Marko Kepi, an Albanian-American activist, is heading a fundraising campaign to aid victims of Wednesday’s earthquake.

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Albanian Defense Minister Olta Xhacka becomes emotional while reading names of victims of the strongest earthquake to hit Albania in more than three decades.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation backing protesters in Hong Kong despite angry objections from Beijing, with which he is seeking a deal to end a damaging trade war.

The new legislation, approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate and by all but one lawmaker in the House of Representatives last week, requires the State Department to certify, at least annually, that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy to justify favorable U.S. trading terms that have helped it maintain its position as a world financial center. It also threatens sanctions for human rights violations.

Congress passed a second bill — which Trump also signed — banning the export to the Hong Kong police of crowd-control munitions, such as teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns.

“I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong. They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump had been vague about whether he would sign or veto the legislation, while trying strike a deal with China on trade that he has made a top priority ahead of his 2020 re-election bid.

China has denounced the legislation as gross interference in its affairs and a violation of international law.

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The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday that it would scrap plans to carry out reviews of three Navy SEALs that could have led to their ouster from the elite force, after President Donald Trump’s extraordinary intervention in a related case. 

“I have determined that any failures in conduct, performance, judgment or professionalism exhibited by these officers be addressed through other administrative measures as appropriate,” acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said in a statement. 

The decision followed Trump’s order on Sunday that Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher keep his status as a Navy SEAL, even after he was convicted of battlefield misconduct. The review of the three other SEALs was connected to the Gallagher case. 

Critics say the actions undermine military justice and send a message that battlefield atrocities will be tolerated. Trump’s former Navy secretary, Richard Spencer, who was fired on Sunday over the case, has spoken out against the president on the issue. 

“The president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices,” Spencer wrote in a piece published Wednesday by The Washington Post.

Trump: I’m defending fighters

Trump has argued that the Navy mishandled Gallagher’s case and has said that he is defending America’s combat fighters from unfair and unfounded prosecution. 

The now-terminated reviews of the three remaining SEALs — Lieutenant Jacob Portier, Lieutenant Commander Robert Breisch and Lieutenant Thomas MacNeil — had received far less attention than the Gallagher case. 

A military jury in July convicted Gallagher of illegally posing for pictures with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter while deployed to Iraq in 2017, but acquitted him of murder in the detainee’s death. Gallagher also was cleared of charges of attempted murder in the wounding of two civilians, a schoolgirl and an elderly man, shot from a sniper’s perch. 

Portier, Breisch and MacNeil were under scrutiny in the Gallagher affair as his superiors. 

Modly said his decision to scrap the reviews should not be interpreted as a diminishment of the SEAL ethos, which he quoted. It says the elite fighters serve with honor “on and off the battlefield.” 

“The United States Navy, and the Naval Special Warfare Community specifically, have dangerous and important work to do,” he said in his statement. “In my judgment, neither deserves the continued distraction and negative attention that recent events have evoked.” 

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Colombians unhappy with President Ivan Duque’s response to nearly a week of boisterous protests over everything from job losses to shark hunting took to the streets again Wednesday in a continuing tide of unrest.

The daily protests jolting the South American country proclaim a wide array of complaints but echo one refrain: an opposition to a government that many believe only looks after the most privileged citizens.

“We feel defenseless to everything,” Lucy Rosales, 60, a pensioner in Bogota. “We don’t feel like we have a voice that represents us. It’s many things that they allowed to accumulate.”

Several thousand people blew whistles and waving their nation’s flag as they marched through the streets of the capital around mid-afternoon, while indigenous activists blocked part of a major highway in southwest Colombia.

The new demonstration came a day after Duque’s attempt to quell the discontent by holding talks with a protest steering group hit a snag: Members of the National Strike Committee refused to join broader talks the president has called with all social sectors, fearing their demands would be diluted.

“The government has not been able to learn from the Chilean and Ecuadorian experiences,” said Jorge Restrepo, an economics professor, referring to recent mass demonstrations in both of those countries. “It has made very many mistakes.”

The steering committee presented a 13-point list of demands Tuesday that asks Duque to withdraw or refrain from tax, labor and pension law changes that are either before the legislature or rumored to be in development. The labor and student leaders also want Duque to review free-trade agreements, eliminate a police unit accused in the death of an 18-year-old student protester and fully implement the nation’s historic peace accord with leftist rebels.

Organizers dismissed Duque’s calls to join his “National Conversation” that would run through March — an initiative that appears to take a page from French President Emmanuel Macron, who opened a “Great National Debate” to involve citizens in drafting reforms after months of angry protests in that country.

“It’s a monologue between the government and its allies,” said Diogenes Orjuela, president of the Central Workers Union, one of the main forces behind the National Strike Committee.

It remains unclear to what extent the Strike Committee represents protesters in what has become a largely citizen-driven outpouring of discontent. An invitation to gather in a park or bang pots and pans quickly goes viral on WhatsApp and soon hundreds fill neighborhoods with the angry sound of clanging metal and chants like “Get out Duque!”

“We’re tired,” Ana Maria Moya, a student, said. “We’re saying, ‘No more.’”

Though the National Strike Committee drew an estimated 250,000 people to the streets last Thursday, far fewer protesters were heeding their call for a new strike on Wednesday. Protesters filled the storied Plaza Bolivar but life continued as normal in much of the rest of the capital.

Various leaders have tried to capitalize on the momentum, but none yet has emerged as the unequivocal voice of the protesters.

“There is a contest over the ownership of the protesters,” Restrepo said. “I see students get out in the streets because they need more social mobility, higher levels of income, more opportunities at least in employment. But then the ones that claim they represent those students in the streets are the unions.”

Colombia is widely considered in need of labor and pension reform. Few retirees currently have access to pensions, with the lowest-income earners the least likely to get one. Labor laws make it difficult to hire new employees. Even as the nation’s economy grows at a healthy 3.3%, unemployment has risen to nearly 11%.

“I would characterize the demands of the National Strike Committee as highly conservative, regressive and counter-reformist demands,” Restrepo said.

Orjuela, a former schoolteacher who participated in Colombia’s last major strike, in 1977, said protest organizers would be willing to support a pension reform as long as it involves a state and not a private-run system.

Even as they parse out the details, the committee’s general message decrying Duque has resonated widely, tapping into the myriad frustrations of Colombians.

For some it is big-picture issues like not fully implementing peace accords, endemic corruption and persistent economic inequality. For others it is small indignities, like relatively pricey public transportation that is also slow and overcrowded.

One unexpected sight in the protests has been that of giant plastic sharks hoisted by at least one protester denouncing a government decision allowing a certain amount of shark fishing.

“It’s like all the groups are feeding off each other,” said Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, a human rights advocate with the Washington Office on Latin America.

Few expected that such a mixed bag of motivations could generate a prolonged protest and it remained unclear how long it might drag on. Thus far, four people have died, hundreds have been injured and tens of millions of dollars have been lost from businesses shuttering during demonstrations.The patience of some Colombians is beginning to wear thin.

Julio Contreras, a deliveryman who was tear gassed while trying to get 20 kilos (44 pounds) of chicken to restaurants, said he is ready for the protests to be done.

“They’re not letting us work,” he said. “The students should be in the universities and not affecting us.”

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U.S. prosecutors have arrested a Hawaii man they accuse of sending hundreds of unwanted service providers and others to a Utah home, including plumbers and prostitutes.

Loren Okamura was arrested Friday in Hawaii following his indictment last month on charges of cyberstalking, interstate threats and transporting people for prostitution, court documents show.

Okamura, 44, targeted a father and her adult daughter, sending the woman threatening messages and posting her picture and address online, authorities said. One posting said the homeowner wanted drugs and prostitutes at the house in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in a Salt Lake City suburb.

The Gilmore family was “tormented” during the year-plus that the “extreme cyberstalking” endured, U.S. Attorney John Huber said Tuesday at a news conference.

Investigators had been focused on Okamura as the suspect since January when the Gilmores were granted a protective injunction in Utah. It took investigators time to gather enough evidence to charge Okamura because of his use of encryption and apps that made him appear anonymous, Huber said.

“For all the good that technology offers us in our modern lifestyles, there is also a darker, seedier side to it,” Huber said. “That’s what you have here.”

Huber declined to disclose the relationship between the victim and Okamura, but said it was not random. He noted that most stalkers had a previous intimate relationship with their victims and said, “those dynamics are present in this case.”

A sealed indictment was issued on Oct. 2, but Okamura wasn’t arrested until Friday as police struggled to find him because he doesn’t have a permanent address or job and is “savvy” with technology he used to mask his phone’s location.

A team of Utah officers flew to Honolulu and teamed with FBI agents on a 15-hour search Friday for Okamura that ended when they arrested him without incident at a supermarket, said Sgt. Jeff Plank of the Utah Department of Public Safety, who was assigned to the FBI’s cybercrime task force.

Okamura’s federal public defender, Sharron Rancourt, didn’t immediately return a phone message and emails seeking comment.

Okamura is scheduled to be in court in Hawaii on Wednesday for a detention hearing.

Prosecutors say Okamura’s online stalking began sometime in 2018 and led as many as 500 unwanted people to go to the house, according to Gilmore. Okamura sent food deliveries, repair services, tow trucks, locksmiths, plumbers and prostitutes to “harass and intimidate” the family, costing the service providers thousands of dollars in lost business, according to the charging documents.

Utah police went to the North Salt Lake house more than 80 times over a four-month period from November 2018 to February 2019. The activities affected the entire neighborhood, prosecutors say.

Okamura sent the woman extensive and repeated texts and voicemails.

In May, the woman received a threatening email telling her she should “sleep with one eye open and keep looking over her shoulder.” The email told her, “You should just kill yourself and do your family a favor,” charging documents show.

Prosecutors say they have records from Okamura’s cellphone and Apple ID to support the charges. His arrest was first reported by Hawaii News Now.

Walt Gilmore didn’t immediately return messages Tuesday. 

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Pennsylvania enacted legislation Tuesday to give future victims of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges.

Gov. Tom Wolf signed new laws he said will help repair “faults in our justice system that prevent frightened, abused children from seeking justice when they grow into courageous adults.”

The legislative package was based on recommendations in last year’s landmark grand jury report about the cover-up of hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses over much of the 20th century.

However, Republicans with majority control of the state Senate blocked the two-year window, which was a top priority of victim advocates, victims and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

They all want the state to temporarily lift time limits that currently bar now-adult victims of child sexual abuse from suing their perpetrators and institutions that may have helped hide it.

About two dozen states have changed their laws on statutes of limitations this year, according to Child USA, a Philadelphia-based think tank that advocates for child protection.

Wolf, a Democrat, signed bills to invalidate secrecy agreements that keep child sexual abuse victims from talking to investigators, and to increase and clarify penalties for people who are required to report suspected child abuse but fail to do so.

Wolf signed the bills at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, the home district of state Democratic Rep. Mark Rozzi, a champion of the legislation and who has spoken publicly about being raped as a 13-year-old boy by a Roman Catholic priest.

“We know our work is not done today, it’s going to continue,” Rozzi said.

The grand jury report prompted a lengthy battle in the Legislature that pitted victims and their advocates who sought the two-year window to file claims over past abuse against top Senate Republicans, who argued it would be unconstitutional and instead offered the slower alternative of amending the state constitution.

The multi-year amendment process has begun, but the bill must again pass both the House and Senate in the 2021-22 legislative session before voters will decide its fate.

Shapiro, a Democrat, said the eliminated time limits means prosecutors could file charges against only two priests after the report was issued. Shapiro said that if the new legislation had applied, some 100 priests could have been charged.

Wolf and Shapiro urged lawmakers to take up the two-year window for lawsuits rather than wait for the constitutional amendment process to play out.

“By waiting, we are robbing the very victims who made this day possible, we are robbing them of the only closure before them,” Shapiro said. “Think about the many Pennsylvanians who have a story to tell about sexual abuse. Why should anyone who’s been a victim of sexual abuse or its cover-up be made to suffer while others get three or four more years of a free pass?”

The main bill in the legislative package ends any statute of limitations, in future cases, for criminal prosecution of major child sexual abuse crimes. Current law limits it to the victim’s 50th birthday.

Victims would have until they turn 55 to sue, compared to age 30 in current law. Young adults ages 18-23 would have until age 30 to sue, where existing law gives them just two years.

Police could file criminal charges up to 20 years after the crime when young adults 18-23 years old are the victims, as opposed to 12 years after the crime for victims over 17 in current law.

Other state have previously amended their laws.

In New Jersey, lawmakers expanded the civil statute of limitations from two years to seven years. The bill opened a two-year window, which starts on Dec. 1, to victims who were previously barred by the statute of limitations. It also allows victims to seek damages from institutions.

New York raised the victim’s age for which prosecutors can seek a felony indictment from 23 to 28. The law also gave anyone a year starting in August to file child sex abuse lawsuits against individuals and institutions, and civil lawsuits going forward can be filed until the victim is 55, up from 23.

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Donald Trump on Tuesday followed a White House Thanksgiving tradition by pardoning “Butter,” the turkey, and his alternate, “Bread.” The president also honored his own tradition of cracking jokes while granting clemency to the poultry. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

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Rescuers were pulling survivors and dead bodies from piles of rubble in Albania on Tuesday after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s coastal area. The U.S. Geological survey placed the quake’s epicenter about 30 kilometers north of the capital Tirana and at a depth of about 20 kilometers. The earthquake was followed by about 100 aftershocks, including three with preliminary magnitudes of about 5. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the death toll is rising.

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WHITE HOUSE — President Donald Trump on Tuesday honored another White House tradition where he granted a pardon to “Butter,” the turkey, and his alternate, “Bread,” in the Rose Garden, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.  

Honoring his own tradition of cracking jokes while granting clemency to poultry, Trump said, “I expect this pardon will be a very popular one with the media. After all, turkeys are closely related to vultures.”

The turkeys have been “raised to remain calm under any condition, which will be very important because they’ve already received subpoenas to appear in Adam Schiff’s basement on Thursday,” Trump said, referring to impeachment hearings.

“Bread and Butter, I should note that unlike previous witnesses, you and I have actually met,” the president said in another jab to Democrats and their impeachment inquiry.

The president made a similar subpoena joke during last year’s turkey pardon, saying, “Even though Peas and Carrots have received a presidential pardon, I have warned them that House Democrats are likely to issue them both subpoenas.”

Trump has made political jokes during all of his Thanksgiving turkey pardons since coming to office. In his first turkey pardon in 2017, Trump joked that he has been “very active in overturning” executive actions taken by his predecessor Barack Obama, but would not subject the birds to it.

“I have been informed by the White House counsel’s office that Tater and Tot’s pardons cannot, under any circumstances, be revoked,” Trump said. “So, Tater and Tot, you can rest easy.”

Matthew Costello, assistant director of the David M. Rubinstein National Center for White House History, said that in these events presidents get to lighten up and show “who they are as a person.”

Costello recalled how President Obama used to make what his daughters call “bad dad jokes” during these ceremonies, while Trump is more focused on how he’s covered in the press. “I think he sees it as an opportunity then to sort of tease and make fun of some of those things,” added Costello.

As far as Bread and Butter are concerned, both birds got to stay at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., prior to the pardoning, and will spend the rest of their lives at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Turkey tradition

Turkeys are a staple main dish for the American Thanksgiving holiday, which falls on the last Thursday of November. According to the White House Historical Association, pardoning them became a presidential tradition since George H. W. Bush in 1989 but the custom has earlier roots.

“A White House reporter in 1865 published a report about President Lincoln pardoning a turkey that he grew fond of,” said Costello. However, that turkey was headed to become Christmas dinner, not Thanksgiving.

The first turkey pardon on record was in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy received a turkey as a gift for Thanksgiving dinner but decided to let it live on Nov. 19. Three days later, the president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan deflected questions about the Iran-Contra scandal and whether he would pardon the actors involved, Oliver North and John Poindexter.

“If they’d given me a different answer on Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him,” Reagan said, referring to the bird.

Before its pardoning, turkeys have been sent as gifts to American presidents from as early as the 1870s, said Costello. In the early 1920s, there had been such a huge poultry influx that President Calvin Coolidge discouraged Americans from sending them. He received not only turkeys for dinner, but quail, ducks, geese, rabbits, deer, even a raccoon, which became a Coolidge family pet named Rebecca.

In recent years, the White House has turned the pardon to be a social media event and encouraged people to participate, including voting on the name via the online poll.

After pardoning the turkeys, Trump and first lady Melania Trump departed the White House to spend Thanksgiving holidays at his Florida golf resort, Mar-a-Lago.
 

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Moroccan rapper Gnawi knew the police would come when he and two friends released an unusually outspoken video exposing their country’s problems with migration and drugs and expressing frustration with the king.

And sure enough, they did.

Gnawi, a former military serviceman whose real name is Mohamed Mounir, was handed a one-year prison sentence Monday by a judge for insulting the police in a case that his supporters say is a backlash against growing public anger at authorities and over a lack of economic opportunity.
      
Moroccan authorities have said Gnawi’s arrest was prompted by an earlier video in which he insulted the police, a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

The video he released with rappers Lz3er and Weld L’Griya featured the song “3acha cha3b” (“Long Live the People”). Released Oct. 29, it immediately went viral, and now has more than 15.5 million hits on YouTube.

The five-minute video rages against the powers-that-be and criticizes the country’s widening economic gap, a message aimed at the country’s disillusioned younger generation.

One passage of the song reflects on the Hirak protest movement in Morocco’s impoverished Rif mountain region. Another section profiles a mother whose sons died attempting to migrate to Europe, while another paints a picture of a young generation ruined by hashish and hard drugs.
 

Most shockingly to many Moroccans, the song also directly criticizes Morocco’s king and his adviser, a criminal offense.

“We didn’t do this project to point fingers or create controversy,” Lz3er told The Associated Press. “We voiced what the majority of Moroccans feel but fear to say … and it naturally upset those who do not want change.”

Morocco, a kingdom long known for its stability in the Arab world, adopted constitutional reforms in response to the 2011 Arab Spring protests against corruption and abuse of power and in favor of expanding free speech. But the country is still struggling with poverty, corruption and unemployment. Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the constitution, but with limits.

The 31-year-old Lz3er, whose real name is Yahya Semlali, said he was followed after the song’s release and that “All Morocco knows that Gnawi is arrested because of the ‘3acha cha3b’ song.”

Morocco’s political rap is grounded in poetry and has a rhythm and meter distinct from American rap. The language’s guttural syllables demand fury in delivery, and rap is a welcome outlet for political passions.

“All of us are in the ‘see and be quiet’ mode. But I do this because I don’t want to see and be quiet. That’s why people respond to my music,” Lz3er said in an interview at his house in Fes. The city is prized by tourists for its beauty and royal sites; locals know it as Morocco’s capital of crime.

Lz3er and Weld L’Griya grew up in a world of crime. Both school dropouts, they got their education on the streets from those who turned to prostitution for lack of other opportunity and from young men who slept on the street in cardboard boxes and turned to drugs as an escape.

“We are stuck in a caste system and our rap mirrors exactly that,” Lz3er said.

But for government spokesman Hassan Abyaba, the rap song doesn’t reflect Morocco’s reality.

 “Songs of all kinds must respect the citizens, the constancy of the nation and the principles and values that are part of the Moroccans’ education,” he told a news conference last week.

The Minister of Human Rights, Mustapha Ramid, dubbed the song “provocative and offensive.”

A small group of supporters gathered in front of Sale court to demand Gnawi’s release.

 “The state is always oppressing us,” said protester Youssef Montaser. “The police don’t guarantee our rights, they wrong us.”

Politically engaged rappers are often arrested for “offenses that have nothing to do with music or their artistic production,” said linguistics expert Zineb Harrouchi.

Opposition rapper Mouad Belrhouate, better known as El 7aqed or “the resentful one,” has been arrested three times for his music critical of Morocco’s social ills and ruling elite.

A political refugee in Belgium since 2015, he told the AP: “Though I love my country very much, it suffocated me. I was always followed, watched. I felt in prison outside of prison, and yet I dream of the day I return to my neighborhood, my little bunker in my neighborhood in Casablanca.”

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Pope Francis on Tuesday closed his visit to Japan by telling students at a Catholic university of the need to work toward a “hope-filled future” that is more inclusive by addressing the disconnects in society.

In his address at Sophia University, the pope said he sensed in Japan a desire to create a more humane, compassionate and merciful society.

“The university, focused on its mission, should always be open to creating an ‘archipelago’ capable of connecting realities that might be considered culturally and socially separate,” Pope Francis said.  “The marginalized would be creatively incorporated into the life and curriculum of the university in an effort to bring about an educational approach aimed at reducing distances and disconnects.”

The pope also cited a “love for nature” as a typical aspect of Asian cultures and expressed a need to protect the planet.

Earlier parts of his Japan visit focused on an anti-nuclear message.

The 82-year-old Argentine landed in Tokyo Saturday before traveling to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sites where more than 100,000 people were killed instantly by U.S. bombs dropped at the end of World War II in 1945.

In Nagasaki Sunday, Pope Francis called on political leaders to renounce nuclear weapons and abandon the arms race.

“I ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security,” he said.

The pope has said it has long been a dream of his to visit Japan, and that he had longed to be sent there as a missionary more than 50 years ago. Out of the country’s 126 million residents, an estimated 440,000 are Catholic.

Before traveling to Japan, the pope visited Thailand to preach a message of religious tolerance and peace.

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