U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently announced Middle East peace plan calls for Israel to keep control over all of Jerusalem, with its Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. The plan envisions the capital of the Palestinian state in outlying suburban neighborhoods of Jerusalem such as Abu Dis, which is technically in the West Bank. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Abu Dis.
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Germs are everywhere. How can you reduce the risk of viral infection? Here are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself. 
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Human rights groups have strongly criticized Italy for extending a deal with Libya that facilitates the return of migrants to detention centers, where these migrants say torture and rape are commonplace. The European Union has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Libya to boost its coastguard capabilities and clamp down on human smuggling – but critics say the money is ending up with criminal gangs. More from Henry Ridgwell
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Національний банк України стримує посилення гривні на українському міжбанківському валютному ринку, повідомляють експерти сайту «Мінфін», які відстежують перебіг торгів.

«НБУ виходив неодноразово на ринок, викуповуючи надлишок валюти спочатку у межах 24,60 гривні і нижче, а потім вийшов з купівлею по 24,56 гривні за долар. Продавці бояться подальшого просідання курсу, як тільки НБУ піде з ринку, і поспішають продати валюту, а покупці якраз відчайдушно торгуються й намагаються максимально збити курс», – так фахівці оцінили перебіг торгів станом на 12:00.

За даними Finance.ua, станом на 12:35 котирування міжбанку склали 24 гривні 56–60 копійок.

Національний банк України опівдні встановив довідкове значення курсу 24 гривні 58 копійок, це на 22 копійки менше за офіційний курс на 6 січня.

«Фактично два чинники сьогодні впливатимуть на курсоутворення – обсяги продажів валюти великими місцевими гравцями (до «Нафтогазу» періодично приєднувалися аграрії та металурги) і дії Нацбанку щодо виходу чи невиходу на торги з інтервенціями», – відзначали фахівці «Мінфіну» перед початком торгів.

Національний банк України знизив облікову ставку на 2,5% – до 11% з 31 січня 2020 року. «Національний банк продовжує пом’якшення монетарної політики, щоб забезпечити інфляцію на рівні цілі 5% та підтримати стійке економічне зростання», – заявили в НБУ.

Наступне засідання правління Національного банку України з питань монетарної політики відбудеться 12 березня 

Облікова ставка є одним із інструментів, за допомогою якого Нацбанк встановлює для комерційних банків орієнтир щодо вартості кредитів і депозитів. Опосередковано цей параметр впливає і на функціонування валютного ринку, регулюючи приплив валюти від нерезидентів.
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A CIA computer engineer testified at the espionage trial of a former CIA employee on Wednesday that the 2017 leak of thousands of pages of documents “was crippling” to the agency and turned his office into an FBI crime scene.The engineer — testifying under the pseudonym Jeremy Weber — said the release of the materials by WikiLeaks left the CIA scrambling.“We were in damage mode,” he said at the trial of Joshua Adam Schulte, who quit the CIA and moved to New York for a $200,000-salaried job four months before the documents were published.“The house was burning down and we were trying to figure out what was going on,” he said.Weber said he was put in charge of engineers assessing the damage from a leak of materials that prosecutors say exposed CIA officers overseas and destroyed cyber tools used to track terrorists and collect intelligence abroad.“It was crippling,” Weber said.He said it took a week of 20-hour workdays to learn the scope of the damage, protect overseas assets and decide how to begin rewriting programs that target foreign adversaries.During opening statements a day earlier, defense attorney Sabrina Shroff said there would be no proof at trial of any relationship between Schulte and WikiLeaks.She said Schulte, 31, of Manhattan, was prosecuted because investigators could not find the source of the leak and spotted an “easy target,” someone who “antagonized almost every single person” while he worked at the CIA in Langley, Virginia.“He really was a difficult employee, but being a difficult employee does not make you a criminal. A difficult employee does not translate to being a traitor. A difficult employee does not translate to somebody who would sell out their country. Josh Schulte’s not a traitor,” she said.Under questioning by a prosecutor, Weber said he considered Schulte a friend after both started at the CIA about a decade ago.But he said he gave up the friendship in 2016 after Schulte told lies in formal complaints against a coworker.Weber acknowledged that the coworker sometimes said things like “I wish you were dead” or “I want to dance on your grave,” but he added that Schulte would sometimes laugh at those comments in an environment where workers sometimes shot Nerf guns at one another.Weber said he believed Schulte lied when he claimed the coworker angrily told him once: “I wish you were dead and that’s not a threat, it’s a … promise.”“I felt like Josh … crossed a line and I was done with him,” he said.Later, Weber said he took it as a threat when Schulte demanded his access restored to a CIA program and said he’d get it restored “one way or another.”He said he later complained to his bosses that Schulte had breached security protocols by using his status as an administrator of software programs to gain greater access to a top-secret program without approval from superiors.
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A smattering of applause briefly interrupted the chatter in the bar of the Trump International Hotel in Washington when the U.S. Senate voted against the first article of impeachment against President Donald Trump.The outcome had been expected. Mitt Romney was the lone lawmaker to break with his party as the Senate acquitted Trump on impeachment charges stemming from his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the Nov. 3 election.
Robert Whooley and Bonnie McPhillips, who were in Washington for a substance abuse prevention convention, celebrated by taking a selfie in front of televisions mounted behind the bar showing the vote as their backdrop. Whooley donned a Make America Great Again cap.
“I’m very happy because I think the whole thing was a sham to begin with, and it’s good to see closure to it,” said Whooley, 63, of Chicago. “I think we should move on.”“I wanted to be here and watch it and see history made,” he added.
The vote against the second article brought louder applause and some whoops of delight from patrons, some of whom also took selfies in front of the TVs announcing the historic verdict.
“We’re thrilled. We’re Trump supporters,” said Kathleen Steininger, who was sitting at the bar with her husband Rick when the acquittal votes were taken. “It was all a waste of
money.”
The impeachment of one of the most polarizing presidents in modern U.S. history will get a final verdict in November’s presidential election, with the bases of both parties energized.
More than 200 “Reject the Cover-Up” protests are planned around the nation on Wednesday in response to Trump’s acquittal, said Sean Eldridge, a former congressional candidate and the founder of Stand Up America, a liberal activist group that is helping to organize the protests.Hub for Trump
At the Trump Hotel bar, many paid scant attention to the television coverage of the Senate votes until the final tallies were shown. After the result, they quickly returned to their conversations or to pecking on their cellphones.
Since opening in September 2016, the Trump International has become Washington’s hub for Trump, from Cabinet secretaries and foreign dignitaries seeking to curry favor with the administration to the president himself, hangers-on and red-hat-wearing tourists.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, was seen briefly walking through the lobby on Wednesday. Britain’s Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage was nursing a drink near the lobby bar when Trump was acquitted.
“I mean, the whole country has been through an agonizing process for nothing,” said Farage, who was in Washington to watch Trump deliver his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
“It was always clearly political. It was never, ever going to qualify as a high crime,” he said. “The one word… for this whole impeachment process is grubby.”
The Trump Organization said in October it was exploring a sale of the rights to its Washington hotel, partly out of concerns raised by ethics watchdogs and emoluments lawsuits that Donald Trump is profiting off of his presidency. The hotel took over the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of the capital.
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China cut tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. imports including soybeans, pork and auto parts Thursday in a trade truce with Washington while Beijing struggles with a costly virus outbreak.The cuts follow last month’s signing of a “Phase 1” agreement toward ending a long-running tariff war over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus. Both sides have made conciliatory gestures, but the lingering dispute threatens to chill global economic growth.The reductions follow American tariff cuts last month on Chinese goods. There was no indication Beijing altered its own cuts in response to the rising cost of efforts to contain a virus outbreak that have depressed business activity by closing factories, restaurants and shops.“The next steps depend on the development of the Chinese-U.S. economic and trade situation,” said a Ministry of Finance statement. “We hope to work with the United States toward the final elimination of all tariff increases.”The tax rate on 916 items including soybeans, pork and fish was cut from 10% to 5%, effective Feb. 14, the ministry said. The rate for 801 items including auto parts will be cut from 5% to 2.5%.Washington hiked tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018 in response to Beijing’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus and complaints it steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. China retaliated by increasing duties on American goods.Under the “Phase 1” deal in October, Washington canceled planned additional tariff hikes and Beijing committed to buy more U.S. farm exports.However, most tariff hikes imposed previously by both sides on billions of dollars of each other’s good are still in place.
 
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Japanese health authorities say 10 more people aboard a cruise ship have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus that has killed hundreds of people in China and triggered a global health emergency.A total of 20 people aboard Carnival Japan’s Diamond Princess have been diagnosed with the virus since it arrived at the port city of Yokohama earlier this week. The vessel and its 3,700 passengers and crew members have been quarantined after a passenger who disembarked after the ship docked in Hong Kong late last month tested positive for the virus.Off the waters of Hong Kong, more than 3,600 passengers and crew are under quarantine after three passengers from a previous voyage tested positive for the virus. The Chinese territory has shut down nearly all land and sea border crossings with the mainland after more than 2,000 medical workers walked off the job Monday demanding that all border crossings be closed completely. Hong Kong was hit hard by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03, which killed more than 800 people worldwide.Chinese health authorities said Thursday another 73 people have died from the coronavirus, raising the death toll on the mainland to 563 since it was first detected in December in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, with the total number of confirmed infections exceeding 25,000. There are about 150 confirmed cases in 23 other countries, including one death in the Philippines, the first outside of China.Taiwan announced Thursday it was banning all international cruise ships from docking at the island.WATCH: Coronavirus Cases, Deaths and Global Concerns RisingSorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyThe World Health Organization, which has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, has issued an appeal for $675 million to fight the virus. But the global health agency said earlier this week the outbreak has not yet reached the level of a pandemic, despite its increasing detection across the globe.  The U.S. Department of Defense said about 350 Americans left Wuhan Wednesday aboard two charter planes that are scheduled to land later in the day at two military bases in the U.S. western state of California.The U.S. State Department said it may schedule more flights to China on Thursday but did not provide additional information.Two U.S. based airlines on Wednesday announced plans to temporarily suspend flights to Hong Kong. American Airlines and United Airlines said they were halting flights there through Feb. 20.Chinese authorities have tried to stop the spread by instituting bans on movement in certain regions, and extending holidays to keep people away from schools and other large gatherings.Beijing, however, is upset that a number of countries are restricting travelers from China from crossing their borders.
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The focus of the 2020 presidential election campaign has now moved on to the New Hampshire Democratic primary after confusion over the delayed results from the Iowa caucuses made it difficult for the leading presidential candidates to capitalize on any momentum. New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday will be the second state contest for the contenders seeking their party’s presidential nomination, but as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the race remains very unsettled.
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After surviving the Islamic State genocide in Sinjar, Iraq, in 2014 and being separated for five years, a Yazidi family of nine finally had a happy reunion in Germany.  VOA’s Mahmut Bozarslan filed this report from Midyat, Turkey.
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More than four months after House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s conduct, the Senate on Wednesday voted along near party lines to acquit the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.The widely expected outcome likely will have far-reaching implications for the government and political system, many experts agree.Here are five important  takeaways:Unprecedented partisanship may have made it virtually impossible to remove future presidents from officeThis photo made available by the U.S. National Archives shows a portion of the first page of the United States Constitution.It never was going to be easy to impeach and convict a president. The U.S. Constitution sets a very high threshold for removing a misbehaving president from office — a majority vote of the House and a two-thirds vote of the Senate after conducting a trial. Only three American presidents — Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and now Trump — have been impeached, but none has been convicted.  Yet  in the current period of deep national ideological and political divisions, it may have become all but impossible to oust a president.  As long as the president’s party stands by him and controls the Senate, critics say, he can feel safe from the threat of removal, no matter how egregious his conduct.In this image from video, Republican Senator Mitt Romney speaks on the Senate floor on the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.Party fidelity was on full display throughout the Trump impeachment.  Not a single Republican joined in the House vote to impeach the president.  The Senate acquittal vote was just as divided, with the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah casting the lone Republican vote to convict Trump of abuse of office.In the 1970s, when Congress considered impeaching Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal, the ideological divide between the two parties was nowhere near as rigid. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress.  Although Nixon ultimately resigned to avoid impeachment, six Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee crossed party lines to recommend articles of impeachment.The 2020 presidential election outcome may validate the wisdom of impeachment — or notWhen Trump was impeached, some wondered if impeachment was going to become the new normal in American politics.  Republicans warned that the bar for presidential impeachments had been lowered to the point where Congress could impeach a president over mere policy disagreements.  The jury is still out on whether the proceeding against Trump will usher in a new era of perpetual partisan impeachment.  A clue to how it plays out could come as early as the November U.S. presidential election, said Peter Shane, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University.   If Trump wins re-election, it could likely blunt congressional appetite for impeachment, he said. On the other hand, a Democratic victory could vindicate the House Democrats’ pushing for impeachment.”If it turns out that Democrats seem to do better in the fall because they’ve gone through this experience, maybe the lesson for future Houses of Representatives is, keep at it, even if you don’t get to remove the president,” Shane said.  Trump’s acquittal raises the bar for abuse of power as an impeachable offenseU.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.The first of two articles of impeachment accused Trump of abuse of power in connection with his efforts to persuade the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.Republicans acquitted Trump of the charge because they believed the alleged abuse of power did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Critics say that’s likely to raise the bar for just how serious an abuse a president has to commit in order to face impeachment.The balance of power has swung in favor of the executive branchSen. Angus King, I-Maine, departs the Senate following defense arguments by the Republicans in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Jan. 25, 2020.The constitutional principle of separation of powers was front and center during the impeachment trial.  Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine warned last  week that acquitting Trump of obstruction could shift the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch. “It would be the largest transfer of power from Congress to the executive in the history of the country,” King warned.Designed to prevent the concentration of power in any one branch of government, separation of powers is “the reason America is such a free country,” the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once famously said.  During the Senate trial, much of the debate over the second article of impeachment — obstruction of Congress and its oversight — revolved around separation of powers.  While House impeachment prosecutors warned that acquitting the president of obstructing Congress would lead to an “imperial presidency,” the president’s lawyers insisted that it would undermine executive power.The extent to which the acquittal will affect the balance of power between Congress and the executive is an open question.  In recent decades, the balance has swung in favor of the executive, as presidential powers on domestic and foreign affairs have steadily increased.The acquittal “will certainly increase the temptation for future presidents to resist congressional oversight in the way that Trump has because he will, in a sense, have gotten away with it,” Shane said. “It may be that other presidents will feel that intermixing their personal goals with national security goals … is OK.”In the long run, however, “what constrains this whole process is how the people in power think their political fortunes are going to be affected by the public at large,” Shane said.A trial without witnesses may have set precedentFor the first time  in more than 200 years, the Senate conducted an impeachment trial without witnesses, despite a dogged Democratic push for testimony.  Deriding the break with tradition as a mockery of justice, Democrats warned it would set a dangerous precedent.  Republicans countered that they, too, did not wish to set a precedent of sorts by calling witnesses that the House should have summoned in the first place.  A precedent has been nonetheless set, experts say, one that will likely influence how Congress in the future approaches impeachment proceedings. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Wednesday that China should join the United States in trilateral arms talks with Russia.  “The president believes that it shouldn’t just be the U.S. and Russia. We think that China is going to need to become involved in any serious arms control negotiation, so we’re going to work on those talks in the coming months and year,” Robert O’Brien said in Washington. He told a group of 50 foreign ambassadors that U.S. officials would travel to Beijing to discuss reducing the “existential” threats of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation.  “The days of unilateral American disarmament are over,” O’Brien noted in remarks that focused on the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Trump last year said he discussed a new accord on limiting nuclear arms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and hoped to extend that to China, but Beijing has so far refused to take part. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month that Russia would take part in potential trilateral talks but that he wouldn’t “force China to change” its position. Eye on Chinese buildupWhile highlighting great-power competition as the top priority of the Trump administration, Trump’s national security adviser said the U.S. was keeping a wary eye on China’s military buildup in the Pacific and Indian oceans. O’Brien also pointed to Putin’s huge investment in the Russian military and Moscow’s continuing military involvement in countries like Ukraine, Syria and Libya. In his speech Wednesday, he also stressed the need for Russian and Chinese help in the denuclearization of North Korea. “The Chinese have to enforce the sanctions against North Korea. They’ve got to stop ship-to-ship transfers. … We need the Chinese to assist us with pressuring the North Koreans to come to the table,” O’Brien said. The national security adviser expressed hope that North Korea would meet with the U.S. again in Sweden. Last October, working-level nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang broke down in Stockholm. 
 
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