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Brazilian states containing the country’s Amazon rainforest said they want to negotiate directly with European nations who fund projects to curb deforestation after changes proposed by the federal government led Norway and Germany to suspend donations. Norway – by far the biggest donor to the Amazon Fund – said last week it had suspended its donations after the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro changed the fund’s governance structure and closed down the steering committee that selects the projects to back. Germany has also suspended its funding. Waldez Góes, governor of Amapá state and president of an organization that groups the Amazon states, said in a statement over the weekend that the embassies of Norway and Germany had been informed of their willingness to negotiate. The states of the Amazon region regretted that Bolsonaro’s actions had led to a suspension of donations, the statement added. “Governors of the Amazon bloc want to directly participate in decisions to reformulate Amazon Fund rules, which are being established by state-run development bank BNDES,” Góes said. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro holds a press conference in Brasilia, Brazil, Aug. 1, 2019. The move comes amid increasing fears surrounding deforestation, which data suggest has soared since …

Bangladesh will work with the United Nations refugee agency to determine if more than 3,000 Rohingya refugees will accept Myanmar’s offer to return home, an official said Monday, nearly a year after a major repatriation plan failed. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine for camps in Bangladesh after a military-led crackdown in August 2017 that the United Nations has said was perpetrated with “genocidal intent,” but many refugees refuse to go back, fearing more violence. “It will be a joint exercise led by UNHCR,” Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation commissioner, told Reuters by telephone Monday, referring to the refugee agency. The United Nations Security Council is due to discuss the latest repatriation plan behind closed doors Wednesday at the request of France, Britain, the United States, Germany and Belgium, diplomats said. FILE – Rohingya refugees gather at a market inside a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 7, 2019. Myanmar has cleared 3,450 people from a list of more than 22,000 refugees provided by Bangladesh, government spokesman Zaw Htay told a news conference in the capital Naypyitaw on Friday. “We have already negotiated with Bangladesh to accept these 3,450 people on August 22,” he said, adding they …

Zimbabwe’s minister of foreign affairs and international trade on Monday defended crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations and urged patience in turning around the country’s foundering economy. Though “everybody’s got the right to demonstrate,” there have “been a lot of insinuations and campaigns of violence,” Sibusiso B. Moyo told VOA in an interview. Citing public safety, he endorsed a Zimbabwe court’s ruling hours earlier to uphold a police ban on a protest organized by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) alliance. Former Major General Sibusiso Moyo, center, who was appointed Foreign Affairs and International Relations Minister speaks with a fellow minister, before taking the oath of office, Dec. 4, 2017, in Harare. Alliance leaders are pressing President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling ZANU-PF party for a role in a transitional government. They had organized a demonstration Monday in Bulawayo, the country’s second-largest city, but police authorities banned it hours before its intended start. Two other opposition demonstrations still are planned this week: for the central city of Gweru on Tuesday and the southeastern city of Masvingo on Wednesday.   Police also had pre-emptively banned a demonstration in Harare last Friday, a decision upheld by a Zimbabwe court. Hundreds of MDC supporters …

 Mexico’s Zapatista indigenous rebel group announced that it is extending its control over so-called “autonomous” zones to 11 more areas in the southern state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas do not hide their dislike of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but when he was asked about the announcement Monday, Lopez Obrador said the expansion was “welcome.” “Go ahead, because that means working to benefit the villages and the people,” Lopez Obrador said. “The only thing we don’t want is violence.” A statement signed by Zapatista “subcommander” Moises and posted over the weekend called it an “exponential growth that allows us to break the blockade again.” But some of the new autonomous zones are likely to be controversial.   A sign in the Zapatista zone with a message that reads in Spanish: ¨You are in the Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people rule and the government obeys.,” warns visitors in Chiapas, México, July 6, 2019. Some are on land the Zapatistas seized after they staged a brief armed uprising in 1994 to demand greater rights for the indigenous. But at least one of new rebel “autonomous” towns, Nuevo Jerusalen, is located in the ecologically sensitive Lacandon jungle, a nature reserve. The Zapatistas …

The Pentagon says the U.S. military has tested a ground-based cruise missile with a range that would have been banned just three weeks ago.   The missile, launched Sunday at San Nicolas Island, California, “accurately impacted its target after more than 500 kilometers of flight,” the Pentagon announced in a news release Monday. “Data collected and lessons learned from this test will inform the Department of Defense’s development of future intermediate-range capabilities,” it added. The United States previously was unable to pursue ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a decades-old arms control pact with Russia.  Washington withdrew from that pact on Aug. 2, citing years of Russian violations. The Pentagon stressed that the cruise missile was configured to carry a conventional payload, not a nuclear weapon. New FILE – U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper briefs the media in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 4, 2019. “It’s about time that we were unburdened by the treaty and kind of allowed to pursue our own interests, and our NATO allies share that view as well,” Esper said. He declined to discuss when or where in Asia the missiles could be deployed …

Turkish authorities have expelled the mayors of the three main cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, provoking protests and political condemnation. Their expulsion comes as Turkish forces are poised to launch a military operation against Syrian Kurdish militants. The pro-Kurdish HDP mayors in Van, Mardin, and Diyarbakir, were replaced by state-appointed trustees Monday. The ruling AKP accuses the mayors of supporting the Kurdish insurgent group the PKK, an allegation the HDP denies. The Turkish Interior Ministry said the personnel action was part of a terrorism investigation. “For the health of the investigations, they have been temporarily removed from their posts as a precaution,” read an Interior Ministry statement. A protester is detained by police during a demonstration against the Turkish government’s removal from office of three pro-Kurdish mayors, Aug. 19, 2019, in Ankara. More than 400 people were detained Monday in a nationwide operation against the outlawed PKK, which Turkey, the European Union and United States have designated as a terrorist organization. “This is a new and clear political coup. It also constitutes a clearly hostile move against the political will of the Kurdish people,” read a joint statement by the HDP leadership. Under emergency powers introduced after a failed …

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged China on Monday to “act in a humanitarian manner” to resolve differences with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Pence called on Beijing to honor its 1984 agreement with Britain, which led to Britain’s 1997 turnover of Hong Kong to China’s control, but allowed freedoms not permissible in mainland China, including the right to protest. Pence, in an address to the Detroit Economic Club, quoted President Donald Trump as saying that “it’ll be much harder” for the U.S. to reach an accord on a new trade deal with China “if something violent happens in Hong Kong.”  Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Economic Club of Detroit, Aug. 19, 2019. “I want to assure you, our administration will continue to urge Beijing to act in a humanitarian manner and urge China and the demonstrators in Hong Kong to resolve their differences peaceably,” Pence said. Pence’s remarks came as Twitter, the social media company, said that 936 accounts originating in China, in “a coordinated state-backed operation,” have been attempting to undermine “the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement” in Hong Kong.  In addition, Facebook said it had suspended numerous accounts that are tied to …

Being president of the United States comes with numerous perks and the fringe benefits continue decades after the nation’s chief executives exit the White House. Presidents are currently paid $400,000 annually, an amount set by Congress. The nation’s leaders have received five pay increases since 1789, when George Washington became the country’s first president. Washington, and the 17 chief executives who followed him, were paid $25,000. In 1873, presidents got a raise to $50,000. In 1909, the presidential paycheck increased to  $75,000 annually. When President Harry Truman started his second term in 1949, he got a raise to $100,000. President Richard Nixon was the first president to get $200,000 in 1969. The current rate of $400,000 took effect in 2001 with President George. W. Bush.     President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in the White House theater on February 1, 2009. Pensions and other allowances were set in place in 1958 after President Truman faced lean times after leaving office. Unlike many other ex-presidents, Truman wasn’t rich and worried about accepting offers that gave the appearance of cashing in on the presidency. However, he eventually sold his memoirs to Life magazine for $600,000, about $5.7 million in …

Islamic State militants in Somalia say they will release jihadist materials in Amharic — a step unmistakably aimed at winning recruits in restive, neighboring Ethiopia. The announcement came in the form of a three-minute video released last month by pro-Islamic State sites and endorsed by the official IS media. The video posted the words to one of Islamic State’s best-known chants in Amharic and promised IS will release more materials in the language, one of the two most-spoken tongues in Ethiopia. Matt Bryden, an Africa analyst with Kenya-based Sahan Research, believes Islamic State — also known as ISIS — is reaching out to Ethiopia’s Muslim community in an attempt to take advantage of ongoing ethnic and political unrest in Africa’s second most populous nation. “I think ISIS sees in Ethiopia a potential opportunity. We know the group has been expanding its influences and its activities across Africa quite aggressively — so far with small results in much of the continent but they are persisting,” Bryden told VOA’s Somali service. He says Ethiopia’s unrest may be worsening despite political reforms enacted by Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed, including the release of thousands of political prisoners and the signing of a peace treaty …

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that citizenship appears to narrow the economic gap between the foreign-born and native-born in the United States. The 2018 figures released Monday offer a view of immigrants’ education, wealth, and the jobs they work in. They also look at differences between naturalized immigrants and those who aren’t citizens.   Their release come as the U.S. is engaged in one of the fiercest debates in decades about the role of immigration.   Stopping the flow of immigrants into the U.S. has been a priority of the Trump administration, which has proposed denying green cards to immigrants who use Medicaid and fought to put a citizenship question on the decennial Census questionnaire.   Monday’s figures show naturalized immigrants had a slightly smaller median income than the native-born.        …

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday was forced to postpone a conference it organized in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Palestinian officials and factions called for a boycott and threatened to organize protests.     The Palestinians cut all ties with the U.S. after it recognized disputed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017, and view the Trump administration as unfairly biased following a series of actions seen as hostile to their aspirations for an independent state. The embassy had organized a conference this week to bring together alumni of U.S. educational and cultural programs, including dozens of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who received permission from Israel to attend. The territory has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power there in 2007. The Palestinian leadership viewed the conference as an attempt to circumvent its boycott of the U.S. administration. “We are aware of recent statements regarding a planned event for alumni of U.S. educational and cultural programs,” the U.S. Embassy said. “In order to avoid the Palestinian participants being put in a difficult situation, we have decided to postpone the event for now.”   It said this and other …

In Uganda, a coach’s passion for baseball is getting schools to embrace America’s favorite pastime.  But a lack of government support means baseball in Uganda is heavily dependent on donations.  Halima Athumani reports from Kampala. …

President Donald Trump is calling on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by at least a full percentage point “over a fairly short period of time,” saying such a move would make the U.S. economy even better and would also “greatly and quickly” enhance the global economy. …..The Fed Rate, over a fairly short period of time, should be reduced by at least 100 basis points, with perhaps some quantitative easing as well. If that happened, our Economy would be even better, and the World Economy would be greatly and quickly enhanced-good for everyone! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2019 In two tweets Monday, Trump kept up his pressure on the Fed and its chairman Jerome Powell, saying the U.S. economy was strong “despite the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell and the Fed.”   He says Democrats were trying to “will” the economy to deteriorate ahead of the 2020 election.   Trump administration officials in recent days have sought to calm worries about a potential U.S. recession that were heightened by last week’s steep stock-market decline.     …

George Wilson Mukhobe has worked as a baseball coach in Uganda for the last decade, and for the last three years as a Major League Baseball scout in Africa. He says there is impressive talent in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. But Mukhobe says few sports shops sell baseball equipment and there is a lack of facilities and support. “Baseball faces a big challenge.  Because, since people have little knowledge about baseball and is damn expensive game, they say, maybe next time,” he told VOA. “They run for quick sports like soccer, athletics and volleyball, you know, basketball.  But with baseball, it’s really tough, even the coaches themselves need to have enough knowledge, to convince the kid that yes, you know the game, so that he can teach them.” Need donations Uganda’s baseball players are heavily dependent on donations from the U.S. and Japan, where Americans introduced the sport.    Uganda’s National Council of Sports says baseball is not among their priorities. “One of the things that lack currently, that you could think that they could do much better, baseball and as government, is to give the team the chance to compete,” said  Ismael Kigongo Dhakaba, the council’s spokesperson. …

Democratic U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan plan to host a news conference Monday afternoon on travel restrictions to Israel and Palestine, after they were denied entry into Israel last week.   At the urging of President Donald Trump, Israel denied entry to the two Muslim representatives over their support for the Palestinian-led boycott movement. Tlaib and Omar, who had planned to visit Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a tour organized by a Palestinian group, are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and support the Palestinian-led international movement boycotting Israel. Before Israel’s decision, Trump tweeted it would be a “show of weakness” to allow the two representatives in. Israel controls entry and exit to the West Bank, which it seized in the 1967 Mideast war along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – territories the Palestinians want for a future state. Trump’s request to a foreign country to bar the entry of elected U.S. officials and Israel’s decision to do so were unprecedented and drew widespread criticism, including from many Israelis as well as staunch supporters of Israel in Congress. Critics said Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision was a …

Democratic U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan plan to host a news conference Monday afternoon on travel restrictions to Israel and Palestine, after they were denied entry into Israel last week.   At the urging of President Donald Trump, Israel denied entry to the two Muslim representatives over their support for the Palestinian-led boycott movement. Tlaib and Omar, who had planned to visit Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a tour organized by a Palestinian group, are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and support the Palestinian-led international movement boycotting Israel. Before Israel’s decision, Trump tweeted it would be a “show of weakness” to allow the two representatives in. Israel controls entry and exit to the West Bank, which it seized in the 1967 Mideast war along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – territories the Palestinians want for a future state. Trump’s request to a foreign country to bar the entry of elected U.S. officials and Israel’s decision to do so were unprecedented and drew widespread criticism, including from many Israelis as well as staunch supporters of Israel in Congress. Critics said Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision was a …

Specialists shoring up fire-damaged Notre-Dame Cathedral returned Monday to the Paris site for the first time in nearly a month, this time wearing disposable underwear and other protective gear after a delay prompted by fears of lead contamination. A worker sprays a gel on the ground to absorb lead during a decontamination operation at Saint Benoit school near Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, Aug. 8, 2019. Meanwhile, cleanup teams swept, sprayed and vacuumed neighboring streets Monday to scrub away any lead left over from the April blaze that decimated Notre-Dame’s roof and toppled its spire. Toxic dust spewed into the air as hundreds of tons of lead melted in the fire.   At the cathedral itself, activity resumed Monday under strict new lead-protection measures for the stonemasons, cleanup workers and scientists working on the monument, according to the Culture Ministry. They include throwaway full-body clothing, obligatory showers and a new decontamination zone to ensure that no one tracks pollution outside the site.   The workers are clearing out hazardous debris and studying and consolidating the medieval monument — a crucial first step to prepare the fragile cathedral for a yearslong, multimillion-euro reconstruction effort.   But even this first step is taking longer …

Voters who prefer hand-marked paper ballots are challenging the validity of the new voting system chosen by Georgia election officials. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last month announced the selection of a system that includes touchscreen voting machines that print a paper summary of voters’ selections.   A petition signed by more than 1,450 Georgia voters and submitted to Raffensperger’s office Monday requests a re-examination of that system. It says the system doesn’t meet the requirements of Georgia’s voting system certification rules and doesn’t comply with the state election code.   Additionally, plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the voting machines in use since 2002 amended their complaint on Friday to target the new system.   Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said secretary of state’s office lawyers were reviewing the arguments.   …

Eirran Betka-Pope was on her lunch break when she spotted hundreds of Donald Trump supporters protesting outside the office of Rep. Justin Amash, the first Republican on Capitol Hill to say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the president. The protesters, who stood on the sidewalk with “Squash Amash” signs, saw his comments as the ultimate betrayal of a president they adore. But for Betka-Pope, a Trump critic, Amash’s actions were commendable — and worthy of a counterprotest. The 32-year-old from Grand Rapids, who works in theater and sketch comedy, put on a Trump mask she happened to have in her car and joined the crowd on the sidewalk. She held up a piece of paper that read “I suck.” For the next half-hour, Betka-Pope stood silently as some people insulted her. A few passing drivers honked in support. More than one person flashed a middle finger. Betka-Pope happily took the abuse for the congressman. But the one thing the Democrat says she won’t do to show her appreciation for Amash is vote for him. “There are other candidates more aligned with my values,” she said. Amash’s is another cautionary tale for GOP lawmakers who consider opposing Trump, whose job …

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “Pan-European Picnic,” an event on the border of Austria and Hungary considered to have helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both leaders are expected to make speeches during a religious ceremony Monday in the border town of Sopron before holding bilateral talks over lunch. Merkel on Saturday thanked Hungary for “having contributed to making the miracle of German reunification possible” by briefly opening the Iron Curtain on Aug. 19, 1989, allowing 700 refugees from Communist-ruled East Germany to cross the border into the West. Relations between Berlin and Budapest have grown frostier in recent years amid Orban’s hard-line stance against refugees and German criticism of Hungary’s authoritarian policies. …

Italy’s ruling League party would seek tax cuts in the 2020 budget by rising the country’s deficit a little bit, its economics spokesman said on Monday. League chief Matteo Salvini pulled the plug last week on its coalition government with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, starting a potential countdown to elections, which the country may need to tackle alongside preparing its budget in the fall. “We need to pursue a tax cut and it is obvious that a small proportion will be funded with the deficit”, League’s economics chief Claudio Borghi said in an interview with state-owned television RAI. …

Thousands of protesters in Indonesia’s West Papua province have set fire to a local parliament building.  Vice Gov. of West Papua province Mohammad Lakotani said Monday’s demonstration was sparked by accusations that security forces arrested and insulted dozens of Papuan students in the East Java province cities of Surabaya and Malang on Sunday.He said an angered mob set fire to tires and twigs in Manokwari, the provincial capital. Television footage showed orange flames and gray smoke billowing from the burning parliament building. Several thousand protesters also staged rallies in Jayapura, the capital city of the neighboring province of Papua, where an insurgency has simmered for decades. Many in the crowd wore headbands of a separatist flag. …

At least eight K-pop stars from China and even one from Taiwan and one from Hong Kong are publicly stating their support for Beijing’s one-China policy, eliciting a mixture of disappointment and understanding from fans.  Many of the statements came after protesters opposed to Beijing’s growing influence over semi-autonomous Hong Kong removed a Chinese flag and tossed it into Victoria Harbor earlier this month.  Lay Zhang, Jackson Wang, Lai Kuan-lin and Victoria Song were among the K-pop singers who recently uploaded a Chinese flag and declared themselves as “one of 1.4 billion guardians of the Chinese flag” on their official Weibo social media accounts. Wang is from Hong Kong and Lai is from Taiwan.  Some see the public pronouncements as the latest examples of how celebrities and companies feel pressured to toe the line politically in the important Chinese market. Yet they also coincide with a surge in patriotism among young Chinese raised on a steady diet of pro-Communist Party messaging. Song and Zhang, a member of popular group EXO, have shown their Chinese pride on Instagram, in Song’s case uploading an image of the Chinese flag last week with the caption “Hong Kong is part of China forever.” Such …

Imagine listening to a violin concert in one of New York City’s majestic cathedrals or in the National Arboretum, surrounded by blooming magnolias. Now anyone can experience this exquisite scene with the use of VR glasses. A team of researchers from the University of Maryland at College Park came up with new immersive technologies that allow people from all over the world to experience performing arts in a breathtakingly beautiful setting without getting up from their couch. Nastassia Jaumen has the story. …