Californians are playing a waiting game – waiting for the power to go out. The region’s power company is cutting off electricity to reduce the risk of forest wildfires. Residents are being told to prepare. Michelle Quinn went to one town waiting for the lights to go off
Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and Austria’s Peter Handke have been awarded the Nobel Literature Prize.
The award was not given last year, so Handke won the 2019 prize for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience” while Tokarczuk won the 2018 prize “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
Each author will receive a $918,000 cash award.
The Swedish Academy did not name a winner for the prize last year following accusations of sexual abuse and other wrongdoing by people connected to the academy.
The coveted Nobel Peace prize will be awarded on Friday.
Russian authorities say they intend to add an opposition-run anti-corruption foundation to a list of so-called “foreign agents” operating in the country — potentially curtailing the operations of one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics.
In a statement released Wednesday, Russia’s Justice Ministry said an audit of the Anti-Corruption Foundation — a non-governmental organization run by opposition leader Alexey Navalny — showed the organization was receiving foreign funding to maintain its operations.
The move puts the group, commonly known by its Russian acronym FBK, afoul of Russia’s so-called “foreign agents” law — a controversial 2012 measure the Kremlin says is necessary to protect Russian sovereignty and that civil society leaders argue tars NGOs as traitors and spies.
Formally, the designation opens up the FBK to increased scrutiny by authorities — as well as fines and possible suspension of its operations.
While the ministry statement provided no details on its audit, an Interfax news agency report said regulators had found two undeclared foreign donations to the FBK — one from the U.S. and another from Spain.
Their total: just over $2,000.
FBK members rejected the foreign agent charge outright, arguing the organization had always relied on local “crowdfunding” to maintain its work.
“The foundation is sponsored inclusively by citizens of Russia, by you,” wrote FBK Director Ivan Zhadanov in a Facebook post.
“This is simply an attempt to strangle the FBK,” added Zhadanov.
The group’s founder, opposition leader Alexey Navalny, went further — arguing the move reflected the foundation’s growing influence thanks to a series of video investigations targeting corruption by Kremlin insiders close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is terribly afraid of the FBK,” wrote Navalny in a post on Twitter. “He can only rely on thieves, bribe takers, and corruptioneers.
“We expose corruption” added Navalny, “and we won’t stop no matter what.”
An NGO in the crosshairs
The announcement comes amid an intensifying assault against the FBK with overt political overtones.
A longtime thorn in the Kremlin’s side, the FBK’s troubles began in earnest again this summer.
After opposition candidates — including members of the FBK — were banned from local Moscow elections en masse, the group worked to organize street protests in response.
The result: a series of mostly peaceful demonstrations that saw over 2,500 arrests — many at the hands of truncheon-wielding police and aggressive OMON (federal government) riot police security forces.
Next, authorities launched an investigation into money laundering by the FBK — accusing the organization’s members of over $15 million in illicit transactions. Coordinated raids of FBK offices across the country ensued.
At the time, Navalny insisted the raids were prompted by an FBK plan called “smart voting” — an election tactic that coordinated voter anger around candidates who had managed to clear registration barriers.
The strategy was credited with aiding significant losses for pro-Kremlin candidates in Moscow local elections.
FBK members say they plan to expand the strategy in regional political races in 2020 — a move that observers say may have prompted renewed efforts to cripple the organization.
Indeed, the FBK has most recently drawn authorities’ ire in the form of court fines.
This week, Moscow police announced they would sue Navalny and other key FBK members for $300,000 in damages — a sum intended to cover expenses incurred by security forces while policing the rallies.
A Moscow restaurant and several other city services have piled on with similar lawsuits.
Now faced with the prospect of the new foreign agent label, Navalny and other FBK members took to social media to plead for renewed donations nationwide.
Throughout the day, the requests ricocheted around the internet, prompting reaction from pro-Kremlin voices online as well as public expressions of support.
“I haven’t done that in a while,” wrote user @DaniilKen in a post on Twitter that showed a screenshot of a money transfer to the FBK. “But it was hard not to respond to the Justice Ministry.”
Just how many more Russians might follow now remains the key question going forward.
Women from across Africa are meeting at the annual Women in Tech Africa Week, hoping to bring more women into the tech industry and combat inequalities in technology use and access, especially for economic empowerment.
Francesca Opoku remembers having to physically send workers to deliver messages or documents when she started her small social enterprise in Ghana 10 years ago. Today, she works to keep up with fast-developing technology to grow her business that produces natural beauty products. She also trains women she works with in financial literacy, such as using simple mobile technology to manage their money.
“As a small African business, as you are growing and as you aspire to grow globally and your tentacles are widening, the world is just going techy,” Opoku said. “Business in the world is going techy. It’s especially relevant in small business. It’s the best way to make what you are doing known out there.”
She was at the launch of Women In Tech Africa in Accra, with events in six other countries including Germany, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Opoku said she wants to learn more about how she can use technology to make her business grow and to ensure she is not left behind in the technology divide.
Across Africa, this divide means women are 13% less likely to own a mobile phone and 41% less likely to use mobile internet than men.
Women In Tech Africa founder
Ethel Cofie, founder of Women In Tech Africa, an NGO that started in 2015, said addressing this gap is crucial. Her network of 5,000 women across 30 African countries is pushing the conversation about women in technology and leadership.
“There is a huge gender gap, and that is part of the conversation,” Cofie said. “When we are out here showing the world we actually exist, are doing things, what it does is, it provides avenues for us to support other women. One of the things Women in Tech has done is work with the Ghanaian Beauticians Association and Ghana traders associations. Even though these women are not necessarily as educated, they also need to be able to use tech to build their businesses.”
Cofie says the digital gap between men and women in Africa is a consequence of poverty and economic disparities. Men usually have higher incomes, and better access to mobile phones and internet data.
Education
Increasing digital access starts with education. At the G-7 summit this year, members pledged to work with developing countries to promote inclusion, equity and access for girls and women to quality education, including Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Faiza Adam, a network engineer, started Girly Tech this year to inspire underprivileged Ghanaian girls into STEM careers. She’s training young girls in web development, programming and robotics in Accra.
“Imagine where girls don’t embrace tech, then in five years to come, we have only males who are in the tech space — there is no diversity,” Adam said. “So, in the decision making, they tend to use the male, male, male ideas instead of female. So, when we have inclusion, or there is diversity — I bring my idea, and the guy also brings his idea from the male perspective — we come together and solve societal problems.”
Cofie and Adam both say more women in tech will mean more problems solved in their own communities. But Cofie adds that half the battles — like the gender divide — could be overcome with the right policies in place.
Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has for the first time called for President Donald Trump to be impeached.
“Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation, and committed impeachable acts,” former Vice President Biden said in New Hamshire on Wednesday.
Trump responded on Twitter. “So pathetic to see Sleepy Joe Biden, who with his son, Hunter, and to the detriment of the American Taxpayer, has ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars, calling for my impeachment – and I did nothing wrong. Joe’s Failing Campaign gave him no other choice!,” he said, without elaborating on the allegations of ripping off two countries for millions of dollars.
So pathetic to see Sleepy Joe Biden, who with his son, Hunter, and to the detriment of the American Taxpayer, has ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars, calling for my impeachment – and I did nothing wrong. Joe’s Failing Campaign gave him no other choice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2019
The White House has said it will not participate in what it calls the “unconstitutional” impeachment inquiry into Trump.
White House lawyer Pat Cipollone sent an eight-page letter to House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are looking into whether Trump broke the law by urging Ukraine to investigate Biden.
Cipollone accuses the Democrats of violating “fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.”
He says they are denying Trump the opportunity to question witnesses and see the evidence they are using to decide whether he should be impeached.
“All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent,” Cipollone wrote, adding that inquiry is baseless, partisan, and an attempt to toss out the results of the 2016 presidential election.
If a majority in the House of Representatives were to approve articles of impeachment against Trump, there would then be a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate where the president’s legal team would have the chance to present a defense.
Pelosi responded to the White House late Tuesday, calling the letter “manifestly wrong … the latest attempt to cover up his (Trump’s) betrayal of our democracy and to insist that the president is above the law.”
Pelosi warned that any more efforts to “hide the truth of the president’s abuse of power” will be seen as more evidence of obstruction.
Trump again denounced the impeachment inquiry, tweeting early Tuesday it is “A Total Scam by the Do Nothing Democrats” and that the whistleblower has “been so incorrect about my ‘no pressure’ conversation” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A Total Scam by the Do Nothing Democrats. For the good of the Country, this Wirch Hunt should end now! https://t.co/G2nPapozye
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2019
The Whistleblower’s facts have been so incorrect about my “no pressure” conversation with the Ukrainian President, and now the conflict of interest and involvement with a Democrat Candidate, that he or she should be exposed and questioned properly. This is no Whistleblower…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2019
A whistleblower complaint about a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy helped trigger a House of Representatives impeachment investigation of Trump last month.
The White House has demanded Pelosi bring the impeachment inquiry to a full vote before the entire House of Representatives if the committees want any cooperation from Trump officials.
But there is no rule preventing the House from looking into allegations of illegal activity of a president before deciding whether to bring actual articles of impeachment to a vote.
The White House letter comes after another move by the Trump administration that Democratic leaders call obstruction.
The State Department refused to let U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland answer questions from House committee members Tuesday.
Sondland had flown from Europe and was willing to appear. But his attorney, Robert Luskin, said Sondland “is a sitting ambassador and employee of State and is required to follow their direction.”
Luskin said Sondland was “profoundly disappointed” at not being given the chance to talk.
The Democratic chairs of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees have now subpoenaed Sondland to testify.
Trump tweeted that Sondland would have appeared before a “totally compromised kangaroo court where Republican rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public to see.”
Sondland, a Trump donor, was one of several diplomats who advised the Ukrainian leadership about how to carry out Trump’s demands after his July phone call with Ukraine’s Zelenskiy. During that call, Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Biden for alleged corruption tied to his son Hunter Biden’s job with a Ukrainian gas company
According to a U.S. intelligence whistleblower, Sondland and other diplomats exchanged a series of text messages in which the diplomats wondered why roughly $400 million in badly needed aid to Ukraine was frozen.
Reports say there was a five-hour-long gap between text messages, during which Sondland telephoned Trump.
The next message assured one diplomat there was no “quid pro quo” of any kind with Ukraine, followed by Sondland writing, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.”
Democrats want to know what happened in those five hours and why the text messages came to a sudden halt.
Calm prevailed in Iraq on Wednesday after a week of anti-government protests left more than 100 dead, prompting the United States to call on the country’s government to exercise “maximum restraint”.
In Baghdad – the second most populous Arab capital – normal life has gradually resumed since Tuesday.
Traffic has again clogged the main roads of the sprawling city of nine million inhabitants. Students have returned to schools, whose reopening was disrupted by the violence.
On Tuesday, security restrictions were lifted around Baghdad’s Green Zone, where government offices and embassies are based.
Iraq descended into violence last week as protests that began with demands for an end to rampant corruption and chronic unemployment escalated with calls for a complete overhaul of the political system.
The demonstrations were unprecedented because of their apparent spontaneity and independence in a deeply politicized society.
Protesters were met with tear gas and live fire. On Sunday night, scenes of chaos engulfed Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of influential Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who called for the government to resign.
At least 13 demonstrators died in Sadr City, where the military recognized “excessive force outside the rules of engagement” had been used.
‘Tragic loss of life’
According to official figures, the week of violence in Baghdad and across southern Iraq killed more than 100 people, mostly protesters but including several police, with more than 6,000 others wounded.
Uncertainty over the identify of the perpetrators persists, with authorities blaming “unidentified snipers”.
Amnesty International said Wednesday that the authorities’ pledge to set up an investigation into the deaths was “already ringing hollow as protesters continue to be harassed and threatened into silence”.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has condemned the violence.
During a call with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, Pompeo said “those who violated human rights should be held accountable”, the State Department said in a statement.
“The secretary lamented the tragic loss of life over the past few days and urged the Iraqi government to exercise maximum restraint.
“Pompeo reiterated that peaceful public demonstrations are a fundamental element of all democracies, and emphasized that there is no place for violence in demonstrations, either by security forces or protesters.”
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also called Abdel Mahdi to express worry over the violence.
“I raised concerns about the response to recent protests – the need to respect peaceful protest & media freedoms,” he wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
Internet shutdown
While calm has returned to the country, uninterrupted internet access has not.
Cyber-security NGO NetBlocks blamed the state for imposing “a near-total telecommunication shutdown in most regions, severely limiting press coverage and transparency around the ongoing crisis.”
For a week, internet access has been progressively limited. First, access to certain social media sites disappeared, followed by internet connections for telephones, computers and even virtual private network (VPN) applications.
Since Tuesday, connection had intermittently returned to Baghdad and the south of the country.
But on Wednesday, NetBlocks reported on Twitter that the internet was “cut again across most of #Iraq”, adding that social media and mobile services were “highly disrupted”.
Providers had told customers earlier in the day they were unable to provide a timetable for a return to uninterrupted service, information on restrictions, or any other details.
Iraqi authorities have not commented on the restrictions, which according to NetBlocks have affected three quarters of the country. In the north, the autonomous Kurdish region has remained unaffected.
The tentative calm returning to Baghdad comes ahead of Arbaeen, the massive pilgrimage this month that sees millions of Shiite Muslims walk to the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.
Nearly two million came last year from neighboring Iran, which has urged citizens to delay their travel into Iraq in light of the protest violence.
Its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday “enemies” were trying to drive a wedge between Tehran and Baghdad, in an apparent allusion to the protests.
The demonstrations and accompanying violence have created a political crisis in a country torn between its two main allies – Iran and the United States.
With political rivals accusing each other of allegiance to foreign powers, President Barham Saleh called Monday for “sons of the same country” to put an end to the “discord”.
He called for a “national, all-encompassing and frank dialogue… without foreign interference.”
Officials are working urgently to retrieve the bodies of 11 elephants that died after trying to save each other from a waterfall in a national park in central Thailand.
Park rangers had initially thought six adult elephants had died Saturday while trying to save a three-year-old calf that had slipped down the falls.
But Monday, a drone found the bodies of five more elephants in the waters below the fall in Khao Yai National Park.
Authorities have strung a net downstream to catch the bodies as they float down the fast-moving waters. There is concern that the rotting bodies will contaminate the water.
Officers expect the bodies to reach the net in a few days. The elephants will be buried and the area sealed with hydrated lime to prevent contamination, the Bangkok Post reported.
This is not the first such incident at the waterfall, known as Haew Narok (Hell’s Fall). In 1998, eight elephants died at the same site.
Park officials put up fencing to keep the wild animals away from the area, but that has not worked.
The park is home to about 300 of Thailand’s approximately 3,000 wild animals.
More than one-third of new mothers in four poor countries are abused during childbirth, a study published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.
The study, carried out in Ghana, Guinea, Myanmar and Nigeria by the World Health Organization, found that 42% of the women experienced physical or verbal abuse or some form of stigma or discrimination at maternity health facilities.
The study also found a high number of caesarean sections, vaginal exams and other procedures being performed without the patient’s consent.
Of the 2,016 women observed for the study, 14% said they were either hit, slapped or punched during childbirth. Some 38% of the women said they were subjected to verbal abuse, most often by being shouted at, mocked or scolded.
An alarming 75% had episiotomies performed without consent. The procedure involves surgically enlarging the opening of the vagina.
The authors of the study urged officials to hold those who mistreat women during childbirth accountable. They also urged the governments to put into place clear policies and sufficient resources to ensure that women have a safe place to give birth.
Among the specific steps proposed by the study are: making sure all medical procedures are performed only after getting an informed consent; allowing the patient to have a companion of their choice in the delivery room; redesigning maternity wards to offer the maximum privacy; and making sure no health facility tolerates instances of physical or verbal abuse.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday awarded one of the nation’s highest civilian honors to Edwin Meese, best known for serving as President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general.
Meese, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, had a longstanding connection to Reagan that included serving as his chief of staff when Reagan was California’s governor. After Reagan became president, Meese served as his chief policy adviser before going on to serve as the nation’s 75th attorney general.
“He was a star,” Trump said. “Ed was among President Reagan’s closest advisers as the administration implemented tax cuts, a dramatic defense buildup and a relentless campaign to defeat communism.”
Meese was an early Trump critic who ended up supporting him and helping lead his transition team. Surrounded by family and friends in the Oval Office, the 87-year-old recalled some 30 years of working with Reagan at the state and national level and in his retirement.
“Ronald Reagan was a pivotal part of my life and I am always grateful to him,” Meese said.
Meese stayed active in conservative circles following his time in the Reagan administration as an author, speaker and fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Meese resigned as attorney general in August 1988 after becoming ensnared in a probe of Wedtech Corp., a New York defense contractor. An independent prosecutor began looking at Meese’s record of assistance to Wedtech. A 14-month corruption investigation ended in a decision not to prosecute Meese, but a report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility said Meese had violated ethical standards.
Trump said Meese delivered “monumental change for the American people” as attorney general and cited the Reagan administration’s efforts against drug use, which Trump said proved successful with lower drug use by young adults.
“Would you like to make a comeback?” Trump joked before presenting Meese with the award.
About five years ago, Abdulhamid Bala narrowly escaped a brutal attack after the armed Islamist group known as Boko Haram invaded the remote community of Gwoza where he lived with his family in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State.
“Many Boko Haram members infiltrated the community but there were about 10 of them chasing us on motorcycles. They were shooting at us sporadically,” Bala told VOA.
Boko Haram had struck Gwoza several times and in August 2014, the insurgents completely overran the town, declaring it their headquarters.
In the midst of the chaos, Hamid ran into the mountains surrounding Gwoza losing sight of his father and younger brother. They’ve been missing ever since. Hamid reported his missing relatives to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
An epidemic
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says their highest caseload of missing persons in the world is currently in Nigeria.
Nearly 22,000 Nigerians have been reported as missing and 90% of the cases are linked to the Boko Haram insurgency, the Red Cross reports.
The armed sect declared war on the Nigerian government in 2009, with the goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate.
It’s estimated that 2 million people have been displaced by the conflict and many ran to the Borno state capital of Maiduguri to seek safe haven.
Bala also fled to Maiduguri, about 140 kilometers northwest of Gwoza. He lives with his wife in the city’s largest refugee camp Bakassi, with more than 43,000 others. At the sprawling camp, many people have stories about being separated from a relative.
Children are especially vulnerable, with nearly 60% of those in the registry minors at the time they disappeared.
“Every parent’s worst nightmare is not knowing where their child is. This is the tragic reality for thousands of Nigerian parents, leaving them with the anguish of a constant search. People have the right to know the fate of their loved ones, and more needs to be done to prevent families from being separated in the first place,” said ICRC President Peter Maurer during his visit to Nigeria last month.
But the registry of 22,000 people does not capture the complete picture on the ground, as Edward Muthoka, the head of the ICRC’s Restoring Family Links team in Maiduguri explained.
“The security situation determines where we can work and where we cannot work. So the 22,000 is the tip of the iceberg because what about the areas that we never had a chance of going to? What about the villages where something happened and everybody was wiped out?” Muthoka told VOA.
The ICRC works closely with state agencies and community leaders to carry out its work.
But the government of Borno State, the heart of the insurgency, admitted that it’s struggling to reunite families.
“When you don’t have the capacity, either in terms of human resources or in terms of institutional strength, it becomes a challenge to carry out the responsibility because we are learning from our international partners who have the expertise, especially the ICRC, the UNHCR and UNICEF,” said Ya Bawa Kolo, the executive chairperson of Borno State’s Emergency Management Agency.
The nature of the insurgency means that people have been displaced many times making it harder to find them.
The ICRC has solved 367 cases of missing persons, helping to bring closure to relatives who don’t know if a family member is dead or alive.
Aperafubu Shettima was disconnected from his family after a 2015 Boko Haram attack on his community. After being reunited, the 14-year-old is now living happily with his parents and siblings at an IDP camp in Maiduguri.
Aishatu Bulama says the ICRC helped trace three of her young children. She, too, reunited with the rest of her family earlier this year.
On the other side of the camp, Hamid is trying to cope.
Earlier this year, he was showing signs of emotional distress, withdrawing from socializing with others at the camp, said Mohammed Buba Dada, an official from the International Organization for Migration.
Dada said that some refugees with missing relatives are exhibiting symptoms of depression. He encourages them to visit the camp’s resource center, set up by IOM, where refugees can play games, do artwork and mingle with one another as a way of managing the burden of not knowing where some of their loved ones are.
There, Bala enjoys playing board games. But the games only give him temporary relief. He wants news about his father and brother. He says at this point, any news would make him feel much better.
The White House says it will not participate in what it calls the unconstitutional impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
White House lawyer Pat Cipollone sent an eight-page letter to House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are looking into whether Trump broke the law by urging Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Cipollone accuses the Democrats of violating “fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.”
He says they are denying Trump the opportunity to question witnesses and see the evidence they are using to decide whether he should be impeached.
“All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent,” Cipollone wrote, adding that inquiry is baseless, partisan, and an attempt to toss out the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Pelosi responded late Tuesday, calling the White House letter “manifestly wrong … the latest attempt to cover up his (Trump’s) betrayal of our democracy and to insist that the president is above the law.”
Pelosi warned the White House that any more efforts to “hide the truth of the president’s abuse of power” will be seen as more evidence of obstruction.
A whistleblower complaint about a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy helped trigger a House of Representatives impeachment investigation of Trump last month.
The White House has demanded Pelosi bring the impeachment inquiry to a full vote before the entire House of Representatives if the committees want any cooperation from Trump officials.
But there is no rule preventing the House from looking into allegations of illegal activity of a president before deciding whether to bring actual articles of impeachment to a vote.
The White House letter comes after another move by the Trump administration that Democratic leaders call obstruction.
The State Department refused to let U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland answer questions from House committee members Tuesday.
Sondland had flown from Europe and was willing to appear. But his attorney, Robert Luskin, said Sondland “is a sitting ambassador and employee of State and is required to follow their direction.”
Luskin said Sondland was “profoundly disappointed” at not being given the chance to talk.
Subpoena
The Democratic chairs of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees have now subpoenaed Sondland to testify.
Trump tweeted that Sondland would have appeared before a “totally compromised kangaroo court where Republican rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public to see.”
Sondland, a Trump donor, was one of several diplomats who advised the Ukrainian leadership about how to carry out Trump’s demands after his July phone call with Ukraine’s Zelenskiy. During that call, Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Biden for alleged corruption tied to his son, Hunter Biden’s job with a Ukrainian gas company
According to a U.S. intelligence whistleblower, Sondland and other diplomats exchanged a series of text messages in which the diplomats wondered why roughly $400 million in badly needed aid to Ukraine was frozen.
Reports say there was a five-hour-long gap between text messages, during which Sondland telephoned Trump.
The next message assured one diplomat there was no “quid pro quo” of any kind with Ukraine, followed by Sondland writing, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.”
Democrats want to know what happened in those five hours and why the text messages came to a sudden halt.
Also at the heart of the inquiry is whether Trump was freezing the aid in an exchange for a Biden investigation.
Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to hold up loan guarantees to Ukraine unless it stopped a corruption probe of the gas company where Hunter Biden worked.
Hunter Biden was not the target of that investigation, and there has been no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son.
Three U.S. House of Representatives committees are set to question Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on Tuesday to find out more about the interactions between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian officials.
The closed-door deposition is part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the House, which Trump on Monday again rejected as a “scam” perpetrated by Democrats who do not want him to win a second term in office next year.
Sondland has become a prominent figure in the probe because of his efforts to get Ukraine to commit to investigate Trump’s potential presidential rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter.
A whistleblower complaint that launched the impeachment inquiry says the day after Trump spoke by telephone with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sondland and U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker met with the Ukrainian leader and other political figures.
The whistleblower said that according to readouts of those meetings recounted by U.S. officials, “Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskiy.”
Speaking to reporters Monday at the White House, Trump returned to his repeated defense of the conversation with Zelenskiy as a “perfect call.” When asked if he is worried about what might emerge now that a second whistleblower has come forward, Trump replied, “Not at all.”
He described the call as “congenial” and said there was “no pressure.”
The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees have been leading the inquiry with depositions and subpoenas seeking documents from members of the Trump administration and the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
They issued fresh subpoenas Monday, demanding Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Office and Budget and Management Acting Director Russell Vought turn over documents by Oct. 15 relating to Trump’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine.
Part of the investigation includes examining whether or not Trump’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine was tied to his request for a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens.
No evidence of corruption by the Bidens in Ukraine has been found.
Iraqi President Barham Salih has condemned attacks on anti-government protesters and media after a week of demonstrations and related clashes left more than 100 people dead and 6,000 wounded.
He called those committing the violence criminals and enemies, and used a televised address Monday to call for a halt to the escalation.
Salih said Iraq had experienced enough destruction, bloodshed, wars and terrorism.
The military admitted earlier Monday to using “excessive force” in confronting protesters in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad.
The government took the step of removing security forces from the area and handing over patrols to police. Officials also pledged to hold accountable any member of the security forces who “acted wrongly.”
The protests in Baghdad and in several southern Iraqi cities have grown from initial demands for jobs and improved city services, such as water and power, to calls now to end corruption in the oil-rich country of nearly 40 million people.
Iraq’s cabinet issued a new reform plan early Sunday in an effort to respond to the protests that have taken authorities by surprise.
After meeting through the night Saturday, cabinet officials released a series of planned reforms, which addressed land distributions and military enlistments as well as increasing welfare stipends for poor families and training programs for unemployed youth.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi told his cabinet late Saturday in televised remarks that he is willing to meet with protesters and hear their demands. He called on the protesters to end their demonstrations.
Former Shi’ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest opposition bloc in parliament, called Friday for the government to resign and said “early elections should be held under U.N. supervision.”
This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
Published reports say a Chinese state energy company that appears to have pulled out of a natural gas project in Iran had been under pressure to do so because of U.S. sanctions against Tehran.
Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh announced the departure of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) from the joint venture to develop Iran’s South Pars offshore gas field in comments Sunday reported by his ministry’s website.
Zanganeh said Iranian company Petropars, which originally had partnered with CNPC and France’s Total on the project, will develop the gas field on its own.
Total initially held a 50.1% stake in the joint venture announced in 2017, while CNPC had 30% and Petropars had 19.9%. Total withdrew from the project in August 2018 as the U.S. began reimposing sanctions on Iran to pressure it to negotiate a new deal to end its nuclear and other perceived malign activities.
Neither CNPC nor the Chinese government made any comment about the South Pars project on Monday, a public holiday in China.
But a Wall Street Journal report said CNPC executives previously had acknowledged that the company was struggling to find banks to transfer funds to Iran due to U.S. pressure. The article said CNPC’s own bank, Bank of Kunlun, had told customers that it was no longer processing trades with Iran while publicly asserting that it intended to keep its business with Tehran going.
The South China Morning Post reported that CNPC also “could have cause for concern when it comes to (U.S.) sanctions” because the company’s website says it has a four-year-old U.S.-based subsidiary that has made a “significant financial investment” in the United States.
The Trump administration has been unilaterally toughening sanctions on Iran since last year, calling on other nations not to do business with its energy and financial sectors and imposing secondary sanctions on foreign companies and individuals who defy those warnings.
U.S. officials sanctioned several Chinese shipping companies and executives last month for importing Iranian oil in defiance of a total ban on Iranian oil exports imposed by the U.S. in May.
A Bloomberg report said CNPC’s role in the South Pars project had been uncertain for several months. It said Zanganeh had complained in February that CNPC had not carried out any of its share of the work. The report said CNPC was in negotiations to remain a partner in the project as recently as August, according to the head of Iran’s Pars Oil and Gas Co.
The leading candidate to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister attacked him Wednesday during the second debate of the campaign, calling him a phony and fraud who can’t even recall how often he’s worn blackface.
Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer said Trudeau doesn’t deserve to govern Canada. Trudeau is seeking a second term in the Oct. 21 elections.
“Justin Trudeau only pretends to stand up for Canada,” Scheer said. “You know, he’s very good at pretending things. He can’t even remember how many times he put blackface on, because the fact of the matter is he’s always wearing a mask.”
The blackface controversy surfaced last month when Time magazine published a photo showing the then-29-year-old Trudeau at an Arabian Nights party in 2001 wearing a turban and robe with dark makeup on his hands, face and neck. Trudeau was dressed as a character from “Aladdin.”
Trudeau said he also once darkened his face for a performance in high school. A brief video surfaced of Trudeau in blackface as well when he was in his early 20s. Trudeau has said he can’t give a number for how many times he wore blackface because he didn’t remember the third incident.
The controversy made global headlines but hasn’t led to a drop in the polls for Trudeau, who has been admired by liberals around the world for his progressive policies in the Trump era.
Trudeau has long championed multiculturalism and immigration. Half of Trudeau’s Cabinet is made up of women, four are Sikhs, and his immigration minister is a Somali-born refugee.
Trudeau accused Scheer of hiding his campaign platform, which he hasn’t released yet. And he accused the Conservative leader of wanting to impose cuts like the unpopular Conservative premier of Ontario has done.
Scheer took every opportunity to attack Trudeau after a rough week for the Conservative leader that led to a dip in the polls. The Globe and Mail reported last week that Sheer holds dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship. Scheer said he only renounced his American citizenship in August. The process could take up to 10 months so Scheer could be the first American to become Canada’s prime minister.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday his administration’s proposal to boost the biofuels market next year would bring the amount of corn-based ethanol mixed into the nation’s fuel to about 16 billion gallons (60.6 billion liters).
“We’ve come to an agreement and its going to be, I guess, about, getting close to 16 billion … that’s a lot of gallons. So they should like me out in Iowa,” he told a news conference.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program currently requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year, but the corn lobby has said the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of waivers means the actual volumes blended are lower than that.
Trump’s EPA unveiled the plan here last week to boost U.S. biofuels consumption to help struggling farmers, but did not provide an exact figure. The plan cheered the agriculture industry but triggered a backlash from Big Oil, which views biofuels as competition.
The deal is widely seen as an attempt by Trump, who faces a re-election fight next year, to mend fences with the powerful corn lobby, which was outraged by the EPA’s decision in August to exempt 31 oil refineries from their obligations under the RFS. That freed the refineries from the requirement to blend biofuels or buy credits from those who do.
Biofuel companies, farmers and Midwest lawmakers complain such waivers undercut demand for corn, which is already slumping because of the U.S. trade war with China. Oil refiners say the waivers protect blue-collar jobs and have no real impact on ethanol use.
The RFS was intended to help farmers and cut U.S. reliance on foreign energy imports, but has become a constant source of conflict between the oil and corn industries – two crucial constituencies heading into next year’s election.
Students in Bangladesh staged protests and blocked major roads Monday after an undergraduate was beaten to death, allegedly by ruling party activists, for criticizing the government over a water-sharing deal with India.
Protests broke out at several universities in Dhaka and the northern city of Rajshahi following the killing of Abrar Fahad of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
Students chanted slogans demanding “justice” and blocked major roads in the two cities. Teachers joined some of the protests.
Dhaka deputy police commissioner Munstasirul Islam told AFP that Fahad was beaten to death and that ruling party activists were in custody for questioning.
His body was found in his university dormitory and media quoted other residents as saying that members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League had interrogated and beaten him.
Ashikul Islam Bitu, a vice-president of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), told NTV that Fahad had been questioned over alleged links to an Islamist party’s youth group.
Hours earlier, Fahad put up a post on Facebook that went viral. In it, he criticized the government for signing an accord that allowed India to take water from a river that lies on the boundary the two countries share.
The BCL has earned notoriety following accusations that its members used killings, violence and extortion to end major anti-government student protests last year.
Those protests were sparked by anger over road safety after a student was killed by a speeding bus.
Last month the BCL president and general secretary were sacked over allegations they tried to extort money from the head of a state-run university.
A federal judge has rejected President Donald Trump’s challenge to the release of his tax returns for a New York state criminal probe.
Judge Victor Marrero ruled Monday. He said he cannot endorse such a “categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.”
The returns had been sought by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. His office is investigating the Trump Organization’s involvement in buying the silence of two women who claimed to have had affairs with the president.
Trump’s lawyers have said the investigation is politically motivated and that the quest for his tax records should be stopped because he is immune from any criminal probe as long as he is president.