Economy and business news. Business is the practice of making one’s living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It’s also “any activity or enterprise entered into for profit.” A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business
The nation’s worst measles epidemic in 27 years could be in its final stages as a week went by with no new reported cases.
“To get to zero is tremendously encouraging,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University expert on vaccination policy.
The current epidemic emerged about a year ago and took off earlier this year, with most of the cases reported in Orthodox Jewish communities in and around New York City. It started with travelers who had become infected overseas but spread quickly among unvaccinated people.
In the spring, 70 or more new cases were being reported every week. Not long ago, the nation that saw that many measles cases in a whole year.
So far this year, 1,241 cases have been confirmed — a number that didn’t rise last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday. The last time the CDC reported no new measles cases was 11 months ago.
New York officials responded to the explosion of measles cases with a wave of measures, including education campaigns to counter misinformation about vaccine safety and fines for people who didn’t get vaccinated.
The epidemic has threatened the Unites States’ nearly 2-decade-old status as a nation that has eliminated measles. The status could come to an end if the disease spreads among Americans for a year or more. Other countries, including Greece and the United Kingdom, recently lost their elimination status amid a global surge in the disease.
Measles outbreaks are typically declared over when 42 days pass without a new infection. If no new cases crop up, the national outbreak would likely end on or about Sept. 30 — just before officials might have to decide on the U.S. elimination status.
The loss of elimination status in the U.S. could take the steam out of measles vaccination campaigns in other countries, said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert.
Health ministers around the world might say, “Why should we strive for elimination? We’ll just do the best we can to control measles, but we won’t go the extra several miles to get to zero,” Schaffner said.
World leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday in New York, must make nuclear arms control a priority, according to a group of over 100 political, military and diplomatic figures. They have issued a statement warning that the risks of nuclear accident, misjudgment or miscalculation have not been higher since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
The Islamic State terror group has issued a new audio recording , claiming to show the group’s reclusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi encouraging his supporters and fighters to conduct more military operations and engage in more propaganda.
The recording, posted to the internet Monday by IS’s al-Furqan media division, also calls on IS supporters not to forget about Muslims being held in prisons and refugee camps.
U.S. officials have yet to comment on the purported recording.
Earlier this year, the terror group released a video of the man it claimed was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seeking revenge for the fall of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate In Iraq and Syria.
Before that, the 48-year-old Baghdadi had not been seen since he gave a sermon at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, in July 2014.
The lack of public appearances and the sporadic messages attributed to him had led to speculation about his whereabouts, while also sparking numerous rumors of his death. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have long believed Baghdadi is alive and hiding in remote areas of Syria or Iraq where IS remains entrenched, possibly with local support.
Since 2016, the United States has offered a reward of up to $25 million for information that helps bring Baghdadi to justice. Only one other person, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, has a reward that high.
A watery grave of old sunken ships has been designated the newest national marine sanctuary in the United States. Located in Maryland about 60 kilometers south of Washington, the “ghost fleet” rises like an apparition out of the water when the tide is low. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to this underwater park with ships going back more than one hundred years.
U.S. News & World Report published its first “America’s Best Colleges” report in 1983, and many schools use those rankings to promote themselves. However, some educators have questioned the published rankings and how useful they are.
Experts rank college rankings
Ray Anderson is a former high school principal who works with AGM-College Advisors in Virginia. Anderson says that while he uses the rankings and talks with students about the results, what’s more important is knowing what the student wants, likes and is capable of doing.
“The focus is on who you are, and then what schools match you,” Anderson said, “not matching you to the school.”
Jeffrey Stahl, a Virginia high school counselor, agrees that rankings have limited value.
He said the rankings “can be helpful,” but that some students pay too much attention to the name of a school and its position in rankings.
“So much about the campus environment, students, professors, cannot be shown just by ranking,” Stahl said. He suggests that families use the ranking information as a starting point. Then, they should widen their search, make their own list, and go see the colleges for themselves.
David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, is more critical of the way college rankings are used, saying rankings “are not mathematically proven to measure the quality of any single college, much less to provide comparisons between colleges.”
He said lower-ranked schools may have difficulty getting students interested in their programs.
“As such,” he said, “the rankings have been known to create ethical problems, as institutions misreport data or otherwise seek to manipulate their ranking.”
In July, U.S. News & World Report “de-ranked” five institutions from its list for misreporting information. Consequently, the magazine said, their ranking numbers were “higher than they otherwise would have been.”
Students must look past those ratings to a gain a broader opinion about the schools for themselves.
Hawkins noted that international applicants might think rankings come from the U.S. government, but that’s not true, he said.
“We try to emphasize that these are commercial publications, rather than official rankings of any sort,” he said.
DeMillo, whose school moved up 13 positions in Forbes’ latest list, said he believes that Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and other publications are providing a service, “if you ignore the ranking part of it.”
For example, he finds the information about all the study programs to be useful. The ratings sometimes list lesser-known schools that might be strong in a field of study that a student is interested in.
“There are so many hidden gems out there,” Stahl said. “Just because a college doesn’t make the list doesn’t mean it doesn’t have great programs and resources.”
Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said Saturday that drone attacks on two Aramco oil facilities by a Yemen Houthi militia group have cut the kingdom’s oil production in half.
Amateur video of the early morning attack in Abqaiq, in eastern Saudi Arabia, showed several blazes raging. By afternoon, video showed huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky. Saudi officials said no workers were killed or injured in the attacks.
A military spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi militia, Col. Yahya Saree, claimed responsibility Saturday for the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities and vowed to increase them if Saudi-coalition forces continued their strikes on targets inside Yemen. It was not clear, however, if the drones originated in Yemen.
Smoke is seen following a fire at an Aramco factory in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 14, 2019.
Saree said 10 (Houthi) drones hit the two oil facilities run by Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant. He said the attacks are being dubbed “Operation Balance of Terror” and are a response to what he called the “ongoing crimes of blockade and aggression on Yemen” (since the Saudi-led coalition began battling the Houthis five years ago).
Saree claimed the attack was the “largest to date” and that it “required extensive intelligence preparations,” including information from sources inside Saudi Arabia.
Later Saturday, however, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks on the Saudi oil plants, and ruled out involvement by Yemen’s Houthis.
“Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy,” Pompeo said on social media, referring to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.
Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
“Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen,” he said in a tweet.
The State Department declined to provide any evidence to bolster Pompeo’s claim, Reuters reported.
The attack on the oil processing sites in Saudi Arabia happened around 4 a.m. local time.
Residents of Abqaiq posted video of what appeared to be Saudi anti-aircraft guns firing into the air at the drones, as the attacks took place. Some Arab news channels claimed that Saudi air force early warning planes were dispatched to the country’s northern border, amid fears the drones were coming from Iraq. VOA could not independently confirm the allegations.
Khurais oil field and Buqyaq
U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia John Abizaid told Reuters news agency, “The U.S. strongly condemns today’s drone attacks against oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais. These attacks against critical infrastructure endanger civilians, are unacceptable, and sooner or later will result in innocent lives being lost.”
James Krane, a Middle East energy specialist at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Texas, told Reuters, “This is a pretty serious escalation of the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. With something like this, we might see the U.S. get dragged in. Iran is telling us, ‘You need to put us on the front burner.’
“They’re not going to be put out of the picture forever. With (former U.S. national security adviser John) Bolton out, who knows? It is hard to see that Bolton’s departure isn’t part of the calculus,” Krane added. “Iran is stepping up what they see is its defense and looking for us to make the next move, and we’ve just fired the hardest-line guy in the Cabinet.”
The attacks Saturday were the latest of many recent such assaults on the Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, and they have been the most destructive.
Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in a statement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency Saturday that the damage at the facilities led to “the temporary suspension of production operations,” affecting an estimated 5.7 million barrels of crude supplies at the Abqaiq site and the Khurais oil field.
Saudi Aramco said in the statement some of the shortage would be offset with stockpiled supplies and added it would provide additional information in the next 48 hours.
The drone assaults also led to concerns about the global oil supply and what will likely be an increase in tensions in the region.
Fires burn in the distance after a drone strike by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group on Saudi company Aramco’s oil processing facilities, in Buqayq, Saudi Arabia September 14, 2019 in this still image taken from a social media video obtained by…
Drones not likely launched in Yemen
Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, told VOA that he suspects the drones may not have been launched from inside Yemen because the Houthis don’t have drones capable of flying as far as Saudi Arabia’s eastern province. Khashan does believe, however, that forces inside the kingdom helped guide the attacks.
“There is no doubt that in order for the Houthis to land the drone on the target they need coordinates and they need someone on the ground to guide them in determining the coordinates. It sounds plausible to me that they have support on the ground in the Eastern Province,” Khashan said.
There has been some speculation that alleged Houthi drone attacks on the Saudi Yanbu pipeline last May were launched from Iraq, which is much closer to the target than Yemen. That attack damaged two oil pumping stations along the largest Saudi cross-country oil pipeline.
FILE – Saudi security guards the entrance of the oil processing plant of the Saudi state oil giant Aramco in Abqaiq in the oil-rich Eastern Province, Feb. 25, 2006.
Saturday’s attack comes as the Saudi oil giant Aramco prepares to publicly sell shares of the company, leading some analysts to speculate the attacks were meant to depress the value of the company when its shares go on the market.
Several analysts on Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV accused Iran of perpetrating Saturday’s drone attacks from bases operated by its Revolutionary Guard and local Shiite proxies from inside Iraq. VOA could not confirm the claims.
Italy has agreed to allow rescue ship Ocean Viking to disembark 82 migrants in the southern port of Lampedusa, the SOS Mediterranee charity which runs the vessel said Saturday.
“The Ocean Viking just received instructions from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre of Rome to proceed to Lampedusa,” SOS Mediterranee tweeted.
“An ad hoc European agreement between Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Luxembourg has been reached to allow the landing,” said French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, referring to the division of the migrants between the five countries.
“We now need to agree on a genuine temporary European mechanism.” Castaner added.
The Ocean Viking was on its second mission and was shuttling between Malta and Italy for nearly two weeks, seeking a port to land the migrants.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which runs the ship jointly with SOS Mediterranee, said the group comprised 58 men, six women and 18 children.
The Ocean Viking had rescued 356 migrants on its first mission.
Italy is trying to set up an automatic system for distributing migrants rescued in the Mediterranean between European countries, diplomatic sources said recently.
Such a deal would put an end to the case-by-case negotiations over who will take in those saved during the perilous crossing from North Africa, which has seen vulnerable asylum seekers trapped in limbo at sea for lengthy periods.
France and Germany have given their green light to the new system, which could also involve Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Spain, Italy’s Repubblica and Stampa dailies said.
The International Organization for Migration reports it has repatriated 127 African and Asian migrants stranded in Libya under difficult, brutal conditions.
Tripoli’s Mitiga International airport was shut down last Sunday after being hit by missiles. For safety reasons, IOM’s chartered plane with 127 migrants aboard took off earlier this week from Misrata, about a two-hour drive east of the Libyan capital.
From there, the passengers, which included women and children, flew to Istanbul and then onwards to their home countries. Missions from 15 countries in Africa and Asia, including Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Bangladesh and Egypt were involved in the complex, risky operation.
IOM spokeswoman, Safa Msehli told VOA stranded migrants is a reference to those those who either are held in Libyan detention centers or are living freely in urban areas across the country.
“In detention centers across Libya we have close to 5,000 migrants that are still detained. In Libya alone, according to IOM Libya’s DTM (Displacement Tracking Matrix), there are over 600,000 migrants, a lot of whom – not only due to the current context of war – but a lot of whom have arrived in Libya and remain without a solution,” Msehli said.
Libya’s detention centers are notorious as places where refugees and migrants are subject to horrific forms of abuse, including torture and rape, as well as the lack of sufficient food and medical care. Migrants and refugees in urban areas are vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and kidnapping for ransom.
Despite all the difficulties, IOM has succeeded in returning more than 7,200 stranded migrants to their countries of origin this year.
Upon their return, Msehli said the migrants receive a reintegration package that helps them resume their lives, continue their education or start a small business.
Pakistan said Saturday four of its soldiers were killed and another was injured when “terrorists” from across the Afghanistan border opened fire at two locations.
The deadliest of the shootings occurred in the remote Dir district where Pakistani troops were building a border fence when they came under attack from the other side, killing three soldiers and injuring another.
The military’s media wing said another soldier was killed when “miscreants” from the Afghan side ambushed a routine border patrol party late Friday in North Waziristan district. It added that two of the assailants were also killed in an exchange of fire.
Cross-border militant attacks are not uncommon on Pakistani troops constructing a fence along the country’s nearly 2,600 kilometer border with Afghanistan.
Islamabad began the unilateral fencing of the largely porous frontier two years ago to plug hundreds of informal crossings that were encouraging terrorist infiltration in both directions.
Military officials expect the massive border project will be in place by end of next year, addressing to a large extent mutual concerns of illegal crossings of both militants and drug traffickers.
Pakistan has complained that anti-state militants linked to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have taken refuge in “ungoverned” Afghan border areas after fleeing Pakistani security operations and orchestrate attacks from those sanctuaries.
Earlier this week, the United States designated TTP chief Qari Wali Noor Mehsud a global terrorist for directing deadly attacks against Pakistan.
Mehsud’s whereabouts are not known but his predecessor, Mullah Fazlullah, was killed in June of 2018 along with several key TTP commanders in an American drone strike in an eastern border region of Afghanistan.
For their part, officials in Kabul allege that leaders and fighters of the Afghan Taliban use sanctuaries on Pakistani soil to direct insurgent attacks against local and international forces.
The Ukrainian president’s envoy for peace talks with Russia-backed separatists expressed concern Friday that the leaders of France and Germany will push Ukraine to make unacceptable concessions to Russia.
Ukraine and Russia have been locked in a bitter standoff since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine. Hopes for a solution to the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 13,000 lives, were revived after political novice Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected Ukrainian president in April.
FILE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a meeting with law enforcement officers in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 23, 2019.
But his envoy, Leonid Kuchma, told The Associated Press he is concerned that France and Germany, who are mediating the talks, will push Zelenskiy to make trade-offs, such as approving a plan for the separatists to hold local elections in the areas they control without any oversight by the Ukrainian government.
“I don’t have a lot of hope,” Kuchma said when asked about a much-anticipated meeting of Zelenskiy with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany. “Zelenskiy will have a very hard time — it will be one against three people.”
As the first step toward seeking a solution to the conflict, Zelenskiy negotiated a major prisoner exchange with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which 35 people from both sides were released and flown home Saturday. Some of the prisoners had been incarcerated in Russia for five years. European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the prisoner swap as a “sign of hope” for implementing the peace accords.
Kuchma, Ukraine’s president between 1994 and 2005, said Friday that Ukraine is being asked to agree to “all the demands that Moscow is making,” including giving wide powers to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine is committed to the peace accords it signed with separatists in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in 2015, Kuchma said, but he insisted that Russia should pressure separatists to lay down their arms and allow Ukrainian troops to take control of the border first, before a political solution is discussed.
“Let’s comply with the Minsk accords,” Kuchma said. “Security comes first. You need to pull out the troops, pull out the heavy weaponry, give us back the border and then we will hold a free election.”
Thousands of Nigerians have joined a lawsuit seeking to block members of the Senate from using public money to buy luxury cars. The suit was initiated by rights groups that became tired of government corruption.
More than 6,700 Nigerians have joined suit that aims to prevent parliament from releasing 5.5 billion naira — equal to about $15 million — that would enable leaders of the Senate to purchase luxury vehicles.
Three domestic rights groups originated the suit, which was filed with the Nigerian Federal High Court.
One of the NGOs leading the lawsuit is civic organization BudgIT. It tracks government spending in an effort to fight corruption. Shakir Akorede, the group’s communications associate, spoke on the class action suit.
“This is living the luxury life by the so-called representatives of the people. How in any way does this plan show the seriousness, the commitment on the part of the government to solve our socioeconomic crisis?” Akorede asked.
The activists are calling the luxury car allocation unjust, unfair and unconstitutional, a waste of taxpayers’ money. News of the allocation spread across social media, creating widespread anger.
The Nigerian Senate’s spokesman, Dayo Adeyeye, told local media that the news is a rumor and that he hadn’t heard about the allocation. He added, however, that government officials are entitled to purchase cars and that he cannot imagine himself in a car used by a former senator.
Senators have become accustomed to purchasing new cars with every new term. But political scientist Auwul Musa says this wouldn’t happen if former senators did what they were supposed to do and return the cars they purchased while in office.
“They’re supposed to return it. They claim that they bought these cars for them to facilitate and ease their work so after you’re done with your office, you’re supposed to return and retire these vehicles and other facilities including laptops, printers,” Musa said.
Musa, who is the director the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC), headquartered in Abuja, said he does not think the lawsuit will effect any change and that Nigerian lawmakers have long abused public money.
CISLAC reported that the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has done little to curb government excesses, although Buhari campaigned on the pledge to do something about it.
Some analysts say the government should allocate such money to the police. The undermanned and underfunded police force is tasked with tackling the rise in armed banditry and kidnapping along roadways around the country.
Another factor behind the public outcry is rising poverty.
Data show the majority of Nigeria’s population lives on less than $2.00 a day.
Meanwhile, Nigerian lawmakers are among the highest paid in the world. Last year, a Nigerian senator revealed that the legislators receive a monthly package of 14.25 million naira. That’s more than $40,000 a month.
U.S. President Donald Trump has arrived in Baltimore, the eastern U.S., majority-black city he recently called a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
Trump was there Thursday to address Republican congressional leaders attending an annual retreat.
Before he left the White House, Trump ignored a reporter’s question about what he would say to the residents of the city, instead saying only that it was going to be “a very successful evening.”
Demonstrators gather near the U.S. House Republican Member Retreat where President Donald Trump is speaking, in Baltimore, Sept. 12, 2019.
Ahead of the president’s visit, activist groups planned to protest “racism, white supremacy, war, bigotry and climate change,” organizers told The Baltimore Sun.
On Thursday, several hundred protesters lined the route Trump’s motorcade took to the city’s Inner Harbor area, where Trump was to speak.
Trump has denied charges of racism on his attacks on the city and its congressman, Elijah Cummings.
“There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know, that Elijah Cummings has done a terrible job for the people of his district, and of Baltimore itself,” he tweeted in July.
With a go-ahead from the Supreme Court, the Trump administration Thursday began enforcing a new rule denying asylum to most migrants arriving at the southern border — a move that spread despair among those fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security agency that manages asylum cases said the policy would be effective retroactive to July 16, when the rule was announced.
The new policy would deny refuge to anyone at the U.S.-Mexico border who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without first seeking asylum there.
The Supreme Court cleared the way, for now, to enforce it while legal challenges move forward.
Previous asylum request is key
Migrants who make their way to the U.S. overland from places like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador would be largely ineligible, along with asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and South America who try to get in by way of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Asylum seekers must pass an initial screening called a “credible fear” interview, a hurdle that most clear. Under the new policy, they would fail the test unless they sought asylum in at least one country they traveled through and were denied. They would be placed in fast-track deportation proceedings and flown to their home countries at U.S. expense.
“Our Supreme Court is sentencing people to death. There are no safeguards, no institutions to stop this cruelty,” the immigration-assistance group Al Otro Lado said in a statement.
The Mexican government likewise called the high court’s action “astonishing.” The effects of the new policy could fall heavily on Mexico, leaving the country with tens of thousands of poor and desperate migrants with no hope of getting into the U.S.
FILE – Then-U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on migration to the U.S., April 4, 2019.
Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan called the Supreme Court’s go-ahead a “big victory” in the Trump administration’s attempt to curb the flow of migrants.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in statement the policy was important.
“Until Congress can act with durable, lasting solutions, the rule will help reduce a major ‘pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable the administration to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey,” said Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is representing immigrant advocacy groups in the case, Lee Gelernt, said: “This is just a temporary step, and we’re hopeful we’ll prevail at the end of the day. The lives of thousands of families are at stake.”
Jewish settlement construction in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has spiked since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, according to official data obtained by The Associated Press.
The data also showed strong evidence of decades of systematic discrimination, illustrated by a huge gap in the number of construction permits granted to Jewish and Palestinian residents.
The expansion of the settlements in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized along with the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, threatens to further complicate one of the thorniest issues in the conflict.
The refusal to grant permits to Palestinian residents has confined them to crowded, poorly served neighborhoods, with around half the population believed to be at risk of having their homes demolished.
Palestinian Jamil Masalmeh uses a power tool to destroy an apartment he had added to his home years earlier, in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem, Sept. 9, 2019.
Peace Now
The data was acquired and analyzed by the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, which says it only obtained the figures after a two-year battle with the municipality. It says the numbers show that while Palestinians make up more than 60% of the population in east Jerusalem, they have received only 30% of the building permits issued since 1991.
The fate of the city, which is home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is at the heart of the decades-old conflict. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state, while Israel views the entire city as its unified capital. Tensions have soared since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and moved the U.S. Embassy there, breaking with a longstanding international consensus that the city’s fate should be decided in negotiations.
Trump has argued that his recognition does not preclude a final settlement. But the Palestinians and rights groups say his unbridled support for Israel’s nationalist government has given it a free pass to tighten its grip on war-won lands sought by the Palestinians.
Peace Now found that in the first two years of Trump’s presidency, authorities approved 1,861 housing units in east Jerusalem settlements, a 60% increase from the 1,162 approved in the previous two years. The figures show that 1,081 permits for settler housing were issued in 2017 alone, the highest annual number since 2000. A total of 1,233 housing units were approved for Palestinians in 2017 and 2018, according to Peace Now.
The data did not include the number of Jewish and Palestinian applications, or the rates of approval, though many Palestinians acknowledge not applying because they say it is nearly impossible to get a permit.
Spokesmen for the Israeli government and the municipality did not respond to requests for comment.
Arduous process
The figures are for construction permits issued by the municipality, the final step of a costly bureaucratic process that can take years to complete. The figures show that since 1991, the municipality has issued 21,834 permits for housing units in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and 9,536 for Palestinian neighborhoods.
Hagit Ofran, an expert on settlements who collected and analyzed the data, says the discrepancy in permits dates to 1967, when Israel expanded the city’s municipal boundaries to take in large areas of open land that were then earmarked for Jewish settlements. At the same time, city planners set the boundaries of Palestinian neighborhoods, preventing them from expanding.
“In the planning vision of Jerusalem, there was no planning for the expansion of Palestinian neighborhoods,” she said, adding that the government has initiated almost no construction in those neighborhoods, placing the burden of planning and permits entirely on the residents themselves.
Today, about 215,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem, mostly in built-up areas that Israel considers to be neighborhoods of its capital. Most of east Jerusalem’s 340,000 Palestinian residents are crammed into increasingly overcrowded neighborhoods where there is little room to build.
Palestinians say the expense and difficulty of obtaining permits forces them to build illegally. Peace Now estimates that of the 40,000 housing units in Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, half have been built without permits.
“When you build illegally, without a permit, there’s always a chance your house will be demolished,” Ofran said.
B’Tselem, another Israeli rights group, says at least 112 housing units in east Jerusalem were demolished in the first seven months of 2019 — more than in any full year since at least 2004.
When Palestinian Jamil Masalmeh failed to secure a permit, Israeli municipal authorities gave him the option of destroying it himself or paying more than $20,000 for the city to demolish it.
‘I’ll die before I ever get a permit’
On a hot, sunny day earlier this week, Jamil Masalmeh, 59, used a crowbar and power tools to destroy an apartment he had added to his home in the Silwan neighborhood years earlier. When he failed to secure a permit, municipal authorities gave him the option of demolishing it himself or paying more than $20,000 for the city to do it.
He says he began trying to get a permit 20 years ago, when he built the extension, which consisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen, for his growing family. Eight years ago, the authorities forced him to dismantle it, but he built it again, hoping to eventually get a permit.
“Every time they tell me to get something different. Get this document or that document, get whatever we tell you to, and then in the end, they say you can’t build on this land. Why? There’s no answer,” he said. “I’ll die before I ever get a permit.”
Promoting Jewish settlement
Every Israeli government since 1967 has actively promoted settlement construction, including during the peace process with the Palestinians.
But settlement approvals have accelerated in east Jerusalem and the West Bank since Trump took office, as Israel has encountered little if any resistance from a friendly White House. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex the Jordan Valley, which makes up about a quarter of the West Bank, and other settlements there if his party wins next week’s elections.
The Palestinians cut off all ties with the Trump administration after the Jerusalem decision and have rejected a peace plan the president has promised to release, saying the administration is marching in lockstep with Israel’s right-wing government. The Palestinians and much of the international community have long seen settlements as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. Israel says the settlement issue should be resolved in negotiations and blames the lack of progress on Palestinian intransigence.
With peace efforts stalled and little hope for an independent state anytime soon, the Palestinians who remain in east Jerusalem are left to endure its crowded conditions and an uncertain future.
“If you want to travel, it’s a problem. If you want to stay home, it’s a problem. If you want to work, it’s a problem. If you want to build, it’s a problem,” Masalmeh said. “Everything’s a problem.”
Iran says it has sold oil on a tanker near Syria’s coast to a private company in defiance of U.S. efforts to stop such a sale, fueling debate among observers about whether the ship has offloaded any crude.
In a tweet posted Wednesday, Iranian Ambassador to Britain Hamid Baeidinejad said his nation’s tanker had sold its oil at sea to the unnamed private company “despite numerous American threats.”
U.S. ally Britain had seized the tanker July 4 under its former name of Grace 1 in the waters of the British territory of Gibraltar, on suspicion the tanker planned to deliver Iranian oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions on the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Gibraltar allowed the tanker, under its new name of Adrian Darya 1, to leave its waters Aug. 18 after saying British authorities had received written assurances that Iran would not deliver the oil to Syria.
Iranian officials denied providing such assurances, and the Adrian Darya 1 sailed toward the Syrian coast before turning off its transponder Sept. 2. The Trump administration, which unilaterally banned all Iranian oil exports in May to pressure Tehran to stop perceived malign behaviors, appealed unsuccessfully to Britain not to release the tanker and later sanctioned the vessel Aug. 30.
در جلسه امروز با وزیر خارجه انگلیس، تاکیدگردیدکه اقدام مقامات انگلیس علیه نفتکش حامل نفت ایران خلاف حقوق بین الملل بود.تحریمهای اتحادیه اروپا قابل تعمیم به کشورهای ثالث نیست.علیرغم تهدیدات بیشمار آمریکا،نفتکش نفت خود را در دریا به یک شرکت خصوصی فروخت و تعهدی را هم نقض نکرده است.
In his tweet, Baeidinejad said Iran believes EU sanctions “cannot be extended to third countries.” He posted his comments after being summoned a day earlier by British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab, who issued a statement condemning Iran for “breaching assurances” about the tanker. Raab said it was “clear … that the oil has been transferred to Syria and Assad’s murderous regime.”
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman backed up Britain’s accusation that Iran “reneged on its assurances” regarding the tanker in a Tuesday statement reported by Reuters.
Earlier, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency had quoted foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as telling state media Sunday that the tanker had “docked on the Mediterranean coast and unloaded its cargo,” without specifying the date or other details.
Long story, short: The #AdrianDarya1 sailed into Syrian waters, anchored off the coast of Tartous and is just parked there, still holding 2.1 million barrels of Iranian oil she picked up FIVE MONTHS AGO. Both Baniyas and Tartous accept maximum 16m vessel depth. She‘s 22m deep. https://t.co/4wwOByTgHI
TankerTrackers.com, one of the few companies monitoring global oil shipments, disputed that contention, tweeting that satellite imagery showed the Adrian Darya 1 remained anchored off the Syrian port of Tartous Wednesday with all of its oil still on board.
Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, dismissed the significance of Iran’s assertion that it has sold the oil to a private company.
“The reported monetary transaction has no relevance because a buyer has not shown up and won’t do so, as the whole world is watching this now,” Madani told VOA Persian. “It’s all talk until the oil actually has been discharged from that vessel,” he added.
U.S. officials repeatedly have warned the international shipping industry that Washington will aggressively enforce U.S. secondary sanctions against anyone doing business with sanctioned Iranian parties and cargo.
Reid I’Anson, a Houston-based global energy economist for French intelligence company Kpler, said he believed Iran has offloaded at least some of the oil from Adrian Darya 1.
This image, obtained Sept. 7, 2019, reportedly shows the oil tanker Adrian Darya 1, near the port city of Tartus, Syria, Sept. 6, 2019.
“We assume the tanker discharged oil after it went dark (by turning off its transponder) because a ship costs money to keep floating and it’s not going to sit there for a week and do nothing,” I’Anson said in a Wednesday interview with VOA Persian. “It could have transferred oil at a port or done a partial ship-to-ship (STS) transfer anytime after Sept. 2 with a component vessel that also could have turned off its transponder.”
I’Anson also said the Iranian tanker may have transferred oil to vessels bound for Turkey or Syria, with both nations having been Iran’s only major oil customers in the region.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a VOA Persian request for comment on Iran’s assertion that it has sold the tanker’s oil to a private company.
Some Rwandans who used to be wildlife poachers have turned into conservationists. For VOA, reporter Eugene Uwimana has more from the Gorilla Guardians Village, located near Volcanoes National Park in Northern Rwanda
Surfing is an ancient Polynesian art that became a craze in the U.S. and Australia in the 1950s. In the U.S., California and Hawaii were ground zero for surf culture, and surf-based movies and music are still a thing. And these days, people aren’t the only ones surfing. Khrystyna Shevchenko visited a unique surfing school. Anna Rice narrates her story.
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush encouraged a reeling nation to light candles in honor of the victims.
Elaine Greene and two friends joined the hordes in a candlelight vigil, but not before she stopped to grab an old flag that was behind her Maine home’s front door.
With tears in her eyes, she raised the flag tentatively.
Motorists honked their approval.
The simple act has played out weekly ever since, through snow and ice, sickness and health, over 18 years. And it’s playing out for a final time Wednesday.
Dubbed the “Freeport flag ladies,” the trio is reluctantly giving in to age and ending the Main Street tradition. Greene is the youngest at 74 and battles Crohn’s disease. Carmen Footer, 77, recently recovered from open heart surgery. JoAnn Miller, 83, has foot problems.
“It was up to me to call it, and I called it,” Greene said.
Greene described their calling as a mission of love, gratitude and patriotism, and it went far beyond waving their flags on a street corner near L.L. Bean. They mailed care packages to military personnel deployed overseas in the war on terrorism. They greeted military personnel at airports. They visited the wounded. And they attended funerals.
They saw people at their worst while dealing with loss. And they witnessed how tragedy can also bring out the best in many people, Greene said.
Over the years, their work became their lives. They appeared alongside presidents. They spoke to schoolchildren. The home that the three share is full of patriotic memorabilia and letters from military personnel. It’s been years since they dressed in anything other than red, white and blue.
Greene, whose glasses are red, white and blue, said she wouldn’t change a thing. After all, she said, the flag waving was the answer to a prayer.
After 9/11, she knew the nation had come under an attack unlike anything since Pearl Harbor. She said she wanted to do something to help, and something told her to grab that flag behind the door.
She remains in awe that a simple gesture grew into something big.
“You can either bring a light into the room, or walk into a room that’s dark and keep it dark,” she said. “I prefer to bring a light into the room. It takes only but a little match to do that. You don’t have to have a great big idea. You just have to be sincere.”
Facing growing competition from less expensive smartphone providers, Apple introduced its new versions of its iconic iPhone Tuesday at its annual product launch event in California. Along with their latest upgrades and new offerings, Apple also caught the attention of both consumers and critics for something they didn’t do. VOA’s Richard Green has more on the tech giant’s newest strategy
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shuffled his Cabinet on Wednesday, adding two women and the son of a former leader to freshen his image but maintaining continuity on U.S.-oriented trade and security policies.
Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s postwar history, kept key positions in the hands of close allies at a time when he is locked in a bitter trade dispute with South Korea and as he tries to fine-tune a trade deal with Washington.
Taro Kono, who had been foreign minister, was appointed defense minister, while Toshimitsu Motegi, minister in charge of economic policy, is now foreign minister. Finance Minister Taro Aso kept his job.
Yet with just two years left on his party leadership, Abe also sought to add some new faces and keep potential challengers close.
Getting the greatest attention was the new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, the 38-year-old son of popular former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He was the only appointment in his 30s in a lineup dominated by men in their 50s and older.
Expectations in the Japanese public have been high for years that the younger Koizumi is destined to be Japan’s leader. Koizumi has tended to keep a distance from Abe, although both hold the conservative pro-U.S. policies of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Abe told reporters that he was proud of his choices as people, mostly veterans, who will tackle reforms to keep Japan competitive in the “new era” of globalization.
On Koizumi, he said: “I have big hopes he will take up challenges with innovative ideas fitting of someone from the younger generation.”
Yu Uchiyama, professor of political science at the University of Tokyo, said the appointments, besides Koizumi, showed Abe chose those who were very close to him.
“Abe wanted the popular Koizumi under his control,” Uchiyama said. “This is a big step for Koizumi toward becoming future prime minister, but he will also be tested for the first time in a major way.”
Also in the limelight are two new female ministers, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi and Seiko Hashimoto, a former Olympian speedskater who was appointed minister in charge of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Women in the Cabinet tend to get attention in Japan, which is criticized as lagging in promoting females in both the private sector and politics.
The nationally circulated Asahi newspaper said the Cabinet appointments showed Abe was building his successors but, at the same time, having candidates competing with each other in an effort to maintain his influence.
“A strategy to create a post-Abe fight,” a front-page headline said.
By rewarding various politicians with posts, Abe has avoided a “lame duck” syndrome, in which he would be powerless during what’s remaining of his party leadership, said political analyst Masatoshi Honda.
Until he came to power in 2012, Japan tended to have a “revolving door” of one leader toppled after another, partly because of recurring corruption scandals. Abe also served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007.
Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who helped launch China’s online retailing boom, stepped down as chairman of the world’s biggest e-commerce company Tuesday at a time when its fast-changing industry faces uncertainty amid a U.S.-Chinese tariff war.
Ma, one of China’s wealthiest and best-known entrepreneurs, gave up his post on his 55th birthday as part of a succession announced a year ago. He will stay on as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company’s board of directors.
Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 to connect Chinese exporters to American retailers.
The company has shifted focus to serving China’s growing consumer market and expanded into online banking, entertainment and cloud computing. Domestic businesses accounted for 66% of its $16.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in June.
Chinese retailing faces uncertainty amid a tariff war that has raised the cost of U.S. imports.
Growth in online sales decelerated to 17.8% in the first half of 2019 amid slowing Chinese economic growth, down from 2018’s full-year rate of 23.9%.
Alibaba says its revenue rose 42% over a year earlier in the quarter ending in June to $16.7 billion and profit rose 145% to $3.1 billion. Still, that was off slightly from 2018’s full-year revenue growth of 51%.
The total amount of goods sold across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms rose 25% last year to $853 billion. By comparison, the biggest U.S. e-commerce company, Amazon.com Inc., reported total sales of $277 billion.
Alibaba’s deputy chairman, Joe Tsai, told reporters in May the company is “on the right side” of issues in U.S.-Chinese trade talks. Tsai said Alibaba stands to benefit from Beijing’s promise to increase imports and a growing consumer market.
Alibaba is one of a group of companies including Tencent Holding Ltd., a games and social media giant, search engine Baidu.com Inc. and e-commerce rival JD.com that have revolutionized shopping, entertainment and consumer services in China.
Alibaba was founded at a time when few Chinese were online. As internet use spread, the company expanded into consumer-focused retailing and services. Few Chinese used credit cards, so Alibaba created the Alipay online payments system.
Ma, known in Chinese as Ma Yun, appears regularly on television. At an annual Alibaba employee festival in Hanzhou, he has sung pop songs in costumes that have included blond wigs and leather jackets. He pokes fun at his own appearance, saying his oversize head and angular features make him look like the alien in director Steven Spielberg’s movie “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.”
The company’s $25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 was the biggest to date by a Chinese company.
The Hurun Report, which follows China’s wealth, estimates Ma’s fortune at $38 billion.
In 2015, Ma bought the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s biggest English-language newspaper.
Ma’s successor as chairman is CEO Daniel Zhang, a former accountant and 12-year veteran of Alibaba. He previously was president of its consumer-focused Tmall.com business unit.
Alibaba’s e-commerce business spans platforms including business-to-business Alibaba.com, which links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers of goods from furniture to medical technology, and Tmall, with online shops for popular brands.
Alipay became a freestanding financial company, Ant Financial, in 2014. Alibaba also set up its own film studio and invested in logistics and delivery services.
Ma faced controversy when it disclosed in 2011 that Alibaba transferred control over Alipay to a company he controlled without immediately informing shareholders including Yahoo Inc. and Japan’s Softback.
Alibaba said the move was required to comply with Chinese regulations, but some financial analysts said the company was paid too little for a valuable asset. The dispute was later resolved by Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank.
Corporate governance specialists have questioned the Alibaba Partnership, which gives Ma and a group of executives more control over the company than shareholders.
Ma has said that ensures Alibaba focuses on long-term development instead of responding to pressure from financial markets.
The prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia Saturday has prompted hopes that Moscow and Kyiv are ready for serious talks to end a more than five-year war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a Moscow-fomented conflict that’s claimed more than 13,000 lives.
As the exchange unfolded, which included the release by Russia of 24 sailors captured in a naval clash last November, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, “Russia and Ukraine just swapped large numbers of prisoners. Very good news, perhaps a first giant step to peace. Congratulations to both countries!”
That view was shared by the man who engineered the swap, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who hailed the exchange as “the first step to end the war.” And various other Western leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, joined the chorus lauding the exchange of 70 prisoners in all as a positive move.
For the families of those exchanged, there was relief.
Russia had threatened to incarcerate the sailors for up to six years, saying their patrol boats had trespassed into Russian territory by crossing its borders to enter the Sea of Azov, just off Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine and other countries that don’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea say the sailors were in international waters, and an international maritime court ordered Moscow to free the men, an instruction ignored until Saturday.
Relatives of Ukrainian prisoners freed by Russia greet them upon their arrival at Boryspil airport, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 7, 2019.
Others among the 35 Ukrainian detainees had been held for years, including Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker who was serving a 20-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony on charges of “terrorism.”
On their arrival at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport, where they were greeted by relatives and Zelenskiy, there was euphoria.
“Hell has ended. Everyone is alive, and that is the main thing,” said Vyacheslav Zinchenko, one of the sailors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not greet in Moscow the 35 Russians released by Kyiv.
Since his surprise election earlier this year, Zelenskiy, a political novice and former television comic, has been urging Putin to join a new round of peace talks involving Trump and other Western leaders.
In a video statement released in July to coincide with a one-day EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, Zelenskiy appealed to Putin directly.
“We need to talk. We do. Let’s do it,” he said, looking directly into the camera.
Last month, it was announced the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany would meet to discuss the Donbas conflict. But in an interview in July with VOA’s Ukrainian Service, Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations, cautioned against optimism.
“Unfortunately, we’ve really not heard much news from Russia. They are still saying that everything is Ukraine’s responsibility, that Ukraine needs to negotiate with the two so-called separatist ‘People’s Republic’ that they created in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the Kremlin-backed, self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
‘Sinister’ exchange
While some are seizing on the prisoner exchange as the possible start of something new, for others it has triggered worries that Putin is using Ukraine to toy with the West. Skeptics argue that Putin isn’t serious about ending a conflict of his own making and has every reason to nurture it as a way to disrupt Ukraine and continue to punish the country for its popular Maidan uprising in 2014, which forced Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, out of power.
FILE – Volodymyr Tsemakh, former commander of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, sits in a court room in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 5, 2019. Tsemakh was one of two high-profile prisoners returned Russia.
They highlight the imbalance in the prisoner swap — seeing Putin’s approach to it as displaying a sinister cynicism. While the released Ukrainians had been held on trumped-up charges, their Russian and pro-Moscow separatist counterparts weren’t innocent. They included Volodymyr Tsemakh, who commanded a Russian separatist air defense unit close to where Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, enroute to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, was shot down in 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.
The Dutch government has been left fuming, saying it “seriously regrets that under pressure from the Russian Federation, Tsemakh was included in this prisoner swap.”
Ukrainian politicians had pleaded with Zelenskiy not to release Tsemakh, but his freedom apparently was the price the Ukrainian leader was forced to pay for the prisoner exchange.
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said the Netherlands was “deeply disappointed” by the release, but added Ukraine had delayed the prisoner exchange to let Dutch investigators question Tsemakh before he was freed.
According to Marcel Van Herpen, author of the book “Putin’s Wars,” and a director at the Cicero Foundation research group, Tsemakh’s release could be a complicating factor for the MH17 trial, which starts in March 2020 in The Hague.
“Of course we are all happy they and the others are free,” tweeted self-exiled Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. “But this is not justice. Putin takes innocent hostages to use as bargaining chips. He is rewarded and praised for exchanging them for Russian spies & criminals, encouraging further terrorist acts.”
Kasparov and other skeptics worry that amid heightened talk of efforts to normalize relations with Putin, the West will fall into the pattern of giving ground to Putin.
“New talk of a ‘peace process’ is a joke when Putin could end the conflict instantly, just as he began it. ‘Use force, then negotiate’ works well for him,” Kasparov tweeted.
Michael Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is cautious about interpreting “this as a step toward ending the war.” He noted, “August was one of the bloodiest months in the Donbas in a long time. More importantly, no country is incentivizing Putin to “de-escalate.” Other analysts fear the swap makes Russia appear reasonable when it was the aggressor state.
Willem Aldershoff, a former senior EU diplomat, worries that Western leaders keen for a reset in relations with Moscow will “be less confrontational with Putin” and “will use this ‘new Russian flexibility’ to pressure Zelenskiy to make compromises that aren’t in Ukraine’s best interests.
A lawyer for Michael Flynn accused federal prosecutors of misconduct on Tuesday as a judge set a December sentencing hearing for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
The arguments from Flynn attorney Sidney Powell were the latest in a series of aggressive attacks on the foundations of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. They represented yet another step in Flynn’s evolution from a model cooperator he was the first and only White House official to cut a deal with prosecutors to a defendant whose newly combative and unremorseful stance may cost him a chance at the probation sentence prosecutors had previously recommended.
Even as U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan set a Dec. 18 sentencing date for Flynn, Powell made clear that she considered the case far from resolved. Though she said she was not seeking to have Flynn’s guilty plea thrown out, she contended the “entire prosecution should be dismissed because of egregious government misconduct.”
“There is far more at stake here than sentencing,” Powell said. She later accused the government of “being too busy working on what they wanted to accomplish in convicting Mr. Flynn” to seek truth or justice.
Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack, a member of Mueller’s team, strongly denied the accusations and said the government had given Flynn’s team more than 22,000 pages of documents. He said the information Powell was seeking either had no bearing on the case against Flynn, or was material that Flynn had been made aware of before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Asked by Sullivan if the government stands by its recommendation that Flynn should be spared prison time for his cooperation, Van Grack said the government would file new documents on that question _ suggesting prosecutors may reverse course and ask for him to spend at least some time behind bars.
If the Dec. 18 sentencing date holds, it will be his second sentencing hearing on that exact date in as many years.
Flynn was supposed to be sentenced last December for lying to the FBI about his December 2016 conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But that sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn asked that he be allowed to continue cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of earning credit toward a lighter punishment.
Flynn changed lawyers and hired a new legal team led by Powell, a conservative commentator and former federal prosecutor who has been an outspoken critic of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In court Tuesday, she unloaded on Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
She accused Peter Strzok, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn at the White House about his interactions with the ambassador, of being “impaired” by bias. She said she had not received copies of Strzok’s derogatory text messages about Trump that led to his removal from Mueller’s team and ultimately his firing from the FBI.
But Van Grack said Flynn was told before his first guilty plea in December 2017 that the communications existed and went ahead with the plea anyway.
Powell also said the government had not produced evidence that she said could demonstrate that Flynn was not an agent of the Russian government. But Van Grack noted that that allegation was never part of the case.
“The government has not alleged in any filing in this court or before the court that the defendant is an agent of Russia,” he said. “That is not part of the case.”
Instead, he added, the prosecution is all about whether Flynn lied to the FBI during a January 2017 interview at the White House about having discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
Mueller’s investigation, which produced charges against a half dozen Trump aides and associates, ended last spring with a report to the Justice Department. The report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but did identify multiple instances in which the president sought to influence the investigation.
Barcelona could cut deaths from air pollution and improve quality of life by implementing in full a plan to calm traffic and free up space for residents, researchers said Monday.
The compact Spanish city is home to more than 1.6 million people and is plagued by contaminants and noise largely due to heavy density of traffic, as well as lack of greenery.
A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), published in the journal Environment International, found the city of Barcelona could prevent 667 premature deaths every year if it created 503 “superblocks” as first proposed.
The superblocks — which keep cars out of designated areas in the city and develop public space in streets — have been complex to roll out, with only six put in place so far.
“What we want to show with this study is that we have to go back and put the citizen at the center of … urban plans, because the health impacts are quite considerable,” said lead author and ISGlobal researcher Natalie Mueller.
As a city with the highest traffic density in Europe, Barcelona also needed to make it easier for people to commute in from the wider metropolitan area by public transport, she added.
The projected reduction in deaths from the superblocks plan would be achieved mainly as a result of a 24% decrease in air pollution from nitrogen oxide (NO2), along with lower traffic noise and urban heat, the study said.
Data released Friday from the Barcelona Public Health Agency showed air pollution accounted for 351 premature deaths in the city in 2018, around the same as in 2017.
Motor vehicles generated the main pollutant, with almost half the city’s population regularly exposed to NO2 levels above the safe limit set by the World Health Organization, the city council said.
From January 2020, Barcelona will implement low-emission zones on weekdays, keeping 125,000 vehicles out of the city.
The city council will also declare a climate emergency including a package of urgent measures to cut down on private vehicle use and boost public transport, among other actions.
It has already extended cycle paths and upgraded its shared bike scheme, while shrinking on-street parking.
‘Courage’ needed
Barcelona City Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it aimed to start drafting plans for three new superblocks shortly, as well as launching public consultations for others.
The ISGlobal study found that, besides reducing deaths, a full roll-out of the superblocks project would increase life expectancy by almost 200 days on average per inhabitant, and generate an annual economic saving of 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion).
The superblocks have sparked opposition in some local areas, notably among small traders who fear they could deter customers.
But Mueller said the concept was similar to banning smoking in bars and restaurants, which was initially unpopular but quickly accepted once people realized the benefits.
“Even if they don’t see it in the beginning, often in the end they are quite happy,” she said, noting the need for “courage” in public policy making.
