About 250 Islamic State fighters have surrendered to Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province, a traditional IS stronghold. Dozens of women and children have surrendered as well. Officials told VOA they would work toward deradicalizing those of Afghan origin and eventually would unite them with their families. The Kabul government has yet to determine the fate of the non-Afghan detainees. VOA’s Zabihullah Ghazi reports.
Day: November 22, 2019
China and Pakistan urged the United States on Friday “to sift fact from fiction” before questioning their bilateral infrastructure development program, which Beijing is funding under its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The reaction came a day after a senior American diplomat spoke critically of the multibillion-dollar collaboration, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and warned it would eventually worsen Islamabad’s economic troubles and benefit only Beijing.
Speaking to an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Thursday, Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said the U.S. offered a better model that would improve the fundamentals of Pakistan’s troubled economy. She also raised questions about the transparency and fairness of CPEC projects as well as related Chinese loans Islamabad has received.
Her remarks drew a strong response from Chinese and Pakistani officials on Thursday.
Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, Yao Jing, said Wells lacked “accurate” knowledge and relied primarily on Western media “propaganda” to level the accusations.
“I would like to remind my American colleague that if you are really making this kind of allegation, please be careful, show your evidence, give me evidence; we will take action,” Yao said while addressing reporters.
He said China and Pakistan are determined to ensure the infrastructure project is free of corruption.
The Chinese diplomat said CPEC is open to investment from anywhere in the world and China would happily welcome U.S. investment in it. Yao described Wells’ remarks as astonishing, saying he had personally briefed her twice on the program during her recent visits to Islamabad.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain described the allegations by Wells as disappointing. He noted that CPEC has ensured energy security for Pakistan and set the stage for an “industrial revolution” in the next stage of the massive project, which is already in progress.
“CPEC is central to Pakistan’s future and it’s a pivot of our strategic relationship with China and for which Pakistan has benefited already. We feel she had got her facts mixed up because of unfounded media reports. So, I think it is important to sift fact from fiction,” Hussain said.
Beijing has invested around $20 billion in Pakistan over the past five years to help upgrade and build ports, roads and power plants, effectively ending nationwide crippling electricity outages.
Most of the money has come as direct foreign investment, while some has been in the form of soft loans and grants. The overall investment of CPEC is estimated to grow to around $60 billion by 2030.
Critics in the U.S. and elsewhere see China’s BRI program as a “debt trap” for countries like Pakistan, which have struggling economies that would make it difficult for them to make Chinese loan repayments. Islamabad’s repayments are due in the next few years and analysts say that process will bring the country’s depleting foreign exchange reserves under pressure.
Ambassador Yao dismissed those concerns, saying unlike Washington and West-governed lenders like the International Monetary Fund, Beijing does not offer or suspend financial loans for “political” reasons.
“China will never ever ask for these loan repayments as long as you are in need of this money. If Pakistan needs it, we keep it here,” he told the audience.
Yao took issue with the U.S. for questioning Chinese aid or loans he said were meant only to help partner nations to improve and stabilize their economies.
“The United States is the biggest loan taker from the world, and even China gave them in credit about $3 trillion,” said the Chinese envoy.
Wells noted, however, that even if loan payments are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan’s economic development potential to hamper Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reform agenda.
She said CPEC relies primarily on Chinese workers and supplies, noting that local industry does not benefit from the initiative and that CPEC is not addressing the issue of rising unemployment in Pakistan.
Yao rejected the assertions, saying CPEC has provided more than 75,000 direct jobs to Pakistani workers and is expected to create as many as 2.3 million jobs by 2030.
The Chinese envoy said the project will have built several special economic free zones by then, enabling Pakistan to improve the quantity and quality of its exports to bring home much-needed dollars to boost its foreign exchange reserves.
Yao criticized Wells for using reported estimated costs of certain projects in her speech. He said those projects were still under discussion and their final cost had not been determined.
President Donald Trump on Friday met with athletes and coaches from 22 collegiate national championship teams.
The traditional honorary White House visit for champion college and pro sports teams has become a politically-loaded event in Trump’s presidency.
Some athletes, including members of the World Cup winning women’s national soccer team, have declined invitations. Others, like the NBA Golden State Warriors and the NFL Philadelphia Eagles, have been disinvited after players criticized the president. Others have warmly embraced Trump.
Trump, an avid golfer, spent a few moments with each team Friday, but lingered a little bit longer with Stanford University’s men’s golf team. He invited all the champs to come take a peek at the Oval Office.
“So far, nobody’s turned that one down,” Trump joked.
An FBI lawyer is suspected of altering a document related to surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, a person familiar with the situation said Friday.
President Donald Trump, who has long attacked as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign, immediately touted news reports about the allegations to assert that the FBI had tried to “overthrow the presidency.”
The allegation is part of a Justice Department inspector general investigation into the early days of the FBI’s Russia probe, which was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller and resulted in charges against six Trump associates and more than two dozen Russians accused of interfering in the election. Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on Dec. 9. Witnesses in the last two weeks have been invited in to see draft sections of that document.
The release of the inspector general report is likely to revive debate about the investigation that has shadowed Trump’s presidency since the beginning. It is centered in part on the FBI’s use of a secret surveillance warrant to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“This was spying on my campaign — something that has never been done in the history of our country,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday. “They tried to overthrow the presidency.”
The allegation against the lawyer was first reported by CNN. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the conduct of the FBI employee didn’t alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of Page had a proper legal and factual basis, an official told the Post, which said the lawyer was forced out.
A person familiar with the case who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to AP only on the condition of anonymity confirmed the allegation. Spokespeople for the FBI and the inspector general declined to comment Friday.
The FBI obtained a secret surveillance warrant in 2016 to monitor the communications of Page, who was never charged in the Russia investigation or accused of wrongdoing. The warrant, which was renewed several times and approved by different judges in 2016 and early 2017, has been one of the most contentious elements of the Russia probe and was the subject of dueling memos last year issued by Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
Republicans have long attacked the credibility of the warrant application since it cited information derived from a dossier of opposition research compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose work was financed by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
“They got my warrant — a fraudulent warrant, I believe — to spy on myself as a way of getting into the Trump campaign,” Page said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox’s “Mornings with Maria” “There has been a continued cover”-up to this day. We still don’t have the truth, but hopefully, we’ll get that soon.”
FBI Director Chris Wray has told Congress that he did not consider the FBI surveillance to be “spying” and that he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. Wray said he would not describe the FBI’s surveillance as “spying” if it’s following “investigative policies and procedures.”
Attorney General William Barr has said he believed “spying” did occur, but he also made clear at a Senate hearing earlier this year that he had no specific evidence that any surveillance was illegal or improper. Barr has appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate how intelligence was collected, and that probe has since become criminal in nature, a person familiar with the matter has said.
But Trump insists that members of the Obama administration “at the highest levels” were spying on his 2016 campaign. “Personally, I think it goes all the way. … I think this goes to the highest level,” he said in the Fox interview. “I hate to say it. I think it’s a disgrace. They thought I was going to win and they said, ‘How can we stop him?’”
Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion.
The pope was on his last full day of a visit to Thailand, where the dominant culture is closely tied to Buddhism, although the Catholic minority of fewer than 1% were generally treated well in modern times.
On Friday, Francis traveled to Wat Roman, a mostly Catholic area on the outskirts of the bustling capital of Bangkok.
World War II era priest
The pope visited a modern sanctuary built in honor of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, a Thai priest who died in 1944. The son of Christian converts from Buddhism, he was arrested for ringing a church bell during a period dominated by an anti-Western government suspicious of foreign influences, such as the French colonial powers in neighboring countries.
The priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison and died of tuberculosis in a hospital where he was treated badly and denied proper care because he was Catholic.
In a talk to priests and nuns gathered in the church, Francis expressed his gratitude to those he said had offered the “silent martyrdom of fidelity and daily commitment” in the past.
In 1940, seven Catholics, including three teenage girls, were killed by Thai police in the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom. Pope John Paul II later declared them martyrs.
The World War II period and other spells of persecution are considered aberrations and today relations between Buddhists and Catholics are generally very good.
During the reign of Thailand’s King Narai 350 years ago, the Vatican formally established its “Mission de Siam.”
Although missionaries failed to achieve mass conversions, they were largely tolerated by the Buddhist majority and particularly the royal court.
Thai face of Catholicism
Since the start of his pontificate in 2013, Francis has preached that the Church should grow by attraction and not by proselytizing, or conversion campaigns.
This has provoked criticism from some conservatives who favor an aggressive approach and largely oppose what is known as “inculturation,” or adapting Church teachings to local culture.
Francis urged priests and nuns to find more ways to talk about their religion in local terms, saying he had learned “with some pain, that for many people, Christianity is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners.”
He added, “Let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”
Meeting Thai bishops in the same shrine complex later, Francis once again talked about issues such as human trafficking and exploitation.
On Thursday he condemned the exploitation of women and children for prostitution in Thailand, which is notorious for its sex tourism, saying the violence, abuse and enslavement they suffer are evils to be uprooted.
Francis was scheduled to meet leaders of other religions and celebrate a Mass in Bangkok’s Assumption Cathedral on Friday afternoon, before leaving on Saturday for Japan.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle.
The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday.
The pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 and up, will have an estimated battery range of more than 500 miles.
With the launch, Tesla is edging into the most profitable corner of the U.S. auto market, where buyers tend to have fierce brand loyalty.
Brand-loyal buyers
Many pickup buyers stick with the same brand for life, choosing a truck based on what their mom or dad drove or what they decided was the toughest model, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
“They’re very much creatures of habit,” Gordon said. Getting a loyal Ford F-150 buyer to consider switching to another brand such as a Chevy Silverado, “it’s like asking him to leave his family,” he said.
Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers.
“The needs-based truck buyer, the haulers, the towers at the worksites of the world, that’s going to be a much tougher sell,” said Akshay Anand, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book.
However, it will help Musk fill out his portfolio and offer a broader range of electric vehicles.
“Elon Musk is trying to not be one-dimensional when it comes to automotive,” said Alyssa Altman, transportation lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. “He doesn’t want to look like he only has a small selection. He wants to build a brand with a diverse offering and in doing that he wants to see where he could enter in the market.”
Electric truck competition
Musk stands to face competition when his truck hits the market. Ford, which has long dominated the pickup landscape, plans to launch an all-electric F-150 pickup. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that its battery-electric pickup will come out by the fall of 2021.
Rivian, a startup based near Detroit, plans to begin production in the second half of 2020 on an electric pickup that starts at $69,000 and has a battery range of 400-plus miles (643.7-kilometers). The Rivian truck will be able to tow 11,000 pounds (4,989.5 kilograms), go from zero to 60 mph (96.6 kph) in three seconds and wade into 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water, the company said. Ford said in April it would invest $500 million in Rivian.
Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets.
“We have yet to see Tesla really make good on some of the very tight deadlines they imposed on themselves, and this has the added challenge of having architecture that is going to be challenging because we haven’t seen an EV pickup before,” said Jeremy Acevedo, manager of industry analysis at Edmunds.
The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at an event at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, McCarthy said he ordered the assessment after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s use of the popular video app for recruiting American teenagers.
“National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy.
Schumer said he was especially concerned about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has previously emphasized its independence from China but has failed to assuage congressional concerns about the security of the personal data of U.S. citizens who use the platform and whether content on the platform is subject to any censorship from Beijing.
In a Nov. 5 blog post, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas, said that the company’s data centers “are located entirely outside of China.” She said U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore.
ByteDance is one of China’s fastest-growing startups. About 60% of TikTok’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said this year.
Earlier this year, Schumer also called on the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a national security and privacy investigation into FaceApp, a face-editing photo app developed in Russia.
The potential for the sharing of army information through the use of apps was highlighted after researchers found in 2018 that fitness-tracking app Strava was inadvertently exposing military posts and other sensitive sites.
In 2017, the Army ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.
At least eight protesters who had been holding out at a trashed Hong Kong university surrendered to police in the early hours of Friday, while others desperately searched for escape routes as riot officers surrounded the campus.
The siege at the Polytechnic University on the Kowloon peninsula appeared to be nearing an end with the number of protesters dwindling to less than 100, days after some of the worst violence since anti-government demonstrations escalated in June.
The mood on the near-deserted campus was calm as the sun rose after a night where some protesters roamed the grounds in search of undercover officers. Others hid, terrified they would be arrested by infiltrators.
“We are feeling a little tired. All of us feel tired but we will not give up trying to get out,” said a 23-year-old demonstrator who gave his name only as Shiba as he ate noodles with egg and sausage in the protesters’ canteen.
“We spent yesterday trying to find ways to get outside but failed, so we came for some breakfast,” he said.
A Reuters reporter saw six black-clad protesters holding hands walk toward police lines, while a first aid worker said two more surrendered later.
Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and are calling for full democracy, among other demands.
Beijing has said it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong is governed. It denies meddling in Hong Kong affairs and accuses foreign governments, including Britain and the United States, of stirring up trouble.
One older protester, who estimated only around 30 demonstrators remained, said some had given up looking for escape routes and were now making new weapons to protect themselves in case police stormed the campus.
The Chinese-ruled city has enjoyed two days and nights of relative calm ahead of district council elections that are to take place Sunday.
The government has said it is committed to proceeding with the elections and is monitoring the situation to ensure the election can be held safely.
All polling stations will be guarded by armed officers in riot gear for the first time in the history of local elections, the South China Morning Post reported.
Students at Syracuse University, in northern New York state, have been given permission to leave campus early for next week’s Thanksgiving break, because of a spate of racist threats on campus that have left students, staff and faculty spooked about possible violent attacks.
Meanwhile, a group of protesting students known as #NotAgainSU has staked out the student wellness center, calling for a stronger university response to the attacks. They say the school has a history of minimizing racial attacks. A group of 19 faculty members said the same, in a letter to the editor published in the university newspaper The Daily Orange.
The attacks were varied. Racist graffiti attacking African Americans and Asians had been scrawled on two separate floors of a freshman dormitory. A Nazi swastika was found carved into the snow on campus. In all, a dozen instances of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti have been found on or adjacent to the campus serving about 22,500 students.
Saturday night, a group of fraternity members on campus yelled racial epithets at an African American student. The campus newspaper reports at least one other incident in which an Asian student was verbally assaulted with a racist slur.
There were also reports that a white supremacist manifesto was deposited on student devices via AirDrop at Syracuse’s Bird Library earlier this week, although police say they have yet to find a single student who actually received the manifesto.
On Tuesday, Genevieve Garcia de Mueller, a faculty member who is both Jewish and Mexican, reported receiving an email containing an anti-Semitic message. She reported the email to campus security and canceled her classes for the day.
“I consistently see this narrative on campus that’s trying to diminish what’s happening,” she told The New York Times this week. “I don’t see a plan … for any sort of systemic change.”
University responds
Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke to the University Senate — the student decision-making body — Wednesday about the incidents. He said local police believe the graffiti is the work of between one and five people whose identities are still not clear.
The four Syracuse students who were yelling racial slurs have been suspended and all fraternities’ social events have been canceled for the rest of the semester. The manifesto story, Syverud said, seems to have been a rumor that got out of hand.
“It was apparent that this rumor was probably a hoax, but that reality was not communicated clearly and rapidly enough to get ahead of escalating anxiety,” he said. “These incidents have caused students rightly to be afraid.”
The chancellor said he has asked university officials to relax school rules and schedules to allow students to cope with their emotions and still complete the semester’s work. He also said the university has formed response teams that will, in the future, be available around the clock for such incidents as they occur.
He also announced the school will allocate at least $1 million for a new curriculum on diversity issues.
Students want more
For many students, however, that is not enough.
Jewel Jackson, a junior and columnist for The Daily Orange, wrote recently: “These ‘solutions’ are attempts by the university to save face and only convey to the students of color that SU officials don’t care about us.”
She said the university has failed to react strongly enough to similar incidents in the past.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed. On Tuesday, he said the university’s response was not enough and called on its board of trustees to hire an independent monitor.
Alum Lindsey Decker tweeted on Tuesday: “I witnessed racist incidents at Syracuse as a grad student. As an alum who is no longer in the precarious position of being an adjunct or student at the university, I feel I can finally publicly use my voice.” She was apologizing for the number of tweets and retweets she had posted about the situation at Syracuse.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who attended law school at Syracuse, tweeted Wednesday that he was “deeply disturbed” by the news from his alma mater. He added: “We are truly in a battle for the soul of this nation, and it requires all of us to stand up together as a country against racism and bigotry.”
I am deeply disturbed by the news coming out of my law school alma mater, Syracuse University. We are truly in a battle for the soul of this nation, and it requires all of us to stand up together as a country against racism and bigotry. We must give hate no safe harbor. https://t.co/m6BNczblXY
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 20, 2019
Students have said they are afraid to walk alone on campus. The school’s department of public safety has increased its patrols and added shuttle services and safety escorts to protect students traversing the campus. Some professors have canceled classes or held them online.
New: #NotAgainSU protesters plan to donate their stockpiled food to local food pantries tonight and tommorow. The students still say they haven’t come to a final decision on the future of their sit-in at Syracuse University’s Barnes Center. @CitrusTVNewspic.twitter.com/0DonszzR4L
— Ricky ”Reports” Sayer (@RickyReports) November 21, 2019
Reports from campus say it is unusually quiet, as many students have gone home early for the Thanksgiving holiday. The crowd of students occupying the wellness center is reported to have thinned out. Student journalist Ricky “Reports” Sayer tweeted late Thursday that the protesters plan to donate their stockpiled food to local food pantries.
But he noted that doesn’t necessarily mean their protest is over.