 1997 for commercial structures.
Trump said he was also looking at possibly relaxing regulations for sinks and showers.
“You go into a new building, a new house or a new home, and they have standards and you don’t get water,” he said. “You can’t wash your hands, practically — there’s so little water that comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on and it takes you so much longer to wash your hands and you end up using the same amount of water.”
Trump said relaxing water-conservation standards might not be practical in some arid regions of the nation, but in many states, there is plenty of water.
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg says employees at his news organization need to accept restrictions with their paycheck, including the ban on investigating their boss.
Bloomberg, billionaire founder of Bloomberg News, was asked in a CBS News interview about rules put in place when he announced his candidacy: The organization’s reporters are not allowed to probe him and his finances, or any of his Democratic rivals.
Bloomberg News says the restriction does not apply to President Donald Trump as the government’s leader. That prompted Trump’s campaign to say it would not allow Bloomberg reporters to cover its events.
“We just have to learn to live with some things,” Bloomberg told CBS. His reporters “get a paycheck. But with your paycheck comes some restrictions and responsibilities.”
He said that people have said to him, “‘how can you investigate yourself?’ And I said, Ï don’t think you can.”’ He noted that Bloomberg News subscribers also get access to campaign news from The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
With his comments, the former New York mayor “puts the journalists who work for him in an extremely uncomfortable, tenuous position,” said Lynne Adrine, a Washington-based journalism professor for Syracuse University.
As the owner of Bloomberg News, which started in 1990, Bloomberg has the right to do as he wants, she said.
“Yet, I don’t think that’s the take-away journalism consumers need at this time,” Adrine said.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Niquette is covering Bloomberg’s campaign. On Friday, he posted a story about remarks Bloomberg made in the CBS interview, including about the news organization’s policy.
Earlier this week, he wrote about Bloomberg’s campaign stop in Mississippi, where the candidate talked about his apology for New York City’s stop-and-frisk policing tactics when he was mayor.
The Bloomberg company had no comment Friday on what the candidate said.
Kathleen Culver, a professor of journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said she’s concerned about the extent to which Bloomberg reporters feel intimidated about their boss’ remarks.
Culver said she understands Bloomberg’s reluctance to step fully away from the company he created, but he might want to look at ways to completely disassociate himself with Bloomberg News at this time.
The White House will not cooperate with the remaining House impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” reads a letter from Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler.
The response was issued less than an hour before a Friday afternoon deadline for lawyers of the president to state whether they would represent him in the next round of the committee’s impeachment proceedings.
“You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” Cipollone said in the letter.
The counsel reiterated the president’s tweeted words that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at a news conference ahead of a vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 6, 2019.
Pelosi’s go-ahead
This came a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed leaders of relevant committees to start drafting articles of impeachment against the president, declaring that Trump had “abused the power of his office.”
Democrats contend the Republican president defied the norms of conduct for the office and violated his sworn obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution by asking Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president running for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Trump next year.
While Pelosi has mentioned no timetable, the Democrat-controlled House could vote to impeach the president before the Christmas holiday recess at the end of the month. That would set the stage for a January trial in the Republican-majority Senate.
Trump contends his phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been perfect and he did nothing wrong.
Republicans have defended the president, saying Trump was right to press Ukraine to scrutinize the work that Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Republicans are also pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community concluded it was Ukraine’s giant neighbor, Russia, that did the meddling.
FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York.
Military aid
Trump’s request to Kyiv came at a time when his administration was withholding $391 million in military assistance approved for Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.
The aid was released in September without Ukraine opening investigations of the Bidens.
The request for such investigations in exchange for military assistance is expected to be among the articles of impeachment against Trump.
This is only the fourth time in U.S. history that an American leader has faced impeachment proceedings.
Articles of impeachment will first be considered by the 41-member House Judiciary panel, where Democrats hold a 24-17 majority.
Two former U.S. presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached but not convicted or removed from office by the Senate, while a third — Richard Nixon — resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment.
Police in southern India have shot to death four men accused of raping and killing a 27-year-old veterinarian.
Police took the suspects to the crime scene Friday, where the men tried to escape.
All of the accused where killed in the fracas.
“It has been 10 days to the day my daughter died,” the veterinarian’s father said Friday. “I express my gratitude towards the police and government for this. My daughter’s soul must be at peace now.”
Still frame taken from Dec. 6, 2019, video shows policemen and officials standing at a spot where police shot to death four men suspected of raping a veterinary doctor, in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
Outrage
Protests, outrage, calls for swift justice and even lynching have engulfed India over the alleged gang rape and murder in Hyderabad, in the state of Telangana.
The crime brought back memories of the gang rape of a young physiotherapy student seven years ago that turned the spotlight on sexual violence against women in India.
The veterinarian left her home one evening and her charred remains were found the next morning.
Authorities say she had talked with her sister to say she had a flat tire near a highway toll booth on the outskirts of the city and that a truck driver had stopped to help fix it.
Police say four men dragged her to an isolated spot near a motorway, where they allegedly took turns raping her. Authorities say the suspects later set her body on fire, wrapped it in a blanket and dumped it under a bridge, where it was found by a passer-by.
Laws tightened, little changed
India tightened laws in the aftermath of the 2012 gang rape of the physiotherapy student in New Delhi, doubling prison terms for rapists, but it appears to have done little to stem brutal sexual assaults of women.
According to the latest government figures, 33,658 cases were reported in 2017, an average of more than 90 incidents every day.
Women activists say the actual number is much higher because many cases are never reported.
The largest concentration of black African churches outside of Africa can be found in South London. Each week, about 20,000 people attend one of the mostly Pentecostal churches in the city. Reporter Marthe van der Wolf has more from London.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, are facing declining enrollments as are many other American universities. But North Carolina A&T, the country’s largest HBCU, has boasted of growth as it continues to welcome international students to its campus. In Greensboro, Esha Sarai has more.
Hundreds of thousands of people went on strike in cities across France, causing a shutdown of public transport and drastically reducing teaching and hospital staff Thursday. Public and private sector workers are protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms that include extending minimum retirement age and rewarding employees for each day worked. VOA’S Zlatica Hoke reports.
Firefighters battled to contain nearly 150 fires burning in New South Wales state Friday as strong winds fanned the flames and again shrouded Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, in hazardous smoke.
Bushfires have killed at least four people and destroyed more than 680 homes since the start of November. Fires are still burning in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland states.
While nearly 150 blazes were burning across Australia’s east coast, New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said authorities were particularly concerned about eight fires now at emergency levels around Sydney, the state capital where about 5 million people live.
A ferry makes its way from Taronga Zoo to Circular Quay, with the Sydney skyline barely visible in the background through smoke haze from bushfires, in Sydney Harbor, Australia, Dec. 5, 2019.
“They have the potential or are expected to spread further east, which unfortunately is getting into more populated areas, villages, communities, isolated rural areas, and other farming practices and businesses throughout the region,” Fitzsimmons told reporters in Sydney.
Several fires to the northwest of the city had joined together to create one massive blaze, spreading with hot, dry winds, he said.
Bushfires are common in Australia, but this year’s fire season has begun much earlier than usual, with temperatures soaring regularly above 40 degrees C (104 F) before the start of the southern summer and high winds scouring the drought-parched landscape.
Australia’s worst bushfires on record destroyed thousands of homes in Victoria in February 2009, killing 173 people and injuring 414 more.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will address reporters Thursday on the status of the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.
Pelosi’s televised statement comes a day after three U.S. constitutional scholars told Congress that Trump committed impeachable offenses by pushing Ukraine to open investigations to benefit him politically.
Harvard law professor Noah Feldman told lawmakers that Trump, by “corruptly soliciting” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open an investigation of one of his chief 2020 Democratic rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, “has clearly committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard set in the U.S. Constitution for impeachment of a president.
Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 4, 2019.
Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said a U.S. president should resist foreign intervention in an American election, not invite it. She called Trump’s request to Zelenskiy an “especially serious abuse of power.”
In his opening statement, University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt told the House Judiciary Committee, “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning, and, along with that, our Constitution’s carefully crafted safeguards against the establishment of a king on American soil. No one, not even the president, is above the law.”
George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley gives an opening statement as he testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Republicans supporting Trump called Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who said he voted against Trump in 2016. But Turley said there was a “paucity of evidence” supporting Trump’s impeachment and “abundance of anger” by Democrats aimed at removing Trump from office. Turley said Trump’s late July call with Zelenskiy was not “perfect,” as Trump has contended, but not grounds to impeach him.
House Democrats: Trump Abuse of Power Impeachable Offense video player.
Katherine Gypson’s report on the Judicial Committee’s Impeachment Hearing Dec. 4
Impeachable offenses
The Judiciary panel’s hearing was the next step in House Democrats’ effort to impeach the country’s 45th president, only the fourth time in the country’s 243-year history that a U.S. leader has faced a formal impeachment proceeding.
The constitutional scholars recalled the history from more than two centuries ago when the country’s founding fathers wrote into the Constitution that presidents could be impeached and removed from office if lawmakers decide they have committed “”treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Feldman, Karlan and Gerhardt all said that Trump had met the criteria for impeachment laid out in the Constitution, describing his actions as an “abuse of power.”
Constitutional law experts (L-R) Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley, are sworn in to testify during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Dec. 4, 2019.
Feldman said if Trump is not held to account for his alleged offenses, “We no longer live in a democracy.”
Turley called the case against Trump “the narrowest impeachment in history” and was being conducted by Democrats in an “incredibly short” period of time. The lead Republican on the Judiciary panel, Congressman Doug Collins, asked, “Why the rush?”
Collins accused Democrats of trying to complete the impeachment process before the country turns its attention to the congressional and presidential election campaigns in 2020, when Trump is seeking re-election. Trump’s lawyers declined an invitation to participate in Wednesday’s hearing, while retaining the right to appear at any later sessions in the coming weeks.
At the end of the day, however, both sides stuck to their talking points. Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler again accused Trump of asking a “foreign government to intervene in our elections, then got caught, then obstructed the investigators twice.” The constitution, he said, “has a solution for a president who places his personal or political interests” above those of the country.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., left, gavels the end of the hearing as ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., talks during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of…
Collins, on the other hand, repeatedly called for Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff to testify before the Judiciary Committee. He also accused the Democrats of rushing the process, not talking to enough witnesses and being “so obsessed with the election next year, they just gloss over things.”
What sparked Inquiry
The Trump impeachment drama centers on his late July request to Zelenskiy to “do us a favor,” the investigation of Biden, his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election that Trump won, not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded.
At the time, Trump was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Trump eventually released the assistance in September without Ukraine opening the Biden investigations, proof, Republicans say, that there was no quid pro quo, an exchange of favors between Trump and Ukraine.
Trump defended his phone call with Zelensky in a series of tweets late Wednesday night, writing that when he used the word “us, I am referring to the United States, our Country.”
When I said, in my phone call to the President of Ukraine, “I would like you to do US a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” With the word “us” I am referring to the United States, our Country. I then went on to say that……
The president then went on to slam House Democrats over their assertion: “This, based on what I have seen, is their big point – and it is no point at a all (except for a big win for me!). The Democrats should apologize to the American people!”
….”I would like to have the Attorney General (of the United States) call you or your people…..” This, based on what I have seen, is their big point – and it is no point at a all (except for a big win for me!). The Democrats should apologize to the American people!
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives could on a simple majority vote impeach Trump before leaving on a Christmas week recess at the end of December, setting up a trial next month in the Republican-majority Senate, where a two-thirds vote would be needed for conviction to remove Trump from office.
Trump’s ouster from the White House remains unlikely, however, with at least 20 Republican senators needed to turn against the president and vote for conviction. Some Republican senators have criticized Trump’s request to Zelenskiy, but none has called for his conviction.
Impeachment history
Two former U.S. presidents — Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — were impeached but not convicted by the Senate and removed from office, while a third — Richard M. Nixon — resigned in the face of certain impeachment. Many constitutional scholars believe abuse of office and obstruction of Congress by withholding documents as it investigates a president are also impeachable offenses, but the U.S. Constitution makes no specific mention of such offenses.
The new testimony comes a day after the Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a 300-page report accusing Trump of “misconduct” in seeking Ukrainian political interference in the 2020 presidential election and then relentlessly trying to “obstruct” Congress as it carried out an inquiry into his actions.
