Month: June 2019

The acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, John Sanders, is resigning and will leave his post on July 5, the agency said on Tuesday. Sanders’s departure coincides with an outcry over the treatment of detained migrant children. Attorneys said 250 children had been held for weeks in dirty conditions at an overcrowded Texas border patrol station without adequate food and water. The children have since been relocated to children’s shelters. John Sanders has led the agency since April. Before taking over CBP, he was the agency’s chief operating officer and had also been the Transportation Security …

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A sizable number of U.S. voters say they’d have some hesitancy about supporting an LGBT candidate for president, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In fact it’s an issue for many more than a candidate’s race or gender. In the poll, 32% of registered voters said they would be less excited about supporting a presidential candidate who was gay, lesbian or bisexual; 42% said that about a transgender candidate. By contrast, only about 1 in 10 voters expressed such hesitance in regard to a candidate’s gender or race. Yet many LGBT candidates …

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Chhengpor Aun of the VOA Cambodian Service contributed to this report. SIHANOUKVILLE, CAMBODIA — Nhor Sreyoun recruited her two younger brothers and sister-in-law to work with her on the construction site of a Chinese-owned building. That was in April.   On Tuesday, seven people were charged in the fatal collapse of the building, hours after the three-day rescue operation to find survivors ended on Monday. Nhor Sreyoun told VOA Khmer that she was “full of regret” that her younger brother, Nhor Chanthorn, 18, died six months before his planned wedding.   Twenty-seven others died, and her other brother and a sister …

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Steve Dunleavy, a reporter and columnist for the New York Post who helped define the tabloid’s modern style, died. He was 81. The Post reported that Dunleavy died at his home on Long Island on Monday night. Steve Dunleavy was one of the greatest reporters of all time,” Post owner Rupert Murdoch said. “His passing is the end of a great era.” Dunleavy was born in Sydney, Australia, and began his journalism career at The Sun, where his father worked as a photographer. He did stints at a variety of newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and The South China Morning …

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U.S. consumers will delay or forgo technology upgrades if President Donald Trump imposes a new round of 25% tariffs on Chinese goods, slowing the U.S. innovation engine, technology industry executives said on Monday. Trump’s administration is preparing to levy tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports after a public comment period ends on July 2 if the U.S. and Chinese presidents cannot relaunch talks to end their trade war. The two countries have been at odds since July 2018 over a host of U.S. demands that Beijing adopt policy changes that would better protect American intellectual property …

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision for Mideast peace has hit a raw nerve in Lebanon, reviving fears of any plan that would permanently settle Palestinian refugees in the country and shift its Christian-Muslim sectarian balance. The first part of the White House plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians focuses on encouraging $50 billion of investment in the Palestinian territories and three neighboring Arab states, one of them Lebanon. Lebanese of all sects are objecting to ideas that have surfaced so far, seeing $6 billion for Lebanon as an inducement to accept the settlement of Palestinians who have lived …

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Sudan’s military rulers refused to agree on Monday to the Ethiopian proposal for a power-sharing agreement with the country’s pro-democracy movement, a top general said, in comments that could worsen a volatile standoff with the protesters. Ethiopia has led diplomatic efforts to bring the military and protest leaders back to the negotiating table, after a deadly crackdown by security forces killed at least 128 people across the country earlier this month, according to protest organizers. Sudanese authorities offered a lower toll of 61 deaths. Protest leaders, represented by the coalition Forces for Declaration of Freedom and Change, had accepted the …

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Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Georgia’s capital for the fifth consecutive day Monday, calling for government reform, a snap election and the resignation of the nation’s interior minister. On Monday, the leader of Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party announced  “large-scale political reform.” “We will have a parliament where all the existing political actors will be respected,” Georgian Dream Party Chief Bidzina Ivanishvili said. Ivanishvili announced that next year’s parliamentary elections would be organized in a proportional representation system. But, Ivanishvili’s announcement fell short of satisfying protesters’ demands. Protests began Thursday, in response to a visit by a Russian legislator to …

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A U.S. citizen has been sentenced to 12 years in a Vietnamese prison for  “attempting to overthrow the state.” Michael Phuong Minh Nguyen, 55, pleaded guilty to wanting to incite protests in Vietnam but denied encouraging people to attack government offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City   He will be deported to the U.S. after he finishes his sentence, his lawyer said. Nguyen Van Mieng, told Reuters news service that Nguyen “admitted guilt at the trial and asked the jury to reduce his sentence so that he could soon reunite with his family.” The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi …

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