Month: September 2019

Greek police said Saturday they have arrested a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a flight from Athens that became a multiday ordeal and included the slaying of an American.

Police said a 65-year-old suspect in the hijacking was arrested Thursday on the island of Mykonos in response to a warrant from Germany.

Lt. Col. Theodoros Chronopoulos, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press that the hijacking case involved TWA Flight 847. The flight was commandeered by hijackers shortly after taking off from Athens on June 14, 1985. It originated in Cairo and had San Diego as a final destination, with stops scheduled in Athens, Rome, Boston and Los Angeles.

The hijackers shot and killed U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23, after beating him unconscious. They released the other 146 passengers and crew members on the plane during an ordeal that included stops in Beirut and Algiers. The last hostage was freed after 17 days.

Suspect from Lebanon

The suspect was in custody Saturday on the Greek island of Syros but was set to be transferred to the Korydallos high security prison in Athens for extradition proceedings, a police spokeswoman told The Associated Press. She said the suspect was a Lebanese citizen. The spokeswoman spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Police refused to release the suspect’s name.

In Beirut, the Foreign Ministry said the man detained in Greece is a Lebanese journalist called Mohammed Saleh, and that a Lebanese embassy official planned to try to visit him Sunday.

However, several Greek media outlets identified the detainee as Mohammed Ali Hammadi, who was arrested in Frankfurt in 1987 and convicted in Germany for the plane hijacking and Stethem’s slaying. Hammadi, an alleged Hezbollah member, was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled in 2005 and returned to Lebanon.

Germany had resisted pressure to extradite him to the United States after Hezbollah abducted two German citizens in Beirut and threatened to kill them.

Hammadi, along with fellow hijacker Hasan Izz-Al-Din and accomplice Ali Atwa, remains on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. The FBI offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to each man’s capture.

News agency dpa reported Saturday that Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on news reports about the case.
 

…

Hundreds protested in central Cairo and several other Egyptian cities late on Friday against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, responding to an online call for a demonstration against government corruption, witnesses said.

Protests have become very rare in Egypt following a broad crackdown on dissent under Sisi, who took power after the overthrow of the former Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Security forces moved to disperse the small and scattered crowds in Cairo using tear gas but many young people stayed on the streets in the center of the capital, shouting “Leave Sisi,” Reuters reporters at the scene said.

Police arrested some of the demonstrators, witnesses said.

Small protests were also held in Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, Suez on the Red Sea as well as the Nile Delta textile town of Mahalla el-Kubra, about 110 km (68 miles) north of Cairo, according to residents and videos posted online.

There was a heavy security presence in downtown Cairo and on Tahrir Square where mass protests started in 2011 which toppled veteran ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Authorities could not be immediately reached to comment.

State TV did not cover the incidents.

A pro-government TV anchor said only a small group of protesters had gathered in central Cairo to take videos and selfies before leaving the scene. Another pro-government channel said the situation around the Tahrir Square was quiet.

Mohamed Ali, a building contractor and actor turned political activist who lives in Spain, called in a series of videos for the protest after accusing Sisi and the military of corruption.

Last Saturday, Sisi dismissed the claims as “lies and slander.”

Sisi was first elected in 2014 with 97% of the vote, and re-elected four years later with the same percentage, in a vote in which the only other candidate was an ardent Sisi supporter.

His popularity has been dented by economic austerity measures.

Sisi’s supporters say dissent must be quashed to stabilize Egypt, after a 2011 uprising and the unrest that followed, including an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of police, soldiers and civilians.

They also credit him with economic reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

…

A New York judge has ordered President Donald Trump to give a videotaped deposition in a lawsuit filed by protesters who claim they were roughed up outside Trump Tower.

State Supreme Court Judge Doris Gonzalez of the Bronx on Friday denied Trump’s effort to quash a subpoena seeking the president’s testimony.

She ordered Trump to videotape a deposition before the trial, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 26.

The lawsuit was filed by six activists who say they were assaulted by Trump security staff during a Sept. 3, 2015, protest by people upset over comments Trump made about Mexican immigrants.

The judge says Trump’s testimony is “indispensable” as someone in charge of the business and his campaign.

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a phone message.
 

…

Thirteen U.S. Marines arrested in July in connection with an alleged human smuggling operation in Southern California are now facing formal charges from the military.

The charges range from failure to obey an order to drunkenness and theft, and include the alleged transportation of undocumented immigrants, according to a statement from the 1st Marine Division.

Two of the Marines, Lance Corporal Byron Law II and Lance Corporal David Salazar-Quintero, were arrested on July 3 after border patrol agents found them picking up three illegal aliens along a stretch of Interstate 8, about 11 kilometers (7 miles) north of the U.S. border with Mexico.

According to court documents, Law and Salazar-Quintero admitted to having been in contact with a recruiter, who offered to pay them for transporting the illegal immigrants from the interstate to other locations.

Law told authorities he and Salazar-Quintero were never paid for the interaction, according to the complaint.

A third Marine was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol a week later, on July 10.

The other 10 were taken into custody during what some officials described as a sting operation July 25 at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base located about 79 kilometers (49 miles) north of San Diego.

In a statement following the mass arrests, the Marine Corps’ 1st Division said the regiment’s commanding officer “will act within his authority to hold the Marines accountable at the appropriate level, should they be charged.”

In addition to the Marine Corps and U.S. Border Patrol, officials with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service also aided in the initial investigation.

According to the Marine Corps, none of the Marines detained as part of the investigation were assigned to the U.S. military operation to support efforts to secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

…

Online shopping giant Amazon revealed a carbon footprint Thursday that rivals that of a small country and vowed to reduce the damage to the planet by cutting its use of fossil fuels.

The company, which ships more than 10 billion items a year on fuel-guzzling planes and trucks, said it has ordered 100,000 electric vans that will start delivering packages to shoppers’ doorsteps in 2021. It also plans to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030. That’s up from 40% today.

“We’ve been in the middle of the herd on this issue and we want to move to the forefront,” said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who announced the initiatives at an event in Washington.

Amazon said it emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, a number that comes close to pollution rates of some small nations.

“Its greenhouse gas emissions are about 85% of the emissions of Switzerland or Denmark,” said Gregg Marland, a professor at the Research Institute for Environment, Energy and Economics at Appalachian State University.

Amazon’s employees have pressed the company to do more to combat climate change. Earlier this year, more than 8,000 Amazon staffers signed an open letter to Bezos, demanding that Amazon cut its carbon emissions, end its use of fossil fuels and stop working with oil companies who use Amazon’s technology to find drillable oil faster. More than 1,500 employees are planning a walkout Friday to support the Global Climate Strike, a worldwide climate change protest.

Amazon plans to be carbon neutral by 2040 and wants other companies to join it. Bezos unveiled a climate pledge and said he would talk with CEOs of other large companies to get them to sign it.

“We want to use our scale and our scope to lead the way,” Bezos said.

Amazon workers get ‘huge win’

A climate change advocacy group founded by Amazon workers said the company’s announcement amounted to a “huge win” and proved that employee pressure works. In a statement, Amazon Employees For Climate Justice said that it would keep pushing the issue as long as Amazon continues working with oil and gas companies and donating to politicians who deny climate change.

Bezos defended Amazon’s work with the oil and gas industry, arguing that “we need to help them instead of vilify them,” and said Amazon would take a “hard look” at campaign contributions to climate deniers. However, he stopped short of saying such donations would stop.

Employees from other big tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, also planned to walk out Friday. Their gripes mirror those of Amazon’s employees, including that their companies provide technology to the oil industry. Ahead of the strikes, Google made its own announcement Thursday, saying it would buy enough renewable energy to spur the construction of millions of solar panels and hundreds of wind turbines across the world.

Comprehensive carbon footprint

To measure its carbon footprint, Amazon looked at emissions from all of its businesses, including the planes it operates and the energy it uses to make Echos, Kindles and its other devices. Amazon even included customers’ trips to Whole Foods, the grocery chain it owns.

“It’s very comprehensive,” said Beril Toktay, professor of operations and supply chain management at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. She said she would like to see Amazon include the carbon footprint of the products it sells on its website, which could help drive people to shop for items that are less damaging to the environment.

Robin Bell, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said it was exciting to see Amazon taking meaningful steps to reduce its carbon footprint.

“They’re blazing a trail for other companies to follow suit,” Bell said.

…

The U.S. military is joining federal, state and local officials on the frontlines of the battle to protect the country’s elections from foreign interference.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper made the announcement Thursday, saying that, from now on, election security will be one of the military’s enduring missions, and that his department will seek to take the fight to the country’s enemies.

“The lines between war and peace have now blurred,” Esper said, citing an exponential expansion of dangers in cyberspace. “Our paradigm for war has changed.”

“Our adversaries see cyberwarfare as a way to take on the United States and impose costs without confronting our traditional strengths,” he said.

Election security

The decision to make election security a core part of the military’s mission comes with campaigning for the 2020 U.S. presidential election well underway, with more than a dozen candidates looking to unseat President Donald Trump.

It also represents a significant expansion of the military’s role in protecting the integrity of U.S. elections, which until now had been more modest.

Despite concerns about Russian and Chinese efforts to meddle in last November’s midterm elections, the Defense Department was in the background, standing up a handful of cyber protection teams that could have been called upon to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), if needed.

“There would not be any independent DoD teams. We would operate in concert with DHS for incident response for election security,” Ed Wilson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, said at the time, emphasizing Homeland Security officials would be in the lead.

But Esper said the growing threat landscape necessitated a larger military role.

“We need to do more than just play goal line defense,” he said. “The Department of Defense has an important role in defending the American people from this misinformation, particularly as it pertains to preserving the integrity of our democratic elections.”

For months now, current and former U.S. intelligence and security officials have warned that Russia is actively working to interfere in the 2020 elections, whether with disinformation campaigns or by targeting U.S. election infrastructure, such as voter databases.

“It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here,” former special counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections, told lawmakers this past July. “And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”

Intelligence officials’ warnings

Mueller also echoed warnings from top intelligence officials that in 2020, Russia would not be alone.

“Many more countries are developing capabilities to replicate what the Russians have done,” he added.

Esper agreed.

“Our adversaries will continue to target our democratic processes,” he warned Thursday. “This is already happening in preparation for the 2020 elections.”

In addition to Russia, officials have said evidence shows Iran and China tried to meddle in the 2018 elections. And they expect the list to grow.

“2018 was maybe a playoff game; 2020 is the Super Bowl with election security,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Thursday.

“State and local election officials are standing on the frontlines of a renewed conflict, defending our nation’s election systems against state and criminal actors,” he said. “I’m committed to ensuring that they do not stand alone.”

For state and local election officials, more help may soon be on the way.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday agreed to support legislation that would provide states with an additional $250 million for election security.

Congressional approval needed

The measure still needs approval from the full Senate and from the House of Representatives, as well as Trump’s signature, for the funds to be doled out. But while lawmakers and officials see McConnell’s support as a positive sign, other security officials worry it, by itself, will not be enough.

“I think (it’s) a great step forward. But what’s next?” Chris Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said to reporters.

“Because if it’s these inconsistent, mass injections of cash every 10 years or eight years, that creates some disruption,” he said. “The thing they (state officials) want more than anything with funding, whether it comes from their state or whether it comes through the federal government, is consistency.”

At least one key lawmaker believes the U.S. is at least on the right track.

“I’m quite confident in 2020, in terms of the election being legitimate and secure,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

“Russia has always been trying to interfere. They always have, always will. Iran, China. We just have to be more discerning as consumers,” he said.

…

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Thursday with President Donald Trump and other critics of the tech industry, the Senate’s most vocal detractor offered a challenge: Sell your WhatsApp and Instagram properties to prove you’re serious about protecting data privacy.

It may have been more than Zuckerberg expected from his private meeting with Sen. Josh Hawley, a conservative Republican from Missouri, in his Capitol Hill office. Zuckerberg left the hourlong meeting — one of several with lawmakers on Capitol Hill — without answering questions from a throng of reporters and photographers pursuing him down a hallway.

Hawley, though, had plenty to say. “The company talks a lot. I’d like to see some action,” he told reporters. “I will believe Facebook when I see some real action out of Facebook.”

Rather than moving users’ personal data from properties such as WhatsApp and Instagram to the core Facebook platform, the company should put a wall around the services or, better yet, sell them off, Hawley said he told Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg, who requested the meeting, “did not think that was a great idea,” he said.

Zuckerberg “had a good, constructive meeting with President Trump at the White House today,” a Facebook spokesman said. On Facebook and Twitter, Trump posted a photo with the caption, “Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today.”

Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of @Facebook in the Oval Office today. https://t.co/k5ofQREfOcpic.twitter.com/jNt93F2BsG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2019

No details were given on the meeting, first reported by the Axios website.
 
Trump has persistently criticized social media companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and his platform of choice, Twitter, embracing conservative critics’ accusations that they censor religious, anti-abortion and politically conservative views. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the companies are “against me” and even suggested U.S. regulators should sue them on grounds of anti-conservative bias.  
 
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Hawley’s remarks concerning his meeting with Zuckerberg.

The popular services WhatsApp and Instagram are among some 70 companies that Facebook has acquired over the past 15 years or so, giving it what critics say is massive market power that has allowed it to snuff out competition.

Zuckerberg’s discussion with Hawley touched on industry competition, data privacy legislation, election security and accusations by conservatives that Facebook and other social media giants are biased against right-leaning content.

During his visit, Zuckerberg also met with other senators including Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Mike Lee, R-Utah, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee; and John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark. He also declined to answer reporters’ questions when he left Lee’s office earlier in the afternoon.

Lee’s office said the two discussed bias against conservatives on Facebook’s platform, regulation of online services, enforcement of antitrust laws in the tech industry and data privacy issues.

Congress has been debating a privacy law that could sharply rein in the ability of companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to collect and make money off users’ personal data. A national law, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., could allow people to see or prohibit use of their data.

‘New rules’ needed

Acting preemptively, Zuckerberg last spring called for tighter regulations to protect consumers’ data, control harmful online content, and ensure election integrity and data portability. The internet “needs new rules,” he said.

It was Zuckerberg’s first public visit to Washington since he testified before Congress last spring about privacy, election interference and other issues.

Facebook, a social media giant based in Menlo Park, California, with nearly 2.5 billion users, is under heavy scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators following a series of privacy scandals and amid accusations of abuse of its market power to squash competition.

The Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee are all conducting antitrust investigations of the big tech companies, and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general has opened a competition probe specifically of Facebook.

At Facebook’s request, Warner helped organize a dinner meeting in Washington on Wednesday night for Zuckerberg and a group of senators.

Warner told The Associated Press he wanted Zuckerberg to hear his Senate colleagues’ “enormous concerns about privacy and about protecting the integrity of our political system.”

Their message for the Facebook chief was “self-regulation is not going to be the answer,” Warner said. “I think Zuckerberg understood that.”

Warner and Hawley have proposed legislation that would force the tech giants to tell users what data they’re collecting and how much it’s worth. The proposal goes to the heart of Big Tech’s hugely profitable business model of commerce in users’ personal data. The companies gather vast data on what users read and like, and leverage it to help advertisers target their messages to individuals they want to reach.

The tech companies view with particular alarm a separate legislative proposal from Hawley that would require them to prove to regulators that they’re not using political bias to filter content. Failing to secure a bias-free audit from the government would mean a social media platform loses its long-held immunity from legal action.

…

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a stopgap government funding bill Wednesday that would maintain current spending levels until Nov. 21 and avoid a government shutdown when funding expires at the end of this month.

A vote is expected in the House Thursday, Democratic aides said.

The measure was the result of talks between both parties in both chambers. House majority leader Steny Hoyer said earlier Wednesday that he hoped Senate passage would swiftly follow approval by the House.

“Once we pass the (continuing resolution) … I’m hopeful that the Senate will take it up, that we’ll have agreement and that we will send it to the president, that the president will sign it,” said Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat.

Deal passed in July

In July, Congress passed a two-year budget and debt deal that authorized discretionary defense and non-defense programs, but lawmakers still need to pass annual legislation to fund agencies and avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.

Last December and January, the government shuttered for more than a month after President Donald Trump initially refused to sign a spending bill if it did not include funding for a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, one of his signature campaign promises.

The bill requires that the Department of Agriculture make a report to Congress by the end of October on payments made to U.S. farmers under the Trump administration’s trade war mitigation program, a Democratic aide said. Payments to foreign-owned companies will have to be listed, he said.

The bill does not include any changes relating to Trump’s immigration policies. Some liberal Democrats had proposed not replenishing projects at the Department of Homeland Security that Trump had defunded in order to pay for a border wall, but such provisions were not included in an effort to get a bill that would pass both the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-run Senate.

Plenty of debates ahead

Hoyer said lawmakers would still debate some of the border policy issues this autumn.

Once the funding bill is passed, “I think we’re going to have some big fights with reference to things that we care very passionately about, including how people are treated at the border,” Hoyer said.

The measure also includes funding Democrats sought for public-health centers and for the Medicaid health care program in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, a summary of the legislation said.
 

…

In a hearing Wednesday to examine the spread of extremism online and the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent violent content, leaders from Facebook, Twitter and Google faced tough questions from U.S. lawmakers, accentuating the positive steps taken, while acknowledging the work remaining.

Policy representatives from the social media giants told members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that their companies had made significant progress in curbing bigotry and extremist content on their platforms.

Senators suggested the companies could do much more, however, as part of their “digital responsibility” to prevent terrorists and extremists from using the internet to encourage violence.

“No matter how great the benefits to society these platforms provide, it is important to consider how they can be used for evil at home and abroad,” Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said in an opening statement, citing incidents in which white nationalists and Islamic State sympathizers used social media to radicalize and post their crimes.

The role of social media companies has come under scrutiny in recent months in the aftermath of assorted high-profile mass shootings that were posted online.

Following a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August that killed 22 people, police reported the suspect posted an anti-immigrant manifesto on a website called 8chan just 27 minutes prior to the shooting.

In a separate incident in March in Christchurch, New Zealand, a self-avowed white supremacist opened fire at two mosques, killing 51 people while live-streaming his actions on Facebook.

Representatives of the three tech giants said they were working to remove extremist content from their platforms more quickly by continuing to develop their artificial intelligence capabilities and by improving their human moderation expertise. At the same time, they noted they are building partnerships with other companies, civil society and governments.

“There is always room for improvement, but we remove millions of pieces of content every year, much of it before any user reports it,” Monika Bickert, head of Facebook’s Global Policy Management, told lawmakers.

Quicker action

Bickert said her company has been able to reduce the average time it takes for its machine detection systems to find extremist content on its live video streaming to 12 seconds. Additionally, she said the company has hired thousands of people to review content, including a team of 350 people whose primary job is dealing with terrorists and other dangerous organizations.

Twitter said it has taken drastic action against terrorism-related content, particularly propaganda related to IS.

Nick Pickles, Twitter’s public policy director, told senators his company has “decimated” IS propaganda on its platform and suspended more than 1.5 million accounts that promoted terrorism between August and December 2018.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy and take swift action on ban evaders and other forms of behavior used by terrorist entities and their affiliates. In the majority of cases, we take action at the account creation stage — before the account even tweets,” Pickles said.

He noted that the company, since introducing a policy against violent extremists in December 2017, has taken action against 186 groups and permanently suspended 2,217 unique accounts, many related to extremist white supremacist ideology.

Redirect method

Google said its video-sharing website YouTube continues to employ what it calls the “Redirect Method,” which uses targeted advertising technology to disrupt online radicalization by sending anti-terror and anti-extremist messages to people who seek out such content.

Derek Slater, Google’s global director of information policy, said his company spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and now has more than 10,000 people working to address content that might violate its policies, including those promoting violence and terrorism.

While recognizing the progress made, U.S. lawmakers pressed the major technology companies to develop ways to detect violent content in a more timely manner.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska said there was “tension” between how Facebook’s algorithms boost content while gaps still exist in detecting extremism content on time.

“I think we need to realize when social media platforms fail to block extremism content online. This content doesn’t just slip through the cracks. It is amplified to a wider audience. We saw those effects during the Christchurch shooting. The New Zealand terrorist Facebook broadcast was up for an hour before it was removed … and it gained thousands of views during that time frame,” Fischer said.

The Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group founded to combat anti-Semitism, said the companies also need to become more transparent by sharing data.

George Selim, senior vice president of programs for ADL, said the companies must provide insight by providing metrics that are verified by trusted third parties in order to assess the problem of hate and extremism on social media platforms.

“Meaningful transparency will allow stakeholders to answer questions such as: How significant is the problem of white supremacy on this platform? Is this platform safe for people who belong to my community? Have the actions taken by this company to improve the problem of hate and extremism on their platform had the desired impact?

“Until tech platforms take the collective actions to come to the table with external parties and meaningfully address these kinds of questions through their transparency efforts, our ability to understand the extent of the problem of hate and extremism online, or how to meaningfully and systematically address it, will be extremely limited,” Selim said.

…

The border wall literally became President Donald Trump’s signature project Wednesday.

Trump used a permanent marker to sign a new portion of the rust-colored metal barrier, reinforced with concrete and rebar, rising as high as 9 meters at Otay Mesa, a suburb of San Diego that separates California from Tijuana, Mexico.

“It is really virtually impenetrable,” Trump declared.

“There are thousands of people over there that were trying to get in” before this portion of the barricade went up, said Trump, who described the work he inspected Wednesday afternoon as “pretty amazing.”

“The wall does not answer the crisis at the border today,” said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the New York office of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “The situation at the border today is not people sneaking in. The crisis at the border today is asylum-seekers showing up and voluntarily turning themselves in to the Border Patrol.”

Limiting arrivals

Chishti told VOA that the near-total ban on asylum implemented via administrative regulation, along with the “Migrant Protection Protocol” and metering of asylum claims at ports of entry, will have far more to do with limiting arrivals than will the wall.

The president told reporters that up to 800 kilometers of border wall, about 1 meter thick, was under construction, but that it was premature to end the national emergency he declared in response to attempts by migrants to illegally cross the border from Mexico.

“I think really the success is going to be when the wall’s built, when human traffickers can’t come through,” Trump said. “This is certainly a tremendous national emergency.”

U.S. Army troops stationed at the border would eventually be drawn down and replaced with Border Patrol agents as the wall goes up, the president said.

Trump, asked about his repeated vow that Mexico would pay for the wall, said Wednesday at Otay Mesa that “they’re paying for 27,000 soldiers, as you know,” on the Mexican side, thwarting border-crossing.

“If I took 5% tariff for six months, that pays for the wall,” Trump said of products from Mexico, quickly adding he did not want to do that because of the current cooperation from the Mexican government.

“Now they’re doing yeoman’s work,” Trump said of Mexico.

Effectiveness

During much of his time inspecting a section of new wall, Trump touted its strength, claiming “20 mountain climbers” had tried to scale it to test its effectiveness.

“This is the one that was hardest to climb,” he said of the current type being built in the San Diego sector. “This wall can’t be climbed.”

“You can fry an egg on that wall,” he added, noting how it is designed to absorb heat, making it even more difficult to scale.

The border barrier being built is meant to deter even the most well-equipped smuggling operations, according to the president.

“If you think you’re going cut it with a blowtorch, that doesn’t work because you hit concrete,” Trump said, adding that cutting through concrete won’t work because it is reinforced with rebar.

When the president attempted to get an Army general to discuss high-technology security measures that are part of the wall, the officer demurred, saying it would be better not to mention those features.

Trump told reporters that three other countries were studying the new type of wall in hopes of building one of their own. He said he would disclose the names of those countries if he got their approval.

Trump also said the U.S. government would be stopping next week the “catch and release” of undocumented people trying to enter the country, something his administration has opposed from the beginning.

“To the extent they have released people who have been caught, it’s only been because of resource constraints either in the immigration court system or in the detention system,” MPI’s Chishti said. “There is no reason to believe that either of those factors has been addressed in the recent past, so while the administration can announce the end of catch and release, without an effective infrastructure to support it, it’s hard to see how it will be a different day on immigration enforcement.”

Praise for Mexico

Trump noted Tijuana is close by, saying “there are thousands of people over there that were trying to get in.” He then praised Mexico for its efforts that have significantly stemmed the flow of migrants at the border.

Analysts say the reductions in arrivals at the border are a combination of increased Mexican enforcement; the throttling of asylum avenues by the Trump administration with the creation of the Remain in Mexico plan and limits on who can apply for asylum; and seasonal declines in migration at this time of the year.

“This is the wall the agents asked for,” a Border Patrol agent told the president at the border Wednesday.

Trump, however, is not getting one wall option he desired, at least for now: a black coat of paint.

“We can paint it at a later date,” said the president, noting the cost savings can be applied to build even more wall.

…

The United States imposed sanctions on Tuesday on three people and 16 groups it says helped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government profit from food aid in the economically struggling country, the Treasury Department said.

The individuals are Amir Luis Saab, Luis Alberto Saab and David Nicolas Rubio, according to a Treasury statement.

In July, the Treasury Department said Colombian national Alex Nain Saab orchestrated a vast corruption network for food imports and distribution in Venezuela and profited from overvalued contracts, including the food subsidy program.

“This action increases pressure on Alex Saab and his network, which have profited off the hunger of the Venezuelan people and facilitate systemic corruption in Venezuela,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in the statement. “Treasury will continue to target those who corruptly profit at the expense of the Venezuelan people.”

…

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. human rights chief, has denied claims by a Brazilian businessman under investigation in Brazil’s massive Car Wash scandal that he paid $141,000 to cover debts incurred by her 2013 Chilean presidential campaign.

Leo Pinheiro is reported to have told prosecutors as part of a plea bargain that his engineering firm, OAS, paid the money at the suggestion of the former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula is serving a 12-year prison sentence for taking bribes in connection with the scandal, which involved payoffs and political kickbacks on contracts with oil company Petrobras and other state-run companies.

Two other Brazilian presidents have been implicated in the scandal, along with two Peruvian presidents.

On Monday, Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paolo newspaper cited messages between prosecutors working on Pinheiro’s case in a report that claimed he told them OAS paid the money to Bachelet’s campaign to ensure a consortium it was involved in retained a contract to build a bridge to the Chilean island of Chiloe.

On Tuesday, Bachelet, a socialist who served from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018 and is the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, denied the claims.

“My truth is the same as always, I have never had links with OAS,” she told Chilean TV station 24 Horas in Geneva.

She highlighted the fact that Pinheiro had failed to mention his claims to tell a Chilean prosecutor investigating the potential involvement of Chilean businesses or politicians in the cross-continental scandal.

She also pointed to the fact that the Chiloe bridge contract was awarded by the government of Chile’s current president, Sebastian Pinera.

Pinheiro was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the scandal but released after three years in custody last weekend after his plea bargain was ratified by Brazil’s Supreme Court.

Chile’s chief prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, said in a statement on Monday that he would await formal confirmation of Pinheiro’s claims from Brazilian prosecutors before taking any action.

“We will continue with our investigation to determine the veracity of this financing and to be able to advance any corresponding criminal complaints,” he said.

“Whoever is ultimately implicated in this testimony, no one is above the law.”

Representatives for OAS, Lula and Pinheiro did not reply to requests for comment. Bachelet’s spokesman at the U.N., Rupert Colville, said she would not comment further on the issue.

“Obviously, as this concerns her political career in Chile, it is not an issue for OHCHR itself to comment on,” he said.

…

Developing economies could face disruption from the shock waves of Britain crashing out of the European Union with no deal, according to analysts.

Brexit will affect not only Britain’s relations with the European Union, but also with hundreds of other countries with which Britain currently trades on EU terms, as Brussels sets trade policy for the entire EU bloc.

London has negotiated new post-Brexit trade arrangements with several countries, including Central American nations, Switzerland and South Korea, among others. That leaves hundreds of states — from smaller economies to relative giants like Japan and Canada — with whom trade would revert to World Trade Organization terms after a no-deal Brexit.

Striking new trade deals won’t be easy, said professor Anand Menon at a “Changing Europe” program at Kings College London.

“Many countries with whom we try and do trade deals will say to us, ‘Yes, that would be great. We’d quite like to know what your relationship with the European Union is going to be before we sign anything with you, though.’ So, all roads lead to Brussels,” Menon said.

Such uncertainty doesn’t help countries that sell goods to Britain. For example, Kenya exports cut flowers, fruits and vegetables, with total exports to Britain estimated at $400 million per year.

Bangladesh exports nearly $4 billion worth of goods to Britain, which are currently traded under the EU’s preferential rules of origin that allocate zero or low tariffs on goods from developing countries. A no-deal Brexit will likely mean disruption, said Max Mendez-Parra, a trade expert at the Overseas Development Institute.

“The problem is that that will erode the preference that some of these countries receive. So for example, the advantage that a country such as Bangladesh and Cambodia have on certain products because they have access with a lower tariff, that would be removed.”

Speaking last month, Akinwumi Adesina, head of the Africa Development Bank, warned that the combination of a no-deal Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war were hitting African economies.

“The industrial capacity has fallen significantly, and so the demand, even for products and raw materials from Africa, will only fall even further. So, the effect of that could have a ripple effect on African economies as the demand for their products weaken from China,” Adesina said.

Britain, meanwhile, is stepping up its search for new trade deals. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss is visiting New Zealand, Australia and Japan this week. Many of these nations’ companies have large investments in Britain and fear the chaotic fallout of a no-deal Brexit.

For smaller economies, the impact is likely to be less severe, Mendez-Parra said.

“African countries seem to be more relaxed, developing countries are more and more relaxed — except some specific countries that trade a lot with the U.K. — about the prospect of a no-deal [Brexit]. And this is because the U.K. has lost over many years the sort of importance as a destination of exports for many of these countries.”

A no-deal Brexit would hit the economies of many EU states like Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. But it is in Britain where the impact will inevitably be hardest-felt.

…

A U.S. service member was killed in action in Afghanistan on Monday, NATO said, without providing further details.

Last week, President Donald Trump abruptly called off talks with the Taliban to end American’s longest war, citing the killing of a U.S. service member in a Taliban attack days earlier.

Monday’s death was the 17th U.S. combat death in Afghanistan this year, according to the Pentagon’s count. There also have been three non-combat deaths this year. More than 2,400 Americans have died in the nearly 18-year war.

Across Afghanistan, militant attacks and more violence killed at least seven people as the country prepares for presidential elections later this month, Afghan officials said.

At least five civilians, including women and children, were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in western Farah province on Sunday, according to Mohibullah Mohib, spokesman for the provincial police.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which occurred near the city of Farah, the provincial capital, but the Taliban are active in the province.

Earlier this month, the Taliban launched an attempt to take the city of Farah, briefly seizing an army recruitment center and setting it on fire. Airstrikes were called in and the Taliban were eventually forced out of the city.

Separately, a magnetic explosive device attached to a mini bus belonging to a university in Ghazni province exploded and killed the bus driver. Arif Noori, spokesman for the provincial governor, said five Ghazni University students were also wounded in the blast.

In eastern Logar province, a schoolgirl died in the crossfire during a battle in the Mohammad Agha district between the Taliban and the security forces, the police said. A second student was wounded.

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani cancelled his first electoral debate with his main electoral rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s chief executive. Both men are partners in the national unity government.

Ghani’s electoral team, in a statement released just before the start of the debate, claimed Abdullah has no political program and that Ghani did not want to debate him.

Abdullah, who was present at the TV studio where the debate was to be held, said Ghani “should have come and shared his plans.”

Around 100,000 members of the country’s security forces will provide security on election day, Sept. 28. Around 72,000 security personnel will be on duty around the 4,942 polling centers across Afghanistan while nearly 30,000 additional troops will serve as reserve units.

Approximately 20,000 American and allied troops remain in Afghanistan. Between 14,000 and 13,000 U.S. troops are currently in the country.

…

A Chinese American couple has been arrested and charged with stealing scientific trade secrets from a children’s hospital in Ohio in the latest federal prosecution aimed at clamping down on China’s alleged theft of American intellectual property.  

The couple — Yu Zhou, 49, and Li Chen, 46 — worked in separate labs at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, for 10 years, stealing proprietary research for use in personal business ventures, law enforcement officials announced Monday.

The purloined exosome-related trade secrets play a key role in the diagnosis and treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions, including liver cancer and a condition found in premature babies, according to a 27-page federal indictment.

The indictment alleges that the couple founded a company in China in 2015 without the hospital’s knowledge or authorization, marketing products related to exosome isolation. Two years later, Zhou helped found an American biotechnology company, advertising products including a kit developed with a trade secret created at one of the hospital’s research labs. Shortly before resigning from the hospital in 2017, Zhu allegedly announced in a press release his new company’s plans to distribute “proprietary exosome isolation systems” from its Central Ohio headquarters.

“Nationwide Children’s Hospital devoted years of work and its own money to researching exosomes in order to promote honorable medical advances,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Benjamin Glassman said in a statement.  

In a statement to VOA, the hospital said, “When we discovered this incident, we alerted the FBI and have been actively collaborating with them.”

Zhou and Chen were arrested in July. The 27-count indictment was unsealed Thursday at their arraignment in federal court in Columbus. The charges carry 10 to 20 years in prison.  

Lawyers for the couple did not immediately respond to an email from VOA seeking comment. 

U.S. crackdown 

The indictment is part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on China’s alleged theft of American property and other predatory practices that are at the heart of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

In the last 10 months, the Justice Department has brought charges against Chinese nationals and entities in at least seven separate economic espionage cases, up from three during the prior 10 months. In addition, the department has obtained guilty pleas and convictions in six older espionage cases, while charging four Chinese nationals for evading sanctions against North Korea.

“The theft of trade secrets is a growing threat that severely impacts our economy and our national security,” stated FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge Todd Wickerham.

Separately, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Chinese government employee on conspiracy charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. visas for fellow government workers.

Zhongsan Liu was arrested Thursday in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and later presented before a U.S. magistrate in federal court in New York.

“We welcome foreign students and researchers, including from China, but we do not welcome visa fraud  especially on behalf of a government,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of National Security. “We will continue to confront Chinese government attempts to subvert American law to advance its own interests in diverting U.S. research and know-how to China.”

…

An innovative boat that saves energy by rising out of the water on hydrofoil wings underwent testing on the Seine river in Paris on Monday as its backers seek to obtain a license to operate a taxi service on the river.

The SeaBubbles craft is powered by electric motors and its hydrofoil wings reduce the drag on the hull in the water, making it more energy efficient than conventional boats.

SeaBubbles co-founder Alain Thebault said the boat, which carries four passengers and one pilot, has green credentials as it is noise free and produces no pollution.

“It’s the future,” he told Reuters in an interview after the boat had completed its latest tests, running up and down the Seine.

The testing will continue until Sept. 20, after which the project’s backers hope to obtain a commercial license to run taxi services from the east of Paris to the west.

Hydrofoils were invented decades ago but their commercial use is limited because they tend to be unstable. SeaBubbles uses computer processors to adjust the hydrofoil wings constantly in the water, which its designers say gives passengers a smooth ride.

…

Several Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday lined up to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the face of a new, uninvestigated, allegation of sexual impropriety when he was in college.

Kavanaugh was confirmed last October after emotional hearings in the Senate over a sexual assault allegation from his high school years. The New York Times now reports that Kavanaugh faced a separate allegation from his time at Yale University and that the FBI did not investigate the claim. The latest claim mirrors one offered during his confirmation process by Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate who claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken party.

When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Kavanaugh denied all allegations of impropriety .

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said after the new report that “Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people.” She tweeted: “He must be impeached.”

A 2020 rival, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, tweeted that “Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke asserted in a tweeted, “We know he lied under oath. He should be impeached.” He accused the GOP-run Senate of forcing the FBI “to rush its investigation to save his nomination.”

Their comments followed similar ones from Julian Castro, a former U.S. housing secretary, on Saturday night. “It’s more clear than ever that Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath,” he tweeted. “He should be impeached and Congress should review the failure of the Department of Justice to properly investigate the matter.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont didn’t refer to impeachment by name in a tweet Sunday, but said he would “support any appropriate constitutional mechanism” to hold Kavanaugh “accountable.”

Later Sunday, Sen. Cory Booker tweeted: “This new allegation and additional corroborating evidence adds to a long list of reasons why Brett Kavanaugh should not be a Supreme Court justice. I stand with survivors and countless other Americans in calling for impeachment proceedings to begin.”

Democrats control the House, which holds the power of impeachment. If the House took that route, a trial would take place in the Senate, where Republicans now have a majority, making it unlikely that Kavanaugh would be removed from office.

Trump, who fiercely defended Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation process, dismissed the latest allegation as “lies.”

In a tweet Sunday, Trump said Kavanaugh “should start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.” It wasn’t immediately clear how the Justice Department could come to the justice’s defense.

Trump added that they were “False Accusations without recrimination,” and claimed his accusers were seeking to influence Kavanaugh’s opinions on the bench.

…

Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in the civil rights era, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Sunday the country hasn’t “relegated racism and white supremacy to the pages of history” as he framed current tensions in the context of the movement’s historic struggle for equality.

He spoke to parishioners at 16th Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham as they commemorated the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four black girls in 1963. “It’s in the wake of these before-and-after moments when the choice between good and evil is starkest,” he said.

The former vice president called out the names of the victims — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley. He drew nods of affirmation as he warned that “the same poisonous ideology that lit the fuse on 16th street” has yielded more recent tragedies including in 2015 at a black church in South Carolina, in 2018 at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and in August at an El Paso, Texas , Wal-Mart frequented by Latino immigrants.

Key Takeaways From Democrats’ Third 2020 Debate

Will it have any effect on fundamentals of nominating fight that remains remarkably stable at top with five months until voting begins?

He condemned institutional racism as the direct legacy of slavery and lamented that the nation has “never lived up to” the ideals of equality written into its founding documents. But then he added a more personal note. “Those who are white try,” Biden said, “but we can never fully understand.”

Biden praised the congregation for offering an example of “rebirth and renewal” to those communities and to a nation he said must recommit itself to “giving hate no safe harbor — demonizing no one, not the poor, the powerless, the immigrant or the ‘other.’”

Biden’s appearance in Birmingham comes at a political inflection point for the Democrats’ 2020 polling leader. He is trying to capitalize on his strength among older black voters even as some African American and other nonwhite leaders, particularly younger ones, view Biden more skeptically.

From his long time in government, as a senator and vice president, the 76-year-old Biden has deep ties in the black community. Though Biden didn’t mention President Donald Trump in his remarks, he has made withering critiques of the president’s rhetoric and policies on race and immigration a central feature of his candidacy.

Yet Biden also draws critical, even caustic appraisals from younger nonwhite activists who take issue with his record. That includes his references to working productively alongside segregationist senators in the 1970s to distrust over his lead role in a 1994 crime law that critics frame as partially responsible for mass incarceration, especially black men.

The dynamics flared up again Thursday after Biden, during a Democratic debate, offered a sometimes incoherent answer when asked how the nation should confront the legacy of slavery. At one point, Biden suggested nonwhite parents use a play a record player to help their children with verbal and cognitive development. That led to a social media firestorm and commentary that Biden takes a paternalistic view of black and brown America even as he hammers Trump for emboldening more obvious forms of racism.

Author Anand Giridharadas called Biden’s answer “appalling — and disqualifying” for “implying that black parents don’t know how to raise their own children.”

Biden gave only slightest of nods to some of those critiques Sunday.

Biden’s audience seemed to reflect his relative popularity with black voters more than the fierceness of his critics.

Parishioners wielded their cellphones when he arrived with Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, a white politician beloved in the church for his role as the lead prosecutor who secured convictions in the bombing case decades after it occurred. The congregation gave Biden a standing ovation as he concluded his 20-minute remarks.

Alvin Lewis, a 67-year-old usher at 16th Street Baptist, said the welcome doesn’t necessarily translate to votes. But as Lewis and other congregants offered their assessment of race relations in the United States under Trump, they tracked almost flawlessly the arguments Biden has used to anchor his campaign.

“Racism has reared its head in a way that’s frightening for those of us who lived through it before,” Lewis said, who said he was at home, about “20 blocks from here” when the Klan bomb went off at 10:22 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1963. “No matter what anyone says, what comes out of the president of the United States’ mouth means more than anything,” Lewis added, saying Trump “has brought out some nastier times in this country’s history.”

Antoinette Plump, a 60-year-old who took in the service alongside lifelong member Doris Coke, 92, said racism “was on the back burner” until Trump “brought out all the people who are so angry.”

Coke, who was at the church on that Sunday in 1963, said, “We’ve come a long way.” But she nodded her head as Plump denounced Trump.

Nearby sat Fay Gaines, a Birmingham resident who was in elementary school in 1963 — just a few years younger than the girls who died.

Gaines said she’s heard and read criticisms about Biden. Asked whether she’d seen his “record players” answer in the debate, she laughed and said she did. But he remains on her “short list” of preferred candidates.

“I think there may just be a generational divide,” she said of the reaction. “People who lived through all these struggles maybe can understand how to deal with the current situation a little better.”

That means, she said, recognizing a politician’s core values.

“I trust Joe Biden,” she said. “History matters. His history matters.”

…

Roughly 49,000 workers at General Motors plants in the U.S. plan to go on strike just before midnight Sunday, but talks between the United Auto Workers and the automaker will resume.

About 200 plant-level union leaders voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a meeting Sunday morning in Detroit. Union leaders said the sides were still far apart on several major issues and they apparently weren’t swayed by a GM offer to make new products at or near two of the four plants it had been planning to close, according to someone briefed on the matter.

“We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most,” union Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement, referring to union concessions that helped GM survive bankruptcy protection in 2009. “Now we are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members.”

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said Sunday evening that contract talks would resume at 10 a.m. Monday, but the strike was still expected to go ahead.

GM on Friday offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according someone who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because that person wasn’t authorized to disclose details of the negotiations, which hadn’t been released to the public. The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a plant that has already stopped making cars. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.

It’s unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.

The UAW’s Rothenberg said the company made general statements about why it is planning to strike, but he would not comment further on GM’s offer. The union said it would strike for fair wages, affordable health care, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.

In a statement, GM also said the offer made to the union on Saturday included more than $7 billion in U.S. factory investments and the creation of 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The investments would be made at factories in four states, two of which were not identified.

The statement also said the company offered “best in class wages and benefits,” improved profit sharing and a payment of $8,000 to each worker upon ratification. The offer included wage or lump sum increases in all four years of the deal, plus “nationally leading” health benefits.

The announcement came hours after the union let its contract with GM expire Saturday night.

If there is a strike, picketers would shut down a total of 53 GM facilities, including 33 manufacturing sites and 22 parts distribution warehouses. GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.

On Saturday, Dittes, the union’s chief bargainer, said in a letter to GM members that after months of bargaining, both the union and GM were far apart on issues such as wages, health care, temporary employees, job security and profit-sharing. The letter to members and another one to GM were aimed at turning up the pressure on GM negotiators.

A strike would bring to a halt GM’s U.S. production, and would likely stop the company from making vehicles in Canada and Mexico as well. That would mean fewer vehicles for consumers to choose from on dealer lots, and it would make it impossible to build specially ordered cars and trucks.

The strike would be the union’s first since a two-day work stoppage at GM in 2007.

On Friday, union leaders extended contracts with Ford and Fiat Chrysler indefinitely, but the pact with General Motors was still set to expire Saturday night.

The union picked GM, which is more profitable than Ford and Fiat Chrysler, as the target company, meaning it’s the focus of bargaining and would be the first company to face a walkout.

Talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because GM plans to close four U.S. factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, and Lordstown. The union has promised to fight the closures.

Here are the main areas of disagreement:

— GM is making big money, $8 billion last year alone, and workers want a bigger slice. The union wants annual pay raises to guard against an economic downturn, but the company wants to pay lump sums tied to earnings. Automakers don’t want higher fixed costs.

— The union also wants new products for the four factories GM wants to close. The factory plans have irked some workers, although most of those who were laid off will get jobs at other GM factories. GM currently has too much U.S. factory capacity.

— The companies want to close the labor cost gap with workers at plants run by foreign automakers. GM pays $63 per hour in wages and benefits compared with $50 at the foreign-owned factories. GM’s gap is the largest at $13 per hour, followed by Ford at $11 and Fiat Chrysler at $5, according to figures from the Center for Automotive Research.

— Union members have great health insurance plans and workers pay about 4% of the cost. Employees at large firms nationwide pay about 34%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The automakers would like to cut costs.

…

It’s been a rocky week in Afghanistan peace talks, and NATO’s operational commander said allies “anticipate increased violence” on the ground as Afghan presidential elections inch closer.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), told a small group of reporters that Afghan elections “probably won’t be perfect,” but the 29-member North Atlantic alliance will “plan and execute to the ends of the Earth” to try to make the September 28 vote as safe as possible.

“There has been a lot of drama associated with Afghanistan, and at this very moment the signal we send to our NATO partners is the U.S. is committed, NATO is committed, and the mission still remains,” Wolters said on the sidelines of the latest NATO Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense Session.

British Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, chairman of NATO’s military chiefs, added Saturday that there was “no division” on that commitment.

“We went into Afghanistan together, and any changes we will make together,” Peach said.

Peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban collapsed late last week. President Donald Trump had planned talks with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and Taliban leaders at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, but then said that he decided to cancel them.

US-Taliban talks

U.S. and Taliban negotiators had recently appeared to be close to a deal to end America’s longest war and start talks between the insurgent group and the Afghan government. However, Trump declared U.S.-Afghan peace talks “dead” after a car bombing in Kabul killed dozens, including an American soldier.

The decision to end talks has increased concerns about escalating violence. Since then, the Taliban has threatened to disrupt the upcoming election, vowing that American troops “will suffer more than anyone else.”

Afghan President Ghani, who is running for re-election this month, appears emboldened by Trump’s cancellation of talks with the Taliban and has hardened his stance for engaging in future peace talks with them.

Ghani said this week that negotiations will be “impossible” until the Taliban declares a cease-fire.
 

…

A senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) intelligence officer arrested this week for allegedly stealing sensitive documents oversaw an investigation into the laundering of stolen Russian funds, Canadian media reported Saturday.

The Globe and Mail said Cameron Ortis’ arrest was linked to a major corruption case that was first revealed by Sergei Magnitsky, who went public with details of a $230 million fraud scheme allegedly run by senior Russian interior ministry and tax officials.

Ortis was as recently as August said to be overseeing an inquiry into whether some of the money was funneled through Canada, the newspaper reported.

“Ortis, director-general of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, was planning to meet for a second time with the legal team pursuing the matter alleging more than $14 million in Russian fraud proceeds were tied to Canada,” The Globe and Mail said, citing an unnamed source.

Ortis’ involvement in the case came after William Browder, a British financier and former investor in Russia whom Magnitsky worked for, filed a complaint with the RCMP in 2016.

Magnitsky died in detention after spending 11 months in prisons in 2009.

Canada’s federal police agency hasn’t opened a formal investigation into the allegation, despite a 2017 meeting between Ortis and Browder, the newspaper said.

Ortis, who was arrested in the capital Ottawa on Thursday, was a top adviser to former RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson and had control over counter-intelligence operations, Canada’s Global News reported.

He faces five charges under the country’s criminal code and its Security of Information Act and will appear for a court hearing next Friday.

“The allegations are that he obtained, stored, processed sensitive information, we believe with the intent to communicate it to people that he shouldn’t be communicating it to,” prosecutor John MacFarlane told journalists after Ortis appeared in court last Friday.

The RCMP fears Ortis stole “large quantities of information, which could compromise an untold number of investigations,” according to Global News, which first reported the arrest.

Canada is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance with Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States.
 

…

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened himself to the unruly comic book character The Incredible Hulk late Saturday in a newspaper interview in which he stressed his determination to take Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31. 

The Mail on Sunday reported that Johnson said he would find a way to circumvent a recent Parliament vote ordering him to delay Brexit rather than take Britain out of the EU without a transition deal to ease the economic shock. 

“The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “Hulk always escaped, no matter how tightly bound in he seemed to be — and that is the case for this country. We will come out on October 31.” 

Britain’s Parliament has repeatedly rejected the exit deal Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, negotiated with the EU, and this month rejected leaving without a deal — angering many Britons who voted to leave the bloc more than three years ago.  

No ‘backstop’

Johnson has said he wants to negotiate a new deal that does not involve a “backstop,” which would potentially tie Britain against its will to EU rules after it leaves in order to avoid checks on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. 

The EU has so far insisted on the backstop, and Britain has not presented any detailed alternative. 

Nonetheless, Johnson said he was “very confident” ahead of a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday. 

“There’s a very, very good conversation going on about how to address the issues of the Northern Irish border. A huge amount of progress is being made,” Johnson told The Mail on Sunday, without giving details. 

Johnson drew parallels between Britain’s situation in Brexit talks and the frustrations felt by fictional scientist Bruce Banner, who when enraged turned into The Incredible Hulk, frequently leaving behind a trail of destruction.  

“Banner might be bound in manacles, but when provoked he would explode out of them,” he said. 

Earlier on Saturday, former Conservative minister Sam Gyimah said he was switching to the pro-EU Liberal Democrat party in protest at Johnson’s Brexit policies and political style. 

Opinion polls late Saturday painted a conflicting picture of the Conservative Party’s political fortunes under Johnson, who wants to hold an early election to regain a working majority in Parliament. 

A poll conducted by Opinium for The Observer newspaper showed Conservative support rose to 37% from 35% over the past week, while Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour held at 25% and Liberal Democrat support dropped to 16% from 17%. Support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party remained at 13%. 

However, a separate poll by ComRes for The Sunday Express put Conservative support at just 28%, down from 30% and only a shade ahead of Labour at 27%. 

ComRes said just 12% of the more than 2,000 people it surveyed thought Parliament could be trusted to do the right thing for the country. 

…

Like many kids, Rihanna dreamed of someday growing up to be rich, but helping others was at the forefront of her vision. 
 
“It’s always been important to me before any success,” she told The Associated Press on Thursday at her annual Diamond Ball charity gala. “As a kid, just seeing those commercials on television with the kids in Africa, where it’s like, ‘It just takes 10 cents or 25 cents to help somebody’ — I used to think, `When I grow up, I’m a gonna be rich and I’m going to make a lot of money and I could make a lot of 10 cents and a lot of 25 cents.’ ” 
 
She’s made a lot more than that as superstar singer and now fashion and beauty mogul, and with her Clara Lionel Foundation has doled out money around the globe to help support education programs, women’s health and emergency response organizations for people in need.  

The foundation, named after Rihanna’s grandparents, raised more than $5 million Thursday night. Cardi B and Offset, A$AP Rocky, Karlie Kloss, DJ Khaled, 21 Savage, Pharrell Williams and others came out to support the glittering charity dinner, which even featured an impromptu performance by Rihanna and Williams. 
 
“I’m a fan of her energy. She has a beautiful soul,” DJ Khaled said before entering the event at Cipriani’s in downtown Manhattan with his wife.  “In my book, she keeps it mad real. It’s just a beautiful day, we’re putting beautiful energy out there.” 
 
It was the second all-star event Rihanna staged this week. Khaled, Halsey and more turned out for her New York Fashion Week show on Tuesday, an extravaganza for her lingerie line, Savage X Fenty, that featured musical performances along with a catwalk. 
 
The star wowed on the red carpet dressed in a black velvet turtleneck dress with a flared skirt. 
  
“Just glam. She’s so glamorous, she’s so gorgeous. Anytime I think of Rihanna, I just think of just glam,” said rapper Megan Thee Stallion. 
 
Rihanna told the crowd she was “humbled” by the support for Clara Lionel, and noted that her grandmother Clara Brathwaite, who died seven years ago, would tell her helping others is “about the collective joining forces.” 
 
She told the AP her connection to her grandparents makes the event a sentimental one. 
 
“So these things get really personal, emotional, and I just want to expand this every year to a different cause, because I don’t feel like people deserve to be left out. That’s really the core of the foundation,” she said. 
 

Inside the event, which started two hours late and was hosted by Seth Meyers, stars mingled in a hall that was decorated with a tropical, colorful motif. A$AP Rocky, recently freed after a legal battle in Sweden that saw him behind bars there for weeks, held court at one table as he chatted with 2 Chainz and others; Cardi B bid a very exact $109,000 for a rare copy of a book on Rihanna, along with a two-thousand pound marble stand designed to hold it. 
 
The night was not without some controversy: One of the honorees, activist and journalist Shaun King, has been accused of mishandling money he claims he’s received for various causes he supports. The Clara Lionel Foundation was almost immediately met with backlash after it was announced King would be a Diamond Ball honoree, forcing King to release a 72-page report to try to defend himself against the allegations. 
 
The foundation’s executive director, Justine Lucas, stood by the decision to honor King, who has been a supporter of Clara Lionel. “We decided to honor Shaun King for a reason, and we decided to honor Shaun King for that same reason tonight,” she said. 

King, who defended himself on Twitter just before the event, did not address the allegations as he accepted his honor, instead imploring the crowd to work harder to fight injustice: “It’s not good enough to have good intentions.” 

Support for King
 
Cardi B stood up for King just before the event. 
 
“One of the main reasons why it is so important for me to be here is because Rihanna is honoring Shaun King. A lot of people need to follow Shaun King on Instagram. He protests so much for all minorities, he protests so much for the whole entire world,” said the Grammy-award winning rapper. 
  
Also honored was Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, where Rihanna was born. Mottley is the first woman to ascend to the position, and Rihanna personally presented her with an award. 
 
Mottley said no matter how global Rihanna is, she always brings Barbados with her. 
  
“Rihanna is one of our citizens of whom we are very, very proud,” Mottley said. “When you come from 166 square miles and you can produce people who make a global impact, it gives your heart a certain amount of warmth.” 

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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Friday that they had arrested a senior intelligence officer for allegedly stealing sensitive documents. 
 
Cameron Ortis faces five charges under Canada’s criminal code and its Security of Information Act, the federal police agency said in a statement. 
 
“The allegations are that he obtained, stored and processed sensitive information, we believe with the intent to communicate it to people that he shouldn’t be communicating it to,” prosecutor John MacFarlane told journalists after Ortis appeared in court Friday. 
 
Canada’s Global News reported that Ortis, who was arrested Thursday, was a top adviser to former RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson and had control over counterintelligence operations. 
 
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is campaigning for a second term in office, told reporters at an election rally, “I can assure you that the authorities are taking this extremely seriously,” without commenting further. 
 
His opponent, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, said it was “extremely concerning that a senior RCMP intelligence officer has been arrested for leaking national security information.” 
 
“This is another reminder of the threats we face from foreign actors,” said Scheer, who is tied in the polls with Trudeau. 
 
The RCMP fears Ortis stole “large quantities of information, which could compromise an untold number of investigations,” according to Global News, which first reported the arrest. 
 
Canada is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance with Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States. 
 
The public broadcaster Radio-Canada said Ortis is a specialist in East Asia, critical infrastructure and online “bots.” 
 
On the LinkedIn social network, the account of a person named Cameron Ortis indicates that he has worked for the Canadian government since 2007 after receiving a doctorate in international relations and political science at The University of British Columbia. 
 
The account also says he speaks Mandarin, the main language of China, with which Canada is in an unprecedented diplomatic crisis. 
 
Beijing last December detained two Canadian nationals in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Chinese tech executive on a U.S. warrant. 
 
China has also blocked Canadian agricultural shipments worth billions of dollars. 

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The controversy swirling around the burial of Zimbabwe’s founding leader, Robert Mugabe, centers on his widow, Grace, who has remained dramatically cloaked behind a heavy black veil as she succeeded in getting the country’s president to scrap his plans for the ex-leader to be buried in a simple plot alongside other national heroes and instead build a grand new mausoleum for her husband.

Known as a strong-willed woman with political ambitions, Grace Mugabe has made the most of her role as the grieving widow — and some in Zimbabwe think she is using the issue to reassert herself as a force to be reckoned with in the country.

When the 54-year-old Grace objected to the funeral plans for Mugabe, who died last week at 95, President Emmerson Mnangagwa came to her palatial 25-bedroom residence in Harare’s posh Borrowdale suburb to consult her about how the interment should proceed. He departed saying he would respect her wishes and scrapped his funeral plans.

She and other family members said they had enlisted the support of Zimbabwe’s traditional chiefs to determine how Mugabe would be buried. In a series of announcements throughout the week they divulged details of where, when and how Mugabe would be buried. The saga culminated Friday with the announcement that the funeral had been postponed for 30 days, until the elaborate new edifice could be built at the Heroes’ Acre national monument.

“We are building a mausoleum for our founding father at the top of the hill at Heroes Acre,” Mnangagwa said on state television of the plan to construct the imposing monument to Mugabe, a guerrilla leader who fought to end white-minority rule when the country was known as Rhodesia. “It won’t be finished, so we will only bury him after we have completed construction.”

Latest acrimony, latest achievement

The wrangle over the burial highlighted the lasting acrimony between Mugabe’s widow and Mnangagwa, who helped oust Mugabe in 2017 after 37 years of often tumultuous rule as the country went from prosperity to economic decline, hyperinflation and widespread shortages.

It was also the latest achievement for Grace Mugabe, who rose from being one of the president’s secretaries to become first lady. Mugabe and his first wife, Sally, had one son who died while Mugabe was jailed by the Rhodesian regime. When Sally was ailing with kidney failure, Mugabe struck up a relationship with Grace, 41 years his junior, and they had a daughter and two sons. Following Sally’s death in 1992, Mugabe married Grace in 1996 in a lavish ceremony at his birthplace, Zvimba.

As Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace became known for shopping sprees in Europe and Asia, building huge residences, and staking claim to farms in the choice Mazowe area, outside Harare, as part of Mugabe’s seizure of once white-owned properties. Grace also featured in a series of scandals and lawsuits, including one in which she sued a diamond dealer she said didn’t deliver a 100-carat diamond she claimed to have paid for. In South Africa she was charged with assaulting a young woman who had been in her sons’ hotel suite in Johannesburg.

She also became increasingly prominent politically, becoming the head of the Women’s League of her husband’s ruling ZANU-PF party. She launched a series of public attacks on then-Vice President Joice Mujuru that led to Mujuru being sacked in 2014. She then turned her sights on Mnangagwa, who was fired from the vice presidency in 2017 and appeared poised to take that position herself. Mnangagwa fled the country, saying he feared for his life.

Military coup

The prospect of Grace Mugabe gaining so much power, especially as Mugabe was becoming visibly feeble, prompted the military to put the couple under house arrest. Mugabe was forced to resign in November 2017, and his wife was expelled from the ruling party.

With Mugabe’s death and the protracted drama surrounding his burial, Grace has reasserted her national prominence — and her ascendency over Mnangagwa.

“That stuff about traditional leaders making the decision is rubbish. Grace was determined to decide how Mugabe should be buried,” said Zimbabwean analyst Ibbo Mandaza. Since Mugabe’s ouster “Mnangagwa has not taken any action against her. Nothing has happened to the mansions, the properties, the state allowances.”

“The whole narrative of the ruling class is the same. There is hypocrisy and looting. There is no honor or dignity,” he said.

And Grace might just make a political comeback, he added. 

“Maybe in a year we will see Grace in bed with Mnangagwa, politically, if not literally,” he said.
 

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A tropical cyclone was forecast to move across the northwestern Bahamas in the coming days, potentially bringing more rain and wind to islands already devastated by Hurricane Dorian, the U.S. National Hurricane Center warned on Thursday. 

The Miami-based hurricane center issued a tropical storm warning for islands including hurricane-hit Abacos and Grand Bahama, saying the system could become a tropical depression or storm before making landfall as early as Friday. 

Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas on Sept. 1 as a 
Category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record to hit land, packing top sustained winds of 185 miles per hour (298 km per hour). 

The tropical cyclone was not expected to bring anywhere near that level of devastation, but was capable of winds of 30 miles per hour and 2 to 4 inches of rain through Sunday, according to the hurricane center. 

Aid groups rushed shelter material to residents living in the shells of former homes or whose homes had been stripped of their roofs. 

“We’re seeing plastic tarps go out all over the islands, and that’s extremely important because now you’ve got another tropical storm coming,” said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs for U.S. relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. 

The prime minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis, on Wednesday said the official death toll was 50 but was expected to rise. 

Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said he believed “hundreds” were dead on Abaco “and significant numbers on Grand Bahama,” the Nassau Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. 

Minnis said there were problems coordinating aid due to the level of devastation and he was trying to remove “bureaucratic roadblocks.” 

Tent cities for newly homeless

With 1,300 people still missing, according to the Bahamian 
government, relief services are focused on search and rescue as well as providing life-sustaining food, water and shelter. 

Officials have erected large tents in Nassau to house those made homeless by Dorian and plan to erect tent cities on Abaco capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people. 

A flood of aid has caused bottlenecks at docks and airports, creating “a lot of delays” in relief supplies, said Nat Abu-Bonsrah of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, the global humanitarian organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 

Due to a shortage of functioning vehicles and facilities on Grand Bahama, the group turned to church members to lend their cars and kitchens for its program providing hot meals to over 400 people a day in Freeport. 

“We’ve not been able to reach them as much as we want,” he said of efforts to get hundreds of hygiene kits to survivors. 

Groups like Samaritan’s Purse, with their own aircraft or logistics chains, said they had not encountered issues with coordination or government red tape. 

“I think we’re accomplishing our mission, any roadblocks we have right now are our own,” said Dennis Clancey, a field operations manager for relief group Team Rubicon, which has deployed mobile medical units to treat patients.

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