The U.N. envoy for Yemen said Friday that there has been a substantial decrease in violence in key areas of the war-wracked country. “In the last two weeks, the rate has dramatically reduced: There were reportedly almost 80% fewer airstrikes nationwide than in the two weeks prior,” U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. “In recent weeks, there have been entire 48-hour periods without airstrikes for the first time since the conflict began.” Griffiths said the number of security incidents in the vital port city of Hodeidah have dropped by 40%, and since five joint observation posts were created along front lines, incidents are down 80%. FILE – An oil tanker docks at the port of Hodeidah, Yemen, Oct. 17, 2019. “Indeed, for several days in a row, there were no incidents in the city at all,” Griffiths told the council via a video link from Amman, Jordan. He also noted that missile and drone attacks by Houthi rebels on neighboring Saudi Arabia have stopped for the past two months. The move toward a de-escalation is the first good news in months for Yemen, which has fought famine and cholera and a collapsing economy. Saudi …

President Donald Trump appeared to open the door on Friday for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to run for an open Senate seat in his home state of Kansas. “He came to me and said ‘Look, I’d rather stay where I am,’ but he loves Kansas, he loves the people of Kansas,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.” “If he thought there was a chance of losing that seat, I think he would do that and he would win in a landslide because they love him in Kansas.” Many Republicans see Pompeo as their best candidate for preventing the race from becoming competitive in Kansas, where a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat since 1932. And talk about his possible run has only intensified as impeachment hearings into Trump’s engagement with Ukraine have scrutinized the State Department. Pompeo has said he’ll remain secretary of state as long as Trump will have him. Asked if he will push Pompeo to run, Trump was noncommittal. “Mike has done an incredible job … Mike graduated No. 1 at Harvard Law, No. 1 at West Point. He’s an incredible guy, doing a great job in a very complicated world. Doing a great job as secretary …

Cuba has publicly laid out the rules governing the extensive, longstanding surveillance and undercover investigation of the island’s 11 million people. A new decree approved by President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Oct. 8 and made public this week says prosecutors can approve eavesdropping and surveillance of any form of communication, without consulting a judge as required in many other Latin American countries.  The law also creates official legal roles for informants, undercover investigators and sting operations. The decree is intended to “raise the effectiveness of the prevention of and fight against crime,” according to the declaration in Cuba’s register of new laws and regulations. Cuba has been updating its laws to conform with a new constitution approved in February, which requires legal approval for surveillance. The country’s powerful intelligence and security agencies have for decades maintained widespread surveillance of Cuban society through eavesdropping of all types and networks of informants and undercover agents, but their role has never been so publicly codified. The decree describes a variety of roles: agents of the Interior Ministry authorized to carry out undercover investigations; cooperating witnesses who provide information in exchange for lenient treatment, and sting operations in which illegal goods are allowed to move …

U.S. House Democrats’ public impeachment inquiry hearings provided new details on allegations President Donald Trump pushed Ukraine’s president to investigate domestic political rival Joe Biden and his son. But as lawmakers draft the articles of impeachment for an expected vote before the end of the year, Republicans and Democrats remain deeply split over impeachment. VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on where the impeachment inquiry heads next. …

An attorney assisting Gambia with its lawsuit against Myanmar alleging state-sponsored genocide at the U.N.’s top court said Thursday that he was confident that the West African nation would win the case based on copious, strong evidence of army atrocities against the Muslim Rohingyas.  “The evidence is plentiful,” Paul Reichler, an attorney at Foley Hoag LLC in Washington, told Radio Free Asia’s Myanmar service. He spoke a day after the Myanmar government announced that State Counselor and Foreign Affairs Minister Aung San Suu Kyi would lead a team in defending the country at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands.  “There are many, many fact-finding reports by U.N. missions, by special rapporteurs, by human rights organizations,” Reichler said.  “There is satellite photography, and there are many, many statements by officials and army personnel from Myanmar, which all together show that the intention of the state of Myanmar has been to destroy the Rohingya as a group in whole or in part,” he said.  FILE – An aerial view shows burned villages once inhabited by the Rohingya, seen from the Myanmar military helicopters that carried U.N. envoys to northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, May 1, 2018. “And we’re …

Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is making her first campaign hires in early voting Nevada, scooping up staffers who worked for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign. Klobuchar’s campaign announced Friday the Minnesota senator had hired Marina Negroponte to serve as state director and Cameron Miller to serve as Nevada political director. Both held similar roles in the state for O’Rourke’s campaign, which ended this month. Negroponte helped organize the Hispanic community for the civil rights nonprofit We Are All Human Foundation and spent a decade working in international development for the United Nations. Miller has worked on several state legislative campaigns in Nevada. The state is third in line to vote next year on the Democratic presidential field. Klobuchar has been working to build momentum after strong performances in the last two debates.   …

Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger and independent journalist Pham Chi Dung, a prominent government critic and VOA contributor, in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday. In a statement posted online, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security accused Dung of “dangerous” anti-state actions, including “fabricating, storing, and disseminating information, as well as other materials opposing the Vietnamese government.” State media said Dung carried out “anti-regime activities such as producing anti-state articles, [and] cooperating with foreign media.” Dung, 53, president of the outlawed Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), could face a jail sentence of five to 20 years if found guilty, local media said. Dung, who writes regularly on VOA’s Vietnamese Blog, faced similar allegations in 2012. IJAVN vice president Nguyen Tuong Thuy told VOA that Dung’s arrest was “a dangerous move to silence dissenting voices and repress freedom of speech in Vietnam.” IJAVN’s website has been blocked since Dung’s arrest. Thuy said he fears “the arrest will have a big impact on the group’s activities and its members,” as authorities continue to investigate the group. Dung established IJAVN as a “civil society organization,” July 4, 2014, and has said that America’s Independence Day inspired him to create a platform to advocate for freedom …

President Donald Trump on Friday promoted a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, a day after a former White House adviser called it a “fictional narrative” and said it played into Russia’s hands. Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and said he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he withheld aid over the summer. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the center of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly $400 million. He also worked to undercut witnesses at the hearings, including the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump recalled from her post in Kyiv. The president called her an “Obama person” and claimed without evidence that she didn’t want his picture to hang on the walls of the embassy. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in the second public impeachment hearing. “There are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like,” he said, adding that he asked why administration …

Prince Andrew is scaling back travel and facing an uncertain future as he steps away from the royal role he has embraced for his entire adult life.                     The latest blow came Friday afternoon when the board of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra announced that it was cutting ties to Andrew, who had been its patron.                     The 59-year-old prince has suffered numerous setbacks in the six days since the broadcast of a disastrous TV interview from Buckingham Palace during which he defended his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died in a New York prison in August in what the New York City medical examiner ruled was a suicide.                     The Times newspaper said in an editorial Friday that the debacle demonstrates the need for “urgent reform” of the royal household. The paper urged Andrew’s older brother and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, to take steps to streamline and make the royal family “more modest.”                     The disgraced prince scuttled plans for a trip to Bahrain that had been planned to support his Pitch(at)Palace project, according to the British news media, even though he is struggling to keep that enterprise going despite cutting …

Heads of state and officials from the Central African bloc CEMAC are meeting in Yaounde to discuss the economies of the six-nation bloc, said to be the least developed on the African continent. CEMAC’s development has been slowed by the spillover of the Boko Haram crisis into Cameroon, carnage in the Central African Republic and political tensions in countries that have some of the world’s longest serving leaders. CEMAC consists of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville. Hundreds of merchants from Gabon and Equatorial Guinea buy and sell goods at the Cameroon border market of Kiossi, located on the boundary line of the two neighboring states. Cameroonian vegetable and fruits seller Ahmad Njimuluh says he’d like to see free movement of people between CEMAC member states. He says between the western Cameroon town of Foumbot where he comes from, and Gabons capital of Libreville there are 68 regular police and customs check points and about 30 other control points which have been found to illegally extort money from commuters. In November 2017, CEMAC heads of state meeting in Chad said they had reached a milestone agreement to lift visa requirements for its citizens traveling within …

South Africa’s troubled state-owned airline says flights will resume as normal over the weekend after it reached a deal with unions to end a week-long strike.                     South African Airways on Friday says it reached an agreement with the South African Cabin Crew Association and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.                     The unions announced the strike shortly after the airline said it was launching a restructuring process that could affect nearly 950 employees.                     The unions also wanted more pay. The deal includes a 5.9% increase, lower than the 8% desired.                     Africa’s second-largest carrier had warned that the strike “endangers the future of the airline.”                     The airline is among debt-ridden state-owned enterprises that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is trying to revive after widespread mismanagement and corruption under the previous administration. …

A Turkish court on Thursday upheld its conviction of 12 former employees of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper despite a higher court ruling, a lawyer for the newspaper said. The court acquitted a 13th defendant, journalist Kadri Gursel, due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court, Turkey’s highest, said the lawyer, Tora Pekin. In a case that drew global outrage over press freedom under President Tayyip Erdogan, 14 employees of Cumhuriyet – one of the few remaining voices critical of the government – were sentenced in April 2018 to various jail terms on terrorism charges. They were accused of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front militant groups, as well as the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says  organized a 2016 failed coup. Gulen denies any involvement. The Cumhuriyet staff have been in and out of jail for the duration of their trials. The 14th defendant, Cumhuriyet accountant Emre Iper, was released last month and his case is still under court review. The Court of Cassation, Turkey’s high court of appeals, had ruled in September for the 13 defendants to be acquitted, with the exception of journalist and politician Ahmet Sik. The …

A Russian who participated in the torture of a captive in Syria and filmed the prisoner’s dismemberment and beheading has been identified by media outlets as a former policeman from Stavropol in southern Russia, who served as a mercenary employed by the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-sponsored private military contractor. A video of the four Russian-speaking men taking part in the gruesome murder was first posted online in 2017 and new footage of the killing emerged on social media this month. The first video showed the assailants smashing the victim with a sledgehammer and dismembering him. A second video was posted on a closed account for Wagner members on the Russian social media site VKontakte, but was quickly unearthed by investigative journalists. Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper, said it has used facial-recognition technology to identify one of the mercenaries and then corroborated its findings with his Russian passport and leaked internal Wagner documents, indicating the former policeman joined the Kremlin-tied private army in 2016. The newspaper named the man as “Stanislav D” but has withheld his family name, fearing reprisals against his relatives. A screengrab from video published by Novaya Gazeta purports to show Stanislav D as the man on the …

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sun has signaled he would welcome better relations with the United States after a conciliatory letter from President Donald Trump and a meeting with Washington’s new envoy.                     Hun Sen posted on his Facebook page a summary of the Nov. 1 letter from Trump, along with an account of how he told Ambassador Patrick Murphy about Cambodia’s goodwill toward the United States.                     Washington has long been critical of Hun Sen’s poor record on human rights and democracy. It has taken a sterner attitude since Cambodia’s Supreme Court in late 2017 dissolved the sole credible opposition party, which ensured that Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party would win the 2018 general election.                     Trump’s letter, a copy of which was leaked Friday, recounted positive past elements of the U.S. Cambodian relationship, while acknowledging “difficulties” in recent years.                     The president reassured Hun Sen that the United States “respects the sovereign will of the Cambodian people and we do not seek regime change.”                     Hun Sen has been in power for 34 years and has said he intends to serve until 2028. He has been quick to crack down on any opposition, …

The U.S. government agreed this week to give another coast guard vessel to Vietnam so the Southeast Asian country can increase its defense against China. But behind that move, Vietnam and the United States are struggling over a growing trade deficit that has alarmed U.S. officials. The U.S. government has complained since June that Americans buy more Vietnamese-produced goods compared to what Vietnamese consumers take from the United States. Vietnam relies heavily on export manufacturing for its economic growth of more than 6% per year. The deficit reached about $40 billion in 2018, which the U.S. Census Bureau calls the fifth largest between the United States and another country. The diversion of export manufacturing from China, now saddled by U.S. tariffs, to Vietnam particularly alarms Washington, analysts say. “The concern from the Vietnamese side is that the U.S. could say, ‘OK, we’re going to put tariffs on exports from Vietnam.’ That’s the fear,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at market research firm IHS Markit. “But I think they could avoid that kind of risk by undertaking some substantial purchases of big-ticket capital goods from the U.S.,” he said. Vietnamese leaders are looking for ways to satisfy the U.S. government …

South Korea says it has decided to continue a 2016 military intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan that it previously said it would terminate amid ongoing disputes over their wartime history and trade. The announcement by South Korea on Friday followed a strong U.S. push to save the pact, which has been a major symbol of the countries’ three-way security cooperation in the face of North Korea’s nuclear threat and China’s growing influence. The office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in says it decided to suspend the effect of the three months’ notice it gave in August to terminate the agreement, which was to expire Saturday, after Tokyo agreed to reciprocal measures. For its part, Japan says it will resume export control talks with South Korea after Seoul says it will drop action against it at WTO. …

President Trump’s Thursday visit to a manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas, where Apple makes a line of computers, highlighted the iPhone maker’s delicate dance with the Trump administration over China, tariffs and U.S. manufacturing. Michelle Quinn takes a look  at the relationship. …

An emerging and lucrative business has farmers buzzing to cash-in on a newly legal cash crop.  Experts say the global market may grow at least fivefold by 2025.  But as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, the potential highs for a formerly banned agribusiness have so far come with trying lows.   …

Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion. The pope was on his last full day of a visit to Thailand, where the dominant culture is closely tied to Buddhism, although the Catholic minority of fewer than 1% were generally treated well in modern times. On Friday, Francis traveled to Wat Roman, a mostly Catholic area on the outskirts of the bustling capital of Bangkok. Pope Francis waves to the crowd following his visit to St. Peter’s Parish church in the Sam Phran district of Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand, Nov. 22, 2019. World War II era priest The pope visited a modern sanctuary built in honor of Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung, a Thai priest who died in 1944. The son of Christian converts from Buddhism, he was arrested for ringing a church bell during a period dominated by an anti-Western government suspicious of foreign influences, such as the French colonial powers in neighboring countries. The priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison and died of tuberculosis in a hospital where he was treated badly and denied proper …

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle. The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday. The pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 and up, will have an estimated battery range of more than 500 miles. With the launch, Tesla is edging into the most profitable corner of the U.S. auto market, where buyers tend to have fierce brand loyalty. Brand-loyal buyers Many pickup buyers stick with the same brand for life, choosing a truck based on what their mom or dad drove or what they decided was the toughest model, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. “They’re very much creatures of habit,” Gordon said. Getting a loyal Ford F-150 buyer to consider switching to another brand such as a Chevy Silverado, “it’s like asking him to leave his family,” he said. Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning …

The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday. Speaking to reporters at an event at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, McCarthy said he ordered the assessment after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s use of the popular video app for recruiting American teenagers. “National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy. Schumer said he was especially concerned about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” Tik Tok logo is displayed on the smartphone while standing on the U.S. flag in this illustration picture taken, Nov. 8, 2019. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app …

At least eight protesters who had been holding out at a trashed Hong Kong university surrendered to police in the early hours of Friday, while others desperately searched for escape routes as riot officers surrounded the campus.  The siege at the Polytechnic University on the Kowloon peninsula appeared to be nearing an end with the number of protesters dwindling to less than 100, days after some of the worst violence since anti-government demonstrations escalated in June.  The mood on the near-deserted campus was calm as the sun rose after a night where some protesters roamed the grounds in search of undercover officers. Others hid, terrified they would be arrested by infiltrators.  “We are feeling a little tired. All of us feel tired but we will not give up trying to get out,” said a 23-year-old demonstrator who gave his name only as Shiba as he ate noodles with egg and sausage in the protesters’ canteen.  “We spent yesterday trying to find ways to get outside but failed, so we came for some breakfast,” he said.  A Reuters reporter saw six black-clad protesters holding hands walk toward police lines, while a first aid worker said two more surrendered later. A protester …