Once a week, a horse track in Harare invites children born with cerebral palsy, a neuromuscular disorder, to visit. But the children don’t simply watch the horses.     

Trish Lillie of the Healing with Horses Therapeutic Centre says her organization is helping kids who cannot afford the recommended speech and physical therapies. 

“I started two years ago,” Lillie said. “I decided to leave the job I was in. I have always loved horses and I have a passion for horses, so I wanted to take my passion and use it to help people.  

“So that’s basically how we started, and the children that come to me are mostly from disadvantaged homes. … So we do this service for free, and we have seen a huge benefit for them.” 

The charity is supported by donations from companies and individuals with a mission to help heal children and communities. 

Stanley Dzingai, 37, brings his 4-year-old child for regular sessions. 
 
“At first my son used to refuse horse therapy, but he is changed and you can see the progress,” Dzingai said. “He couldn’t stand, but now he is standing; he couldn’t sit, and now he can sit. We started recently, but we can see an improvement, a huge one,” in one month’s time. 

The U.N. Children’s Fund says the prevalence rate of cerebral palsy worldwide ranges from about 1 to 4 in every 1,000 live births. 
 
Christine Peta, a former disabilities professor at the University of Cape Town who now works with UNICEF Zimbabwe, said that “when some women fall pregnant, they do not go for medical checks until the day they go into labor. So if there are problems that can be prevented or infections that can be treated that can prevent cerebral palsy, those problems remain unattended, resulting in the child being born with cerebral palsy. So it is very critical to be medically checked during pregnancy.” 

But that might be only an ideal in countries like Zimbabwe, where the health sector has essentially ceased to function. 
 
In that case, Peta recommends speech, occupational and physical therapies for children born with cerebral palsy.  

She said this might be difficult to obtain in situations where money is lacking. In such instances, she said, horse riding can be the cheapest kind of therapy. 

“When a child has cerebral palsy, the child faces a number of problems, which include balance, their limbs can be stiff or they are unable to control movement,” Peta said. “Horse riding can stabilize or improve the balance of the body or the weakened muscles, the weak bones. So it is one of the things that I believe are organic and brilliant in addressing the issue of cerebral palsy.” 

Almost as important, the children, after getting acclimated, take to the therapy with glee. What child, after all, doesn’t want to ride a pony? 

…

Two additional advisers will testify Thursday as the U.S. House of Representatives holds a marathon week of public hearings on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Former White House adviser Fiona Hill and career foreign service officer David Holmes are to testify Thursday.

On Tuesday Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former NSC official Tim Morrison testified.

On Wednesday, the most high-profile witness to appear, U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, testified for nearly seven hours. He was followed by career Pentagon official Laura Cooper and Undersecretary of State David Hale Wednesday afternoon.

All nine have testified previously in closed-door hearings about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served as a board member of a Ukraine natural gas company, and probe a discredited conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 president election. Three of the nine listened in on the July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Ukraine’s president.

Democrats hope the hearings will sway public opinion in favor of impeachment. Republicans have used them to discredit the impeachment proceedings and poke holes in the witnesses’ testimony.

Here is what you need to know about the witnesses Thursday and their role in the Ukraine affair.

Fiona Hill

A British-born American foreign affairs expert, Fiona Hill served as the National Security Council’s top Russia expert until June. The first former White House official to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, Hill told investigators in October that Marie Yovanovitch’s removal as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was the “result of the campaign that Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani had set in motion” and that she had personally been the target of similar smear campaigns. Hill also testified about a July 10 White House meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian officials at which Sondland announced that “we have an agreement with the chief of staff for a meeting (between Trump and Zelenskiy) if these investigations in the energy sector start.”

David Holmes

A career foreign service officer, Holmes has been the political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv since August 2017. In that capacity, he serves as the senior political adviser to the ambassador and has attended many meetings with Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials. Holmes is the diplomat who overheard a phone conversation between Sondland and Trump the day after Trump pressed Zelenskiy to carry out corruption investigations. During the call, Holmes testified last week, Trump asked Sondland, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” According to Holmes’ testimony, he heard Sondland reply that “he’s gonna do it” and that Zelenskiy would do “anything you ask him to.” The account establishes a direct link between Trump and the Ukraine pressure campaign.

…

The fifth Democratic presidential candidate debates took place Wednesday in Atlanta. The candidates answered questions on a range of issues, including the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, foreign policy and health care.

Here are some comments from each candidate:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, in answering a question about recent “Lock him up!” chants directed at Trump, said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we mock that, that we that we model ourselves after Trump and say, lock him up.’ … It’s about civility. We have to restore the soul of this country. That’s not who we are. That’s not who we have been. That’s not who we should be.”

Senator Cory Booker, in arguing against a “wealth tax” being pitched by Senator Elizabeth Warren, said, “I don’t agree with the wealth tax the way Elizabeth Warren puts it,” saying the Democratic Party should discuss how to “give people opportunities to create wealth, to grow businesses. … That’s what our party has to be about as well.”

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in talking about climate change, said, “American farming should be one of the key pillars of how we combat climate change. I believe that the quest for the carbon-negative farm could be as big a symbol of dealing with climate change as the electric car in this country. And it’s an important part of how we make sure that we get a message out around dealing with climate change that recruits everybody to be part of the solution, including conservative communities where a lot of people have been made to feel that admitting climate science would mean acknowledging they’re part of the problem.”

How (Historically) Presidential Are the Democratic Candidates?

Here’s how the candidates’ experiences stack up against each other as well as U.S. presidents throughout history.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, in criticizing the Democratic Party, said, “It is a party that has been and continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment in Washington, represented by Hillary Clinton and others’ foreign policy, by the military industrial complex and other greedy corporate interests. I’m running for president to be the Democratic nominee that rebuilds our Democratic party, takes it out of their hands and truly puts it in the hands of the people of this country.”

Senator Kamala Harris, in answering whether she would make concessions to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said, “In all due deference to the fact this is a presidential debate, Donald Trump got punk’d. He has conducted foreign policy since day one borne out of a very fragile ego.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar, in addressing Saudi Arabia and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said, “When the president did not stand up the way he should to that killing and that dismemberment of a journalist with an American newspaper, that sent a signal to dictators … and that’s wrong.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, says he’s “pro-Israel “but that he is concerned about conditions for the Palestinians. “I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinian people as well with respect and dignity that they deserve,” he said. “What is going on in Gaza right now where youth employment is 70 or 80% is unsustainable.”

Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and environmentalist, discussed his plan to implement “structural reforms” to put power back in the hands of the American people through election reform and break the corporate stranglehold over government. “It’s time to push power back to the American people and take power away from the corporations who bought our government,” he said. “And I’m talking about structural reform in Washington, D.C. — term limits. You’re going to have to have new and different people in charge. I’m the only person on this stage who will talk about term limits.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, in discussing her proposed “wealth tax,” a tax on the country’s wealthiest people to pay for, among other things, her health care plan, said, “Doing a wealth tax is not about punishing anyone. It’s about saying, You built something great in this country? Good for you’ … All of us helped pay for it.”

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, in answering a question about child care and paid family leave, said, “There are only two countries in the world that don’t have paid family leave for new moms: the United States of America and Papua New Guinea. That is the entire list and we need to get off this list as soon as possible.”

…

Susan Choi’s novel “Trust Exercise,” in which a high school romance is spun out into a web of memories and perspectives, has won the National Book Award for fiction.

Sarah M. Broom’s family memoir “The Yellow House” won in nonfiction and Martin W. Sandler’s “1919 The Year That Changed America” for young people’s literature. The winner for best translated book was Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet. In poetry, the winner was Arthur Sze’s “Sight Lines.”

The 70th annual National Book Awards were presented Wednesday night at a dinner benefit gala in downtown Manhattan, with winners each receiving $10,000. Finalists were chosen by panels of authors, critics, booksellers and others in the literary community. Publishers submitted more than 1,700 books for consideration.

Choi expressed gratitude not just for the award, but for the writing life, saying that writing and teaching showed her that the word was “its own reward.” Her other books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist “American Woman” and the PEN/Faulkner finalist “A Person of Interest.”

Other speakers offered emotional tributes to loved ones and cited the written word as a source of healing, action and community in an unsettling world. Kraszahorkai praised his translator, Muzlet, and marveled how the change from one language to another could make one “feel at home in the United States of America.”

Broom singled out her mother for awe and gratitude, remembering how she raised 12 children and absorbed words everywhere from the grocery store to package labels, “always wolfing down words. Insatiable.”

The prolific Sandler is an Emmy-winning television writer who has written dozens of books, and vows to write 60 more. Sze called poetry an “essential language,” helping us all to “slow down, see clearly, feel deeply” and understand what “truly matters.”

Honorary awards were given to Oren Teicher, longtime head of the American Booksellers Association, and Edmund White, the pioneering gay writer. Each celebrated the literary life in their own fashion.

Teicher, introduced warmly by author-bookseller Ann Patchett, spoke of his ever-renewing joy in helping bookstores commit a sacred, timeless “act of magic”: placing the “right book in a reader’s hands.” Teicher will soon step down after a decade as CEO of the independent sellers trade group and quoted W.B. Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends; and say my glory was I had such friends.”

White was introduced, mischievously, by the filmmaker-author John Waters, who celebrated his longtime friend with dirty jokes, entendres that mean one thing only and high praise for a man who “pissed off” both Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag.

White’s medal is for “Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,” but he was here to dish, joking that a writer’s typical 8-hour “work” day was maybe a half hour of actual writing and otherwise a well-met schedule of gossip, “too many emails,” cooking, pornography and drinking.

“So many writers are alcoholic because they can get away with it,” he said.

…

Wednesday was the most explosive day yet in the House impeachment hearings and perhaps a crucial moment for the Trump White House when U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testified that there was a quid pro quo between President Donald Trump and Ukraine.

Trump has been denying allegations that he held up nearly $400 million in badly needed military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv promised to investigate Joe Biden, a possible rival of Trump’s in the 2020 presidential election, for alleged corruption.

In his opening statement, Sondland said impeachment investigators “have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously … the answer is yes.”

According to the ambassador, “it was no secret” and a number of senior Trump administration officials were “in the loop,” including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and former national security adviser John Bolton.

Sondland talked about long and complicated behind-the-scenes machinations that started in April, with the election of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and September, when the aid to Ukraine was finally released after a 55-day delay.

Sondland said he joined Energy Secretary Rick Perry and special envoy Kurt Volker in following Trump’s “orders” to work with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election to help Democrats.

“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said. “Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine.”

WATCH: Sondland to US Lawmakers: Trump Conditioned Aid to Ukraine on Investigations

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Sondland said Giuliani was acting at Trump’s behest when the lawyer told Ukrainian officials that the president wanted Zelenskiy to publicly commit to investigating the Bidens and the Democrats.

Sondland said efforts to push for the investigations were a quid pro quo in arranging a White House meeting for Zelenskiy.

Sondland said that while Trump never told him directly that military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on the investigations, he later concluded that had to be the reason because Sondland said there was no other credible reason Ukraine was not getting the money it had been promised.

WATCH AMBASSADOR SONDLAND HEARING ON-DEMAND

Aid released after whistleblower complaint

Republicans on the impeachment inquiry have argued there could not have possibly been a quid pro quo with Ukraine because the military aid was eventually released and there were no investigations of Biden and the Democrats. They also say Ukraine was unaware that the money was being held up.

But in later testimony Wednesday, Pentagon official Laura Cooper said Ukrainian officials began asking questions about the aid in July. 

“It’s the recollections of my staff that they likely knew,” she said.

Trump released the aid to Ukraine on September 11 after reports emerged that an intelligence community whistleblower told the inspector general he was concerned about a July phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden. That whistleblower complaint is what led to the impeachment probe.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said that Sondland’s testimony “made clear” that in his calls with Trump, the president “clearly stated that he ‘wanted nothing’ from Ukraine, and repeated ‘no quid pro quo’ over and over again. The U.S. aid to Ukraine flowed, no investigation was launched, and President Trump has met and spoken with President Zelenskiy. Democrats keep chasing ghosts.”

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Ukraine got the money and there were no investigations only because Trump got caught.

No evidence of Biden wrongdoing

Trump has alleged that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless it fired a prosecutor looking into corruption in Burisma, a gas company where Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has ever surfaced. Allegations that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help Democrats are based on a debunked conspiracy theory that likely originated in Russia.

Two more witnesses are set to testify in the impeachment inquiry Thursday, including David Holmes, an aide to the U.S. ambassador, who says he overheard Trump talk about investigations in a telephone call the president had with Sondland.

July call central to inquiry

Trump’s July 25 White House call with Zelenskiy, in which the U.S. leader asked Zelenskiy to “do us a favor,” to undertake the politically tinged investigations, is at the center of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump.

It is against U.S. campaign finance law to solicit foreign government help in a U.S. election, but it will be up to lawmakers to decide whether Trump’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard in the U.S. Constitution sets for impeachment and removal of a president from office. Trump could be impeached by the full Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in the coming weeks, which would be similar to an indictment in a criminal trial. He then would face a trial in the Republican-majority Senate, where his conviction remains unlikely.

Sondland confirmed the essence of a cellphone conversation he had with Trump on July 26, the day after Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy, as he sat at a Kyiv restaurant with other State Department officials.

Late last week, David Holmes, an aide to William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, told impeachment investigations in private testimony that he overheard the Trump-Sondland call because Trump’s voice was loud and Sondland held the phone away from his ear.

Holmes said Sondland in the call assured Trump that Zelenskiy “loves your ass,” which Sondland said “sounds like something I would say.”

“So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Holmes quoted Trump as asking. Sondland, according to Holmes, replied, “He’s gonna do it,” while adding that Zelenskiy will do “anything you ask him to.”

Holmes said he later asked Sondland if Trump cared about Ukraine, with the envoy replying that Trump did not “give a s**t about Ukraine.” Sondland said he did not recall this remark but did not rebut Holmes’ account.

“I asked why not,” Holmes recalled, “and Ambassador Sondland stated that the president only cares about big stuff. I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the Biden investigation.”‘

Disdain from Trump

Before Sondland revised his testimony last month to say there had been a quid pro quo — the military aid for the Biden investigation — Trump had called Sondland a “great American.” But after Sondland changed his testimony, Trump said, “I hardly know the gentleman.”

Trump has repeatedly described the July 25 call with Zelenskiy as “perfect” and denied any wrongdoing. Trump has often assailed the impeachment inquiry but did not immediately comment on Twitter about Sondland’s testimony.

…

Layleen Cubilette-Polanco had experienced some rough patches in her 27 years but had tried to change course, seeking to switch out of previous jobs as a go-go dancer and sex worker for employment in places like McDonald’s and Walgreens, her sister said.

She never completed that journey. Cubilette-Polanco died in June of complications from epilepsy in New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail where she spent her final two months, unable to make $500 bail.

On Wednesday, transgender advocates across the United States commemorated people like Cubilette-Polanco for the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Vigils such as one in New York that culminated in front of the Stonewall Inn LGBTQ landmark drew attention to at least 22 transgender people, almost all of them black women, who have been killed so far in 2019. A similar number have been killed in each of the past seven years, as tracked by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the United States.

Globally, at least 311 were killed in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, the second-highest total on record, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project of the Berlin-based group Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide.

Of those 130 were killed in Brazil and 63 in Mexico, the project said.

The U.S. campaign made special note of Cubilette-Polanco.

Though she was not a homicide victim, her story illustrates the insecurity of trans women of color, who are more likely to be unemployed and lack access to healthcare.

After a youth spent helping others, whether rescuing stray animals or bringing home runaway kids needing a place to stay, she decided to start helping herself, sister Melania Brown said.

“The last couple of months of her life, she wanted the change. She wanted to get a real job. She wanted to fulfill herself in society, and society let her down,” said Brown, who believed that discrimination never gave the Dominican-born U.S. citizen a fair chance in the job market.

Cubilette-Polanco was arrested in April on charges of misdemeanor assault and theft over an altercation with a taxi driver. Bail was set at $500 because of a 2017 prostitution arrest, local media reported, citing arrest records.

She lived with epilepsy and schizophrenia, according to a lawsuit her family filed against New York City’s Department of Correction.

The Human Rights Campaign has recorded at least 157 homicides of transgender people since 2013, nearly all of them women of color.

More than 100 demonstrators gathered in New York on Wednesday night to remember those slain, meeting at the Christopher Street pier, where transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson died in 1992, and marching to the Stonewall, site of the 1969 uprising considering the birth of the modern queer rights movement.

“We need to invest more in our trans community. Don’t just send me roses when I’m gone,” said Kiara St. James, executive director of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group.

The names of victims were read, and people dressed in white, their faces veiled, held up portraits of the dead.

Another speaker, who goes only by the name Synthia, said she had been the victim of a hateful act of aggression in which a man pulled a gun on her.

“I survived that day knowing my name could have been on the list I just read,” she said. “So for me, Transgender Day Remembrance is about living survivors that walk these streets daily just trying to survive.”

…

U.S. Democrats hold their fifth presidential debate Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia.  Ten Democratic contenders will debate each other in a presidential race that of late has been largely overshadowed by the impeachment drama in Washington involving President Donald Trump.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the Democratic race from Washington.

…

From 2008 on, Vietnam was mostly protected from the global financial crisis, not because its banks were stronger than the U.S. banks that created the crisis, but because it was less integrated into global trade back then. More than a decade later, Vietnam does far more trade with foreign countries today, making its banks far more susceptible to global trends.  The government has taken steps to strengthen domestic banks.

In particular Vietnam is transforming banks to require that, when doing credit risk analyses, they take into account environmental, social, and governance risks, known as ESG. The State Bank of Vietnam has set a goal that by 2025, each bank will have created its own department dedicated solely to ESG analysis, and it will incorporate ESG factors into its overall risk analyses.

The central bank says it is making progress, noting that 17 banks in Vietnam have set up these mandatory departments to analyze the environmental and social impact of their lending, and that 25 banks have conducted such analyses so far, based on a survey in early 2019. 

“Vietnamese banks have shown their readiness in pursuing a sustainable finance agenda, which is essential for capturing new business opportunities,” Nguyen Quoc Hung, director of the department of credit policies for economic sectors at the State Bank of Vietnam, said. 

The push for banks and other businesses to consider their impact on the environment has given birth to buzz words like “green finance” and “green bonds” — but what do they actually mean? An important example would be for a bank to provide a loan to a small business that produces wind turbines. The development of wind power would be considered an environmental benefit in the bank’s credit risk analysis, in addition to the social benefit of supporting a small business rather than just working with major corporations.

The example matters particularly to Vietnam because it considers green finance one strategy in its fight to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and it considers itself one of the countries most susceptible to the threat of a changing climate. 

The government is moving to strengthen domestic banks as part of its membership in the Sustainable Banking Network, a network of 38 developing countries pushing ESG factors and supported by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
A benefit of the network is for countries to share best practices, according to Imansyah, who is a co-chair of an SBN working group and who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“Sharing lessons and knowledge among members has been an important catalyst to drive finance reforms,” Imansyah said.

His country, along with China, is leading the pack of 38 countries, having already implemented many of its planned ESG policies, such as government incentives for environmentally friendly investments. 

However Vietnam is catching up. For instance an October IFC report noted, “Vietnam is one of the few SBN members to require CIs [credit institutions] to report the quantities and values of their green loans.”

Besides the environment, Vietnamese officials are concerned about ensuring social and governance standards at its banks, given the banks’ history of complex cross-ownership and corporate board arrangements that create possible conflicts of interest and that the government aims to clean up. It has also been cleaning up the burden of bad debt, or bank loans that have gone unpaid for a certain period of time, which could threaten the stability of the banking sector.

Social impact is harder to measure at Vietnamese banks. They might look to their U.S. counterparts, which did not fully analyze the social risks of giving out too many subprime mortgages, to be packaged into financial products for investors before 2008. The defaults on those mortgages, leading up to the global financial crisis, are the kind of social impact Vietnam’s banks wish to avoid.

…

Pope Francis arrived in Bangkok on Wednesday to begin a tour of Thailand and Japan, beginning a mission to boost the morale of those countries’ tiny minority Catholic communities and speak about issues of concern including human trafficking and peacemaking.

He is expected to highlight his admiration in Thailand for the community’s missionary ancestors who brought the faith to this Buddhist nation centuries ago and endured bouts of persecution as recently as the 1940s.

Francis was greeted by Surayud Chulanont, former prime minister and head of King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s Privy Council.

His warmest welcome, however, came from his second cousin, Sister Ana Rosa Sivori, who has been a missionary in Thailand since the 1960s and will serve as his translator during his time here. On stepping down from the plane, the first thing Francis did – even before his official welcome from Surayud – was to hug his cousin.

He also met about a dozen children in traditional hilltribe attire. One wearing an elaborate headdress came forward with a huge smile on her face and hugged him. He also received an artillery salute.

Francis’ three-day visit to Thailand, followed by three days in Japan, will be a welcome break for the 82-year-old pope. He is enduring fresh opposition from Catholic conservatives in the U.S. over his just-concluded meeting on the Amazon as well as a new financial scandal at home.

Leaving those concerns behind, Francis will meet with Thailand’s supreme Buddhist leader, Thai authorities as well as all the Catholic bishops of Asia _ a rare chance for him to address some of the major challenges facing the Catholic Church in the region and the men responsible for dealing with them.

On the eve of the trip, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said interfaith relations and emphasizing the dignity of every person are likely to be raised.

Francis has made the fight against human trafficking a hallmark of his papacy. He is expected to raise this issue in Thailand, which is a key transit point for victims of human trafficking, forced labor and the sex trade.

Francis is also expected to encourage the Catholic community, which represents just 0.58 percent of its 69 million people, as well as encourage the largely Buddhist country to continue welcoming migrants and showing tolerance to people of other faiths. That message is also intended to reach the country’s small Muslim community amid a persistent insurgency in the far south bordering Malaysia.

Thirty-five years after St. John Paul II became the first pope to visit Thailand, Francis is marking the 350th anniversary of the creation of a stable apostolic vicariate in Thailand, then known as Siam, after Dominican missionaries first brought the faith in 1567, followed by members of Francis’ own Jesuit order.

Francis will pray at the tomb of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, known as the Rev. Benedikto Chunkim, who became the first martyred priest of modern Thailand when he was killed in 1944. Francis is also likely to refer to seven other martyrs killed in 1940 as a nationalistic government sought to convert all Thais to Buddhists.

In the morning ahead of the Pope’s arrival, members of the Catholic community continued preparations for his activities

At the National Stadium, where Francis will be celebrating Mass before tens of thousands of people, students gathered with their band instruments for a costume rehearsal as their parents looked on with excitement.

Eight-year-old Jiraroj Panyam, who will be playing the saxophone, said he hoped to tell the pope to “keep on working hard, have faith and be cheerful.”

“I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for anyone, not just him, but for everyone no matter what nationality or religion they are,” said Mongkol Devapradipa, whose son will also be performing on Thursday.

…

The U.S. military said Wednesday two of its service members were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, however preliminary reports do not indicate it was caused by enemy fire, according to an official announcement.

The latest fatalities bring the number of American soldiers killed this year in war-related activities in Afghanistan to at least 18.

Earlier, the Taliban insurgency claimed its fighters shot down a U.S. military Chinook helicopter in the eastern Afghan province of Logar.

A Taliban spokesman said the helicopter was sent to raid an insurgent base in the area.

It was difficult to ascertain from independent sources whether the insurgent group was referring to the same incident. Taliban battlefield claims of attacks on U.S.-led foreign forces in Afghanistan are often inflated.

Separately, an overnight Taliban raid on a military base in northern Kunduz province has killed at least 13 Afghan forces and wounded several others. Afghan media reported the attack occurred in the Imam Sahib district.

The Taliban took responsibility for carrying out the deadly attack, saying insurgent fighters also seized military equipment from the base.

The violence comes a day after a high-profile prisoner swap between the insurgents and the United States that freed two foreign hostages, including an American, in return for three senior insurgent detainees.  

The two university professors, Kevin King and his Australian colleague, Timothy John Weeks, had been held hostage by the Taliban since August 2016. They were teaching at Kabul’s American University of Afghanistan before being kidnapped at gunpoint from near their campus.

…

Amnesty International says Iranian security forces have killed at least 106 people in nationwide anti-government protests since Friday, four times the death toll of Iran’s last mass protests two years ago.

In a Tuesday interview with VOA Persian, the London-based rights group’s Iran researcher Raha Bahreini said Amnesty determined that security forces killed 106 protesters based on eyewitness accounts, social media videos and reports of exiled Iranian human rights activists. She said Amnesty International soon would provide a breakdown of the number of protesters killed in various Iranian cities.

VOA Persian has independently confirmed the killings of at least seven protesters in shootings by Iranian security forces on Saturday. Iranian state media have said several people have been killed including at least one security force member in the demonstrations that began Friday and spread to dozens of cities. But the Iranian government has not published any official death toll.

The demonstrations erupted in response to the government abruptly raising the subsidized price of gasoline by 50% early Friday. Many Iranians see the increase as putting a further burden on their wallets at a time of worsening economic conditions.

Bahreini said Amnesty has called on the United Nations and European Union to make urgent appeals to Iran to end its violent crackdown on the protests and to respect Iranians’ rights to freedoms of expression and assembly.

Iran violently suppressed the last major wave of nationwide protests that swept the country from late December 2017 to early January 2018. At least 22 people were killed in the crackdown on those protests, which were fueled by public anger with government corruption and mismanagement.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
 

…

DARPA, the main research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is funding researchers to develop wearable devices that would have military applications such as using the mind to control unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, commonly known as drones. Instead of using brain implants to achieve this, DARPA is looking for non-invasive to minutely invasive ways of interfacing with the machine. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee got a close-up look at one team’s work at Rice University.

…