Month: April 2019

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is the latest Democrat to jump in the race for the White House.

The Massachusetts lawmaker and Iraq War veteran made the announcement on his website Monday.

Moulton first came to prominence in 2014 when he unseated long-term incumbent Rep. John Tierney in a Democratic primary and went on to represent the state’s 6th Congressional District, a swath of communities north of Boston including Salem, home of the infamous colonial-era witch trials.

Speculation about a possible Moulton run has been simmering as far back as 2017 when he spoke at a Democratic political rally in Iowa, home of the first-the-the-nation presidential caucuses. At the time, he brushed aside talk of a presidential run.

Talk of possible run ramped up during last year’s election when the former U.S. Marine helped lead an effort to get other Democratic military veterans to run for Congress — a cause he continues to push.

“16 years ago today, leaders in Washington sent me and my friends to fight in a war based on lies. It’s still going on today,” Moulton said in a recent tweet. “It’s time for the generation that fought in Iraq to take over for the generation that sent us there.”

The 40-year-old Moulton also gained national attention for helping lead an effort within the party to reject Nancy Pelosi as House speaker after Democrats regained control of the chamber. Moulton said it was time for new leadership.

Moulton has also been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump — from foreign policy, including Trump’s recent veto of a resolution to end U.S. military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, to his push for a wall at the southern border.

And when Trump claimed to be the target of the “single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history,” Moulton responded that “as the Representative of Salem, MA, I can confirm that this is false.”

Despite occasionally differing with some on the most liberal wing of the party, Moulton has staked out familiar policy positions for those seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

He’s called health care “a right every American must be guaranteed,” pushed to toughen gun laws, was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, has championed a federal “Green Corps” modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, and has called for an end to the Electoral College.

Money could prove a challenge to Moulton, who has raised $255,000 so far this year and had about $723,000 in his campaign account as of the end of March.

Moulton is now the third political figure from Massachusetts to take a stab at a White House run. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a Democrat — and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld — a Republican — are also running.

 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Afghanistan’s president over the weekend to express Washington’s disappointment over the indefinite postponement of Afghan talks with the Taliban and to condemn the insurgent’s latest “spring offensive,” according to a statement Monday.

The Afghan-to-Afghan talks were scheduled to start on Friday in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain an office, but were scuttled after a falling out over who should attend.

The gathering would have marked the first time that Taliban and Kabul government officials sat together. It was considered a significant first step toward finding a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan, America’s longest conflict, and the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

The State Department said Pompeo called President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday over the postponement and also condemned the recent Taliban announcement of starting another offensive this spring.

The announcement itself was just a show of strength since the Taliban have kept up relentless near-daily attacks even during the harsh winter months, inflicting staggering losses on the embattled Afghan military and security forces. Many civilians also loss their lives in the cross-fire.

In his phone call with Ghani, Pompeo encouraged both sides to agree on participants, saying the talks are Afghanistan’s best chance at peace.

Before the postponement, Washington’s special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who has met on several occasions with the Taliban and has pressed for Afghan-to-Afghan talks, had hoped the Qatar meeting would bring the sides closer to a “roadmap” for a future Afghanistan.

Kabul, which had been sidelined for months from U.S-Taliban talks because the insurgents refuse to talk directly with government officials, had offered a massive delegation of 250 participants, including prominent Afghan figures, government and opposition representatives, as well as others to travel to Qatar.

But the hosts in Doha came back with what they said was a revised acceptable list that drastically reduced the number of women and eliminated all government ministers from the list.

Each side blamed the other for scuttling the talks as violence continued. On the ground, Afghan government forces face not only a resurgent Taliban — who now hold sway over nearly half the country — but also militants from the Islamic State group.

IS on Saturday targeted the Telecommunications Ministry in Kabul, with a suicide bomber striking outside the ministry and clearing the way for gunmen to enter the heavily-guarded compound. At least seven people were killed.

According to a prominent figure on the Kabul list for talks in Qatar, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the media, several senior participants on the list had received a call from the president’s office warning them they should not express personal opinions at the talks with the Taliban, only speak on behalf of the state.

The Taliban for their part have said they would consider all Afghans at the table only as individuals and not government representatives.

Meanwhile, Ghani is organizing a Loya Jirga — a council of elders that has a voice in Afghan policy — for next week in Kabul. The agenda is also expected to include negotiating positions for talks with the Taliban.

Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has refused to attend the grand council, along with several other prominent Afghans who claim it’s been hand-picked by the president who is seeking another term in elections in September. Abdullah has also announced he is running in the elections.

 
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North Korea has directed a wave of criticism at top White House officials, as talks with the United States have stalled. But one person Pyongyang hasn’t criticized: Donald Trump.

The pattern reflects North Korea’s apparent preference to continue negotiating directly with Trump, who has taken a more conciliatory approach to the nuclear talks than many of his deputies.

It also appears to be a carefully calibrated effort by North Korea to increase negotiating pressure on the U.S. without completely derailing the talks.

“They’re good at drawing the line,” says David Kim, who specializes in East Asia security policy at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “As long as they don’t bash Trump, we’ll be OK.”

North Korea has bashed plenty of other U.S. officials in recent weeks.

Pompeo ‘talking nonsense,’ North says

Last week, after announcing the test of a “tactical guided weapon,” North Korean state media took aim at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo is “talking nonsense” and “fabricating stories like a fiction writer,” said the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), quoting a foreign ministry official.

“Whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, the talks go wrong,” said the official, who called for Pompeo to be removed from the negotiating team.

North Korea was apparently unhappy with a recent Senate hearing during which Pompeo agreed with the characterization of Kim Jong Un as a “tyrant.” 

Pyongyang has also accused Pompeo of making unreasonable denuclearization demands during meetings with his North Korean counterparts.

Pompeo downplayed the comments, insisting last week he’s “still in charge” of the team negotiating with North Korea. 

North Korea: Bolton ‘dim-sighted’

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, who North Korea once referred to as “human scum” and a “bloodsucker,” also received the KCNA treatment last week.

“He looks dim-sighted to me,” a North Korean foreign ministry official said of the glasses-wearing Bolton. “We have never expected that adviser Bolton would ever make a reasonable remark.”

Bolton, who also dealt with North Korea during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, is one of Washington’s most hawkish officials on North Korea issues.

Just a month before joining the Trump administration last year, Bolton wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal titled: “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.” 

Bolton has also angered North Korea by proposing it follow Libya’s model of unilaterally handing over its entire nuclear program. 

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in the early 2000s; he was killed by protesters during a NATO-backed uprising against his rule in 2011.

Trump-Kim ties ‘excellent’

In contrast to its treatment of Pompeo and Bolton, North Korea has gone out of its way to praise the friendly relations between Trump and Kim.

The personal chemistry between Trump and Kim is still “mysteriously wonderful,” senior North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui said in March.

Trump and Kim weren’t always friendly. In 2017, Trump dubbed Kim “Little Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” amid North Korea’s repeated nuclear and missile tests. Kim returned the threats of nuclear war and referred to Trump as a “dotard.”

Trump now insists his friendship with Kim could be key to convincing the young North Korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons.

“We fell in love,” Trump said last year, touting the “beautiful letters” he has exchanged with Kim.

Given Trump’s softer approach, North Korea likely believes it can get a better deal if it negotiates directly with Trump, analysts say.

“They still have trust in President Trump,” says Kim Joon-hyung, a professor at South Korea’s Handong Global University. “So they are trying to separate him from his staff.”

Trump overrules the hawks

Trump has repeatedly disagreed with and sometimes overruled the North Korea policies of his more hawkish deputies. 

For example, although Bolton and some senior State Department officials have spoken about timelines for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, Trump regularly insists he is in “no hurry.”

Trump has overruled some of his top advisors, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, with his decision to suspend large-scale military exercises with South Korea.

Last month, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against two Chinese shipping companies because of deliveries to North Korea, Trump abruptly reversed the move. A day earlier, Bolton had publicly praised the sanctions on Twitter.

In explaining the sanctions reversal, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” 

So what’s next?

Even though Trump and Kim have stopped insulting each other for now, the talks remain stalled. 

Despite two summits between Trump and Kim, U.S. officials now acknowledge they have not even reached an agreement on what the idea of denuclearization means.

With such fundamental disagreements, it’s not clear that personal diplomacy alone can rescue the talks. And both sides appear to be hardening their stances. 

Trump says he is not willing to relax sanctions unless North Korea agrees to completely dismantle its nuclear program. Pyongyang has offered only partial dismantlement in exchange for lifting most U.N. sanctions. 

In a speech earlier this month, Kim said he was open to a third summit with Trump. But he gave the U.S. until the end of the year to change its approach. 
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Several world and religious leaders condemned the explosions on Easter at Sri Lankan churches and hotels that killed scores of people.

Dozens of foreigners — British, Dutch and American citizens — are believed to be among them the dead.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said attacks were “truly appalling.”

“The acts of violence against churches and hotels in Sri Lanka are truly appalling, and my deepest sympathies go out to all of those affected at this tragic time,” she tweeted. “We must stand together to make sure that no one should ever have to practice their faith in fear.”

The Catholic Church in Jerusalem released a statement saying “We pray for the souls of the victims and ask for speedy recovery of the injured, and ask God to inspire the terrorists to repent of their killing and intimidation.”

But during the traditional Easter address at the Vatican, Pope Francis conveyed sadness over the attacks.

“I want to express my affectionate closeness with the Christian community, attacked while it was at prayer, and to all the victims of such cruel violence,” he said.

Sunday’s bomb attack came a month after dozens of Muslims were killed in a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern such violence was “devastating”.

“New Zealand condemns all acts of terrorism, and our resolve has only been strengthened by the attack on our soil on the 15th of March. … New Zealand rejects all forms of extremism and stands for freedom of religion and the right to worship safely. Collectively we must find the will and the answers to end such violence,” Ardern said in a written statement.

Meanwhile in the U.S., President Donald Trump said Americans stand “ready to help.”

”Heartfelt condolences from the people of the United States to the people of Sri Lanka on the horrible terrorist attacks on churches and hotels,” he tweeted.

The World Jewish Congress denounced the attack as “heinous” and appealed for “zero tolerance of those who use terror to advance their objectives.”

“This truly barbarous assault on peaceful worshippers on one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar serves as a painful reminder that the war against terror must be at the top of the international agenda and pursued relentlessly,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called the attacks despicable.

“We are all children of God; an attack on one religion is an attack on us all,” he said on Twitter.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan condemned  in the “strongest terms possible the Easter terror attacks in Sri Lanka. This is an assault on all of humanity.” While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said terrorism must be condemned and confronted globally as is a global menace with no religion.

“Terribly saddened by terrorist attacks on Sri Lankan worshippers during Easter. Condolences to friendly government and people of Sri Lanka. Our thoughts and prayers with the victims and their families,” he said.

 
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As the White House mulls new travel restrictions on countries with high visa overstay rates, activists say African asylum-seekers may feel the consequences.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Trump administration was weighing rules aimed at nationals of countries with high overstay rates of business and tourism visas, known as B1s or B2s.

According to the newspaper, the United States would warn countries to cut the overstay rates or see future visas harder to obtain and set for shorter periods. Such rules could be implemented soon through a presidential proclamation, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told the political website Politico.

That means the nations with the highest rates of travelers overstaying their visas, rather than the ones that have the highest number overall, would feel the most impact of any new rules. African nations like Djibouti, Eritrea, Chad, Liberia, Somalia, Burkina Faso, South Sudan and Sudan are among those with the highest rates.

By comparison, only one African nation — Nigeria — is among the top 10 worldwide for most overstays overall, including both Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and non-VWP countries. The waiver program allows citizens of certain nations to visit the United States for up to 90 days without a visa.

Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Nigeria, China, France and India each have higher totals than the 17 countries with the highest overstay rates combined, according to a VOA analysis of fiscal year 2017 DHS statistics.

VOA sent written questions requesting the outlines of the proposed restrictions and a list of countries likely to be affected to DHS and the White House but received no response.

“The government has chosen to focus on rates versus numbers because it fits their narrative that all immigrants are poor and brown or black,” Samah Mcgona Sisay, Equal Justice Works Fellow at New York-based rights group African Services Committee, said in an interview with VOA.

Although B1s and B2s are temporary, nonimmigrant visitor visas — carrying strict guidelines, a lengthy application process and a $160 price tag for visitors from non-VWP countries — the proposed restrictions would target individuals legally seeking asylum, Sisay said, like many of her clients.

“The rates are high because oftentimes … a visa is their only way to get out of the country,” Sisay said.

Black immigrants ‘in the bull’s-eye’

Last September, a proposed “public charge” regulation was unveiled by DHS aimed at making it harder for would-be legal immigrants to qualify for permanent residency if deemed likely to use public benefits. Under current law, legal permanent residents generally do not qualify for federal public benefits for their first five years of living in the U.S.

Separately, the Reuters news agency reported immigrant visa denials have increased due to a recent rule change allowing U.S. State Department officials greater discretion on public charge grounds.

These factors, combined with recently reintroduced legislation to cut family-based immigration and eliminate the diversity visa lottery — all in the midst of a major personnel shake-up at DHS — have added to growing uncertainty for black immigrant communities in the U.S., said Carl Hamad-Lipscombe, deputy director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

“They know that they are in the bull’s-eye,” Hamad-Lipscombe said. “This administration is not interested in exploring additional pathways for lawful entry to the U.S., but they’re also considering cutting the few pathways that immigrants — and particularly immigrants from African countries — have.”

WATCH: High Visa Overstay Rates Linked to Immigration Policies

“You could bring a claim based on discrimination and say that [the overstay] rule change … is arbitrary and actually based on discrimination,” Sisay added.

Last year, President Donald Trump reportedly used an expletive to refer to African nations and Haiti during a closed-door immigration meeting with lawmakers.

Why target visa overstays now?

Over the past two years, the administration’s immigration policies have largely emphasized security measures on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

There have been notable exceptions: they include Trump’s Supreme Court-upheld travel ban, which imposes restrictions on foreign nationals from five Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia and Libya, and a record-low refugee cap set by the administration.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told the Journal the administration considers it a priority to tackle visa overstays “to protect American taxpayers.”

But visa overstays, representing 62% of additions to the undocumented population in 2016, have outpaced entries without inspection (EWIs) for the last decade and are “not a new phenomenon,” said Robert Warren, senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

Any proposed fix, Warren said, should fall on the U.S., in the form of greater resources for visa-issuing offices — “the first line of defense against overstaying” — and preventing tourists from gaining employment.

“It’s inconceivable that a foreign country can have any influence over whether or not their nationals overstay here, after they come here as tourists,” Warren told VOA.

In September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) noted “considerable progress” in implementing a biometric entry and exit system to track air travelers, although the technology remains in a pilot phase. 

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the State Department’s fiscal 2020 budget, combined with its decision to close offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) abroad and transfer those duties to embassies and consulates, could further strain the department’s resources.

Questioned about the proposed budget, a State Department official told VOA, “Our first priority when adjudicating visa applications is to ensure that applicants do not pose a security risk to the United States.”

On the USCIS closures, the official added, “We anticipate a smooth transition and continued efficient processing of USCIS-related work at all of our missions overseas.”
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Helping children with homework, playing with toddlers, giving sage advice or just listening, the men and women you’re about to meet do what many grandparents do. The Foster Grandparent program has been using volunteers older than 55 to help children and youth in their communities for decades. The program helps 20,000 older people stay active and makes kids feel loved when their own grandparents can’t be near. Lesia Bakalets met with program members to learn more. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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One of the lead U.S. prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, Benjamin B. Ferencz came to America from Transylvania as an infant in 1920.

“I was a poor immigrant boy,” he said recently at an event hosted by the embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Washington.

Ferencz won a scholarship to attend Harvard Law School and graduated in 1943. He then joined the U.S. Army and fought in “every campaign in Europe” under General George Patton, before assuming the duty of gathering Nazi war crime evidence for the U.S. military.

“I was a liberator to many concentration camps, it was my job to get in there fast before the records were destroyed,” Ferencz told an audience at the U.S. Library of Congress where he received the Anne Frank Award from the Dutch embassy, designed to honor human dignity and the spirit of tolerance.

In his acceptance speech, Ferencz expounded on the notion that there is no justice without accountability. He recalled the heroism of one inmate at a concentration camp who, in the role of the camp’s scribe, “at least 50 times he had taken his (own) life into his hands” to hide records of names of Nazi perpetrators, “knowing, or believing that there would be a day of reckoning and accountability.”

WATCH: Ben Ferencz: ‘Until We Have a Happier World for Everyone’

In an interview with VOA after the award ceremony in the halls of the Library of Congress, Ferencz said there needs to be an understanding that the aim of accountability could take a long time to achieve.

Recalling the critical leadership role the United States played in the World War II, including the postwar trials of Nazis at Nuremberg, in which Ferencz participated as a prosecutor, he said “I hope one day America will wake up and see the necessity for continuing our leadership toward a more humane and peaceful world.”

A barrister by training who reveres the institution and rule of law, Ferencz nonetheless expressed his faith in public discourse.

“The final court is the court of public opinion,” he said in the interview.
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Today at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, you have to look closely for evidence that one of the worse school shootings in U.S. history happened here 20 years ago.

The building looks like any of the thousands of American high schools across the country. The students hanging out in front of the school or practicing on the football field weren’t even born on April 20, 1999, when two student gunmen opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher.

But the markers are there — if you look closely enough.

Just over the hill from the school at an adjacent park is the Columbine memorial, which pays tribute to the people murdered in the massacre. The football stadium is named for Frank DeAngelis, the principal who led the school through the crisis and stayed on for another 15 years.

The softball field honors teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death in a classroom while waiting hours for medical help.

Protocol at the time called for sheriff’s deputies to wait outside and secure the perimeter until the specialized SWAT team could arrive. Columbine was one of the first mass shootings at a U.S. school, and it changed how schools and law enforcement prepare to confront an active shooter.

“In 1999, that’s what deputies did. They ran toward danger, and then they contained it. Now, the training is different,” says Jeff Shrader, sheriff of Jefferson County, Colorado, whose deputies responded to the incident at Columbine two decades ago. “They’re going to go to the shooter. They’re going to do everything they can to neutralize the threat. To identify it and to neutralize it so that hopefully more lives would be saved.”

WATCH THE VIDEO:

At Columbine, first responders were also hampered by poor communication and uncertainty about the school’s layout.

“One of the things we were able to do shortly after that was to put maps of schools in command vehicles so that they were readily accessible,” the sheriff says. “In our command operations center, we maintain those, but they were things that just weren’t thought of in that point in time.”

Responding quickly to a school shooter is not the only thing that’s changed since Columbine.

Visitors used to be able to walk right into most American schools. Now, exterior doors are locked, and many schools use an intercom buzz-in security system. Interior classroom doors often lock now, allowing students and teachers to lock themselves inside. There is a film that can be put on windows to effectively render them bulletproof.

The U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) finds that school shooters often experience some sort of stressor — a setback, challenge or loss — leading up to an attack.

“They had difficulty coping with perceived injustice or bullying that was happening to them at the school, whether it was real or perceived,” says Dr. Lina Alathari, chief of the NTAC. “They had a sense that they were being bullied, and in a majority of incidents, these students were being bullied.”

FBI investigators concluded the Columbine killers were not bullied.

Today, the Secret Service recommends that all schools establish a threat assessment team, made up of teachers, counselors and others, to identify students in distress or who might exhibit concerning behavior with the aim of stopping violence before it happens.

“There is no specific type of student who would carry out an attack,” Alathari says. “In a majority of cases, these were mainstream students. The most common performance, they were As and Bs. They came from different types of families, intact families, single family homes. They were popular. Some were loners. So, there really is no single profile that you can point to and say that is the type of student that would carry out an attack.”

Markers that threat assessment teams should look for include students whose grades decline, are experiencing suicidal thoughts or becoming more isolative, as well as other changes in behavior.

“This is when we need to be intervening as a community to offer that student assistance before it escalates to the point where they view violence as an option,” Alathari says.

To date, the NTAC has trained more than 100,000 school personnel, law enforcement and others with a stake in school safety on how to identify and assess and intervene with students of concern.

About 90% of U.S. schools have a plan for what to do in the event of a school shooting. Seventy percent of schools drill students using that plan, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Columbine survivor Samantha Haviland was a 16-year-old junior when the shootings happened at her high school. Two decades later, she is director of counseling for Denver Public Schools, and she has concerns about how lock down drills impact students.

“To remind our students over and over again that you are not safe, you are not safe, you are not safe, is causing a lot of anxiety,” Haviland says. “And we have students who are jumping out of windows during drills because they think it’s real because someone dropped a book at the wrong time.”

She says there is a part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder called hyper-vigilance, where a person is always looking for exits, places to hide or how to escape, and keeping an eye out for who might try to hurt you.

“That hyper-vigilance takes up a lot of brain capacity and really decreases our students’ ability to focus on education when they’re in school. So, they’re not learning at the same rate that maybe you or I did when we went to school,” Haviland says.

In 81% of the school shooting incidents the NTAC studied, other students knew that the potential perpetrator was about to carry out an attack or was interested in doing so.

More schools are adopting procedures that teach students how to safely report suspicious behavior.

“It’s important for kids to see something, say something, hear something, say something,” DeAngelis says, “but then we need to do something as adults, and we need to follow up, and that is a key component.”
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