LOS ANGELES — Joe Biden, a former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, has compared Republican President Donald Trump to the late George Wallace, a prominent supporter of racial segregation.  Biden, in California for a two-day swing to campaign and raise funds, told a gathering on Friday that Trump is “more George Wallace than George Washington.”  Wallace, remembered for his white supremacist views, served as Alabama’s governor for 20 years, beginning in 1967, and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination several times.  His 1972 presidential bid ended when he was shot, but he survived. Wallace died in 1998.  Biden’s comment came days after Trump said in a tweet that four U.S. congresswomen of color “should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”  The tweet kicked off a weeklong furor in Washington, with Democrats, and some Republicans, denouncing the comment as racist. Three of the four congresswomen were born in the United States, and all are U.S. citizens.  “Our children are listening to this. What the president says matters. It matters, because the president is the face of the nation,” Biden said in California.  Trump’s re-election campaign responded with a series of tweets highlighting what they said were Biden’s own past links to Wallace.  Inspired by Charlottesville rally Biden, 76, …

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday and expressed disappointment over the country’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile system, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.  Washington had opposed Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile defense system and threatened to impose sanctions. Since then, President Donald Trump has been unclear about whether his administration was planning such an action.  Several Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday pressed Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey for the purchase.  …

HONG KONG — Tens of thousands gathered in Hong Kong on Saturday to voice support for the police and call for an end to violence, after a wave of protests against an extradition bill triggered clashes between police and activists and plunged the city into crisis.    The rally, called “Safeguard Hong Kong,” came a day ahead of another mass protest planned against the government and its handling of the now-suspended extradition bill that would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial.    Police have called for calm ahead of Sunday’s protest, where security is expected to be tight. Authorities have removed metal barriers — which activists have used to block roads during previous demonstrations — from areas around the march route.    “We are experiencing the most serious revolution after Hong Kong’s handover,” said former Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang. “We are also experiencing the most serious challenge for “One Country, Two Systems,” he added, referring to the system under which Hong Kong is governed since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997.  Explosive found in raid   Also Saturday, the Associated Press reported that police in Hong Kong found about 2 …

IRBIL / SULAIMANIYA, IRAQ – Security services in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region said Saturday that they had arrested the brother of a lawmaker serving in the Turkish parliament for the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital, Irbil.    The diplomat was one of at least two people shot dead on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in a restaurant where Turkish diplomats were dining.    “The Kurdistan region announced on Saturday the arrest of the man who planned the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in a restaurant in Irbil, less than a week after the attack,” the Asayish internal security service said in a statement.    It did not name the suspect but said “reports indicated” that his sister served as a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament. A separate statement from another Iraqi Kurdish security force, the Counter Terrorism Department, gave the suspect’s name as Mazlum Dag.    Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) later confirmed that the man who arrested was the brother of one of its lawmakers, Dersim Dag.    It said it strongly condemned the attack on the diplomat and that “using the attack as a reason to make one of our lawmakers a target through the name of her …

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven had assured him American citizen and rapper A$AP Rocky would be treated fairly.    Trump said he assured Lofven that Rocky was not a flight risk and personally vouched for his bail.    Swedish prosecutors on Friday extended Rocky’s detention by six days amid their investigation into a street fight in Stockholm.  …

Pakistan organized its first ever provincial elections Saturday in a northwestern region along the mountainous border with Afghanistan that until a few years ago was condemned as the “epicenter” of international terrorism. Pakistani officials said the elections in the seven districts of what were formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) are central to steps the government has taken to supplement regional and global efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan and counter violent extremism. Pakistani election officials said some 2.8 million registered voters were to choose from 285 candidates for 16 seats in the legislative assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The contestants, including two women, represented major mainstream political parties. The election was held under tight security and no incidents of violence were reported. The historic vote came on a day when Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan left for the United States for his first meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, where the two leaders will discuss counterterrorism measures among a range of other issues. A landmark constitutional amendment pushed through the parliament last year paved the ground for the tribal territory to be merged in the adjoining KP province to bring …

Saudi-coalition spokesman Col. Turki al Maliki says that coalition fighter jets took out at least five Houthi air defense sites around the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, early Saturday. Amateur video showed a number of explosions rocking Sanaa, overnight.  Amateur video broadcast by Arab media showed a series of explosions around the Yemeni capital Sana’a, early Saturday, followed by loud percussive explosions. Saudi-owned media, quoting coalition spokesman Turki al Maliki, indicated that at least five Houthi air defense sites were bombed by Saudi warplanes. Maliki claimed that a number of Houthi ballistic missiles were destroyed in the air attacks. The Saudi-owned Asharqalawsat newspaper quoted Maliki as saying the “operation [overnight] targeted the Houthis air defense capabilities, as well as their ability to launch aggressive attacks.” Maliki went on to say the coalition raids “conformed with international human rights law.” Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, tells VOA that he doesn’t think the Saudi air raids are going to have much effect on the ongoing war or the Houthis military capabilities: “This is not the first time the Saudis announced launching attacks on missile sites in Yemen,” he said. “It happened in the past and it’s highly …

Two ossuaries found under the Pontifical Teutonic College in the Vatican were opened Saturday and forensic experts began to analyze the bones. The ossuaries were discovered by the Vatican last week after the opening of two tombs of princesses at the cemetery earlier this month revealed they were empty. The tombs had been opened as part of investigations into the disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, in 1983. The mystery of the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, 36 years ago, continues to deepen at the Vatican, giving rise to more questions rather than answers. The latest mystery involves bones recovered on Saturday for analysis, located in two ossuaries found last week. Earlier this month the Vatican had opened two tombs and found the remains of the bodies that should have been there were not. Church officials said the bodies of the two German princesses who were buried in those tombs may have been removed and never returned to their original resting place. The tombs were opened following a request from the Orlandi family. A demonstrator wears a shirt with writing in Italian reading “Please give the justice dossier for Emanuela” on the outskirts of the Vatican, …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to meet Saturday with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno in the capital of Quito as he continues his Latin American trip that has so far been dominated by the growing threat of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. In Argentina Friday, Pompeo confirmed the U.S. imposed financial sanctions against a Hezbollah militant group leader suspected of directing a deadly bombing in 1994 of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.   “They were killed by members of a terrorist group, Hezbollah, and had help that day from Iran,” which provided “logistical support and funding through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Pompeo said at an event in Argentina marking the 25th anniversary of the attack.   U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signs a guest book during a memorial service marking the death of 85 people who died in a 1994 bombing blamed on Hezbollah, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, July 19, 2019. Pompeo announced two actions against Salman Raouf Salman, who he said was the on-the-ground coordinator for the deadly bombing, and “remains a wanted man who continues to plot terrorism on behalf of Hezbollah.” The State Department’s Rewards for Justice …

Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s biggest live volcano, erupted overnight with lava flows and explosive burps, vulcanologists said Saturday. A heavy emission of ash into the sky forced the closure of two airports in Sicily’s second-biggest city of Catania. They partially reopened early Saturday. The activity followed “lively spattering” recorded by the  National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) in early June and a previous eruption in December last year. Eruptions are frequent, and the last major one dated back to early 2009. The institute said this latest eruption was intermittent and the lava was flowing around 1.5 kilometres (one mile) down a desertic escarpment called the Valle del Bove (Ox Valley) from craters situated on the volcano’s southeast face. …

President Donald Trump attributed statements to a Democratic congresswoman that she didn’t make as he set off an incendiary week of vilification with accusations that she and three other lawmakers of color hate America. The episode roiled the capital and excited Trump’s North Carolina rally, overshadowing distortions in rhetoric that came from many quarters and from both parties on a variety of matters over the last week-plus — the Democratic presidential campaign among them. A sampling: LOVING AMERICA TRUMP quotes Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as saying: “You don’t say ‘America’ with this intensity. You say ‘al-Qaida,’ it makes you proud. Al-Qaida makes you proud. You don’t speak that way about America.” — North Carolina rally on Wednesday. TRUMP: “I hear the way she talks about al-Qaida. Al-Qaida has killed many Americans. She said, ‘You can hold your chest out, you can — when I think of America — uhh — when I think of al-Qaida, I can hold my chest out.’” — remarks Monday at a manufacturing event at the White House. THE FACTS: This is a wholly distorted account of what the Omar said. She did not voice pride in the terrorist group. Trump is referring to an interview …

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that four activist Democratic congresswomen of color “go back” to countries “from which they came” has excited some in his political base. Yet in many of America’s workplaces and institutions, the same language would be unacceptable and possibly illegal. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws against workplace bias, explicitly cites comments like “go back to where you came from” as examples of “potentially unlawful conduct.” Similar phrases routinely show up in lawsuits that the EEOC files against employers alleging discrimination, harassment or retaliation based on race or national origin. Apart from its legality in workplaces, Trump’s language has ignited impassioned responses across racial, ethnic and political divides. “It wasn’t Racist!” tweeted Terrence Williams, a black comedian who supports Trump. “No matter what color you are YOU can go back home or move if you don’t like America.” By contrast, Rachel Timoner, a senior rabbi at a Reform Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn, said such language would never be tolerated among members of her congregation. “I’d want to sit down with them and ask them, where that’s coming from?” she said. “If a person persistently degraded other human beings, I would need to say to …

The World Food Program warns 1.9 million Mozambicans battered by two devastating cyclones earlier this year are at risk of severe food shortages without urgent international assistance.  Hundreds of people were killed, tens of thousands made homeless and livelihoods lost when Cyclones Idai and Kenneth hit Mozambique with devastating force in March and April. The destructive power of the two storms has wreaked havoc on the country’s infrastructure and agriculture. Many crops that were about to be harvested and farm infrastructure were destroyed.  The impact of these two disasters lingers on, threatening widespread hunger among survivors of these twin disasters.   A man waits to receive food aid outside a camp for displaced survivors of cyclone Idai in Dombe, Mozambique, April 4, 2019. World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel says more than 1.6 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity and the worst is yet to come. “It is expected that the upcoming lean season it will be very difficult in Mozambique with just below 2 million people projected to be in crisis situation if there is no humanitarian intervention before,” Verhoosel said. “The lean season is the period from October this year until the next harvest season in …

Updated 5:50 a.m. July 20, 2019. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report. GENEVA — Iran has taken a British-flagged oil tanker it seized in the Strait of Hormuz to Bandar Abbas port, where it and its crew will remain while an investigation into the vessel’s conduct is carried out, Iran’s Fars news agency said Saturday. The Stena Impero was in an accident with an Iranian fishing boat whose distress call it ignored, the agency quoted the head of Ports and Maritime Organization in southern Hormozgan province, Allahmorad Afifipour, as saying. It was taken to Bander Abbas, on Iran’s southern coast and facing the strait.  “All its 23 crew members will remain on the ship until the probe is over,” Afifipour said. The crew is made up of 18 Indian nationals and five others of other nationalities, he said. The tanker’s operator, Stena Bulk, said Friday the ship had been “in full compliance with all navigation and international regulations,” but was no longer under the crew’s control and could not be contacted. FILE – British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt prepares to give an interview outside his home in London, June 24, 2019. Britain’s foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said Saturday that he was worried …

Officials say the death toll has risen to 152 in monsoon flooding in South Asia as millions of people and animals continue to face the brunt in three countries. At least 90 people have died in Nepal and 50 in India’s Assam state. A dozen people have been killed in neighboring Bangladesh. Shiv Kumar, a government official in Assam, said Saturday that 10 rare one-horned rhinos have died at the Kaziranga National Park after swirling gray waters of the Brahmaputra River burst its banks and entered the reserve. A one-horned rhinoceros walks in floodwaters in Pobitora wildlife sanctuary, east of Gauhati, India, July 19, 2019. The sanctuary has the highest density of the one-horned Rhinoceros in the world. Some 4.8 million people in about 3,700 villages across the state are still affected by the floods, though the frequency of rains has decreased in the past 24 hours, the Assam Disaster Response Authority said. More than 2.5 million have also been hit by flooding in India’s Bihar state. Amid the flooding, 20-year-old Imrana Khatoon delivered her first baby on a boat in floodwaters early Friday while on her way to a hospital in Assam’s flooded Gagalmari village, locals said. The woman …

Summer in the city is hot. How hot? A team at the University of Georgia is developing a way to map how hot it is in so-called urban heat islands, down to the level of individual street blocks. Faith Lapidus reports. …

Fifty years ago, two American astronauts became the first humans to walk on the Moon. But before humans had left Earth, animal astronauts had blazed a trail into space. VOA’s Kerry Hensley has more. …

Many victims of an arson attack on an animation studio in the western Japanese city of Kyoto were young with bright futures, some joining only in April, the company president said Saturday, as the death told climbed to 34. Thursday’s attack on Kyoto Animation, famous in Japan and overseas for its series and movies, was the worst mass killing in two decades in a country with some of the world’s lowest crime rates. Company president Hideaki Hatta said many of the victims were young women. “Some of them joined us just in April. And on the eighth of July, I gave them a small, but their first, bonus,” he said. “People who had a promising future lost their lives. I don’t know what to say. Rather than feeling anger, I just don’t have words,” Hatta said. Policemen stand behind a police line at the torched Kyoto Animation building in Kyoto Fifteen of the victims were in their 20s and 11 were in their 30s, public broadcaster NHK said. Six were in their 40s and one was at least 60. The age of the latest victim, a man who died in hospital, was not known. The names of the victims have …

Officials in Hawaii said Friday that they will not call up additional National Guard troops or use force on peaceful telescope protesters blocking access to the state’s highest peak. Gov. David Ige said that his priority is to keep everyone in the community safe, including the activists at the base of Mauna Kea. The 80 guard members on the Big Island since the start of the protests will remain, state officials said. “We will not be utilizing tear gas, as some of the rumors have been (saying),” Ige said. “We are looking for the best way forward without hurting anyone.” The governor said last week that National Guard units would be used to transport personnel and equipment as well as to enforce road closures. Hawaii Gov. David Ige speaks at a news conference in Honolulu, July 17, 2019, about issuing an emergency proclamation in response to protesters blocking a road to prevent the construction of a giant telescope. Ige said Friday no more troops would be called in to the Big Island, but he stopped short of removing an emergency proclamation that he enacted Wednesday. The emergency order broadened the state’s authority to remove protesters from the mountain, including the …

The Trump administration has told federally funded family planning clinics it is considering a delay in enforcing a controversial rule that bars them from referring women for abortions. That comes after clinics had vowed defiance. Two people attending meetings this week between the Department of Health and Human Services and clinic representatives told The Associated Press that officials said the clinics should be given more time to comply with the rule’s new requirements. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly before any decision has been announced. HHS said Friday that its policy has not changed. Rule announced, to take effect immediately On Monday, agency officials announced that the government would immediately begin enforcing the rule, catching the clinics off-guard and prompting an outcry. Planned Parenthood said its 400 clinics would defy the requirement. Some states, including Illinois and Maryland, backed the clinics. The family planning program serves about 4 million women a year, and many low-income women get basic health care from the clinics. The administration’s abortion restrictions, cheered by social and religious conservatives, are being challenged in court by groups representing the clinics, several states, and the American Medical Association. The litigation …

In the Spanish colonial fortress that serves as his official residence, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello is under siege. Motorcyclists, celebrities, horse enthusiasts and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Puerto Ricans have swarmed outside La Fortaleza (The Fort) in Old San Juan this week, demanding Rossello resign over a series of leaked online chats insulting women, political opponents and even victims of Hurricane Maria.  Rossello, the telegenic 40-year-old son of a former governor, has dropped his normally intense rhythm of public appearances and gone into relatively long periods of near-silence in the media, intensifying questions about his future. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello speaks during a press conference in La Fortaleza’s Tea Room, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 16, 2019. For much of his 2½ years in office, Rossello has given three or four lengthy news conferences a week, comfortably fielding question after question in Spanish and English from the local and international press. And that’s on top of public appearances, one-on-one interviews and televised meetings with visiting politicians and members of his administration.  But since July 11, when Rossello cut short a family vacation in France and returned home to face the first signs of what has become …

The Trump administration is considering more dramatic cuts to the U.S. refugee program, with one official suggesting the White House not allow any refugees into the country in the coming fiscal year. In a Politico report released Thursday, government officials from several federal agencies attended a meeting last week and discussed several options that included a ceiling of 10,000 — well below the current refugee ceiling of 30,000, which is already an all-time low for the program. The U.S. resettled 23,190 refugees since the beginning of fiscal 2019 last October. With 2½ months remaining until the count resets, the U.S. is on track to fall short of this year’s cap, according to U.S. State Department data. Since the so-called “refugee ceiling” is an upper limit, and not a quota, the government is not required to meet the annual admissions number. Multiple figures Scott Arbeiter, president of World Relief, one of the primary refugee resettlement nongovernmental organizations in the U.S., said he has heard multiple figures proposed for the coming fiscal year, all well below the program’s historical annual threshold of around 60,000 to 70,000. In President Barack Obama’s last year two years in office, his administration made a concerted effort …

Joaquin Guzman, the convicted Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo,” has been transferred to a “Supermax” prison in Colorado from which no one has ever escaped, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a statement Friday. Guzman was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years on Wednesday in a federal court in Brooklyn after a jury convicted him of drug trafficking and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies as a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s largest, most violent drug trafficking organizations. Before he was finally captured in 2016, Guzman twice escaped maximum-security prisons in Mexico. “We can confirm that Joaquin Guzman is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at United States Penitentiary (USP) Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, located in Florence, Colorado,” the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in its statement. The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment further. FILE – This Oct. 15, 2015 file photo shows a guard tower looming over a federal prison complex which houses a Supermax facility outside Florence, Colorado. Guzman was whisked away early Friday from a secret location in New York, on his way to the Supermax prison in Florence, his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told the Denver Post. The prison …