The Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump Wednesday. Lawmakers passed charges he abused the power of the presidency to benefit himself politically by a 230-197 vote, with one present. Charges Trump obstructed Congress’ efforts to investigate him also passed by a 229-198 vote, with one present. The historic vote fell almost entirely along party lines, sending the case for removing Trump from office to the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill

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Minutes after the House impeached President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw uncertainty into the process by refusing to say, repeatedly, when or whether she would send two articles to the Senate for a trial.

Her comments came as a surprise in a news conference late Wednesday that was intended to express Democrats’ somber closing message after voting to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. She started by praising her fellow Democrats for having “moral courage” and said it was “a great day for the Constitution of the United States of America.”

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US House Impeaches President Trump 

On a near party-line vote, Democrat-controlled House approves two articles of impeachment against Trump, a Republican, making him only third US president to be impeached in country’s 243-year history 

But then she declined to say when she would send the articles to the Republican-led Senate. Until the articles are submitted, the Senate cannot hold the trial that is nearly certain to acquit the president.

Pelosi said House Democrats could not name impeachment managers — House prosecutors who make the case for Trump’s conviction and removal from office — until they know more about how the Senate will conduct a trial.

“’We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. “And I would hope that that will be soon. … So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected a proposal earlier this week from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to call several witnesses. McConnell also said that he is coordinating with the White House and declared that “I am not an impartial juror.”

Pelosi said that McConnell “says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury to be in cahoots with the lawyers of the accused. That doesn’t sound right to us.”

Schumer and Pelosi are set to meet Thursday morning, according to a person familiar with the planning who was not authorized to discuss the private meeting.

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Legacy Moment: Pelosi Leads ‘Somber’ Trump Impeachment

Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent much of the historic day within a few steps of the cloakroom door, away from better-lit seats where the managers and members were debating impeachment

Asked again if she could guarantee that she would send the articles to the Senate, Pelosi said at the news conference: “That would have been our intention.” But they will see what the Senate decides, she said.

“We are not having that discussion. We have done what we set out to do,” Pelosi said.

An aide to McConnell said he did not have an immediate comment on Pelosi’s remarks. But he tweeted that McConnell would speak about “House Democrats’ precedent-breaking impeachment of the President of the United States” on Thursday morning.

Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a member of Pelosi’s leadership team, said after her remarks that Democrats want impeachment proceedings that are “judicious and responsible and deliberative.”

He said that while Senate will decide its own procedures, “the speaker’s only point is before she sends it over she needs to understand what that is” because it will influence who the impeachment managers are.

Asked about never sending the articles over, Cicilline said, “I would not speculate that anyone’s even contemplating that.”

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India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the final appeal of one of the four men sentenced to death for the 2012 fatal gang rape of a woman on a moving bus in New Delhi, paving the way for the four to be hanged.

The gruesome case made international headlines and exposed the scope of sexual violence against women in India, prompting lawmakers to stiffen penalties in rape cases.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student whom Indian media dubbed “Nirbhaya,” or “Fearless,” because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified, was heading home with a male friend from a movie theater when six men lured them onto a bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries to her. The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family insists he was killed. The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

One of those sentenced to death, Akshay Kumar Singh, filed his review petition earlier this month after the other three had theirs rejected.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Singh’s appeal. India’s president can still decide to grant him mercy, but that is not expected to happen.

Activists say new sentencing requirements haven’t deterred rape, the fourth-most common crime against women in India, according to government statistics.

The last hanging in India was in 2013.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes amid a revived debate over sexual violence in India after several headline-grabbing cases in recent weeks. A woman in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was doused with gasoline and set on fire by five men, including two she had accused of gang rape and who were out on bail, on her way to attend a court hearing in her case. She died earlier this month at a hospital in New Delhi.

The burned body of a 27-year-old veterinarian was found in late November near the city of Hyderabad in southern India. Police later fatally shot four men being held on suspicion of raping and killing the woman after investigators took them to the crime scene, drawing praise from people frustrated by the pace of the 2012 case and condemnation from those who said it undermined the courts’ role.

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A global shipping industry organization is proposing a research and development program to help cut carbon dioxide emissions, funded by about $5 billion from shipping companies over a decade.

The International Chamber of Shipping said Wednesday that it is proposing creating a nongovernmental organization to be known as the International Maritime Research and Development Board.

It would be overseen by member countries of the U.N. maritime agency and financed by shipping companies through a mandatory contribution of $2 per metric ton of marine fuel.

Environmental activists say that while shipping contributes only about 2% of global greenhouse gases, the industry’s efforts are essential to combating climate change.

Last year, members of the U.N. agency, the International Maritime Organization, reached an agreement to cut the shipping industry’s emissions.

The strategy envisions cutting total annual emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared with 2008. It foresees “pursuing efforts toward phasing them out entirely.”

The International Chamber of Shipping said that the proposed $5 billion “is critical to accelerate the R&D effort required to decarbonize the shipping sector” and to spur the development of commercially viable zero-carbon ships by the early 2030s. It added that “additional stakeholders’ participation is welcomed.”

The group said that governments will discuss the shipping industry’s proposal when the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee meets in London in March.

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Farmers and construction workers protested across the Netherlands early Wednesday, driving in slow-moving convoys during the morning rush hour to demonstrate against government policies aimed at cutting pollution.

Traffic authorities warned commuters that the morning rush hour would be busier than usual and police issued fines to some farmers for driving their tractors on the highway as the latest in a series of protests clogged roads around the country.

Police closed off a major highway near Amsterdam when farmers drove tractors onto the road.

Protester Jacco van den Berg told Dutch national broadcaster NOS that the action was aimed at showing that construction workers are prepared to take action to protect their livelihoods, which they say are threatened by measures to reduce pollution.

“Something has to happen,” he said. “We’re coming up to Christmas and there are companies that won’t make it to Christmas.”

Many construction projects were halted earlier this year when a Dutch court ruled that the government’s policy on granting building permits breached European pollution laws.

The protests came a day after Dutch senators approved legislation to cut emissions of the pollutant nitrogen oxide. Measures include making farmers change the feed they give to livestock and extending a voluntary scheme to buy up pig farms.

The new legislation, which has already been approved by the lower house of Parliament, also lowers the maximum speed limit on Dutch highways from 130 kph (80 mph) to 100 kph (62 mph).

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In conservative Pakistan, women’s sports still lag far behind their male counterparts. That has not stopped women who enjoy sports from pushing the boundaries and demanding change. In a poor neighborhood in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, young women are so passionate about football they have persisted despite the disapproval of their own families and society. But as Ayesha Tanzeem reports from Karachi, the young women still have doubts about a future in the sport.

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Stirring a giant vat in a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian Christian Maryam Salem prepares a special festive dish — not for Christmas, but the St Barbara’s Day festival.

It is celebrated every December 17 in Aboud, which residents believe is the last resting place of Saint Barbara, a third century woman killed for refusing to renounce her Christian faith.

The special dessert, named after Barbara and given to hundreds of people, looks a little like rice pudding but includes wheat, anise, fennel, cinnamon, almonds, raisins and sugar.

Salem says it takes several days to prepare, starting with soaking the wheat for 24 hours.

“We cook it and gradually add the rest of the ingredients and keep stirring until the ingredients are well mixed,” said Salem, who has been preparing the dish for the festivities for 12 years.

The exact details of Barbara’s story are disputed but the legend of the story is well-known.

The beautiful daughter of a pagan born in the third century, she secretly converted to Christianity.

Once her father found out she fled but was eventually caught.

Her furious father murdered her but was struck by lightning and died shortly after.

The pastor of Aboud’s Greek Orthodox Church, Father Emmanuel Awwad, said some accounts suggest the final scenes took place in the village, while others placed them in the city of Baalbek in modern day Lebanon.

Bagpipes

Celebrations began before sunset on Monday, with a special prayer held in the church in the village centre.

Afterwards the clergy and local residents, both Christian and Muslim, marched through the village down streets flanked by olive trees and cactuses, while a group of scouts played bagpipes and drums.

The march culminated at the saint’s tomb, located on a rocky hill where on a clear day you can see through Israeli territory to the Mediterranean Sea.

There families and visitors lit candles in the darkened room in honor of the saint.

“We ascend to the tomb with a march befitting the saint’s standing and greatness as a martyr,” Awwad said.

He said the march was “affirming their affiliation to the land,” referencing Israeli attempts to take control of the area.

More than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law, alongside 2.7 million Palestinians.

Hanna Khoury, head of the village council, recalled how in 2002 during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Israeli forces blew up the site under the pretext it was being “used to prepare for commando operations.”

The army later apologized, saying it had not realized the religious significance of the site.

Muslims also eat the Barbara dish after a six-day fast and on other occasions, noted Hamzah al-Aqrabawi, a researcher in Palestinian heritage.

“Barbara is a popular ritual that Palestinian peasants have had for 2,000 years,” he said.

Eight-year-old Riad Zaarour was wrapped in a traditional Palestinian kuffiyeh, or scarf, as he waited for the dish.

“The best thing in the festival is Barbara. We eat it and celebrate. I feel happy.”

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Danish scientists have managed to extract a complete DNA sample from a piece of birch pitch more than 5,000 years old, used as a kind of chewing gum, a study revealed Tuesday.

The Stone-Age sample yielded enough information to determine the source’s sex, what she had last eaten and the germs in her mouth. It also told them she probably had dark hair, dark skin and blue eyes.

And genetically, she was more closely related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those living in central Scandinavia at the time, they concluded.

“It is the first time that an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bones,” Hannes Schroeder of the University of Copenhagen, told AFP.

Schroeder is co-author of the study, which was published in the review Nature Communications.

They found the sample during an archaeological dig at Syltholm, in southern Denmark, said Tehis Jensen, one of the other authors.

“Syltholm is completely unique,” he said.

“Almost everything is sealed in mud, which means that the preservation of organic remains is absolutely phenomenal.”

The researchers also recovered traces of plant and animal DNA – hazelnut and duck – confirming what archaeologists already know about the people who lived there at the time.

But they were not sure why their subject chose to chew the bark: whether to turn it into a kind of glue, to clean her teeth, to stave off hunger – or simply as chewing gum.
 

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A judge on Monday sentenced a woman to 10 months in prison for her role in a business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to give birth to children who would automatically receive U.S. citizenship.

U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the sentence in Santa Ana, to Dongyuan Li, who wiped away tears with her hand several times during the hearing.

Selna said he expected her to be released from custody later Monday due to time served.

Federal prosecutors opposed the sentence and said they believed Li should be sentenced to years in prison to deter others from helping women lie on visa applications and hide pregnancies in these so-called birth tourism schemes.

Li pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and visa fraud for running a birth tourism company in Southern California known as “You Win USA.”

Federal authorities said the company helped more than 500 Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver American babies, and that Li used a cluster of apartments in Irvine, California, to receive them.

Authorities said the company coached the women to lie on their visa applications and to hide their pregnancies when passing through customs in U.S. airports.

In a letter to the court, Li said she has taken English and music lessons and read books and exercised daily while in custody.

“I am very sorry for the mistakes that I have made,” she wrote in the Dec. 1 letter filed with the court. “I truly sincerely apologize for any harm that I have caused to the American society.”
 

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A U.S. judge on Monday flatly rejected a last-ditch bid by President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn to get the criminal charges to which he already pleaded guilty dropped, brushing aside his claims of misconduct by prosecutors and the FBI.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Flynn to appear for sentencing on Jan. 28, concluding that the retired Army lieutenant general had failed to prove a “single” violation by the prosecution or FBI officials of withholding evidence that could exonerate him.

Sullivan’s 92-page ruling represented a major blow to Flynn, who has tried to backpedal since he pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn’s sworn statements in his plea agreement “belie his new claims of innocence,” Sullivan wrote.

“It is undisputed that Mr. Flynn not only made those false statements to the FBI agents, but he also made the same false statements to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and senior White House officials, who, in turn, repeated Mr. Flynn’s false statements to the American people on national television,” the judge wrote.

Flynn was one of several former Trump aides to plead guilty or be convicted at trial in then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy as well as numerous contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Sentencing delayed

Flynn was previously supposed to have been sentenced by Sullivan in December 2018, but Sullivan fiercely criticized Flynn and accused him of selling out his country.

At the time, Sullivan appeared poised to sentence Flynn to prison. But then Sullivan instead gave Flynn the option of delaying the sentencing so the former national security adviser could fully cooperate with any pending investigations, including testifying in the Virginia trial of his former business partner Bijan Rafiekian on charges of illegally lobbying for Turkey.

The plans for him to testify, however, later evaporated.

Flynn, who Trump fired just weeks after taking office, dismissed his former lawyers on the case and tapped Sidney Powell, a frequent Fox News guest who has often expressed hostility toward the FBI and Mueller.

Her combative and aggressive approach led to a falling out with prosecutors, who ultimately decided not to call Flynn as a witness in the Rafiekian trial after Powell contended that Flynn would not testify to “knowingly” submitting false statements to the Justice Department when he retroactively registered as a lobbyist for Turkey.

Rafiekian verdict overturned

A federal judge in September overturned a jury verdict convicting Rafiekian.

Powell has filed a flurry of requests with the court to try to force the Justice Department to turn over troves of records that she said would show the FBI conducted an “ambush” interview of Flynn and withheld evidence that could exonerate him.

“The court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea,” Sullivan wrote in the ruling. “The record proves otherwise.”

Sullivan took aim at Powell in his ruling as well, saying one of the lawyer’s legal briefs had plagiarized another source by lifting “verbatim portions from a source without attribution” and noted that such conduct violates the District of Columbia’s rules for attorneys.

FBI has support of judge 

The judge’s ruling bolstered the FBI’s handling of the Flynn

investigation a week after the agency was criticized by the Justice Department’s inspector general for the manner in which it handled its applications to a specialized court to obtain a 2016 wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Sullivan’s ruling came a day before another judge is scheduled to sentence Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who also pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller. Gates cooperated extensively with prosecutors.

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Police in Central Sulawesi say they are continuing their hunt for members of a militant group suspected of attacking local police officers last week.

Authorities in the Indonesian province said Sunday the attack that killed one police officer was carried out by a group known as the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT).  

Five gunmen ambushed villagers and held them and police officers hostage. The officers had just returned from Friday prayers at a small mosque near a police station in Central Sulawesi’s Salubanga village, according to local police.

Local officials said the attackers immediately fled from the vicinity.

“Our members who were in the bulkhead post had a chance to fight back and ask for help from the closest post. As a result … one of our personnel on duty at the post by the name of Muhamad Saepul Muhdori has died,” said Sugeng Lestari, Central Sulawesi’s police commissioner.

The hostages reportedly managed to escape the scene as the militants exchanged gunfire with police.

What is MIT?

MIT, a U.N.-designated terrorist group, is mostly active in Indonesia’s Java and Sulawesi province, with some presence in eastern provinces.

While it is unclear how many fighters are in MIT, the group reportedly has ties with other terrorist groups in the country and abroad.

MIT has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and some of its members have traveled to Syria to join the extremist group.

Since 2012, MIT has targeted Indonesian government officials and security forces, while also killing civilians in multiple attacks. It has become increasingly bold in its attacks on security forces, which include beheadings and the use of explosives and shootings, according to the United Nations.

Indonesian officials say there are currently about 10 active militants affiliated with the MIT, especially after its former leader, Abu Wardah Santoso, was killed in a counterterrorism operation by the Indonesian military in 2016. Nearly 30 members of the group were reportedly captured or killed in the same operation.

Law enforcement officials in Indonesia believe MIT may have recruited new members in recent months.

Counterterrorism efforts

Indonesia, home to 230 million Muslims, has been targeted by terrorist groups in recent years.

Since the bombings on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, most of them foreigners, the Indonesian government has stepped up its crackdown on Islamic militants, who were blamed for the Bali attack.

New threats have emerged in recent years from IS-inspired extremists who have targeted security forces and locals.

Last month, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the Medan city police station, wounding at least six people. That attack came as Indonesia’s counterterrorism forces were cracking down on suspected Islamic militants, following the assault by a knife-wielding couple who wounded Indonesia’s top security minister in October.

U.S. cooperation

The U.S. has been working with Indonesian authorities to expand mutual cooperation in counterterrorism efforts in the region.

In September 2018, the U.S. and Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen and expand cooperation on counterterrorism, including the exchange of information on terrorist and militant groups.

In its October 2018 “Country Reports on Terrorism,” the U.S. State Department said Indonesia has been able to deny terrorist groups safe haven.
 
“Indonesia applied sustained pressure to detect, disrupt, and degrade terrorist groups operating within its borders and deny them a safe haven,” the report said.

Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.
 

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