Guatemala received the first Salvadoran citizen from the United States under a new migration agreement that designates the Central American nation a so-called safe third country for asylum-seekers, Guatemalan authorities said Tuesday.

The program kicked off in late November, when a Honduran man flew from El Paso, Texas, to Guatemala City on a nearly empty Boeing 737. This marks the second flight.

The plane, which arrived Tuesday morning from Mesa, Arizona, also had 84 Guatemalans and two Hondurans aboard, said Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration institute.

She did not specify whether the migrants from Honduras and El Salvador would seek asylum in Guatemala or return to their countries.

The program marks a policy achievement for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has demanded help from Mexico and Central America in curbing the flow of migrants seeking to request asylum in the United States.
 

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Talks between the Colombian government and the unions and student organizations that are planning major protests this week ended without advances on Tuesday, as the country prepares for its third national strike since late November.

Hundreds of thousands of Colombians have participated in protests against President Ivan Duque’s social and economic policies since Nov. 21, imperiling the government’s tax reform proposal and leading Duque to announce a “great national dialogue.”

Five people have died in connection with the demonstrations, including a young man killed by homemade explosives on Monday in the city of Medellin during a protest at a public university.

On Monday, the government asked the unions and student groups that make up the National Strike Committee to call off the Wednesday protest and agreed to a parallel dialogue with them.

The committee rejected the request to halt the strike, continuing to demand the government meet only with them instead of including business groups and others in talks.

Diogenes Orjuela, the head of the Central Union of Workers (CUT), told Reuters early on Tuesday the strike would go ahead and that his organization would continue to seek dialogue without “conditions on our plan of action which we have through December 10.”

The CUT is the country’s main union, with more than 500,000 members.

13 demands

The committee has made 13 demands of the government, including that it reject a rise in the pension age and a cut in the minimum wage for young people, both policies Duque denies ever supporting.

A meeting between the committee and the government ended without progress Tuesday, with presidency official Diego Molano telling journalists that certain committee demands could not be met.

“What they have requested can’t be fulfilled, particularly if we only maintain the exclusive and independent negotiations,” Molano said, adding the committee’s demand that the ESMAD riot police not be present during demonstrations was also inviable.

The death last week of 18-year-old protester Dilan Cruz has helped fuel anger at the ESMAD, which protesters accuse of using excessive force during crowd dispersion efforts. Cruz was fatally injured on the third day of protests by an ESMAD projectile.

Orjuela told journalists following Tuesday’s meeting that the negotiations will move forward while protests continue.
 

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Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the FBI he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed” at the way James Comey was fired as FBI director, according to records released Monday.

Rosenstein was interviewed by FBI agents several weeks after Comey’s firing as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. An FBI summary of that interview was among roughly 300 pages of documents released as part of public records lawsuits brought by BuzzFeed News and CNN.

The records also include summaries of FBI interviews of key Trump associates, including Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski and Michael Cohen. They provide additional insight into Mueller’s two-year investigation, which shadowed the first part of Trump’s presidency and preceded an ongoing impeachment inquiry centered on his efforts to press Ukraine for investigations of political rival Joe Biden.

Hicks described efforts to prepare for media scrutiny of a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and the president’s oldest son. Lewandowski told investigators the president prodded him to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make an announcement that the scope of the Russia investigation had been limited to future election interference.

And Cohen, who is now serving a three-year prison sentence for campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, told investigators he advised Trump’s personal lawyer that there was more detail about a proposed deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow than what he had shared with lawmakers. He said he “vaguely recalled” telling Jay Sekulow about a call he had “with a woman from the Kremlin,” and said Sekulow’s response was in line with “so what” and the deal never happened, according to the FBI document.

Sekulow told The Associated Press on Monday night that Cohen’s statements were false and that Cohen never told him anything about any call with a woman from Russia.

Rosenstein, who left his Justice Department post last spring, was interviewed about his role in Comey’s May 2017 firing. Rosenstein wrote a memo harshly criticizing Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a document held up by the White House as justification for his firing.

Rosenstein said he was asked during a White House meeting one day before Comey’s firing to produce a memo laying out his concerns with the FBI chief. He said he knew when he left the office that day that Comey would be fired, though he said he did not expect for his memo to be immediately released, and was surprised by the portrayal in the media that the termination was his idea instead of the White House’s, according to the FBI document.

Rosenstein said he expected Comey would be contacted by either Trump or Sessions so a meeting could be scheduled and he could be fired in person. Comey instead learned of his firing from television while speaking with agents in Los Angeles.When he learned of how Comey was fired, he was “angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed. It was also humiliating for Comey,” an FBI agent wrote of Rosenstein’s reaction.

At one point during the interview, as Rosenstein was describing how he had “always liked Jim Comey” but disagreed with his decisions in the Clinton case, the deputy attorney general “paused a moment, appearing to have been overcome by emotion, but quickly recovered and apologized,” according to the FBI.

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Ten years ago on December 3, a suicide bomber attacked a graduation ceremony at Shamo Hotel, one of Mogadishu’s main hotels.

Fourteen medical students, lecturers, and doctors from Banadir University were among 30 people who were killed, more than 50 others injured.

Dr. Osman Mohamud Dufle was on the podium when the suicide bomber detonated the bomb.

“The explosion occurred right in front of me,” says Dr. Dufle, a physician and a member of the parliament.

Before going to the podium, his friend, Higher Education Minister Dr. Ibrahim Hassan Addow, asked if he could speak before him as he was rushing to another event. But the event organizer, Dr. Mohamed Mohamud Biday, intervened and convinced Dr. Addow he will speak next. The bomber detonated the explosion in the space between them. Dufle survived, Addow died.

Also killed were Health Minister Qamar Aden Ali, Education Minister Ahmed Aden Wayel, and Youth & Sports Minister Suleiman Olad Roble, who succumbed to his injuries few days later. Two journalists and one of the country’s leading embryologists, Dr. Mohamed Adam Shahid, were among the dead.

“That has particular memory for me,” says Dufle. “To see the colleagues I was sitting alongside two minutes ago, lifeless in front of me, it’s a shocking memory.”

Dr. Biday, a cardiologist who was among the seriously injured, thought it was a mortar attack. He tried to get up and run, fearing that a second mortar round may be on the way, but he could not move.

“I was seriously injured, I could not stand,” he said. “I suffered multiple fractures; I was carried in a sheet.” He was among 20 badly wounded evacuated abroad for medical emergency.

Dr. Biday only learned the extent of the tragedy after 24 hours.

“It was a very painful day. A dark day.”

University bounces back

On the day of the attack, Banadir University, which started admitting its first students in 2002, was graduating its second class, 60 students, 30 of whom were doctors.

It was a big blow not only to Banadir University but to the education sector in Somalia, which was reviving despite the absence of a strong, functioning government.

“It was a sad day but today we recovered,” says Dr. Biday, who is now the rector of Banadir University.

“The intention was to shut down our eyes, the university, and to stop the effort and the work. But the leadership stood up. Today we are stronger.”

Biday says it would have been like a “second death” had the university collapsed after the attack.

To date, Banadir University has 11 different colleges. Last week, it graduated its 13th class, with 633 students achieving their dreams. Nearly 270 of the students graduated from the medical college, including 138 female doctors. Overall, 3210 students, including 938 females, have graduated since the University was opened.

The attack on the Shamo hotel graduation was one of the most gruesome suicide bombings in Somalia history. Ten years after the tragic event, and after multiple reviews of CCTVs and other recordings made of the event, it was concluded that the bomber was impersonating a journalist as he was holding a camera wandering around the ballroom of the graduation ceremony. At 11:15am, he detonated a laptop bomb that he was carrying.  

At that time, even the participants did not expect that anyone would target such an event where students and parents attended to express delight and celebrate achievement in a country where such happy gatherings, at the time, were rare.

Government security agencies blamed the attack on the al-Shabab militant group. The bomber was identified as an Al-Shabab member who travelled from Denmark to join the militant group.

Al-Shabab denied responsibility for the attack.

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A survey of nearly 500 leaders at colleges and universities reflects other reports that found American higher education is facing challenges on many fronts.

School officials were asked to name the biggest issues their institutions would face in the next three to five years and how they would deal with them. The study was a joint effort with the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Huron Consulting Group, and was released in October.

The study identified the top six issues that the 500 leaders listed. The most common concern? Increasing competition with other educational institutions. About 62% of those questioned noted that concern.

The next most common issue? The increase in non-traditional students, meaning students who fall outside the typical 18 and 24 years olds who enter school each year. The growth of non-traditional students – mostly adults with full-time jobs — were cited by 39% of leaders.

Two other concerns were shrinking state and federal financial support, and decreasing public trust in higher education. Officials said they were worried about political conditions around the world, too, and their effect on international students coming to the United States.

But the college and university officials said they have answers. In fact, 89% expressed confidence in their school’s ability to meet the needs of the growing number of students who are working adults.

Peter Stokes says colleges and universities have always been dealing with change. Stokes is the managing director for higher education with Huron.

After World War II, when the U.S. experience a sharp jump in the U.S. birth rate — known as the Baby Boom — more young people enrolled in college. Then, after the Great Recession in 2008, the birth rate dropped. Around that time, the number of working adults starting or returning to college or university began to rise.

The traditional student population will likely recover eventually, Stoke says. Until then, schools will have to adapt and increase internet-based and short-term programs to meet the needs of students who have less time and money to spend.

As for the five other issues identified in the study, only seven leaders polled felt very confident in their school’s ability to find solutions.

Louis Soares is the chief learning officer at the American Council on Education. He says that in recent years, Americans have come to think of higher education as more of a means of getting a well-paying job than as a public benefit.

This may not be surprising given the increased cost of higher education. But Soares said that this put many educational institutions in competition with one another to prove how their programs can results in better jobs.

At the same time, U.S-based companies like Amazon and Google are creating their own educational programs to compete with traditional degree programs. And countries like France, Canada and Australia are becoming more appealing to international students who would have likely looked to U.S. schools in the past.

As a result, some colleges and universities across the country have been closing. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in 2018 the number of institutions nationwide dropped to its lowest level since 1998.

Soares suggests that schools have a better chance of surviving if they work together, as Georgia Tech has, sharing new program ideas and methods with 50 other institutions. But that is not always easy.

“U.S. higher education is innovative, but the innovation tends to be small-scale,” he said.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, says it is important to focus on public trust and governmental support of higher education.

Pasquerella says U.S. higher education has failed to promote its own importance to society. Many people have come to think of colleges and universities as places where students waste time learning unnecessary subjects or hearing one-sided beliefs.

She says colleges and universities educate future business and political leaders who shape policies that improve conditions in  communities and the nation. Major scientific and technological developments usually emerge from a college or university laboratory.

“Demonstrating the ways in which … their success is inextricably linked to the physical, emotional, economic well-being of people in the communities in which they’re located and which they seek to serve … is a first and critical step in helping to restore public confidence in higher education,” said Pasquerella.

She added that as Americans better appreciate the contributions and impact of colleges and universities, funding from state and federal governments will likely increase to previous levels.

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A typhoon struck the Philippines on Tuesday bringing heavy rains and prompting preemptive halts in air travel, schools and government offices, with some 200,000 people evacuated after warnings of floods and landslides.

Typhoon Kammuri, the 20th typhoon to hit the country this year, weakened slightly and moved slowly across central parts of the archipelago during the night, with damage minor reported in some areas.

The storm was packing 155 kph (96 mph) wind speeds and gusts of up to 235 kph (146 mph), the weather bureau said. Authorities warned of landslides, storm surges and floods triggered by heavy winds and rain, preemptively moving 200,000 people to safe places in several dozen provinces.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage.

The main airport in Manila would be closed for 12 hours from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. as a precaution, although air travel continued in unaffected areas of the country.

Government offices and schools were closed in affected areas and utilities firms appealed for patience ahead of anticipated power outages. The coastguard halted commercial sea travel in affected areas.

Local television showed footage of the main airport in Legazpi province with cables, lighting and panels hanging from the ceiling. Pictures posted by social media users showed waves crashing against bulwarks, felled trees and signage, and some minor damage to electricity poles.

The Philippines is hosting the Southeast Asian Games and organizers postponed several events, including the surfing, kayak, windsurfing, sailing and canoe contests.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey on Monday to stop holding up support for a NATO defense plan for the Baltics and Poland, as Ankara presses the alliance to support its fight against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of the NATO summit, Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labeling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse.

He called on Ankara to focus on the larger challenges facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The message to Turkey … is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” Esper said as he flew to London.

“Alliance unity, alliance readiness, means that you focus on the bigger issues — the bigger issue being the readiness of the (NATO) alliance. And not everybody’s willing to sign up to their agenda. Not everybody sees the threats that they see.”

NATO envoys need formal approval by all 29 members for the plan to improve the defense of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against any threat from neighboring Russia.

The dispute, as NATO prepares to hold its 70th anniversary summit, is a sign of deep divisions between Ankara and Washington over everything from the war in Syria to Turkey’s growing defense relationship with Russia.

Turkey wants NATO to formally recognize the YPG militia, the main component of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as terrorists and is infuriated that its allies have given the militia support.

Ankara has blamed Washington for the current impasse, saying it was caused by the U.S. withdrawal of support from a separate defense plan for Turkey, covering any possible attack from the south where it borders Syria.

Asked whether Washington might agree to branding the YPG as terrorists in order to break the deadlock, Esper said: “I wouldn’t support that.”

“We’re going to stick to our positions, and I think NATO will as well,” Esper said.

The issue is the latest source of friction between the NATO allies, which have also been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of advanced Russian air defenses, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO defenses and pose a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Washington said in July it was removing Turkey from the F-35 program and has warned of possible U.S. sanctions.

Two U.S. senators pressed the Trump administration on Monday to impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian missile defense system and said the failure to do so sent a “terrible signal.”

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London Bridge reopened to cars and pedestrians Monday, three days after a man previously convicted of terrorism offenses stabbed two people to death and injured three others before being shot dead by police.
                   
Political leaders including Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who have traded blame for the security failures that allowed the attack ,attended a vigil at Guildhall Yard in the medieval heart of London to remember the victims and honor members of the emergency services and bystanders who fought the attacker with fists, fire extinguishers and even a narwhal tusk.
                   
The dignitaries, city officials and members of the public observed two minutes of silence in honor of former University of Cambridge students Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25. They were fatally stabbed by 28-year-old convicted terrorist Usman Khan during an event designed to connect graduate students with prisoners. Both victims worked for the Cambridge-based prisoner rehabilitation program Learning Together.
                   
Two of the three injured people remained in hospital Monday. The third was discharged.
                   
The attacker was attending the event at Fishmongers’ Hall, beside the bridge, and had returned for the afternoon session when he started stabbing people. Police believe he acted alone.
                   
He was pursued onto London Bridge and restrained by staff from the venue and others attending the conference. Police opened fire after he flashed what looked like a suicide vest. It was a fake device.
                   
Toby Williamson, chief executive of Fishmongers’ Hall, paid tribute to staff at the venue who tried to help the injured and fight off the attacker. Williamson said one staffer, whom he identified as Lukasz, pulled a 5-foot (1.5 meter) narwhal tusk from the wall and charged at Khan, allowing others to escape. Williamson told the BBC that Lukasz suffered cuts in a minute of “one-on-one straight combat” with the knifeman.
                   
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told Monday’s vigil that, in the face of tragedy, people should “take hope from the heroism of ordinary Londoners and emergency services who ran toward danger, risking their lives to help people they didn’t even know.”
                   
The attack has pushed security to the top of the agenda in campaigning for the U.K.’s Dec. 12 election.
                   
Johnson, a Conservative, has blamed legal changes made by a previous Labour government for the fact that Khan was freed from prison a year ago after serving half of a 16-year sentence for terrorist offenses, without parole officers assessing whether he still posed a risk.
                   
That rule was changed in 2012 by a Conservative-led government, and Johnson has vowed to end the early release of violent offenders altogether.
                   
Opposition parties blamed years of cuts to the prison and probation services by the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010. Khan was on probation, subject to restrictions on his movement and wearing an electronic tag when he launched his attack.
                   
“There are enormous questions to be learned from this terrible event that happened last week and that is, what happened in the prison with this particular individual, what assessment was made of his psychological condition before he was released and also what supervision and monitoring he was under after coming out?” said Corbyn.
                   
The family of Merritt also cautioned against knee-jerk responses. They said he “would not want this terrible, isolated incident to be used as a pretext by the government for introducing even more draconian sentences on prisoners, or for detaining people in prison for longer than necessary.”
                   
In the wake of the attack, authorities are urgently reviewing the release of more than 70 other former terrorist prisoners.
                   
As part of that work, a 34-year-old man was arrested Saturday in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts. Police said Monday he had been returned to prison for breaching his release conditions.

…

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of a “point of no return” in climate change as a result of inadequate efforts to stop it. The U.N. chief spoke in Madrid on Sunday ahead of a 10-day climate conference attended by 25,000 people from around the world. Spain has offered to host the event on short notice after Chile withdrew due to political turmoil there. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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A trade deal between the U.S. and China has stalled because of newly signed U.S. bipartisan legislation supporting pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, according to the news website Axios.

The news site quotes a source close to U.S. President Donald Trump’s negotiating team as saying the trade talks were “now stalled” because of the legislation, and time was needed to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “domestic politics to calm.”

China is also taking other steps to retaliate against what it sees as U.S. support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.  

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday it is slapping sanctions on U.S.-based non-governmental organizations that have acted “badly” during the recent protests in Hong Kong. NGOs affected by the sanctions include Human Rights Watch, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House.

China also announced Monday that it “has decided to suspend reviewing the applications for U.S. warships to go to Hong Kong for (rest and) recuperation as of today.”

A foreign spokeswoman said, “China urges the United States to correct its mistakes, stop any deeds and acts of interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

In another development, Reuters reports that hundreds of Hong Kong office workers came together during their lunch break Monday, the first in a week of lunchtime protests to show their support for pro-democracy politicians who were handed a resounding victory in district polls last week.

Protests erupted in Hong Kong in June over the local government’s plans to allow some criminal suspects to be extradited to the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong officials withdrew the bill in September, but the street protests have continued, with the demonstrators fearing Beijing is preparing to water down Hong Kong’s democracy and autonomy nearly 30 years before the former British colony’s “special status” expires.

…

A group of U.S.-based scientists is rushing to document indigenous sites along Puerto Rico’s coast dating back a couple of thousand years before rising sea levels linked to climate change destroy a large chunk of the island’s heritage that is still being discovered.

Scientists hope to use the 3D images they’ve taken so far to also help identify which historic sites are most vulnerable to hurricanes, erosion and other dangers before it’s too late to save the island’s patrimony.

“It’s literally being washed away,” said Falko Kuester, director of the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, which is involved in the project. “A big part of what we’re working on is to make the invisible visible and make sure it stays in our memory.”

Also involved in the project are UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Para la Naturaleza, a nonprofit environmental group based in Puerto Rico.

The first site scientists targeted was a large swath along the U.S. territory’s north coast that includes a ceremonial center used by the Taino Indians roughly 2,000 years ago, said Isabel Rivera Collazo, an environmental archaeologist at UCSD who is overseeing the project that began in August 2017.

Scientists discovered what appears to be a large settlement just east of the ceremonial site thanks to drones and technology including 3D images, she said. They were also able to determine the shape of the ceremonial site, she added.

Armed with that information, scientists used excavations to determine that one of six plazas previously discovered appears to have been used for ceremonial dances and the veneration of ancestors.

“The inside of the plaza was intensively trampled,” Rivera said.

The Tainos populated various Caribbean islands but were eventually wiped out after the arrival of Christopher Columbus and European settlers.

“Up to today, there is still a lot we don’t know about indigenous culture along our coasts,” Rivera said. “It’s not in our history books.”

“The entire coast is blanketed with archaeological sites,” she said. “We want to recover that information before it disappears.”

Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources has said the sea level around the island is rising by more than 3 millimeters – a little over a tenth of an inch – per year. But climate change has more immediately dramatic effects as well, destroying habitats, eroding coastlines and causing more powerful storm surges when hurricanes hit.

Some scientists say that warmer temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of storms. Puerto Rico is exposed to storms every year for six months during the Atlantic hurricane season, and the scientists noted that the storm surge from Hurricane Maria washed away part of the region they’re studying.

“It’s literally in the eye of the storm quite regularly,” Kuester said of the island.

Eric Lo, an engineer with the UCSD’s cultural heritage initiative, flew to Puerto Rico in August 2017 to launch the project a month before Maria hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane. Lo was surprised at what he saw upon his return to the U.S. territory months later.

“Pieces of land where I had stood and flown the drone didn’t exist anymore,” he said. “They were underwater.”

Scientists are now trying to determine the extent of coastal erosion in that region and the hurricane’s impact on the archaeological site they are studying.

Three-dimensional models based on drone images are being used to measure distances, areas, volumes and explore fine details: “You start asking these details that historically you couldn’t,” Kuester said.

The engineering initiative that he oversees has helped explore other historic sites elsewhere, including an underwater cave with prehistoric fossils and a baptistery in Florence, Italy.

…

New Orleans police say 11 people were wounded in a shooting early Sunday on the edge of the city’s famed French Quarter.

A police news release said two people were in critical condition. No arrests were announced by midday Sunday.

Police Supt. Shaun Ferguson told The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune that a person of interest has been detained, but it was not immediately clear whether the person had any connection to the shooting.

Police said 10 people were taken to two hospitals and another walked in. Further details haven’t been released.

The shooting happened about 3:20 a.m. on a busy commercial block of Canal Street that has streetcar tracks and is near many hotels.

Ferguson said police quickly responded to the scene as patrols were heightened for this weekend’s Bayou Classic, the annual Thanksgiving weekend rivalry football game between Grambling State and Southern University at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Kenneth Culbreth told The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune that he had gone into a CVS pharmacy in the early morning hours to make a quick purchase. Moments later, he walked out to a crime scene.
 “On my way out of the CVS, I heard pops,” Culbreth said. “It was so many, I couldn’t keep count.”

Culbreth spent the rest of the morning watching the scene, with law enforcement and several emergency vehicles moving in and out at a rapid pace.

…