United States and Chinese officials say a joint investigation into a fentanyl ring has dismantled an international supplier. News outlets report U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Chinese narcotics authorities say the investigation also stopped more than 20 million doses of the drug from reaching the U.S. A Homeland Security Investigations attache in China, Shawn Harwood, said at a Wednesday news conference in New Orleans that this joint investigation is the first of its kind.   A Homeland Security Investigations statement says its New Orleans office learned in August 2017 of a China-based supplier exporting fentanyl to the United States. The department’s office in Guangzhou, China, and the Chinese Narcotics Control Bureau then began the joint investigation.   Officials are now investigating 35 U.S. addresses where the ring tried to deliver drugs. …

Environmentalists are alarmed that President Donald Trump is following through on his campaign pledges to roll back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth. At a recent rally in Charleston, West Virginia, under a “Trump Digs Coal” banner, the president announced plans to roll back the Clean Power Plan. “We are putting our great coal miners back to work.” Trump said, claiming that coal is necessary for the nation’s energy security. “You can do a lot of things to those solar panels, but you know what you can’t hurt? Coal. You can do whatever you want to coal.” Trump’s plan abandons the previous administration’s goal of scaling back U.S. reliance on coal and reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by a third by the year 2030. Instead, Trump wants to allow coal-producing states like West Virginia to set …

President Donald Trump has followed through on pledges to roll-back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth. Trump’s proposal includes loosening restrictions to the American Clean Cars Standards and the Clean Power Plan. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more. …

The saws, the sanding, the hammering. The constant sounds of construction are music to the ears of country music star Garth Brooks. “That sound you are hearing right there, that’s love,” he said, competing to have his voice heard over the ever-increasing buzz of activity that surrounds him on this construction site. For Ericka Santiestepan, a single mother of two young children, the slam of a hammer hitting a nail is also the sound of hope. “I feel like I won the lotto. It’s means everything. I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to have to go next,” she told VOA. That’s because when the A-frame trusses Brooks is helping build are finally raised, they form the roof over Santiestepan’s new, permanent home. “I’m in a house,” she said, grinning, “and I have these amazing people to help me — Garth Brooks and Trisha (Yearwood) are working on …

It’s an event that takes place just one week a year, but former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s Habitat for Humanity Work Project has become one of the most identifiable aspects of their legacy. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports outside South Bend, Ind., it’s been an emotional journey for the Carters and their growing army of volunteers. …

The taut drama Operation Finale revisits history and brings to life the dramatic capture, by Mossad operatives, of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. Filmmaker Chris Weitz and scriptwriter and historian Matthew Orton offer a dramatic rendition of the historic events that took place in Argentina 15 years after the end of World War II. After Mossad received a tip that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement, Israel sends a group of elite operatives to abduct the architect of the Final Solution and bring him to Israel to be tried for his crimes. At the time, Argentina is harboring a sizable number of runaway German Nazis, leaving Israel no hope that an extradition request for Eichmann would be honored by the Argentinian government. So Eichmann’s capture is a top secret, illegal operation. The group led by Mossad operative Peter Malkin abducts Eichmann taking …

Victims of a prominent Washington rabbi who for years secretly videotaped women as they used a ritual bath reached a $14.25 million settlement with four Jewish organizations, their lawyer confirmed Wednesday. The settlement covers over 150 women filmed by Bernard “Barry” Freundel, along with other women who undressed where the hidden camera was located even if they were not taped, attorney Alexandra Harwin told AFP Wednesday. Freundel was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in 2015, after his voyeurism went undetected for years. Rabbi at the Kesher Israel synagogue in Washington’s upscale Georgetown neighborhood, he placed his secret camera near the mikveh, a bath used to achieve ritual purity in Judaism. The case has shocked the city’s Jewish community, in which Freundel was a highly respected figure who taught at several universities in the area. The class action lawsuit initially sought $100 million in damages, but the …

The U.S. Navy seized hundreds of small arms, including AK-47s,  from an unflagged boat in the Gulf of Aden, a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday. The defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the incident took place on Tuesday and the boarding was carried out by the crew of the Jason Dunham destroyer. The unflagged vessel was a traditional dhow, or sailing boat. The defense official declined to comment on the destination of the small vessel, but it was being investigated. The Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes connecting Europe to Asia and the Middle East, with Yemen to the north, Somalia to the south and the Arabian Sea to the east. The defense official added that U.S. Navy and allied ships have carried out similar operations in the past, including seizing drugs from vessels in the area. …

The United States cannot guarantee that it will provide India a waiver from sanctions if it purchases major weapon and defense systems from Russia, a top Pentagon official said on Wednesday, ahead of a high-level dialogue between Washington and New Delhi. The United States has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, under which any country engaged with its defense and intelligence sectors could face secondary U.S. sanctions. However, a new defense bill gives the president the authority to grant waivers in case of national security interests. Randall Schriver, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, said there was an “impression that we are going to completely protect the India relationship, insulate India from any fallout from this legislation no matter what they do.”  Media reports from the region have suggested that India would get a waiver. “I would say that is a bit misleading. We would still have very significant concerns if India …

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called Wednesday for the United States to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses against minority Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, saying it was being turned into a “high-tech police state.” The group, led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Executive Commission on China, made the call in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Muslims in Xinjiang, China’s western autonomous region, were “being subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitized surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored,” the lawmakers said in their letter, which in addition to Rubio and Smith was signed by 15 U.S. senators and representatives. The letter, signed by nine Republicans, seven Democrats and one independent, called for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against senior Chinese government and …

President Donald Trump’s administration killed Puerto Ricans through “neglect,” the mayor of the island’s capital said Wednesday, a day after the official death toll for Hurricane Maria was raised to nearly 3,000. Trump defended his handling of the crisis, claiming that his administration did a “fantastic job” and that Puerto Ricans are still being helped, but Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, had a different view. “The administration killed the Puerto Ricans with neglect. The Trump administration led us to believe they were helping when they weren’t up to par, and they didn’t allow other countries to help us,” Cruz told CNN. “Shame on President Trump. Shame on President Trump for not even once, not even yesterday, just saying, ‘Look, I grieve with the people of Puerto Rico.’” After nearly a year of controversy over the death toll from the September 2017 storm, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said …

U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday asked for more time to decide whether to retry former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on 10 criminal charges that a Virginia jury deadlocked on last week. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had faced a Wednesday deadline to decide whether to retry Manafort on the charges, which include seven counts of bank fraud and three counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts. “The government does not at this time have sufficient information to make an informed decision on whether it will seek retrial of the remaining counts,” prosecutors wrote in a filing late Wednesday, adding they would like the deadline extended to one week after the court has ruled on Manafort’s post-trial motions. …

Republican U.S. Congressman Ron DeSantis came under fire on Wednesday when the President Trump-backed Florida gubernatorial candidate said his state should not “monkey this up” by electing Democratic Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is African-American. Gillum scored a surprise victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for one the United States’ most competitive races for governor. If the 39-year-old Tallahassee mayor wins the November 6 election, he would become the most populous U.S. swing state’s first black governor. Critics on Wednesday blasted DeSantis, a staunch Donald Trump supporter who won his party’s nomination the previous day, for comments they said had racist undertones. Interviewed on Fox News, DeSantis said, “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases,” after calling Gillum “an articulate” spokesman for far-left views. Words like “monkey” or “ape” have been used to demean African-Americans and …

The UN human rights chief urged Facebook Wednesday to more proactively address hate speech but warned against excessive regulation, after US President Donald Trump accused tech giants’ platforms of bias against him. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s appeal follows a decision by Facebook this week to ban Myanmar’s army chief and other top military brass named in a UN probe linking them to a possible “genocide” against Rohingya Muslims. The social media network is the prime source of news and information for many in the country, but has also been a platform for the army and Buddhist hardliners to spread hate speech against the Rohingya and other minorities. The site aired support for the military’s bloody “clearance operations” last year that forced some 700,000 Rohingya over the border into Bangladesh. “We felt early on very uncomfortable with what we were seeing in Myanmar, (but) in the early meetings that we had …

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday clarified his previous statements on the fate of additional large-scale exercises on the Korean Peninsula, leaving open the possibility of future cancellations. “Our military posture has not changed since the conclusion of the Singapore summit, and no decisions have been made about suspending any future exercises,” Mattis said. “Our forces maintain a high state of military readiness and vigilance in full support of a diplomatically led effort to bring peace, prosperity and stability to the Korean Peninsula,” he added. At a Tuesday briefing, the defense secretary told Pentagon reporters he had “no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises” on the Korean Peninsula. Minutes later, however, when asked whether that meant next year’s large-scale exercises on the peninsula known as Ulchi-Freedom Guardian and Foal Eagle were now back on, Mattis replied that the Pentagon had “not made decisions on that at this time” …

A 1600’s Native American fort uncovered as part of a rail bridge replacement project in Connecticut is shining some light on a tribe’s first dealings with Europeans, archeologists said Tuesday during a tour of the site. The find on a small sliver of land next to railroad tracks that carry Amtrak and Metro-North commuter trains is considered one of the most important discoveries in the Northeast for Native American history. Not only did experts recently find the remains of the 17th-century fort, they discovered some artifacts including arrow and spear tips that date back an estimated 3,000 years, indicating Native Americans were active at the site for generations. No evidence of human remains has been found. “It’s one of the earliest historic period sites that has been found so far,” said archaeologist Ross Harper. “And it’s very rich in artifacts including Native American pottery and stone tools, as well as …