President Donald Trump says the U.S. is missing out economically because “Boneheads” at the Federal Reserve won’t lower interest rates at his insistence.
The Fed is meeting next week and is expected to trim its benchmark rate by another quarter point after cutting the rate for the first time in a decade in July.
FILE – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell walks to the podium during a news conference in Washington, July 31, 2019.
Trump has been pressuring Fed chairman Jerome Powell to drop rates to zero. The rate currently is in a range of 2% to 2.25%.
As the sun rose on Wednesday’s anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Trump tweeted, “It is only the naivete of Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve that doesn’t allow us to do what other countries are already doing. A once in a lifetime opportunity that we are missing because of ‘Boneheads.'”
….The USA should always be paying the the lowest rate. No Inflation! It is only the naïveté of Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve that doesn’t allow us to do what other countries are already doing. A once in a lifetime opportunity that we are missing because of “Boneheads.”
French police are appealing for victims and witnesses to come forward to aid their probe into Jeffrey Epstein and anyone else involved in the disgraced financier’s alleged sexual exploitation of women and girls, and say they have already interviewed three people who identified themselves as victims.
FILE – This March 28, 2017, file photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein.
The police appeal published Wednesday on Twitter provided both a phone number and an Interior Ministry email address for victims and witnesses to use. It said police specialists have been mobilized for the investigation.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said three victims who have already come forward were interviewed by investigators in August and earlier this month, the last as recently as Monday.
The French probe opened Aug. 23 is investigating the alleged rape of minors and other possible charges linked to the Epstein case. Epstein killed himself in jail last month.
Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who helped launch China’s online retailing boom, stepped down as chairman of the world’s biggest e-commerce company Tuesday at a time when its fast-changing industry faces uncertainty amid a U.S.-Chinese tariff war.
Ma, one of China’s wealthiest and best-known entrepreneurs, gave up his post on his 55th birthday as part of a succession announced a year ago. He will stay on as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company’s board of directors.
Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 to connect Chinese exporters to American retailers.
The company has shifted focus to serving China’s growing consumer market and expanded into online banking, entertainment and cloud computing. Domestic businesses accounted for 66% of its $16.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in June.
Chinese retailing faces uncertainty amid a tariff war that has raised the cost of U.S. imports.
Growth in online sales decelerated to 17.8% in the first half of 2019 amid slowing Chinese economic growth, down from 2018’s full-year rate of 23.9%.
Alibaba says its revenue rose 42% over a year earlier in the quarter ending in June to $16.7 billion and profit rose 145% to $3.1 billion. Still, that was off slightly from 2018’s full-year revenue growth of 51%.
The total amount of goods sold across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms rose 25% last year to $853 billion. By comparison, the biggest U.S. e-commerce company, Amazon.com Inc., reported total sales of $277 billion.
Alibaba’s deputy chairman, Joe Tsai, told reporters in May the company is “on the right side” of issues in U.S.-Chinese trade talks. Tsai said Alibaba stands to benefit from Beijing’s promise to increase imports and a growing consumer market.
Alibaba is one of a group of companies including Tencent Holding Ltd., a games and social media giant, search engine Baidu.com Inc. and e-commerce rival JD.com that have revolutionized shopping, entertainment and consumer services in China.
Alibaba was founded at a time when few Chinese were online. As internet use spread, the company expanded into consumer-focused retailing and services. Few Chinese used credit cards, so Alibaba created the Alipay online payments system.
Ma, known in Chinese as Ma Yun, appears regularly on television. At an annual Alibaba employee festival in Hanzhou, he has sung pop songs in costumes that have included blond wigs and leather jackets. He pokes fun at his own appearance, saying his oversize head and angular features make him look like the alien in director Steven Spielberg’s movie “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.”
The company’s $25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 was the biggest to date by a Chinese company.
The Hurun Report, which follows China’s wealth, estimates Ma’s fortune at $38 billion.
In 2015, Ma bought the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s biggest English-language newspaper.
Ma’s successor as chairman is CEO Daniel Zhang, a former accountant and 12-year veteran of Alibaba. He previously was president of its consumer-focused Tmall.com business unit.
Alibaba’s e-commerce business spans platforms including business-to-business Alibaba.com, which links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers of goods from furniture to medical technology, and Tmall, with online shops for popular brands.
Alipay became a freestanding financial company, Ant Financial, in 2014. Alibaba also set up its own film studio and invested in logistics and delivery services.
Ma faced controversy when it disclosed in 2011 that Alibaba transferred control over Alipay to a company he controlled without immediately informing shareholders including Yahoo Inc. and Japan’s Softback.
Alibaba said the move was required to comply with Chinese regulations, but some financial analysts said the company was paid too little for a valuable asset. The dispute was later resolved by Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank.
Corporate governance specialists have questioned the Alibaba Partnership, which gives Ma and a group of executives more control over the company than shareholders.
Ma has said that ensures Alibaba focuses on long-term development instead of responding to pressure from financial markets.
The prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia Saturday has prompted hopes that Moscow and Kyiv are ready for serious talks to end a more than five-year war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a Moscow-fomented conflict that’s claimed more than 13,000 lives.
As the exchange unfolded, which included the release by Russia of 24 sailors captured in a naval clash last November, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, “Russia and Ukraine just swapped large numbers of prisoners. Very good news, perhaps a first giant step to peace. Congratulations to both countries!”
That view was shared by the man who engineered the swap, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who hailed the exchange as “the first step to end the war.” And various other Western leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, joined the chorus lauding the exchange of 70 prisoners in all as a positive move.
For the families of those exchanged, there was relief.
Russia had threatened to incarcerate the sailors for up to six years, saying their patrol boats had trespassed into Russian territory by crossing its borders to enter the Sea of Azov, just off Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine and other countries that don’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea say the sailors were in international waters, and an international maritime court ordered Moscow to free the men, an instruction ignored until Saturday.
Relatives of Ukrainian prisoners freed by Russia greet them upon their arrival at Boryspil airport, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 7, 2019.
Others among the 35 Ukrainian detainees had been held for years, including Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker who was serving a 20-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony on charges of “terrorism.”
On their arrival at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport, where they were greeted by relatives and Zelenskiy, there was euphoria.
“Hell has ended. Everyone is alive, and that is the main thing,” said Vyacheslav Zinchenko, one of the sailors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not greet in Moscow the 35 Russians released by Kyiv.
Since his surprise election earlier this year, Zelenskiy, a political novice and former television comic, has been urging Putin to join a new round of peace talks involving Trump and other Western leaders.
In a video statement released in July to coincide with a one-day EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, Zelenskiy appealed to Putin directly.
“We need to talk. We do. Let’s do it,” he said, looking directly into the camera.
Last month, it was announced the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany would meet to discuss the Donbas conflict. But in an interview in July with VOA’s Ukrainian Service, Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations, cautioned against optimism.
“Unfortunately, we’ve really not heard much news from Russia. They are still saying that everything is Ukraine’s responsibility, that Ukraine needs to negotiate with the two so-called separatist ‘People’s Republic’ that they created in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the Kremlin-backed, self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
‘Sinister’ exchange
While some are seizing on the prisoner exchange as the possible start of something new, for others it has triggered worries that Putin is using Ukraine to toy with the West. Skeptics argue that Putin isn’t serious about ending a conflict of his own making and has every reason to nurture it as a way to disrupt Ukraine and continue to punish the country for its popular Maidan uprising in 2014, which forced Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, out of power.
FILE – Volodymyr Tsemakh, former commander of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, sits in a court room in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 5, 2019. Tsemakh was one of two high-profile prisoners returned Russia.
They highlight the imbalance in the prisoner swap — seeing Putin’s approach to it as displaying a sinister cynicism. While the released Ukrainians had been held on trumped-up charges, their Russian and pro-Moscow separatist counterparts weren’t innocent. They included Volodymyr Tsemakh, who commanded a Russian separatist air defense unit close to where Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, enroute to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, was shot down in 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.
The Dutch government has been left fuming, saying it “seriously regrets that under pressure from the Russian Federation, Tsemakh was included in this prisoner swap.”
Ukrainian politicians had pleaded with Zelenskiy not to release Tsemakh, but his freedom apparently was the price the Ukrainian leader was forced to pay for the prisoner exchange.
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said the Netherlands was “deeply disappointed” by the release, but added Ukraine had delayed the prisoner exchange to let Dutch investigators question Tsemakh before he was freed.
According to Marcel Van Herpen, author of the book “Putin’s Wars,” and a director at the Cicero Foundation research group, Tsemakh’s release could be a complicating factor for the MH17 trial, which starts in March 2020 in The Hague.
“Of course we are all happy they and the others are free,” tweeted self-exiled Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. “But this is not justice. Putin takes innocent hostages to use as bargaining chips. He is rewarded and praised for exchanging them for Russian spies & criminals, encouraging further terrorist acts.”
Kasparov and other skeptics worry that amid heightened talk of efforts to normalize relations with Putin, the West will fall into the pattern of giving ground to Putin.
“New talk of a ‘peace process’ is a joke when Putin could end the conflict instantly, just as he began it. ‘Use force, then negotiate’ works well for him,” Kasparov tweeted.
Michael Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is cautious about interpreting “this as a step toward ending the war.” He noted, “August was one of the bloodiest months in the Donbas in a long time. More importantly, no country is incentivizing Putin to “de-escalate.” Other analysts fear the swap makes Russia appear reasonable when it was the aggressor state.
Willem Aldershoff, a former senior EU diplomat, worries that Western leaders keen for a reset in relations with Moscow will “be less confrontational with Putin” and “will use this ‘new Russian flexibility’ to pressure Zelenskiy to make compromises that aren’t in Ukraine’s best interests.
A lawyer for Michael Flynn accused federal prosecutors of misconduct on Tuesday as a judge set a December sentencing hearing for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
The arguments from Flynn attorney Sidney Powell were the latest in a series of aggressive attacks on the foundations of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. They represented yet another step in Flynn’s evolution from a model cooperator he was the first and only White House official to cut a deal with prosecutors to a defendant whose newly combative and unremorseful stance may cost him a chance at the probation sentence prosecutors had previously recommended.
Even as U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan set a Dec. 18 sentencing date for Flynn, Powell made clear that she considered the case far from resolved. Though she said she was not seeking to have Flynn’s guilty plea thrown out, she contended the “entire prosecution should be dismissed because of egregious government misconduct.”
“There is far more at stake here than sentencing,” Powell said. She later accused the government of “being too busy working on what they wanted to accomplish in convicting Mr. Flynn” to seek truth or justice.
Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack, a member of Mueller’s team, strongly denied the accusations and said the government had given Flynn’s team more than 22,000 pages of documents. He said the information Powell was seeking either had no bearing on the case against Flynn, or was material that Flynn had been made aware of before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Asked by Sullivan if the government stands by its recommendation that Flynn should be spared prison time for his cooperation, Van Grack said the government would file new documents on that question _ suggesting prosecutors may reverse course and ask for him to spend at least some time behind bars.
If the Dec. 18 sentencing date holds, it will be his second sentencing hearing on that exact date in as many years.
Flynn was supposed to be sentenced last December for lying to the FBI about his December 2016 conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But that sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn asked that he be allowed to continue cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of earning credit toward a lighter punishment.
Flynn changed lawyers and hired a new legal team led by Powell, a conservative commentator and former federal prosecutor who has been an outspoken critic of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In court Tuesday, she unloaded on Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
She accused Peter Strzok, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn at the White House about his interactions with the ambassador, of being “impaired” by bias. She said she had not received copies of Strzok’s derogatory text messages about Trump that led to his removal from Mueller’s team and ultimately his firing from the FBI.
But Van Grack said Flynn was told before his first guilty plea in December 2017 that the communications existed and went ahead with the plea anyway.
Powell also said the government had not produced evidence that she said could demonstrate that Flynn was not an agent of the Russian government. But Van Grack noted that that allegation was never part of the case.
“The government has not alleged in any filing in this court or before the court that the defendant is an agent of Russia,” he said. “That is not part of the case.”
Instead, he added, the prosecution is all about whether Flynn lied to the FBI during a January 2017 interview at the White House about having discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
Mueller’s investigation, which produced charges against a half dozen Trump aides and associates, ended last spring with a report to the Justice Department. The report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but did identify multiple instances in which the president sought to influence the investigation.
President Donald Trump has fired his National Security Adviser John Bolton.
“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning,” Trump said on Twitter Tuesday.
He thanked Bolton for his service and said he would be naming a replacement next week.
I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore….
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
“They just didn’t align on many issues,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters, denying there was one single issue that caused the break between Trump and Bolton.
The White House says Charlie Kupperman will serve as acting National Security Adviser.
Trump’s announcement came just 90 minutes before Bolton was to appear alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the White House press room podium for a briefing.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump, left, conducts a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, May 22, 2018, as then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, right, looks on.
Bolton was chosen by Trump in March of 2018 to replace H.R. McMaster, a former Army lieutenant general, as national security adviser.
Trump’s first choice for the position, Michael Flynn, also a retired Army lieutenant general, lasted less than a month in the job before being fired. He was subsequently convicted of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about a December 2016 conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States and is awaiting sentencing.
Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was brought into this administration after a stint as a commentator on the Fox News Channel, which is generally supportive of President Trump.
Bolton who had previously served in the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, also held roles in the Justice and State departments.
“I like John Bolton. I think he sees the world for what it is,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a confidante of the president and a member of the foreign relations committee, told reporters, noting the deterioration of the personal relationship between the Trump and the national security advisor.
“There’s been some public discussions about Bolton being on the other side of meeting the Taliban. That probably was a bridge too far. I don’t know what happened there,” added Graham.
Bolton had reportedly been opposed to plans to invite Taliban members as well as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to the presidential retreat of Camp David for talks aimed at solidifying a U.S.-Taliban peace deal. Trump, after a recent Taliban attack that killed a U.S. soldier, decided to cancel the meeting.
There have also been indications that Bolton, regarded as a hardliner on security issues, also differed with the president on the U.S. approach to Iran and North Korea.
Trump had noted Bolton’s reputation as a hawk, once saying in the Oval Office that “John has never seen a war he doesn’t like.”
Trump never appeared to warm to Bolton and had expressed reservations about him prior to hiring him, including making comments about Bolton’s bushy mustache.
President Donald Trump’s administration is stepping up its campaign to get other nations to boost pressure on Iran as world leaders prepare to meet at the United Nations this month.
The administration says the world should take note of and act on admitted Iranian noncompliance with the 2015 nuclear deal and new questions about Iran’s activities raised by the U.N. atomic watchdog. The U.S. has been ratcheting up its own sanctions on Iran since Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal last year.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (pahm-PAY’-oh) said Tuesday that Iran is trying to deceive the world by refusing to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency’s head said Monday he’d stressed the importance of “full” cooperation with it.
Iran says it has begun using advanced centrifuges in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
New satellite images published Monday by the European Space Agency show an increase in air pollution in the Brazilian Amazon while fires burned in the region last month.
Several maps showed more carbon monoxide and other pollutants in August than in the previous month, when there were fewer fires.
The agency said fires released carbon dioxide once stored in the Amazon forests back into the atmosphere, potentially having an impact on the global climate and health.
Burning continues in the Amazon despite a 60-day ban on land-clearing fires that was announced last month by President Jair Bolsonaro.
Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research showed the number of fires in all of Brazil has surpassed 100,000 so far this year, up 45 percent compared to the same period in 2018.
FILE – A fire burns a tract of the Amazon jungle in Agua Boa, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Sept. 4, 2019.
Renata Libonati, a professor in the department of meteorology at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, said that aside from gases, the burning of forests also released particles into the atmosphere, which can lead to an increase in respiratory problems, especially among young children and the elderly.
Particles can be transported by winds in cities that are not immediately close to where the fires are taking place.
“The impact of the fires go far beyond where the forests are burning,” Libonati told The Associated Press.
The lack of rain during the current dry season in the Amazon region makes things worse, she said, as rain can help stop the progress of particle pollution.
Barcelona could cut deaths from air pollution and improve quality of life by implementing in full a plan to calm traffic and free up space for residents, researchers said Monday.
The compact Spanish city is home to more than 1.6 million people and is plagued by contaminants and noise largely due to heavy density of traffic, as well as lack of greenery.
A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), published in the journal Environment International, found the city of Barcelona could prevent 667 premature deaths every year if it created 503 “superblocks” as first proposed.
The superblocks — which keep cars out of designated areas in the city and develop public space in streets — have been complex to roll out, with only six put in place so far.
“What we want to show with this study is that we have to go back and put the citizen at the center of … urban plans, because the health impacts are quite considerable,” said lead author and ISGlobal researcher Natalie Mueller.
As a city with the highest traffic density in Europe, Barcelona also needed to make it easier for people to commute in from the wider metropolitan area by public transport, she added.
The projected reduction in deaths from the superblocks plan would be achieved mainly as a result of a 24% decrease in air pollution from nitrogen oxide (NO2), along with lower traffic noise and urban heat, the study said.
Data released Friday from the Barcelona Public Health Agency showed air pollution accounted for 351 premature deaths in the city in 2018, around the same as in 2017.
Motor vehicles generated the main pollutant, with almost half the city’s population regularly exposed to NO2 levels above the safe limit set by the World Health Organization, the city council said.
From January 2020, Barcelona will implement low-emission zones on weekdays, keeping 125,000 vehicles out of the city.
The city council will also declare a climate emergency including a package of urgent measures to cut down on private vehicle use and boost public transport, among other actions.
It has already extended cycle paths and upgraded its shared bike scheme, while shrinking on-street parking.
‘Courage’ needed
Barcelona City Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it aimed to start drafting plans for three new superblocks shortly, as well as launching public consultations for others.
The ISGlobal study found that, besides reducing deaths, a full roll-out of the superblocks project would increase life expectancy by almost 200 days on average per inhabitant, and generate an annual economic saving of 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion).
The superblocks have sparked opposition in some local areas, notably among small traders who fear they could deter customers.
But Mueller said the concept was similar to banning smoking in bars and restaurants, which was initially unpopular but quickly accepted once people realized the benefits.
“Even if they don’t see it in the beginning, often in the end they are quite happy,” she said, noting the need for “courage” in public policy making.
The American Medical Association on Monday urged Americans to stop using electronic cigarettes of any sort until scientists have a better handle on the cause of 450 lung illnesses and at least five deaths related to the use of the products.
The AMA, one of the nation’s most influential physician groups, also called on doctors to inform patients about the dangers of e-cigarettes, including toxins and carcinogens, and swiftly report any suspected cases of lung illness associated with e-cigarette use to their state or local health department.
The recommendation followed advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday for people to consider not using e-cigarette products while it investigates the cause of the spate of severe lung illnesses associated with vaping.
Many, but not all, of the cases have involved those who used the devices to vaporize oils containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of cannabis.
CDC officials said some laboratories have identified vitamin E acetate in product samples and are investigating that as a possible cause of the illnesses.
Public health experts have not found any evidence of infectious diseases and believe the lung illnesses are probably associated with a chemical exposure.
Megan Constantino, 36, from St. Petersburg, Florida, quit vaping six days ago after hearing reports of the illnesses and deaths related to vaping.
“It scared me into quitting,” she said.
Like many users of vaping pens, Constantino picked up the device after quitting cigarette smoking three years ago, and said, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
She added, “I threw the last cartridge away. I took a picture of it and I literally cried.”
Constantino said many people who vape have been “on pins and needles” for the investigation results, and she is concerned that the reports of a link to vaping THC may give people an excuse to ignore the warnings.
E-cigarettes are generally thought to be safer than traditional cigarettes, which kill up to half of all lifetime users, the World Health Organization says. But the long-term health effects of vaping are largely unknown.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has faced mounting pressure to curb a huge spike in teenage use of e-cigarettes, a trend that coincided with the rising popularity of Juul e-cigarettes.
“We must not stand by while e-cigarettes continue to go unregulated. We urge the FDA to speed up the regulation of e-cigarettes and remove all unregulated products from the market,” AMA president Dr. Patrice Harris, said in a statement.
Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, which advocates for cigarette smokers to switch to nicotine-based vaping devices, said the AMA should be “ashamed of themselves for playing politics with people’s health and protecting the profits of drug dealers.”
He criticized the AMA for “fearmongering about nicotine vaping products” while not mentioning “the very real risks of vaping illicit THC products.”
Juul Labs declined to comment. Altria Group Inc owns a 35 percent stake in Juul.
The Poor People’s Campaign will begin touring more than 20 states later this month to bring together residents of disenfranchised communities and help them register to vote.
The Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the campaign, said Monday at a news conference in Washington, D.C., that the tour begins Sept. 16 in El Paso, Texas, and will culminate on June 20 with an assembly on the National Mall in Washington. Three stops are planned in at least 22 states, with Day 1 focusing on the communities and their stories; Day 2 on voter registration and Day 3 on a march and rally.
MORE — an acronym for Mobilizing, Organizing, Registering, Educating — will build on a multistate anti-poverty tour that began in February and ended with the People’s Moral Action Congress in Washington.
“We have identified areas all over the country where, if just 2% of poor and low-wealth people and their allies are organized, it changes the political calculus and can make a huge electoral difference,” Barber said in a statement. He said such votes could make a difference in the 2020 reelection bids of U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis in North Carolina and Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
The original Poor People’s Campaign was established by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in December 1967, four months before he was assassinated.
Barber revived that campaign in 2017, four years after he had started the “Moral Monday” movement, which organized protests about issues including gerrymandering, voting rights, LGBTQ rights and unions.
The new, nine-month-long MORE campaign will carry over into next year, when voters will decide whether they’re satisfied with the direction taken by President Donald Trump. MORE’s organizers made a conscious decision to make Washington, D.C., the campaign’s last stop, Barber said.
“We are coming back to demonstrate our collective power and to demand that the agenda of this campaign inform the platforms of both parties’ conventions ahead of the 2020 election,” Barber said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration is discussing the possibly of granting residents from the hurricane-hit Bahamas temporary protected status, a short-term permission to reside in the United States.
Trump told reporters at the White House Monday “we’re talking to a lot of different people” about the issue, however he said the United States would need to make sure immigrants from the Bahamas are properly documented.
“We have to be very careful … I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come in to the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members,” he said.
Senators from the state of Florida have been asking the president to grant the status to Bahaman residents, a protection that in the past has helped people from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras, which Trump has been trying to roll back.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters at the White House Monday that the United States is expediting its immigration processes for residents of the Bahamas. However, he said immigration officials must still vet all immigrants for possible threats to national security.
When asked about an incident Sunday in which hundreds of storm survivors were prevented from boarding a ferry in the Bahamas because they lacked U.S. visas, Morgan said the situation was a mistake and the result of “some confusion.” He said “If your life is in jeopardy you will be allowed in, if you have documents or not.”
A Bahamas coroners team carries a body out of The Mudd neighborhood in the Marsh Harbor area of Abaco Island in the Bahamas in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, Sept. 9, 2019.
On the ground in the Bahamas, rescue workers continued their task of searching for bodies and survivors amid the destruction of Hurricane Dorian.
Police said Monday the current death toll from the storm is 45, but expect the number of fatalities to keep rising as more bodies are discovered.
“There are many more persons presumed missing and we are appealing to the public to file Missing Persons reports,” police said in a statement late Sunday.
Hundreds, if not thousands of people are believed to be missing following the storm, which struck a week ago as a Category 5 hurricane with winds of up to 320 kph.
Dorian is now over the North Atlantic, but before it moved out to sea it got in its last licks in Canada.
The storm battered the Canadian Maritime provinces and far-eastern Quebec with tropical storm force winds, tearing off the roofs of homes and buildings, uprooting trees, and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands.
No Canadian storm deaths have been reported.
Dorian also lashed the Carolinas on the U.S. East Coast, destroying homes, flooding beach resorts, and spawning more than 20 tornadoes that caused further damage.
Officials in northern Burkina Faso say at least 29 people were killed in two separate incidents Sunday.
Government spokesman Remis Dandjinou said, in a statement, at least 15 people were killed when a truck carrying people and goods “rode over an improvised explosive device in the Barsalogho area.”
Fourteen people were killed when a food convoy of trucks came under attack in Sanmatenga province, according to the spokesman.
The French news agency AFP reports that locals sources said many of the dead in the convoy were the drivers of the vehicles carrying provisions for people displaced by fighting.
“Military reinforcements have been deployed and a thorough search in under way,” said Dandjinou.
Millions of people in Burkina Faso are facing an unprecedented humanitarian emergency because of growing hunger, instability and displacement, the World Food Program warned recently.
The United Nations reports escalating fighting, some fueled by ethnic and religious beliefs, has forced more than 237,000 people to flee their homes.
Jihadists have frequently launched attacks on Burkina’s military.
A former French colony, Burkina Faso in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.
The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.
Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.
Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.
“Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.
“The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.
State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue.
Nissan Motor Co’s nominating committee will discuss Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa’s resignation and possible successors at a meeting on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Saikawa has expressed his desire to resign from the troubled automaker and is not “clinging to his chair”, the source said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public.
The Nikkei newspaper earlier reported that Saikawa told reporters on Monday he wanted to “pass the baton” to the next generation as soon as possible. The executive has come under pressure since admitting last week to being improperly compensated.
World War II veteran Henry Ochsner, who landed on the beach at Normandy on D-Day and later received the French government’s highest honor for his service, has died. He was 96.
Family friend Dennis Anderson says Ochsner died Saturday at his home in California City of complications from cancer and old age.
As part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division — known as the “Screaming Eagles” — Ochsner also fought at the Battle of the Bulge.
In 2017 Ochsner and nine other veterans were awarded France’s National Order of the Legion of Honor during a ceremony at Los Angeles National Cemetery.
Ochsner married Violet Jenson in 1947. He is survived by his wife, their four daughters and two granddaughters. Funeral plans are pending.
