Author: Worldcrew

The U.S. Supreme Court is set this week to hear a closely watched case testing the limits of religious rights, and new Justice Neil Gorsuch’s judicial record indicates he could tip the court toward siding with a church challenging Missouri’s ban on state funding of religious entities.

Trinity Lutheran Church, which is located in Columbia, Missouri and runs a preschool and daycare center, said Missouri unlawfully excluded it from a grant program providing state funds to nonprofit groups to buy rubber playground surfaces.

Missouri’s constitution prohibits “any church, sect or denomination of religion” from receiving state taxpayer money.

Gorsuch, who embraced an expansive view of religious rights as a Colorado-based federal appeals court judge, on Monday hears his first arguments since becoming a justice last week. He will be on the bench on Wednesday when the justices hear the Trinity Lutheran case, one of the most important of their current term. Gorsuch, appointed by President Donald Trump, restored the Supreme Court’s 5-4 conservative majority.

Trinity Lutheran wanted public funds to replace its playground’s gravel with a rubber surface made from recycled tires that would be safer for children to play on.

The U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state and guarantees the free exercise of religion.

At the very least, a victory for Trinity Lutheran would help religious organizations nationwide win public dollars for certain purposes, such as health and safety.

But it also could bolster the case for using public money for vouchers to help pay for children to attend religious schools rather than public schools in “school choice” programs backed by many conservatives. For example, Colorado’s top court in 2015 found that a Douglas County voucher program violated a state constitutional provision similar to Missouri’s.

Trinity Lutheran’s legal effort is being spearheaded by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative Christian legal activist group, which argues Missouri’s policy violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of free exercise of religion and equal protection under the law.

If the church wins, “religious organizations cannot be excluded from general public welfare benefits that apply to everybody,” said Erik Stanley, an alliance lawyer representing the church.

Referring to Gorsuch, Stanley said, “He has definitely been a friend of religious liberty. So we are hopeful that will continue when he’s on the court, and we’re grateful he gets to participate on this important case.”

In 2013, Gorsuch sided with the evangelical Christian owners of arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby and allowed owners of private companies to object on religious grounds to a provision in federal healthcare law requiring employers to provide medical insurance that pays for women’s birth control.

Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion that Hobby Lobby’s owners faced a choice “between exercising their faith or saving their business.” The Supreme Court later affirmed the ruling.

Missouri said there is nothing unconstitutional about its grant program.

“Trinity Lutheran remains free, without any public subsidy, to worship, teach, pray and practice any other aspect of its faith however it wishes. The state merely declines to offer financial support,” the state said in legal papers.

The church has drawn support from the religious community including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Mormon Church and Jewish groups.

‘Open the floodgates’

Groups filing legal papers opposing Trinity Lutheran, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said government funding of churches is precisely what the Constitution forbids.

“Forcing states to provide cash to build church property could open the floodgates to programs that coerce taxpayers to underwrite religion,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s program on freedom of religion and belief.

Mach said three-quarters of the U.S. states have provisions like Missouri’s.

Alliance Defending Freedom, which also opposes gay marriage, transgender protections and abortion, has another major case involving religion that the Supreme Court could take up in its term beginning in October. It represents a Colorado bakery’s Christian owner who argues the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom means he should not have to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Trinity Lutheran sued in federal court in 2012. The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 upheld a trial court’s dismissal of the suit. The appeals court said

accepting the church’s arguments would be “unprecedented,” noting the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in the case Locke v. Davey that upheld a bar on Washington state scholarships for students preparing for the ministry.

The justice who Gorsuch replaced, the late fellow conservative Antonin Scalia, was one of two dissenters in the Locke ruling. When a state withholds a generally available benefit solely on religious grounds, it is like an unconstitutional “special tax” on religion, Scalia said.

Judicial observers have described Gorsuch as very much in the mold of Scalia.

Missouri’s grant program was meant to keep tires out of landfills while also fostering children’s safety. The church’s brief to the high court stated, “A rubber playground surface accomplishes the state’s purposes whether it cushions the fall of the pious or the profane.”
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Christians around the world on Sunday celebrated Easter – the day they believe Jesus arose from the dead.  It is the holiest day of the Christian calendar.  

Throngs of the faithful endured heavy security checks to secure a place in the Vatican’s flower-filled Saint Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’ celebration of Easter Mass and his delivery of his annual “Urbi et Orbi” –  “to the city and to the world” – Easter address.

Pope Francis denounced how migrants, the poor and the marginalized are treated.  He said they see their “human dignity crucified” every day through injustice and corruption.

The pope asked in his prayers for peace in the Middle East “beginning with the Holy Land, as well as in Iraq and Yemen.”

He said he hopes that Jesus’ sacrifice will inspire world leaders to “sustain the efforts of all those actively engaged in bringing comfort and relief to the civil population in Syria, prey to a war that continues to sow horror and death.”

In Florida, U.S. President Donald Trump attended an Easter church service in Palm Beach, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, daughter Tiffany and son Barron. Melania Trump’s parents also were there. The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea was the site of the president and first lady’s wedding in 2005.

Easter is Christianity’s “moveable feast,” falling on a different date each year.  Western Christian churches celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox.  

This year, however, the date of the Roman Catholic and Protestant observance of Easter coincides with the Orthodox churches.  The two Easters are usually weeks apart, with the Western Christian church following the Gregorian calendar, while the Eastern Orthodox uses the older Julian calendar.

In Jerusalem, a sunrise service at the Garden Tomb, where worshippers sang hymns of the resurrection, set the biblical tone. Throughout the day, masses of different denominations of both Western and Eastern Christians coexisted in the same holy space.   

Wajeeh Nusseibeh, a Muslim man and member of one of the two families that guard and keep the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, said there were fewer people visiting the holy place this year than in the past.

Nusseibeh blamed that on tough economic times and security concerns among Middle Eastern Christians, who feel under threat in Iraq and Syria. “We hope to have peace next year,” he said. “And everyone accepts the other.”

The Old City also had Jewish pilgrims celebrating the weeklong biblical holiday of Passover— the story from the biblical Exodus celebrating the ancient Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery.

Reports say many of the attendees were ultra-Orthodox Jews in dark suits and hats, but they were joined by others, including members of the Israel’s Ethiopian Jewish community.

Armed Israeli police and soldiers patrolled the streets near the site of Christ’s tomb, but the atmosphere was calm.

In Egypt, however, authorities beefed up security after a suicide bomb attack on a Coptic Christian church last Sunday left dozens dead and more than 100 wounded.

Easter marks the end of Holy Week, which includes Maundy Thursday, the day of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. Holy Week also includes Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.

In predominantly Orthodox countries such as Russia and Serbia, government and church leaders attended midnight masses and held liturgy.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christian faithful, conveyed a message of peace during midnight mass at the Patriarchate in Istanbul, Turkey.

“Our faith is alive,” he said.

“This message – of the victory of life over death, of the triumph of the joyful light of the (Easter) candle over the darkness of disorder and dissolution – is announced to the whole world from the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the invitation to experience the unwaning light of the resurrection,” he said.  

Patriarch Irinej, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, delivered a gloomier Easter message. “With great sadness and pain in our hearts, we must note that today’s world is not following the path of resurrection but the road of death and hopelessness,” he said.

In Romania, another Orthodox Christian country, Patriarch Daniel asked members of the church to bring “joy to orphans, the sick, the elderly, the poor … and the lonely.”

Photo gallery: Christians around the world celebrate Easter

 
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A federal judge Saturday blocked Arkansas’ plan to execute six inmates over the course of ten days.

The State had initially planned to execute eight inmates over eleven days just two weeks before its supply of midazolam, a lethal injection drug, is set to expire. But another judge granted stays to two of the inmates.

Nine death row prisoners brought the case to the state, arguing that midazolam could expose them to “severe pain.”  

Federal District Judge Kristine G. Baker in Little Rock also stated in her ruling that the execution team did not have antidotes on hand in case something went wrong with the executions – a possibility, she noted, which has already happened in cases in Alabama, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma when using the same drug.

“The schedule of imposed on these officials, as well as their lack of recent execution experience, causes concern” Baker wrote in her order Saturday.

The Arkansas attorney general’s office said the decision strayed from previous rulings by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It is unfortunate that a U.S. district judge has chosen to side with the convicted prisoners in one of their many last-minute attempts to delay justice,” Jude Deere, an office spokesman, said.

The state of Arkansas has not executed an inmate since 2005 due to drug shortages and legal challenges.
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News of North Korea’s latest attempted missile launch did not derail U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s travel to the Korean Peninsula on Sunday.

U.S. officials aboard Air Force 2, the jet carrying Pence and his wife to Seoul, said the flight remained on schedule to arrive in the South Korean capital Sunday afternoon (3:30 p.m. local time, 0230 EDT, 0630 UTC).

The North Korean missile failure became known an hour after the Pence party left Anchorage, Alaska, following a refueling stop on the long flight from Washington to northeast Asia. Pence was quickly in contact with President Donald Trump in Florida, the vice president’s aides said.

Reporters aboard Air Force 2 were briefed on the situation as the jet crossed the Bering Sea.

Pence left Washington Saturday on a 10-day, four-nation trip that also includes stops in Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Hawaii. It was his first official trip to the Asia-Pacific rim, where he will hold talks on trade, economic and security issues, including North Korea’s provocative military actions.

Pence’s press secretary, Marc Lotter, told VOA earlier that the trip would reinforce the administration’s policy of placing “extreme value on our alliances and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The vice president’s visit to South Korea began one day after North Korea’s national holiday celebrating the birth anniversary of the country’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994. In the days leading up to Pence’s departure, world attention had been focused on the possibility that the North Korean regime might conduct a long-rumored nuclear test explosion in conjunction with the “Day of the Sun” holiday.

Military parade

No nuclear activity occurred, but Kim Jong Un, grandson of the country’s founder, presided Saturday over a bellicose military parade through Pyongyang, showing off the military hardware that backs up his frequent threats against South Korea, his closest neighbor, Japan and the United States.

Prior to Sunday’s failed launch, North Korea’s most recent missile exercise sent a medium-range rocket plunging into the Sea of Japan less than two weeks ago. Trump has said the United States will act unilaterally, if necessary, against further acts of aggression by Pyongyang, but he also has urged China to take a more direct role in the Korean crisis, since Beijing is the North’s closest ally and can wield significant economic pressure on the Kim regime.

At the same time, Trump ordered a substantial naval armada to steam toward the Korean Peninsula, in what many people in the region saw as a gesture warning Pyongyang to lower the temperature of its political rhetoric and actions.

While in South Korea, Pence will meet with Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn and local business leaders. He also will take part in an Easter Sunday religious service and have supper with American and South Korean troops.

On Tuesday, Pence is due to leave for Japan, where he will meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other Japanese officials. They are expected to initiate economic negotiations that were first announced by Trump and Abe in February.

VOA’s Steve Herman and Brian Padden contributed to this report.
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Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are claiming success with the first in a new series of test flights that are part of an effort to upgrade one of the nuclear weapons that has been in the U.S. arsenal for decades.

An F-16 airplane from Nellis Air Force Base dropped an inert B61-12 bomb over the Nevada desert last month to test the weapon’s non-nuclear functions as well as the plane’s ability to carry the weapon.

With a puff of dust, the mock bomb landed in a dry lake bed at the Tonopah Test Range.

Scientists are planning to spend months analyzing the data gathered from the test.

Officials say the first production unit of the B61-12, developed under what is called the Life Extension Program, is scheduled to be completed in 2020. 

The B61 nuclear gravity bomb first entered service in 1968, and four variants remain in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The B61-12 will add at least 10 years to the service life of the B61, the NNSA said, allowing the retirement of the B83.
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The second mosque in the United States led solely by women held its inaugural service in California Friday, but unlike a Los Angeles congregation that opened two years ago, the new female-led Muslim house of worship in Berkeley is open to both genders.

The Qal’bu Maryam Women’s Mosque “is a place for women to worship in the sanctuary, to not be hidden away in dank rooms,” said Rabi’a Keeble, founder of the Berkeley mosque, whose name means “heart of Mary” in Arabic.

Many mosques around the world admit men and women, but most segregate the genders. At the Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles, male worshippers older than 12 are excluded, making the new Berkeley mosque the first of its kind in the country.

“We uplift the female, and just as the Prophet loved women, we must follow in his footsteps and love ourselves and each other,” she said.

Women lead talks, prayers

Keeble is a 40-something convert from Christianity with a master’s degree in religious leadership from the Starr King School of Ministry, a seminary affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, which has donated space for the mosque.

At Qal’bu Maryam, there is no imam, as the cleric who conducts worship at a mosque is called. Rather, female lay leaders will rotate in leading the prayers and the talks.

About 50 or so women and men, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, attended the jummah or traditional Friday service, listening to prayer leader Crystal Keshawarz chant the holy Arabic words, “God is great” or “Allahu Akbar.”

Traditionalists object

The Koran does not directly address whether women can lead congregational prayer, according to many traditional Islamic scholars. Some argue the Prophet Mohammad gave permission to women to lead any kind of prayer, while others say that he meant to restrict women to leading prayer at home.

Still, many traditionalists do not believe a man should hear a woman’s voice in prayer.

“Men are conditioned to believe that women’s voices are seducing and if they hear her voice they are pushed into an adulteress area,” Keeble said. “Men should think better of themselves. They are not animals.”

Mohammad Sarodi, former chairman of the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, California, said he would not attend prayers led by women.

“If women are leading prayers for women, fine. But if they are leading prayers for men, then that is not something I have been raised with,” Sarodi, 70, said. “I have never heard from the scholars that this is acceptable. Women are certainly not inferior, but this is not how it’s done.”

Time for a change

Though Islam is not the only religion with a tradition of male leadership, it is a faith that many non-Muslims, and even some within the faith, view as unwelcoming or even hostile to women.

“It’s simply time” for change, Keeble said, both to bring more women into the faith and to alter the perceptions of those who feel that Islam was oppressive to females.

“I think this is the only way that reputation can be addressed — by empowering women,” Keeble said.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration declined to name any major trading partner as a currency manipulator in a highly anticipated report on Friday, backing away from a key Trump campaign promise to slap such a label on China.

The semi-annual U.S. Treasury currency report did, however, keep China on a currency “monitoring list” despite a lower global current account surplus, citing China’s unusually large, bilateral trade surplus with the United States.

Five other trading partners who were on last October’s monitoring list – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland – also remain on the list, ensuring that the Treasury would apply extra scrutiny to their foreign exchange and economic policies.

The Treasury report recognized what many analysts have said over the past year, namely that China has recently intervened in foreign exchange markets to prop up the value of its yuan currency, not push it lower to make Chinese exports cheaper.

Foreign exchange experts told Reuters last week that a manipulator label was unlikely for Beijing.

Trump, who on the campaign trail blamed China for “stealing” U.S. jobs and prosperity by cheapening its currency, repeatedly promised to label the country as a currency manipulator on “day one” of a Trump administration – a move that would require special negotiations and could lead to punitive duties and other action.

The report did call out China’s past efforts to hold down the yuan’s value, saying this created a long-term “distortion” in the global trading system that “imposed significant and long-lasting hardship on American workers and companies.”

The Treasury also warned that it will scrutinize China’s trade and currency practices very closely and called for faster opening of China’s economy to U.S. goods and services and a shift away from exports to more domestic consumption.

“China will need to demonstrate that its lack of intervention to resist appreciation over the last three years represents a durable policy shift by letting the RMB (yuan) rise with market forces once appreciation pressures resume,” the report said.

The report shows the Trump administration is taking an approach to foreign exchange based on data rather than politics, said Nathan Sheets, a former U.S. Treasury under secretary for international affairs during the Obama administration.

“This isn’t the report that Donald Trump had in mind on Nov. 8,” said Sheets, who is now with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “But it lays out legitimate complaints. It’s a clear statement to the Chinese that they need progress.”

The Treasury did not alter its three major thresholds for identifying currency manipulation put in place last year by the Obama administration: a bilateral trade surplus with the United States of $20 billion or more; a global current account surplus of more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, and persistent foreign exchange purchases equal to 2 percent of GDP over 12 months.

No countries were determined to have met all three of these criteria, but Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland all met two of them.

The Treasury warned Japan against resuming currency interventions, saying that these “should be reserved only to very exceptional circumstances with appropriate prior consultations, consistent with Japan’s G-7 and G-20 commitments.”
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North Korea’s military responded fiercely Friday to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to “take care of” Pyongyang’s aggressive policies. Concerns remained high about a possible military provocation by the North on its national holiday Saturday, but there was no sign of nuclear activity during the early-morning hours.

North Korea is celebrating the “Day of the Sun,” its annual commemoration of its founding leader, Kim Il Sung, who was born 105 years ago. Kim, who died in 1994 after 46 years as the communist state’s “supreme leader,” was the grandfather of its current leader, Kim Jong Un.

The national holiday has been celebrated in the past with demonstrations of the North’s military prowess. Speculation about a nuclear test explosion on the holiday sharply increased in recent days, but Pyongyang has given no clue about its plans.

After Trump denounced North Korea on Thursday as a problem for the entire world that “will be taken care of,” the North Korean People’s Army responded with a characteristic statement vowing dire consequences: “Our toughest counteraction against the United States and its vassal forces will be taken in such a merciless manner as not to allow the aggressors to survive.”

The statement, attributed to a spokesman for army’s general staff, continued: “Under the prevailing grave situation, the United States has to come to its senses and make a proper option for the solution of the problem.”

Pyongyang’s statement was circulated by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency and broadcast by its central radio network. There was no comment from the White House or the National Security Council in Washington.

Amid all the tough talk, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, are heading to the Asia-Pacific region Sunday on a 10-day trip, with their first stop in Seoul, South Korea’s capital.  

The vice president’s press secretary, Marc Lotter, told VOA that Pence would reaffirm Trump’s commitment to strengthen U.S. alliances and partnerships throughout the region. The message Pence will carry, Lotter added, is that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is the linchpin of peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region.

WATCH: Key Dates in North Korea’s Nuclear Missile Program

Rhetoric similar to the statement Pyongyang released late Friday is fairly common, but remarks by its military command are taken more seriously by intelligence and defense analysts than are those from government ministries or state media commentators.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday described the current situation on the Korean Peninsula as “complex and sensitive.”

“We have appealed to relevant various parties multiple times to keep calm and exercise restraint, not make moves that may heighten tensions of the peninsula. All the similar acts are irresponsible and also are dangerous,” spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing.

In his comments about North Korea on Thursday, Trump noted that China was “working very hard” to try to defuse the international tension over North Korea, and that he was hopeful Beijing’s diplomacy would be effective.

An American aircraft carrier and other warships have been steaming toward the Korean Peninsula in a show of force, although there has been no specific U.S. threat of retaliatory action if Pyongyang conducts another nuclear test or launches more missiles in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

Scores of foreign journalists have been in Pyongyang this week for the “Day of the Sun” celebrations. Five years ago, Kim Il Sung’s centenary was marked by a failed attempt to launch a North Korean satellite, and last year Pyongyang tested a newly developed intermediate-range missile — also a failure.

Satellite photographs this week have shown activity around the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, which could be taken to indicate another underground nuclear test is imminent.

Meanwhile, South Korean and American troops are preparing for joint military exercises, a regular event that Pyongyang has denounced as a prelude to an invasion. If that occurs, the North has said, it would be justified in launching a massive counterattack. But a spokesman for the South Korean joint chiefs of staff said Seoul had seen no indication that any military action by the North was imminent.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a security forum in Washington that North Korea’s military development has progressed to a point where Pyongyang is now closer than ever to being able to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile. That, in turn, has reduced U.S. defense officials’ options about how to respond to the North Korean threat, Pompeo added during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He indicated that a worst-case scenario would force the U.S. to take action against the North, and that would be “a tough day for the leader of North Korea.”

VOA’s Elizabeth Hughes, Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb and national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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On the campaign trail, candidate Donald Trump called NATO “obsolete.” This week, with the NATO secretary general standing next to him at a White House news conference, President Trump did a complete reversal, saying, “It’s no longer obsolete.”

Candidate Trump regularly denounced China as a currency manipulator. But days after his summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump said the exact opposite. “They’re not currency manipulators,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

These and other presidential policy zigzags are the talk of Washington’s political elites.

The Washington Post recently declared Trump “the king of flip-flops.” There is almost daily commentary arguing that the first weeks of his presidency have revealed a leader with a weak understanding of geopolitics, struggling with critical issues such as the workings of the NATO alliance. 

“He’s been mugged by reality,” one commentator said.

In an article published Thursday, however, the Post noted that the president appears to be flip-flopping with more moderation as he gains experience.

Positions more nuanced

On issue after issue in the past 12 weeks, Trump’s views have evolved away from campaign rhetoric to more nuanced positions that reflect the responsibilities of office, according to Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at Washington’s Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. 

“Many presidents would say campaigning is one art and governing is another,” he told VOA.

“There is a contrast between the black and white of the campaign trail and the many shades of gray you see sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office,” Mahaffee said. “The adage, ‘You campaign in poetry and govern in prose’ is true no matter who holds the office.”

Trump himself makes no apologies for his shifting views and policy reverses. After seeing pictures of victims of the recent Syrian chemical weapons attack, Trump told a news conference that his opinion of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime had changed.

“I think of myself as a very flexible person. I do change and I’m proud of that flexibility,” Trump said, as he stood alongside visiting Jordanian King Abdullah.

A day later, the president ordered a Tomahawk missile strike on the Syrian air base where the chemical attack is believed to have originated. While the strike earned him international plaudits, it surprised many at home, including supporters who had listened to him promise on the campaign trail to keep the United States out of conflicts in the Middle East.

New understanding

The further turnabout on at least three issues this week, including NATO and his campaign pledge to close the Export-Import Bank, have prompted discontent in several quarters of the foreign policy establishment.

“I would say the most generous interpretation would be that he’s now learning about issues that he really didn’t have any expertise with beforehand,” said Angela Stent, director for the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. “He came from the world of real estate.”

“It’s the same on the NATO issue,” Stent said. “He said consistently during the campaign that NATO was obsolete. He didn’t understand why the U.S. needed NATO.”

Surrounded by professionals

Luke Coffey, director of the Foreign Policy Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questions the mainstream narrative. He says Trump’s sometimes worrisome campaign persona has been supplanted by a leader who may speak imprecisely, but who surrounds himself with professionals.

“The stuff he [Trump] said about NATO in the past and Russia, I found very alarming, but yesterday he said all the right things,” Coffey said. “His staff, his appointments, his Cabinet, his generals say all the right things about NATO.”

Mahaffee, of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, says that in the final analysis, Trump’s flip-flops probably won’t hurt his overall approval ratings.

“NATO defense spending, the Ex-Im Bank, things like that really won’t resonate as much as getting the economy moving and getting jobs back,” he said. “While a Washington media corps that likes to keep a scorecard will be doing one thing, much of the voting public will be more concerned about pocketbook issues.”
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The new U.S. spy chief blasted the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in his first public comments, labeling it a hostile intelligence organization out to damage the United States as much as any terrorist organization.

“It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is — a nonstate, hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

“It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations,” he added, calling the celebration of WikiLeaks in some circles “perplexing and deeply troubling.”

Pompeo went as far as to lambast WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a “darling” of terrorist groups, saying a member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) recently thanked Assange on social media for “providing a means to fight America in a way that AQAP had not previously envisioned.”

Pompeo’s remarks to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington are consistent with previous comments from the U.S. intelligence community.

Relationship with Russia

A declassified report issued in January concluded with “high confidence” there was an ongoing relationship between Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks.

The same report also said Russia’s own propaganda outlet, RT, “has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks” dating back to a 2013 meeting between Assange and RT’s editor in chief.

Despite such findings, U.S. President Donald Trump has until recently downplayed talk of what intelligence officials have described as a Russian campaign to influence last year’s presidential election.

During the presidential campaign itself, Trump went as far to tell supporters, “I love WikiLeaks,” while encouraging the group to uncover more information.

Trump changes tone

But Trump’s tone changed following WikiLeaks’ release last month of what it described more than 8,000 classified CIA documents.

“This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our security, our country and our well-being,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters at the time, adding the president was “extremely concerned.”

Pompeo Thursday refused to comment specifically on the WikiLeaks dump known as “Vault 7,” but said damage had been done.

And he warned that WikiLeaks is only one of several hostile intelligence operations masquerading as anti-secrecy advocates.

“It’s much bigger than that. It’s much broader and deeper than that,” Pompeo said, cautioning other state actors may seek to imitate Russia’s use of WikiLeaks to strike at the U.S. “They have now found a model.”

“Our defense will not be static,” he said, citing strong support from the Trump administration. “We need to be as clever and innovative as the enemies we face.”

Assange’s defense

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks’ Assange published a defense of his organization in The Washington Post, saying its motive was to “to publish newsworthy content … irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media.”

Assange, an Australian citizen, is wanted in Sweden to face rape allegations. He has been living under asylum at Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012.
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As the United States and Russia clash on Syria, another war-torn nation could play out as a renewed theater for the U.S.-Russia rivalry: Afghanistan.

Thursday, U.S. forces dropped what was being called the largest non-nuclear bomb on a reported Islamic State militant complex in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.

The U.S. strike came a day before Russia is to host multi-nation talks on prospects for Afghan security and national reconciliation, the third such round since December.

Eleven countries are set to take part in Friday’s discussions in Moscow, including Afghanistan, China, Iran, Pakistan and India. Former Soviet Central Asian states have been invited to attend for the first time.

The Afghan Taliban said Thursday that they would not take part.

“We cannot call these negotiations [in Moscow] as a dialogue for the restoration of peace in Afghanistan,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA. “This meeting stems from political agendas of the countries who are organizing it. This has really nothing to do with us, nor do we support it.”

The spokesman reiterated insurgents’ traditional stance that U.S.-led foreign troops would have to leave Afghanistan before any conflict resolution talks could be initiated.

The United States was also invited to the Moscow talks, but Washington declined, saying it had not been informed of the agenda beforehand and was unclear about the meeting’s motives.

Undermining NATO

American military officials suspect Russia’s so-called Afghan peace diplomacy is aimed at undermining NATO and have accused Moscow of arming the Taliban.

“I think it is fair to assume they may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban], in terms of weapons or other things that may be there,” U.S. Central Command Chief General Joseph Votel told members of the House Armed Services Committee in March. He said he thought Russia was “attempting to be an influential party in this part of the world.”

For its part, Moscow has denied that it is supporting the Afghan Taliban.

“These fabrications are designed, as we have repeatedly underlined, to justify the failure of the U.S. military and politicians in the Afghan campaign.There is no other explanation,” said Zamir Kabulov, the Kremlin’s special envoy to Afghanistan.

In a separate statement Thursday, the Taliban also denied receiving military aid from Russia, though the group defended “political understanding” with Afghanistan’s neighbors and regional countries.

Anna Borshchevskaya of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said reports of Moscow supporting the Taliban were not new.

“The official Russian position on the Taliban is that they see it as a group that could help fight ISIS, but this is something that even some Taliban spokesmen have denied, since ISIS and the Taliban reached an understanding about a year ago,” Borshchevskaya said.

Putin’s motive

She said that if the allegations of Russian support for the Taliban were true, Russian President Vladimir Putin was most likely motivated by his desire to undermine the West.

“Certainly one motivation could be taking advantage of regional chaos, and to assert Russia’s influence at the expense of the U.S., taking advantage of a U.S. retreat from the Middle East and elsewhere and [to] undermine NATO and the U.S.” Borshchevskaya said, “This has been Putin’s pattern.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has made few public statements on Afghanistan, and his administration is still weighing whether to deploy more American troops to try to reverse the course of the war.

Thursday’s strike in Nangarhar marked a major step by the Trump administration in Afghanistan, in which there has been a U.S. military presence since 2001.

During a March 31 NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reaffirmed U.S. support for the alliance’s mission in Afghanistan.

“NATO’s work in Afghanistan remains critical. The United States is committed to the Resolute Support Mission and to our support for Afghan forces,” Tillerson said.

Some 13,000 NATO troops, including 8,400 Americans, are part of the support mission, tasked with training Afghanistan’s 300,000-member national security and defense forces.

Michael Kugelman, South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, said he expected continuity in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan between the Obama and Trump administrations.

“The statement made by Tillerson at a recent NATO meeting could well have been uttered by an Obama official,” Kugelman said. “The focus on training, advising and assisting and the call for reconciliation mirror exactly the Obama administration’s priorities.”

More troops

But the South Asia analyst noted one important policy difference: U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.

“Obama was an anti-war president who was never comfortable keeping large numbers of troops in Afghanistan. Trump is unlikely to be as constrained,” Kugelman said.

“Look for Trump to send in several thousand more troops,” he said. “This is a request that the generals in Afghanistan have made for years, and Trump is more likely to defer to the U.S. military’s wishes on this than Obama was.”

As for Russian involvement in Afghanistan following the former Soviet Union’s occupation of the South Asian country from 1979 to 1989, Kugelman said that even if Russia were engaging the Taliban to undercut U.S. influence,  the two nations ultimately hope for the same outcome in Afghanistan.

“The ironic thing is that Washington and Moscow both want the same endgame in Afghanistan — an end to the war, preferably through a reconciliation process — but they simply can’t get on the same page about how to proceed,” Kugelman said.
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Fast-food chain Burger King said Wednesday that it would start televising a commercial for its signature Whopper sandwich that is designed to activate Google voice-controlled devices.

The move raised questions about whether marketing tactics have become too invasive.

The 15-second ad starts with a Burger King employee holding up the sandwich saying, “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich. But I’ve got an idea.

“OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?”

If a viewer has the Google Home assistant or an Android phone with voice search enabled within listening range of the TV, that last phrase -— “Hello Google, what is the Whopper burger?” — is intended to trigger the device to search for Whopper on Google and read out the finding from Wikipedia.

“Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” said a Burger King representative.

Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International Inc., said the ad was not being aired in collaboration with Google.

Google declined to comment, and Wikipedia was not available for comment.

The ad, which became available Wednesday on YouTube, will run in the U.S. during prime time on channels such as Spike, Comedy Central, MTV, E! and Bravo, and also on late-night shows starring Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.

No responses

Some media outlets, including CNN Money, reported that Google Home stopped responding to the commercial shortly after the ad became available on YouTube.

Voice-powered digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo have been largely a novelty for consumers since Apple’s Siri introduced the technology to the masses in 2011.

The devices can have a conversation by understanding context and relationships, and many use them for daily activities such as sending text messages and checking appointments.

Many in the industry believe the voice technology will soon become one of the main ways users interact with devices, and Apple, Google and Amazon are racing to present their assistants to as many people as possible.
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President Donald Trump has declared: “I am my own strategist.” That would seem to bode poorly for his actual strategist, Steve Bannon.

And Trump now appears to be publicly distancing himself.

In an interview with The New York Post, the president said “I like Steve” and called his adviser “a good guy”’— but one who wasn’t really all that involved with his winning election campaign. He said his warring senior officials, including Bannon, must “straighten it out or I will.” In a second interview with The Wall Street Journal, he dismissively called Bannon “a guy who works for me.”

The unusual public, lukewarm support from the boss has Bannon’s friends and advisers worried he will soon be out of a job. But shedding Bannon would be no simple staff shake-up. More than any other member of Trump’s orbit, the former media executive and radio host, known as a bare-knuckle political fighter, has a following all his own. He is viewed by many in the conservative core as the ideological backbone in a White House run by a president who boasts of his flexibility.

“I think it’s important to recognize the value of the base. It’s important to recognize the base sees their advocate in Steve Bannon,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser who has known the president for decades.

Spicer also on hot set

Bannon is not the only Trump official to find himself in the hot seat in a White House divided. Press Secretary Sean Spicer has also come under fire for comments he made about the Holocaust on Tuesday. Spicer has apologized repeatedly, including on Wednesday, and the White House hopes that controversy will pass.

As for Bannon, before joining the campaign last summer as its chief executive officer, he was informally advising Trump. And as leader of the conservative Breitbart News he spent the better part of a year connecting Trump with the populist, nationalist voters who would propel him to victory over 16 Republican opponents and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In more than half a dozen interviews during the campaign with Bannon on Breitbart’s radio show, Trump laid out his vision for leading the country, with Bannon sometimes playing the role of coach.

Helped craft hard-line speeches

Bannon, more than any other White House aide, speaks the language of Trump’s populist base. He spoke in February of “our sovereignty” as a country and about the new administration’s aim for “deconstruction of the administrative state.” He also helped write many of Trump’s hardest-line speeches.

“It would be a terrible signal if Trump were to either force Bannon out or let him go because he is the face of the national populism that inspired a lot of voter to vote for Trump,” said Ned Ryun, founder of the conservative group American Majority and a longtime friend of Bannon’s.

“And what makes it even worse right now,” Ryun added, “is that people have deep concerns about liberal New York Democrats associated with Goldman Sachs coming in and making strong moves at the White House.”

That view cuts to the core of why Bannon might be on the outs at the White House.

He’s feuded with Trump’s son-in-law-turned-senior-adviser, Jared Kushner, and with economic chief Gary Cohn. Both are New Yorkers who have voted for Democrats. Cohn, the former No. 2 at Goldman Sachs, and fellow Goldman executive Dina Powell, one of Trump’s top national security advisers, have been gaining favor with the president.

Bannon removed from NSC

Last week, Trump removed Bannon from the National Security Council, while Powell appears to be ascendant.

The president’s irritation with Bannon could have roots in the adviser’s high profile in the early days of the administration. Democrats waged a campaign to brand him as “President Bannon.” He appeared on Time magazine’s cover and was portrayed on “Saturday Night Live” as the Grim Reaper pulling the president’s strings.

Recently, the president has undercut Bannon in front of other senior staffers, including questioning the need for his presence in certain White House meetings.

Isolated within White House

Bannon is seen as increasingly isolated within the White House, particularly after the health care debacle. His hard-line sales pitch to the Freedom Caucus lawmakers — he told the Republicans that the White House-based legislation was not up for debate — was panned inside the West Wing as a major misstep that cost Trump votes. The original travel ban, a Bannon effort, is mired in the courts, and Trump appears to be backing away from some of the economic policies that Bannon championed.

And Bannon’s creation of an in-house think tank known as the Strategic Initiatives group has been marginalized. Some staff members initially hired for that project are now part of the Kushner-led Office of American Innovation.

It’s Bannon’s rift with Kushner that seems to have troubled the president the most.

The 36-year-old and 63-year-old have clashed repeatedly in recent weeks.

Trump has stressed loyalty in his business and political careers and has shown a reluctance to dismiss top aides, even under public pressure. But he also has drawn a line in the past when it comes to his kids.

‘Kushner is family’

It’s a lesson learned by Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was pushed out of his role after clashing with the president’s children about the direction of the campaign.

But Bannon’s supporters say Kushner’s importance doesn’t erase Bannon’s. Caputo said that Bannon must “fix things” in White House relationships but dismissed as “hype” the belief that he is about to lose his job.

Says Ryun: “Kushner is family. He’s not going anywhere,” But he adds, “Bannon should not go anywhere either because of what he represents to the voter.”

In the end, whoever is advising in the White House, “this will be a Trump presidency,” says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal Trump adviser.

“Trump has been Trump for a long time. And he will continue to be Trump.”
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It was one of the most exclusive tickets in town: Only 800 were made available, and those lucky enough to score one were told they would have to show photo ID at the gate, where they would be issued a wristband and a number. No signs bigger than a sheet of notebook paper allowed, so as not to obscure anyone’s view.

The rules weren’t for a rock concert but for a town hall meeting Wednesday evening between Republican Rep. Mike Coffman and his suburban Denver constituents.

Town halls have become a risky proposition for GOP members of Congress since President Donald Trump’s election. Liberal groups and constituents angry about the Trump agenda have flooded public meetings, asking their representatives tough questions, chanting, heckling them and even shouting them down in skirmishes that have made for embarrassing online video.

On Monday, for example, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, who became infamous for yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress in 2009, was himself confronted at a town hall by constituents chanting, “You lie!”

As a result, some Republicans aren’t holding town halls. And some of those who are going ahead with such events are taking steps to keep things from getting out of control.

In Texas, Rep. Dave Culberson barred signs and noisemakers from a March 24 town hall, required those attending to prove they were constituents by showing utility bills or other documents, and insisted that questions be submitted in advance. He was still shouted down repeatedly by a crowd angry about the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

In Arkansas, Rep. French Hill will hold his first town hall of the year on Monday — but in the middle of the afternoon, and with the state’s Republican junior senator, Tom Cotton, at his side. Nevada’s Dean Heller, one of the more vulnerable GOP senators in 2018, will also hold his first town hall of 2017 on Monday, in the morning. And he, too, is apparently seeking safety in numbers by including Republican Rep. Mark Amodei.

Democrats, for their part, have felt the heat from anti-Trump constituents at town halls and are also taking precautions. Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, for example, is banning signs at her town hall in Los Angeles next week.

Coffman is a politician perennially in the hot seat. His swing district has slightly more Democrats than Republicans, and he is always a top target in elections. For years, he has avoided town halls, instead holding private, one-on-one meetings with constituents during “office hours” at libraries in his district.

In January, one of those events was flooded by hundreds of constituents and activists who filled the library lobby, sang, chanted and demanded Coffman emerge from his private conversations to address them. The congressman ended up slipping out the back.

One of the rules for his Wednesday town hall was no standing in the aisles or blocking entrances and exits.

Coffman’s spokesman, Daniel Bucheli, said the congressman decided to hold the event because he knows constituents are anxious. Coffman has said his office spent weeks trying to find as large a venue as possible before securing a hall at a satellite branch of the University of Colorado that could hold 600 people and an overflow room to accommodate 200 more.

“Because of the big demand and a lot of people wanting questions answered, this was a great forum,” Bucheli said.

Smadar Belkind Gerson, an activist in Coffman’s district who was helping to organize protests outside the town hall, said that she was glad Coffman moved to a more open format but that he has a long way to go. The event, she noted, was scheduled to last only an hour, and Coffman’s staff planned to draw numbers to determine which constituent could ask questions.

“Yes, people are upset,” Gerson said. “But the more you do this and the more you restrict people, the more they will be upset.”

She noted that a Democratic state lawmaker who may challenge Coffman in 2018 planned to hold a town hall on the same campus Wednesday evening with no restrictions on attendance or questions.

Coffman held two town halls via telephone before Wednesday’s in-person event. Those appearances are far more controlled, with questions submitted in advance and an operator cutting off the questioner so the politician can respond.
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