YCLOAK

Global regulators will meet in Montreal next week to review pilot licensing requirements, the U.N.’s aviation agency said, as part of a discussion that has gained urgency following two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft in the past year.

It is the first time that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets global standards for 193 member countries, will undertake such a broad review on training requirements.

While the meeting was not called in response to the Max crashes in Indonesia last October and in Ethiopia in March, it coincides with a larger debate on whether increasingly automated commercial jets are compromising pilot skills. 

The 737 Max has been grounded worldwide and could not be back in service for months yet.

Most attention surrounding the two 737 Max crashes that killed a total of 346 people focuses on suspected flaws in an automated stall-prevention system called MCAS, which Boeing implemented to make the Max perform like previous 737 models.

But the training given to pilots to allow them to handle such problems smoothly is also under scrutiny, expanding an industry debate over pilot skills that has been raging for years as crews spend less and less time flying aircraft manually.

“Recently, with current events, people are discussing whether the minimum requirements or experience are still valid, [or] should we review that?” ICAO’s chief of operational safety Miguel Marin told Reuters.

In addition to regulators, representatives of a global pilots group are expected to attend the July 8-12 meeting, Marin said. Marin called the meeting a “first step,” with any eventual change up to regulators.

Training hours

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration increased the number of required training hours for commercial pilots from 250 to 1,500 in 2013, a move that some players have criticized as excessive, particularly as the industry grapples with future pilot shortages.

At the Montreal meeting, regulators will discuss flying hours and competency-based training, where pilots demonstrate skills like landing an airplane, as opposed to focusing on learning to fly and accumulating hours regardless of aircraft type.

ICAO’s multi-crew pilot license created in 2006 focused on competency-based training, where pilots need 240 hours to become first officers on a single aircraft type.

“What we’re seeing in highly automated aircraft, it’s not how to manage the airplane if things are OK. It’s those unexpected malfunctions that throw the airplane off,” Marin said. “We think that can only be addressed with a different type of approach to training rather than just saying, give them more hours.”
 

…

In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. Lazarus Chigwandali has long been performing on the streets of Lilongwe.  But after catching the eye of a Swedish producer, he began work on an album that is due out in August. He’s also about to embark on a nationwide tour to promote a documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, about the plight of albinos in Malawi. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.

…

In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. 

As teens, Lazarus Chigwandali and his late brother, who also had albinism, played on the streets of Lilongwe, mostly to raise money to buy protective skin lotion.

He says in those days it was difficult to find skin lotion that would protect them from the sun, so they had sores all over their bodies. As a result many people discriminated against them because of the way their bodies looked.

Attacks continue

Discrimination and attacks against albinos like Chigwandali continue. Some Africans believe their body parts, used in so-called magic potions, will bring good luck.

At 39, Chigwandali began composing songs about the myths and misperceptions about people with albinism.

Then he heard music producers from abroad wanted to meet him at his home village to record his music, something that worried his wife, Gertrude Levison.

She says she was afraid that maybe they wanted to kidnap them all. But she realized that it was a peaceful move when she heard her husband talking with a friend of his on the phone.

The recording deal enabled Chigwandali to produce a 30-track music album, Stomp on the Devil, which denounces attacks on albinos. It is due out in August

Esau Mwamwaya, is Chigwandali’s manager.

“With the challenge which people with albinism face in Malawi we felt like, with his powerful voice, he can be an instrument to send the message across the world that you know, people born with albinism, are just like anybody else,” Mwamwaya said.

Much work to be done

While some of his songs are playing on local radio stations, Chigwandali says there is still a long way to go before the attacks end.

He says there are still others who ignore the messages in his songs. This means a lot of work. But, he says, “We will soon start a nationwide tour to screen my documentary which shows attacks on people with albinism in Malawi.”

The documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, is about the plight of albinos in Malawi.

His wife worries that Chigwandali’s growing fame could expose him and their two albino sons to potential attackers.

To ease their concerns, Chigwandali’s managers have launched a fundraising initiative to build a house for the family that will provide greater security.
 

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Iran announced Monday that it has exceeded its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit, violating the amount it agreed to hold in the 2015 international deal. The move is aimed at forcing the signatories of the nuclear deal to give Iran relief from U.S. sanctions. VOA’s Kurdish Service discussed the consequences of Iran’s action with two experts on Iranian issues. Zlatica Hoke has a summary of what they said.

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The U.S. military says it has struck an al-Qaida leadership and training facility in northern Syria where attacks threatening Americans and others were being planned.

The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the strike occurred on Sunday near the northern province of Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, said Monday that the strike killed eight members of the al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din, which is Arabic for “Guardians of Religion.”

The Observatory says the dead included six commanders: two Algerians, two Tunisians, an Egyptian and a Syrian.

Al-Qaida-linked militants control wide parts of northern Syria, mostly in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.

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India spends billions of dollars on social welfare support for the poor but corruption, fraud and inefficiencies often prevent the benefits from reaching them. But now, the government is starting to transform the way it gets welfare to the poor by linking welfare programs to the world’s biggest biometric identity project under which more than one billion people have been given biometric cards. Anjana Pasricha reports on how residents of a rural hamlet in the northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh are benefiting after it switched from cash to digital payments.

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A powerful car bomb-and-gun attack in the Afghan capital of Kabul is reported to have killed and wounded dozens of people. Officials said the ensuing clashes between the assailants and Afghan security forces were raging six hours into the siege.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for plotting the suicide raid against what it said was the logistics and engineering center of the Afghan Defense Ministry.

Residents said Monday’s blast occurred in a central part of the city during morning rush hour, sending a plume of black smoke over Kabul.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said in a statement that several gunmen later took positions in a nearby under construction multi-story building following the blast and started firing at Afghan police forces on duty.

Rahimi added that Afghan special forces reached the site and an operation was underway to neutralize the assailants. He said two attackers had already been killed while the rest were currently holed up in “civilian homes” around the site of the attack. Rahimi noted that security forces have rescued more than 200 people to safety.

Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah condemned the Taliban attack, saying it “showcases the group’s inherent criminal nature” and vowed the violence will not deter security forces from pursuing and punishing the “miscreants.”

Ambulances rushed to the scene and ferried one dead and around 100 injured people to hospitals, including children, the Afghan health ministry spokesman said. The education ministry announced in a statement that 52 students were among those injured.

Staff at the nearby office building of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) were also among the casualties. Television footage showed the AFF’s acting chief was among those who suffered injuries.

A senior Afghan journalist, Bilal Sarwary, tweeted the massive blast killed at least 40 people and wounded 80 others, quoting Afghan intelligence, police and government officials.

Authorities in Kabul, however, have not immediately offered any details about whether the blast caused fatalities.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that a vehicle-born bomb was detonated before “multiple” suicide attackers entered the Defense Ministry-related compounded and engaged Afghan security forces.

Mujahid said the raid killed “tens of officers and workers of the Defense Ministry, though the insurgent group often releases inflated claims for such attacks.

The violence coincided with intensified Taliban battlefield attacks across Afghanistan that officials said have killed nearly 100 Afghan security forces over the past two days.

Monday’s attack comes as the Taliban and the United States are engaged in a fresh round of talks in Qatar aimed at finding a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan.

Washington says it is trying through the dialogue to lay the ground for inter-Afghan talks for a sustainable peace in Afghanistan.

But a Taliban spokesman on Monday reiterated it will participate in talks with Afghan stakeholders only after a timetable for withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign troops from Afghanistan in the presence of “international guarantors.”

Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban’s negotiating team, however, ruled out peace talks with the government in Kabul “as government.” The insurgent group dismisses the Afghan administration as an American “puppet” with no decision-making authority.

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took his global message urging immediate climate action to officials gathered in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, where production of hydrocarbons remains a key driver of the economy.
 
Guterres is calling on governments to stop building new coal plants by 2020, cut greenhouse emissions by 45% over the next decade and overhauling fossil fuel-driven economies with new technologies like solar and wind. The world, he said, is facing a grave climate emergency.''<br />
 <br />
In remarks at a summit in Abu Dhabi, he painted a grim picture of how rapidly climate change is advancing, saying it is outpacing efforts to address it.<br />
 <br />
 He lauded the Paris climate accord, but said even if its promises are fully met, the world still faces what he described as a catastrophic three-degree temperature rise by the end of the century.<br />
 <br />
Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than even worst-case scenarios, he said, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.<br />
 <br />It is plain to me that we have no time to lose,” Guterres said. Sadly, it is not yet plain to all the decision makers that run our world.''<br />
 <br />
 He spoke at the opulent Emirates Palace, where Abu Dhabi was hosting a preparatory meeting for the U.N. Climate Action Summit in September. Guterres was expected to later take a helicopter ride to view Abu Dhabi's Noor solar power plant.<br />
 <br />
When asked, U.N. representatives said the lavish Abu Dhabi summit and his planned helicopter ride would be carbon neutral, meaning their effects would be balanced by efforts like planting trees and sequestering emissions. The U.N. says carbon dioxide emissions account for around 80% of global warming.<br />
 <br />
Guterres was in Abu Dhabi fresh off meetings with The Group of 20 leaders in Osaka, Japan. There, he appealed directly to heads of state of the world's main emitters to step up their efforts. The countries of the G-20 represent 80% of world emissions of greenhouse gases, he said.<br />
 <br />
At the G-20 meeting, 19 countries expressed their commitment to the Paris agreement, with the only the United States dissenting.<br />
 <br />
In 2017, President Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement as soon as 2020, arguing it disadvantages American workers and taxpayers. Trump has also moved steadily to dismantle Obama administration efforts to rein in coal, oil and gas emissions. His position has been that these efforts also hurt the U.S. economy.<br />
 <br />
The secretary-general's special envoy for the climate summit, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, told The Associated Press it was disappointing that the U.S. has pulled out from the accord. However, he said there are many examples of efforts at the local and state level in the United States to combat climate change.<br />
 <br />I think it is very important to have all countries committing to this cause… even more when we are talking about the country of the importance and the size – not only in terms of the economy but also the emissions – of the United States,” he said.
 
Guterres is urging business leaders and politicians to come to the Climate Action Summit later this year with their plans ready to nearly halve greenhouse emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
 
He suggested taxing major carbon-emitting industries and polluters, ending the subsidization of oil and gas, and halting the building of all new coal plants by next year.
 
We are in a battle for our lives,'' he said.But it is a battle we can win.”

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Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across Sudan on Sunday against the ruling generals, calling for a civilian government nearly three months after the army forced out the long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

The mass protests, centered in the capital, Khartoum, were the first since a June 3 crackdown when security forces violently broke up a protest camp. In that confrontation, dozens were killed, with protest organizers saying the death toll was at least 128, while authorities claim it was 61, including three security personnel.

Sunday’s demonstrators gathered at several points across Khartoum and in the sister city of Omdurman, then marching to the homes of those killed in previous protests.

The protesters, some of them waving Sudanese flags, chanted “Civilian rule! Civilian rule!” and “Burhan’s council, just fall,” targeting Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the head of the military council. Security forces fired tear gas at the demonstrators.

Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council, said the generals want to reach an “urgent and comprehensive agreement with no exclusion. We in the military council are totally neutral. We are the guardians of the revolution. We do not want to be part of the dispute.”

The European Union and several Western countries have called on the generals to avoid bloodshed.

The June 3 raid followed the collapse of talks on a new government, whether it should be led by a civilian or soldier.

Ethiopia and the African Union have offered a plan for a civilian-majority body, which the generals say could be the basis for new negotiations.

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Sometimes, modern problems require ancient solutions.  
 
A 1,400-year-old Peruvian water-diverting method could supply up to 40,000 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of water to present-day Lima each year, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability.
 
It’s one example of how indigenous methods could supplement existing modern infrastructure in water-scarce countries worldwide. 
 
More than a billion people across the world face water scarcity. Artificial reservoirs store rainwater and runoff for use during drier times, but reservoirs are costly, require years to plan and can still fail to meet water needs. Just last week, the reservoirs in Chennai, India, ran nearly dry, forcing its 4 million residents to rely on government water tankers.  
 

Peru’s capital, Lima, depends on water from rivers high in the Andes. It takes only a few days for water to flow down to Lima, so when the dry season begins in the mountains, the water supply rapidly vanishes. The city suffers water deficit of 43 million cubic meters during the dry season, which it alleviates with modern infrastructure such as artificial reservoirs. 
 

Artificial reservoirs aren’t the only solution, however. Over a thousand years ago, indigenous people developed another way of dealing with water shortages. Boris Ochoa-Tocachi, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London and lead author of the study, saw firsthand one of the last remaining pre-Inca water-harvesting systems in the small highland community of Huamantanga, Peru. 

Water diverted, delayed
 
The 1,400-year-old system is designed to increase the water supply during the dry season by diverting and delaying water as it travels down from the mountains. This nature-based “green” infrastructure consists of stone canals that guide water from its source to a network of earthen canals, ponds, springs and rocky hillsides, which encourage water to seep into the ground. It then slowly trickles downhill through the soil and resurfaces in streams near the community.  
 
Ideally, the system should be able to increase the water’s travel time from days to months in order to provide water throughout the dry season, “but there was no evidence at all to quantify what is the water volume that they can harvest from these practices, or really if the practices were actually increasing the yields of these springs that they used during the dry season,” said Ochoa-Tocachi. 
 

To assess the system’s capabilities, the researchers measured how much it slowed the flow of water by injecting a dye tracer high upstream and noting when it resurfaced downstream. The water started to emerge two weeks later and continued flowing for eight months — a huge improvement over the hours or days it would normally take. 
 
“I think probably the most exciting result is that we actually confirmed that this system works,” Ochoa-Tocachi added. “It’s not only trusting that, yeah, we know that there are traditional practices, we know that indigenous knowledge is very useful. I think that we proved that it is still relevant today. It is still a tool that we can use and we can replicate to solve modern problems.” 

Considerable increase in supply
 
The researchers next considered how implementing a scaled-up version of the system could benefit Lima. Combining what they learned from the existing setup in Huamantanga with the physical characteristics of Lima’s surroundings, they estimated that the system could increase Lima’s dry-season water supply by 7.5% on average, and up to 33% at the beginning of the dry season. This amounts to nearly 100 million cubic meters of water per year — the equivalent of 40,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. 
 
Todd Gartner, director of the World Resources Institute Natural Infrastructure for Water project, noted that this study “takes what we often just talk about — that ‘green [infrastructure] is as good as grey’ — and it puts this into practice and does a lot of evaluation and monitoring and puts real numbers behind it.” 
 
Another benefit of the system is the cost. Ochoa-Tocachi estimated that building a series of canals similar to what exists in Huamantanga would cost 10 times less than building a reservoir of the same volume. He also noted that many highland societies elsewhere in the world have developed ways of diverting and delaying water in the past and could implement them today to supplement their more expensive modern counterparts. 
 
“I think there is a lot of potential in revaluing these water-harvesting practices that have a very long history,” Ochoa-Tocachi said. “There are a lot of these practices that still now could be rescued and could be replicated, even though probably the actual mechanics or the actual process is different than the one that we studied. But the concept of using indigenous knowledge for solving modern engineering problems, I think that is probably very valuable today.” 

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Tens of thousands of people turned out for gay pride celebrations around the world on Saturday, including a boisterous party in Mexico and the first pride march in North Macedonia’s capital. 
 
Rainbow flags and umbrellas swayed and music pounded as the march along Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma avenue got underway, with couples, families and activists seeking to raise visibility for sexual diversity in the country.   
 
Same-sex civil unions have been legal in Mexico City since 2007, and gay marriage since 2009. A handful of Mexican states have also legalized same-sex unions, which are supposed to be recognized nationwide. But pride participants said Mexico has a long way to go in becoming a more tolerant and accepting place for LGBTQ individuals.  
 

“There’s a lot of machismo, a lot of ignorance still,” said Monica Nochebuena, who identifies as bisexual.  
 
Nochebuena, 28, attended the Mexico City march for the first time with her mother and sister on Saturday, wearing a shirt that said: “My mama already knows.” Her mother’s shirt read: “My daughter already told me.” 
 
Human rights activist Jose Luis Gutierrez, 43, said the march is about visibility, and rights, especially for Mexico’s vulnerable transgender population. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says that poverty, exclusion and violence reduce life expectancy for trans women in the Americas to 35 years. 
 
In New York City, Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, when a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan led to a riot and days of demonstrations that morphed into a sustained LGBTQ liberation movement. The city’s huge Pride parade on Sunday will swing past the bar. 
 
Other LGBTQ celebrations took place from India to Europe, with more events planned for Sunday. 
 

In the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, U.S. Charge d’Affaires Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm attended the first pride march there in a festive and incident-free atmosphere despite a countermarch organized by religious and “pro-family” organizations. 
 
People from across Macedonia took part, along with marchers from neighboring Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia and other countries.  
 
“This year Skopje joined more than 70 Pride [marches] and the USA are very proud to be part of this,” Schweitzer-Bluhm told reporters. “There is a lot of progress here in North Macedonia but still a lot has to be done.” 

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Thousands marched through Madrid on Saturday to ask the Spanish capital’s new mayor not to ditch ambitious traffic restrictions in the center only recently set up to improve air quality. 
 
“Madrid Central,” as it is called, was one of the measures that persuaded the European Commission not to take Spain to court last year over its bad air pollution in the capital and Barcelona, as it did with France, Germany and the United Kingdom. 
 
“Fewer cars, better air” and “The new city hall seriously harms your health” were the messages on banners as protesters walked through the city’s center in 40-degree-Celsius heat. 
 
The capital’s new conservative mayor, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, made ditching “Madrid Central” a priority during his campaign, saying it had done nothing to ease pollution and only caused a nuisance for locals. 
 
But since he has taken power as part of a coalition with center-right party Ciudadanos, city officials have toned this down, saying the government is merely seeking to reform a system that does not work properly, having mistakingly handed out some fines. 
 
When the system was launched in November, Madrid followed in the steps of other European cities such as London, Stockholm and Milan that have restricted traffic in their centers. 
 

But while in these cases drivers can pay to enter such zones, Madrid went a step further, banning many vehicles from accessing the center altogether and fining them if they did. 
 
These fines will be suspended from July 1 to the end of September as the new city hall team audits the system. 
 
For Beatriz Navarro, 44, a university biochemistry professor who took part in the march, the system is working fine. 
 
“It’s a small seed … among everything that has to be done to slow down climate change,” she said. 
 
In a statement, environmental group Ecologistas en Accion said “the levels of pollution from nitrogen dioxide (NO2) registered during May this year were lower than those of 2018 in all the [measuring] stations in the system.” 
 
“In 14 of the 24 stations [in Madrid], the value registered in May 2019 was the lowest in the last 10 years.” 

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U.S. President Donald Trump said early Sunday that his schedule while in South Korea would include a visit with U.S. troops and a trip to the Demilitarized Zone. 
 
It did not mention, however, the invitation Trump had sent through social media on Saturday, in which he tweeted an invitation to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to meet him at the border “to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”

After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2019

Sunday morning, Trump plans to address South Korean business leaders. He will then travel to the presidential residence to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. 
 
He will travel to the DMZ Sunday afternoon, and then address U.S. troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, before departing for the U.S.

Speaking to reporters at the Group of 20 summit in Japan, Trump said he decided Saturday morning to “put out a feeler” to meet Kim, adding such a meeting would last only two minutes.

“We’ll see each other for two minutes,” Trump said. “That’s all we can. But that will be fine.”

South Korea Welcomes Trump, But Skeptically

Despite Trump courting controversy, polls suggest support for US remains high

Trump later said he would feel “very comfortable” stepping across the border into North Korea. If that happened, it would be the first time a sitting U.S. president visited North Korea.

Kim has not responded to Trump’s offer. But North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, called the invitation an “interesting suggestion.”

“We see it as a very interesting suggestion, but we have not received an official proposal in this regard,” Choe said in a statement published in the official Korean Central News Agency.

“It would serve as another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations,” Choe added.

Another meeting between Trump and Kim could help reset stalled nuclear talks. But a meeting without substance risks becoming theatrics and would appear to further legitimize the North Korean leader, many analysts warn.

“The DMZ is too consequential a venue to be used simply as backdrop for a photo op,” said Daniel Russel, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific.

Talks stalled

Trump and Kim met in Singapore last June and in Vietnam in February. Since Vietnam, working-level negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have broken down because of disagreement over how to pace sanctions relief with the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

In recent weeks, Trump and Kim have exchanged personal letters, raising hopes the talks may get back on track. But it isn’t clear how additional top-level diplomacy can advance the talks, as neither side appears to have softened their negotiating position.

A key indicator of progress is whether North Korean counterparts meet with U.S. Special Representative Stephen Biegun, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“Progress on inter-Korean relations and denuclearization requires that the Kim regime agree to working-level talks to negotiate next steps,” Easley said. Absent substantive talks, further summits with Kim “run the risk of appearing to accept North Korea as a nuclear state,” he added.

Meeting at JSA?

U.S. officials haven’t said where along the 250-kilometer Demilitarized Zone Trump intended to visit.

The Joint Security Area (JSA) has long been mentioned as a possible venue for a Trump-Kim meeting. The JSA, also known as the Panmunjom border village, is the only spot along the DMZ where North and South Korean soldiers can stand face to face.

Past U.S. presidents have used visits to the DMZ to deliver messages on strengthening the U.S.-South Korea alliance, to pay respect to the troops, and to demonstrate a symbolic show of resolve against North Korea.

“It is absolutely not the place to praise his ‘friend’ Kim, to complain about ‘freeloading’ allies, or to muse about withdrawing U.S. troops,” said Russel, the former State Department official who is now a vice president at the Asia Society.

While Trump’s language may differ from that of past presidents, some analysts welcomed a more conciliatory approach.

“While no major agreements will be signed, both sides can reaffirm their commitment to dialogue and diplomacy, essentially resetting the table for a future deal in the weeks and months to come,” said Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest.

DMZ visit planned ahead of time?

In 2017 during his first visit to South Korea as president, Trump canceled a surprise stop at the DMZ after heavy fog grounded the helicopters that were to take him there.

Bad weather is again a possibility, with the onset of the rainy season in South Korea. However, because of the possibility of a summit with Kim, Trump could choose to take a motorcade to the DMZ, if the weather becomes an issue.

Trump’s visit to the DMZ is less spontaneous than the president suggests. In an interview Monday with the Washington-based newspaper and website The Hill, Trump acknowledged a likely visit to the DMZ, adding he “might” want to meet Kim there.

In Monday interview, Trump acknowledged likely visit to the DMZ and said he “might” want to meet KJU there. WH asked we delay publication, citing security concerns. We agreed. Then he just tweeted it out https://t.co/WHMqJ0ABHz

— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) June 28, 2019

However, White House officials asked the website to delay the publication of those remarks, citing security concerns.

Before leaving Washington, Trump said he would “not quite” meet with Kim, though he said he may talk with him in a “different form.”

Earlier this week, a North Korean state media article said Kim was “seriously contemplating” the “interesting” contents of a recent letter from Trump.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said “nothing has been finalized,” adding it continues to call for more dialogue with North Korea.

The Financial Times reported late Saturday that White House officials were drafting an “official invitation” for Kim to meet Trump at the DMZ.

It isn’t clear whether South Korea’s Moon  would also attend any meeting at the DMZ.

Wide gaps

There appear to be wide gaps between North and South Korea on how to proceed with nuclear talks.

Although Trump and Kim agreed in Singapore to work “toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” U.S. officials have acknowledged that Washington and Pyongyang do not agree on what “denuclearization” means.

North Korean officials have made clear they do not see “denuclearization” as Pyongyang unilaterally giving up its nuclear weapons.

Instead, the North wants to see the United States take reciprocal steps, including ending U.S. and U.N. sanctions and providing various security guarantees.

In Hanoi, Kim offered to dismantle a key nuclear complex in exchange for the lifting of most U.N. sanctions. Trump rejected that offer, insisting that Kim agree to give up his entire nuclear weapons program before receiving sanctions relief.

Kim has given the United States until the end of the year to offer what it sees as an adequate counterproposal.

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Mexico and the United States are scrambling to address rising numbers of immigrants arriving at their shared border. Mexican border guards are stepping up raids against immigrants traveling north. In the United States, an uproar over the treatment of children in U.S. detention facilities led American lawmakers to approve a $4.6 billion emergency bill. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.

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A group of New York bikers has set out to save the environment by starting a bike-powered composting service. They collect food waste from restaurants and households for composting, and then use that compost as fertilizer to grow vegetables. In a city with a population of 8.5 million people, this might seem like a drop in the bucket, but while the scope might be small now, the organizers have big  and green  plans for the project. Nina Vishneva has the story narrated by Anna Rice.

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The desktop personal computer changed the world when it was introduced back in the 1970s. But lately laptops and phones have slowly eaten away at that market. But the creators of a new PC that costs less than a trip to the grocery store are hoping their little PC can change that. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.

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R. Kelly’s lawyers want a Chicago judge to toss a 2019 lawsuit alleging the singer sexually abused a minor a little over 20 years ago.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports their motion to dismiss was filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court.
 
The lawsuit says the abuse occurred in 1998. Kelly’s attorneys say she had until 2002 to sue. But state law can extend deadlines to file in cases where the accuser becomes aware of the abuse later.
 
Plaintiff lawyer Jeffrey Deutschman says Kelly has a right to file the motion but that it will drag out the case.
 
The plaintiff is one of four accusers in a separate criminal case . The suit was filed just before Kelly was charged in February with criminal sexual abuse. He denies ever abusing anyone.

…

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cited an awkward encounter with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law in a restaurant as an example of diplomacy being conducted behind his back when he was in the administration, according to a newly released transcript of a congressional hearing.

Tillerson, who was fired by Trump in March 2018 , mentioned the story during a day of closed-door testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about his rocky, 13-month tenure as secretary of state. He described his surprise to find that he happened to be dining in the same Washington restaurant while Jared Kushner and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray had a private meal.

The former top U.S. diplomat and CEO of ExxonMobil said he “could see the color go out” of the Mexican official’s face when Tillerson greeted them at their table with a smile.

“And I said: ‘I don’t want to interrupt what y’all are doing,‘” Tillerson recalled for the committee. “I said ’Give me a call next time you’re coming to town. And I left it at that.”

The account from the transcript released Thursday suggests that Trump’s top diplomat was in the dark as the new administration was grappling with major foreign policy issues.

Trump had harsh words for his former top diplomat in December after Tillerson said in rare public remarks that the president was “undisciplined” and did not like to read briefing reports. Trump called him “dumb as a rock” in a tweet.

Tillerson described the restaurant incident as an example of one of the challenges he faced as secretary of state until Trump abruptly fired him over social media.

He said it was a “unique situation” to have the president’s son-in-law as a White House adviser, saying “there was not a real clear understanding” of Kushner’s role and responsibilities.

“No one really described what he was going to be doing,” he said. “I just knew what his title was.”

Tillerson said there other examples. He noted that Kushner “met often” with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and that the president’s son-in-law requested that the secretary speak with an official from the kingdom to discuss a document they had been developing that was “kind of a roadmap” for the future of the relationship between the two countries.

The foreign trips raised concerns, the former secretary said, because Kushner would not coordinate with the State Department or the local embassy in the countries he visited. Tillerson said he raised the issue with him but “not much changed.”

A committee member asked about a private dinner in May 2017 attended by Kushner, Steve Bannon, bin Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates in which they discussed the plans by Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. to blockade the neighboring Gulf nation of Qatar, which hosts the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, in the coming weeks.

Tillerson said he didn’t know about any such dinner but that it would have made him “angry” if it had occurred, since he and others in the administration were caught off guard by the blockade a few weeks later. The committee did not cite a source for their information about the dinner. The White House said it did not occur and disputed the former secretary’s broader criticism of Kushner.

“This story is false and a cheap attempt to rewrite history. The alleged ‘dinner’ to supposedly discuss the blockade never happened, and neither Jared, nor anyone in the White House, was involved in the blockade,” presidential spokesman Hogan Gidley said. “The White House operated under the belief the Secretary of State at the time, Mr. Tillerson, would and should know what his own team was working on.”

Gidley added that Kushner “consistently follows proper protocols” with the National Security Council and the State Department, “and this instance is no different.”

Bannon did not respond to a request for comment.

The testimony, with Tillerson accompanied by a personal lawyer and a State Department attorney, took place in private last month. A transcript was released Thursday. There were large sections redacted, including some where he discusses issues related to an Oval Office meeting that involved the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak .

He was prohibited from discussing private conversations with Trump and avoided certain highly publicized incidents, including reports he once referred to the president as a “moron.”

He told the committee he had never met Trump before being urged by him to take the job and he was stunned by the offer after his long career as an oil industry executive with extensive overseas experience, especially in Russia and the Middle East.

Tillerson, who had been acquainted with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the late 1990s, said he told the leader during his first visit as secretary of state that relations with the United States were bad but could be improved if they worked to build trust.

“I said the relationship is the worst it’s been since the Cold War but I looked him in the eye and I said but it can get worse and we can’t let that happen,” he said.

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Al-Qaida is accusing Egyptian authorities of killing jailed former U.S.-educated President Mohamed Morsi, who died in a Cairo courtroom during his trial earlier this month.
 
The militant group’s media arm as-Sahab posted a statement on Thursday, urging Egyptians to rise against current general-turned-President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
 
Al-Qaida says: “We do not doubt that he (Morsi) was killed, oppressed and humiliated” in jail.
 

UN Calls for Independent Investigation into Death of Egypt’s Morsi

UN human rights office calls for prompt, impartial, transparent investigation into sudden death of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in Cairo court, where he was on trial on espionage charges

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president who hailed from the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, was ousted by the Sissi-led military in 2013 after massive protests against his one-year divisive rule. He had been jailed for six years until his death.
 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a fierce el-Sissi critic, has claimed that Morsi’s death was suspicious while rights groups said the government deliberately denied Morsi access to medical care.

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Separatists in Cameroon’s restive English-speaking regions have freed a prominent Catholic archbishop they kidnapped Tuesday. 

Archbishop Cornelius Fontem Esua says he was abducted by separatist fighters in a locality called Njinikejem while on a trip to preach peace in regions where a separatist war has raged for the past two years.

“The road was blocked,” he said. “I stood there for sometime, some boys came in and said, ‘No, you cannot go, you should go back.’ They gave me the number of a certain general [commander of separatist fighters]. They called and said, ‘Let me talk to him.’ He said, ‘No, you cannot pass, it has been blocked.’ I came down, I removed the barrier and I passed. The boys came, about 5 or 6 of them very aggressively shouting, ‘Who do you think you are,’ mishandled my driver. ‘No, we are taking you to our camp.'”

Esua says he was taken to the bush with four of his companions. He says they were not physically assaulted while in captivity.

The archbishop says he told the hundreds of youths and the man who called himself the general commanding separatist forces in the area that they should stop killing, maiming and abducting people whom they say they are trying to liberate.

“I told them, ‘You are making people to suffer.’ I said we cannot achieve anything good with evil. Thou shall not kill, thou shall not make other people to suffer. People whom you pretend to be fighting for are suffering. I told them a lot about education. Get the schools open,” he said.

Esua says they listened to him, and replied that they were fighting to save their land and people. He says he was asked to leave after more than 13 hours in captivity; he did not say if a ransom was paid for his release.

Previous abductions

It was not the first time clergy have been abducted by the English-speaking separatists, who want to break away from Cameroon’s French-speaking majority. 

The Catholic Church says dozens of its nuns and priests have been kidnapped and released.  Many believe the church paid to secure their release, an allegation the church denies. 

Security analyst Eugene Ongbwa, a consultant with Cameroon’s NGO Ecumenical Service For Peace, says the separatists have not been killing priests because the Catholic Church has preached against abuses by the government, and has called on the central government to listen to the fighters.

When the crisis began, separatist fighters kidnapped and killed missionaries and foreign workers to put pressure on the international community to force the government of Cameroon to grant their requests, Ongbwa said, adding that separatists seem to have dropped that option. The archbishop’s life may have been spared because he has been neutral, though vocal, about the need for the government to listen to the separatists, Ongbwa said.

The Catholic Church says at least nine clergy members have been killed, including American-born Charles Wesco, who died in Bamenda in crossfire with separatist fighters, and Kenyan-born Cosmas Omboto Ondari, who was shot in the southwestern town of Mamfe in a crossfire incident last November.

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Kenyan activists are celebrating after a Chinese-backed plan to build East Africa’s first coal-fired power plant near the World Heritage site island town of Lamu has again been halted.  Ruud Elmendorp reports from Lamu on the continuing controversy. 

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Another 10 Democratic U.S. presidential contenders will debate Thursday night, including a larger number of leading candidates, following a spirited Wednesday night debate in the first major event of the 2020 election campaign.

Thursday’s participants include former Vice President Joe Biden and other top-tier possible choices, including Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of the Midwestern city of South Bend, Indiana; along with six others.

All twenty Democratic presidential hopefuls hope to oust Republican President Donald Trump after a single term in the White House.

The immediate focus Wednesday was on Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive lawmaker from the northeastern state of Massachusetts who national surveys show has edged closer to Biden as a Democratic favorite to oppose Trump in the election set for Nov. 3, 2020.

She told a live audience in Miami, Florida, and millions more watching on national television, “I want to return government to the people.” She added, referring to major corporations, “What’s been missing is courage, courage in Washington to take on the giants. I have the courage to go after them.”

Later, Warren said she supports a government-run health care system that could end the private insurance-based health care now used in the U.S. Some Democratic candidates and most Republicans, including Trump, oppose such a change as costly and a mistake for the country.

But Warren, a former Harvard law professor, said, “Health care is a basic human right and I will fight for basic human rights.”

Even with Warren’s strong performance in the two-hour debate, the other candidates had their moments to control it in their attempt to gain a foothold in the unprecedentedly large field of 25 Democratic candidates.

Immigration

Former U.S. housing chief Julian Castro, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and other contenders called for major changes in U.S. immigration policies, voicing numerous objections to the way Trump has tried to block Central American migrants from entering the U.S. to seek asylum.

“We must not criminalize desperation” of migrants to reach the U.S., said Castro, who frequently began his answers in Spanish before repeating them in English. He said this week’s photo of an El Salvadoran father and his 23-month-old daughter drowning in the Rio Grande River on the southern U.S. border with Mexico “is heart-breaking…and should piss us all off.”

Warren was also joined on the debate stage by Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas and five others as they parried each other’s policy planks and aimed verbal shots at Trump and his 29-month White House tenure. “Immigrants do not diminish America,” Klobuchar said at one point in a rejoinder to Trump, even as she added that some border restrictions must be kept to stop human traffickers.

For many Americans, it was the first chance to size up many of the Democratic presidential candidates, to see whether they might like any of them as an alternative to Trump, the country’s surprise winner in the 2016 election.

The crowd in Miami, a Democratic stronghold in a state Trump won in the 2016 election, cheered raucously at verbal swipes at Trump, with Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee perhaps drawing the biggest response when he contended that Trump was the world’s biggest security threat to the U.S., while the other candidates gave more traditional answers to the same question, naming Russia, China, and global warming.

The Democrats are staging a dozen debates over the coming months, well ahead of the first Democratic election contest to eventually pick the party’s presidential nominee: caucus voting in the Midwest farm state of Iowa in the dead of winter next February.

The unwieldy field of candidates, in addition to another five that did not meet the Democratic National Committee’s minimal political standards to merit a spot in the debates, all sense they might have a chance to unseat Trump.

Democratic voters, however, so far seem uncertain of what they are looking for in their party standard-bearer — someone who best represents their political views on such contentious issues as health care, abortion, foreign policy, immigration, taxes and more, or possibly a candidate who has one overriding quality: the best chance of defeating Trump.

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Forces loyal to Libya’s internationally recognized government claim they have seized a key town south of Tripoli from forces from a rival eastern-based government.

Officials with Prime Minister’s Fayez al-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord said Wednesday that they took over Gharyan in a surprise attack from forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar’s army had set up offices in the town, which also is home to field hospitals and a helicopter base. 

Haftar’s forces said there was fighting in Gharyan but did not concede defeat.

Fighting between the two armies has been centered in the suburbs south of Tripoli for several months, with neither side making much progress. But the clashes have driven thousands of civilians from their homes or to government-run shelters.

Libya has been in constant chaos since longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011. 

Al-Sarraj has been struggling to assert authority while Haftar looks to take power. The turmoil has given extremist groups, such as Islamic State, the opportunity to entrench themselves in Libya.

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has identified a new risk that Boeing Co must address on its 737 Max before the grounded jet can return to service, the agency said Wednesday.

The risk was discovered during a simulator test last week and it is not yet clear if the issue can be addressed with a software upgrade or will require a more complex hardware fix, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The FAA did not elaborate on the latest setback for Boeing, which has been working to get its best-selling airplane back in the air following a worldwide grounding in March in the wake of two deadly crashes within five months.

The new issue means Boeing will not conduct a certification test flight until July 8 in a best-case scenario, the sources said, but one source cautioned it could face further delays beyond that. The FAA will spend at least two weeks reviewing the results before deciding whether to return the plane to service, the people said.

Last month, FAA representatives told members of the aviation industry that approval of the 737 Max jets could happen as early as late June.

The world’s largest planemaker has been working on the upgrade for a stall-prevention system known as MCAS since a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October, when pilots were believed to have lost a tug of war with software that repeatedly pushed the nose down.

A second deadly crash in March in Ethiopia also involved MCAS. The two accidents killed a total of 346 people.

“On the most recent issue, the FAA’s process is designed to discover and highlight potential risks. The FAA recently found a potential risk that Boeing must mitigate,” the FAA said in the statement emailed to Reuters. “The FAA will lift the aircraft’s prohibition order when we deem it is safe to do so.”

Intense scrutiny

Boeing said in a securities filing late Wednesday that the FAA has asked it to address through software changes a specific flight condition not covered in the company’s already-unveiled software changes.

The U.S. planemaker also said it agreed with the FAA’s decision and request, and was working on a fix to address the problem.

“Boeing will not offer the 737 MAX for certification by the FAA until we have satisfied all requirements for certification of the MAX and its safe return to service,” Boeing wrote in the filing.

Boeing’s aircraft are being subjected to intense scrutiny and testing designed to catch flaws even after a years-long certification process.

Two people briefed on the matter told Reuters that an FAA test pilot during a simulator test last week was running scenarios seeking to intentionally activate the MCAS stall-prevention system. During one activation it took an extended period to recover the stabilizer trim system that is used to control the aircraft, the people said.

It was not clear if the situation that resulted in an uncommanded dive can be addressed with a software update or if it is a microprocessor issue that will require a hardware replacement.

New delays

In a separate statement, Boeing said addressing the new problem would remove a potential source of uncommanded movement by the plane’s stabilizer.

A hardware fix could add new delays to the plane’s return to service.

The FAA also said on Wednesday that it continues “to evaluate Boeing’s software modification to the MCAS and we are still developing necessary training requirements. We also are responding to recommendations received from the Technical Advisory Board. The TAB is an independent review panel we have asked to review our work regarding 737 Max return to service.”

American Airlines Group Inc and Southwest Airlines Co earlier canceled flights through early September as a result of the grounding. On Wednesday, United Airlines said it also was removing Max flights from its schedule through Sept. 3.
 

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