Firefighters struggling against one of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history hoped calmer winds on Tuesday would allow them to make progress in carving out buffers to contain the blaze. Six people have been confirmed killed and seven others have been missing since last Thursday. Nearly 900 homes and 300 other buildings have been reduced to ash and 37,000 people forced to evacuate as the Carr fire consumed 110,000 acres (45,000 hectares) of mountainous terrain near the city of Redding, in the northern part of the state. By Tuesday morning, some 3,600 firefighters had carved buffer lines around 27 percent of the fire’s perimeter, up from just 5 percent during much of the past week, thanks to calmer winds expected to remain in the area for two days. The blaze, so far the seventh most destructive in California history, roared without warning into Redding and adjacent communities last week …

A Turkish court has rejected an appeal for U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson to be released from house arrest while being tried on terrorism charges. Brunson’s detention has become a pressing issue for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened sanctions as part of a pressure campaign to free the pastor. Brunson is next expected in court Oct. 12 as he battles charges of terrorism and espionage. He has been jailed for the past 21 months after indictment on charges of helping a network led by U.S.-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, which Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Brunson is also charged with supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The 50-year-old pastor, who denies the charges, could face up to 35 years in prison if convicted. The detention of Brunson, an evangelical pastor from Black Mountain, North Carolina, has strained relations …

A jury of six men and six women was impaneled on Tuesday afternoon for the closely watched financial crimes trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Alexandria, Virginia.   Manafort, 69, is on trial for tax and bank fraud charges related to his political consulting and lobbying work for politicians in Ukraine.      Manafort has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial of Manafort, who briefly headed President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, is the only to arise so far from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the vote. The jurors – 10 whites and two Asian-Americans — who will decide Manafort’s guilt or innocence were selected from a pool of several dozen candidates. Four alternate jurors were also selected.   Prosecutors and defense lawyers objected to nearly two dozen other candidates in the juror pool for unknown reasons.   Federal District Court …

The United States on Tuesday froze the assets of three Pakistanis it has linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group blamed for the deadly 2008 attacks in India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The State Department added Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil to its list of “specially designated global terrorists,” saying he was a senior commander of the group. The U.S. Treasury targeted Hameed ul Hassan and Abdul Jabbar, who it said were responsible for funneling money to Lashkar-e-Taiba and paying salaries to its members. “Treasury’s designations not only aim to expose and shut down Lashkar-e Tayyiba’s financial network, but also to curtail its ability to raise funds to carry out violent terrorist attacks,” Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement, using an alternate spelling of the group’s name. The designation means all property belonging to the men subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked and Americans are …

The highest-ranking American at the Vatican insisted Tuesday he never knew or even suspected that his former boss reportedly sexually abused boys and adult seminarians, telling The Associated Press he is livid that he was kept in the dark because he would have done something about it. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican’s family and laity office, spoke as the U.S. church hierarchy has come under fire from ordinary American Catholics outraged that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct with men was apparently an open secret in some U.S. church circles. An open letter Tuesday in the conservative Catholic magazine First Things urged Catholics to withhold diocesan donations to the U.S. church until an independent investigation determines which U.S. bishops knew about McCarrick’s misdeeds – a “nuclear option” aimed at making the laity’s sense of betrayal heard and felt. Some of that outrage has been directed at Farrell, who was consecrated …

U.S. President Donald Trump declared Tuesday “collusion is not a crime,” as he continued his attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into links between between his 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump echoed comments by one of his lawyers, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, about collusion not specifically being an offense in the U.S. legal code.  Trump added that it “doesn’t matter,” because his campaign had not colluded with Russia. Even without collusion being a criminal offense, U.S. legal analysts say Mueller is likely investigating a possible conspiracy, a criminal offense, to connect with a foreign government to influence the election and probing numerous ties Trump campaign aides had with Russian interests.  Trump has reluctantly acknowledged Russian interference in the election, but has called the investigation “a big hoax” to explain his upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump’s comments on collusion came on the first day of the …

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday took to Twitter to ridicule two long-time wealthy Republican political donors, Charles and David Koch, after the billionaire industrialists lashed out at him for imposing tariffs on foreign imports and not controlling the government’s burgeoning long-term debt. The Kochs, whose Koch Industries manufacture a wide array of industrial and consumer products, have long funded conservative, mostly Republican, candidates in the United States, but sat out the 2016 presidential contest in which Trump won the White House over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The brothers — Charles, 82, and David, 78 — favor limited government with minimal regulation and free trade. They are expected to spend $300 million to $400 million supporting candidates they favor in the nationwide November 6 congressional elections, in which the entire 435-member House of Representatives and a third of the 100-member Senate are being contested. But Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Chinese, …

The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season has begun, but many families in Houston are still struggling to recover from the devastating floods brought last year by Hurricane Harvey.    For Samantha and Justin Scott, trying to get their life back to normal has been a living nightmare.   “It’s emotionally exhausting.I think when my kids think back to the past year of our life, especially our oldest, I think he’s just going to remember that I cried a lot,” said Samantha, who lives in the Bear Creek Village neighborhood just west of Houston with her husband and three children who range in age from one to five.   They are still rebuilding their home after last year’s flood caused by Hurricane Harvey, one of the wettest storm systems in U.S. history. Hurricane Harvey smashed into Texas a Category 4 hurricane, the first since 2005 to make landfall in the United States. …

The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season has already begun, but many families in Houston are still struggling to recover from the devastating floods brought by Hurricane Harvey last year. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee travels to Houston to see how flood victims are recovering almost a year later, and what can be done to prevent future flooding in hurricane prone cities. …

U.S. President Donald Trump has suspended Rwanda’s ability to ship apparel products duty-free to the United States due to a trade dispute over Rwanda’s increased tariffs on American used clothing and footwear, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Monday. The ban, ordered by Trump in a proclamation that followed a 60-day notification period, will maintain Rwanda’s other duty-free benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. “We regret this outcome and hope it is temporary,” Deputy USTR C.J. Mahoney said in a statement. He adding that the move would affect about $1.5 million in annual Rwandan exports, or only about three percent of the country’s total exports to the United States. …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned on Monday that any potential International Monetary Fund bailout for Pakistan’s new government should not provide funds to pay off Chinese lenders. In an interview with CNBC television, Pompeo said the United States looked forward to engagement with the government of Pakistan’s expected new prime minister, Imran Khan, but said there was “no rationale” for a bailout that pays off Chinese loans to Pakistan. “Make no mistake. We will be watching what the IMF does,” Pompeo said. “There’s no rationale for IMF tax dollars, and associated with that American dollars that are part of the IMF funding, for those to go to bail out Chinese bondholders or China itself,” Pompeo said. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that senior Pakistani finance officials were drawing up options for Khan to seek an IMF bailout of up to $12 billion. An IMF spokeswoman said: “We …

The U.S. military in Africa has taken steps to increase the security of troops on the ground, adding armed drones and armored vehicles and taking a harder look at when American forces go out with local troops, the head of the U.S. Africa Command said Monday.  Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser told reporters the U.S. also has cut the response time needed for medical evacuations — the result of a broad review in the wake of last year’s ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers and four of their Niger counterparts. “Since that happened, there were significant things to change and learn,” Waldhauser said. “We’ve done a thorough scrub really on every level, whether it’s at a tactical level … or how we conduct business at AFRICOM.” A report is due in mid-August on actions taken in response to the findings, Waldhauser said. He released a report in May on …

Several U.S. states on Monday said they would jointly sue the Trump administration for allowing the public to download blueprints for 3-D printable guns in a last-ditch effort to block the designs from becoming available Wednesday. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said at a news conference in Seattle that the states will ask a federal judge to issue a restraining order and an injunction to block the publication of the designs, which they say would allow criminals easy access to weapons. Along with Washington state, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Oregon, Maryland and the District of Columbia are working on finalizing the lawsuit and plan on filing it Monday, Ferguson said. At issue is a June settlement between the U.S. government and Texas-based Defense Distributed company that will allow it to legally publish gun blueprints online. Defense Distributed, which had challenged an earlier government ban as a violation …

American culture has become “less hospitable to people of faith,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday in vowing that the Justice Department would protect people’s religious freedom and convictions. Sessions spoke at a Justice Department summit on religious tolerance at a time when courts across the country have been asked how to balance anti-discrimination laws against the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantees. He also announced the creation of a “religious liberty task force” to help implement that guidance and ensure that Justice Department employees are accommodating peoples’ religious beliefs. Conservative groups immediately praised Sessions for promising to protect deeply held religious convictions, though Trump administration critics have repeatedly voiced concerns that the attorney general’s stance undercuts LGBT rights and favors the rights of Christians over those of other faiths. Sessions, the country’s chief law enforcement officer, warned of a “dangerous movement” that he said was eroding protections for religious Americans. …

A new poll shows that young Americans are expressing widespread pessimism toward the current political system but are feeling motivated to make positive change in the country. The poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV found that about 70 percent of Americans ages 15 to 34 think American politics are dysfunctional, and just 1 in 10 have felt positive or excited about the state of the country in the past month. However, the poll also found that 62 percent of young people believe that their generation is motivated to make positive changes in the United States. A similar percentage said that voting in the 2018 midterms will allow young people to effect real change in the government. The survey found that young people are most eager to vote for someone who shares their political views. About a third say they are certain to vote in …

A group of 36 people have filed the first legal challenge to the Trump administration’s travel ban after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in June. Muslim Advocates, Lotfi Legal LLC, the Immigrant Advocacy & Litigation Center PLLC, and Public Counsel have filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of some who had visa applications “wrongfully denied” or “stalled” by the administration. The president’s proclamation, which was upheld by the nation’s highest court in June, allows for exemptions from the travel restrictions it imposes. These waivers are granted on a case-by-case basis in instances where people can prove that the restrictions would cause an undue hardship, that they are not a threat to national security and that their coming to the U.S. would be in the country’s interest. But the plaintiffs write in their brief that few waivers are being granted and, therefore, the offer of waivers is fraudulent. They …

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday made his most explicit statement yet that he is open to direct talks with Iran. Trump, in the White House East Room during a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, was asked by a reporter if he would be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. “I believe in meeting,” Trump responded. “Speaking to other people, especially when you’re talking about potentials of war and death and famine and lots of other things, you meet. There’s nothing wrong in meeting.”   Trump noted his recent one-on-one discussions with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin as examples of his direct diplomacy with leaders deemed hostile to U.S. interests. “So, I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don’t know that they’re ready yet. They’re having a hard time right now,” Trump added. …