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Hong Kong civil servants and supporters crowded into a public park Friday to join a pro-democracy movement that China’s top diplomat accused Western nations of provoking. Several thousand joined the rally for government workers in solidarity with protesters who have called for greater rights and government accountability over the past two months. As rain hit the umbrella-ready crowd, attendees dispersed willingly, avoiding the police clashes that have increasingly beleaguered demonstrations. “As civil servants, if we don’t stand up, that means we are disloyal,” said K. H. Wu, a retiree who worked for the government’s Census Department for 40 years. “Our loyalties are not to a particular government, but to the people.” Wu attended the rally with his wife, also a civil servant. He said this was the first time he participated in a rally in which he openly shared his status as a former government worker. He said he did so because he feels “there’s nothing to be afraid of.” “Right now the Hong Kong government is blindly leading the people,” Wu said. “They disregard the needs of the population. With Hong Kong like this right now, you have to rid yourself of all fear.” Civil servants attend a rally …

Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. U.S. Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales shake hands before a bilateral meeting in Guatemala City, Guatemala Aug. 1, 2019. McAleenan traveled to Guatemala to promote safe third country agreement U.S. Homeland Security acting Secretary FILE – A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer looks on during an operation in Escondido, Calif., July 8, 2019. One family’s gripping account after an immigration raid The family opened the door thinking they were going to collaborate with law enforcement to help solve a crime. That is not what happened. It wasn’t local police. Children and adults play on pink seesaws along the U.S.-Mexico border in Sunland Park, N.M., July 28, 2019. US-Mexico Border and seesaw bridges Two California professors installed FILE – Yazmin Juarez, mother of 19-month-old Mariee, who died after detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testifies before a House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and …

With farm bankruptcies rising and agricultural debt loads soaring, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill that will make it easier for more farmers with larger amounts of debt to file for bankruptcy protection. The bipartisan bill — called the Family Farmer Relief Act of 2019 — raises the ceiling on how much debt producers who file for Chapter 12 bankruptcy can have, to $10 million from the previous $4 million. Chapter 12 is a part of the federal bankruptcy code that is designed for family farmers and fishermen to reorganize their debts. It was created during the 1980s farm crisis as a simple court procedure to let family farmers keep operating while working out a plan to repay lenders. It costs far more now to run a U.S. farm than it did 30 years ago, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Without this change to the law, bankruptcy experts say, farmers whose debts exceed $4.15 million are forced to use Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which is more costly and onerous. The legislation, passed by the Senate on Thursday and earlier by the U.S. House of Representatives, is headed to the White House for President Donald Trump to sign, …

MEXICO CITY — A Mexican reporter in Guerrero state who also served as a municipal official was shot and killed Friday in a beachside resort, authorities said, the second journalist from the state slain in less than a week as Mexico’s endemic bloodletting reaches new heights.    Edgar Alberto Nava, who published news stories about the coastal resort city of Zihuatanejo on a Facebook page called La Verdad de Zihuatanejo, died after being shot several times, the Guerrero prosecutor’s office said.    Nava also worked as Zijuatanejo’s regulations director. It was not clear if the attack, in a Zihuatanejo restaurant, was related to Nava’s journalism work.    Homicides in Mexico jumped in the first half of the year to the highest on record, according to official data, underscoring the challenges President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has faced since taking office in December with a vow to reduce violence in the country ravaged by notorious drug cartels.    “This is a great loss for our government and for the journalism industry where he also worked,” Zihuatanejo Mayor Jorge Sanchez said in a statement lamenting Nava’s death.    Six other journalists in Mexico have been killed so far this year, according to free-speech advocacy group Article …

Hopes by small aviation museum in southwestern Iowa that a stamp in its possession was rare enough to parlay into a fortune crashed Friday when experts told them it wasn’t real, and likely not even worth the paper it was glued upon. The Iowa Aviation Museum in Greenfield, Iowa, has had what it thought was a 1918 “Inverted Jenny” stamp on public display for some 20 years, dating back to when it was donated to the museum, glued to a board along with several other stamps. A notation from the donor attached to the board speculated then that it was worth about $73,000. Experts at the national stamp convention meeting in Omaha knew immediately the stamp wasn’t authentic, said Ken Martin with the American Philatelic Society that’s holding the show through Sunday. Likely cut from a catalog “It wasn’t the right size. It was too small,” Martin said. “This version was likely cut out of a postage stamp auction catalog.” An examination under a microscope confirmed experts’ initial doubt. A 100-year-old stamp would have been printed from an artist’s engraving, so the image under a microscope would appear as a series of lines. A reproduction for printed material decades later …

Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives voted Friday to confirm Pedro Pierluisi as secretary of state, removing an important obstacle to the veteran politician becoming governor with an hour to go before Ricardo Rossello was expected to step down. The House voted 26-21, with one abstention, to confirm Rossello’s nominee and potential successor. The legislature, which is controlled by Pierluisi’s New Progressive Party, erupted into cheers when the deciding vote was cast. But Pierluisi’s fate remains unclear. The secretary of state is next to line for the governor’s chair when the chief executive resigns. However, the issue of who is rightfully governor is almost certain to go to court.  Rossello was due to step down at 5 p.m., a resignation he promised in response to weeks of popular protest over mismanagement, and a series of leaked chats in which he and advisers denigrated a range of Puerto Ricans. If Pierluisi, 60, does not become governor, the position is taken by Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, who is not widely popular and already is the target of protests. The down-to-the-wire maneuvering risked political chaos and a constitutional crisis and sowed bitterness and pessimism among Puerto Ricans about the fate of their island, which …

BOSTON — Authorities said Friday that they were looking to toxicology reports for clues to the death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill, a granddaughter of assassinated U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.    The Kennedy family confirmed the death in a statement after police responded to a call Thursday afternoon about a possible drug overdose at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The statement was issued by Brian Wright O’Connor, a spokesman for Saoirse Hill’s uncle, former U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II.    Hill, 22, was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill, who was one of four people falsely convicted in the 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings of two pubs. The two are now divorced.    “She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit,” the statement said, adding she was passionate about human rights and women’s empowerment and worked with indigenous communities to build schools in Mexico.  ‘Gifted student’   Hill, whose first name is pronounced SIR-shuh, attended Boston College, where she was a member of the Class of 2020. The college issued a statement Friday saying she was a communications major and “a gifted …

 The U.S. Navy has identified the pilot killed in the crash of a fighter jet in the California desert. A Navy statement Friday says the pilot was 33-year-old Lt. Charles Z. Walker.   The Navy released a photo of Walker but provided no additional information, such as his hometown. Walker’s F/A-18E Super Hornet crashed July 31 in Death Valley National Park while flying through a canyon where military pilots routinely conduct low-level training missions. Seven park visitors on a canyon overlook suffered minor injuries caused by debris from the crash. The Super Hornet was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-151 based at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California’s Central Valley. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. …

The latest batch of tariffs that President Donald Trump plans to impose on Chinese goods would likely cost U.S. households an average of $200 a year, some economists have estimated. That would come on top of the roughly $831 imposed per household from Trump’s existing tariffs, according to a New York Federal Reserve analysis. Trump plans to tax $300 billion of Chinese imports at 10% starting in September with the goal of accelerating trade talks with Beijing to favor the United States. The new tariffs would be in addition to 25% tariffs Trump has imposed on $250 billion in Chinese products. Those are mostly industrial goods. By contrast, the new tariffs would target products used by American consumers such as shoes, clothing and cellphones. President Donald Trump meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the start of their bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. By Friday, Trump’s new planned tariffs had triggered worries, especially among retailers, about the consequences. Retail stores, many of which have been struggling, would have to make the painful choice of either absorbing the higher costs from the new tariffs or imposing them on price-conscious customers. Additionally, China has …

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a deal on Friday to sell more American beef to Europe in what was a modest win for an administration that remains mired in a trade war with China. Trump gathered European Union officials and cowboy-hatted American ranchers in the White House Roosevelt Room to announce the pact. “The agreement that we sign today will lower trade barriers in Europe and expand access for American farmers and ranchers,” Trump said. He spoke shortly before the agreement was signed by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Stavros Lambrinidis, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States and EU representative Jani Raappana. The European Commission has stressed that any beef deal will not increase overall beef imports and that all the beef coming in would be hormone-free, in line with EU food safety rules. An agreement would need to be approved by the European parliament. After the agreement was signed, Trump joked at the podium that his administration was working with the EU “on a 25% tariff on all Mercedes-Benz and BMWs coming into our nation.” “So, we appreciate — I’m only kidding,” he said to laughter. The beef deal could help alleviate some of the damage to …

Military authorities in Sudan have arrested more suspects in the shooting deaths of protesters in the cities of el-Obeid on Monday and Omdurman on Thursday. Four Sudanese paramilitary soldiers were arrested Friday in the deaths of six protesters in el-Obeid. On Thursday, the Transitional Military Council arrested seven members of the Rapid Support Forces in connection with that incident. Another two suspects have been arrested for the killing of four demonstrators in Omdurman. Despite the killings and the tensions, the TMC and civilian Forces for Freedom and Change Coalition resumed talks Thursday evening on forming a power-sharing government. The sides are trying to agree on a constitutional outline for a government that will lead Sudan for the next three years, until elections. This week’s protests were sparked by demands for justice for all those killed and wounded in the protests of the past six months. Alaa Abdulahadi, who joined a march Thursday in the Burri neighborhood east of Khartoum, said her cousin was killed during the June 3 military crackdown on protesters outside army headquarters in Khartoum. “We have lost so many lives and the old regime destroyed our country. We have witnessed the deterioration of our economy and the abuse of …

In a speech Friday to a regional youth leadership program in Thailand, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended new U.S. tariffs on China, saying, “We want free and fair trade, not trade that undermines competition.” Pompeo’s statements came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would impose a 10 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports starting September first. Pompeo chided China for “decades of bad behavior” that have stalled free trade. “It’s time for that to stop,” he said. He also mentioned the massive anti-government protests in Hong Kong. “We also believe in human rights and freedom,” he said. “The current unrest in Hong Kong clearly shows that the will and the voice of the governed will always be heard.” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo crosses his arms for the traditional ‘ASEAN handshake’ with Chinese FM Wang Yi and fellow diplomats, during the 26th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 2, 2019. Pompeo, who has assured his Southeast Asian partners this week that they do not have to choose between the U.S. and China, used his speech Friday to contrast U.S. and Chinese investment. He described Chinese investment as exploitative, and U.S. investment as …

U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed a new round of North Korean missile tests early Friday, five months after his last denuclearization talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and with pressure building to iron out a deal. “These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement,” he wrote on Twitter, later acknowledging that the missile tests could have violated United Nations resolutions. The two men met in Singapore in June of last year. Kim Jong Un and North Korea tested 3 short range missiles over the last number of days. These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when we shook hands. There may be a United Nations violation, but.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials assess the projectile as likely a “short-range ballistic missile” that shares flight characteristics with other recent North Korean launches, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement to reporters. The Friday launch was first reported by U.S. officials, who said the move did not appear to threaten North America. North Korea has test-fired at least six short-range weapons in just over a …

The United States said Friday it would bar two Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations from traveling to the United States in its latest action to pressure Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro into stepping down. The U.S. State Department said in a statement the two officials, Rafael Enrique Bastardo Mendoza, the commander of Venezuela’s special forces, and Ivan Rafael Hernandez Dala, the chief of counterintelligence, had committed “gross violations of human rights.” The United States imposed financial sanctions on the two officials, as well as three other people, in February. The State Department’s move allows it to revoke any visas the two officials, their spouses and minor children may have and renders them ineligible for travel into the United States.  …

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton will attend a summit in Peru to discuss Venezuela on Tuesday, but Venezuela’s allies Russia and Cuba turned down invitations to take part, two foreign ministry sources in Peru said. One of the sources said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will also attend the meeting, which aims to discuss Venezuela’s political crisis and build support for early elections. Both sources asked not to be named because the list of attendees had not been announced. A spokesman for Bolton declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Peru invited some 100 foreign ministers to the summit and had hoped to include Russia, Cuba, China and Bolivia. The idea was to foster dialog between supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his critics, Peru’s foreign minister said when he announced the summit last month. China and Bolivia have not confirmed whether they will attend, both sources said. The head of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Moreno, and the European Union’s representative on Venezuela, Enrique Iglesias, have confirmed their attendance, the sources added.   …

Turkish authorities have started filling a controversial dam whose artificial lake will submerge a 12,000-year-old town and which is the source of tension with Iraq, activists said Friday. The small town of Hasankeyf in the southeastern Batman province, home to 3,000 residents, will disappear as the lake is filled for the Ilisu project. While some residents welcome the development as a boost to the local economy, many are concerned over the loss of heritage. “They have closed the dam and the water is rising,” said Ridvan Ayhan, spokesman for the “Keep Hasankeyf Alive” collective, an activist group which opposes the dam. The dam has been built downstream of the Tigris river, causing concern in Iraq, which shares the river, that it will add to the region’s water shortages. But the dam is a central part of Turkey’s long-running Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), which aims to develop one of the country’s poorest regions through energy and irrigation. Ayhan said he had satellite images showing the water covered a 20-kilometre area in a process the group believed began between July 17 and 19. “We are asking the authorities to empty the dam, let the water flow. They haven’t made any statement,” Ayhan …

Indian doctors removed a tumor with a record number of 526 teeth inside a seven-year-old boy’s mouth, the medical team in the southern city of Chennai said on Friday. The 200 gram (7 ounce) growth was lodged in the boy’s lower right jaw, said Senthilnathan P., a doctor at Saveetha Dental College and Hospital, where the operation was performed. “He had come to us complaining about a swelling in his jaw,” Senthilnathan told Reuters, saying the boy had a history of swelling since he was three. “It was a benign tumor, which we removed and found that it was embedded with hundreds of unerupted teeth,” he added of the operation last month, saying Indian doctors believed the number of teeth was a global medical record. A tumor with unerupted teeth is typically a genetic condition that can also be in some cases caused by external factors such as trauma to a tooth, the doctor said. “The boy recovered very well and got discharged in three days,” he added.   …

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Friday that she met her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to discuss tensions following Canada’s December arrest of a Huawei Technologies Co executive on a U.S. warrant, and the subsequent detention of two Canadians by China. “The fact that we were able to speak and discuss these issues face-to-face, directly with one another, absolutely is a positive step,” Freeland said in a teleconference from Bangkok, where she was attending an annual east Asia summit. Freeland said the two ministers met on the sidelines of the international gathering and “committed to continued discussions,” but she gave few details about their conversation. It was the first encounter between the two since Canada detained Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou — the daughter of the Chinese company’s founder — in December. Beijing is demanding her return. She is facing possible extradition to the United States to face charges that she conspired to defraud global banks about Huawei’s relationship with a company operating in Iran. “Minister Wang expressed concerns regarding the extradition process of Meng Wanzhou,” Freeland said without elaborating. After Meng was picked up in Vancouver, China detained Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig and later charged …

Peering through the darkness under the faint light of a peach-colored moon, wildlife biologist Jason Davis spots a telltale green flash in the bushes. Quick as a flash himself, Davis arcs a long-handled mesh net through the humid coastal air, ensnaring his tiny target. Ignoring the mosquitoes, Davis heads to the open bed of his pickup truck, opens up a notebook-size metal testing kit, and begins examining his find. Two minutes later, he makes his pronouncement. “That is what I am calling bethaniensis,” he declares. “Photuris bethaniensis,” aka the Bethany Beach Firefly, was first identified in the 1950s, and has been found only in a sliver of southern Delaware coastland. Now environmental groups are shining a beacon on the luminescent beetle, whose unique habitat is threatened by coastal development, sea level rise, invasive plants and insecticides. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, both based in Oregon, are pushing for the federal Endangered Species list to include its first firefly. Their petition to the Department of Interior says the Bethany Beach Firefly “is at immediate risk of extinction” from the “imminent destruction” of much of its habitat, noting plans to build expensive beach homes in …

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has come under fire for stacking his new cabinet with ageing party loyalists despite hopes he might opt for more technocrats in his final term. The senate this week approved the list of 43 ministers after the former military ruler finally settled on their names some two months after his inauguration in May. Buhari, 76, is yet to hand out their portfolios but already his choice of stalwarts from his All Progressives Congress (APC) party has caused dismay. “One would have expected that the president would shop for more people with more expertise” to assuage worries about the future, said Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, head of Abuja-based Transition Monitoring Group organisation. She said she doubted the ability of those chosen “to push the agenda for development for Nigeria”. Buhari faces a raft of challenges in his second term at the helm of Africa’s most populous nation — from tackling a grinding Islamist insurgency and spreading insecurity to trying to bolster a fragile economic recovery. During his first four years he earned the nickname “Baba go-slow” after he took six months to name a cabinet and was seen to proceed with decisions at a glacial pace. Far from cutting …

The daughter of U.S. President Ronald Reagan has asked for forgiveness for her father’s racist remarks.  Patti Davis said in an opinion piece published Thursday in The Washington Post she “wasn’t prepared for the tape of my father using the world ‘monkeys’  to describe black African delegates to the United Nations who had voted in a way that angered him.” Members of the Tanzanian delegation had voted in 1971 against recognizing the People’s Republic of China.  “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes,” then California Governor Reagan said in a telephone call with then-President Richard Nixon, who taped the conversation.  The tape of Reagan remarks accompanied an article about the comments Wednesday on the website of The Atlantic.  “There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation,” Davis wrote.  “If I had read his words as a quotation, and not heard them, I’d have said they were fabricated,” she wrote.  “Because I never heard anything like that from him.”  “. . . but it doesn’t remove the knife cut of the words I heard him say on that tape.  That …

A television documentary has made allegations linking Australia’s gambling giant, Crown Casino, to organized crime, money laundering and human trafficking. The company has taken out newspaper ads denying the allegations.  The investigation into Crown Casino was carried out by Australia’s Channel Nine television network and two newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The story was based on tens of thousands of documents apparently leaked from the company that owns casinos in the cities of Melbourne and Perth, and is planning another in Sydney. The documentary alleged links between Crown and organized crime and claims the company turned a “blind eye” to money laundering and exploited weaknesses in Australia’s immigration processes to fly wealthy Chinese gamblers into the country without proper checks. There are also claims it had business links with an Australian brothel that has been investigated over human trafficking. MP seeks investigation Independent Member of Parliament Andrew Wilkie told the Australian parliament that Crown has operated above the law in the state of Victoria. “I now know of three police officers — two currently serving — who have openly said to my staff that in Victoria, Crown is regarded as the Vatican, an independent sovereign state all to …

Life can have its obstacles, but facing those obstacles with a disability is even more challenging. Saba Shah Khan introduces us to a lawyer in Parkland, Florida, who is defying the stereotypes associated with autism. …

VOA’s Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report. The United States on Friday pulled out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty to develop its own new warheads after the Russians refused to destroy their new missiles NATO says violate the pact. “Russia failed to return to full and verified compliance through the destruction of its noncompliant missile system, the SSC-8 or 9M729 ground-launched, intermediate-range cruise missile,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise.” Pompeo, in a statement, added the United States “will not remain party to a treaty that is deliberately violated by Russia. Russia’s noncompliance under the treaty jeopardizes U.S. supreme interests as Russia’s development and fielding of a treaty-violating missile system represents a direct threat to the United States and our allies and partners.” President Donald Trump talks to reporters before departing for a campaign rally, on the South Lawn of the White House, Aug. 1, 2019. New agreement? U.S. President Donald Trump he is hopeful a new agreement can be made to replace the historic Cold War pact. “Russia would like to do something on a nuclear treaty and that’s OK with me. They would …