Advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday in an effort to block a rule published last month that expands the number of migrants who can be subject to a sped-up deportation process without oversight by an immigration judge. The rule, published in the Federal Register on July 23, broadened the practice of “expedited removal” to apply to anyone arrested anywhere nationwide who entered the United States illegally and cannot prove they have lived continuously in the country for at least two years. Previously, only migrants caught within 100 miles of a U.S. border and who had been in the country for 14 days or less were subject to the fast-track process. Under expedited removal, migrants are not entitled to a review of their cases in front of an immigration judge or access to an attorney. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Council on behalf of three immigration rights groups, claims the government did not go through the proper procedures in issuing the rule and says it violates due process and U.S. immigration laws. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the filing. President …

Tunisia’s biggest political party Ennahda named a candidate for presidential elections on Tuesday, the first time the moderate Islamist party has put up a nominee for the post since the country transitioned to democracy after the 2011 revolution. Party vice president Abdel Fattah Mourou, 71, a lawyer, will run in elections due to be held two months early on Sept. 15 following the death of president Beji Caid Essebsi last month. Liberal Prime Minister Youssef Chahed will also stand, his Tahaya Tounes party said last week, making him one of the likely frontrunners to succeed Essebsi. Other candidates who have announced their intention to run include liberal former Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa and Moncef Marzouki, who served as interim president for three years after autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled. Essebsi was chosen in the first democratic presidential election in 2014. FILE – Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi gestures during a press conference in Tunis, Oct. 25, 2018. One of Ennahda’s most moderate leaders, Mourou has long demanded reforms to the party to make it more open and to distance it from the Muslim Brotherhood in other Arab countries. Critics say Mourou is two-faced, however, and holds contradictory …

President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered a review of foreign aid that critics fear could lead to sharp cuts in funds for global health, peacekeeping, narcotics control and other programs despite their having been approved by Congress. The review was disclosed in an administration letter and confirmed by congressional aides. Members of Congress, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, have been pushing back against repeated Trump administration efforts to cut the amount of money Washington spends on foreign aid. In April, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, often a close Trump ally, called the administration’s proposal for a 23 percent cut in the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy “insane” and said it would not pass. FILE – Sen. Lindsey Graham, speaks to reporters after a briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 21, 2019. But the administration has pushed ahead, seeking to pare back funding as the fiscal year nears its end on Sept. 30 by asking for accounting of money that has not yet been spent. One congressional aide said the amount potentially affected ranged from $2 billion to $4 billion. In a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the White House Office of Management and …

The head of the U.S. agency that maintains the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal said Tuesday the country is facing the most complex and demanding global security environment since the Cold War. National Nuclear Security Administration chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty outlined the challenges while speaking to hundreds of people gathered for a small business expo in New Mexico. She said Russia and China are investing significant resources to upgrade and expand their nuclear capabilities while trying to undermine U.S. alliances around the world. North Korea’s intentions remain unclear and in the Middle East, Iran is enriching uranium and has increased its nuclear stockpile beyond limits set by a 2015 accord. “Amidst this increasing international turmoil, the effectiveness and credibility of our nuclear deterrent reassures our friends and our allies and serves as the ultimate insurance policy against a nuclear attack, deterring those who would wish to harm us,” she said. This marks the latest in a series of visits by Gordon-Hagerty to New Mexico as her agency faces pressure to resume the production of plutonium pits, which are key components for nuclear weapons. The work is being split between Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and the Savanna River Site …

Two Latin American countries are warning their citizens against travel to the United States after mass shootings killed 31 people last weekend.  Venezuela and Uruguay warned their residents about violence and hate crimes in the United States. Uruguayans were told to take “extreme precautions” when traveling go the U.S. because local authorities are unable to stop mass shootings, the foreign ministry said.  “Due to factors such as the indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population, it is especially advisable to avoid places where large concentrations of people occur,” the statement said. The Venezuelan foreign ministry recommended its citizens “postpone travel” to America in light of “violence and indiscriminate hate crimes.” The Japanese consulate in Detroit also warned Japanese residents and visitors to  “be aware of the potential for gunfire incidents everywhere in the United States.” The warnings come days after a gunman opened fire at a shopping center in El Paso, Texas, killing 22. Hours later, hundreds of miles away, another gunman began shooting in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine.  In the past, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, China and the Bahamas have also issued travel warning for the U.S.  …

Armed robbers broke into a Mexican government coin manufacturer Tuesday and filled a backpack with more than $2 million worth of gold coins from a vault that had been left open, security officials said. The daylight robbery was the latest high-profile crime to hit Mexico City, where crime has increased during record lawlessness plaguing the country. Two people, one wielding a firearm, broke into a Casa de Moneda branch in the morning after throwing a security guard to the ground and taking his gun, Mexico City police said. A police officer stands guard as he speaks on his cellphone after armed robbers stole gold coins worth more than $2 million, outside Casa de Moneda in Mexico City, Mexico, Aug. 6, 2019. One of the robbers then went to the vault, which was open, and filled a backpack with 1,567 gold coins, police said. The coins, known as “centenarios,” have a face value of 50 pesos, but trade for 31,500 pesos ($1,610) apiece, according to Mexican bank Banorte. That makes the total value of the haul at least $2.5 million. The coin was first minted in 1921 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain, according to the central …

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday proposed a “red flag” law that would take guns away from people who may harm themselves or others, responding to pressure for him to “do something” after a mass shooting in Dayton that killed nine people. The Republican governor said he would ask the General Assembly to pass a law that would allow judges to temporarily confiscate guns from individuals believed by police or their relatives to be a danger, and to provide them with mental health treatment. “We have an obligation to each other,” DeWine said at a news briefing. “If someone is showing signs of trouble or problems, we must help and we must not turn away.” DeWine spoke three days after a gunman wearing body armor and a mask opened fire early Sunday in a crowded Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood known for its nightlife. It was the second deadly U.S. mass shooting in less than a day. The governor, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association when he was elected last year, was heckled Sunday night as he spoke at a vigil for the victims of the rampage. FILE – People shout “Do Something!” as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine speaks during …

With a handshake and a hug, Mozambique’s leaders hoped Tuesday to close the book on a decades-long conflict. But an election in October and new causes of violence mean lasting peace is far from assured. After fighting on opposite sides of a civil war that erupted following independence from Portugal and killed more than one million people between 1977 and 1992, the ruling Frelimo party and former guerrilla movement Renamo signed a cease-fire that ended the worst of the bloodshed. However, violence has flared periodically in the years since, especially around elections. President Filipe Nyusi and Renamo leader Ossufo Momade smiled broadly and embraced after signing the deal, which encompasses a permanent end to hostilities and constitutional changes, as well as the disarming and reintegration of Renamo fighters into the security forces or civilian life. Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi, left, and Renamo leader Ossufo Momade sign a cease-fire agreement in Gorongosa, in this handout photo taken and released by the office of the President of Mozambique on Aug. 1, 2019. “With this agreement we are saying that we may disagree, but we always use dialogue to settle our differences,” Nyusi said at an event in Maputo’s Praca da Paz (Peace …

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said one day after the U.S. placed a full economic embargo against Venezuela the U.S. can now sanction anyone who supports the government of President Nicolas Maduro. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to freeze all Venezuelan government assets in the U.S. — the toughest sanctions on Maduro’s government so far. In a speech Tuesday in Lima, Peru at a summit on Venezuela, Bolton said the U.S. is “sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with the Maduro regime: proceed with extreme caution. There is no need to risk your business interests with the United States for the purposes of profiting from a corrupt and dying regime.” Bolton called on world leaders at the International Conference on Democracy in Venezuela to take tougher action to oust Maduro, whom he accused pretending to negotiate in good faith in order to buy time. “The time for dialog is over. Now is the time for action,” Bolton said. “Maduro is at the end of rope.” Bolton also touted the success of previous economic embargoes in Panama and Nicaragua and denounced China’s and Russia’s support for Maduro. “We say again to Russia, …

Can Turkey be reeled back in as a trusted NATO partner? A growing chorus of policy-makers and foreign-policy analysts fear it can’t. The threat this week by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to launch a military incursion into Kurdish-majority areas in northern Syria is setting the stage for yet another fierce dispute between Ankara and the rest of NATO — including the U.S., which partnered with Syrian Kurds to rout the Islamic State terror group. Erdogan’s warming ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his purchase of an advanced Russian air-defense system — as well as his pursuit of strategies in Syria that conflict with those of other NATO partners and his support for Islamist causes— are straining Turkey’s ties with the West to the point of rupture, say analysts. Pentagon officials also have expressed frustration with signs of an Erdogan rapprochement with Iran. FILE – Presidents Hassan Rouhani of Iran, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Ankara, Turkey, April 4, 2018. The crisis in Turkish-NATO relations is now as grave as in 1974, when Turkey invaded the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. There’s no formal mechanism for a …

Indonesia’s massive August 4 power outage is raising new concerns about the state electricity company, and renewing calls to look at alternative power sources, including geothermal energy, solar photovoltaic and wind. The blackout that hit the state-owned PLN electric company was Indonesia’s worst  since 2005, affecting millions of people in Jakarta and surrounding areas such as West Java and Banten. “By diversifying our energy sources by adding renewables, we may have a backup plan reducing the potential of a total blackout,” Mamit Setiawan, an analyst with Energy Watch, told VOA. Setiawan added that the centralized nature of power plants on the country’s most populated island of Java increases the likelihood of cascading outages similar to Sunday’s incident. The eight-hour blackout began when lines carrying high voltage failed. The disruption caused other parts of the system to crash, which in turn, caused a domino-like series of further problems affecting power plants in the central and western part of Java, including one that covered the capital. The blackout hindered many important services, like traffic lights, subways, cell phones and ATMs. Indonesian President Joko Widodo arrives with Sripeni Inten Cahyani, PLN’s acting CEO, during a visit at PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) headquarters, …

Updated: Aug. 6, 2019, 2:49 p.m. VOA’s Mandarin Service contributed to this report. WHITE HOUSE — The White House is signaling it is not seeking to further escalate the trade war with Beijing, after the administration of President Donald Trump took the mostly symbolic action of declaring China a currency manipulator. “We have negotiated in good faith, and we want to continue to negotiate in good faith with the Chinese,” despite disappointment with China’s negotiators not living up to earlier promises and a lack of progress, Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters on Tuesday. “The door is open for additional negotiations,” said Kudlow. “We are planning for the Chinese team to come here in September” after the latest round of talks last week in Shanghai did not achieve a breakthrough. Trump — if there’s a deal or progress — may reconsider some of the actions he has taken, such as reversing increased tariffs on Chinese products, added the president’s economic adviser. Kudlow also warned additional punitive action against China could be taken by the president if no progress is achieved. “The president is defending the American economy,” Kudlow emphasized. Earlier in the day on Twitter, Trump …

North Korea launched a fresh round of short-range ballistic missiles into the sea early Tuesday and warned it could take a “new road” in response to U.S-South Korea military exercises that began this week. The launch came as Defense Secretary Mark Esper is in the Asia-Pacific region on his first international trip in his new post. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb is traveling with Esper as tensions in the region are on the rise …

Trade between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa is in the doldrums despite a 2000 U..S law designed to boost access the American market, a conference in Ivory Coast has been told. The African Growth and Opportunity Act, which in 2015 was extended to 2025, provides tariff-free access on 6,500 products to 39 countries, ranging from oil and agricultural goods to textiles, farm and handicrafts. Trade quadrupled in value from 2002 to 2008, a year when it reached $100 billion, but fell back in 2017 to just $39 billion, according to figures compiled by the U.S. agency USAID. The surplus is widely in Africa’s favor, but most exports to the U.S. are in oil or petroleum-based products, not the industrialized goods that provide a value-added boost to local economies. “I do not think that AGOA has been the game-changer for many countries on the continent that we hoped it would be,” Constance Hamilton, assistant U.S. trade representative for Africa, told the 18th AGOA Forum, ending in the Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan on Tuesday. “AGOA has not led to the trade diversification for which we originally hoped,” she said in remarks on Monday. “Petroleum products continued to account for the …

Israel has advanced plans for more than 2,300 settlement homes in the occupied West Bank, the latest in a surge of such approvals since US President Donald Trump took office, an NGO said Tuesday. A defence ministry planning committee issued the approvals while meeting over the past couple of days, the Peace Now NGO said in a statement. The 2,304 housing units are at various stages in the approval process. “The approval of settlement plans is part of a disastrous government policy designed to prevent the possibility of peace and a two-state solution, and to annex part or all of the West Bank,” said Peace Now, which closely monitors Israeli settlement building. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged before April elections to annex settlements in the West Bank, a move sought by the country’s far-right. Annexing settlements on a large-scale in the West Bank could prove to be a death knell for the two-state solution, long the focus of international efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last week, Israel’s security cabinet gave rare approval to 700 Palestinian homes in the part of the West Bank under the country’s full control while also approving 6,000 homes for settlers. Details of those …

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon” and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.   Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Morrison’s family issued a statement through Knopf saying she died after a brief illness.   “Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the family announced.  “She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends.  The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing.”   Few authors rose in such rapid, spectacular style. She was nearly 40 when her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was published. By her early 60s, after just six novels, she had become the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, praised in 1993 by the Swedish academy for her “visionary force” and for her delving into “language itself, a language she wants to liberate” …

Deep differences between Turkey and the United States over the scope and command of a planned “safe zone” in northeast Syria raise the prospect of Turkish military action unless the two countries break months of deadlock in talks this week. Turkey has twice sent troops into northern Syria in the last three years and President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday a third incursion was imminent, targeting Kurdish-controlled territory east of the Euphrates river. Ankara views the Kurdish YPG militia, which plays a leading role in the Syrian Democratic Forces that hold sway over hundreds of miles (km) of Syria’s northeast border region, as terrorists who pose a grave security threat to Turkey, saying they must be driven back from frontier areas. Washington, which armed and backed them in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, wants to protect its military partners and has resisted Turkey’s demands for full control of a long strip of land that would extend 32 km (20 miles) into Syria. Military delegations from both countries are meeting in Ankara this week, the latest attempt in months of talks on setting up the safe zone which they agreed to form as President Donald Trump’s administration reduces troop …

The American creator of the 8chan website linked to deadly U.S. mass shootings said Tuesday he hoped the El Paso carnage would be the “final nail in the coffin” for the forum, which he accused of harboring “domestic terrorists”. Fredrick Brennan told AFP in an interview in Manila that he sometimes regretted setting up the unmoderated message board in 2013 — adding that turning it over to a new owner last year was a mistake. 8chan, which promotes itself as a site devoted to the “darkest reaches of the internet”, is home to posts from right-wing extremists, misogynists and conspiracy theorists. On Saturday, a young white male suspect was believed to have posted on the site a manifesto denouncing a “Hispanic invasion” of El Paso, shortly before going on a shooting spree at a Walmart store in the U.S. border city, killing 22 people. “I think this will be the final nail in the coffin for 8chan,” Brennan said. “Obviously he (the El Paso suspect) is a domestic terrorist. What else can you call him? He killed American citizens, he hates American society as it is set up,” said the 25-year-old. “Is it a cesspool for hate? The site is …

Shortly after Woodstock organizers announced the shambolic 50th anniversary concerts were off after months of setbacks and holdups, Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang summed up the drama in six words: “It’s been a really bizarre trip.” Over the last six months, Lang, 74, moved like a cat using all nine lives to make Woodstock 50 work. The first plan, to have an all-star concert with the likes of Jay-Z, Dead & Company, the Killers and more in Watkins Glen, New York, some 115 miles (185 kilometers) northwest of the original 1969 concert was scuttled after the venue backed out. Then the plan was to have it in Vernon, New York, but organizers couldn’t get a permit. Lang finally found a location that would work all the way in Maryland but artists started to pull out of the festival and he decided to scrap the event and the anniversary concerts altogether. “What can I say?” Lang said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not been surprising that we weren’t able to pull this off.” If Lang could go back and do things differently, he says, he would have tried to get permits earlier. And he would have worked with …

A South African group of teenage pilots who flew a self-assembled aircraft across Africa are back in South Africa after tragedy struck the expedition. The two experienced adult pilots manning the support airplane accompanying the teens died in an accident in Tanzania. The group left South Africa in June as part of nonprofit U-Dream Global’s inspirational Cape To Cairo crowdfunded project that saw a group of teens build an aircraft and fly it from South Africa to Egypt and back. Safety has been an extremely high priority since the beginning of the U-Dream Global Cape to Cairo initiative. On the bitterly cold mid-June morning of departure, Des Werner and Werner Froneman made very sure everything was packed. Just over a month and a half later, the two directors of the nonprofit U-Dream Global were killed during the organization’s Cape to Cairo expedition.  Their “Sling 4 plane” reportedly went down shortly after taking off in Tanzania en route to Malawi over the weekend. Athol Franz, editor and owner of the African Pilot magazine, has been following this initiative ever since the founder of U-Dream Global, 17-year-old Megan Werner, pitched the idea of teens building a plane and flying it from Cape …

Lee Juhyun in Seoul and Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb in Tokyo contributed to this report. North Korea launched a fresh round of ballistic missiles into the sea early Tuesday and warned it could take a “new road” in response to U.S.-South Korean military exercises that began this week. The North fired two short-range ballistic missiles from South Hwanghae province in the western part of the country, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The missiles traveled about 450 kilometers and reached a height of about 37 kilometers, it added.  North Korea has conducted four rounds of short-range ballistic missile launches in less than two weeks, raising doubts about working-level nuclear talks that U.S. officials had hoped would begin last month. People watch a TV showing a file image of a North Korea’s missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019. ‘Flagrant violation’ Minutes before the latest test, North Korea’s foreign ministry released a statement slamming the U.S.-South Korean military drills as a “flagrant violation” of its recent agreements with Washington and Seoul. “We have already warned several times that the joint military exercises would block progress …

School dress codes are legal in America, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. But many students say they discriminate against females and burnish stereotypes. During the 2015-16 school year, 53 percent of public schools compelled students to abide by a dress code, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But some young women in the United States and around the world are pushing back, saying dress codes unfairly target women more than men. Sahar Majid has more in this report narrated by Kathleen Struck. …

In May a Chinese vessel exploring for oil tried to stop the operations of a Malaysian contract drilling site in the South China Sea, a U.S. think tank says. In June and July, a Chinese boat entered a standoff with Vietnam over exploration in another tract of the disputed waters.  The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expressed concern. The bloc, which includes Malaysia and Vietnam, brought up land reclamation plus other activities in the South China Sea, the site of Asia’s biggest maritime sovereignty dispute, saying in a statement those actions could “undermine peace.” China’s reclamation of land in the South China Sea over the past decade makes it easier to launch ships and place oil rigs compared to countries without those resources. Beijing has a military and technological lead over the five other governments with claims to the disputed waters. ASEAN usually takes a more upbeat tone at formal events such as the August 2 East Asia foreign ministers summit that produced the statement. The bloc now wants to show its exasperation with Chinese expansion without angering Beijing, a key ally, experts believe. “It’s an interesting change in wording, probably related to recent events in Vietnam and …

China says it will take “countermeasures” if the United States deploys ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.   Fu Cong, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s arms control division, told reporters Tuesday that Beijing “will not stand idly by” if Washington follows through on a pledge made last weekend by new Defense Secretary Mark Esper to deploy the missiles in the region “sooner rather than later,” preferably within months.  He urged China’s neighbors, specifically Japan, South Korea and Australia, to “exercise prudence” by refusing to deploy the U.S. missiles, adding that it would serve those countries national security interests.   Fu did not specify what countermeasures China would take, but said “everything is on the table.”  Secretary Esper’s stated goal to deploy ground-based missiles in the region came after the Trump administration formally pulled the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty last week. The pact, reached with the former Soviet Union, bans ground-based nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles with a range between 500-5,000 kilometers. Washington said it withdrew from the INF because of continued violations by Moscow.   Fu said China had no interest in taking part in trilateral talks with the United States and Russia …