A North Carolina court on Monday temporarily blocked the state from using its congressional map in next year’s elections and strongly suggested it would eventually rule the districts were illegally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
The decision was a victory for Democrats, who have struggled to gain a foothold in both the state legislature and North Carolina’s 13 U.S. congressional districts, in part because of how Republicans drew the electoral lines.
The ruling seems likely to ensure that the state’s 2020 congressional elections will take place under a new map, dealing a blow to Republicans’ hopes of recapturing the U.S. House of Representatives after Democrats swept to power in that chamber last year.
Republicans hold 10 of the state’s 13 U.S. House seats, despite a nearly even split between Democratic and Republican votes in the popular count.
In an 18-page ruling, the judges said the voters who brought the lawsuit had shown a “substantial likelihood” of succeeding if the case were to reach trial.
The three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court that issued the decision is the same group that struck down the state’s legislative map in September, finding that it violated the state constitution’s free elections, equal protection and free speech clauses.
A similar challenge failed at the U.S. Supreme Court in June, when the court ruled federal judges had no jurisdiction over partisan gerrymandering, the act of drawing electoral lines to benefit one party over another.
But the Supreme Court’s decision explicitly said that state courts may consider the issue under state law. Numerous state constitutions, like that of North Carolina, contain language that goes further than the U.S. Constitution in governing the way elections are held.
“With judges deciding behind closed doors how many members of Congress from each party is acceptable, judicial elections have become the most consequential in America,” Phil Berger, the Republican leader of the state Senate, said in a statement.
Last year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the state’s U.S. congressional lines. The new map was credited with helping Democrats split the state’s 18 congressional seats in 2018 after years of Republican dominance.
Both North Carolina gerrymandering challenges were backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, the litigation arm of a Democratic group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to help break Republican control of the redistricting process in states across the country.
“For nearly a decade, Republicans have forced the people of North Carolina to vote in districts that were manipulated for their own partisan advantage,” Holder said in a statement. “Now — finally — the era of Republican gerrymandering in the state is coming to an end.”
A large ancient wetlands region spanning northern Botswana – once teeming with life but now dominated by desert and salt flats – may represent the ancestral homeland of all of the 7.7 billion people on Earth today, researchers said on Monday.
Their study, guided by maternal DNA data from more than 1,200 people indigenous to southern Africa, proposed a central role for this region in the early history of humankind starting 200,000 years ago, nurturing our species for 70,000 years before climate changes paved the way for the first migrations.
A lake that at the time was Africa’s largest – twice the area of today’s Lake Victoria – gave rise to the ancient wetlands covering the Greater Zambezi River Basin that includes northern Botswana into Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east, the researchers said.
It has been long established that Homo sapiens originated somewhere in Africa before later spreading worldwide.
“But what we hadn’t known until this study was where exactly this homeland was,” said geneticist Vanessa Hayes of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney, who led
the study published in the journal Nature.
The oldest-known Homo sapiens fossil evidence dates back more than 300,000 years from Morocco. The new study suggests that early members of our species as represented by the Morocco remains may not have left any ancestors living today, the researchers said.
“There is no contradiction between the presence of an early Homo sapiens-like skull in northern Africa, which may be from an extinct lineage, and the proposed southern African origin of the Homo sapiens lineages that are still alive,” added study co-author Axel Timmermann, a climate physicist at Pusan National University in South Korea.
The ancient lake Makgadikgadi began to break up about 200,000 years ago, giving rise to a sprawling wetland region inhabited by human hunter-gatherers, the researchers said.
“It can be viewed as a massive extension of today’s Okavango Delta wetland area,” Timmermann said.
Changes in Earth’s axis and orbit caused climate, rainfall and vegetation shifts that set the stage for early migrations of this ancestral group of people away from the homeland region, first toward the northeast 130,000 years ago, then toward the southwest 110,000 years ago, Timmermann added.
“Our study provides the first quantitative and well-dated evidence that astronomically driven climate changes in the past caused major human migration events, which then led to the development of genetic diversity and eventually cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity,” Timmermann added.
Pope Francis has declared that the Vatican Secret Archive isn’t so secret after all.
Francis on Monday officially changed the name of the Holy See archive to remove what he said were the “negative” implications of having “secret” in its name.
From now on, the vast trove of documentation of popes past will be officially known as the “Vatican Apostolic Archive.”
Francis noted that the archive has long been open to scholars and that he himself has decreed that the archives of World War II-era Pope Pius XII, accused by some of not speaking out enough about the Holocaust, would open ahead of time March 2, 2020.
But he said the name change better reflects the archive’s reality and “its service to the church and the world of culture.”
French luxury group LVMH has offered to buy Tiffany & Co. for $14.5 billion in cash, sending shares in the New York jewelers soaring.
The purchase would add another household name to LVMH’s plethora of upscale brands. It owns fashion names such as Christian Dior, Fendi, and Givenchy as well as watchmaker Tag Heuer.
It would also give LVMH a much broader foothold in the United States and broaden its offerings in jewelry.
LVMH cautioned in a brief statement that “there can be no assurance that these discussions will result in any agreement.”
Tiffany said the offer was for $120 a share, which is about $14.5 billion. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the offer over the weekend.
The New York-based company said Monday that it was considering the offer. Its shares jumped 31% to $128.81 in premarket trading in New York.
The offer comes as Tiffany has struggled with stagnating sales as China’s slowing economy has weighed on spending by Chinese tourists, who make up a substantial portion of luxury spending. The strong dollar has also made Tiffany products more expensive for consumers outside the U.S.
LVMH competes with the Kering Group, which owns Gucci and Saint Laurent, and Richemont SA, which owns Cartier.
Thousands of students have joined Iraq’s anti-government protests, defying a government order and tear gas from security forces.
The students skipped classes at several universities and secondary schools in Baghdad and across the Shi’ite south on Monday to take part in the protests. The demonstrations are fueled by anger at corruption, economic stagnation and poor public services.
In Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests, demonstrators chanted: “It’s a student revolution, no to the government, no to parties!”
Security forces have fired tear gas and stun grenades to keep protesters from crossing a main bridge leading to the Green Zone, home to government offices and embassies.
At least 219 people have been killed in clashes with security forces since the protests began earlier this month.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it is operating at a ” heightened state of vigilance” following the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi but there are no plans to issue an (National Terrorism Advisory System) alert unless “we develop specific or credible threat information” to share with the public.
“Our security posture will remain agile, we will continue to mitigate and respond to the ever evolving threat landscape,” the DHS said in a statement a day after President Donald Trump announced that U.S. military special forces operation in northwest Syria successfully targeted and “violently eliminated” Baghdadi.
FILE – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi purportedly appears for the first time in five years in a propaganda video in an undisclosed location, in this undated TV grab taken from video released April 29 by Al-Furqan media.
“Last night the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice,” said Trump, speaking from the Diplomatic Room of the White House, explaining that the IS leader detonated a suicide vest in a tunnel, also killing three of his children.
“No (US) personnel were lost in the operation,” but a large number of al-Baghdadi’s fighters were killed and others were captured, according to Trump. He said the Islamic State leader, who was hiding in a tunnel tried to flee, “was screaming, crying and whimpering” in his last moments.
“He died like a dog. He died like a coward,” added Trump.
Baghdadi’s remains were positively identified in 15 minutes, according to Trump.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces says IS spokesman and Baghdadi’s “right-hand man” Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was also killed in the U.S. operation. U.S. officials have yet to confirm his death.
A destroyed vehicle at the site where helicopter gunfire reportedly killed nine people near the northwestern Syrian village of Barisha in the Idlib province, Oct. 27, 2019.
A U.S. official told VOA the operation was staged from a base in Iraq. President Trump said eight helicopters flew slightly over an hour to reach the compound.
There were also “many other ships and planes” supporting a large group of U.S. fighters who “blasted their way in so quickly” and then “all hell broke loose,” said Trump.
Russia “did not know the mission,” explained Trump but allowed the helicopters to fly over areas in Syria it controlled.
Trump also thanked Iraq, Syria and Turkey for unspecified cooperation and expressed appreciation to the Syrian Kurds for providing helpful information.
Initial reports of the IS leader’s death were greeted with a degree of skepticism as Baghdadi’s demise had previously been erroneously reported several times.
Since 2016, the United States had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information to help bring Baghdadi to justice. Only one other person, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, has a reward that high.
Jeff Seldin, Carla Babb and Steve Herman contributed to this report.
Today Vietnam has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, high levels of optimism in public opinion surveys, and good relations with its old wartime enemies, the United States and France. So locals were caught off guard by the high-profile deaths in Essex, which suggest that some thought they could find more opportunity abroad than at home.
FILE – Police forensics officers attend the scene after a truck was found to contain the bodies of 39 refugees, in Thurrock, South England, Oct. 23, 2019.
British police found 39 people dead in a truck last week, prompting fears that the deceased were the victims of human trafficking. Several people have been arrested in the United Kingdom and one man has been charged with manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. Vietnam’s prime minister has ordered an investigation into whether this was a case of human trafficking.
Some here are surprised that people would spend tens of thousands of dollars, equivalent to hundreds of millions of Vietnam dong, to leave, even though Vietnam has a fast-growing economy that has lifted many out of poverty. One local noted that such money could be used to find work domestically.
“No matter what the country is, this is sad and depressing,” one poster on the news site Vnexpress said of the deaths. “I think the current life in Vietnam is not too difficult. Instead of spending hundreds of millions to go abroad, that amount of money in Vietnam could create many jobs.”
Vietnamese were surprised to hear their compatriots had gone abroad to find work, since the country has become much richer in recent years, from hotel resorts, to luxury boutiques. (VOA/Ha Nguyen)
Life in Vietnam has improved for many people, and it is a different place than it was in wartime. In the 1960s and ’70s, waves of boat people left the violence of the Vietnam War. It was a time when some in the country would go hungry, most had only bicycles at best for transportation, and few could do business with the outside world amid international isolation.
Sill, labor migration continues to be a reality, with Vietnamese choosing to go to work in factories in Russia, construction in Libya, or cannabis farms in the UK. Drive around smaller towns like Da Lat, and there are signs posted by brokers offering to take workers overseas.
Le Minh Tuan, father of 30-year old Le Van Ha, who is feared to be among the 39 people found dead in a truck in Britain, cries while holding Ha’s son outside their house in Vietnam’s Nghe An province.
Some say it is not always helpful to label the workers as modern slaves, or victims who were tricked into human trafficking. In the UK example, researcher Nicolas Lainez said treating Vietnamese as victims who need to be saved by police could be “a smokescreen to conceal the severe control over human mobility enforced by the UK and its European counterparts, the deregulation of labor markets, the prevarication of workers, and the increase in inequality under neoliberal policies.”
In other words, he says authorities treat labor migration as an issue of public safety or criminal activity, rather than take responsibility for state policies that are harmful to workers and migrants.
“These structural forces, ignored in discussions on modern slavery, leave both citizens and non-citizens with little or no protection, and encourage labor exploitation and migration on a large scale,” Lainez wrote in a blog post.
In Vietnam’s less-developed towns, like Da Lat, brokers post signs offering to take Vietnamese abroad to find work. (VOA/Ha Nguyen)
Vietnamese have also viewed the latest tragedy as a case of disadvantaged workers, in search of a better life.
“They did not have enough money to leave as entrepreneurs,” one Facebook poster commented of those who died in the truck. “They went to look for a good future and take care of their families but ended up trapped … but the result is heartbreaking … Condolences to the victims.”
President Donald Trump falsely asserted that he predicted Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in a news conference Sunday aimed at showcasing his administration’s accomplishments in stemming the terrorist threat abroad.
A look at the president’s claims at the briefing, where he announced the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group:
TRUMP: “I’m writing a book … About a year before the World Trade Center came down, the book came out. I was talking about Osama bin Laden. I said, ‘You have to kill him. You have to take him out.’ Nobody listened to me.” Trump added that people said to him, ”‘You predicted that Osama Bin Laden had to be killed, before he knocked down the World Trade Center.’ It’s true.”
THE FACTS: It’s not true.
His 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” makes a passing mention of bin Laden but did no more than point to the al-Qaida leader as one of many threats to U.S. security. Nor does he say in the book that bin Laden should have be killed.
As part of his criticism of what he considered Bill Clinton’s haphazard approach to U.S. security as president, Trump wrote: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy Number One, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”
The book did not call for further U.S. action against bin Laden or al-Qaida to follow up on attacks Clinton ordered in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan after al-Qaida bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. attacks were meant to disrupt bin Laden’s network and destroy some of al-Qaida’s infrastructure, such as a factory in Sudan associated with the production of a nerve gas ingredient. They “missed” in the sense that bin Laden was not killed in them, and al-Qaida was able to pull off 9/11 three years later.
In passages on terrorism, Trump’s book does correctly predict that the U.S. was at risk of a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bombing pale by comparison. That was a widespread concern at the time, as Trump suggested in stating “no sensible analyst rejects this possibility.”
Still, Trump did not explicitly tie that threat to al-Qaida and thought an attack might come through a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction, like a nuclear device in a suitcase or anthrax.
TRUMP: “Nobody ever heard of Osama bin Laden until really the World Trade Center.”
THE FACTS: That’s incorrect. Bin Laden was well known by the CIA, other national security operations, experts and the public long before 9/11, with the CIA having a unit entirely dedicated to bin Laden going back to the mid-1990s. The debate at the time was over whether Clinton and successor President George W. Bush could have done more against al-Qaida to prevent the 2001 attacks.
Clashes in the streets as thousands of people took to the streets for another weekend of protests in Hong Kong. This week, the city’s governing body formally withdrew the bill that sparked the original protests earlier this year, but that has done little to appease protesters in this leaderless movement, who say they want the government to do more to stave off what they believe is encroaching control from Beijing. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Hong Kong
The United States is promising there will be no let-up in its pursuit of the Islamic State terror group despite the death of self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in what is being described as a “daring and dangerous” nighttime raid in northern Syria.
Baghdadi, who took over the group formerly known as al-Qaida In Iraq in 2010 and turned into a global threat, died “whimpering and crying” in a dead-end tunnel, according to U.S. President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, Oct. 27, 2019.
“Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders and our commitment to the enduring defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations,” the U.S. president said from the White House Sunday, using an acronym for the terror group.
“We know the successors,” he added. “And we already have them in our sights.”
Efforts to track them down may get an additional boost from the raid on the compound in Barisha, in Syria’s Idlib province, which led to the capture of a small group of IS officials and fighters.
Trump said U.S. forces also recovered, “highly sensitive material and information… much having to do with ISIS, origins, future plans, things that we very much want.”
Already, those efforts may be paying off. The commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Abdi, tweeted Sunday that IS spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was targeted and killed in a subsequent joint SDF-U.S. operation near the northern Syrian town of Jarablus, though U.S. officials have yet to comment.
But military and intelligence officials admit tracking down and eliminating key IS emirs and operatives, while serving to degrade the terror group’s capabilities, has not been sufficient to lead to its ultimate demise.
At one point, in late 2015, as the U.S.-led coalition tried to roll back the terror group’s caliphate, officials said airstrikes were killing, on average, one mid-level or senior-level IS leader every two days.
HVI [High Value Individual] strikes killed abt 70 senior/mid-level #ISIS leaders since May “depleting #ISIL‘s bench” per @OIRspox
U.S. counterterrorism officials later described some of those so-called decapitation strikes as “significant blows.”
Yet IS carried on, and even as it’s caliphate collapsed, with the last bit territory falling to coalition forces this past March, the terror group’s leadership was proving to be nimble and adaptive, focusing their efforts on a potent and growing insurgency.
“ISIS is working to advance an insurgency in Syria and Iraq comprised of dispersed networks spanning the battlespace,” a U.S. counterterrorism official recently told VOA.
“The group is using these networks to undermine local governance and reconstruction efforts by stoking violence and mistrust among ethno-sectarian lines,” the official added.
Other current and former officials warn such resiliency has been built into the IS’ operating model from the start.
“It’s a big deal, simply because of the symbolic importance of Baghdadi,” former U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told VOA, of the U.S. operation that killed the IS leader.
But he said Baghdadi’s death alone would not be enough.
“ISIS has been more de-centralized and has groomed leaders for just this eventuality,” Clapper said.
Terrorism analysts also point to a growing body of evidence that suggest even in groups which are less prepared to cope with the loss of an influential leader, strikes like the one that killed Baghdadi are rarely death blows.
“The death of a jihadist leader is always a dangerous moment for the group as it can lead to internal struggles,” said Michael Horowitz, head of intelligence for Le Beck, a Middle East-based security and geopolitical consultancy.
FILE – Then-al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden speaks to a select group of reporters in mountains of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1998.
“In general, however, jihadist groups do tend to survive such strikes,” he said, pointing to IS’ main rival, al-Qaida, as an example. “[Osama] bin Laden was replaced by his former number two, [Ayman] al-Zawahiri, a much less charismatic leader, but one that still heads a powerful and global terror franchise.”
Recent intelligence from the U.S. and other countries indicates IS, even without Baghdadi, is well-positioned to survive and even thrive.
Despite no longer controlling territory in Syria and Iraq, the terror group still had an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 thousand fighters across Syria and Iraq. Officials also believe it still has plenty of cash, perhaps up to $300 million at its disposal.
And U.S. officials note IS retains many of its former capabilities, moving them underground as it ceded territorial control to U.S.-backed forces.
“The group has tens of thousands of seasoned fighters and hundreds of leaders who have survived decades of war,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “The Islamic State is more than its emir.”
Islamic State ‘brand lives on’
U.S. officials have likewise warned that IS has built itself in such a way that developments which they thought would undoubtedly lead to its demise — like the loss of almost all of its physical caliphate — have had less impact than anticipated.
“The so-called ISIS caliphate has been destroyed, but the ISIS brand lives on around the world,” State Department Counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales warned this past August.
Still, IS is likely to face some significant challenges, especially in the short term, knowing that the U.S. may have gained access to crucial information during the raid on Bashira.
“The first thing they’re going to do will probably be to activate security protocols to try to get their manpower and their resources to a position of safety with the expectation that the U.S. is going to hit the [IS] network hard,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and CEO of Valens Global.
There is also a question of securing the allegiance of IS’ various affiliates, especially those in Afghanistan, Egypt’s Sinai, Libya and Nigeria.
“The standard bayat [pledge of allegiance] is not to an organization,” said Gartenstein-Ross “Bayat is on an individual to individual level.”
And exactly who that new leader will ultimately be is not clear.
This file image made from video posted on a militant website July 5, 2014, purports to show Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, delivering a sermon at a mosque in Iraq.
“If you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said that ISIS was always expecting that Baghdadi would eventually be killed and that the process of succession was already set in place,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a terrorism researcher and assistant professor at Queen’s University in Ontario Canada, who has interviewed active members of the movement.
“But now, after Baghuz, all of this is up in the air,” he said. “Whatever structures they had in place for succession are probably no more.”
There are also questions about how Baghdadi’s death will impact the morale of IS fighters and supporters. While analysts say most will view him as a martyr, ignoring President Trump’s descriptions of the IS leader dying “like a dog” and “like a coward,” his continued ability to defy the U.S. and send out occasional messages may be felt.
“It seems his reappearance earlier this year was a real morale booster for supporters,” said Raphael Gluck, co-founder of Jihadoscope, a company that monitors online activity by Islamist extremists.
“Clearly he, or those around him, thinks it’s good for ISIS and worth the risks,” Gluck said at the time.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Vice President Mike Pence said late-breaking intelligence gave special forces the opening they needed to carry out the attack on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after President Trump approved the raid earlier this past week.
Vice President Mike Pence told CBS News that by Thursday afternoon, the U.S. had a “high probability” that Baghdadi would be in the compound in Idlib, Syria. He added that the U.S. received “actionable intelligence” on Saturday morning that allowed the mission to move forward that night.
A U.S. official told VOA the operation was staged from a base in Iraq. President Trump said eight helicopters flew slightly over an hour to reach the compound.
Esper said soldiers had intended on capturing Baghdadi but were prepared to kill him, if necessary. The team called out to Baghdadi to try to get him to surrender.
“He refused. He went down to a subterranean area, and in the process of trying to get him out, he detonated a suicide vest, we believe, and killed himself,” Esper told CNN.
According to Pence, the president looked at options presented to him by military leaders on Friday morning.
“He reviewed them, asked some great questions, chose the option that we thought gave us the highest probability of success and confirmation that the head of ISIS would be there and either captured or killed,” Esper added.
Esper said there were two “minor” injuries to U.S. soldiers in the operation, who have since returned to duty. Trump also indicated a U.S. K-9 was injured.
Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces who partnered with the U.S. to defeat Islamic State in Syria, thanked the president on Twitter Sunday and said there had been monitoring and “joint intel cooperation on the ground” with the U.S. for five months.
He called the death of Baghdadi a “joint operation,” and hinted at “other effective operations” between the U.S. and SDF in the future. He later said an operation in the region targeted and killed Islamic State spokesman Hassan al-Muhajir. U.S. officials would not comment on Abdi’s Tweets.
During the announcement, Trump thanked the SDF, Iraq, Russia, Turkey and Syria, in addition to U.S. military forces who were “so brave and so good.”
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi marks a “turning point” in the fight against terrorism.
On Twitter, Erdogan said Turkey would “continue to support anti-terror efforts.. as it has done in the past”.
Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement Sunday that Baghdadi was dead, Bahrain’s foreign minister called the death a “fatal blow” to the terrorist organization.
مقتل المجرم أبو بكر البغدادي يشكل ضربة قاصمة لتنظيم داعش الارهابي . نحيي الأشقاء و الحلفاء على جهدهم و نجاحهم في العثور عليه و التخلص منه #البغدادي
Many U.S. lawmakers welcomed the news of the terrorist leader’s death after the president’s announcement, but some underscored the challenges that remain in the fight against terrorism.
“The death of al-Baghdadi is significant, but the death of this ISIS leader does not mean the death of ISIS,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “Scores of ISIS fighters remain under uncertain conditions in Syrian prisons, and countless others in the region and around the world remain intent on spreading their influence and committing acts of terror. ”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the event “a significant step for the campaign against ISIS”.
“The world’s most wanted man has been brought to justice. The world is a safer place today,” he said in a statement. “This victory for the U.S. and our many counterterrorism partners is a significant step for the campaign against ISIS, for the future of the Middle East, and for the safety of the American people and free people around the world.”
Clashes between police and militant elements in a thousands-strong crowd of demonstrators transformed part of central Barcelona into a battleground late on Saturday as another day of pro-independence protests turned violent.
Projectiles were fired, at least six people were hospitalized with injuries, and barricades were set alight after officers charged ranks of demonstrators — many young and masking their faces — who had amassed outside Spanish police headquarters.
The violent standoff in the city’s tourist heartland offered stark evidence of the fault lines developing between hardline and conciliatory elements within the region’s independence movement.
It lasted several hours before protesters dispersed through the city’s streets.
Barcelona has witnessed daily pro-secession protests since Oct. 14. That was when Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine politicians and activists to up to 13 years in jail for their role in a failed independence bid in 2017, prompting widespread anger in the region and sending shockwaves through Spain’s political landscape.
Catalan pro-independence demonstrators attend a protest to call for the release of jailed separatist leaders in Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 26, 2019. Banners read “Freedom.”
Saturday’s protest was not the first marred by violence, with unrest notably on Oct. 18 having been more widespread. But it contrasted starkly with events earlier in the day, when 350,000 Catalans had marched peacefully through the city in support of calls from civil rights groups for the jailed separatist leaders to be freed.
Bottles, balls, bullets
The later protest was organized by CDR, a pro-independence pressure group that favors direct action and has cut off rail tracks and roads, as well as trying to storm the regional parliament.
It began around 7:30 p.m. (1730 GMT) and as the crowd grew to around 10,000, according to police estimates, demonstrators threw a hail of bottles, balls and rubber bullets at officers, TV footage showed.
Police carrying shields and weapons and backed by some 20 riot vans then charged the demonstrators in an attempt to disperse them, splitting the crowd in two along Via Laietana near the police headquarters.
Reuters TV footage showed police armed with batons forcing their way through the crowd while demonstrators threw stones and flares. News channel 24h showed police grappling one-on-one with demonstrators, who fell back before reforming their lines.
Some projectiles were fired, with a Reuters photographer among those hospitalized after being hit in the stomach by a rubber or foam bullet. Catalan emergency services said that, in all, six people were hospitalized.
The organizers of the earlier protest, grass-roots groups Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, had hoped that, with pro-secessionist parties split over what strategy to adopt, it would refocus attention in the secessionist camp by
drawing the largest crowd since the court verdicts were passed.
“From the street we will keep defending all the [people’s] rights, but from the institutions we need political answers,” ANC leader Elisenda Paluzie told the gathering, pledging to organize more protests.
Local police said around 350,000 attended, compared with a daily peak of 500,000 at the Oct. 18 protest and 600,000 at a march that took place on Catalonia’s national day last month.
All those figures, however, represent only a small percentage of the region’s 7.5 million population, and its electorate is almost evenly split over the issue of independence.
A Catalan pro-independence demonstrator throws a fence into a fire during a protest against police action in Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 26, 2019.
Mainstream Spanish parties, including the minority Socialist government, have consistently rejected moves toward Catalan independence and all except for the left-wing Podemos are opposed to any form of referendum.
They are now gearing up for a national election on Nov. 10.
‘Prison is not the answer’
Both ANC and Omnium Cultural eschew violence and their then-leaders were among the nine jailed on Oct 14.
Many who joined their march carried Catalan pro-independence flags and banners bearing slogans that included: “Prison is not the answer,” “Sit and talk” and “Freedom for political prisoners.”
In the front row was regional government head Quim Torra, who earlier presided over a ceremony at which hundreds of Catalan mayors endorsed a document demanding self-determination.
“We have to be capable of creating a republic of free men and women … and overcoming the confrontational dynamic with a constructive one,” he told them.
While not currently affiliated with any party, Torra belongs to the separatist political movement Junts per Catalunya. It has been in favor of maintaining confrontation with authorities in Madrid, while its leftist coalition partner Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya favors dialogue.
One marcher, Maria Llopart, 63, criticized the lack of unity between the two parties. “Everything looks very bad. We are not advancing,” she said.
Francesc Dot, 65, said the nine leaders had been jailed in defense of “Spain’s unity.”
His wife, Maria Dolors Rustarazo, 63, said she should also be in prison because she voted in the 2017 referendum, which Spanish courts outlawed. “If [all separatist votes] … have to go to jail, we will go, but I don’t think we would all fit,” she said.
She condemned the violence but had understanding for young protesters being “angry at the lack of democracy.”
On Saturday they included Manel, a 20-year-old student with his face obscured by a cloth, who said he was among those who lit barricades during last week’s unrest.
“We need a consistent protest — more streets and less parliamentary talk, because that doesn’t seem to work,” he said before the CDR protest turned violent.
“If we halt the economy, the Spanish government would be obliged to talk.”
Democratic presidential candidates in South Carolina Saturday accused U.S. President Donald Trump of stoking racism as they vied for the state’s black vote in its strategically important early primary.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and five other Democrats participated in a forum at historically black Benedict College a day after Trump was presented an award there for his work on criminal justice, sparking outrage among candidates and temporarily prompting Senator Kamala Harris to pull out.
Harris, a former district attorney and state attorney general in California, spoke at the event Saturday after the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, which gave Trump the award, was removed as a sponsor, according to her campaign.
A spokeswoman for that nonprofit group, which continued to be involved in organizing the event throughout the day, did not respond to a request for comment.
“I said I would not come because I just couldn’t believe that Donald Trump would be given an award as it relates to criminal justice reform,” Harris told the audience.
“Let’s be clear: This is somebody who has disrespected the voices that have been present for decades about the need for reform,” she said, criticizing the president for describing an impeachment inquiry against him as a “lynching,” a form of vigilante killing historically associated with white supremacists.
Showcase for Democrats
The event is an important showcase for Democrats ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary, the party’s fourth state-nominating contest. Six in 10 Democratic voters in the state are black and Biden has a strong early lead in local political polls.
In receiving the award Friday, Trump extolled his record on race and criminal justice before a largely handpicked and appreciative audience. The award recognized Trump last year signing bipartisan legislation including easing harsh minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
Biden told the crowd on Saturday that “I don’t quite understand” why Trump would get the award. “It’s not just his words that have given rise to hate,” he said. “His actions — his actions have failed the African American community, and all communities.”
Trump hopes his support for a sweeping criminal justice reform law will help him pick up votes among African Americans next year after only winning 8% of the black vote in 2016. The president easily won South Carolina, where Republican voters outnumber Democrats 2-to-1, in 2016.
On Twitter, the president shot back at Harris, calling her a “badly failing presidential candidate” and said low unemployment and new criminal justice reforms achieved during his administration are “more than Kamala will EVER be able to do for African Americans!”
A spokeswoman for Trump’s presidential campaign, Sarah Matthews, added that “only people with desperately failing campaigns try to make this kind of racist nonsense against the President and Republicans work.”
Biden and Warren
Ten Democrats seeking the presidential nomination are speaking at events in South Carolina this weekend and presenting plans on legalizing marijuana, ending the death penalty and eliminating sentencing disparities for offenses involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine, which have disproportionately affected black people.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is scheduled to speak on the final day of the criminal justice event Sunday along with two other Democrats.
In South Carolina, Democrats are working to chip away at a Biden’s early advantage. Bolstered by the eight years he served as vice president to Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, Biden has deep connections with black politicians and clergy.
Biden leads his closest rival in South Carolina, Warren, by nearly 20 percentage points, according to a RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. The state may end up being crucial for the former vice president as a last line of defense if he continues to lose ground to rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire.
President Donald Trump’s plan to attend Game 5 of the World Series Sunday will continue a rich tradition of intertwining the American presidency with America’s pastime.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s limousine drove onto to the field ahead of the 1933 World Series, the last time the nation’s capital hosted the Fall Classic. Congressional hearings on the stock market collapse were postponed so senators could attend the game.
Harry S. Truman tossed out a first pitch from the stands of a regular season game in August 1945, just days after the end of World War II, giving Americans a sense that normalcy was returning after years of global conflict.
George W. Bush wore a bulletproof vest under his jacket when he threw a perfect strike from the Yankee Stadium mound during the 2001 World Series, not 10 miles from where the World Trade Center was attacked a month earlier.
FILE- Former President George W. Bush throws the ceremonial first pitch before Game 5 of baseball’s World Series between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers, in Houston, Oct. 29, 2017.
Trump, who has yet to throw out a ceremonial first pitch since taking office, plans to arrive after the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are underway and leave before the final out, in hopes of making his visit less disruptive to fans, according to Rob Manfred, baseball’s commissioner.
Deep ties to baseball
While it will be Trump’s first time attending a major league game as president, he has deep ties to the sport.
A longtime New York Yankees fan who was spotted regularly at games in the Bronx, he was also a high school player with enough talent that, he has said, he drew the attention of big league scouts.
Presidential attendance at baseball games has “become an institution and a unifying influence in a nation that is losing both,” said Curt Smith, a former Bush speechwriter and author of “The Presidents and the Pastime.”
“It is part of the job description, whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative. Bush found it a joy, he understood the symbolism of the moment. And he was the rule, not the exception,” Smith said.
Trump mentioned his World Series plan to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. But when asked whether he might throw out the first pitch, he said, “I don’t know. They’re going to have to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor,” apparently referring to a bulletproof vest. “I’ll look too heavy. I don’t like that.”
FILE – Chef Jose Andres, left, and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda attend the grand opening of the Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards, March 14, 2019, in New York.
First pitch honor goes to Andres
But the Nationals, who decide on ceremonial first pitches, made clear that the president was not asked to take the mound. That honor instead will go to a notable Trump critic, celebrity chef Jose Andres, whose humanitarian work has been widely acclaimed.
Andres, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Spain, has been a longtime critic of the president’s views on immigrants and he halted plans to open a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington. The Trump Organization then sued Andres, who also denounced the administration for failing to do enough to help the people of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017.
There’s some suspense around how Trump might be greeted at the game.
Though the fans at the high-priced event are likely to skew more corporate than at a regular season Nationals contest, Trump is extremely unpopular in the city he now calls home. In the 2016 election, Trump won 4% of the vote from the District of Columbia.
Trump’s White House staff has long tried to shield him from events where he might be loudly booed or heckled, and he rarely ventures out into the heavily Democratic city. (With the exception of his hotel, a Republican-friendly oasis a few blocks from the White House.)
‘Every president gets booed’
“It’ll be loud for Trump but every president gets booed: both Bushes, Reagan, Nixon. When Americans pay for their ticket, most of them buy into the great American tradition to boo whomever they want,” Smith said. “He should embrace it: So what if the elites boo you? Think of how it plays with your voters elsewhere in the country, thinking ‘There they go again, booing our guy.’ Use it!”
Trump has long been a baseball fan, especially of his hometown Yankees. Before he became president, he would be spotted at games, sometimes along the first-base line with then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Trump was also memorably photographed behind home plate across town in the moments after the final outs of the 2006 NLCS when the New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Trump played high school baseball at New York Military Academy, where he was a star first baseman. His coach, Col. Ted Dobias, told Rolling Stone in 2015 that Trump “thought he was Mr. America and the world revolved around him.”
“He was good-hit and good-field,” Dobias said. “We had scouts from the Phillies to watch him, but he wanted to go to college and make real money.”
Phillies spokesman Greg Casterioto said Friday that the team’s scouting records do not go back that far and there is no way to verify that claim. But Trump, when honoring the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox at the White House in May, fondly remembered his time playing the sport.
“I played at a slightly different level,” Trump said, “but every spring I loved it. The smell in the air.”
FILE – President Donald Trump shakes hands with former New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera during ceremony presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rivera, in the White House, Sept. 16, 2019, in Washington.
Relationship with pro sports
That event also underscored Trump’s tumultuous relationship with professional sports. Several Red Sox stars, including Mookie Betts, and the team’s manager, Alex Cora, declined to attend the White House ceremony. Trump has disinvited other championship teams, including the Golden State Warriors and Philadelphia Eagles, from attending after some of their players criticized him.
Trump is, so far, the only president since William Howard Taft in 1910 not to have thrown a first pitch at a major league game. The first president known to attend a game was Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Calvin Coolidge, nearly a decade before Roosevelt, was the only other president to attend a World Series game in Washington.
Trump will sit with league officials and likely watch from a luxury box, behind security and away from much of the crowd. That would be very different from some of his predecessors, including John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who sat by the field for their ceremonial duties.
“In the old days, they would throw from the presidential box,” said baseball historian Fred Frommer, who has written several baseball books, including a pair of histories about Washington baseball. “Players from both teams would line up on the first base line and would fight for it, like a mosh bit. And whoever emerged with it would take it to the president for a signature.”
Bolivian President Evo Morales on Saturday vowed to hold a runoff election if an audit of a vote count that gave him an outright win turned up evidence of fraud, as he sought to calm a sixth day of protests and international criticism over his disputed re-election to a fourth term.
Morales, already Latin America’s longest-serving president, is the lone survivor of a group of fiery leftist leaders who took office in the previous decade, most of whom have since been replaced by right-leaning governments.
He has overseen a rare period of economic and political stability in South America’s poorest country. But charges of vote-rigging lodged by the opposition and doubts about the legitimacy of the vote raised by official observers threaten to dog his 2020-25 term and tarnish his reputation as a democrat.
In a speech at a military event, Morales invited countries in the region that have called for him to hold a runoff vote — the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia — to take part in an audit of the official tally.
“Let’s do an audit vote by vote,” Morales said in the coca-growing region of Cochabamba. “I’ll join [the audit]. If there’s fraud, the next day we’ll convene a second-round” election, he added in comments broadcast on state TV.
Pressure campaign
Shortly after Morales spoke, his chief rival in the race, Carlos Mesa, a former president, announced his supporters were forming a commission to pressure the international community to not recognize the election’s results.
Brazil, landlocked Bolivia’s biggest trade partner, already said it would reject Morales’ win until the regional Organization of American States (OAS) finished an audit of the vote count, which has not yet started.
The European Union and Washington-based OAS, both of whom sent observer missions to Bolivia, have also pushed Morales to convene a second-round vote to calm unrest and restore credibility to the election.
Police officers block a road leading to the Presidential Palace during a protest march in La Paz, Bolivia, Oct. 26, 2019.
Protesters blocked roads in parts of the highland capital of La Paz on Saturday, chanting “fraud” and waving Bolivia’s red-yellow-and-red flag as anti-government strikes continued in different cities in the South American country.
The country’s embattled electoral board, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), and Morales’ government have both denied any foul play and invited the OAS to audit the official tally. But they have not said whether they will accept the OAS’s condition that the audit’s conclusions be legally binding.
Peru said on Saturday that it would take part in the audit at Bolivia’s request, but it called for the process to be carried out respecting Bolivian laws.
TSE results
The vote count by the TSE at 100% on Friday showed Morales had 47.08% of votes versus Mesa’s 36.51% in a crowded race of nine candidates. That gave him the 10-point lead needed to face Mesa in a Dec. 15 second-round vote, when the opposition would most likely rally behind Mesa to defeat Morales.
The TSE sparked an uproar after the election on Sunday when it halted publication of a quick vote count that showed Morales headed to a second round with Mesa. When the quick count resumed after an outcry, it confirmed Morales’ prediction that he would pull off an outright win with the help of rural votes.
Mesa’s campaign said it found 100,000 votes that should have been annulled because of irregularities but instead swung in Morales’ favor.
“This is a scandalous fraud never seen before. That’s why the people are reacting,” retiree Fredy Salinas, 67, said as he bought vegetables in a market in La Paz. “The people in the government are really shameless.”
Morales said his detractors were “envious” of his achievements and accused the opposition, without providing evidence, of trying to stir up unrest to try to unseat him illegally. “With lies and tricks they’re trying to instigate hatred and racism,” he said.
North Korea said Sunday that there had been no progress in U.S.-North Korea relations and that hostilities that could lead to an exchange of fire had continued, according to North Korea’s state news agency KCNA.
In a statement under the name of North Korea senior official Kim Yong Chol, KCNA said that it would be a mistake for the United States to rely on U.S. President Donald Trump’s and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “close personal relations” and ignore a year-end deadline that Kim set for denuclearization talks.
Kim Yong Chol was the nuclear talks envoy to the United States for the discussions between the two countries before the second summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Vietnam in February ended in failure.
Kim Yong Chol said the United States had been pressuring North Korea in a “more crafty and vicious way” instead of heeding North Korea’s call for Washington to adopt a new approach, adding that the United States had been persistently pushing other countries to impose U.N. sanctions on North Korea.
The statement came days after North Korea asked South Korea to discuss removal of its facilities from the North’s resort of Mount Kumgang, a key symbol of cooperation that Pyongyang recently criticized as “shabby” and “capitalist.”
North Korea on Friday sent notices to the South’s Unification Ministry, which handles issues between the two sides, and Hyundai Group, whose affiliate Hyundai Asan Corp. built the resort facilities, asking for their demolition and seeking discussion through the exchange of documents, the ministry said.
Hyperinflation and the continuing economic and political crisis in Venezuela is driving more Venezuelans to travel to the Colombian border to buy food and other supplies. Even though the government has raised the minimum wage, it is still not nearly enough and most Venezuelans continue to struggle. VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit reports.
