Month: September 2018

Iran’s state TV has broadcast footage purporting to show a close encounter between the Revolutionary Guard’s navy and the USS Theodore Roosevelt early this year.

Press TV’s website says the encounter occurred March 21 in the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the passageway for nearly a third of all oil traded by sea. The TV agency says the video was aired Saturday as part of a documentary.

The footage is likely meant as a show of strength amid new U.S. sanctions on Iran and the Trump administration plans to bring Iranian oil exports down to zero.

In the video, Revolutionary Guard speedboats are seen closing in on the U.S. carrier.

Iranian sailors then warn the Americans over radio communication to “keep well clear” of the Guard patrol boats and say they advise the Americans to “refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner.”
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Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland postponed her U.N. speech Saturday as free-trade talks between the U.S. and Canada intensified.

Freeland had been scheduled to deliver Canada’s address to the General Assembly in New York, but Canada exchanged the slot with another country. Freeland may or may not give the speech on Monday.

A senior Canadian government official said they were making progress in the talks but that it wasn’t certain that they would reach a deal soon. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Canada would sign only a good deal.

Canada, the United States’ No. 2 trading partner, was left out when the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. and Canada are under pressure to reach a deal by the end of the day Sunday, when the U.S. must make public the full text of the agreement with Mexico.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to go ahead with a revamped NAFTA, with or without Canada. It is unclear, however, whether Trump has authority from Congress to pursue a revamped NAFTA with only Mexico, and some lawmakers say they won’t go along with a deal that leaves out Canada. 

Dairy tariffs

Among other things, the negotiators are battling over Canada’s high dairy tariffs. Canada also wants to keep a NAFTA dispute-resolution process that the U.S. wants to jettison.

U.S.-Canada talks bogged down earlier this month, and most trade analysts expected the Sept. 30 deadline to come and go without Canada’s reinstatement. They suspected that Canada, which had said it wasn’t bound by U.S. deadlines, was delaying the talks until after provincial elections Monday in Quebec, where support for Canadian dairy tariffs runs high.

But trade attorney Daniel Ujczo of the Dickinson Wright law firm, who follows the NAFTA talks closely, said the United States put pressure on Canada, contending there would “consequences” if it didn’t reach an agreement by the end of the day Sunday. Trump has repeatedly threatened to start taxing Canadian auto imports. Ujczo put the odds of a deal this weekend at 75 percent. 

Relations between the two neighbors have been strained since Trump assailed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Group of Seven meeting in June, calling him “weak” and “dishonest.” Canadian leaders have objected to Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian steel, citing national security.
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Two police officers were shot to death Saturday morning in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi in an exchange of gunfire with a suspect.

The officers were responding to calls of gunfire at a house in the city of Brookhaven and were “mortally wounded” when the shooting broke out, according to Warren Strain of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.

Authorities identified the officers as James White, 35, and Zack Moak, 31.

The suspect, Marquis Flowers, 25, of Brookhaven, was wounded and treated at a nearby hospital. Strain said Flowers had not been charged but was in custody.

Authorities said Flowers used a handgun, but they would not provide details.

Officials said it was not clear why the gunfire broke out but that an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and other agencies was underway.

On Twitter, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant asked the public to pray “for the family and loved ones of these fallen heroes.”
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U.S. consumer spending increased steadily in August, supporting expectations of solid economic growth in the third quarter, while a measure of underlying inflation remained at the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for a fourth straight month.

Economists said Friday’s report from the Commerce Department should allay fears of the economy overheating and likely keeps the U.S. central bank on a gradual path of interest rate increases. The Fed raised rates Wednesday for the third time this year and removed the reference to monetary policy remaining “accommodative.”

“Growth is solid and inflation pressures modest,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “This is exactly the environment the Fed needs to move interest rates up at a gradual pace as further rate hikes start to look like tightening.”

Consumer spending

The Commerce Department said consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, rose 0.3 percent last month after an unrevised 0.4 percent gain in July. Spending last month was driven by outlays on health care, which offset a drop in motor vehicle purchases.

August’s increase in consumer spending was in line with economists’ expectations. When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending rose 0.2 percent after climbing 0.3 percent in July.

The report came on the heels of data Thursday showing a decline in orders for key capital goods in August and a further widening of the goods trade deficit, which prompted economists to downgrade their gross domestic product growth estimates for the third quarter to as low as a 2.8 percent annualized rate.

Third-quarter GDP growth forecasts were previously as high as a 4.4 percent pace.

Economic growth

The economy grew at a 4.2 percent rate in the second quarter, powered by robust consumer spending. Economists said data in hand suggested that consumer spending was on track to grow around 3.6 percent in the third quarter, close to the 3.8 percent pace set in the April-June period.

Consumer spending is being driven by a tightening labor market, which is starting to boost wage growth, as well as higher savings. It is also being supported by robust consumer confidence.

A separate report Friday showed the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index at a six-month high in September. A survey earlier this week from the Conference Board showed consumer confidence hitting an 18-year high in September.

The Conference Board places more weight on the labor market.

The dollar was trading higher against a basket of currencies, while U.S. Treasury yields fell. Stocks on Wall Street were little changed in late afternoon trade.

Eyes on tariffs

In August, spending on goods increased 0.3 percent, likely lifted by higher gasoline prices. Spending on goods rose 0.5 percent in July. Outlays on services advanced 0.4 percent, with spending on health care accounting for much of the increase.

There was a moderation in monthly price gains in August. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding the volatile food and energy components was unchanged. That was the weakest reading since March 2017 and followed a 0.2 percent gain in July.

August’s flat reading left the year-on-year increase in the so-called core PCE price index at 2.0 percent. The core PCE index is the Fed’s preferred inflation measure. It hit the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent inflation target in March for the first time since April 2012.

Economists say inflation could slightly overshoot its target amid concerns an escalating trade war between the United States and China could lead to price increase for a range of consumer goods.

Washington on Monday slapped tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, with Beijing retaliating with duties on $60 billion worth of U.S. products. The United States and China had already imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of each other’s goods.

Walmart Inc, the largest U.S. retailer, said last week it might hike prices because of the duties on Chinese imports.

“With this $200 billion increase, you are effectively tripling the amount of goods subject to a tariff and that has potential to influence prices,” said Tim Quinlan, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.

JPMorgan estimates that the tariffs could add 0.2 to 0.3 percentage point to core inflation.

In August, personal income rose 0.3 percent after increasing by the same margin in July. Wages jumped 0.5 percent, the biggest gain in seven months, after rising 0.3 percent in July.

The saving rate was unchanged at 6.6 percent last month.
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China may be taking a page of the playbook used by Russia to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, targeting U.S. political action committees and various think tanks with spear-phishing emails.

The observation by FireEye, a private cybersecurity firm, still leaves key questions unanswered. What information China was able to get as a result of the attacks, if any, and how Beijing may intend to use any information are unclear. 

“We have not yet directly observed subsequent attacker activity that would indicate the motivation or intent,” FireEye told VOA via email.

But it adds to growing concerns that China is no longer content to steal information either to boost its military or the fortunes of Chinese technology companies, and may be ready to train its cyber capabilities on larger, strategic goals.

“They would like to see me lose an election because they’ve never been challenged like this,” U.S. President Donald Trump alleged Wednesday, citing China’s displeasure with tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese products, part of an escalating trade war.

“We have evidence. It will come out,” he added.

So far, Trump administration officials have been tight-lipped, promising more revelations in a speech next week in Washington by Vice President Mike Pence.

Still, U.S. intelligence officials have been hinting for months that China is poised to act more aggressively.

China is “asserting a whole-of-nation strategy in the cyber domain that is unprecedented in scale,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said at an event this past week, prior to the president’s comments.

“China exploits our transparency and open society,” Coats said. “China is also targeting U.S. state and local government and officials. It is trying to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy.”

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, speaking at the same event as Coats, went further, calling China the top counterintelligence threat.

“China is expanding its intrusions,” Bowdich said. “We have folks throughout the country that are being approached.”

There are also indications China has been testing out its ability to infiltrate the electoral systems of other countries, most notably targeting political organizations, politicians and journalists in Cambodia in the months leading up to that country’s election this past July.

​Cambodia targeted

“This includes compromises of Cambodian government entities charged with overseeing the elections,” FireEye said in a report, attributing the attacks to a group known as TEMP.Periscope, known for its focus on the maritime industry.

But not everyone is convinced China is ready to weaponize its cyber capabilities and unleash them on the U.S. election in November.

“So far, at least, they don’t seem to have made the political decision, the political calculation, that they want to go in that direction, the same direction that the Russians have,” Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and former spokesman for the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, told VOA.

China is thought to have hacked the presidential campaigns of both Obama and Republican Senator John McCain in 2008.  But while the hackers took a significant number of files, it is not clear the information was “weaponized” in any way.

Accusations rejected

Price said what China has been doing still seems to be in the realm of “what we would expect of other strategic adversaries, collecting information for political advantage or economic gain.”

“But obviously that’s always one decision away,” he added. “I unfortunately have no doubt that they have plenty of fodder and material that they could use.”

For its part, China has rejected the accusations by Trump as “crazy talk,” attributing his remarks to “campaign strategy.”

“China has always adhered to the policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday. “We don’t accept any groundless accusations made against China.”

‘It employs cyberbullying’

But U.S. intelligence officials and defense officials have long argued the question is not whether China interferes but what types of tactics Beijing wants to bring to bear.

They also worry China is learning from Russia’s efforts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, combining cyber tools and attacks with other means to wield influence.

“It employs cyberbullying. It employs, in some cases, corruption,” a senior Trump administration official told White House reporters following the president’s public accusations.

“It employs propaganda, and things that appear to be more normal modes of interacting and studying information,” the official added.

And not all of those tools are necessarily being deployed to influence campaigns in the near term.

‘The long game’

“China plays the long game,” National Security Agency Deputy Director George Barnes warned a security conference in Washington in June. “They’re very thoughtful, methodical, strategic, and they’re taking steps that may not be realized for 20 years, but they’re taking them and they’re bold about it.”

It is an approach that has a growing number of officials and analysts warning that, in the end, China may be able to have a bigger impact than any meddling by Moscow. 

“The real challenge, in the long run, is honestly China,” said Jamie Fly, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “China can take all the tools the Russians deployed against us in 2016 and use them much more effectively.”
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A federal judge Friday cleared the way for a lawsuit to go to trial. It accuses Harvard University of discriminating against Asian-American applicants, a closely watched case that could influence the use of race in college admissions decisions.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston rejected dueling motions by Harvard and a nonprofit group suing the Ivy League university to rule in their favor ahead of a nonjury trial set to begin Oct. 15.

The ruling came after the U.S. Justice Department, which has been investigating Harvard for potential civil rights violations over its affirmative action policy, threw its support behind the 2014 lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions Inc.

Burroughs said that rather than presenting her with undisputed facts and evidence that would allow her to rule without overseeing a trial, Harvard and SFFA had filed motions that were “essentially mirror images of one another.”

“There are disputed material facts based on Harvard’s fact witnesses, the statistical evidence, and the expert opinions presented by each side that cannot be resolved before trial,” Burroughs wrote.

Representatives for the group and Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Affirmative action

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that universities may use affirmative action to help minority applicants get into college.

Conservatives have said such programs can hurt white people and Asian Americans.

SFFA, which is headed by a prominent anti-affirmative action activist, alleged that evidence showed that Harvard’s admissions process, which factored in race, significantly disadvantaged Asian Americans compared with other groups.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard has denied the allegations and has criticized the lawsuit as an effort to attack the right of colleges to consider race as an admissions factor.

Trump administration

After President Donald Trump, a Republican, took office last year, the Justice Department began investigating whether Harvard’s policies are discriminatory because they limit Asian-Americans’ acceptance.

In court papers, SFFA claimed an Asian-American male applicant with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 35 percent chance if he were white, 75 percent chance if he were Hispanic and 95 percent chance if he were black.

A Harvard research division found in 2013 that over a decade, Asian-American admission rates were lower than those for whites annually even though whites outperformed Asian-American applicants only on a subjective “personal” rating, SFFA said.
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Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello flew to New York this week on a mission: convince potential tourists that the hurricane-ravaged island was ready for their return.

But Puerto Rico’s recovery from last year’s Hurricane Maria has been a “mixed bag,” Rossello told Reuters on Thursday, acknowledging that the bankrupt U.S. territory, while improving, was far from out of the woods.

Puerto Rico has received only a small fraction of the federal funding it needs to get back on its feet, Rossello said in a 75-minute interview, and getting access to the rest could take more than a decade.

$4 billion or less

His administration estimates that fixing Puerto Rico fully will require $139 billion, but the federal government has earmarked only about $60 billion to $65 billion for the recovery, he said. Of that, only about $3 billion to $4 billion has actually flowed into the island’s coffers. 

Obtaining the remainder could take 10 to 11 years, he said, adding that his team was lobbying Congress for more money.

Compounding the problem is Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy in U.S. federal court, where it is trying to restructure $120 billion of debt and pension obligations. There are also ongoing spending disputes between the government and a federally appointed fiscal oversight board.

In the year since Hurricane Maria, Rossello has at times been diplomatic regarding the federal government’s response, while at other times — especially lately — he’s been more critical. He has also been criticized for sticking with an estimated death toll of 64 early on, when  strong evidence suggested it could be higher. A government-commissioned study by researchers at George Washington University eventually pegged the toll at around 3,000.

When asked whether his administration’s messaging strategies have been tied to an effort to maintain good relations with President Donald Trump, Rossello said a “critical part” of the island’s recovery “is making sure the federal  government responds to our petitions.”

“So ,yes, I have opted for a path that involves dialog, that involves collaboration,” Rossello said, adding that he has not been afraid to be critical.

If Trump does not sign the island’s request to extend the federal  government’s 100 percent coverage of repair costs, “I’ll be the first one to fight it,” Rossello said, “and I’ll be the first to point out that action, or lack of action, is one of the main obstacles to our recovery.”

Rossello said Puerto Rico still has as many as 60,000 homes with temporary tarp roofs. It also has hundreds of thousands of informally constructed homes with many owners lacking title to their property.

Rebuilding will require that the current ranks of about 45,000 construction workers to grow to 130,000, according to Rossello, who recently signed an executive order increasing the minimum hourly construction wage to $15 despite opposition from the oversight board and the private sector.

Power shift

The island’s government is still considering initiatives that could make the its troubled electricity grid more resilient, Rossello said. Ultimately, the island hopes to generate 40 percent of its electricity from renewables and steer away from fossil fuels. The shift would require a new regulatory policy, approval by the bondholders, and, potentially, investment from outside companies or organizations.

“We have received 10 to 12 unsolicited proposals for generation,” he said, while acknowledging the government has yet to find a private operator for the power utility’s transmission and distribution operations.

But changes at the electric agency known as PREPA, which Rossello called one of the most troubled organizations in modern history, will be gradual. The governor said he was working with a search firm to identify outside board members for the utility, after nearly the entire board quit in an uproar over appointment of a new chief executive.

Limited electricity was a major problem for the island’s small-business sector, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report on Thursday. A survey of more than 400 businesses with fewer than 500 employees found 77 percent suffered losses as a result of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Broader effort

Meanwhile, Rossello is trying not only to restore tourism, but to expand it in such a way that it incorporates hundreds of square miles of seaside and mountain communities that are largely unvisited. Puerto Rico’s tourism is small compared with that of other Caribbean locales and tends to be centered in San Juan.

The island’s visitor lodgings hit a 2017 high of 204,025 in July, but fell to just under 30,000 in October following the hurricanes, according to Puerto Rico Tourism Company data.

Persuading tourists to leave the capital, though, will require easier travel. “Puerto Rico should be a multiport destination,” he said, discussing plans to beef up airport capacity in the south and west of the island.

He emphasized the possibility of capitalizing on Puerto Rico’s near-constant spate of community festivals. “We have flower festivals, orange festivals, plantain festivals, coffee festivals, music festivals,” he said.

Rossello pointed to so-called chinchorreos as a possible draw, events in which Puerto Rican foodies move from one inexpensive eatery to the next.

“A bar crawl for food — that’s the best way to put it,” the governor said, “and the island is small, so you start in one place and you’re on a beachfront, and 15 minutes later you’re in the mountains.”
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Former Massachusetts state Sen. Brian Joyce, who was awaiting trial on federal corruption charges, was found dead in his home Thursday, authorities said.

Joyce, 56, was found dead by his wife, according to a statement from Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol District Attorney’s office.

“Foul play is not suspected in the death at this time,” Miliote said.

The state’s chief medical examiner planned to conduct an autopsy and the investigation remained “active and ongoing,” the spokesman said.

A Democrat who served as assistant majority leader, Joyce was first elected in 1998 and left the Senate after not seeking re-election in 2016 amid the federal probe. He moved to Westport, Massachusetts, from Milton after his political career ended.

In December 2017, Joyce was named in a 113-count indictment charging him with racketeering, extortion, wire fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said he accepted up to $1 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for helping companies and then laundering the money through his law office, disguising it as legal fees.

Then-acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said at the time that Joyce violated his duty to his constituents “by accepting bribes and kickbacks in exchange for his official action.”

Joyce pleaded not guilty at his arraignment and was free on $250,000 bond. A trial date had not been set.

Joyce’s attorney, Howard Cooper, had maintained that his client was innocent of all the charges against him.

WCVB-TV reported Thursday that Joyce had been involved in a car crash Wednesday, but it was unclear if that incident was connected in any way to his death.
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He let his anger flare repeatedly, interrupted his questioners and sobbed several times during his opening statement. She strived to remain calm and polite, despite her nervousness, and mostly held back her tears.

Throughout their riveting, nationally televised testimony on Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh served as Exhibits A and B for a tutorial on gender roles and stereotypes. Amid the deluge of reaction on social media, one prominent observation: Ford, as a woman, would have been judged as a far weaker witness had she behaved as Kavanaugh did.

“Imagine a woman openly weeping like this on a national stage and still getting elected to the Supreme Court. Or any office,” tweeted Joanna Robinson, a senior writer with Vanity Fair.

​Kavanaugh vented fury and tears

Kavanaugh, nominated to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, mixed tears with fury in his statement forcefully denying Ford’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her in 1982 when they were both in high school. He choked up at several points when referring to how his family has been affected by the tempest surrounding allegations by Ford and other women.

Opponents of Kavanaugh’s nomination said his behavior demonstrated a lack of judicial temperament. Some supporters said they were moved to tears when he broke down.

Later, during questioning by some of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic members, Kavanaugh aggressively interrupted his interrogators and even asked sharp questions of his own.

“Have you ever drank so much you didn’t remember what happened?” asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat.

“Have you?” countered Kavanaugh.

​Ford cooperative, respectful

Ford, in contrast, sought to present herself as cooperative and respectful, expressing her wish that “we could collaborate in a way that could get at more information.”

“I’m used to being collegial,” she said at one point.

At another, she told the prosecutor, asking about her emotional state: “I think that’s a great question.”

Zoe Chance, a marketing professor at Yale School of Management, said that in terms of winning over public opinion, Ford and Kavanaugh “are both doing the right thing.” She cited research indicating that men could seem more influential and competent through shows of anger, and women less so.

“When women express strong emotions, we judge them to be emotional — or, in the extreme, ‘hysterical,’” Chance said in an email. “When men express strong emotions, we infer that they must be facing extreme situations.”

What was persuasive?

However, Chance was unsure that Kavanaugh’s anger was effective in this case.

“In this particular situation, the emotional display casts doubt on his ability to be dispassionate and objective as a judge,” Chance suggested. “If we value the ability to separate emotion from facts, then Ford has behaved more judgelike than Kavanaugh has.”

Michael Cunningham, a psychology professor at the University of Louisville, said he found Ford’s body language and tone of voice to be persuasive.

“Her generally calm and soft-spoken, yet firm, voice seemed consistent with the feminine sex-role,” he said. “At the end, I believe she retained her credibility.”

As for Kavanaugh, Cunningham said the nominee “was successful in conveying the emotions of a man who has convinced himself that he has done nothing wrong.” But the professor had doubts about the impact of Kavanaugh’s show of emotions.

“Judge Kavanaugh tearing up when mentioning his daughter conveyed a man who was feeling sorry for himself,” Cunningham said. “Society wants men to be sympathetic, and even tearful at times, but not for themselves.”

Glenn Sacks, a commentator who writes often about men’s issues, expressed dismay at social-media derision being directed at Kavanaugh because of his emotional displays.

“The mocking of his demeanor is indicative of the restraints still upon men — no weakness allowed, suck it up or get laughed at,” Sacks said in an email. “Men are taught this at an early age — when women cry, we sympathize. When a man cries, it’s so unseemly we can barely stand to look at it.”

Contrast of emotions

Jo Langford, a Seattle-based therapist who works with men and boys who have committed sexual offenses, said he was struck by the contrast between Kavanaugh’s anger and Ford’s “stable and straightforward cadence.” He concluded that Ford may have fared better in the court of public opinion.

Among those closely following the hearing was Danielle Campoamor, a New York-based writer and editor who says she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker five years ago.

Ford “was calm in a way every sexual assault victim is asked to be, lest they be written off as ‘unhinged’ and ‘emotional’ and, as a result, no longer credible,” Campoamor said. “Kavanaugh, by contrast, was unapologetically angry. … He embodied the anger so many sexual assault victims fear; the anger that keeps so many of us from coming forward.”
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