U.S. Vice President Mike Pence accused Russia on Wednesday of working to “destabilize” the Western Balkans and divide the region from the West where he said its future lies. Pence spoke in Montenegro, which joined NATO this year in defiance of Russia, on the final leg of a tour designed to reassure Eastern Europe of Washington’s commitment to its security despite doubts sowed by President Donald Trump’s lukewarm support for the Western military alliance. Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic with a population of 680,000 and an army of 2,000, became NATO’s 29th member in June, eight months after Podgorica accused Russian spies of orchestrating an attempted coup to derail the accession. Moscow dismissed the accusations as anti-Russian hysteria and warned of retaliation against Montenegro’s “hostile course.” “As you all know, Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force and, here in the Western Balkans, Russia has worked to …

Bipartisan groups of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are looking for ways to fix problematic parts of the U.S. health care law, even as President Donald Trump says he wants to let it collapse. Trump has voiced his anger that the Senate last week failed in three attempts to overhaul the law, passed during the first term of former President Barack Obama and commonly known as Obamacare. Since then he has said he just wants to let the law implode and leave Democrats to explain to voters why their insurance premiums increased sharply or they couldn’t buy insurance at all. But Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said he would hold bipartisan hearings next month with Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington state on how to repair the market for those who, unlike most Americans, do not have employer- or government-provided insurance. Alexander said an array of witnesses would be called …

Developments in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday include President Donald Trump trying to limit legal immigration to the U.S., signing a bill that strengthens sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, planning to enact trade action against China, and allegedly calling the White House a dump. Trump Joins Senators in Bid to Cut Legal Immigration — Trump and two Republican senators have announced a proposed new law to reduce legal immigration. Speaking Wednesday at the White House, Trump said the United States has for decades “operated a very low-skilled immigration” and the new system being sought would operate as a points-based system that would take into account the applicants’ ability to speak English and provide for themselves when considering their green card applications. Text of President Donald Trump’s Bill on Merit-based Immigration System Trump Signs Russia Sanctions Bill Into Law — Trump imposed new sanctions Wednesday on Russia, signing legislation with …

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have called Iran’s recent rocket test “inconsistent” with a U.N. Security Council resolution and asked the U.N. chief to investigate it.   “This launch therefore represents a threatening and provocative step by Iran,” says the letter sent Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres and the president of the Security Council by the United States on behalf of the four powers.   Last Thursday, Iran announced that it had successfully fired a rocket carrying a satellite into space.  Tehran claimed the “Simorgh” rocket is capable of carrying a 250-kilogram satellite as far as 500 kilometers above Earth, but did not elaborate on the payload of the rocket fired last week.   The launch followed the U.S. move in July to increase economic sanctions placed on Iran for its ballistic missile program.   It is not a violation of the 2015 nuclear deal signed, but …

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson surprised reporters at the State Department by joining the daily briefing for the first time Tuesday, laying out his vision for U.S. foreign policy for North Korea, Venezuela, China, the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, among other global hot spots. Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has the story from the State Department. …

As the U.S. stock market hit a new all-time high Wednesday, key U.S. lawmakers staked out core positions for a looming battle that could impact economic performance for decades: reforming America’s complicated and much-maligned tax system. “Comprehensive tax reform represents the single most important action we can take now to grow the economy and to help middle-class families finally get ahead,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, adding that Washington has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to act. “For families, we want to make their taxes simpler, fairer and lower. For small businesses, we want to provide the conditions they need to form, invest and grow,” McConnell said. An object of near-universal ridicule, the federal tax code is thousands of pages long and forces many Americans to hire accountants or attorneys to comply with its vast array of provisions. President Donald Trump made tax reform a major campaign promise …

The Boy Scouts are denying a claim by President Donald Trump that the head of the youth organization called the president to praise his politically aggressive speech to the Scouts’ national jamboree.   Trump told The Wall Street Journal, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.” Politico published the transcript of the interview.   On Wednesday, the Scouts responded, “We are unaware of any such call.” It specified that neither of the organization’s two top leaders — President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh — had placed such a call.   Surbaugh apologized last week to members of the scouting community who were offended by the political rhetoric in Trump’s July 24 speech in West Virginia.   Other U.S. presidents have delivered nonpolitical speeches at past jamborees. To …

The Sistine Chapel choir is preparing for its first visit to the United States in 30 years. The world’s oldest choir, it began performing for the head of the Roman Catholic Church about 500 years ago. …

President Trump’s White House is under new management. Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly has taken over as chief of staff after serving as the Secretary for Homeland Security. Kelly will be asked to use his military experience to bring a sense of order to a White House. …

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson surprised reporters at the State Department Tuesday by joining their daily briefing for the first time, laying out his vision for U.S. foreign policy for North Korea, Venezuela, China, the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, among other hot spots. Asked about U.S. relations with Russia following President Vladimir Putin’s order to cut back sharply on the number of American diplomats in Moscow,  Tillerson said he has repeatedly warned Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that ties between their two countries are bad, but could get even worse, and they just did.   Tillerson said the additional sanctions against Russia that the U.S. Congress passed by an overwhelming margin last week are not “helpful,” from his point of view. “Now the action by the Congress to put these sanctions in place, and the way they did, neither the president nor I were very happy about that,” Tillerson said. …

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said the debate over raising the country’s debt ceiling could stretch into September and he sought bipartisan support for the legislation to prevent a government default. “We are looking for a way forward” to pass a debt limit increase “sometime in the next month or so,” McConnell said after meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. He also told reporters that comprehensive tax legislation will move forward in September, but that he does not expect many Senate Democrats to support the Republican legislation. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, whose panel oversees government borrowing, said in a brief hallway interview that he does not expect bipartisan cooperation on the debt legislation. “We’re not going to get any Democrat help, I’ll tell you that,” Hatch said. The government bumped up against its statutory limit on borrowing at just …

A leading Senate Democrat on Tuesday accused U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions of concealing policy recommendations that could change how the Justice Department enforces laws on illegal immigration, drug trafficking and violent crime. In a letter to Sessions, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden said the Justice Department should release recommendations made by the Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, noting that the policy changes could end up hurting Americans. “These [Justice Department] decisions could have dramatic and wide-ranging consequences for Americans’ daily lives,” Wyden wrote, noting that the task force’s work could impact everything from marijuana and asset forfeiture policies to hate crimes, immigration and human trafficking. “Yet Americans remain in the dark about the content of the task force’s recommendations.” The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety was established through an executive order by President Donald Trump in February. Names of those serving on the task …

The Trump administration’s review of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan is taking “longer than originally announced and intended,” the former U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan told VOA, although that could be due to the complexity of the issue. “There are no easy answers, there are no easy solutions. After 16 years, a lot of different approaches have been tried or at least considered,” said Laurel Miller in an interview with the VOA Afghan service this week. President Donald Trump and his security team may be finding that they need more time to establish a new way forward, she said. Miller, a Rand corporation foreign policy expert, served as the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, or SRAP, for nine months, until June 23 of this year. The administration has released few details about its policy review, but several options have been floated in the news media. Among those options: …

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly confirmed Christopher Wray as the new head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The vote was 92-5 for Wray to take over the agency, which has been at the center of controversy since the 2016 presidential campaign. “This is a tough time to take on a tough job,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said during the debate over Wray’s nomination. “The previous FBI detector, as we know, was fired because of the Russian investigation” into its meddling in the presidential campaign. But Wray said at his conformation hearing last month that there was only “one right way” to do the job — “with strict independence, by the book, playing it straight, faithful to our laws, and faithful to the best practices of the institution.” Wray, 50, has a long, distinguished career as a federal prosecutor and in private practice. He has a law …

The number of refugees coming to the United States dipped sharply in July, dropping to the lowest level of monthly arrivals in more than a decade amid temporary Supreme Court orders that largely supported the government’s efforts to curb the number of displaced people allowed into the country. By Monday afternoon, 1,224 refugees had arrived, according to U.S. State Department data — less than any other month since the 2007 fiscal year. The number plummeted in recent weeks after the Supreme Court determined that only refugees with close family ties to the United States will be allowed in for now. The country’s highest court is scheduled to hear two cases related to President Donald Trump’s travel ban in October. Asked about the sharp drop in July, a State Department spokesperson referred to the July 19 order by the Supreme Court that determined the “bona fide” relationship applied to relatives, and …

America’s top envoy is sending a message to North Korea that “we are not your enemy,” while the White House continues to assert that all options remain on the table to halt Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. During a rare appearance at a State Department media briefing Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States does not “seek regime change, we do not seek a collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th Parallel.” Despite what Tillerson termed North Korea’s “unacceptable threat” to the U.S., “we hope that at some point they will begin to understand that and we would like to sit and have a dialogue with them.” Patience in growing thin, however, among some U.S. lawmakers. Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican member of the …

American and Japanese ships and aircraft are searching for a missing American sailor in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy said. The sailor, whose name is being withheld, was reported missing from the USS Stethem destroyer around 9:00am local time Tuesday. The ship was “conducting routine operations” in the South China Sea at the time, according to a Navy statement. Sailors aboard the vessel have carried out multiple searches of the ship to try to locate the sailor. The Joint Personnel Recovery Center Hawaii also is assisting with this search, the Navy said. This is the Navy’s second effort to find a missing sailor in the Asia-Pacific region within the last two months. In June, a sailor on the guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh was reported missing off Okinawa, and a 50-hour search ensued. The sailor was discover days later hiding in one of the ship’s engineering spaces. …