Jet-car speed racer Jessi Combs, known by fans as the “fastest woman on four wheels,” has died in a crash in Oregon’s Alvord Desert while trying to break a speed record, local authorities said Wednesday. Combs, 39, died Tuesday afternoon while racing in a dry lake bed in a desert in remote Harney County, sheriff’s Lt. Brian Needham said in a statement. The cause is under investigation. Terry Madden, Combs’ teammate on the North American Eagle racing team, said in an Instagram post Wednesday that he was heartbroken and added a video collage of photos and video clips of Combs with various team members. “She was the most amazing spirit that I have ever or will ever know,” Madden wrote. “Unfortunately we lost her yesterday in a horrific accident, I was the first one there and trust me we did everything humanly possible to save her.” Combs was widely known in the niche sport of jet-car racing and was attempting to break the Women’s Land Speed Record of 512 mph (823 kph) set in 1976 by Kitty O’Neil when she died. Jet cars are race cars propelled by jet engines. She currently held the record as the fastest woman on four wheels …

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says if the United States wants to engage in negotiations, it must observe the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. Speaking Thursday during a visit to Malaysia, Zarif accused the United States of “engaging in economic terrorism against the Iranian people.” He pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 deal, which Iran agreed to after two years of talks with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the European Union. “We did not leave that mechanism.  We are still sitting around the table with five other countries and the EU.  The United States was the sixth country, which decided to leave,” Zarif said.  “So if it wants to come back to the room, there is a ticket that they need to purchase, and that ticket is to observe the agreement.” FILE – President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, Aug. 21, 2019. Trump has been a sharp critic of the nuclear deal, saying it was too friendly to Iran and left it with too easy of a potential path to developing nuclear …

As fires continue burning through the Amazon jungle, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has begun accepting aid from the world governments. Voice of America spoke with Nestor Forster, Brazil’s interim Ambassador in Washington. …

 Top US military officer said Wednesday it was too early to talk about the future of US counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan, where insurgent violence continues   …

An oppressive political climate marked by a lack of rights and freedoms is now a key factor driving emigration from Russia, with more than 1.5 million Russians leaving the country since Vladimir Putin became president, according to the Atlantic Council.  …

New York City garbage man Nelson Molina has been seeing value in other people’s garbage for the past three decades. For years he has been saving unique items that their owners threw away. Vladimir Lenski met with the unusual collector.   …

Where does your food come from? Many city dwellers look no further than the local grocery store. But each summer American state fairs give farmers the opportunity to show off their skills and give the rest of us a better idea of the work that happens on the farms where food comes from. Saqib Ul Islam has more from the Maryland State Fair in Timonium.   …

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week suggested that the Islamic State or IS is regrouping in Iraq and Syria. His statement comes following a major terrorist attack in Afghanistan, for which IS claimed responsibility. Nadeem Yaqoob reports on the threat posed by IS as it expands its influence into South Asia. For Nadeem Yaqub, Aman Azhar, VOA News. …

Puerto Ricans are breathing sighs of relief after Hurricane Dorian brushed by the U.S. territory, but now has its sights set on Florida. Dorian caused some flooding and power outages on two Puerto Rican islands, but spared the entire territory from any major damage. All hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings for Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean have been discontinued. Dorian is a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour. Category 1-strength winds bend palm trees as Hurricane Dorian slams into St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Aug. 28, 2019, in this still image taken from social media video. Parts of Puerto Rico are still not recovered from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017, killing about 3,000 people. Thousands of homes still have no roofs and kilometers of roads are still torn up. Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in Florida, which is bracing for what forecasters say will be a powerful and dangerous Hurricane Dorian. The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the storm may hit as early as this weekend as a Category 3. Officials up and down the coast are warning residents to be prepared …

Chinese investment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has reached $16 billion, according to Nigeria’s state-run oil company. While Nigeria’s oil industry welcomes China’s interest, analysts worry about a lack of transparency in the sector and slow development of the country’s renewable energy market. When a top official with China’s third-largest national oil company paid a visit to Abuja, Nigeria this month, he was recommended by a top official of Nigeria’s state-run oil company to increase investment in Nigeria’s petroleum industry. Mele Kyari, the managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, or NNPC, thanked the China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, for its continued support of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. Chinese investments in the sector have reached $16 billion. Kyari added that Nigeria needs partners like China. The two countries need each other to reach their oil production targets. Africa’s largest oil producing nation pumps 2 million barrels a day and has a goal of producing 3 million barrels a day by 2023. China’s domestic oil production has been on a steady decline because of natural depletion and other geological challenges. So experts predict that up to 80 percent of China’s crude oil supply will be imported …

Democratic U.S. Senators Chris Coons and Chris Van Hollen last week endorsed taking action to head off a possible Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lauded an innovative Ugandan approach to resettling war refugees, and called for greater political openness in Uganda. The senators spoke to VOA after traveling to Uganda earlier this month.  The Aug. 12-15 trip occurred as Ebola was spreading in the neighboring DRC. During the last pandemic, Coons said, “we made a critical investment in protecting Liberia, West Africa and frankly the world, and we could and should do that again in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today.” A woman’s fingerprints are scanned before receiving a cash voucher at the Lobule refugee settlement in Uganda. August 14, 2019 (T. Krug/VOA) In between rain showers, Coons and Van Hollen toured the Lobule refugee settlement, where refugees were receiving cash vouchers through the World Food Program to be used in local markets. In its use of vouchers, increasingly employed as an alternative to the delivery of bulk food, the WFP has been building on a pilot program implemented in 2014 of providing cash vouchers to refugees.  According to an email from Stephan Deutscher, a program policy officer for …

A U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, a move likely to anger Beijing at a time of rising tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The busy waterway is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, which include an escalating trade war, American sanctions on China’s military and U.S. relations with Taiwan. Reuters reported on Tuesday that China had denied a request for a U.S. Navy warship to visit the Chinese port city of Qingdao. The U.S. Navy vessel Wayne E. Meyer, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, carried out the operation, traveling within 12 nautical miles (14 miles/22 km) of Fiery Cross and Mischief Reefs, Commander Reann Mommsen, a spokeswoman for the Japan-based U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said. The operation was conducted “to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways as governed by international law,” Mommsen said. The U.S. military operation comes amid an increasingly bitter trade war between China and the United States that sharply escalated on Friday, with both sides leveling more tariffs on each other’s exports. The U.S. military has a long-standing position that its …

CNN has apologized for a misleading headline that appeared on its website during its coverage Sunday of the Hong Kong riots. At one point, a headline reading “Police Use Petrol Bombs and Water Cannons Against Hong Kong Protesters” flashed on the screen. According to Hong Kong police, officers shot water cannons at barricades, not people, and it was the demonstrators who threw the gasoline bombs. CNN’s Hong Kong bureau chief Roger Clark admitted in a letter to police that the headline was “erroneous.” Clark said CNN is “working hard to ensure that reporting of the Hong Kong protests is fair and balanced at all times.” …

President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy says details of the U.S. peace plan will not be revealed until after next month’s Israeli election. “We have decided that we will not be releasing the peace vision, or parts of it, prior to the Israeli election,” Jason Greenblatt tweeted Wednesday. Trump said Monday parts of the political portion of the peace deal could be made public before the election.  Israel’s Parliament voted to dissolve and hold another election after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a tightly contested April vote, but failed to put together a governing coalition.  Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner announced the economic portion of his peace plan earlier this year. It would include $50 billion in international investment to help the Palestinian people. Trump has called his administration’s peace plan “the deal of the century.”  Palestinian leaders have already rejected the economic plan before all the details are known. They say it makes no mention of a two-state solution and say it is humiliating to believe Palestinians can be bought off. They also accuse the Trump administration of being openly and blatantly pro-Israel. There have been no formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks since 2014.    …

This article originated in FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a press availability at the State Department in Washington, Aug. 7, 2019. There has been no public comment from the Trump administration on the details of the loan program discussed by the president. But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking to FILE – A picture shows export oil pipelines at an oil facility in Iran’s Kharg Island, on the shore of the Persian Gulf, Feb. 23, 2016. In another VOA Persian interview, Doug Bandow, a senior foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said he believes Trump recognizes that Tehran needs financial help. “He doesn’t want them to get the money from conventional means because he wants to maintain his policy of maximum pressure,” Bandow said. “He’s looking for an alternative, but I’m not convinced this one will work.” Bandow said he doubts Iran will accept loans in place of selling its oil to international customers. Iran relies on oil exports for most of its revenue, but its exports have been cut significantly since Washington unilaterally banned all nations from buying Iranian crude in May as part of the U.S. sanctions campaign. “And who wants to …

He admires 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders for his leftist views, but avowed socialist Jerome Segal launched his own U.S. presidential bid Wednesday, calling for comprehensive societal transformation including an “enormous redistribution of wealth.”  In a country that has largely embraced two-party politics for more than 200 years, the head of the new Bread and Roses Party acknowledged he has virtually no chance of victory.    But Segal, who floats the idea of a maximum income of 20 times what workers at the bottom make, seeks a “flatter social pyramid” and envisions a transition to a less competitive, more meaningful life. He said he would be successful if he got socialist talking points into the campaign.    “We offer a reformulation of the American dream, to have a modest but secure income sufficient for meeting core needs, with expanding leisure to do those things that matter most,” Segal, 75, told reporters.    The Democratic Party has tilted leftward since Republican President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration.    While some of its leading candidates, namely Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, offer progressive prescriptions such as universal health care, Trump and his Republicans have sought to brand much of the Democratic field as “socialists.”    Segal, a …

A Trump administration program forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico has evolved into a sweeping rejection of all forms of migrants, with both countries quietly working to keep people out of the U.S. despite threats to the migrants’ safety.    The results serve the goals of both governments, which have targeted unauthorized migration at the behest of President Donald Trump, who threatened Mexico with potentially crippling tariffs earlier this year to force action.    Some people sent to wait in the Mexican border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros said they never requested asylum, including Wilfredo Alvarez, a laborer from Honduras. He crossed the Rio Grande without permission to look for work to support his seven children and was unexpectedly put into the program. He was sent back to Mexico with a future court date.  ‘They threw us away’   “We thought that if they caught us, they would deport us to our country, but it was not that way,” Alvarez said. “They threw us away here to Mexico, but we are not from here and it’s very difficult.”    Others said they were never asked if they feared persecution in Mexico, despite U.S. government rules that say migrants should …

Ayaz Gul contributed to this report. PENTAGON — The top U.S. military officer says it’s too soon to talk about an American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan or the future of U.S. counterterrorism forces there, as peace talks with the Taliban continue. “I’m not using the ‘withdraw’ word right now,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. Dunford was speaking at the first on-camera Pentagon briefing by a secretary of defense and the chairman in exactly one year. Dunford expressed hope that a peace agreement would cause “a disruption of the status quo” needed to move toward a resolution to the 18-year conflict. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, speaks to reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon, Aug. 28, 2019. He said any agreement would be “conditions-based” and would need to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a “sanctuary” for terrorists to launch attacks against the United States. “It’s premature to talk about what our counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan may or may not be without a better appreciation for what will the conditions be,” he said. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said all options remain on …

Pinterest said it would try to combat misinformation about vaccines by showing only information from health organizations when people search.    Social media sites have been trying to combat the spread of misinformation about vaccines. Pinterest previously tried blocking all searches for vaccines, with mixed results.    Now searches for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and related terms will bring up results from such groups as the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net.    Pinterest won’t show ads or other users’ posts, as they may contain misinformation.      “We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” Pinterest said Wednesday in a blog post.    Though anti-vaccine sentiments have been around for as long as vaccines have existed, health experts worry that anti-vaccine propaganda can spread more quickly on social media. The misinformation includes soundly debunked notions that vaccines cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can harm people.    Experts say the spread of such information can push parents who are worried about vaccines toward refusing to inoculate their children, leading to …

The former mayor of Tehran, who was sentenced to death for murdering his second wife, was freed on Wednesday, after being pardoned by the victim’s family. Mohammad Ali Najafi was released on an approximately $240,000 bail, local news outlets cited his attorney, Hamid Reza Goudarzi, as saying. MIT educated Najafi has also been sentenced to two years for carrying an “unlicensed” gun. The sentence is subject to appeal, Goudarzi noted. Mohammad Ali Najafi, 67, shot his second wife, Mitra Ostad, 35, at their home in a posh neighborhood of Tehran on May 28. The police found Ostad’s body with several gunshots in her chest. Hours later, Najafi surrendered himself to the police. According to Iran’s Islamic penal Code, if a person has intentionally murdered or maimed another person, the victim (or victim’s family) is entitled to retribution, (Qisas or an “eye for an eye” in the case of personal injury or a life for a life in the case of murder). However, the victim (victim’s family in case of death of the victim) are entitled to forgive the perpetrator. Two weeks ago, Mitra Ostad’s brother, Massoud, said on his Instagram account, “We have forgiven Mr. Najafi”, without demanding blood money. …

Facebook is tightening its rules around political advertising ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, an acknowledgement of previous misuse. But it’s not clear if it will be enough to stop bad actors from abusing its system. The changes include a tightened verification process that will require anyone wanting to run ads pertaining to elections, politics or big social issues like guns and immigration to confirm their identity and prove they are in the U.S. Beginning in mid-September, such advertisers confirm their group’s identity using their organization’s tax identification number or other government ID. The verified group name will be listed on the “paid for by” disclaimers that disclose the backers of ads. Facebook says it will verify this information against government records and will note in the disclaimer for confirmed ads that they’re placed by a “confirmed organization.” That process won’t apply to everyone, as Facebook says it would bar some smaller but legitimate groups from advertising. But a loophole that will allow small grassroots groups and local politicians to run political ads could also continue to allow bad actors to take advantage of the process. Advertisers who don’t have tax ID numbers, government websites or registrations with the …

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that parliament would be suspended until mid-October, a move that angered lawmakers opposed to his planned withdrawal from the European Union on October 31 without a deal and cuts the time they will have to try to block him. The new British leader’s unexpected announcement threw the debate over Brexit into a new uproar three years after voters narrowly decided to leave the EU 46 years after it joined the 28-nation bloc. Queen Elizabeth, as the head of state, approved Johnson’s plan to suspend parliament.  She will reopen parliament October 14 with an address outlining the government’s legislative priorities. Johnson said that would give parliamentarians favoring and opposing Brexit “ample time” for debate ahead of an October 17-18 summit of EU leaders, which could reach an ultimate decision on whether Britain leaves the EU with or without a divorce deal spelling out the terms of its departure. Johnson said it was “completely untrue” that the suspension of parliament was designed to block lawmakers from thwarting his Brexit plans. Rather, he said, it was to “bring forward a new bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit.” Opposition …

Hamas said Wednesday that two overnight bomb attacks killed three police officers in the Gaza Strip as the Palestinian enclave was placed under a state of alert. Witnesses told AFP that both bombings were suicide attacks by assailants on motorbikes, but there was no official confirmation. A source familiar with the investigation said a Salafist movement in Gaza that sympathizes with Islamic State group jihadists was suspected. Hamas’s interior ministry confirmed the three deaths, but spoke only of two “bombings” in Gaza City without providing details. It had earlier said two officers died in “two explosions targeting police checkpoints” late Tuesday night, before revising the toll to three. Suicide bombings are rare in the Gaza Strip. In August 2017, a suicide bomber killed a Hamas guard in southern Gaza on the border with Egypt. Hamas, itself an Islamist movement, has run the Gaza Strip since 2007 but has been regularly criticized by more radical Salafist groups in the impoverished, Israeli-blockaded coastal territory. …

Trade union members in Hong Kong rallied Wednesday against the city’s flagship Cathay Pacific airline for firing employees apparently because of links to this summer’s ongoing pro-democracy protests. A banner behind a stage in a central public square read “Revoke termination” and “Stop terrorizing CX staff,” referring to the airline by its code. The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions said that 20 employees have been dismissed or forced to resign, including pilots, cabin crew and managers. CEO Rupert Hogg resigned earlier this month to take responsibility following recent events, the airline said. Cathay has confirmed the dismissal of several employees in the past two weeks. It has said given various reasons, such as a pilot who misused company information or another who is in legal proceedings, without mentioning the protests. One Cathay pilot was charged with rioting during a protest. The trade union confederation called the rally after Cathay Dragon, a Cathay group airline, fired the head of its cabin crew union. Chinese aviation authorities have pressured Cathay by banning staff from mainland flights if they support “illegal protests.” China’s central government has been sharply critical of the protests in the semi-autonomous territory.   …