Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of  secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.

The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.

Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.

Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula. 

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.

“Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.

“The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.

State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue. 

…

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Sunday replaced the energy minister with one of his sons, state media said, in a major shakeup as the OPEC kingpin reels from low oil prices.

The appointment of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, half-brother to de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, marks the first time a royal family member has been put in charge of the all-important Energy Ministry.

He replaces veteran official Khalid al-Falih as the world’s top crude exporter accelerates preparations for a much-anticipated stock listing of state-owned oil giant Aramco, expected to be the world’s biggest.

“Khalid al-Falih has been removed from his position,” the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing a royal decree.

“His royal highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman is appointed minister of energy.”

Since his appointment as oil minister in 2016, Falih has been the face of Saudi energy policy but the veteran technocrat had seen his portfolio shrink in recent weeks.

His ouster comes just days after he was removed as chairman of Aramco and replaced by Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the kingdom’s vast Public Investment Fund.

Falih’s powers were diminished last month when the world’s top oil exporter announced the creation of a new ministry of industry and mineral resources, separating it from his energy ministry.

It was widely speculated that top officials were dissatisfied with Falih as oil prices sagged ahead of the Aramco IPO.

Economic uncertainty fanned, by an ongoing US-China trade war, has dragged Brent crude prices to around $60 a barrel in recent weeks, well below the $85 mark that experts say is needed to balance the Saudi budget.

‘Seasoned veteran’

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members are scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to review their strategy on limiting production to halt a slide in prices.

Cartel kingpin Saudi Arabia, which pumps around a third of OPEC’s oil, has resorted to massive production cuts to lift prices since the market crash in mid-2014.

It was unclear whether there would be a change in policy under Prince Abdulaziz, who joined the oil ministry in the 1980s and has held a variety of senior roles.

“Prince Abdulaziz is a very seasoned veteran of Saudi and OPEC policy making,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told Bloomberg News.

“He won’t have a learning curve. I don’t expect any big rupture in current Saudi oil policy.”

His appointment further concentrates power within the king’s family. His other son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, controls the major levers of power and is heir to the Arab world’s most powerful throne.

A younger son, Prince Khalid bin Salman, is deputy defense minister.

Aramco is stepping up efforts to float around five percent of the company, seeking to raise up to $100 billion based on a $2 trillion valuation of the whole firm.

But low oil prices have left some investors in doubt that Aramco is really worth that much.

Failure to reach a $2 trillion valuation as desired by Saudi rulers is widely considered the reason the IPO, earlier scheduled for 2018, was delayed.

The planned IPO forms the cornerstone of a reform program envisaged by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to wean the Saudi economy off its reliance on oil.

Saudi Aramco has not announced where the listing will be held, but London, New York and Hong Kong have all vied for a slice of the much-touted IPO.

…

Top oil producers will consider fresh output cuts at a meeting this week, but analysts are doubtful they will succeed in bolstering crude prices dented by the U.S.-China trade war.

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members want to halt a slide in prices that has continued despite previous production cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.

Analysts say the OPEC+ group’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which monitors a supply cut deal reached last year, has limited options when it meets in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

UAE Energy Minister Suheil al-Mazrouei said Sunday the group would do “whatever necessary” to rebalance the crude market, but admitted that the issue was not entirely in the hands of the world’s top producers.

Speaking at a press conference in Abu Dhabi ahead of the World Energy Congress, to start Monday, he said the oil market is no longer governed by supply and demand but is being influenced more by U.S.-China trade tensions and geopolitical factors.

The minister said that although further cuts will be considered at Thursday’s meeting, they may not be the best way to boost declining prices.

“Anything that the group sees that will balance the market, we are committed to discuss it and hopefully go and do whatever necessary,” he said.

“But I wouldn’t suggest to jump to cuts every time that we have an issue on trade tensions.”

While cuts could help prices, they could also mean producers lose further market share, analysts say.

“OPEC has traditionally resorted to production cuts in order to shore up the prices,” said M. R. Raghu, head of research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz).

“However, this has come at the cost of reduction in OPEC’s global crude market share from a peak of 35 percent in 2012 to 30 percent as of July 2019,” he told AFP.

The 24-nation OPEC+ group, dominated by the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC production giant Russia, agreed to reduce output in December 2018.

That came as a faltering global economy and a boom in US shale oil threatened to create a global glut in supply.

Previous supply cuts have mostly succeeded in bolstering prices.

But this time, the market has continued to slide — even after OPEC+ agreed in June to extend by nine months an earlier deal slashing output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd).

 Trade war

The new factor is the trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies, whose tit-for-tat tariffs have created fears of a global recession that will undermine demand for oil.

Saudi economist Fadhl al-Bouenain said the oil market has become “highly sensitive to the US-China trade war”.

“What is happening to oil prices is outside the control of OPEC and certainly stronger than its capability,” Bouenain told AFP.

“Accordingly, I think OPEC+ will not resort to new production cuts” because that would further blunt the group’s already shrunken market share, he said.

European benchmark Brent was selling at $61.54 per barrel Friday, in contrast with more than $75 this time last year but up from around $50 at the end of December 2018.

The deliberations also coincide with stymied production from Iran and Venezuela and slower growth in U.S. output, meaning that supplies are not excessively high.

“US shale output growth does not have the same momentum as in previous cycles, and OPEC production is at a 15-year low, having fallen by 2.7 million barrels per day over the past nine months,” Standard Chartered said in a commentary last month.

“We think that the oil policy options for key producers are limited, for the moment,” the investment bank said.

No decisions will be taken at Thursday’s meeting, but it should produce recommendations ahead of an OPEC+ ministerial meeting in Vienna in December.

Rapidan Energy Group said the alliance might need to cut output by an additional one million bpd to stabilise the market.

But the problem will be deciding which member countries will shoulder the burden of any new cuts.

Saudi Arabia, which is the de facto leader of OPEC and pumps about a third of the cartel’s oil, took on more than its fair share last time around.

It has also undergone a major shake-up in its oil sector, announcing the replacement of energy minister Khalid al-Falih with Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in the early hours of Sunday morning ahead of a much-anticipated stock listing of state oil giant Aramco.

Bouenain said he believes that Riyadh is likely to resist taking on further cuts, given the impact on the kingdom’s revenues.

Raghu said that “without a favorable resolution to the dispute, OPEC’s production cuts will not result in a sizeable uptick of oil prices.”

…

Turkish and U.S. troops conducted their first joint ground patrol in northeastern Syria Sunday as part of a planned so-called “safe zone” that Ankara has been pressing for in the volatile region.

Turkey hopes the buffer zone, which it says should be at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep, will keep Syrian Kurdish fighters, considered a threat by Turkey but U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group, away from its border.

Associated Press journalists in the town of Tal Abyad saw about a dozen Turkish armored vehicles with the country’s red flag standing along the border after crossing into Syria, and American vehicles about a mile away waiting. The two sides then came together in a joint patrol with American vehicles leading the convoy.

At least two helicopters hovered overhead. The Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the start of the joint patrols and said unmanned aerial vehicles were also being used.

Washington has in the last years frequently found itself trying to forestall violence between its NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish fighters it partnered with along the border to clear of IS militants.

An initial agreement between Washington and Ankara last month averted threats of a Turkish attack. But details of the deal are still being worked out in separate talks with Ankara and the Kurdish-led forces in Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

Turkey, which has carried out several incursions into Syria in the course of the country’s civil war in an effort to curb the expanding influence of the Kurdish forces, carried out joint patrols with U.S. troops in the northern town of Manbij last year.

Sunday’s joint patrol is the first one taking place east of the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops have more presence, and as part of the safe zone that is being set up.

Anadolu Agency said six Turkish armored vehicles crossed into Syria on Sunday from the border town of Akcakale, opposite from Syria’s Tal Abyad, and joined U.S. vehicles for their first joint patrol of an area east of the Euphrates river.

AP reporters in Tal Abyad said the patrol was headed to a Kurdish-controlled base apparently to inspect it, apparently to ensure that trenches and sand berms had been removed. U.S. troops had inspected the base on Saturday during patrols with the SDF during which some of the berms Turkey had complained about were removed.

For Turkey, a “safe zone” is important because it is hoping some of the Syrian refugees it has been hosting for years could be resettled there, although it is not clear how that would work.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey could “open its gates” and allow Syrian refugees in the country to move toward Western countries if a safe zone is not created and Turkey is left to shoulder the refugee burden alone. Turkey hosts 3.6 million refugees from Syria.

Rather than calling it a safe zone, Washington and the Kurdish-led forces have said a “security mechanism” is taking shape to diffuse tensions in northeastern Syria

…

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. Some information is from Reuters and RFE. VOA Ukrainian’s Tatiana Vorozhko contributed reporting. 

WASHINGTON – Ukrainian security officials have a launched an investigation into “subversive” activities by one of the Eastern European country’s defense contractors over plans to supply military hardware to neighboring Russia. 
 
Ukraine’s main government agency for counterintelligence and counterterrorism, the SBU, confirmed Thursday that Motor Sich, the country’s largest manufacturer of engines for missiles and military aircraft, was under investigation for preparing an illegal export shipment of military or dual-use equipment to Russia, with whom Ukraine is at war. The news was first reported by RFE. 
 
SBU officers raided Motor Sich headquarters and seized its shares in 2018 when the defense firm, then valued at nearly $500 million, was in the process of being sold to a Chinese company. 
 
That Chinese aeronautical firm, Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, renewed efforts to acquire a controlling share of Motor Sich in June, drawing scrutiny from Kyiv’s Anti-Monopoly Committee. 
 
The prospective sale also drew the attention of White House officials, who told Ukrainian media ahead of White House national security adviser John Bolton’s late-August visit to Kyiv that Motor Sich should not be handed over to a “potential enemy.” 
 
As Ukraine’s antitrust agency began reviewing the proposed China deal, the U.S.-government-run Overseas Private Investment Corp., an agency that provides financial support for American companies looking to invest in emerging markets, said it would consider backing a U.S. private-sector bid for Motor Sich.  

Bolton has aimed to scuttle Beijing’s acquisition of Motor Sich “on grounds that it will give Beijing vital defense technology,” The Wall Street Journal reported before Bolton’s Kyiv trip.
 
Aid withheld 

Bolton, it was widely reported, used the Kyiv visit to warn pro-Western Ukraine, which the White House views as a geopolitical ally against an increasingly assertive Russia, to avoid being lured into China’s orbit by what he called Beijing’s “debt diplomacy.” 
 
A day after Bolton concluded his Kyiv visit by announcing stepped-up military assistance to Ukraine, President Donald Trump issued a contradictory directive, calling for a suspension and review of a $250 million military aid package to Kyiv.

Later that day, Pentagon officials confirmed that they had already conducted an audit and fully supported allocation of the funding to Ukraine. 

The ongoing White House delay has since sparked an outcry from a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, who issued a letter to Trump demanding that he release the funds. 
 
Falling under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the funds, the lawmakers wrote, “help Ukraine develop the independent military capabilities and skills necessary to fend off the Kremlin’s continued onslaughts within its territory.” 
 
Asked for a response, a senior Trump administration official told VOA’s Ukrainian service, “We can confirm the letter from the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus has been received and is going through the normal process for correspondence at OMB.” 
 
The senior administration official failed to confirm whether the $250 million in question was currently under active review. 
 
Op-ed on White House action 
 
On Friday, The Washington Post published an editorial slamming the Trump White House for withholding the military aid over what it called explicitly political purposes. 

“We’re reliably told that the president … is attempting to force [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden,” the Post editorial states. “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.” 
 
In August, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, told The New York Times that he traveled to Europe to ask Zelenskiy aide Andriy Yermak to investigate Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Hunter Biden is former Vice President Biden’s son. 
 
Giuliani’s office did not respond to VOA’s requests for comment. 

Budgetary issues ‘being sorted out’

George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told VOA that although he was optimistic U.S. funding would continue, “I think there are some issues about the U.S. budgetary process being sorted out right now.” 
 
“The U.S. has contributed over $1.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine`s defense since Russians invaded Donbass in 2014,” Kent said. “And I think we will work very closely together with Ukrainians to ensure that we support Ukraine`s abilities to defend itself effectively, and it has been the case the last five years, and it will also be the case going forward.” 
 
Earlier this week, two senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that chances were the money would be allocated as usual, but that the determination would not be made until a policy review was completed and Trump made a decision. 
 
The federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30. 

…

Bidi Bidi refugee camp is home to nearly a quarter-million South Sudanese who fled the violence of civil war in their home country. Its progressive policies allow refugees to live, farm and work together while they wait to return to their home country. But, as conditions are slow to improve in South Sudan, many refugees are opting to stay.

U.S. Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Chris Van Hollen visited the camp recently. The two lawmakers were touring several refugee settlements throughout Uganda last month, including Bidi Bidi — one of the world’s largest.

Speaking by phone, Senator Van Hollen called the settlements an “important model” that other countries should consider when housing the displaced.

 
“Obviously a key ingredient to the success of that model has been significant international support,” he said.

When Bidi Bidi was opened in 2016, it was a rural piece of land in northern Uganda, where South Sudanese refugees, mostly women and children, fled to avoid violence during their country’s civil war.
 
As is often the case, tensions are common between refugees and the local population, who feel that the refugees are taking resources that might have been available for them.

But, Uganda decided to do something different, earmarking a percentage of the country’s international funding to go toward local amenities. Refugee families were given plots of land to build family-style clusters of homes with room to grow their own fruits and vegetables. As a result, a small-scale economy began to flourish in the camp, with some refugees starting their own businesses.

Last year, following a peace deal between warring South Sudan leaders, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he hoped the refugees would begin returning home.
 
But, that’s not the case.
 
According to a new report published this week by several humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, refugees — especially women — are hesitant to return home. They fear the peace won’t last.

 As a result, settlement official Michael Joelle says Bidi Bidi has reached capacity, and refugees are being turned away and settlements are feeling the strain.
 
“Before the 2016 emergency, we were offering a plot of 50 by 100, so the number has been decreasing as the number of refugees increase,” said Joelle.
 
The situation has become more dire after international donors suspended their funding earlier this year after it was reported that funds for refugees in Uganda had been mismanaged.

Grace, a refugee at Bidi Bidi, fled her home country with her children four years ago. Her husband finally joined the family last year.

The former teacher said she doesn’t see herself moving back to South Sudan anytime soon.   
 
“Even we’re receiving bad news, so and so has been killed, so and so has been raped, so many things are happening.”

…

Winston Churchill’s grandson, who was expelled midweek from the Conservative party for voting to delay Brexit, launched Saturday a scathing attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote a biography of his grandfather, saying he should stop comparing himself to Britain’s iconic wartime leader as he’s “nothing like” him.

“Winston Churchill was like Winston Churchill because of his experiences in life. Boris Johnson’s experience in life is telling a lot of porkies [lies] about the EU in Brussels and then becoming prime minister,” Nicholas Soames told Britain’s The Times newspaper.

Soames was among 21 Conservative rebels who were expelled from the party for voting to stop Johnson taking Britain out of the EU by October 31, something Johnson has pledged to do “no ifs or buts.”

In the interview, Soames, a former defense minister, said he could see no “helpful analogy” between his grandfather and Johnson. “I don’t think anyone has called Boris a diplomat or statesman. We all know the pluses and minuses, everyone he has worked for says the same thing: he writes beautifully [but he’s] deeply unreliable.”

Johnson’s Brexit options are shrinking fast. He has lost every single vote he’s brought as prime minister before the House of Commons in the face of a Conservative party split and the united efforts of the country’s opposition parties to thwart him.

On Monday party rebels again will join with opposition parties to block him from calling an election before they’ve ensured he can’t take Britain out of the European Union without a deal agreed upon with Brussels.

Limited options

In effect, his opponents are trapping him in Downing Street as his hardline Brexit strategy appeared to be in tatters. Johnson now has no majority in the House of Commons, thanks to defections and the mass expulsion of party rebels.

Last week, his election bid was rebuffed when he failed to secure the backing of two-thirds of the Home of Commons. His second bid will get a similar dismissal, according to lawmakers and analysts. With his options limited, Johnson is now saying he will ignore legislation passed midweek requiring him to ask Brussels for a Brexit delay to allow further negotiations to take place between Britain and EU leaders.

The Conservative rebels and opposition parties argue that the economic impact of a so-called no-deal Brexit would be devastating for livelihoods and jobs.

Johnson also wrote to Conservative lawmakers on Friday, telling them: “They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do.” He told reporters earlier he won’t comply and seek yet another deadline extension from Brussels, as the incoming law, which will receive the Queen’s assent on Monday, compels him to do, if no agreement with Brussels is in place by October 19.

Asked if he would obey the new law requiring him to write to EU leaders, Johnson responded: “I will not. I don’t want a delay.”

His defiance is prompting growing alarm that Britain’s political crisis is deepening and risks a tumultuous clash between the government and the courts, along with a rebellion by top civil servants and an even bigger split in Conservative ranks.  

David Lidington, the de facto deputy prime minister under Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, warned Saturday it would set a “dangerous precedent,” if Johnson chose to break the law. “It is such a fundamental principle that we are governed by the rule of law that I hope no party would question it,” he told the BBC.

A former senior legal official went further, warning Johnson he risked being jailed, if he refuses to obey the law. Kenneth MacDonald, who was the country’s top prosecutor between 2003 and 2008, said if the courts were asked to issue an injunction ordering that “the law should be followed,” a refusal to obey “could find that person in prison.” He added that would not be “an extreme outcome” as it is “convention” that individuals who refuse to “purge their contempt” are sent to prison.

Warning shots

The warning was echoed by a former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, another Conservative rebel. If he refuses to obey the law he will be “sent to prison for contempt,” he said, while accusing Johnson of acting like a “spoiled child having a tantrum.” A former Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, told Sky News he doubted it would get as far as that because civil servants likely would rebel and refuse to co-operate with a prime minister who was willfully breaking the law.

Johnson broke off early on Saturday from a social visit with his partner, Carrie Symonds, to the Queen at the monarch’s Scottish residence, Balmoral, to plot his next moves. On his visit to Scotland, Johnson ramped up the pressure on opposition parties to agree to an early election, goading them by accusing them of cowardice. “I have never known an opposition in the history of democracy that has refused to have an election,” he said. “I think that obviously they don’t trust the people, they don’t think that the people will vote for them, so they are refusing to have an election.”

But Downing Street aides admit the unity of the opposition parties — as well as the size of the Conservative rebellion — had surprised Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, who miscalculated the reaction of the leader of the main opposition party, Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn.

“The plan was to use the threat of suspending parliament to force the rebels out into the open early,” an aide said. “We always knew they would try and force a Brexit delay on us. But the expectation was that Corbyn could be goaded into welcoming an election. That was a serious miscalculation on our part,“ he added.

The turbulence of the last week — which saw the British parliament break convention and initiate legislation — is unnerving the cabinet, too.

Will Boris Johnson’s Election Gamble Pay Off?

With British politics being turned upside down by Brexit , few pollsters are ready to hazard a firm prediction of an election win for Johnson — consensus suggests a hung parliament

Collision course

On Friday, some current cabinet ministers expressed major reservations about Johnson’s bellicose approach with much of the blame for the government’s lose of control being focused on the 47-year-old Dominic Cummings, a controversial figure who’s been compared to the former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, for his ‘slash-and-burn tactics.”

Cummings, the chief strategist for the Brexit campaign during the 2016 referendum on EU membership, told government advisers Friday they should hold their nerve, saying if they thought last week was chaos, it was “only just the beginning.” Cummings has made no secret of his wish to rip up the map of British politics and re-draw it, starting with a populist remake of the Conservative party.

A former cabinet minister, David Gauke, one of the expelled Conservative rebels, said Johnson and Cummings want “to rebadge the Conservative party as the Brexit Party.”

“I can see nothing incompatible about being a Conservative MP and not wanting to crash the country into a brick wall, but it appears that it is no longer the case,” he said in a newspaper interview. The risk is that Johnson will end up alienating millions of pragmatically-inclined, traditional Conservative voters, he says.

…

An American Airlines mechanic was ordered temporarily detained Friday after he was charged with purposely damaging an aircraft in July amid a dispute between the airline and its mechanics union involving stalled contract negotiations.

Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani will remain in custody pending a hearing Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Federal prosecutors are requesting he be detained pending trial.

Takeoff aborted

Pilots of a flight from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, July 17 aborted takeoff plans after receiving an error message involving the flight computer, which reports speed, pitch and other data, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

It said after returning to the gate for maintenance, a mechanic discovered a loosely connected pitot tube, which measures airspeed and connects directly to the flight computer.

A later review of video surveillance footage before the flight captured “what appears to be the sabotage of the aircraft” by a man walking with a limp, the complaint said.

Union contract

When Alani was interviewed, he told law enforcement he was upset at the stalled contract between the union and American, which he said had affected him financially, according to the complaint. It said Alani claimed to have tampered with the aircraft to cause a delay or have the flight canceled in anticipation of obtaining overtime work.

Unions have complained that American is trying to outsource more maintenance jobs, a move American has indicated is necessary to cover increased wages.

In a statement Friday, American said it was scheduled to resume negotiations with its mechanics union at the National Mediation Board in Washington Sept. 16.

A U.S. federal court last month issued a permanent injunction against American’s mechanics union, which the airline had accused of illegal slowdowns it said had devastated its operations during the peak summer travel season.

Passengers continued safely

A spokesman for American said the airline had an “unwavering commitment” to safety and security and had placed passengers on the July 17 flight on another plane to get to their destination.

“At the time of the incident, the aircraft was taken out of service, maintenance was performed and after an inspection to ensure it was safe the aircraft was returned to service,” the spokesman said. “American immediately notified federal law enforcement, who took over the investigation with our full cooperation.”

Court records do not indicate whether Alani had an attorney.

The U.S. federal court order last month prohibits employees from “calling, permitting, instigating, authorizing, encouraging, participating in, approving, or continuing any form of disruption to or interference with American’s airline operations,” including a refusal to accept overtime or complete any maintenance repairs in the normal course of work.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on Friday wrote on Twitter that on two days last week he had American flights canceled at the last minute because of mechanical issues and “now we learn an American mechanic was caught sabotaging planes due to labor dispute.” He added he wants mechanics to get a fair contract.

…

The announcement of John Lansing’s resignation as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media is renewing questions about the mission and direction of the broadcasters it oversees.

The USAGM directly manages five international news entities, including Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Combined, the USAGM broadcasters transmit in 61 languages and have an unduplicated weekly audience of 345 million.

Lansing, 62, a veteran cable TV executive, was named CEO of USAGM in 2015 and has now served under two presidents. He will formally leave the agency at the end of September and start in mid-October as CEO of the domestic National Public Radio network.

“John Lansing is going to leave behind a really remarkable legacy,” said Amanda Bennett, director of the Voice of America. “He really focused USAGM on issues of a free and independent press. That’s going to be his legacy. That, and his sunny disposition.”

Trump nominee

President Donald Trump has nominated documentary filmmaker Michael Pack to replace Lansing. Pack, a senior fellow and former president at the Claremont Institute in California, has collaborated on film projects with former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon.

Pack’s name was sent to the Senate in January but has been stuck in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Efforts to reach committee Chairman Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, and ranking member Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, were unsuccessful.

Pack could become the CEO in one of two ways: by Senate approval or appointment by the advisory Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan panel that includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pack’s nomination sparked debate about Trump’s intentions for the agency, as has the president’s own words and repeated criticism of the U.S. media.

On Twitter last November, Trump complained about unfair coverage by CNN and mused, “Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”

A few days later, Bennett published an op-ed in The Washington Post stating that such a network already existed: VOA.

Under VOA’s charter, its journalists are required to report “accurate, objective and comprehensive” news. Other legal provisions, collectively known as the “firewall,” protect VOA journalists from political interference in their work.

“Whoever the next CEO is, they need to look at the history of the agency,” said Danforth Austin, a former reporter and executive at The Wall Street Journal who served as VOA director from 2006 to 2011.

Changed focus

Austin said that during WWII, and then the Cold War, VOA and the other U.S.-funded news entities were largely a propaganda tool. But from the 1960s on, they transformed into solid journalistic organizations with a mandate to provide balanced and independent news.

“There are all kinds of different groups with different ideas of what we should or shouldn’t be broadcasting,” Austin said. “I recall getting calls from the State Department saying, ‘You can’t do that!’ I would always politely suggest they call the secretary of state and hang up the phone.”

“Propaganda or news, you have to decide, ‘What’s the most effective approach?’ ” he added.

Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Although he has no vote in the Senate, his committee wields influence on Capitol Hill over USAGM.

Engel praised Lansing on Friday for putting the USAGM’s networks “ … on a path toward becoming modern, effective news organizations providing unbiased information in some of the world’s most closed media spaces.”

But he said that if the Senate does not confirm Pack in a timely manner, the BBG should exercise its power and appoint someone.

“The existing Board of Governors retains the power to name a replacement. I urge the board to do so immediately, as we can’t predict when the Senate may act on the president’s nominee. This is too important a job to be left vacant for even a day,” he added.

The USAGM has its share of critics. Engel’s predecessor, former Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican, has called it a “broken agency.” Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state, said the agency was “practically defunct in terms of its capacity to tell a message around the world.”

Bennett and Austin attributed audience growth under Lansing to a focus on independent and unbiased news coverage. In 2018, its audience expanded 24%, a record.

“Sixty percent of our audience around the world believes us and trusts us,” Bennett said. “John’s focus on editorial independence is what must carry on if we’re not to squander that trust built up over the years.”

…

Eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and experiencing contractions, a Salvadoran woman who had crossed the Rio Grande and was apprehended by the Border Patrol was forced to go back to Mexico.

Agents took her to the hospital, where doctors gave her medication to stop the contractions. And then, according to the woman and her lawyer, she was almost immediately sent back to Mexico.

There, she joined the more than 38,000 people forced to wait across the border for immigration court hearings under a rapidly expanding Trump administration policy. And her plight highlights the health risks and perils presented by the “Remain in Mexico” program.

The woman was waiting Thursday with her 3-year-old daughter in a makeshift tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, next to an international bridge, due to give birth any day, said her attorney, Jodi Goodwin.

“She’s concerned about having the baby in the street or having to have the baby in a shelter,” Goodwin said.

Pregnant women face special hazards in Mexico because places where migrants wait to enter the U.S. often don’t have access to regular meals, clean water and medical care.

Many shelters at the Mexico border are at or above capacity, and some families have been sleeping in tents or on blankets in the blistering summer heat. Reports have abounded of migrants being attacked or kidnapped in Mexican border cities, especially in Tamaulipas state across from South Texas, where the Salvadoran mother is waiting for a November court date.

The Associated Press is not identifying the woman from El Salvador because she fears for her safety.

The U.S. government does not automatically exempt pregnant women from the “Remain in Mexico” program. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the woman’s case.

The program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, was instituted by the U.S. and Mexico as a way of deterring migrants from crossing the border to seek asylum. Mexico has cooperated with the expansion of the program at the behest of President Donald Trump, who threatened crippling tariffs in June if Mexico did not do more to stop migrants.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said people in “vulnerable populations” may be exempt from being sent to Mexico. But pregnant women are not necessarily considered vulnerable by CBP, a subsidiary of the department.

“In some cases, pregnancy may not be observable or disclosed, and may not in and of itself disqualify an individual from being amenable for the program,” CBP said in a statement. “Agents and officers would consider pregnancy, when other associated factors exist, to determine amenability for the program.”

Goodwin provided copies of the 28-year-old woman’s immigration paperwork and the bracelet from when she was admitted to Valley Regional Medical Center.

“In this particular case, this woman was actually taken to the hospital by CBP,” she said. “There’s no way that CBP could suggest that her pregnancy wasn’t known.”

The paperwork instructs her to return to Brownsville on Nov. 14 for a court hearing.

The U.S. government is establishing temporary tent courtrooms in Brownsville and Laredo, Texas, where immigration judges from around the U.S. will hear migrants’ cases by video. The hearings will start in those cities later this month.

The woman’s notice lists her address as a migrant shelter in Matamoros several miles from the primary international bridge near the camp where she is staying. Goodwin says she has never been to that shelter.

There are at least six cases of pregnant women border-wide who have been sent back to Mexico, according to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general demanding an investigation into the issue. Goodwin also represents a woman from Peru who was seven months pregnant when border agents allowed her to enter, only to send her back to Mexico the next day.

Mexico offers limited health coverage to people regardless of nationality that includes some of the screenings a pregnant woman needs, said Lina Villa, a Mexico-based health official for Doctors Without Borders. But many migrants don’t know that they can get that coverage, she said.

As their deliveries near, many migrant women aren’t sure whether they’ll have access to a hospital and if they will need surgery, Villa said. They are worried about their child being born in Mexico instead of the U.S. and what that might mean for their prospects of eventually entering the U.S., she said.

“It’s a very, very difficult group of people that needs a lot of help, and they don’t get enough,” she said.

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Robert  Mugabe, who ruled the southern African nation of Zimbabwe for 37 years following the end of white minority rule in 1980, has died.  He was 95 years old. Some hailed Mugabe as a liberation hero, but others say he destroyed the economy of what was once Africa’s breadbasket, rigged elections and terrorized his people for decades. VOA’s Anita Powell looks at his life and legacy.
 

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Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation when he first came to power in a nation divided by nearly a century of white colonial rule.

Nearly four decades later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.

Former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe Dies

Mugabe died in Singapore, where he has often received medical treatment in recent years

Mugabe, was ultimately ousted by his own armed forces in November 2017.

He demonstrated his tenacity — some might say stubbornness — to the last, refusing to accept his expulsion from his own ZANU-PF party and clinging on for a week until parliament started to impeach him after the de facto coup.

His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. For Mugabe, it was an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and left him a broken man.

Confined for the remaining years of his life between Singapore where he was receiving medical treatment and his sprawling “Blue Roof” mansion in Harare, an ailing Mugabe could only observe from afar the political stage where he once strode tall. He was bitter to the end over the manner of his exit.

On the eve of the July 2018 election, the first without him, he told reporters he would vote for the opposition, something unthinkable only a few months before.

Took power in 1980

Educated and urbane, Mugabe took power in 1980 after seven years of a liberation bush war and — until the army’s takeover — was the only leader Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, knew since independence from Britain.

But as the economy imploded starting from 2000 and his mental and physical health waned, Mugabe found fewer people to trust as he seemingly smoothed a path to succession for his wife, Grace, four decades his junior and known to her critics as “Gucci Grace” for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping.

“It’s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife,” Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of Zimbabwe’s influential liberation war veterans, told Reuters after Mugabe’s removal.

‘A jewel’

Born on Feb. 21, 1924, on a Roman Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa’s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism.

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Returning to then-Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics but was jailed for a decade four years later for opposing white rule.

When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral, a decision by the government of white-minority leader Ian Smith that historians say played a part in explaining Mugabe’s subsequent bitterness.

After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the “thinking man’s guerrilla” on account of his seven degrees, three of them earned behind bars.

Later, as he crushed his political enemies, he boasted of another qualification: “a degree in violence.”

After the war ended in 1980, Mugabe was elected the nation’s first black prime minister.

“You have inherited a jewel in Africa. Don’t tarnish it,” Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere told him during the independence celebrations in Harare.

At first, reconciliation

Initially, Mugabe offered forgiveness and reconciliation to old foreign and domestic adversaries, including Smith, who remained on his farm and continued to receive a government pension.

In his early years, he presided over a booming economy, spending money on roads and dams and expanding schooling for black Zimbabweans as part of a wholesale dismantling of the racial discrimination of colonial days.

With black and white tension easing, by the mid-1980s many whites who had fled to Britain or South Africa, then still under the yoke of apartheid, were trying to come home.

No challengers

But it was not long before Mugabe began to suppress challengers, including liberation war rival Joshua Nkomo.

Faced with a revolt in the mid-1980s in the western province of Matabeleland that he blamed on Nkomo, Mugabe sent in North Korean-trained army units, provoking an international outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians.

Human rights groups say 20,000 people died, most of them from the minority Ndebele tribe from which Nkomo’s partisans were largely drawn. The discovery of mass graves prompted accusations of genocide.

After two terms as prime minister, Mugabe tightened his grip on power by changing the constitution, and he became president in 1987. His first wife, Sally, who had been seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him, died in 1992.

A turning point came at the end of the decade when Mugabe, by now a leader unaccustomed to accommodating the will of the people, suffered his first major defeat at the hands of voters, in a referendum on another constitution. He blamed his loss on the white minority, chastising them as “enemies of Zimbabwe.”

Days later, a groundswell of black anger at the slow pace of land reform started boiling over and gangs of black Zimbabweans calling themselves war veterans started to overrun white-owned farms.

Mugabe’s response was uncompromising, labeling the invasions a correction of colonial injustices.

“Perhaps we made a mistake by not finishing the war in the trenches,” he said in 2000. “If the settlers had been defeated through the barrel of a gun, perhaps we would not be having the same problems.” 

The farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa’s most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation.

The economy shrank by more than a third from 2000 to 2008, sending unemployment above 80%. Several million Zimbabweans fled, mostly to South Africa.

Brushing aside criticism, Mugabe portrayed himself as a radical African nationalist competing against racist and imperialist forces in Washington and London.

Rock bottom

The country hit rock bottom in 2008, when 500 billion percent inflation drove people to support the challenge of Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Facing defeat in a presidential run-off, Mugabe resorted to violence, forcing Tsvangirai to withdraw after scores of his supporters were killed by ZANU-PF thugs.

South Africa, Zimbabwe’s neighbor to the south, squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mugabe’s grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service.

As old age crept in and rumors of cancer intensified, his animosity towards Tsvangirai eased and the two men enjoyed weekly meetings over tea and scones, in a nod to Mugabe’s affection for British traditions.

On the eve of the 2013 election, Mugabe dismissed cries of autocracy and likened dealing with Tsvangirai to sparring in the ring.

“Although we boxed each other, it’s not as hostile as before,” he told reporters.

Even as he spoke, Mugabe’s agents were busy finalizing plans to engineer an election victory through manipulation of the voters’ roll, according to the Tsvangirai camp.

It was typical of Mugabe’s ability to outthink — and if necessary outfight — his opponents, a trait that drew grudging respect from even his sternest critics.

Writing in a 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, then-U.S. ambassador to Harare Christopher Dell reflected the views of many: “To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician.”

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