U.S. President Donald Trump rallied supporters in Battle Creek, Michigan, as the U.S. House of Representatives began voting on impeaching him. Trump took to the stage for his last campaign rally of the year as the House began voting.  “It doesn’t feel like we’re being impeached,” Trump said, to cheers, as Congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,  introduced the two articles of impeachment. Minutes later, he was impeached on the first article. As House passed the threshold to pass the second article, Trump continued his speech in front of an energetic crowd, highlighting the military and Space Force, the strength of the economy and the investments made by numerous companies in Michigan.  “You’re back, very proud of you,” he said. He cast “the radical left” as consumed with rage and envy, saying, “I have the greatest economy in the history of this country. If crooked Hillary won the economy would have crashed.”   Trump continuously blasted Democrats for what he called “a very dark era.” “This lawless partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat party,” he told the crowd. “Have you seen my polls in the last four weeks?” Earlier in the day, Trump …

Members of the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to charge President Donald Trump with two articles of impeachment. As the Senate prepares to address the issue in the new year, public opinion in the U.S. on impeachment remains polarized. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari looks at the factors feeding a deep partisan divide. …

Citing 400 years of tradition, Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vasquez on Wednesday challenged the federal ban on cockfighting. Vasquez signed a bill that seeks to sidestep the ban signed into law by President Donald Trump last year that was set to take effect on Friday. “This measure is not meant to be a confrontation,” she said. “If they [the federal government] understand this as a conflict, then we ask them to come talk to us. Let’s talk it through. This is an industry that represents the income for thousands of families, and we have to take them into consideration.” Puerto Rican officials say cockfighting generates an estimated $18 million a year and employs 27,000 people. There are 71 licensed cockpits across the island that are regulated by the Department of Sports and Recreation. The blood sport was introduced to the island by Spanish colonists 400 years ago. The ban “is an abuse the U.S. government is committing against our culture,” said  cock owner Carlos Junior Aponte Silva. Animal rights activists say cockfighting is cruel. Owners attach spikes to the birds’ legs to cause more damage to opponents during the 12-minute bouts. Cock deaths during a fight or shortly afterward are common. Vasquez expects …

Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland is being destroyed as desert locusts swarm over Somalia, in the worst invasion in 25 years.    The locusts have damaged about 70,000 hectares of farmland in Somalia and neighboring eastern Ethiopia, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Wednesday.    VOA’s Harun Maruf tweeted dramatic videos of the insects flying over the central Somali town of Adado: Video: Huge locust swarm over Adado town today. Somalia faces the worst Desert Locust outbreak in over 25 years according to @FAOSomaliapic.twitter.com/2ZuI0vEhDI — Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) December 18, 2019 The FAO said the locust invasion was worse than had been predicted and was likely to spread to other nations in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, South Sudan and Sudan.    “As the weather seems favorable for the locust breeding, there is a high probability that the locust will continue to breed until March-April 2020,” FAO regional coordinator David Phiri said.    “I was supposed to get up to 3,000 kilograms of teff [a cereal grass] and maize this year, but because of desert locusts and untimely rains, I only got 400 kilograms of maize and expect only 200 kilograms of teff,” Ethiopian farmer Ashagre Molla, 66, said. “This is not even enough to …

In mid-June, Abdulrasoul Ibrahim Omar, 38, hired smugglers to transport him, his pregnant wife and his two small daughters out of Libya.    Speaking over WhatsApp during the journey, he would not say where he was going.    “No safety in Libya. I fled to … ,” he texted, not completing the thought.  Abdelrasoul Ibrahim Omar and his daughters in Tunisia, Aug. 18, 2019. (Courtesy Abdelrasoul Ibrahim Omar) Before arriving in Libya, Omar fled genocide in Darfur and Sudan, and survived one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.      Almost all the people traveling to Libya’s coast in hopes of making it to Europe face beatings, rapes, torture or kidnappings, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Smugglers demand heavy ransoms from the usually impoverished families in exchange for their loved ones’ lives.    “[They are] suffering some of the gravest human rights abuses in the world today,” said Charlie Yaxley, a UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva. “We don’t know how many people are dying on the way.”    At the U.N. Refugee Conference on Wednesday, Libya’s permanent representative to the U.N. office at Geneva said the world’s wealthy nations should take more preventive actions for people feeling the need to flee their countries in the first …

Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists failed Wednesday to agree on a prisoner exchange and troop pullback after several hours of tense talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.  Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the separatist rebels met in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to discuss conditions for an “all for all” prisoner swap. This followed the reaching of a tentative agreement during Ukraine peace talks in Paris last week.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who met with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on December 9, had hailed the prospective exchange as a key result of the Paris talks. He said he expected all 72 Ukrainian prisoners held by the separatists to return home before year’s end.  But Olga Kobtseva, a rebel representative in the so-called Contact Group in Minsk, said Wednesday’s talks failed to produce an agreement. She cited Ukraine’s refusal to absolve the rebels in its custody of criminal charges as the main stumbling block.  On top of that, the parties were unable to confirm the numbers and verify the lists of prisoners to be swapped.  Another rebel envoy, Vladislav Dainego, said the parties also failed to agree on the areas where Ukrainian forces and the rebels would pull back from the front line to help maintain a lasting cease-fire.  “We …

One of the world’s most-watched soccer matches was played Wednesday night amid heavy security as authorities sought to keep Catalonia’s separatist movement from disrupting the game between Barcelona and Real Madrid. While the game in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium began without incident, some riot police clashed with protesters in the streets outside, and plastic trash cans were set on fire. The match, which drew nearly 100,000 spectators, was halted briefly when a few dozen balls were thrown onto the field, some of them bearing a message urging the Spanish government to open a dialogue with the separatists. Thousands of police and private security guards were deployed in and around stadium as nearly 100,000 fans attended. During the street clashes, riot police used batons to force the crowd back. Some protesters fought between themselves, while others threw objects at police lined up behind shields. At least four trash cans were set on fire, and a smell of smoke wafted into the Camp Nou. Masks depicting Barcelona’s Lionel Messi are confiscated by security personnel as Barcelona supporters enter at the Camp Nou stadium, ahead of a Spanish La Liga soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid in Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 18, 2019. …

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a “biosimilar” medicine — one derived from living sources rather than chemicals — to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally. The trastuzumab drug has shown “high efficacy” in curing early-stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, WHO said in a statement. But the annual cost of the original drug is an average of $20,000, “a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in most countries,” the statement added. However, the biosimilar version of trastuzumab is generally 65 percent cheaper than the original. “With this WHO listing, and more products expected in the prequalification pipeline, prices should decrease even further,” WHO said. The cheaper but equally effective biotherapeutic medicines are produced from biological sources such as cells rather than synthesized chemicals. They are usually manufactured by companies after the patent on the original product has expired. “WHO prequalification of biosimilar trastuzumab is good news for women everywhere,” said WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Women in many cultures suffer from gender disparity when it comes to accessing health services. In poor …

When India’s contentious new citizenship law passed easily through parliament, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has a strong majority, few in his government anticipated a violent backlash to it.    In the week since its passage, protests have raged through the country, vehicles have been torched, thousands of students from some of the country’s most prestigious universities have marched in the streets, and opposition leaders have joined growing calls to scrap the law.   The protests pose the most serious opposition that Modi has confronted since he took power six years ago riding a wave of popularity.    The law has brought to the forefront worries long voiced by the prime minister’s opponents and critics that his government’s policies will relegate some 200 million Muslims — the country’s largest minority — to second class citizens as it pursues a Hindu nationalist agenda. It was passed five months after his government scrapped the autonomy of Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state.    The new law will fast track citizenship for six non-Muslim religious minorities — Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists, and Jains — who fled religious persecution from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. However it excludes Islam, a major religious group …

The U.S. special envoy leading negotiations with the Taliban met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul on Wednesday, officials said, amid a renewed push to reach an accord with the insurgents. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Ghani discussed several topics including the need for a ceasefire, Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks to journalists after voting near the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 28, 2019. “The president also expressed his concerns about the continued violence by the Taliban,” Seddiqi said. “The president reiterated that the government and people of Afghanistan want a sustainable peace.” The U.S. State Department said Khalilzad had met with Afghan leaders to discuss “efforts to finalize a deal with the Taliban.” “If an agreement can be reached, the process must soon pivot to intra-Afghan negotiations,” a State Department spokesman told AFP, referring to discussions the U.S. wants to see take place between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Khalilzad has spent more than a year leading a push for a deal with the Taliban that would see the U.S. reduce its military footprint in Afghanistan in return for security guarantees from the insurgents. While U.S.  officials have …

Kashmir’s main mosque re-opened for prayers Wednesday for the first time since the restive valley’s semi-autonomous status was axed by New Delhi in August and a curfew imposed. The area where the Jamia Masjid in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar is located is a hotbed of anti-Indian sentiment, with Friday prayers that attract thousands of worshippers —  often followed by street protests. Locals believe the recent closure was the longest the 13th-century mosque had endured since Kashmir was split between India and Pakistan in 1947 after independence from Britain. “I was sitting at home when I heard the azan [call for prayer] coming from the Jamia Masjid. I couldn’t believe my ears and came running to offer prayers here for the first time in four-and-a-half months,” Mohamad Iqbal, 55, told AFP. “It feels like I’m breathing again. No doubt my happiness knows no bounds today, but the saddest thing is that the Kashmir dispute is yet to be resolved.” Some 70 worshippers were led by Mufti Ghulam Rasool in afternoon prayers inside the sprawling mosque, which can accommodate 30,000 faithful. Before the crackdown, chief cleric and influential separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq delivered sermons and political messages at the mosque every …

The United States and South Korea failed to reach a deal on how to split the cost of the U.S. military presence, South Korean officials said Wednesday, just days before the current agreement is set to expire. South Korean and U.S. negotiators “broadened their understanding” of each other’s positions during two days of talks that ended Wednesday, but must be prepared for another round of negotiations in January, South Korea’s foreign ministry said. The United States had reportedly demanded that South Korea pay five times its current amount for the cost of the approximately 28,000 troops that are stationed in South Korea. South Korean officials dismissed the demand as unreasonable. In an interview with the South Korean media, James DeHart, the top U.S. negotiator signaled flexibility, insisting Washington is “no longer focused” on its initial demand. James DeHart, U.S. Department of State’s a senior advisor for security negotiations and agreements bureau of political-military affairs, speaks after a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, in Seoul, Nov. 19, 2019. “The figure will be different from our initial proposal and probably different from what we’ve heard from the Korean side so far. So we will find that point of agreement,” Dehart told …

American history is happening in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats are driving President Donald Trump to the brink of impeachment Wednesday as the House takes up charges Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress in pressuring Ukraine to investigate political rivals and refusing to cooperate with the ensuing congressional probe. The nation’s 45th president is on track to become only the third commander in chief to be impeached. But first, watch for a daylong showdown that’s been boiling for years between Republicans loyal to Trump and Democrats who say his conduct toward Ukraine makes him unfit for office. Look, too, for legacy moments for Washington’s political veterans on the eve of the 2020 election year. What to watch during a historic day on Capitol Hill that begins at 9 a.m. EST and is expected to end with a final vote between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m.: Spoiler alert Trump is heading for impeachment. When the House opens debate, the outcome will have been known for some time. A tally compiled by The Associated Press found that a majority of House members have said they will vote to approve the charges and send them to the Senate for a trial next …

When the Honduran boy complained of a toothache, Dr. Psyche Calderon asked the obvious question: “When did the pain start?” The answer broke her heart. “When La Mara broke all my teeth and killed all my family,” the 14-year-old said. He said little else about the attack by the infamous Central American gang, La Mara Salvatrucha. Just: “I was the only one that survived.” Calderon is not a therapist, nor a lawyer or a dentist. She is a general practitioner volunteering her time to provide care for Central Americans stuck in Mexico while they try to obtain asylum in the United States. There was little she could do for this teenager. “So I gave him an antibiotic, then went home and cried,” she said. Calderon is part of a movement of health professionals and medical students from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border that is quietly battling to keep asylum seekers healthy and safe while their lives remain in flux. They try desperately to tend to a need left largely unmet by the governments of both countries. It has thrust volunteer doctors into new and unusual roles where they often have to improvise while working with limited donated medications and …

The daughter of jailed Uighur rights activist Ilham Tohti accepted a European Parliament prize on his behalf on Wednesday, urging lawmakers in an address not to be “complicit in the Chinese persecution of the Uighur people.” China has come under increasing international scrutiny for cracking down on the Muslim Uighur minority in its northwesterly Xinjiang region. Tohti, an economist, was jailed for life in China in 2014 on separatism charges that were widely denounced in Western capitals. His daughter, Jewher Ilham, urged politicians, academics and students on Wednesday to protest against the treatment of the Uighurs as she accepted her father’s Sakharov Prize for defense of human rights at the parliament in Strasbourg. Independent German researcher Adrian Zenz, an expert on China’s ethnic policies, estimated in March that 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been or were being detained in so-called re-education centers in Xinjiang. After Tohti’s prize was announced in October, China said he was “a criminal who was sentenced in accordance with the law by a Chinese court,” and urged that “all sides respect China’s internal affairs and judicial sovereignty and not inflate the arrogance of terrorists.” China has said Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants …

Foreign tourists normally pour into Vietnam to see colonial architecture and limestone jutting out of the sea. Now some are headed to Vietnam’s clinics and hospitals. They’re part of Asia’s latest medical tourism industry. Vietnamese officials hope medical tourists will emerge from the threefold increase in arrivals between 2010 and 2018. The key attractions: dentists and cosmetic surgery. Vietnam’s political stability, affordability of healthcare and the relatively high quality of certain types of medicine are driving the incipient trend already, country analysts say. Vietnam stands to join Asian peers such as Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan as magnets for medical tourism, yet charge less. “I do see a trend of people coming here. It is cheaper to get things done here than it is in Thailand and definitely Singapore,” said Mike Lynch, managing director with SSI Institutional Brokerage in Ho Chi Minh City. “The biggest group is cosmetic surgery. There’s a lot of it going on here.” Money maker for Vietnam More than 80,000 foreigners have traveled to Vietnam so far for medical “examinations and treatments” the government-run Vietnam Investment Review news website says, and they contributed combined income of more than $1 billion. The country’s medical sector grows 18% to …

The boards of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Peugeot on Wednesday signed a binding merger deal creating the world’s fourth-largest auto company with the scale to confront the challenges of stricter emissions regulations and the transition to new driving technologies. The companies said in a joint statement the new group will be led by PSA’s cost-cutting CEO Carlo Tavares, with Fiat Chrysler’s chairman John Elkann as chairman of the merged company. Fiat Chrysler CEO Mike Manley will stay on, but it was not announced in what capacity. No name for the new company has been decided, executives said in a conference call, but both Tavares and Manley insisted that it was not a “touchy subject.” The deal, which was unveiled in October, was announced as a 50-50 merger, but PSA has one extra seat at the board and Tavares at the helm, giving the French carmaker the upper hand in daily management. The executives said they expect the deal to take 12-15 months to close. It will give birth to a group with revenues of nearly 170 billion euros and producing 8.7 million cars a year – just behind Toyota, Volkswagen and the Renault-Nissan alliance. The merger is expected to …

Gunmen in Pakistan shot and killed two policemen on Wednesday who were part of the most recent anti-polio drive in the country’s rugged and volatile northwest, officials said. The gunmen opened fire as the policemen were heading on foot to the town of Lower Dir in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, said local police official Saeedur Rehman. He said the attackers fled the scene and a search was underway to find them. The policemen were to escort a team of medics going house-to-house to vaccinate children against the crippling disease. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting. Pakistan regularly carries out anti-polio drives, despite threats from the Taliban who claim the campaign is a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. Polio teams and security forces escorting them are often targeted in deadly attacks. The latest, three-day anti-polio campaign started Monday. Rehman said that despite Wednesday’s attack, the teams would carry on administering polio drops to children in Lower Dir till the end of the day. Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio is still endemic; the other two are Afghanistan and Nigeria . So far this year, 94 new polio cases have been reported in …

India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed hearing pleas challenging the constitutionality of a new citizenship law that has sparked opposition and massive protests across the country. The court said it would consider the pleas on Jan. 22. Protests and widespread condemnation have been growing against the Citizenship Amendment Act, with demonstrations erupting in India over the last week. The new law applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally but can demonstrate religious persecution in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims. Critics say that the new law is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government’s agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims and that it goes against the spirit of the country’s secular constitution. Modi has defended it as a humanitarian gesture. Its passage last week follows a contentious citizenship registry process in northeastern India’s Assam state intended to weed out people who entered the country illegally.Nearly 2 million people in Assam were excluded from the list, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign. India is building a detention center for some of the tens of …

Boeing confirms it will suspend production of its 737 Max jetliner next month as regulators made it clear that they will not approve the jet’s return to service by the end of the year. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on the potential impact of the move. …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out Tuesday at Western nations for their lack of support for his so-called Operation Peace Spring, which he launched in October in Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria.  Speaking at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Erdogan described the difficulties encountered by the millions of refugees forced to flee war and persecution, and the need for universal solidarity to support them.   The Turkish president, who said his country has welcomed more than 5 million displaced individuals — 3.7 million of them Syrian refugees, criticized the European Union for its lack of financial support and the member nations’ unwillingness to share the burden of welcoming refugees inside their own borders. FILE – Thousands of Syrian refugees cross into Turkey, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, June 14, 2015. Erdogan also criticized Western leaders, whom he said have failed to support his military offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. He has accused the Kurds of being allied with PKK terrorists in Turkey, and said his reason for launching Operation Peace Spring was to clear a 120-kilometer area in Syria of what he called a terrorist presence. “Let us declare these areas as safe zones,” Erdogan said through …

U.S. lawmakers granted formal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians on Tuesday and directed federal officials to acquire land on the tribe’s behalf, following a decades-long struggle by its members scattered across the Northern Plains of the U.S. and Canada. A provision to recognize the tribe and make it eligible for millions of dollars annually in federal assistance was included in a defense bill approved in the Senate on a vote of 86 to 8. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump to be signed into law. Most of the tribe’s more than 5,000 members are in Montana, descendants of Native Americans and early European settlers. They have a headquarters in Great Falls, Montana but have been without a recognized homeland since the late 1800s, when the tribe’s leader, Chief Little Shell, and his followers in North Dakota broke off treaty negotiations with the U.S. government. Tribe members later settled in Montana and southern Canada, but they struggled to stay united because they had no land to call their own. Formal government recognition gives cultural validation to a tribe whose members have long lived on the fringes of society and were sometimes shunned by whites. More …

The sixth and final Democratic presidential debate of the year will be held Dec. 19, 2019, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Only seven of 15 candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump will be on stage this time, as the first primary contests early next year draw closer. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the significance of this debate and the issues young student voters want to hear from the candidates. …