Day: December 14, 2019

The promise of reparations  to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened new territory in a reckoning at U.S. colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes and public apologies. 

Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions. 

While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions received from the slavery economy are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream. 

The country has been discussing reparations in one way or another since slavery officially ended in 1865. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave, launching the violence afflicted on black people to prop up the Southern economy.

University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton said he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery but that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education. 

“It doesn’t have to be trillions of dollars … but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans and really everybody else, because this is an American-made institution. We didn’t immigrate here,” said Clinton, a descendant of slaves who lives in Bay Shore, New York. 

A majority of Georgetown undergraduates voted in April for a nonbinding referendum to pay a $27.20-per-semester “Reconciliation Contribution” toward projects in underprivileged communities that are home to some descendants of 272 slaves who were sold in 1838 to help pay off the school’s debts. 

Georgetown President John DeGioia responded in October with plans instead for a university-led initiative, with the goal of raising about $400,000 from donors, rather than students, to support projects like health clinics and schools in those same communities.

Elsewhere, discussions of reparations have been raised by individual professors, like at the University of Alabama, or by graduate students and community members, like at the University of Chicago. 

At least 56 universities have joined a University of Virginia-led consortium, Universities Studying Slavery, to explore their ties to slavery and share research and strategies. 

In recent years, some schools, like Yale University, have removed the names of slavery supporters from buildings. New monuments have gone up elsewhere, including Brown University’s Slavery Memorial sculpture — a partially buried ball and chain — and the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers under construction at the University of Virginia. 

“It’s a very diffused kind of set of things happening around the nation,” said Guy Emerson Mount, an associate professor of African American history at Auburn University. “It’s really important to pay attention to what each of these are doing” because they could offer learning opportunities and inform national discussions on reparations. 

Virginia Theological Seminary in September announced a $1.7 million endowment fund in recognition of slaves who worked there. It said annual allocations would go toward supporting African American clergy in the Episcopal church and programs that promote justice and inclusion.

The Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey followed with a $27.6 million endowment after a historical audit revealed that some founders used slave labor. 

“We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce,” seminary President M. Craig Barnes said in October. 

In an October letter to Harvard University’s president, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister noted the developments at Georgetown and the seminaries and asked the Ivy League school to consider how it could make amends for the oppression of Antiguan slaves by a plantation owner whose gift endowed a law professorship in 1815. Harvard’s president wrote back that the school is determined to further explore its historical ties to slavery. 

Harvard in 2016 removed a slave owner’s family crest from the law school seal and dedicated a plaque to four slaves who lived and worked on campus.

At the University of Buffalo, some have urged the public school to consider the responsibility it bears having been founded by the 13th U.S. president, Millard Fillmore, who signed the Fugitive Slave Act to help slave owners reclaim runaways. Students have not formally raised the idea of reparations, according to a school spokesman, but they led a discussion on the topic as part of Black Solidarity Week last month. 

William Darity, a Duke University public policy professor and an expert on reparations, said the voices of college students have helped bring attention to reparations in a way that hasn’t been seen since Reconstruction.

But he has warily watched what he sees as a piecemeal approach to an issue he believes merits a congressional response. 

“I don’t want anybody to be under the impression that these constitute comprehensive reparations,” Darity said. 

Supporting a reparations program for all black descendants of American slaves “would be the more courageous act,” he said. 

Few Americans support reparations, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. It showed that only 29% say the government should pay cash reparations to descendants of enslaved black people. 

University of Buffalo associate professor Keith Griffler, who specializes in African and African American studies, said he sees the cusp of a movement on college campuses. 

“And it’s probably not surprising that some of the wealthier private institutions have been the first to take those kinds of steps, because public universities still have their funding issues. 

“The conversations, just acknowledging these kinds of things,” Griffler said, “I think would go a long way toward making students feel that at least their voices are being heard.” 

…

Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about.

Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London.

In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”

Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K.

In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party’s “emphatic” victory showed that “the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is different to that chosen by the rest of the U.K.”

The SNP has campaigned for decades to make Scotland independent and almost succeeded in 2014, when Scotland held a referendum on seceding from the U.K. The “remain” side won 55% to 45%.

At the time, the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. But the SNP argues that Brexit has changed everything because Scotland now faces being dragged out of the EU against its will.

Sturgeon said Friday that Johnson “has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the EU” and Scotland must be able to decide its future in a new independence referendum.

Johnson insists he will not approve a referendum during the current term of Parliament, which is due to last until 2024. Johnson’s office said the prime minister told the Scottish leader on Friday that “the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected.”

The Scotsman newspaper summed up the showdown Saturday with front page face-to-face images of Sturgeon and Johnson: “Two landslides. One collision course.”

“What we’ve got now is pretty close to a perfect storm,” said historian Tom Devine, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He said the U.K. is facing an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” as Johnson’s refusal to approve a referendum fuels growing momentum for Scottish independence.

Politically and legally, it’s a stalemate. Without the approval of the U.K. government, a referendum would not be legally binding. London could simply ignore the result, as the Spanish government did when Catalonia held an unauthorized independence vote in 2017.

Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based political analyst, said Sturgeon “has said that she doesn’t want a Catalonia-style referendum. She wants to do this properly.”

There’s no clear legal route to a second referendum if Johnson refuses, though Sturgeon can apply political and moral pressure. Diffley said the size of the SNP’s win allows Sturgeon to argue that a new referendum is “the will of the people.”

Sturgeon said that next week she will lay out a “detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”

Devine said the administrations in Edinburgh and London “are in a completely uncompromising condition” and that will only make the crisis worse.

“The longer Johnson refuses to concede a referendum, the greater will the pro-independence momentum in Scotland accelerate,” he said. “By refusing to concede it, Johnson has ironically become a recruiting sergeant for increased militant nationalism.”

Northern Ireland has its own set of political parties and structures largely split along British unionist/Irish nationalist lines. There, too, people feel cast adrift by Brexit, and the political plates are shifting.

For the first time this week, Northern Ireland elected more lawmakers who favor union with Ireland than want to remain part of the U.K.

The island of Ireland, which holds the U.K.’s only land border with the EU, has proved the most difficult issue in Brexit negotiations. Any customs checks or other obstacles along the currently invisible frontier between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland would undermine both the local economy and Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The divorce deal struck between Johnson and the EU seeks to avoid a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules, which means new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

“Once you put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s going to be part of a united Ireland for economic purposes,” Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, told the BBC. “That will increase the tendency toward a united Ireland for political reasons, too.

“I think there is a good chance there will be a united Ireland within 10 years.”

In Scotland, Devine also thinks the days of the Union may be numbered.

“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think it’s more likely than not that the U.K. will come to an end over the next 20 to 30 years.

…

North Koreans with disabilities may face disproportionate risk due to efforts to curtail the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs. 

Some humanitarian aid groups providing medical, educational and material support to people with physical, sensory and other developmental impairments say United Nations sanctions, as well as the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, are limiting their ability to carry-out work in North Korea.  

Amid those restrictions, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are abandoning their programs altogether. 

Multiple sources involved in aid work tell VOA that Humanity & Inclusion (HI) is ceasing its North Korea operations. The French/Belgian organization, also known as Handicap International, has been active in the country since 2001 and works in conjunction with the state-run Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled, according to the non-profit’s website. 

HI declined to respond to VOA’s request for confirmation. 

North Korea’s opacity and the reluctance of many NGOs to publicly discuss their work there make it difficult for outside observers to obtain a full picture of the situation.  

But, Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, who lectures in humanitarian studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, says the “detrimental impact of sanctions” is primarily responsible for the departure of international organizations, like HI, from North Korea.

She explains that while humanitarian activity in North Korea is permitted under the sanctions, the lengthy process of applying for exemptions from member states and the UN Sanctions Committee as well as blocks on financial transactions lead to the erosion of partnerships that these organizations have spent years building with Pyongyang.   

“It’s really a tragedy,” Zadeh-Cummings says. “Because of time delays, uncertainty and difficulties in getting sanctions exemptions, those decades of trust and relations are being threatened.”

Among the relief agencies that have pulled-out or suspended work in North Korea are Finland’s Fida International, which closed its food security program earlier this year, and the Britain-based charity Save the Children, which left the country in 2017. Both organizations say the pressure brought on by sanctions forced their decisions.        

Zadeh-Cummings notes the closure of programs that benefit the disabled could be a lost opportunity.  She says that despite North Korea’s reputation as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, the regime “shows a willingness to engage” with the international community over the creation of such initiatives, which have gone from “non-existent to a space for collaboration” with aid groups in the past several years. 

“The people on the receiving end of this aid are the ones who are losing out,” due to the international sanctions, she adds.

The sanctions further complicate many NGOs’ ability to provide support for North Korea’s disabled due to a “dual use” ban on metallic objects because of concern these could end up in the hands of the country’s military. In turn, this measure could prohibit many medical supplies and adaptive equipment from entering North Korea, unless an import license and waiver are obtained, which some humanitarians say could take many months or years, if not at all. 
 
“I can’t send wheelchairs, crutches or canes because they all have metal in them,” says Sue Kinsler, whose California-based Kinsler Foundation has supported North Korean schools for the blind and has helped disabled athletes compete in recent Paralympics and other sporting events.  

She says her charity, which relies on small donations from churches in South Korea and the U.S., has not been able to raise sufficient funds or collect many donations in recent years.

“They all stopped helping me because of the sanctions,” she  says. “They’re afraid of breaking the rules.” 

Kinsler, who says she used to visit North Korea several times a year, adds that she hasn’t returned since Washington banned U.S. citizens from traveling to the country following the death of tourist Otto Warmbier in 2017. 

Some other American aid workers have obtained permits to enter North Korea to carry-out relief work. 

Dr. Kee Park, director of DPRK Programs at the Korean American Medical Association, says he travels to North Korea twice a year and performs surgeries with local physicians. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. 

Park, who lectures at Harvard and co-authored the recent report The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, says the difficulty in “navigating the regulatory hurdles” required to obtain permission to transport even the most basic of medical devices to North Korea could mean many patients will become permanently disabled.  

“If they have an injury and cannot obtain surgical care in a timely fashion they might end up with a disability,” he says, adding that sanctions could prevent performance of “simple operations” for disabling conditions such as cleft pallet, clubbed foot and cataracts. 

Park says that despite the lack of new surgical instruments, North Korean doctors are “masters at maximizing the utility of their medical supplies.”

“They reuse as much as possible until things become unusable,” he says. 

“Collateral damage” 

North Korea has given Washington an end of year deadline to drop what Pyongyang calls a “hostile policy” in order to resume stalled denuclearization talks. Some observers say the North wants relief from unilateral U.S. sanctions that have reduced its capacity to earn foreign sources of income – an indication that these measures are having their intended effect. 

Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korea expert at Tufts University, writes in an email to VOA that “targeted financial sanctions are a potent and fine-tuned, non-lethal instrument of coercion.”

Lee notes that while sanctions are not a “perfect instrument”, he argues that humanitarian concern should instead focus on the Kim regime’s “perverse priorities” as the root cause of the North Korean people’s “misery and hunger.” 

“There will invariably be negative trickle down effects on the innocent people and in procedural aspects related to the delivery of aid,” Lee writes.

Andray Abrahamian, a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Incheon, South Korea campus, agrees that North Korea is “unable or unwilling” to care for many of its citizens, including people with disabilities, and so has largely outsourced this responsibility to international aid groups. 

But Abrahamian, who previously worked for a North Korea-focused NGO, says the livelihood of this already disadvantaged population will continue to decline if recipients of humanitarian support  are seen as “collateral damage.”   

“The further you are away from political power the more vulnerable you are to sanctions-imposed scarcity,” he says.

…

UN investigators accused Chile’s police and army of indiscriminate violence and gross violations, including torture and rape, in crushing recent mass protests over social and economic grievances.

An investigative team from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a 30-page report expressing alarm at the excessive use of force by security agents.     It said Chile’s violent crackdown on protesters resulted in the reported deaths of dozens of people, a high number of injuries, and the arbitrary detentions of thousands of demonstrators.

Chile’s Office of the Public Prosecutor says it is investigating 26 deaths.   The report holds state agents responsible for many of these deaths, noting that live ammunition was used in some cases.  

The Chilean Ministry of Justice reports that nearly 5,000 people, more than half of whom were police officers, have been injured during the protests.  UN sources say the number of injured is higher than that cited by government officials.  They accuse state agents of unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons, such as anti-riot shotguns, during peaceful demonstrations.

Imma Guerras-Delgado headed the mission to Chile, which took place in the first three weeks of November.  She said the demonstrations that have been occurring since mid-October were triggered by multiple causes, including social and economic inequality.

“The majority of those who have exercised the right to assembly during this period have done so in a peaceful manner,” Guerras-Delgado said. “We have found that the overall management of assemblies by the police was carried out in a fundamentally repressive manner.”  

Guerras-Delgado said the mission is particularly concerned by the use of pellets containing lead.  She said hundreds of people suffered eye injuries, causing blindness in a number of cases, and condemned the brutal suppression of peaceful nationwide protests by the police and army.

“Human rights violations documented by OHCHR [Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] include the excessive or unnecessary use of force that led to unlawful killings and injuries, arbitrary detentions and torture and ill treatment,” she said.   

Among its recommendations, the report urges Chile to immediately end the indiscriminate use of anti-riot shotguns to control demonstrations.  It also calls on the government to make sure security forces adopt measures to guarantee accountability for human rights violations and to prevent the recurrence of similar events.

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Cameroon’s Parliament is divided over the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered for the country’s English-speaking regions as a solution to the crisis that has killed more than 3,000 people.
 
Some lawmakers who convened for the extraordinary session of Parliament on Biya’s instructions suggest that only the creation of federal states, one incorporating the country’s English-speaking regions and the other made up of the French-speaking regions, can stop the crisis. 

Others said the English-speaking regions’ special status already cedes enough power and resources to the crisis-prone areas, where separatists are fighting to create an English-speaking state

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly, told the lower house of the Parliament that Biya asked him to convene the extraordinary session  solely to examine the bill and vote it into law because Biya is determined to restore peace in the restive English-speaking regions.  

Lawmaker Njume Peter Ambang from the English-speaking South-West said the section of the bill granting a special status to the English-speaking regions could calm rising tensions for peace to return.

“It is a moment for us to leave a legacy and we should look at this particular document with a lot of seriousness and responsibility,” Ambangsaid.  “We owe Cameroonians a lot. This is the moment that I think we have to make Cameroonians to know that they elected us for their own interest.”

The bill envisages the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, public affairs management controllers and three commissioners responsible for what the bill describes as economic, health, social, educational, sports and cultural development affairs. 

It also would also create the post of a public independent conciliators, responsible for solving disputes over the functioning of regional administrations. The bill also proposes more powers for elected mayors and would give them the authority to recruit hospital staff and teachers. 

But lawmaker Henry Kemende, from the English-speaking North-West region, said the special status for the English-speaking regions will not solve the crisis because most English speakers expect the creation of a federal state recognizing the people’s cultural and linguistic diversity. He said the French-speaking regions should constitute one state while the English speakers form another in a federal republic.

“We thought that will have a bill that will admit the fact that we have failed in a unitary state and that we were going to try something different from the unitary state,” he said.

George Elanga Obam, Cameroon’s minister of decentralization, said by opting for the acceleration of decentralization, Biya is respecting proposals made by people his government consulted.

Obam said after consulting Cameroonians of all walks of life and organizing a national dialogue called by Biya, it was unanimously agreed that effective decentralization is the solution to the crisis in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions. He said the special status will make the English-speaking regions more involved in making decisions that affect their lives and contributing to their own development.

Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue this fall refused to take part, calling it a non-event. The talks  recommended that the English-speaking regions be given special status.

Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

…

Melania Trump on Friday appeared to condone her husband’s criticism of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, saying through a spokeswoman that her 13-year-old son, Barron, is in a different category than the teenage climate activist “who travels the globe giving speeches.”

“He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy,” spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in an emailed statement the day after President Donald Trump lashed out at Thunberg  because Time magazine had named her “Person of the Year.”

The first lady’s apparent acceptance of her husband’s actions stood in contrast to the work she’s doing through her “Be Best”  initiative to combat online bullying and teach children to be kind.

The president tweeted Thursday that “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!” He said it was “ridiculous” that Time had chosen her for the honor.

Trump mocked the teenage activist, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a week after the first lady tweeted angrily at Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan for mentioning Barron during her testimony as a Democratic witness at a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it,” Melania Trump tweeted.

At one point during her testimony, Karlan said that while Trump can “name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” Karlan was trying to make a point that Trump is a president and not a king. At the end of the hearing, Karlan apologized for the comment.

Grisham said the first lady will continue to use “Be Best” to help children.

“It is no secret that the president and first lady often communicate differently — as most married couples do,” Grisham said.

Former first lady Michelle Obama encouraged Thunberg, saying, “don’t let anyone dim your light.”

Michelle Obama wrote on Twitter from Vietnam, where she was traveling this week. “Like the girls I’ve met in Vietnam and all over the world, you have so much to offer us all,” she wrote. “Ignore the doubters and know that millions of people are cheering you on.”

…

Three months after being sworn into office, the civilian-led transitional government in Sudan has been trying to overcome political and economic challenges in the African country after decades under the former regime of Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled in April this year after months of popular protests against his government.   

One major objective for the new government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has been the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

During his recent visit to Washington, where he met with senior U.S. officials, Hamdok emphasized that removing his country from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism was essential for the success of the new government in carrying out necessary reforms.

“This issue has a lot of bearing on so many processes, not to mention debt and investment but also opening the country at large,” Hamdok said last week during remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“This is something, unless it is addressed, all these other processes will not take place,” he added, linking the removal of Sudan from the U.S. terrorism list to top priorities his government has taken on for the transitional period.

Sponsoring terrorism

Sudan was added to the U.S.  list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 over charges by Washington that Bashir’s Islamist government was supporting terrorism. The country was also targeted by U.S. sanctions over Khartoum’s alleged support for terror groups, including al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah.

“When Bashir took over the country [in 1989], and then the fundamentalists and Islamists gained more and more power, Sudan was harboring some very bad people, including Osama bin Laden,” said former U.S. Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, co-chair of the Sudan Task Force at the Atlantic Council, who was the U.S. chargé d’affaires to Sudan from 2011 to 2012.

“The more power the Islamists had within the government then, the more of whom we would call the bad actors [and] terrorists came to spend time in Sudan,” she told VOA.

But Sudanese officials maintain that it was the former regime that supported terrorism and that the Sudanese people shouldn’t be published for crimes committed by Bashir’s regime.

Normalized relations

Since the overthrow of Bashir, U.S. officials have expressed support for the new Sudanese government.

Earlier this month, U.S. and Sudan announced the warming of their diplomatic relations through an exchange of ambassadors for the first time in 23 years.

Pleased to announce that the United States and #Sudan have decided to initiate the process to exchange ambassadors for the first time in 23 years. This is a historic step to strengthen our bilateral relationship.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 4, 2019

This move, experts say, could be a gesture of goodwill as both sides are trying to open a new page in their relations.

“Having ambassadors in both countries will certainly make efforts to delist Sudan from the terrorism list more effective,” said al-Noor Mohammed, a Sudanese researcher based in Khartoum.

“It gives our government a great deal of legitimacy as it seeks to turn this opening into meaningful outcomes, such as the removal of Sudan from the U.S. [terrorism] list,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

Essential for Sudan’s economy

Experts believe lifting economic sanctions imposed on Sudan and removing the country from the terrorism list will significantly help alleviate economic hardships that Sudan has faced  for many years.

“The new government has inherited a country with an enormous debt of about $60 billion,” said Yousif al-Jalal, a Khartoum-based political analyst.

He told VOA that “removing the country from that list will allow Hamdok’s government to reach out to international monetary lenders to address the debt issue.”

The designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism bars the country from debt relief and financing from international financial lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Some groups such as the Sentry, an organization that monitors conflicts in Africa, have called on the U.S. government to accelerate the process of taking Sudan off the terrorism list.

Removing Sudan from the list “will help unlock essential financial support and bolster Sudan’s economic prospects,” the Sentry said in a statement Thursday.

“If it occurs in conjunction with meaningful economic, governance and human rights reforms, the prospects for economic recovery and democratic transformation in the country will grow exponentially,” it added.

U.S. conditions

U.S. officials say that one of the important steps in removing Sudan from the list is reaching a settlement with families of those killed in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Sudan’s Hamdok said in addition to settling with the victims’ families, his government was also pursuing a deal with those injured in the 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole.

Sudan is accused of providing material support to al-Qaida, which was responsible for all those attacks.

U.S. officials  have also expressed concerns about the presence of some military personnel in the newly established authority in Sudan who had ties with the former regime.

“Sudan needs to give assurances to Washington that these military people won’t have the power to take over the government at some point,” analyst al-Jalal said.

The U.S. also raised questions during Hamdok’s recent visit to Washington about Sudan’s intelligence agency and whether it has fully been transferred to a civilian leadership.

The delisting process

Removing Sudan from the U.S. State Department list requires approval from Congress after a six-month review.

“There is an interagency discussion that happens,” Yates said, adding that the State Department, Defense Department and the intelligence community discuss the outcome and “then they refer the decision to the president.”

She noted that Congress has to be notified after the process is over.

“But after a 45-day period, if the Congress does nothing, then [Sudan would be] delisted,” Yates said.

…

All seven Democratic presidential candidates who qualified for next week’s debate threatened on Friday to skip the event if an labor dispute forces them to cross picket lines on the campus hosting it. 
 
The Democratic National Committee said it was trying to come up with an “acceptable resolution” to the situation so the debate could proceed. 
 
A labor union called UNITE HERE Local 11 said it would picket as Loyola Marymount University hosted Thursday’s sixth Democratic debate of the cycle, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responded by tweeting they wouldn’t participate if that meant crossing the lines. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, environmental activist Tom Steyer and businessman Andrew Yang followed suit. 
 
“The DNC should find a solution that lives up to our party’s commitment to fight for working people. I will not cross the union’s picket line even if it means missing the debate,” Warren tweeted. 
 
Sanders tweeted, “I will not be crossing their picket line,” while Biden tweeted: “We’ve got to stand together with @UNITEHERE11 for affordable health care and fair wages. A job is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about dignity.” The other candidates used Twitter to post similar sentiments. 

Picketing began in November
 
UNITE HERE Local 11 says it represents 150 cooks, dishwashers, cashiers and servers working on the Loyola Marymount campus. It says it has been in negotiations with a food service company since March for a collective bargaining agreement without reaching a resolution, and “workers and students began picketing on campus in November to voice their concern for a fair agreement. The company abruptly canceled scheduled contract negotiations last week.” 
 
“We had hoped that workers would have a contract with wages and affordable health insurance before the debate next week. Instead, workers will be picketing when the candidates come to campus,” Susan Minato, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said in the statement. 
 
DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa said both the DNC and the university found out about the issue earlier Friday, but expressed support for the union and the candidates’ boycott, stating that DNC Chairman “Tom Perez would absolutely not cross a picket line and would never expect our candidates to either.” 
 
“We are working with all stakeholders to find an acceptable resolution that meets their needs and is consistent with our values and will enable us to proceed as scheduled with next week’s debate,” she said in a statement. 

University encourages resolution
 
Loyola Marymount said that it was not a party to the contract negotiations but that it had contacted the food services company involved, Sodexo, and had encouraged it “to resolve the issues raised by Local 11.” 
 
“Earlier today, LMU asked Sodexo to meet with Local 11 next week to advance negotiations and solutions. LMU is not an agent nor a joint employer of Sodexo, nor of the Sodexo employees assigned to our campus,” the university said in a statement. “LMU is proud to host the DNC presidential debate and is committed to ensuring that the university is a rewarding place to learn, live and work.” 
 
This is the second location site set to host the December debate. In October, the DNC announced it wouldn’t be holding a debate at the University of California-Los Angeles because of “concerns raised by the local organized labor community” and was moving the event to Loyola Marymount. 

…