Democrats have concluded three days of opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump, setting the stage for the president’s lawyers to present their case in the days ahead. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, House impeachment managers painstakingly argued for Trump’s conviction and removal from office, but Senate Republicans, who control the chamber, are mostly united in their defense of the president.
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The U.S. Constitution commands the U.S. Senate be responsible for holding an impeachment trial. But it does not say anything about how the trial is to be conducted. While there are some rules that have been determined for this trial, much of its direction will be determined by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. VOA’s Steve Redisch reports.
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Since October, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have taken to the streets of Beirut to protest what they say is a corrupt political system that has failed to provide even the most basic of services. But in a media marketplace crowded with overtly partisan publications, protestors are using social media to get the word out. VOA’s Betty Ayoub reports.
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Tens of thousands of people poured into a central Baghdad square Friday for what had been billed as a “million-man” march, carrying Iraqi flags and signs and shouting “No, No America.”  Many wore white fabric, symbolizing their determination to see the U.S. military either leave Iraq, or be expelled. “Many protesters wear white fabric, symbolizing their determination to expel the U.S. from Iraq on Jan. 24, 2020 in Baghdad. (Halan Akoy/VOA)We want the invaders out,” said Ra’ad, a protester and father who does piecemeal work to feed his five children. “If the politicians don’t make them leave the military will.”  Prominent Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a “million-man” march to demand the expulsion of American forces after the U.S. killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful general, in a Jan. 3 airstrike at the Baghdad airport. Six others died in the airstrike, including Iraqi Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of a Shi’ite militia groups known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.   Iran retaliated with airstrikes on U.S. bases in Iraq, and both sides have threatened grave consequences if they are struck again.Shi’ite politicians subsequently used their majority in parliament to push through a resolution calling for the U.S. military to be expelled from Iraq, while Sunni and Kurdish politicians, representing the country’s two largest minorities, boycotted the vote. Iraq’s president, a Kurd, declared that “the vote is not good for Iraq.”Despite the vote, the United States has said it has no plans to leave the country and the Iraqi government has given no indication that it can or will try to force the U.S. troops out.This protesters sign says “I am an Iraqi against the presence of America on Jan. 24, 2020 in Baghdad. (H.Murdock/VOA)At the rally, some men expressed their anger by burning a paper American flag, while others carried signs saying, “I am an Iraqi against the presence of America.”   Some signs said more directly, “Death to America” or “Death to Israel.”  Anti-government protesters in Iraq have rallied every day since early October to demand government action on basic human needs like jobs, security and health care. At least 600 people have died in these demonstrations, but protesters say they are not giving up.   Friday’s protest was not related to those protests and was held in a different part of Baghdad.Ambulances line up outside the protest during morning hours on Jan. 24, 2020 in Baghdad. (H.Murdock/VOA)Ambulances were lined up outside the rally, but by 2:30 p.m. the day remained peaceful. Gunshots rang out late the night before in the area, but no deaths or injuries were reported. “It’s not good for our economy to have the U.S. here,” said Ra’ad, the protester. “They come here and they take our resources out.” 
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Холдинг «Метінвест» Ріната Ахметова та Вадима Новинського відреагував на журналістське розслідування щодо порушення вимог безпеки на його підприємствах в Україні та США. «Метінвест» заявив, що «оприлюднена інформація є вимислом, який наносить шкоду репутації компанії». У олігарха запевняють, що його вугільна компанія «United coal company» не є об’єктом будь-якого офіційного розслідування, та додав, що корпорація приділяє особливу увагу безпеці праці на своїх підприємствах. При цьому в матеріалі журналістів йшлося про інтерес американської влади до діяльності не компанії «United coal company» Ахметова-Новинського, а її дочірньої фірми «Pocahontas coal company LLC».

«Станом на цей час «UCC» не є об’єктом будь-якого розслідування», – йдеться у листі групи «Метінвест», надісланому 24 січня в редакцію Радіо Свобода.

Автори матеріалу наголошують, що у своїй публічній реакції холдинг олігарха вдався до підміни понять, а тому така заява, на їхню думку, є маніпулятивною. Журналісти також заявляють, що за місяць до виходу розслідування звертались до компанії, надаючи можливість представити свою позицію, щоб вона була відображена в матеріалі, утім, холдинг відмовився надавати свої коментарі до його виходу. 

У розслідуванні Надії Бурдєй, проведеному для ГО «Центр протидії корупції», програми «Схеми: корупція в деталях» та видання «Українська правда» йшлося, що Комітету з питань освіти та праці Палати представників Конгресу США вивчає обставини, за яких шахта «Affinity Mine» у Західній Вірджинії позбавилась статусу «порушника» після низки аварій на ній. Вугілля на цій шахті видобуває фірма «Pocahontas coal company LLC» – це дочірня компанія «United coal company». 

У 2013 році, протягом місяця, на цій шахті загинуло двоє шахтарів. В ході розслідування трагедії, управління з охорони праці встановило, що «Pocahontas coal company LLC» систематично порушує обов’язкові стандарти безпеки праці. За результатами розслідування, шахті і присвоїли статус порушника – «Pattern of Violations» (POV).

Цю інформацію «Метінвест» підтверджує і заявляє, що статус порушника з його компанії «Pocahontas coal company LLC» зняли у 2018 році: «У 2018 році статус POV був скасований. Судові позови про неправомірність такого рішення були відхилені судом через відсутність доказів», – йдеться у заяві холдингу «Метінвест». 

Так, у журналістському матеріалі саме йшлося про те, що у 2018 році управління з охорони праці дійсно уклало з компанією Ахметова мирову угоду й скасувало проблемний статус. Але тоді ж, наприкінці 2019 року Об’єднання працівників шахт Америки звернулося до суду з вимогою поновити для вугільної компанії Ріната Ахметова «Pocahontas coal company LLC» статус «системного порушника» («Pattern of Violations»). 

«Ми подали цю скаргу, оскільки рішення управління праці є прямою загрозою для здоров’я та безпеки шахтарів в будь-якій точці США. Якщо управління грубо ігноруючи закон, відміняє статус «порушника» і йому це зійде з рук, то воно зробить це знову. Ми хочемо впевнитися, що це не повториться», – на своєму офіційному сайті заявило Об’єднання працівників шахт Америки. 

Скасування статусу «порушника» для компанії Ахметова привернуло увагу Комітету з питань освіти та праці Палати представників Конгресу США, йшлося в журналістському матеріалі. У вересні 2018 року Комітет із офіційним листом звернувся до управління праці з проханням надати детальну інформацію про зустрічі з представниками вугільної компанії Ріната Ахметова – «Pocahontas coal company LLC», а не «UCC», як йдеться у заяві холдингу. 

У листі до управління, Комітет Конгресу висловив сумніви щодо законності угоди між компанією українського олігарха «Pocahontas coal company LLC» й попросив вказати точну дату повної перевірки шахти, під час якої управління не виявило жодного порушення. Справа в тому, що кожного року управління фіксувало на шахті нові порушення й, за підрахунками комітету Конгресу, за п’ять років таких порушень нарахували 265. 

«Спроба «Метінвесту» спростувати матеріал про порушення вимог безпеки на його підприємствах – є простою маніпуляцією. Холдинг не називає жодного факту, який, на його думку, є «видумкою». Не надає жодного документу. До того ж, називає іншу компанію – «United coal company» щодо якої, дійсно, немає позову і яка не цікавить Конгрес. Тож, жодного факту, викладеного в матеріалі, холдинг не спростовує. Запити з проханням надати коментар журналісти направили на адресу компанії «Метінвест» за місяць до публікації матеріалу, але компанія відмовився від коментарів», – заявила авторка матеріалу журналістка Надія Бурдєй. 

У листі «Метінвест» також повідомив про заходи, які компанія вживає задля підвищення безпеки праці своїх працівників: «Група «Метінвест» першою з українських компаній отримала міжнародний сертифікат Vision Zero. Це концепція якісно нового підходу до організації всієї системи охорони праці на підприємствах, яка слугує зниженню покажників виробничого травматизму і професійних захворювань. Сертифікат Vision Zero мають такі світові лідери, як RWE, CEMEX, AngloGold і TUV NORD. На всіх підприємствах групи «Метінвест» – в Україні, Болгарії, Італії, Великій Британії і США – діють Кардинальні правила щодо охорони праці й виробничої безпеки – зведення канонів, які рятують життя. Витрати групи на виробничу безпеку й охорону праці в 2018 році склали понад 95 мільйонів доларів. З 2014 року показники безпеки на шахті Affinity значно покращились».

Раніше «Схеми» показали, як в США компанії українського олігарха платять мільйони доларів у разі порушення вимог безпеки на своїх підприємствах, водночас в Україні до відповідальності найчастіше притягують хіба що пересічних працівників його заводу. 

Також у розслідуванні «Монополіст «під прикриттям» журналісти розповіли, що холдинг «Метінвест» українського олігарха Ріната Ахметова й народного депутата Вадима Новинського став власником п’яти із восьми коксохімічних заводів, розташованих на підконтрольній Україні території. Така монополізація галузі відбувалась фактично із введенням в оману членів Антимонопольного комітету.
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Національний банк України встановив на 27 січня курс 24 гривні 33 копійки за долар, посиливши національну валюту одразу на 19 копійок порівняно з курсом на 24 січня.

На українському міжбанківському валютному ринку динаміка була іншою – майже впродовж усієї сесії котирування долара зростали, але в другій половині дня це переважно відбувалося на мінімальних обсягах, які регулятор не бере до уваги. За даними Finance.ua, торги закрилися на рівні 24 гривні 44–48 копійок за долар.

«Частина продавців і спекулянтів намагається максимально розігріти котирування. Основною причиною цих чергових дисбалансів став НБУ і подальші дії місцевих покупців та продавців. На початку сесії регулятор купував долар через Matching. Купив близько 50 млн доларів, чим відкачав з ринку пропозицію», – так описують ситуацію в розпал торгів фахівці сайту «Мінфін».

Читайте також: «Інвестняні», запропоновані Зеленським і Гончаруком, не покращать загальний інвестиційний клімат – експерти​

Національний банк України з 13 грудня 2019 року встановив облікову ставку на рівні 13,5%, знизивши її одразу на 2%. Також регулятор збільшив обсяг щоденного викупу валюти на міжбанку до 50 мільйонів доларів з попереднього рівня 30 мільйонів доларів.
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Turkey’s emergency management agency says an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 has shaken the country’s east.The earthquake struck Friday at 1755 GMT, 8:55 p.m. local time, near the town of Sivrice in eastern Elazig province, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said there were no reports deaths in Sivrice or other affected areas. However, 4-5 buildings collapsed in Sivrice, where two people were hurt, he said. Soylu was at a meeting on earthquake preparedness when the quake struck.
Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters that there were no reports of any casualties in Sivrice but said the quake may have caused casualties in rural areas outside the town. He said troops were on standby to help is they are needed.
The Kandilli seismology center in Istanbul said the quake measured 6.5.
The U.S. Geological Survey gave the preliminary magnitude as 6.7, with the quake affecting not only Turkey but also Syria, Georgia and Armenia.
Turkish media said the earthquake sent people running outdoors for safety. 
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From the roadside stand where his family sells mole, barbecue and chicken stew, Miguel Ángel Vázquez has seen all the caravans of Central American migrants and asylum seekers stream past his front door in recent years, throngs of people driven to flee poverty and violence in hopes of a better life in the United States.After watching armored National Guard troops and immigration agents break up the latest one right on his doorstep, loading men, women and wailing children onto buses and hauling them off to a detention center in the nearby city of Tapachula, he’s sure of one thing.Mexican National Guards block a highway in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico after a group of Central American migrants crossed the nearby border from Guatemala to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.“I can see that these caravans are no longer going to pass,” said Vásquez, 56.On Friday morning, life was back to normal at the river border between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tecun Uman, Guatemala.Carmelino Sánchez Cumes, 54, left his home in Champerico Guatemala at 4 a.m. to come buy medicine for two elderly aunts that’s not available back home.The partial closure of river crossings “was tough” on people accustomed to doing so as part of daily life, he said.The international bridge reopened at 5 a.m. and cars and motorcycles were crossing freely.National guard troops stood watch in groups of about a half dozen, visibly fewer than before, and said privately that the tension of recent days had vanished.One said it’s easy to distinguish local Guatemalans who cross for ordinary workaday reasons for their manner of speaking, and they’re welcome “because they’re neighbors.”Where the first caravans were allowed to pass through Mexican territory and even given humanitarian aid or transportation by many communities and some officials, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration changed that beginning last year in response to steep trade tariffs threatened by Washington.The result was on display Thursday on a rural highway in the far-southern Mexican city of Frontera Hidalgo, just across the river border between Mexico and Guatemala that the hundreds of migrants, mostly Hondurans, crossed before dawn.The migrants walked for hours before stopping at the crossroads where Vázquez’s stand lies, taking advantage of the copious shade on a road otherwise largely exposed to the beating tropical sun. They bought all the food the family and refreshments the family had and behaved respectfully, according to Karen Daniela Vázquez Robledo, his daughter.Then hundreds of national guard troops advanced their lines to within 100 yards (meters) of the migrants. A brief negotiation stalled, and the migrants knelt to the ground in prayer and began to chant “we want to pass.”National guardsmen advanced banging their plastic shields with batons and engaged the migrants. There was shoving and pepper spray as migrants were rounded up.Many of the people allowed themselves to be escorted to the buses without resistance. Women cradling small children or holding kids’ hands wept as they walked toward the buses. In all, 800 migrants were detained, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.Others resisted and were subdued. One man dragged by three guardsmen and a migration agent shouted “they killed my brother, I don’t want to die,” presumably in reference to the possibility of being returned to his country.A paramedic attended to an injured woman lying on the highway shoulder.The road was left littered with water bottles, plastic bags and clothing. An irate man in a blue shirt yelled at the agents “this is a war against the Hondurans.”On Friday, López Obrador said he had been briefed about the operation and commended military commanders for not resorting to force, without explaining what he considered to be force.“I have information that the National Guard has acted well,” said López Obrador, who said he was briefed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. “He told us there had not been injured, had not been wounded, that the problem has been resolved well.”López Obrador went on, as he has before, to describe the migrants as being “tricked” by unscrupulous organizers in Honduras who lead them to believe they will pass without problems. He added that his political adversaries, “the conservatives,” had hoped it would go badly for the Mexican government.“Clearly there is a need,” López Obrador said. “But there’s a management, we’ll say political. Fortunately, human rights have been respected.”Thursday’s confrontation was a sudden climax after the day had seemed to be winding down.Central American migrants cross the Suchiate River from Tecun Uman, Guatemala, to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.The migrant caravan had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican National Guardsmen posted along the Suchiate River, which forms the border here.The national guardsmen intercepted the caravan on the edge of the community of Frontera Hidalgo, near Ciudad Hidalgo where the migrants crossed the river at dawn.In previous caravans, Mexican authorities have allowed caravans to walk for awhile, seemingly to tire them out, and then closed their path.Mexico and Guatemala have returned hundreds of migrants from the caravan to their home countries since the caravan set out last week, mostly to Honduras.Back at the roadside food stall in the southern state of Chiapas, Karen Vázquez, 26, was dismayed by what she saw unfold — the pepper spray, children running and crying.“It was something very unpleasant, seeing how the people are taken away, and us hiding as well so they don’t take us away,” she said. “It makes us sad because they don’t take them in the right way. In truth, they take them very badly.”
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Alan Dershowitz was in line at Mar-a-Lago’s lavish Christmas Eve buffet last month when President Donald Trump stopped to chat.The retired Harvard law professor had already been asked by Trump’s legal team to assist with the defense at his impeachment trial and, with the case opening in a matter of weeks, the Republican president wanted to know: Was he on board?“He said, ‘Everybody wants to do this thing, but I want you,’” Dershowitz recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.Dershowitz, whose clients have included O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow and Mike Tyson, ultimately said yes, joining a legal team that, starting Saturday, will present the defense at only the third impeachment trial of a American president in history.Trump’s attorneys say Dershowitz and Ken Starr, the former independent counsel during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, will have “discrete functions that they will be addressing” at trial.Dershowitz’s task is to make the argument — widely rejected among scholars — that an impeachable offense requires criminal-like conduct. Dershowitz joked Thursday that if he sounded sniffly, it was because he’d been buried in musty history and law books to prepare.While it’s just another high-profile case in a career full of them, Dershowitz’s defense of Trump has befuddled associates, friends and former students, who struggle to make sense of his forceful advocacy for the president and who fervently disagree with the legal positions he’s taken and even the facts he’s advanced in Trump’s defense.“Rubbish” is how one law professor who studied under Dershowitz, Frank Bowman at the University of Missouri, described his views on impeachable offenses. A longtime Harvard Law School colleague, Laurence Tribe, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that the argument “has died a thousand deaths” but nonetheless “staggers on like a vengeful zombie.” Some, meanwhile, have seized on video of a 1998 interview when Dershowitz expressed virtually the opposite view of what he’s saying now about an impeachable offense requiring a crime.For his part, Dershowitz maintains there’s nothing inconsistent or unusual about the positions he’s taking.Though he’s been a vocal defender of Trump the last three years, he insists it’s not about this particular president. Rather, he’s trying to prevent impeachment from being weaponized into a “partisan process,” where any president can be removed over non-criminal abuses of power.“I’ve always taken positions that are principled and often unpopular and often in defense of people I don’t particularly support,” Dershowitz said, citing his defense of Neo-Nazis who wanted the right to march through Skokie, Illinois.“I haven’t changed at all. I’ve had the same consistent policy of defending people I don’t like, people I do like, without regard to party, without regard to partisanship.”Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge in Boston who has known Dershowitz for years, says it’s true that he hasn’t changed — he still gravitates toward the media spotlight, high-profile cases and “positions he thinks will prove how principled he is.”But she says it’s impossible to reconcile his statements on behalf of Trump, and his extraordinarily expansive view of presidential authorities, with the civil libertarian bent he’s expressed over the decades and his stated opposition to unchecked government power. Some of what she’s heard him say is “horrifying.”“I’ve known him for a very long time,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”Even before he made the case against impeachment in a book, Dershowitz has defended as lawful some of Trump’s most scrutinized actions. In op-eds and TV appearances, he has accused special counsel Robert Mueller of partisan bias, ridiculed the idea Trump could have obstructed justice by firing his FBI chief and said presidents enjoy more power than kings.“A civil libertarian should be concerned about deploying the levers of power for the wrong purposes,” said Gertner, who is now a senior Harvard law lecturer. “These are not civil liberties positions. These are positions to garner attention to put him in the position that he now is in, which is to represent the president.”Harvey Silverglate, a friend of Dershowitz’s for more than 50 years, said his positions on Trump clearly make him unpopular “among the legal intelligentsia nationwide.” But he said Dershowitz specializes in cases where the defense is difficult or unique, and the client unpopular.Though Trump may not be an underdog in the conventional sense, Silverglate wrote in an email, “his impeachment does present just the kind of case, challenge and client for which Dershowitz is perfect — a high-profile assault on an individual who has powerful enemies and who is being ‘prosecuted.’”Dershowitz says he’s convinced that the same people criticizing him would be applauding him if he was prosecuting the House impeachment case. The attacks, he said, have been “ferocious.” He calls it a “shoe on the other foot test.”“People say I’m not a constitutional lawyer because they don’t like the side I’m on,” Dershowitz said. “They say I’m too old, I’m a has-been.”Trump has watched Dershowitz defend him on Fox News for years, sometimes tweeting links to the lawyer’s statements that he finds especially helpful. Through the Mueller investigation and into impeachment he has been enamored with the possibility of assembling a legal dream team.But White House aides cautioned Trump against bringing Dershowitz onto his team, concerned that Dershowitz was a self-promoter whose showboating style wouldn’t put Trump’s interests first.They also feared Dershowitz’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein and the surrounding legal drama would be a distraction for the defense. Trump overruled them.According to one person familiar with the decision, Trump wanted the appearance of a bipartisan defense team. And he has always valued attorneys who can make the case to the public on Fox News, his preferred platform.By the time of their Christmas Eve conversation, Dershowitz had already been approached about a role on the team. But his wife, who was with him that evening at Mar-a-Lago, was more apprehensive, concerned he’d lose his independence.Trump sought to offer reassurance on that point, saying that while he appreciated that concern, it was nonetheless important to consider “how important this was for the future of the country and for precedent and all that,” Dershowitz recalled.Within days, his participation was settled.“People have already said that my arguments will be bonkers or errant nonsense,” Dershowitz said. “My only point is: Listen. I’m going to lay out a very serious constitutional argument. Maybe you’ll agree with it or maybe you won’t, but let’s have a debate on the merits.”
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London police say they will start using live facial recognition cameras in operational deployments, in a major advance for the controversial technology.The Metropolitan Police Service said Friday it will use the cameras to automatically scan the faces of people passing through small targeted areas where intelligence suggests serious offenders will be found.Real-time crowd surveillance by police in the British capital is among the more aggressive uses of facial recognition in modern democracies and raises questions about how the technology will enter people’s daily lives. Rights groups said the London police deployment threatens civil liberties such as the right to privacy and represents an expansion of surveillance.London police said the facial recognition system, which runs on technology from Japan’s NEC, looks for faces in crowds to see if they match any on “watchlists” of people wanted for serious and violent offences, including gun and knife crimes and child sexual exploitation.
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