Farmers across France are protesting poor economic and social conditions in the farming community. Hundreds of tractors disrupted traffic in Paris and other major cities in a demonstration organized by the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions and the union of young farmers. Farmers unloaded tires to block some roads and scattered hay bales across the Champs-Elysées, the central avenue in Paris. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports farmers demand a response from President Emmanuel Macron.
 

…

Appeals court judges put on hold a ruling by a lower court that would require former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify to lawmakers as part of the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
McGahn, who left his post in October 2018, last May defied a House Judiciary Committee subpoena to testify about Trump’s efforts to impede former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The hold on the case comes as the judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit consider a longer stay. They scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 3 on the underlying appeal, according to a court order.
Hours earlier, Washington-based U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed to impose a temporary delay on her ruling, saying in an order it would give her time to rule on whether to put the case on hold longer-term so the Justice Department can appeal.
Pivotal figure
The Justice Department filed a second emergency application earlier to the appeals court, asking that court to put the litigation on hold after Jackson did not immediately act on its earlier request.
Justice Department lawyers said the filing was “in an abundance of caution” in order to ensure that they could then turn to the Supreme Court in a timely fashion if their request is rejected.
McGahn emerged as a pivotal figure in a 448-page report completed in March by Mueller.
According to the report, McGahn told investigators that Trump repeatedly instructed him to have Mueller removed and then asked him to deny having been so instructed when word of the action emerged in news reports. McGahn did not carry out either instruction.
House Democratic leaders have since focused their impeachment inquiry on Trump’s actions concerning Ukraine, but have discussed pursuing a broader count of obstruction of Congress among any articles of impeachment — formal charges — brought against the president. McGahn’s testimony could bolster that part of their inquiry.
Officials told not to testify
In Monday’s ruling, Jackson rejected the Trump administration’s claim of broad immunity protecting current and former senior White House officials from being compelled to testify before Congress, saying no one is above the law.
Justice Department lawyers wrote in the new filing that the appeals court should block the ruling before Trump is “irreparably injured by the compelled congressional testimony of a former close advisor.”
The administration wants the ruling to be put on hold while the Trump administration appeals it, which means McGahn would not have to testify in the meantime. The White House has directed current and former officials not to testify or provide documents sought in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry.

…

More international students who said they were attending a university that was actually a shell created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been arrested in Michigan on immigration charges in recent months.
DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) created the University of Farmington to expose weaknesses in the student visa immigration process, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo, as reported by the Detroit Free Press. The paper broke the story last spring.
“While ‘enrolled’ at the university, 100 percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the university would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes or educational services,” the memo said.
While the students were granted student visas to enter the U.S., they were in violation when they did not actually attend the school, federal agencies said. Of about 250 people arrested, more than 200 students voluntarily left the U.S., and 50 stayed until being arrested or deported, the Free Press reported. ICE officials said many of the students were from India.
The paper reported that some students — claiming they were entrapped by the U.S. government, which operated the fake university — hired attorneys to defend their right to stay.
It remains unclear what happened to the tuition and fees paid by the students. It cost approximately $12,000 to enroll in the fake school, the Free Press reported.
Last winter, eight people were arrested and indicted for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit. Federal agencies said those charged helped at least 600 “foreign citizens to illegally remain, reenter and work in the United States and actively recruited them to enroll in a fraudulent school as part of a ‘pay to stay’ scheme.”
After conviction, the eight were sentenced to between 12 and 24 months. They face deportation after they serve their terms.

…

Europe is taking on propaganda videos and social media accounts that glorify terrorism and extremism in an effort to limit the space for extremist groups to recruit people online, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, known as Europol, said this week.
The decision was made following two days of meetings last week by Europol’s European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU), at its headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, the agency said in a statement Monday.
“This coordinated action focused on the dissemination of online terrorist content. Among the items referred were propaganda videos and social media accounts glorifying or supporting terrorism and violent extremism,” the agency said in a statement.
The crackdown came after meetings between law enforcement and judicial authorities in Europe aimed at launching a joint effort to disrupt Islamic State’s online activities, the agency said, adding that they have been addressing this issue since 2015.
“Since July 2015, the EU IRU of Europol has been working with law enforcement authorities and online service providers to address the terrorist abuse of the internet in the framework of the EU Internet Forum,” the statement added.

FILE – Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov, center, smiles as he leaves after a press conference following his meeting with Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara in Jakarta, Indonesia, Aug. 1, 2017.Telegram
In an operation last week, Europol and law enforcement authorities in 12 European countries removed more than 26,000 items supporting Islamic State’s ideology.
“They have disappeared from an important part of the internet,” Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesperson for the Belgian prosecutor’s office, said at a news conference at Europol headquarters in The Hague.
For the operation, the agency had been collaborating with nine online service providers, including Telegram, Google, Files.fm, Twitter, Instagram and Dropbox.
Among them, Telegram was the online service provider that contained the most extremism-related material, according to Europol, which praised Telegram for “its efforts to root out … malicious content.”
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov responded Tuesday to Europol’s appreciation via his official Telegram channel.
“After the ISIS attacks in Europe, we have zero tolerance for their propaganda on our platform,” Durov said, using an acronym for the militant group.
“At the same time, we’ll continue to defend our users’ absolute right to privacy like no other service, proving that you don’t have to sacrifice privacy for security,” he added.
Telegram has been used by IS members because the app provides encryption for private communications.

FILE – This image posted online Dec. 6, 2015, by supporters of the Islamic State militant group on an anonymous photo sharing website shows Syrians inspecting a damaged building in the aftermath of an airstrike that targeted areas in Raqqa, Syria.Online recruitments
According to a report released this summer by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, Telegram serves “as a stable online platform for pro-IS content, an ecosystem for building extremist networks, an effective and secure internal communications tool, and a forum for recruiting new IS members.”
Experts charge that Islamic State’s online recruitment strategy, with the use of encrypted apps and automated bots, poses a challenge for European law enforcement units that want to monitor its online activities.
“Research shows that European policymakers and companies alike often focus on the restriction and removal of internet content to contain the spread of extremist messaging. But that censorship can lead extremists to focus their recruitment activities elsewhere,” Kate Cox, a senior analyst at RAND Europe, told VOA.
“What is needed are approaches that are grounded in intelligence collection involving close partnerships between law enforcement and social media companies in order to map extremist networks, identify capabilities and highlight potential targets,” Cox added.
Some experts point out that even though a lot has been done to exert more control over the online space to prevent the IS propaganda, there are many “offline” networks that could pose a threat of terrorist recruitment in Europe.
“I think over the last two years, there has been a lot of effort to exercise more control on the online space [IS online presence] both with active takedown measures and regulatory measures … but it’s not the primary channel of recruitment,” Raphael Bossong, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told VOA.
“All research shows that it is also and much more importantly the social ties, more contacts that people have, and then once they have a certain environment, a certain personal involvement, they may be going further into the online world,” Bossong said.
Free speech
According to experts, Europe’s anti-terrorism measures are broadly defined, and efforts by tech companies to counter the problem of extremist material online are faced with obstacles because it overlaps with free speech and people’s ability to express themselves online.
“The European Union’s own Directive on Combating Terrorism has a vague definition of terrorism that risks negative consequences for free expression, particularly online, and could have a range of downstream impacts, such as on the right to public protest and demonstration,” according to a report released this month by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford.
“Free expression is at risk when governments pass counterterrorism laws that use imprecise and unclear passages criminalizing the ‘glorification of terrorism and its provocation,’ ” the report added.
There is also the debate among free speech advocates and experts over issues pertaining to people’s privacy and the broader security implications of allowing jihadist groups like Islamic State to operate on these platforms.
“There are obvious tensions — privacy and free speech on the one hand, and safety and security on the other,” Maura Conway, a Dublin-based academic who studies fighting online extremism and is coordinator of VOX-Pol, told VOA.
“The role of the internet, and social media in particular in this case, in violent extremism and terrorism was not something that internet companies wished to countenance early in their development, but is certainly an area that they now acknowledge is one in which workable solutions need to be found,” Conway added.
Rikar Hussein contributed to this report, and some information for this report came from Reuters.

…

A series of brutal winter storms Wednesday were pummeling most of the United States, making travel extremely difficult as Americans prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 500 flights were canceled and more than 9,000 delayed, according to the website FlightAware.
More than 50 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more from their homes this year, making it the second-highest Thanksgiving travel volume since AAA began tracking in 2000.
After wreaking havoc on the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountains, a storm pushed into South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin later in the day.
But the National Weather Service said the West was not yet done. It forecast a bomb cyclone, a system that brings a rapid drop in air pressure, that will bring heavy snow and wind gusts of up to 120 kilometers per hour.
“It’s one of those things, you couldn’t make it up if you tried,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brent Hewett said of back-to-back storms forming around the holiday.
For much of the Midwest and Northeast, the National Weather Service is predicting high winds and heavy snow, prompting state and local officials to urge residents to avoid travel — a tall order on the eve of a holiday.

…

William Doyle Ruckelshaus, who famously quit his job in the U.S. Justice Department rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, died Wednesday at age 87. 
 
Ruckelshaus served as the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which confirmed his death in a statement Wednesday. 
 
The lifelong Republican also served as acting director of the FBI. But his moment of fame came on October 20, 1973, when he was a deputy attorney general and joined his boss, Attorney General Elliot Richardson, in resigning rather than carrying out Nixon’s unlawful order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. 
 
After Richardson and Ruckelshaus resigned, Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the firing in what became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” — prompting protests and outrage around the country. Impeachment proceedings against Nixon began 10 days later. 
‘Incorruptible’
 
“He was incorruptible,” longtime friend and Seattle philanthropist Martha Kongsgaard said Wednesday of Ruckelshaus. “It was very disappointing for him to see this happening again in our country, and maybe on a larger scale. Deep decency in the face of corruption is needed now more than ever.” 
 
Ruckelshaus’ civic service and business career spanned decades and U.S. coasts, marked by two stints at the EPA under Nixon and Ronald Reagan, a failed U.S. Senate bid in 1968 and top positions at Weyerhaeuser Co. and Browning-Ferris Industries. 
 
Ruckelshaus spent much of his life focused on air and water pollution and other environmental issues. As a young Indiana state attorney general, he sought court orders to prevent industries and cities from polluting waters, and in his later years, he was the Pacific Northwest’s most high-profile advocate for cleaning up Puget Sound in Washington state.  

FILE – William Ruckelshaus is sworn in as the first Environmental Protection Agency administrator by Chief Justice Warren Burger as Jill Ruckelshaus and President Richard Nixon look on, Dec. 4, 1970.As the first EPA administrator from 1970 to 1973, he won praise for pushing automakers to tighten controls on air pollution. Shortly after taking over the agency, he ordered the mayors of Detroit, Atlanta and Cleveland to stop polluting waters and took actions against U.S. Steel and dozens of other water polluters. 
 
Reagan asked him back to the EPA in 1983 to help restore public trust after the prior administrator — Anne M. Gorsuch, mother of current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents about her agency’s allegedly lax efforts to clean up toxic waste. 
 
Ruckelshaus’ wife, Jill, likened his return to a “self-inflicted Heimlich maneuver,” but Ruckelshaus said he accepted the job because he thought he could right the ship, help the staff refocus on its work and reestablish the EPA’s credibility. 
 
Several thousand EPA employees greeted his return with thunderous applause. One sign read, “How do you spell relief? Ruckelshaus.” 
 
Reflecting on his long career of public service and private enterprise in 2001, Ruckelshaus ranked his time at the EPA as one of the most fulfilling and challenging. 
‘Something beyond yourself’
 
“At EPA, you worked for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue,” he said in an EPA oral history interview. “You’re not there for the money, you’re there for something beyond yourself.” 
 
In recent years, Ruckelshaus joined other former EPA directors in championing the agency against cuts or efforts to curtail its authority. In an interview with The Associated Press last year, his criticism of President Donald Trump’s moves to roll back environmental protections and give more regulatory power to the states was withering. 
 
He said some states don’t have the resources to police big polluters, and others lack the will. 
 
“The reason that the ultimate authority to enforce the law was put into federal hands was because the states weren’t any good at it,” Ruckelshaus said. “The idea that you’re going to delegate it to the states … is completely fraudulent.”  

FILE – Then-President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to attorney William Ruckelshaus during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 24, 2015.Ruckelshaus was born in 1932 in Indianapolis to a line of politically active lawyers. His grandfather had been the Indiana chairman of the Republican Party in 1900, and his father was the platform committee chairman at five Republican conventions. 
 
He told the Los Angeles Times in 1971 that his personal interest in nature and conservation was rooted in his childhood when his father took him fishing in northern Michigan. 
 
Between his stints at the EPA, Ruckelshaus moved his family to the Seattle area where he had spent two years out of high school as an army drill sergeant at Fort Lewis. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. 
 
He met his wife on a blind date set up by her Sunday school teacher. It took place at his aunt and uncle’s house in Indianapolis, where they both grew up. 
Puget Sound cleanup
 
In the Northwest, Ruckelshaus led federal efforts to recover Chinook salmon and steered an ambitious state initiative to clean up and restore Puget Sound, where salmon and orcas are in danger. 
 
His focus on a collaborative science-based process helped set the course for the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency charged with cleaning up the inland waters by 2020. 
 
His daughter, Mary Ruckelshaus, served as the agency’s chief scientist at the same time her father led the leadership council that oversaw it. 
 
Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970, once called Ruckelshaus “a Republican environmental hero,” and Washington Governor Chris Gregoire described him as “big as the great outdoors.” 
 
Ruckelshaus served on the boards of directors of several major corporations. He was senior vice president for law and corporate affairs at Weyerhaeuser Co. before returning to the EPA for his second term. At the time, some environmentalists criticized his close ties to some of the industries that the EPA regulated. 
 
He was CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. from 1988 to 1995 and served as chairman from 1995 to 1999. He was also a strategic director of Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, an early backer of companies such as Amazon. 

…

Senior doctors in Zimbabwe have joined their junior counterparts in a general strike over low wages that they say are not keeping up with high inflation.
On Wednesday, health care workers said they would continue their strike, which began Tuesday to protest the dismissal of junior colleagues who walked out in September, paralyzing the country’s health delivery system.
Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital, Parirenyatwa General in Harare, looked deserted as patients were being turned away.
Margret Mashava brought in her pregnant sister, Marvel, who she suspected might have complications related to an earlier cesarean section.
“Now we are stranded. We do not know what to do. There are no nurses at the clinics. We do not know. Maybe we will approach midwives since there are no doctors now. We don’t know what to do,” she said.
Zimbabwe’s senior doctors on Wednesday said in a statement that they had watched “over the past few months as the situation in our hospitals deteriorate … no bandages, no gloves and syringes available. In response, the employer [the government] unlawfully withheld their salaries. The authorities are so vindictive that they went to [a medical] theater to hand a letter to a doctor who was finishing an emergency operation. For the record, the senior doctors will not be reapplying to go back to work.”

Tawanda Zvakada of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association says, Nov. 22, 2019, he hopes President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government will swiftly act now that senior doctors have joined the strike. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Tawanda Zvakada of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association said he hoped the government would swiftly act now that senior doctors had joined the strike.
He said, “Doctors are not neglecting patients at all. But they have been put in such a situation that they can’t do anything. This is solely to blame on the government side. We have reiterated that we are not on strike, but incapacitated. The will is there but we do not have the capacity. Once we are capacitated, you will see doctors at hospitals.”
Being “incapacitated” is the word government workers are using to justify staying at home, saying their salaries of below $100, in some cases, cannot let them meet their basic needs.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government claims it can’t pay more to its workers, but critics point to skewed priorities, an apparent reference to frequent foreign trips and purchases of luxury vehicles by senior officials while the social sector is ailing and largely depends on foreign donors.

…

A U.S. judge on Wednesday delayed the planned Dec. 18 sentencing hearing of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, but did not set a new date.
Judge Emmett Sullivan had been expected to put off sentencing after both Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, and the United States filed a joint motion to request the delay, citing the expected December release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins of investigations into alleged Russian election interference. The inspector general said last week he expects to release the report on Dec. 9.
“The parties expect that the report of this investigation will examine topics related to several matters raised by the defendant,” they wrote in the joint filing.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to agents about his 2016 conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then-Russian ambassador to the United States. The retired Army lieutenant general is one of several Trump aides to plead guilty or be convicted at trial in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

…

The New York-based Human Rights Watch claims it has “damming evidence” showing the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army is engaged in summary executions, pillaging, seizing properties, and preventing the return of people to their homes.
“Turkey is turning a blind eye to the reprehensible behaviors displayed by the factions it arms,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “So long as Turkey is in control of these areas, it has a responsibility to investigate and end these violations.”

In this photo taken from the Turkish side of the border between Turkey and Syria, in Ceylanpinar, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, smoke billows from a fire in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, Oct. 20, 2019.Last month Turkish forces and the SNA launched an offensive in northeast Syria against Syrian Democratic Forces, which are made up mainly of the Kurdish militia the YPG.
Ankara considers the YPG terrorists, but the militia was a crucial ally of Washington’s military effort against Islamic State.
HRW cites evidence that the SNA executed prisoners, seized the homes of local Kurds, and engaged in indiscriminate shelling of civilians.
The case of Hevrin Khalaf, a prominent women’s rights activist, is highlighted. In October, Khalaf was executed after her car was stopped by a militia affiliated with the SNA.
HRW also says social media postings of videos put up by the militia appear to show the execution of women prisoners.

FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Nov. 6, 2019.Ankara has so far not responded to the HRW report. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has praised the SNA for its “sacrifices” in Syria.  
Turkey is facing growing international criticism for its use of militias, which critics claim have links to radical Islamic groups, a charge denied by Ankara.
“The problem is that those people are radicals in terms of their ideology, this is criticized by the western world,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.
“But Turkey has done it in the last eight years, so this is a choice by the president. He takes the risk. He lets them fight on the side of the Turkish army. We will see if it’s like a hand grenade exploding in his hand or it will strengthen his position,” Bagci added.
The SNA force is around three times larger than Turkish armed forces engaged in northern Syria. Ankara’s reliance on the SNA comes as its armed forces are facing an unprecedented number of simultaneous military commitments.

FILE – A Turkish army tank is driven to its new position on the Turkish side of the border between Turkey and Syria, in Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, Oct. 8, 2019.“The Turkish army is already strained,” said retired Turkish general Haldun Solmazturk, who now heads the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkish Institute. “From Iraq to Idlib to eastern Mediterranean Cyprus. An additional burden will have some serious impact on the Turkish army to meet all these challenges.”
The SNA has also taken the brunt of casualties. As of November 15, 224 killed and 692 injured compared to Turkish forces casualties of 11 dead and 90 wounded. Some analysts claim the relatively low number of Turkish deaths is a reason why the operation continues to enjoy strong domestic support among the Turkish public.
Ankara’s heavy use of SNA forces made up of mainly Syrian Arabs is also widely seen as a tactic to dispel allegations Turkish forces are invading another country.
Analysts point out, given that Turkey once ruled the region when it was the Ottoman Empire, Arab nations remain nervous about any irredentist Turkish aspirations. The Arab League has strongly condemned the Turkish operation.
Ankara insists it is committed to Syria’s territorial integrity.

“Our operations in northern Syria aim to clear terrorists from their strongholds, create safe conditions for the return of refugees robbed of their homes & lands,” tweeted Fahrettin Altun, the Turkish president’s communications head.
 
“Kurdish groups have forced many Arabs from their homes in areas under their control in northern Syria,” said former Turkish ambassador Mithat Rende. “These towns and cities controlled by Kurds are Arab towns with Arab names, with Kurdish minorities.”
Erdogan claims up to two million Syrians who fled to Turkey to escape the civil war will be returned to a so-called “safe zone,” that is being created in northern Syria along the Turkish border.
The Turkish president is looking to the international community for funding to pay $20 billion for the building of hundreds of thousands of new homes in the “safe zone.”  
Next week Erdogan will press his case when he is scheduled to hold a meeting with French, German, and British leaders on the sidelines of the London NATO summit.
 
“We invite the international community to support us in helping our Syrian brothers and sisters to safely return to areas where they can live in peace regardless of their religious and ethnic identities,” tweeted Altun Wednesday.
However, the actions of SNA forces are seen as fueling accusations Ankara is seeking to remove local Kurdish populations and replace them with Arabs considered more sympathetic to Turkey.
“There weren’t many mistakes by the Turkish army, but there was a tactical mistake when it comes to public diplomacy in the communication,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen who served widely in the region. “It’s a fact some of these militias have committed crimes, and this is being used against Turkey, that it’s involved in ethnic cleansing.”
Ankara vehemently denies any intention that it’s seeking demographic changes in Syria. However, the latest findings by HRW can only add to questions over Turkey’s plans for a safe zone and mass return of Syrians.
“Executing individuals, pillaging property, and blocking displaced people from returning to their homes is damning evidence of why Turkey’s proposed ‘safe zones’ will not be safe,” said Whitson.
 
 

…

Mobile device makers are constantly reinventing their products to keep consumers coming back, and paying, for more. The race to outdo each other has resulted in new form factors like foldable and dual screens. Not to be left out, Microsoft recently unveiled its take on the trend. VOA’s Tina Trinh examines whether the new look prizes form over function?
 
 

…

Polls opened Wednesday in Namibia, where the ruling party faces its biggest challenge since independence nearly three decades ago. The resource-rich southern African nation’s registered 1.3 million voters were choosing the president and National Assembly members.
                   
The ruling SWAPO has been shaken by a corruption scandal and the weakening economy. Meanwhile, more than 700,000 of the country’s 2.5 million people have registered for relief during a drought that affects the region.
                   
President Hage Geingob faces a challenger from within his own party who is running as an independent. Dr. Panduleni Itula has been appealing to youth; some 46% of them are unemployed. The election includes more than 400,000 voters born since Namibia gained its independence from South Africa.
                   
Itula made a last-minute legal challenge to Namibia’s use of electronic voting machines in this election but it was rejected. The country was the first in sub-Saharan Africa to use the machines.
                   
Geingob after voting on Wednesday called elections a contest, not a war, the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
                   
An unprecedented runoff election might be needed if no presidential candidate can get over the 50%-plus-one vote threshold.
                   
In the last election, in 2014, SWAPO won 80% percent of the vote, its highest share ever, while Geingob won 87% of the presidential vote.
                   
The ruling party was shaken this month when two cabinet ministers resigned after Iceland’s biggest seafood company, Samherji, was accused of paying bribes to local politicians and officials for access to Namibia’s fishing quota, a key economic resource along with mining.
                   
Political analysts have said they do not expect the scandal to have a big impact on the vote as many people already had made up their minds.
                   
Other candidates include Namibia’s first female presidential candidate, Esther Muinjangue.
                   
The official opposition Popular Democratic Movement, led by McHenry Venaani, has largely been campaigning around the issue of SWAPO’s two-thirds majority in parliament, which Venaani says has fueled impunity and graft.
                   
The Landless People’s Movement led by Bernadus Swartbooi has focused on land expropriation in Namibia, which has one of the world’s highest inequality rates.

…

Rumbling two by two down the ring road, disgruntled French farmers drove their tractors toward Paris Wednesday to protest stagnant revenues and what they say is unfair competition.
The protest was snarling traffic in the Paris area, as farmers from across the country attempted to use 1,000 tractors to block off access to Paris.
The tractors will remain parked on the highway circling the city until French President Emmanuel Macron agrees to meet with protesters, regional farmers’ union spokesperson Elisa Despiney told The Associated Press.
They could remain there for “hours, or maybe days,” she added.
By mid-morning, blue and green tractors bearing signs reading “Respond, Macron!” had advanced toward the southwestern edge of the city, taking up two lanes of the highway as police escorted them on motorcycles. They then stalled on the Paris ring road, where some protesters have pitched tents and lit fires.
Protesters on foot inside the city, meanwhile, have blocked off the Champs-Elysees and scattered hay across the famous Paris avenue.
The French presidency said no meeting between Macron and a delegation of farmers was planned at this stage.
Farmers’ grievances include free trade agreements they say put them at a disadvantage, a government reform that failed to increase their revenues, and regulations they say hinder the sector’s performance.
Damien Greffin, president of the farmers’ union for the Paris region, placed the blame for farmers’ woes squarely on Macron, whom he called the “instrument of these divisions” in an interview with BFM TV. He called on Macron to rally French citizens to support agricultural workers.
Farmers have specifically criticized a law passed last year that intended to bolster French agriculture. They say they haven’t seen the increased revenues the government promised.
They have also condemned “agri-bashing,” or perceived public hostility toward farmers, particularly from those who have criticized their use of pesticides and treatment of animals.
“We’d just like to work without people constantly pointing their finger at us about the plant protection products we use, about animal welfare,” Antoine Benoist, a 44-year-old farmer from the Essonne region, told the AP.
“We are the first to be careful with our future, to think about our health, the health of our children, about animal welfare,” he added.
Minister of food and agriculture Didier Guillaume told Europe 1 radio Wednesday that he supports “their anger and their protest.”
He added that “enough is enough” of “permanent denigration” and the gulf between city residents and farmers.
Guillaume defended last year’s agriculture law, saying that a two-year experimentation phase is still underway and it will take time for farmers to see its benefits.
The main farmers’ union has organized actions throughout the country, including a similar tractor protest in Lyon, where about 600 farmers with some 120 tractors blockaded three entrances to the city.
Paris and Lyon police have advised car drivers to stay off the affected roads.
The demonstrations in France follow similar protests in Germany Tuesday, when some 10,000 farmers drove 5,000 tractors into Berlin to protest the German government’s agricultural policies. Farmers in the Netherlands clogged highways last month to decry what they said was unfair blame for nitrogen pollution in the country.
The new EU Commission president on Wednesday guaranteed that farming would continue to be at the heart of the bloc.
Ursula von der Leyen told the EU plenary in Strasbourg that agriculture, which long absorbed half the EU budget before slowly tapering off, “will remain a valued part of our culture and our future.
In her speech hours before she was slated to be confirmed by the parliament, she promised “capital access to young farmers” to beef up their income, and insisted she would act against unfair global competition which the European farmers increasingly fear will undercut domestic prices. She said that EU trading partners “must comply with the EU environmental standards” if they want to import farm products.

…

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has responded positively to a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump that encouraged him to promote democracy and improve strained relations between the two countries.
       
A letter from Hun Sen, dated Tuesday and shared online Wednesday by members of his government, accepted Trump’s invitation to a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in the United States early next year, as well as an offer for the two countries’ foreign policy teams to hold talks.
       
Washington has long criticized Hun Sen’s government for its poor record on democratic and human rights. Hun Sen, in power for 34 years, has accused the U.S. of seeking “regime change” to oust him.
       
Trump’s Nov. 1 letter assured Hun Sen that the U.S. does not seek regime change.

…

South Korea says it has fired warning shots to repel a North Korean merchant ship that violated their disputed western sea boundary.
South Korea’s military says it believes the North Korean ship crossed the sea boundary on Wednesday due to bad weather and an engine problem.
It says it’s the second time that South Korea has fired warning shots to drive back a North Korean ship in the area since South Korea’s current liberal government took office in 2017. The first incident happened in September.
Ties between the two Koreas are strained amid a stalemate in U.S.-led diplomacy on ending the North Korean nuclear crisis.
North Korea said Monday its troops conducted artillery firing drills near the sea boundary, drawing formal protests from South Korea.

…

Top Russian officials decried the recommendations by a World Anti-Doping Agency committee to suspend Russia from international competition over tainted athlete doping probes — the latest in a drawn out saga over accusations of Russian state sponsored doping that has roiled global sport since 2014.
Russian athletes, unsurprisingly, joined in expressing bitterness about the WADA recommendations. But while some argued the suggested WADA penalties were unduly harsh, others blamed a failure in Russian sport leadership for risking their chance to compete in the next two Olympic Games and perhaps beyond.
The recommendations, issued by WADA’s Compliance Review Committee on Monday, alleged evidence of tampering of some 2000 athlete probes at Moscow’s RUSADA testing facility, and called for a four-year suspension of Russia from international competition, including the Olympic Games.
Reacting to the pronouncement at a news conference on Tuesday, Russia Minister of Sport
In this file photo dated Wednesday, July 24, 2019, Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Russia has sent a formal response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2019.The charges, argued Lavrov, were carried out by those who “wish to show Russia as guilty in anything and everything.”
The Kremlin was more sanguine.  A spokesman merely noted that President Vladimir Putin — who has gladly cast Russia’s return to sporting glory as a symbol of the country’s rising global status under his 19-year rule — had no plans to meet with government sporting officials over the issue.
WADA is expected to make a final decision regarding the committee’s recommendations on December 9. Whatever the outcome, Russia would have a right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a final ruling.
Athletes react
Yet athlete anger was also palpable  — with leading athletes lashing out at both WADA and Russia’s sporting bureaucracy for failing to lift a doping cloud that has hung over Russian athletics ever since a 2015 WADA investigation detailed widespread cheating at international events.
Indeed, just days prior to this week’s WADA committee recommendations, World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body formally known as the IAAF, provisionally suspended top figures from Russia’s Track and Field for helping champion Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko avoid doping tests earlier this year.
The charges prompted the immediate full suspension of efforts to reinstatement Russia’s track and field association following its 2015 suspension. Until the most recent violation, the talks reportedly had been making headway.
In a letter addressed to Russia’s Minister of Sport and head of Russia’s Olympic Committee, acclaimed high jumper

Western news agencies producing content in Persian have rebuked Iran for harassing their journalists based in Europe and the United States and for intimidating the Iran-based relatives of those journalists.
In a statement emailed to VOA Persian on Tuesday, a BBC spokesman said the London-based network has seen an increase in Iranian harassment of its Persian service staff and their families since the network began covering anti-government protests that erupted in Iran on November 15 and spread to dozens of cities.
Within several days, the Iranian government violently suppressed the protests, which were sparked by the sudden increase in gas prices amid a weakening economy. The London-based rights group Amnesty International said Iranian security forces killed at least 143 protesters in the unrest, in which some people set fire to buildings and looted stores. Iranian authorities have not released a death toll.
“It is deeply disappointing that Iran’s targeting of journalists and foreign-based Persian language media has been stepped up [during coverage of the protests],” the BBC spokesman said. “We have for many years sought to bring the world’s attention to this completely unacceptable breach of human rights, through our advocacy at the U.N., EU and other international bodies. We call on the Iranian authorities to bring this harassment to an end immediately.”
In a report published earlier Tuesday, the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders, also known as RSF, said it has documented recent threats by Iran toward journalists of Iranian origin working for BBC, Washington-based Voice of America, Prague-based VOA sister network Radio Farda and London-based media companies Iran International, Kayhan Life and Manoto TV.
RSF said Tehran’s harassment of the overseas-based Iranian journalists often has taken the form of “online attacks, insults and intimidation, mainly on social networks.”
The media rights group said a key perpetrator of the online intimidation has been Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain.
In a series of Farsi tweets since the start of Iran’s latest unrest, Baeidinejad alleged Radio Farda was acting to “topple” the Iranian government and accused a BBC journalist covering a rally of Iranian dissidents outside Iran’s London embassy of speaking to “terrorists.”

مردم ایران هیچگاه این روزهارا فراموش نمیکنندکه چگونه شبکه های معاندی چون BBCفارسی، VoA، من و‌تو‌ و ایران اینترنشنال با ارتزاق از بودجه دولتهای خارجی وگروه پهلوی درتلاشند آشوبگران سازمان یافته، قاتلین جان و آتش زنندگان اموال را منتقدان سیاسی معرفی کنند و ایران را به ناامنی بکشند.
— Hamid Baeidinejad (@baeidinejad) November 19, 2019
On November 19, Baeidinejad also tweeted: “The Iranian people will never forget these days in which enemy TV channels such as BBC, VOA, Manoto and Iran International – subsidized by the money of foreign governments and the Pahlavi group – have put Iran in danger by trying to portray the rioters, who are murderers and arsonists, as political dissidents.”
Pahlavi is the family name of Iran’s exiled crown prince, whose father led the nation until being  deposed in a 1979 Islamic Revolution by clerics who have been in power ever since.
RSF said another aspect of Iran’s harassment campaign has involved its intelligence agents “summoning and threatening” the parents of several of overseas-based journalists in recent days, telling the parents to tell their children to stop working for “enemy” news outlets. It said those agents conveyed a message to the parents that stopping such work would be “better for them and for you.”

جمهوری اسلامی ارعاب و تلاش برای سانسور روزنامه‌نگاران را از طریق فشار به خانواده‌هایشان در خارج از مرزها، ادامه می‌دهد. پدر ۷۳ ساله من را فراخوانده‌اند و درباره من ‌و خواهرم به او هشدار داده اند. خانواده‌های ما گروگان هستند. #روزنامهنگاریجرم_نیست#journalismisnotacrime
— Farnaz Ghazizadeh (@BBCFarnaz) November 23, 2019
In a November 23 tweet, BBC Persian broadcaster Farnaz Ghazizadeh said her 73-year-old father in Iran had been warned about the work that she and her sister Sanaz, also a BBC journalist, have been doing. “Our family members are hostages,” she wrote, adding the hashtag #journalismisnotacrime.
“I strongly condemn the harassment of journalists’ families inside Iran by Iranian authorities,” said VOA director Amanda Bennet in a video message recorded on Tuesday. It was a more strongly-worded response than that of BBC, which has sent several of its English service reporters to Iran in recent years on condition that their movements are restricted by Iranian authorities and their content is not shared with the BBC Persian service.
“We stand with (RSF) in condemning this harassment and asking that it immediately stop to ensure the safety of the families of our journalists who are working hard to bring objective, truthful news and information around the world,” Bennett added.
Iran tries to block its people from seeing VOA Persian TV programs and digital content and has not allowed a VOA correspondent to report from inside the country in 13 years.
Responding to a VOA Persian question about the reports of Iranian harassment at a Tuesday press briefing at the State Department, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he has seen Iran “engage in activity that is fundamentally at odds with central understandings we have here in America about how the press ought to be treated.”
Pompeo said the Trump administration has been advocating for Iran to behave like a normal nation that respects press freedom. “When I see those reports [of harassment], it reminds me that our work is certainly not yet complete,” he added.  

…

Donald Trump on Tuesday followed a White House Thanksgiving tradition by pardoning “Butter,” the turkey, and his alternate, “Bread.” The president also honored his own tradition of cracking jokes while granting clemency to the poultry. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

…

Rescuers were pulling survivors and dead bodies from piles of rubble in Albania on Tuesday after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s coastal area. The U.S. Geological survey placed the quake’s epicenter about 30 kilometers north of the capital Tirana and at a depth of about 20 kilometers. The earthquake was followed by about 100 aftershocks, including three with preliminary magnitudes of about 5. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the death toll is rising.

…