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President Donald Trump prepares to welcome Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House Nov. 13, just weeks after Turkey launched an assault in Syria on Kurdish fighters — longtime allies of the United States in the fight against Islamic State terrorists. U.S. lawmakers from both  parties have slammed the president for his announcement that he plans to withdraw most U.S. troops from Syria, and Democratic lawmakers are also blasting his invitation to Erdogan while Turkey continues its attacks on the Kurds. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
 
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There’s a new statue of Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, on a terrace of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, a stone’s throw from the iconic Brandenburg Gate.It is a long time coming, for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and other supporters of the project. They had been pressing Berlin city officials for years to erect a statue in a public place, but Berlin officials demurred, noting that many factors and people contributed to the fall of the Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.The Reagan supporters finally settled for a statue on the grounds of the embassy — American soil in the heart of Berlin.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the unveiling Friday, calling it a “monumental moment” as the artwork appeared. The statue memorializes Reagan’s 1987 speech in which he exhorted then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”Two years later, the Wall began to come down on live television. After a surprise announcement by an East German official that Easterners would be allowed to travel to the West, effective immediately, Berliners took hammers to the concrete barrier and started dismantling it themselves.WATCH: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 Years On
The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 Years On video player.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Chancellery in Berlin, Nov. 7, 2019.Child of former East GermanyGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a child of the former East Germany, says Ossies are the real heroes behind the fall of the Wall. Peaceful protests began in September 1989 in the East German university town of Leipzig and spread to other eastern cities, culminating in the November decision to open the Wall in Berlin.“The peaceful revolution and November 9, 1989, was the work of the citizens of the GDR,” Merkel told the magazine Der Spiegel this week. “We are happy to share it, including the joy, but it was done by the citizens of the GDR with a huge amount of courage.”This is perhaps why Berlin officials resisted the Reagan statue. To Germans, this was not Reagan’s win. It was Germany’s.Matthias Stausberg, who grew up in the West German town of Betzdorf, was living in Berlin in 1999 when the city celebrated the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. He describes coming home from work to find his roommate watching archival footage on television.“As I walked into the room,” Stausberg says, “he turned to me, tears running down his cheeks, saying ‘This was really our finest hour.’ And it was.”Now based in London, Stausberg is well-versed in the discussions about how and why the Wall fell and why the Wall remains, invisibly, in German culture.But, he says, “All of that doesn’t take away from the beauty of the moment itself. When do these profound political transformations ever play out peacefully? Those days beginning in the evening of November 9th were days of unparalleled joy. The world was watching Germany, and for once, it was good news.”
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Crammed with Chinese restaurants, Turkish carryouts and Tunisian bakeries, Avenue de Flandre in northern Paris is, in many ways, the face of today’s France. Sub-Saharan African and East Asian workers staff the markets lining the grimy artery, a haphazard match of needs and chance.But for some sectors, that may soon change.Earlier this week, French authorities announced the country’s first foreign worker quotas for non-European Union immigrants to fill key labor gaps in areas such as construction — a road few other European counterparts have gone down. But the message wrapped in a broader immigration package is a familiar one in a region grappling with populist claims of runaway migration and a surging far right.Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, in announcing the quota system, said France needed to “take back control” of its immigration policy.“Taking back control of our migration policy means fighting back against abuses of the right of asylum, against irregular migration,” Philippe said, as he outlined a raft of measures Wednesday that included delaying access to health care for new asylum-seekers and dismantling Paris-area squatter camps.French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, left, and French Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner at a press conference at the Hotel Matignon in Paris, Nov. 6, 2019. Next year, France will start setting quotas on migrant labor.Support for quotasA newly released Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting poll found most French support the quota measures, even as they give the centrist government’s overall immigration policy a thumbs-down. Far-left parties slam them as overly harsh; those to the right say they’re not tough enough.And with France’s far-right National Rally party polling strongly, many see the bigger aim as political.“They’re trying to appeal to right-wing voters” ahead of next year’s local elections and 2022 presidential ones, said Olivia Sundberg Diez, a migration policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center. But, she added, “it’s very hard to beat the far right at their own game. If you try, you are setting yourself up for criticism on both sides.”French authorities moved quickly to make good on one of the announced measures, dismantling a northern Paris squatter camp hours after Philippe spoke, and busing migrants to temporary shelters.FILE – Young people attend a meeting between asylum-seekers and French children in Ferrette, France, April 24, 2019. This tiny town near the Swiss border in eastern France has opened its doors to asylum-seekers who now are 10% of the population.Not easy to implementThe quotas might be trickier to implement. The government’s plan remains sketchy, with little regional precedence. Only a few European countries, including Germany, Britain and Hungary, have adopted similar initiatives, or used EU “blue cards” — the region’s answer to the U.S. green card.“Quotas have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is it’s a clear signal that migration is under control,” said Jean-Christophe Dumont, Immigration Division head for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He said the government was right in trying to reform the labor migration system.But, Dumont added, “it’s extremely difficult, based on economic indicators or theory, to estimate what will be the needs in specific occupations for the next 12 months.”The quotas are aimed to supplement roughly 33,000 higher-skilled workers who come to France annually. But employers today are struggling to fill a raft of lower-level jobs, including those in construction, bakeries and health care. Done right, analyst Sundberg said, setting migration targets rather than ceilings can be useful to fill jobs in an increasingly aging Europe.But she said the labor quotas would affect only a small slice of France’s overall migrant population, while raising key questions, including what will happen to the migrants when their contracts are over.“Whether it will actually happen and what impact it will have is very unclear,” she said.Migrants are gathered before being evacuated by French police in Paris on November 7, 2019. – More than a thousand migrants and homeless have settled camp in this area for months.More asylum-seekersThe government’s announcement comes as France has seen a steady increase in asylum-seekers, up 22% in 2018, to reach nearly 123,000. While the numbers are modest compared with the country’s population of 67 million, the message of out-of-control migration resonates, particularly in the wake of Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis.Indeed, recent polls put the far-right National Rally neck and neck with French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist La Republique en Marche party in the next presidential elections, with a significantly higher score than the 2017 race, when National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen placed second.But French charity Secours Catholique is seeing another phenomenon; illegal immigrants now account for more than 40 percent of the destitute people it receives. It blames the uptick on increasingly tougher migration policies by recent governments.Secours Catholique President Veronique Fayet dismissed the newly announced government measures, including the delay in accessing health care, as “a publicity stunt.”“With the motive that some people are defrauding and profiting from the system,” she said of French authorities, “they’re stigmatizing and fragilizing an entire population.”Anti-immigrant attitudes are sharpening in Europe, experts say, seen not only with gains by far-right parties in Germany and elsewhere, but also the controversial naming in Brussels of a new “European way of life” commissioner.“For the moment, it looks like the name is there to stay,” Sundberg, of the European Policy Center, said. “Which I think is an unfortunate signaling of the direction European migration policy will take.”
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President Donald Trump says he’s weighing an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow.Trump tells reporters he appreciates the invitation from Putin, but the parade falls “right in the middle of political season,” so he’s not sure he can make it.He adds: “I would love to go if I could.”The event commemorates the May 1945 allied victory over Nazi Germany. Russia uses the annual parade to show off its military might.Trump says the event, which next year marks the 75th anniversary of the allied victory, is “a very big deal.” 
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The United Nations’ highest court ruled Friday that it has jurisdiction in a case brought by Ukraine that alleges Russia breached treaties on terrorist financing and racial discrimination following its annexation of Crimea by arming rebels in eastern Ukraine and reining in the rights of ethnic Tatars and other minorities. 
 
The decision by the International Court of Justice means the case, which opened a new legal front in the strained relationship between Russia and Ukraine, will go ahead. 
  
It most likely will take many months or years to settle. 
 
The court’s president, Abdulqawi Yusuf, said the ruling was limited to jurisdiction and did not address the merits of Ukraine’s complaints in the case.  FILE – A member of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service signals for people to stop as they approach a checkpoint at the contact line between Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian troops, in Mayorsk, eastern Ukraine, July 3, 2019.Kyiv filed the case in January 2017, asking the court to order Moscow to stop financing rebels in eastern Ukraine and to pay compensation for attacks, including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. 3 Russians, Ukrainian chargedRussia has always denied involvement in the downing of the passenger jet, but an international investigation has charged three Russians and a Ukrainian with murder over their alleged role in the deadly missile strike. 
 
Ukraine also asked the court to order Russia to stop discriminating against ethnic Tatars on the Crimean Peninsula. 
 
At hearings in June, Russia argued that Ukraine was using the two treaties as a way of bringing broader arguments about the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine before the world court. 
 
Lawyers for Moscow insisted that the court had no jurisdiction and should throw out the case. 
 
In a preliminary ruling in 2017, the court ordered Russia to stop limiting “the ability of the Crimean Tatar community to conserve its representative institutions.” Rejected requestHowever, in the same ruling, judges rejected Ukraine’s request for measures aimed at blocking Russian support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, saying Kyiv did not provide enough evidence to back up its claim that Moscow sponsored terrorism by funding and arming the rebels. 
 
The case is going ahead as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is attempting to end the conflict in the east of his country that has killed more than 13,000 people and displaced more than a million people. 
 
Rulings by the court, the United Nations’ principal judicial organ, are binding on states. 
 
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Ten teenagers were among the 39 Vietnamese found dead in a truck container in southeast England last month, local police said Friday while relaying for the first time details of those who died.The scope of the tragedy became clear as police released the names and ages of those who died in one of Britain’s worst incidents of people smuggling.Two of the dead were only 15, while the oldest was 44. Some 20 of the victims came from one province — Nghe An in north central Vietnam, around 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Hanoi.Police suggested they waited until the entire identification process was complete before releasing details of those who died.“Our priority has been to identify the victims, to preserve the dignity of those who have died and to support the victims’ friends and families,” said Assistant Chief Constable Tim Smith.“It remained of paramount importance to us to ensure that an individual’s next of kin were informed, and that they were given some time to absorb this tragic news before we publicly confirmed their loved one’s identity.”The authorities worked with Vietnamese police and the coroner to identify the bodies found Oct. 23 in the back of a truck in an industrial park in the English town of Grays.Police officers are on the scene after a truck, in rear, was found to contain 39 dead bodies, found to be Vietnamese nationals, near London, England, Oct. 23, 2019.Police said last week that all of the victims were Vietnamese citizens. DNA samples were taken from families in Vietnam who suspected their missing relatives had been on that truck.Some of the names had emerged in news reports before, among them Pham Thi Tra My, a 26-year-old woman whose heartbreaking final text message to her mother vividly brought home the scale of the tragedy. Her family had been unable to contact her since the text arrived saying she was suffocating.“I’m so sorry mom and dad…. My journey abroad doesn’t succeed,” she wrote. “Mom, I love you and dad very much. I’m dying because I can’t breathe …. Mom, I’m so sorry.”The 31 men and eight women are believed to have paid people traffickers for their clandestine transit into England. British police have charged 25-year-old Maurice Robinson, from Northern Ireland, with 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. They say he drove the cab of the truck to Purfleet, England, where it picked up the container, which had arrived by ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.In Ireland, 22-year-old Eamonn Harrison was arrested on a British warrant. Essex Police in Britain said they had started extradition proceedings to bring him to the U.K. to face charges of manslaughter. Several others have been arrested in Vietnam.Families in Vietnam have set up altars with incense and photos of their loved ones, praying for their return. The tragedy has also deeply affected the Vietnamese community in the U.K., who gathered last week for a candlelight vigil at the Church of the Holy Name and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in east London to mourn the dead.Father Simon Thang Duc Nguyen, a Roman Catholic priest who organized the ceremony, said the community never thought such a great number of people could die in a single incident.“It’s a funeral for a whole nation, not only of a family,” he said. “It’s a funeral … for people across the world.” 
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Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States said Washington and its allies are still confronting formidable communist adversaries and the free world needs to continue to defend against threats from Russia and China.In a speech near Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Russia “invades its neighbors and slays political opponents,” adding Russian authorities “use police raids and torture against Crimean Tartars and Ukrainians who are working in opposition to Russian aggression.”The top U.S. diplomat also hit out at Beijing.“In China, the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is shaping a new vision of authoritarianism,” Pompeo told an audience at the Körber-Stiftung Foundation, accusing the CCP of using tactics to suppress Chinese people, denying travel privileges to critics, and harassing the families of Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang who sought refuge abroad.In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry criticized Pompeo over earlier remarks regarding the Communist Party.”Pompeo attacked the Chinese political system, rendering the so-called Chinese threats filled with ideological prejudice and the zero-sum game thinking of the Cold War. The Chinese government is expressing strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition,” said spokesperson Geng Shuang.Pompeo is in Germany this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, 1989, the demolition of the Berlin Wall brought to an end to a divided Germany, and was followed by the eradication of communism in Europe, and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at an event marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 8, 2019.1989 was the year that student-led pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, with corruption among the elite a key complaint of demonstrators.Pompeo on Friday drew a distinction between the communist government and the Chinese people, saying, “I wouldn’t characterize it as a conflict between the United States and China,” when asked during a moderated discussion if the two countries are having a new Cold War.In Hong Kong, as ongoing anti-government protests show no sign of an immediate end, Pompeo said the United States had urged China to maintain its commitment to the citizens of Hong Kong, adding people there will “find their own path forward.”Pompeo is scheduled to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel later Friday. He met with Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer earlier in the day.When asked how committed the U.S. is to the peace in Ukraine, Pompeo said he had supported giving defensive weapon systems to Ukraine, adding the U.S. had provided the tools they needed to protect themselves from Russia.
 
“We must recognize that free nations are in a competition of values with unfree nations,” he said. 
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Almost whatever happens Dec. 12, after Britons have voted for the third time in almost four years in a general election, the country is likely to emerge even more disunited than before, analysts and commentators worry.The vote may well mark an important stage in the unpacking of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, otherwise known as the United Kingdom, they say. According to the five living former British prime ministers, the turmoil caused by Brexit has plunged Britain into an existential crisis, and has turned the upcoming poll into the most consequential British election of modern times.If Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win, Northern Ireland will end up being pushed closer to the Republic of Ireland, thanks to the most recent Brexit deal negotiated with the European Union that would align the British-run province with EU rules on food safety and other standards. That would require customs officials to check goods entering Northern Ireland from mainland Britain.Meanwhile, if Jeremy Corbyn, seen as Labour’s most left-wing leader since the 1920s ends up in Downing Street, it will likely be thanks to support from the Scottish Nationalist Party.  That party has made clear its price will be another Scottish independence referendum, which stands a high chance this time of passing, unlike the poll in 2014. Few pollsters believe Labour can win enough seats to form a majority government. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister — the head of the Scottish government — said she was sure Corbyn would agree to another independence plebiscite if he becomes prime minister.He may not have any choice.  Some veteran politicians, including former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major, worried even before the 2016 British referendum on European Union membership that the plebiscite could well set in motion the conditions for a break-up of the United Kingdom. With large majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland opposed to Brexit, the writing was on the wall, they said.Blair warned that at the very least it would “completely change the dynamic of Scottish independence.” He and others said the demand for a second independence referendum would be “unstoppable” if the Scottish pro-European views are discounted.FILE – Pro-independence activists wave Scottish Saltire flags as they march in Edinburgh, Scotland, Oct. 5, 2019.That is what the SNP hopes will happen, and as a electoral beneficiary of nearly four years of Brexit chaos in Westminster, Sturgeon said the demand for a Scottish independence referendum will become “irresistible” if her party wins the majority of Scottish seats in the general election, which is highly likely. Unionists won the 2014 independence referendum by 55 percent to 45 percent.A string of opinion polls recently has shown the political landscape is being reshaped by the Brexit impasse, with surveys suggesting that a narrow majority of just over 50% favoring Scottish secession. Significantly, more people than not say Scotland would be wealthier and better off inside the EU and outside Britain.In October, undeterred by damp and rain more than 200,000 pro-independence Scots marched in Edinburgh demanding secession. The Institute for Government, a London think tank, has argued it would be politically unsustainable to deny Scotland a second independence referendum, if Scots vote in December for parties supporting one. In a report it said:  “If the union is to survive, it must be because a majority of people in all four parts of the U.K. are persuaded that its survival is for the best, not because Westminster wields the power… to hold the nations… together against their will.”The political dynamic is changing In Northern Ireland too, and reunion with the Irish Republic is becoming more talked about, partly due to mounting anger over Brexit combined with changing demographics, analysts say. By 2021 the province’s Catholics, who tend to support reunification, will outnumber Protestants, who tend to be unionist, according political scientist Paul Nolan. He said that while Catholics don’t automatically want reunion, it will be important for the London government to ensure they are “not alienated by any form of triumphalism or anything that seems to be a rejection of their cultural identity as nationalists.”Northern Ireland’s unionists worry that the Brexit deal Johnson negotiated with Brussels — the second exit agreement struck — will in effect start peeling the province away.FILE – A car passes a Brexit sign on the old Belfast to Dublin road, close to the Irish border in Newry, Northern Ireland, Oct. 16, 2019.In September, for the first time, an opinion survey found that a slim majority in Northern Ireland favored reunion with the Irish Republic.On Thursday, the second day of official electioneering, Johnson acknowledged that this election is the most important for a generation, and not only because it will determine whether his Brexit deal ultimately secures the full backing of Parliament afterward. Campaigning in Scotland, he said, “Only a vote for the Conservatives will stop the SNP’s plans to break up the U.K., the most fantastic and successful political union in the world. I will never give up on our incredible union.”Even a Conservative victory won’t ensure Scotland stays in the union, though.  Some commentators say a Johnson win would end up sealing Scotland’s departure by deepening Brexit grievances and giving greater weight to the SNP’s case for another referendum.The English increasingly don’t seem to care, including even Conservative party members. A majority of Conservatives said in a July opinion poll that they’d rather Brexit took place, even if it led to Scotland and Northern Ireland breaking away.Would it matter if Britain broke up and was reduced to a residual core of England and Wales?  England’s GDP would remain in the world’s top 10, according to economists, although that could depend in part on how it finally exits the EU and what free trade deals it strikes with the EU, its largest trading partner, and with others, notably the U.S.However, how it would relate to the rest of the world aside from commerce would partly depend on whether it emerged in an isolationist mood, more “Little England,” or as a buccaneering, outward-looking  nation, determined to engage politically and to continue to punch above its weight.According to Tim Oliver of Britain’s Loughborough University, and author of “Understanding Brexit: A Concise Introduction,” a breakup would raise serious questions about England’s military status because of a splitting up of military assets and personnel among Britain’s constituent parts, affecting its wider geopolitical role, its influence in NATO and its importance as a key U.S. ally.“A potential loss would be the U.K.’s nuclear weapons, currently based in Scotland and for which there exists no immediately viable alternative location in England. Whether nuclear status would boost England’s (like the U.K.’s) claim to being a great power is debatable, but much ink will be spilt by English commentators and decision makers over what the loss or reduction in nuclear power status means,” he wrote in a paper for the London School of Economics.Another unanswered question would be over whether England inherits the Britain’s permanent U.N. Security Council seat, which could be difficult with other established powers, such as Germany, and rising powers interested in securing a seat. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says NATO remains one of the most important strategic partnerships in recorded history. Speaking Thursday in Germany at an event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pompeo said the alliance has a critical role amid dangers posed by communist governments around the world. Pompeo’s remarks came after French President Emmanuel Macron said a lack of U.S. commitment is causing the “brain death” of NATO. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
 
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An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor in Italy has been placed under police protection after receiving hundreds of threats on social media.Liliana Segre, who was sent to the Auschwitz death camp at age 13, has been receiving as many as 200 threats daily, many against her life. In response to the attacks, Segre, who is senator for life, called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to combat hate, racism and anti-Semitism. The motion was approved by Italy’s Parliament, even without the support of Italy’s right-wing parties, including former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s Euroskeptic League Party and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.Since then, the attacks against Segre have amplified. The Milan-based Center of Contemporary Jewish Documents’ Observatory on Anti-Jewish Prejudice says anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in Italy, particularly online. In the first nine months of this year, 190 anti-Semitic incidents were reported to the observatory, compared with 153 incidents for all of 2018, and 91 for all of 2017.”An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor under guard symbolizes the danger that Jewish communities still face in Europe today,” Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Dror Eydar, tweeted Thursday.
 
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The United States and Germany are reaffirming the strategic partnership and alliance under NATO, rejecting French President Emmanuel Macron’s view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is experiencing “brain death.” 
 
“I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically, one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday at Leipzig, Germany, during a news conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. 
 
“I do not think NATO is brain-dead,” added Maas. 
 
Maas’s comment followed that of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauerm, who said Germany aimed to meet NATO spending targets by 2031. ‘Not my point of view’
 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Macron had chosen drastic words, adding “that is not my point of view regarding the cooperation within NATO.” 
 
In an interview with The Economist, the French president said European nations could no longer rely on the U.S. to defend allies. 
 
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron was quoted as saying. He noted the U.S. decision to pull troops from northeast Syria had surprised many NATO partners. 
  
Turkey, another NATO member, saw the U.S. troop withdrawal from northeast Syria as a green light to launch a military incursion into the region, ousting the U.S.-allied and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces from the border area. 
 
Pompeo said the U.S. would continue to “monitor the cease-fire” brokered by Washington in the region and hold human rights violators there accountable. 
 
“We’re investigating allegations of war crimes and we’ll continue to deliver on our humanitarian mission there,” the U.S. secretary of state said Thursday. People line up to see an escape tunnel underneath the Berlin Wall that divided the city for 28 years during the Cold War, and was made visible for public for the first time, in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 7, 2019.Berlin Wall
 
Pompeo was in Germany to attend events marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, underscoring what U.S. officials said was the need for continuing a strengthened trans-Atlantic partnership. 
  
Three decades ago, on Oct. 9, residents of Leipzig took to the streets under the banners of “We Want Change,” sparking peaceful protests that would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall a few weeks later. 
  
The chief U.S. diplomat, who served as a U.S. Army officer during the Cold War, visited American troops in Grafenwohr and Vilseck earlier Thursday. 
 
Pompeo’s meetings this week with German leaders come days after China rolled out one of the world’s largest 5G mobile communications networks.   
 
The U.S. is waging a wide-ranging campaign to block Huawei, a leading Chinese telecom equipment vendor, citing security threats. U.S. officials have threatened to roll back intelligence sharing with European allies that use the Chinese company’s equipment. 
 
But there appear to be divisions among leaders in Germany. In a move seen as counter to U.S. warnings, Merkel is allowing Huawei to take part in the rollout of Germany’s 5G networks. The country’s intelligence community is concerned about the security risks. Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, recently told the country’s legislators that Huawei “cannot be trusted fully.” 
 
Pompeo said Thursday, “This isn’t just a simple decision.” 
 
“It’s complicated, but it comes in the face of the challenges that are presented by the Chinese Communist Party,” added the top U.S. diplomat. Experts echo warnings
 
Experts said Kahl’s warnings should not be taken lightly. 
  
“They reflect the warnings that national security experts in the U.S. have been shouting from the hills. These warnings were further echoed and validated in the German and EU assessments. Hopefully, the German government will take these cautions seriously and change course,” said Nate Snyder, a senior adviser with consulting firm Cambridge Global Advisors and a former counterterrorism official during the Obama administration. 
 
“There is no scenario where the vulnerabilities identified in the Huawei 5G network can be mitigated. Once there is infiltration of Huawei hardware or software, it cannot be undone. The best way to manage this risk is to not take it,” Snyder said. 
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Organizers of a major horse jumping exhibition in Helsinki, Finland, are re-defining the term horsepower.  They are taking more than 100 tons of waste from hundreds of horses and converting it to electricity. The renewable energy project has grown at the annual event over the years and now meets all the exhibition’s power needs, with some left over to heat nearby homes. VOA’s Jim Randle narrates our story.
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