While the internet has definitely made our lives easier, it has come at a cost. Studies show that internet addiction is on the rise, specifically among young people. In Turkey, a recent study shows that internet addiction has risen over the last two decades. For VOA, Yildiz Yazicioglu and Murat Karabulut report from Ankara, Turkey, in this story narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Month: October 2019
Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) confirmed Saturday it had delayed the planned release of preliminary results of the Sept. 28 presidential polls.
The commission’s chief, Hawa Alam Nuristani, made the widely anticipated announcement at a late evening news conference in Kabul on the day the commission was supposed to officially deliver first results.
Nuristani apologized to Afghans for not being able to meet the deadline, but she defended the decision to delay the results, saying it would “further ensure the transparency of the [electoral] process” and restore the people’s confidence in it.
The chief election commissioner promised to release preliminary results as soon as possible but did not say exactly when that would happen.
Two senior IEC members, while speaking to VOA on Friday, predicted results would be delayed by at least one week.
Problems from the start
Election officials said they had from the outset faced issues in collecting and transferring massive amounts of data to the main IEC computer server from biometric devices used to record voter fingerprints and pictures. A time-consuming exercise of identifying fraudulent votes was cited as another major factor for the slow data entry.
The fourth Afghan presidential election was already under scrutiny for a record-low turnout of about 26 percent and allegations of fraud. The final turnout was expected to drop further as the IEC was expected to disqualify an estimated 700,000 of the 2.7 million votes cast last month for not meeting anti-fraud rules.
All previous elections held in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001 were marred by allegations of widespread fraud and rigging, prompting the IEC to use biometric devices for the first time in the just concluded presidential polls.
While security concerns stemming from violent Taliban attacks on the election process were mainly blamed for the low turnout, the polling was marred by widespread irregularities and allegations of fraud.
The United Nations, in a report released this week, noted that election-related attacks had killed 85 Afghan civilians and injured 373 others.
Both front-runners, President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, have already claimed victories, raising fears of a repeat of what happened in the 2014 fraud-marred presidential election. The United States at the time had to intervene to help the two men negotiate a power-sharing deal, ending months of nationwide chaos.
Accuracy paramount
On Wednesday, U.S. acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells underscored the need for a credible outcome of the election and called on all candidates to avoid declaring victory before official results were released.
“We welcome the IEC’s intention to conduct all necessary anti-fraud measures before it announces the preliminary result. An accurate result is more important than a rushed one,” Wells told reporters in Kabul after her meetings with Ghani, Abdullah and election commission officials.
Abdullah and Ghani have both pledged support for the IEC to take as much time as needed to deliver a transparent outcome.
“The Afghan people yearn to hear about the results of the presidential elections, but we respect the Independent Election Commission’s decision to postpone announcing the results to ensure fairness, transparency and accountability of the final vote,” Ghani tweeted shortly after the delay was announced.
Turkish-backed Syrian fighters clashed with Kurdish-led forces in several parts of northeastern Syria on Saturday, with some crossing the border from Turkey to attack a village, a war monitor said. Both sides blamed each other for fighting that has rattled the U.S.-brokered cease-fire.
Nearly two days into the five-day halt in fighting, the two sides were still trading fire around the key border town of Ras al-Ayn. There has also been no sign of a withdrawal of Kurdish-led forces from positions along the Syrian-Turkish border as called for under the agreement, reached between Turkey and the United States.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it was “completely abiding” by the accord and that it was in “instantaneous coordination” with Washington to ensure the continuity of calm. The ministry accused Kurdish-led fighters of carrying out 14 “attacks and harassments” the past 36 hours, most in the town of Ras al-Ayn, which is besieged by allied fighters before the cease-fire. It said the Syrian Kurdish fighters used mortars, rockets, anti-aircraft and anti-tank heavy machine guns.
Turkey also said Saturday said it has recaptured 41 suspected Islamic State members who had fled a detention camp amid the chaos caused by the fighting earlier this week.
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Syrian Locals Grieve as Turkey-Syria Cease-Fire Collapses
‘We have already paid with too many lives,’ those affected by the fighting say
The Kurds, meanwhile, appealed to Vice President Mike Pence to enforce the deal saying Turkey has failed to abide by its provisions and has continued the siege of Ras al-Ayn.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said there were still clashes inside Ras al-Ayn and medical personnel could not enter to help the wounded.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Turkish-backed fighters entered Syria and advanced into Kurdish-held Shakariya, a village east of Ras al-Ayn that saw clashes and a Turkish strike a day earlier.
Video posted online showed the fighters driving alongside the wall Turkey has erected along the border and boasting that they were headed on “an assault” into Syria. The video did not show them crossing the border.
Syrian state media said Turkish-backed fighters also made an “infiltration attempt” south of Ras al-Ayn but were repelled in clashes with the Syrian government military that had just moved into the area. The reports gave no further details.
The Observatory said Saturday that Turkey-backed Syrian fighters have prevented a medical convoy from reaching Ras al-Ayn. It said a medical convoy arrived outside the town Friday but Turkey-backed factions closed the road ahead and behind, leaving it stuck outside Ras al-Ayn.
The agreement — reached in negotiations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence — would virtually hand Turkey its aims in the invasion, requiring Kurdish fighters to vacate a swath of territory in Syria along the Turkish border during the cease-fire.
The Kurdish-led force, which said it was in contact with the Americans during the negotiations, said it will abide by the halt in fighting but has not committed to any pull-out. Erdogan warned Friday that Turkey will relaunch its assault on Tuesday when the deal runs out if the Kurdish fighters don’t pull out of a zone 30 kilometers (20-miles) deep running the entire length of the border.
On Saturday, the Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 41 suspected Islamic State members were re-captured after fleeing a detention camp amid fighting earlier this week in Syria. He said 195 other suspected IS members had already been recaptured. He said the captured IS suspects would be relocated to areas controlled by Turkey in northern Syria, including Afrin and al-Bab.
Last week, there were reports that after a Turkish shell landed near Ein Issa camp that holds members of IS families, more than 700 managed to flee amid the chaos.
Turkey’s state-run English language broadcaster TRT World said the IS members and families were captured by Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces.
Erdogan has accused Syrian Kurdish forces of releasing some 750 IS members and families, amid Turkey’s offensive. The Kurds say they broke out of their camp a week ago, attacking guards, amid heavy clashes and Turkish airstrikes nearby.
Washington is drowning in red ink again, yet the mounting fiscal problem is prompting collective yawns from the Trump Administration and Democrats alike.
It wasn’t so long ago that an announcement that the United States annual budget deficit was approaching $1 trillion — in a time of record low unemployment and steady economic growth, no less — would have set off alarm bells in the nation’s capital and sent politicians running to the television cameras to demand action to rein in federal spending. But a recent report from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic analysis that shows the deficit ballooning to a seven-year high of $984 billion in fiscal 2019 was greeted with near silence from U.S. lawmakers, the administration and other policy makers.
Instead, as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, Republicans and Democrats are promoting ambitious new spending and tax relief measures that would add many trillions of dollars to the cumulative federal debt – the sum total of past deficits — which is now approaching a staggering $23 trillion.
After forcing a $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress in 2017 and demanding sharp increases in military spending, both of which have contributed to a 48% increase in the federal deficit since he took office, President Trump and others in his administration have floated the idea of further tax reductions heading into 2020.
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates including liberal Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are pushing for additional federal spending on social programs, including a controversial “Medicare for All” proposal. A study by the Urban Institute found that the most expansive version of that program, which extends healthcare coverage to every American and eliminates virtually all out-of-pocket spending on health care, would cost an average of $3.4 trillion per year, or $34 trillion over a decade.
Warren, who is surging in the polls ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sanders, is also advocating expanded Social Security benefits, free college tuition, student debt relief and environmental initiatives with hefty price tags.
The current U.S. federal debt, now approaching $23 trillion is equal to more than 100% of the estimated $21.3 trillion 2019 Gross Domestic Product. The country has not seen a debt-to-GDP ratio this high since World War II. But still, the primary policy proposals coming from voices on both sides of the political spectrum are in favor of measures that would likely exacerbate the deficit and add to the federal debt.
It’s a state of affairs that leaves Washington budget watchdogs frustrated and worried about the future.
“Certainly, interest in fiscal responsibility seems to be an all-time low,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
“It should be frustrating for everyone, because the deficit is at an all-time high…for this point in the economic cycle,” he said. “It’s really dangerous. And what we need to be doing is getting our debt under control now, understanding that it will have to expand during a recession, not making it even worse.”
That’s a message that neither the Trump administration nor the Democrats running for president appear to have acknowledged.
There are multiple reasons why demands for spending cuts and deficit reduction have been muted in recent years. For one, the seemingly constant state of crisis in Washington, made even more profound by the ongoing effort to impeach President Trump, leaves little room in the headlines for more complex issues like fiscal policy.
However, one key reason that deficit hawks’ collective voice does not command the attention in Washington that it once did is that they have been demonstrably wrong about the effects of rising federal borrowing.
For years, the twin terrors of rising interest rates and inflation were key arguments against allowing the deficit and debt to continue to mount. Expansive federal spending was supposed to goose demand and drive up prices. At the same time, lenders — in the form of the bond market — were expected to demand ever-higher interest rates from a federal government that kept driving itself further into debt.
Additionally, as the government borrowed more and at higher interest rates, the borrowing was supposed to “crowd out” more productive investment in the private sector.
But for the past decade, inflation has remained stubbornly low, even in the years immediately following the Great Recession, when the government was pouring money into the economy to increase demand.
At the same time, the federal government is still able to borrow at historically low rates, making the cost of servicing new debt much lower than budget hawks predicted it would be at this point. And the absence of any evidence that government borrowing is “crowding out” private sector investment has been sparse enough that the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation has declared it to be a concern of “minimal importance.”
Additionally, while much is made of the fact that the federal debt is now higher than annual GDP, that hardly makes the U.S. an outlier among developed nations. Other advanced economies carrying comparable levels of debt include Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France. Japan’s debt load is equal to more than twice its GDP.
In fact, there is a rising consensus among economists worldwide that, especially given the low interest rate environment that is expected to persist indefinitely, high debt levels among advanced economies simply are not that big a deal. Among the loudest voices making this point has been Olivier Blanchard, the former head of the International Monetary Fund — an organization that has spent decades trying to convince developing economies to avoid high debt loads.
“The right attitude…is not to pretend that debt is catastrophic if it is not,” he wrote in a recent paper with economist Ángel Ubide. “Sooner or later, a government will test that proposition and discover that it is false. The right approach is to tailor the advice to the situation of each country.”
Lebanon braced for a third day of unrest on Saturday after anti-government protests fueled by rising fury over an economic crisis erupted across the country and descended into riots on the streets of Beirut.
Small groups of demonstrators gathered in central Beirut in an effort to keep the protests going, with storefronts of banks and upmarket retailers in the capital’s commercial district smashed in and fires still smoldering from the night before.
Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri gave his government partners a 72-hour deadline on Friday to agree on reforms that could ward off economic crisis, hinting he may otherwise resign.
The latest unrest erupted out of anger over the rising cost of living and new tax plans, including a fee on WhatsApp calls, which was quickly retracted after protests – the biggest in decades – broke out.
In a televised speech addressing the protests on Saturday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group opposed the government’s resignation, and that the country did not have enough time for such a move given the acute financial crisis.
“Everyone should take responsibility rather than being preoccupied with settling political scores while leaving the fate of the country unknown,” said Nasrallah, adding that Lebanon could face “financial collapse”.
“All of us have to shoulder the responsibility of the current situation that we arrived at in Lebanon. Everyone should take part in finding a solution,” added Nasrallah, whose Iranian-backed Shi’ite group is Lebanon’s most influential.
The protests that swept villages and towns across the country on Friday recalled the 2011 Arab revolts that toppled four presidents. Lebanese from all sects and walks of life waved banners and chanted for Hariri’s government to go.
“People will definitely go back out today because they’re in pain,” said Ramzi Ismail, a 60-year-old engineer. “But we are against clashes with the army or security forces and vandalism.”
‘Two big dangers’
In the speech, Nasarallah predicted that imposing more taxes would lead to an “explosion” of unrest.
He said Lebanon was facing two big dangers – financial and economic meltdown and popular unrest.
“If we don’t work towards a solution we’re heading towards a collapse of the country, it will be bankrupt and our currency will not have any value.”
“The second danger is a popular explosion as a result of wrong handling of the situation,” Nasrallah said.
The unusually wide geographic reach of protests has highlighted the deepening anger of the Lebanese. The government, which includes nearly all Lebanon’s main parties, has repeatedly failed to implement reforms needed to fix the national finances.
“The protests must continue because this is a matter of our dignity. We’ll be left humiliated otherwise,” said Miriam Keserwan, 28.
Riot police in vehicles and on foot rounded up protesters late on Friday, firing rubber bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse riots in Beirut that grew violent as the night wore on, leaving streets strewn with glass and burning debris.
Lebanon’s internal security apparatus said 52 police were injured on Friday and its forces arrested 70 people.
“I can’t blame the people who are doing this,” said 26-year-old Charbel Abyad, referring to the city’s damage. “Some have no jobs, no health care and no education. They are being mistreated and they can’t help but express it this way.”
South Sudan opposition leader Riek Machar returned to the country on Saturday to meet with President Salva Kiir less than a month before their deadline to form a unity government after a five-year civil war.
Machar last met face-to-face with Kiir in September, when they discussed outstanding issues in a fragile peace deal. His two-day visit includes a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who arrives Sunday with a U.N. Security Council delegation.
The delegation is expected to encourage progress in the peace deal signed a year ago but fraught with delays.
The opposition has said Machar won’t return to form the government by the Nov. 12 deadline unless security arrangements are in place.
The U.S. has said it will reevaluate its relationship with South Sudan if that deadline is missed.
The civil war killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions.
Before Machar’s return a unified army of 41,500 opposition and government soldiers needs to be ready along with a 3,000-person VIP protection force.
But so far there are only 1,000 unified soldiers and security arrangements won’t meet the deadline, deputy opposition spokesman Manawa Peter Gatkuoth said.
The previous Machar-Kiir meeting focused on speeding up the screening and reunification of forces, but parties left the talks with differing views.
Deputy chairman for the opposition Henry Odwar called the meeting “lukewarm,” while government spokesman Michael Makuei called it “highly successful” and said everything was on track for next month’s deadline.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Saturday the murder suspect whose case was the spark that started the fire of the Hong Kong protests — an extradition proposal to allow Hong Kong to transfer suspects to Taiwan, as well as mainland China, among other places, that Lam has announced will be withdrawn — is ready to turn himself in to Taiwanese authorities.
Lam said Chan Tong-kai wrote to her, saying he would “surrender himself to Taiwan” in connection with his alleged involvement in a murder case.
Chang is accused of murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan. When he fled back to Hong Kong, he was arrested on money laundering charges but is expected to be released soon.
Hong Kong is facing the 20th straight weekend of anti-government protests, after both sides revealed this week that they are digging in.
Protesters say they won’t back down from their “five demands” on Hong Kong’s government, and Lam said she would make no concessions to protesters.
Lam’s hardline position was echoed earlier this week by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who went a step further and warned that anyone advocating Hong Kong’s independence from China risked “crushed bodies and shattered bones.”
But protesters say they’re not giving up. On Friday, more than 1,000 people flooded the city’s financial center, marching past banks and luxury stores, drawing hordes of curious onlookers and bringing traffic to a halt.
The protesters’ main demands include universal suffrage, an investigation of police violence, amnesty for protesters and the full, official withdrawal of the extradition bill, which would allow mainland China to try people arrested in Hong Kong.
Protests have been a near-constant presence in the city since June, even though police have outlawed unauthorized protests and the wearing of face coverings during public gatherings.
Police have not granted permission for protests planned for this weekend.
Protests are also planned for every weekend for the rest of the year — or until one side gives in.
Fern Robinson contributed to this report.
The United States is imposing new sanctions on Cuba over its human rights record and its support for Venezuela’s government, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday.
In a statement, the department said it will restrict Cuba’s access to commercial aircraft by revoking existing licenses for aircraft leases to Cuban state-owned airlines and denying future applications for aircraft leases.
The United States will also expand sanctions to include more foreign goods containing U.S. content and impose additional restrictions on exports to the Cuban government, the statement said.
“This action by the Commerce Department sends another clear message to the Cuban regime” that they must immediately cease their destructive behavior at home and abroad,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in the statement.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez responded in a post on Twitter, denouncing the move as “additional economic blockade measures evidencing moral bankruptcy of an internationally isolated policy promoted by a corrupted government.”
In a separate statement, the U.S. State Department criticized Cuba for its detention of dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer, calling on Havana to disclose his whereabouts, treat him humanely and release him without condition.
Ferrer, a prominent figure who leads the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), was detained in Santiago de Cuba Oct. 1 after a police raid on his home, which is also the group’s headquarters.
Cuba’s government does not typically discuss police activity, including the detention of dissidents, who Havana dismisses as provocateurs funded by the United States.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will not turn over documents to congressional Democrats who had subpoenaed them concerning his role in Ukraine as part of their impeachment probe into President Donald Trump, according to U.S. media reports Friday.
Three U.S. House of Representatives committees subpoenaed Perry on Oct. 10 for any role he played in Trump’s push to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.
Turkish forces trigger humanitarian upheaval
As Turkey’s military targets northern Syria after the United States said it was withdrawing its troops, refugees are left wondering what this means for them. The United Nations warned this week that hundreds of thousands of civilians are in danger in northeastern Syria. Doctors Without Borders announced it would shutter its operations in the area, and aid groups say getting help to those in need is increasingly unsustainable. And at one housing camp, where Islamic State families fled as the extremist group’s territory dwindled, hostility is high and security is weakened after many of the Kurdish guards left for the front lines.
Produce truck concealing migrants leads to arrests
Border agents in the southern U.S. state of Arizona found dozens of people stashed among boxes of produce in a refrigerated truck this week. Two people are facing human-smuggling charges, and the migrants now face deportation. The U.S. government is pursuing an increasing number of cases involving smuggling charges, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday.
Ecuador closes border with Venezuela, stranding refugees
Venezuelans are stuck after the Ecuadorian government imposed new rules barring people from entering the country without a visa. But many of the refugees cannot afford the $50 fee to get one, leaving them stranded. VOA’s Celia Mendoza reports from the Rumichaca International Bridge in Colombia.
US deports convicted terror plotter to Sudan
In the early 1990s, fresh off an attack on the World Trade Center, the FBI foiled another plan to target some of New York City’s most recognizable buildings — including the United Nations. This week, one of those arrested was deported to Sudan, after serving out his prison sentence.
From the Feds
— After suspending aid to three Central American countries as part of a bid by Washington to push coordination on migration policies, the U.S. said this week that the funding would be reinstated.
— U.S. immigration officials released data this week that 238 “fraudulent families” crossed the border near El Paso, Texas, in the last six months. These are people the government says are “presenting themselves as families when making an asylum claim in order to be released into the United States.” But as immigration researcher Aaron Reichlin-Melnick highlights, some “80,000 families entered into El Paso during that time period. 238 were found to be “fraudulent” (with that exact definition unclear), or just 0.3%.”
What an extraordinarily bad way of putting this.
~80,000 families entered into El Paso during that time period. 238 were found to be “fraudulent” (with that exact definition unclear), or just 0.3%.
In addition, this means CBP guessed wrong 77% of the time when flagging fraud. https://t.co/5wIfD8V4iR
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) October 18, 2019
Netflix has released a movie based on the so-called Panama Papers despite an attempt by two lawyers to stop the streaming premiere.
“The Laundromat,” starring Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas and Meryl Streep, debuted Friday on Netflix after a limited release in theaters.
Two Panamanian lawyers, Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, sued Netflix in federal court in Connecticut this week, saying the movie defamed them and could prejudice criminal cases against them. Netflix asked a judge to dismiss the suit but did not address the allegations.
The Panama Papers were more than 11 million documents leaked from the two lawyers’ firm that shed light on how the rich hide their money.
A judge ruled there was no valid reason to file the case in Connecticut and ordered it transferred to the Los Angeles-area federal court district.
John McAnear, a 77-year-old Air Force veteran, stood in an audience of hundreds in suburban Des Moines with an oxygen tank at his side, wheezing as he implored Pete Buttigieg to protect the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Democratic presidential hopeful skipped any attempt to bond over their mutual military service. Instead, Buttigieg offered a list of proposals to fix the VA.
Of the many ways the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is different from his better-known rivals, there is this: his ingrained emotional restraint in a show-all-tell-all era.
“You don’t really get the warm fuzzies from him,” said Lisa Ann Spilman, a retired Air Force officer who attended Buttigieg’s event. “But I really like how intelligent and down-to-earth he is.”
Personal connection
As Buttigieg, whose campaign appears better positioned organizationally in Iowa and financially overall than former Vice President Joe Biden’s, attempts to climb into the top tier of Democrats, voters will be taking a measure of him in all ways, including whether he can make the kind of personal connection they have come to expect, at least since Bill Clinton showed he could feel their pain.
Buttigieg chafes at being labeled an emotionless technocrat, and his supporters cite his intellectual agility as his main draw, particularly against someone like President Donald Trump, whose strained relationship with the truth is so frequently on display.
In a candidate debate Tuesday, Buttigieg showed rare outward fire, pointedly challenging Senator Elizabeth Warren on her health care plan and former Representative Beto O’Rourke on gun control. “I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Buttigieg said to O’Rourke.
“I don’t mind being a little professorial at times,” Buttigieg acknowledged in a conversation with reporters last month. He added, “Sometimes I think I’m misread because I’m laid back. I’m misread as being bloodless.”
But to describe him as wooden or mechanical gets it wrong. Upbeat in his trademark white shirt with sleeves half-rolled, Buttigieg projects energy and youthful diligence.
He’s not a fiery podium speaker like Senator Bernie Sanders. He isn’t given to big hugs or open self-reflection, like Biden and Warren.
In interactions with voters, Buttigieg’s style is evolving. During a late-summer stop in southeast Iowa, he noted his mother-in-law “is alive because of the Affordable Care Act,” but he moved on without describing her illness or asking if his audience had similar experiences.
It’s notable because Buttigieg is trying to frame his message around empathy in what he calls the nation’s “crisis of belonging.”
Misfiring
And it does not always work. When the question turned to cancer at the Iowa State Fair, he said before discussing his plans, “Cancer took my father earlier this year, so this is personal,” skipping over any elaboration of the pillar Joe Buttigieg was to his only child.
When the questioner noted her family’s loss, he said politely, “I’m sorry. So, we’re in the same boat,” and then turned to a discussion of research.
Buttigieg’s mother, Anne Montgomery, said that in boyhood her son was fun, curious, literate and multitalented but “a reserved person.”
“It’s been a part of his life for a long time,” she said in an Associated Press interview.
What Buttigieg suggests is his tendency to “compartmentalize” has been a liability for some other candidates, most notably for the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis.
He offered an almost programmatic answer when asked during a nationally televised debate if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered.
Dukakis, who lost in a landslide, acknowledges today that he “botched it” and that his answer fed the narrative that the pragmatic, policy-oriented Massachusetts governor was emotionless.
Buttigieg, Dukakis told the AP, is warm and thoughtful, “but he also happens to be very, very bright, and that, I think, is the biggest part of his appeal.” Dukakis has endorsed his home state senator, Warren.
“He’s not a typical politician,” said Kelsie Goodman, an associate principal for a Des Moines area high school who first saw Buttigieg at an event last month. “And he’s an intellectual judo master.”
As the campaign progresses, there are signs Buttigieg is becoming more comfortable opening up.
At an outdoor event at Des Moines’ Theodore Roosevelt High School last Saturday, he ignited laughter and cheers for his answer to a question about how he would approach debating Trump.
“We know what he’s going to do, and it just doesn’t get to me. Look, I can deal with bullies. I’m gay and I grew up in Indiana. I’ll be fine,” he deadpanned.
Concern for husband
In a rare personal revelation, he told reporters on a bus ride across northern Iowa that he dreaded the thought of his husband, Chasten, being subjected to the cruelties of modern politics.
“Another agonizing feeling is to watch that happening to someone you love,” he said. “At least if it’s happening to me, I can go out there and fight back.”
Still, what Buttigieg’s most vocal advocates praise as his coolness so far seems to be doing little to dampen views of him in Iowa, where he has invested heavily in time and money in hopes of a breakthrough finish. In a September CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, 69% of likely Iowa caucus participants said they viewed Buttigieg favorably, second only to Warren.
Where Buttigieg clearly connects personally is along the rope line with supporters and when the merely curious meet him after he leaves the stage.
In these moments, he has met people who describe their own stories of stepping out of the shadows, as Buttigieg did coming out as a gay man in 2015. Buttigieg regularly mentions Iowa teenager Bridgette Bissell, who described the courage she took from meeting him to announce she was autistic.
Similar moments, Buttigieg said, prompted him to build his campaign around repairing Americans’ sense of connectedness.
In Waterloo recently, local organizer Caitlin Reedy introduced Buttigieg to hundreds at a riverside rally, explaining that she was drawn to him by having experienced the uneasiness of sharing her diagnosis with diabetes.
Picturing ‘unification’
Leaning forward in his chair on the bus the next day, Buttigieg said the campaign was teaching him how people — feeling left out racially, ethnically, culturally, economically — yearn to connect.
“Where it comes from is going through the process of understanding that you’re different,” he said, “and then understanding that that’s part of what you have to offer.”
“Join me in picturing that kind of presidency,” he told more than 600 in Waterloo, “not for the glorification of the president, but for the unification of the people.”
Joe Biden is confronting growing anxiety among would-be allies in the Democratic establishment about his ability to win the presidential nomination following underwhelming debate performances, lagging fundraising and withering attacks from rivals in his own party and from President Donald Trump.
The former vice president’s bank account is better suited for a city council race than a presidential election, warns Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor and top Democratic fundraiser.
Democratic donor Robert Zimmerman describes group “therapy sessions” with some party financiers haranguing the direction of the race. And in New Hampshire, state House Speaker Steve Shurtleff is leaning toward backing Biden, but says “people wish he’d be a little more forceful.”
Their concern is heightened by the rise of Elizabeth Warren, a progressive long viewed by current and former elected officials, big donors and veteran strategists as too liberal to beat Trump in the general election. Warren and Biden are essentially tied at the top of the race with the rest of the field lagging behind.
With first votes in the Democratic primary fast approaching, the new dynamic is sparking widespread frustration among establishment Democrats who have increasingly begun to speak out about the direction of the 2020 contest as they implore Democratic donors sitting on millions of dollars to get off the sidelines to bolster Biden’s candidacy.
“Every dinner party and cocktail party becomes a therapy session,” said Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee based in New York.
West Coast alarms
The same alarms are going off on the West Coast.
“Why are they are not being more supportive of the vice president, who is a centrist?” said Michael S. Smith, a major Democratic donor and Biden supporter in Los Angeles. “If you’re worried about a flood, don’t you start piling up sandbags? I don’t understand the lack of support.”
Others direct their concerns at Biden.
McAuliffe, long a top fundraiser for the Clintons, seized on Biden’s fundraising and his pace of spending to raise questions about the campaign. In an interview, he said it might be time to fire some campaign consultants.
“I don’t think anybody likes to read about $1 million spent on private jets,” McAuliffe said, referring to Biden’s preferred mode of travel. “If I were advising the vice president I’d say, `Fly commercial, get a bag of peanuts or pretzels, go up and down the aisle handing them out. It’ll do wonders for you.’”
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was more subtle, praising Biden as the safest political bet against Trump and the best potential president among Democrats. But he suggested the candidate’s performance so far falls short in some areas.
“I hear concerns about gaffes on this and that” and the campaign trajectory, Rendell said, recalling donor calls he’s made on Biden’s behalf. “Donors are always worried in any campaign,” Rendell quipped, but said he nonetheless must spend time “reassuring them.”
Nervous supporters
The former governor invokes the threat of Warren as the nominee to bolster Biden to nervous supporters.
“We know Joe Biden can win Pennsylvania,” Rendell tells prospective donors. “If Elizabeth is the nominee, we have to fight tooth-and-nail for every last vote.”
Despite the worries, Biden’s support among primary voters shows no sign of cratering — even with Trump and his allies trying to dig up dirt on Biden’s son’s work in Ukraine. While Warren has gained on Biden in many polls and fundraising, the former vice president has remained roughly steady in polls of national Democratic voters.
And perhaps most importantly, he is still the strong favorite among black voters whose support is decisive in a Democratic primary.
Still, anxious donors, party officials and strategists see the need for a stronger national organization. That means competing more aggressively with Warren’s ground game in the four early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, while building out an expansive operation for the Super Tuesday calendar and other states that follow.
Risky approach
Biden’s strategy leans heavily on that kind of sustainable, long-term campaign, because his coalition is anchored by non-white voters and white moderates who have much stronger sway in states that come after the initial Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. His campaign acknowledges as much, with aides insisting that Biden doesn’t have to win either of the first two states to win the nomination.
But there’s considerable risk in that approach, with a worst-case scenario for Biden coming if he falls short of expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire, then doesn’t have enough money to counter negative perceptions with his own advertising and outreach, setting him up to lose support from nonwhite voters and white moderates that he’d need in Nevada, South Carolina and diverse Super Tuesday states.
“A lot of people are with Biden because they think he can win. He’s got to make people continue to believe that,” said Carol Fowler, a former South Carolina party chairwoman who remains uncommitted. Holding that “soft” support would become harder if another candidate, particularly one of the female candidates, gathers momentum ahead of South Carolina, Fowler argued.
Weak fundraising
Up in New Hampshire, which will host the nation’s first presidential primary in February, House Speaker Shurtleff is concerned about Biden’s weak fundraising performance and stagnant polling.
“Nothing’s changed,” said Shurtleff, who describes himself as a centrist leaning toward Biden.
Biden’s most recent disclosures reveal that he spent about $2 million more than the $15 million he took in over the last three months and has a massive overhead, including a staff payroll that topped $4.5 million — plus the private jet travel that rankled some donors. He reported $9 million in the bank at the end of September compared to Bernie Sanders’ $33.7 million, Warren’s $25.7 million and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s $23.4 million.
“You got $9 million? You could be running a city council race,” an incredulous McAuliffe said of Biden’s relatively weak fundraising. “That has to be fixed.”
‘Most Electable’
Still, some Democrats still see a Biden upside in the dynamics.
“People still view Biden as the most electable,” said Robert Wolf, a top donor for President Barack Obama and former chairman and CEO of UBS Americas, pointing to Warren and Sanders supporting a single-payer health insurance overhaul that would eliminate private coverage. “That makes me nervous,” Wolf said.
John Morgan, a Florida attorney who has helped Biden raise almost $2 million for his presidential bid, sees such nervousness stoking Biden’s fourth-quarter money collections. But he insisted that Biden would have plenty of money for the first four nominating contests.
“People are starting to wake up,” he said.
Every October, for the past 48 years, hot air balloons have been filling the skies over Albuquerque, New Mexico, giving spectators both on and off the ground a visual feast of rare beauty. VOA’s Julie Taboh visited the southwestern state’s largest city to see how a modest launch of 13 balloons almost five decades ago has evolved into the largest ballooning event in the world.
Official Washington finds itself consumed by the twin crises of impeachment and Syria this week. President Donald Trump is trying to fend off congressional Democrats moving toward impeachment, even as he faces a fierce backlash from some Republicans over his decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria. Trump is used to weathering political storms, but this one is particularly intense, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
The lights are back on through most of the state of California, where 2 million people saw their power cut during the past week in a precautionary effort to prevent wildfires. As VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports, a heightened fire risk has left power companies racing to upgrade transmission systems, which sometimes spark the blazes.
A United Nations mission in Afghanistan said more civilians have been killed or injured in the past quarter than in any three-month period in the last decade.
A report released Thursday said the 1,174 civilian deaths and 3,139 injuries in the third quarter of this year marked a 42% increase compared with the same period last year.
In the previous quarter, 785 civilians were killed and 1,254 were wounded.
The latest figures brings to more than 8,000 the number of casualties in the first nine months of 2019. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said most of those were caused buy anti-government insurgents.
The report said women and children accounted for more than 41% of casualties this month, with 631 children being killed and 1,830 injured.
“The harm caused to civilians by the fighting in Afghanistan signals the importance of peace talks leading to a cease-fire and a permanent political settlement to the conflict; there is no other way forward,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan. “Civilian casualties are totally unacceptable, especially in the context of the widespread recognition that there can be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.”
Not only do women already earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, but they also pay more for personal products and services like razors, shampoo, haircuts and clothes.
This so-called “pink tax” follows a woman from the cradle to the grave, over her entire life span, according to the research, including a 2015 report from the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA).
The New York City DCA analyzed almost 800 items in 35 product categories and found that items for female consumers cost more than products for men across 30 of those categories.
Overall, women’s products cost 7% more than similar products for men. Women pay more than men for comparable personal care products 56% of the time.
The report found women pay:
— 7% more for toys and accessories
— 4% more for children’s clothing
— 8% more for adult clothing
— 13% more for personal care
— 8% more for senior/home health care products
Baby clothes specifically for girls cost more than clothes for boys. Girls’ shirts can cost up to 13% more than boys’ clothes. Toys marketed to girls cost up to 11% more than toys for boys, even when it’s the exact same item in different colors.
“I have no doubt that it’s real,” says Surina Khan, CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California. “We just have to go to any store, and you can see that, let’s say, a pink razor blade versus a blue one that men use, the pink one costs more. Haircuts cost more. Women’s clothing cost more. It’s definitely present and part of our reality.”
It even costs more for women to get old.
The report found that braces and supports for women cost 15% more; canes cost 12% more; and personal urinals 21% more for female senior citizens.
The price differences suggest women pay a yearly “gender tax” of about $1,351, despite buying the same products and services as men.
“I absolutely think it’s gender discrimination,” Khan says. “Some people will say that it’s more expensive to cut women’s hair, but that is clear gender discrimination, because really it depends on whether you have long hair or short hair, about the amount of time that it takes to cut your hair. Many women have short hair. They shouldn’t have to pay more than a man for a short haircut.”
The National Retail Federation, which calls itself the world’s largest retail trade association, declined to comment for this article. However, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at Ball State University, says the price differences are similar to discounts for senior citizens.
“Senior citizens aren’t as fussy about when they see the movie, but they are fussier about what price they’re willing to pay for it, so we give them discounts,” Horwitz says. “Sellers engage in this behavior all the time. What bothers us about this one is that the way they’re dividing up groups is by gender.”
Horwitz also says the real problem is that girls and women are socialized to want the pink items.
“There is no reason why women shouldn’t be able to walk into the drugstore and buy the men’s razors. Right?” he says. “And if they did, and if they were clear that they didn’t care, there wouldn’t be a more expensive women’s version.”
Congress is making a move to end the pink tax. In April, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California, and Republican Congressman Tom Reed of New York, introduced a bipartisan bill with 50 co-sponsors. The Pink Tax Repeal Act would require that comparable products marketed toward men and women be priced equally.
“I think that if you’re charging women more and people are paying it, then there’s motivation to do that. But it’s discriminatory, and it needs to stop,” Khan says. “It has a cumulative effect over our lifetime because if we’re paying more for products, and earning and owning less, then it’s basically contributing to gender inequality.”
Crude oil contaminating the northeastern coast of Brazil has reached the town of Maragogi, one of the region’s main tourist beaches, its mayor said Thursday.
Images on local television showed dozens of people in Maragogi, known for its natural pools of crystalline water, shoveling and raking the sand in an attempt to remove the sludge from the coast. The region is known as the “Brazilian Caribbean.”
As a truck from Brazil’s environmental agency loaded up with oil-stained sand, some volunteers, apparently without supervision from authorities, joined the work with small shovels.
Environmental regulator Ibama reported there are at least 178 locations in nine Brazilian states that have been affected by the oil. In terms of expanse, it is Brazil’s largest-ever environmental disaster, according to David Zee, an oceanographer at Rio de Janeiro’s state university.
The government’s response has been questioned by ocean experts and environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace. As in Maragogi, in recent weeks many Brazilians have worked to remove oil from the contaminated beaches without proper equipment or instruction from authorities.
“Just like with the spread of fires in the Amazon, the government again was late to respond,” Ricardo Baitelo, coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil, said to The Associated Press.
The Brazilian Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, rebuffed the criticism Wednesday and told local press all necessary means had been adopted for the crude’s identification and collection.
Ibama did not respond to The Associated Press’s phone and email requests for information regarding the number of people and equipment working on the operation.
The origin of the oil remains a mystery. Salles said it likely originated in Venezuela, which Venezuela’s government denies, and that the circumstances of the spill are unknown.
Authorities’ primary hypothesis is that the crude spilled into the water from a boat navigating near Brazil’s coast.
Workers from Ibama, state-run oil company Petrobras and other volunteers have collected hundreds of tons of crude, but the mysterious oil slicks could continue to wash ashore.
A month and a half after oil began appearing on the coast, Salles said he did not know how much oil was still at sea and could reach the mainland in coming days.
Zee expressed concern the oil spill could advance toward the south of Bahia state and damage the Abrolhos region that contains one of the nation’s largest coral reefs.
“The more time that passes with new oil appearing, it’s confirmed that the ocean is absorbing ever more toxic substances, some of which are carcinogenic. The contaminated zones will take at least 25 years to recover,” said Zee. “Brazil has no emergency plan, equipment, nor trained personnel to intervene in a disaster situation like this.”
Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians agreed on Thursday to establish a joint economic committee and a business council, as the Palestinian Authority faces a financing gap that could top $1.8 billion.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s PA has been in deep financial crisis since February when Israel froze transfers of VAT and customs duties it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.
His administration had to impose austerity measures, cutting almost half the salaries of its employees.
Abbas, who arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday, met with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
It added that the leaders reached “an agreement on the establishment of a joint economic committee and on a Saudi-Palestinian business council”.
The report did not elaborate further.
The announcement came days after Saudi Arabia’s football team played Palestine in the occupied West Bank for the first time on Tuesday, with the Saudi side having previously refused to enter the territory as part of its boycott of Israel.
Israel’s cuts have hit hard on the Palestinian territories, already suffering unemployment of around 26 percent in the second quarter of 2019, the World Bank said last month in a report.
Israel collects around $190 million a month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through its ports, and it is supposed to transfer the money to the PA.
In February, Israel decided to deduct around $10 million a month from the revenues — the sum the PA paid inmates in Israeli jails or their families — prompting the Palestinians to refuse to take any funds at all.
US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner during a conference in Bahrain dangled the prospect of $50 billion of investment into a stagnant Palestinian economy.
But the plan so far fails to address key issues such as an independent Palestinian state, Israeli occupation and the Palestinians’ right to return to homes from which they fled or were expelled after Israel’s creation in 1948.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it will issue a formal note of protest to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after Russian authorities caught three U.S. diplomats in a restricted area near a secret test site in northern Russia, state-run news agency TASS has reported.
The trio, which included the U.S. military and naval attachés, was removed from a train on October 14 and briefly questioned by Russian authorities in the sensitive Arctic shipyard city of Severodvinsk, near the site of a mysterious explosion in August that killed five nuclear workers.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said the diplomats had been on an official trip and that they had notified Russian authorities in advance of their travel plans. The reason for the diplomats’ travel was not disclosed.
But Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the diplomats had been found in a restricted area more than 40 kilometers from Arkhangelsk, the city they had said they planned to visit.
Interfax said the authorities checked the documents of the three before releasing them.
TASS quoted a source as saying law enforcement authorities suspected the three of breaching rules on foreigners visiting controlled zones.
Interfax quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as confirming that the diplomats gave notice of their travels, although it said it was for a different destination and that they “probably lost their way.”
Severodvinsk is considered to be in a sensitive military region, and foreigners are allowed to visit only under certain conditions — normally with advanced permission from the authorities.
An explosion on August 8 at the Nyonoksa missile-testing site on the coast of the White Sea, about 50 kilometers from Severodvinsk, killed five people working for Russia’s nuclear agency.
A State Department official on October 10 said the United States concluded that the explosion occurred amid an operation to recover a nuclear powered missile that had apparently crashed during a test.
Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism unit went on a busy 24-hour spree to root out suspected Islamic militants ahead of a presidential inauguration this weekend that will be attended by Asian leaders and Western envoys.
At least 40 suspects have been detained by the counterterrorism squad, known as Densus 88, in eight provinces, including four who were captured on Thursday, national police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said. The sweep followed a tipoff about possible attacks against police and places of worship in several areas.
Six of the arrested militants, including a woman, were presented in a news conference Thursday in orange detainee shirts and under heavy guard at the police headquarters. They were not identified by police, who also displayed explosive chemicals for bomb-making, knives, jihadi books, airsoft guns and rifles with silencers and sniper scopes they said were seized from the suspects.
Another police spokesman, Muhammad Iqbal, said Wednesday among the arrested suspects were two female police officers who have been radicalized and were willing to be suicide bombers.
The arrests follow an attack last week in which a militant stabbed Indonesia’s top security minister, Wiranto, who is recovering from his wounds. A husband and wife were arrested in that attack. President Joko Widodo, who will take the oath of the office on Sunday at a ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, ordered government forces to hunt down the militant networks responsible for the attack.
Wiranto, a local police chief and a third man were wounded in the broad daylight attack in Banten province last Thursday by suspected militant Syahril Alamsyah and his wife, Fitria Andriana. Both are believed to be members of a local affiliate of the Islamic State group known as the Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, or JAD.
Prasetyo said the arrested husband, known as Abu Rara, would face heavier sanctions for handing a knife to his 15-year-old daughter to help assault the police. The child declined out of fear.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has been battling militants since bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Attacks aimed at foreigners have been largely replaced in recent years by smaller, less deadly strikes targeting the government, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces and local “infidels.”
In May last year, two families carried out suicide bombings at churches in Indonesia’s second-largest city, Surabaya, killing a dozen people and two young girls whose parents had involved them in one of the attacks. Police said the father of the two girls was the leader of a cell in a larger militant network that claimed allegiance to IS.
The inauguration of Widodo, who won a second term with 55.5% of the vote in the April 17 election, will be attended by Southeast Asian leaders and Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Several envoys, including China’s Vice President Wang Qishan and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao, are also scheduled to attend.
Prasetyo said 31,000 security personnel were being deployed to secure the capital during the inauguration, though there has been no warning of a possible attack.
“The arrested suspects planned to attack police and worship places instead,” Prasetyo said.
He said police were hunting down other suspected militants, mostly participants in a social media chat group who are believed to be linked to JAD.
Police have seized 10 homemade pipe bombs believed to be intended for suicide attacks, chemicals for use in explosives, airsoft guns, knives, documents on planned attacks, jihadi books, laptops and cellphones in separate raids.
In West Java’s Cirebon district, investigators found that three of the suspects had been working on a chemical bomb containing methanol, urea fertilizer and rosary pea seeds, which are the main ingredient of abrin, an extremely toxic poison, Prasetyo said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his 27 counterparts from across the European Union are converging on Brussels Thursday for a summit they hope will finally lay to rest the acrimony and frustration of a three-year divorce fight.
Yet even before dawn, Johnson had a serious setback when his Northern Irish government allies said they would not back his compromise proposals. The prime minister needs all the support he can get to push any deal past a deeply divided parliament.
It only added to the high anxiety that reigned Thursday morning, with the last outstanding issues of the divorce papers still unclear.
Technical negotiators again went into the night Wednesday to fine tune customs and sales tax regulations that will have to regulate trade in goods between the Northern Ireland and Ireland, where the U.K. and the EU share their only land border.
And they were set to continue right up to the summit’s midafternoon opening. If a deal is agreed on during the two-day summit, Johnson hopes to present it to Britain’s Parliament at a special sitting Saturday.
After months of gloom over the stalled Brexit process, European leaders have sounded upbeat this week. French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that “I want to believe that a deal is being finalized,” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said negotiations were “in the final stretch.”
Johnson, who took office in July vowing Britain would finally leave the EU on Oct. 31, come what may, was slightly more cautious. He likened Brexit to climbing Mount Everest, saying the summit was in sight, though still shrouded in cloud.
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party added to those clouds early Thursday. DUP leader Arlen Foster and the party’s parliamentary chief Nigel Dodds said they “could not support what is being suggested on customs and consent issues,” referring to a say the Northern Irish authorities might have in future developments.
Both the customs and consent arrangements are key to guaranteeing an open border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland — the main obstacle to a Brexit deal.
Foster and Dodds said they would continue to work with the U.K. government to get a “sensible” deal. The problem is that the closer Johnson aligns himself with the DUP, the further he removes himself from the EU, leaving him walking a political tightrope.
Brexit negotiations have been here before, seemingly closing in on a deal that is dashed at the last moment. But hopes have risen that this time may be different. Though with Britain’s Oct. 31 departure date looming and just hours to go before the EU summit, focus was on getting a broad political commitment, with the full legal details to be hammered out later. That could mean another EU summit on Brexit before the end of the month.
So far, all plans to keep an open and near-invisible border between the two have hit a brick wall of opposition from the DUP.
A warming planet is triggering extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and loss of wildlife habitats. An American art exhibit is delving into the effects of climate change, which include melting glaciers and the destruction of coral reefs. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to the University of Rhode Island to see how art is used to fight climate change.