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Thousands of Puerto Ricans marched Tuesday to protest pension cuts, school closures and slow hurricane recovery efforts as anger grows across the U.S. territory over looming austerity measures.

The Labor Day protest attracted teachers, retirees and unionized workers from both the private and public sectors, as well as the mayor of the capital of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz. Among those who marched through the city’s financial center before the protest grew violent was 56-year-old Juan de Dios del Valle, a government worker who was laid off in 2008 and has since found only occasional jobs as a gardener or janitor.

“I’m here to support all those who are mired in poverty,” he said.

The event remained peaceful until hundreds of young protesters, many with their faces covered, threw rocks and other objects as they clashed with police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Several protesters and police officers received head wounds and other injuries as clouds of white smoke billowed through the Hato Rey district, where many banks and financial institutions are located. Police said several people were arrested as protesters set fire to palm tree fronds and debris including an old refrigerator.

Concerns that the protest could grow violent led the island’s biggest mall to close for the day, along with several banks, government agencies and schools. Gov. Ricardo Rossello condemned the violence, saying it tarnished Puerto Rico’s reputation.

“That freedom of expression cannot turn against … the safety of human beings,” he said.

Adria Bermudez, who works at Puerto Rico’s largest public university, said she was marching against the increase of the undergraduate cost per credit from $57 to $115, then to an eventual $157 over five years. She also demanded that government officials and legislators reduce their salaries instead of implement more austerity measures.

“The measures are aimed at the middle class and low middle class,” she said. “The rich don’t suffer.”

The march comes as Puerto Rico tries to emerge from an 11-year recession and restructure a portion of its $72 billion public debt load while recovering from Hurricane Maria. The storm caused an estimated $100 billion-plus in damage, and some 30,000 power customers remain in the dark almost eight months since the storm hit.

Economists warn that the poverty rate on the island of 3.3 million people could increase from 45 percent to more than 60 percent. Meanwhile, a federal control board overseeing the island’s finances approved several austerity measures in late April that Rossello has refused to implement. These include a 10 percent cut to a public pension system facing nearly $50 billion in liabilities.

San Juan’s mayor called on Congress to eliminate the control board, which it created two years ago to help resolve Puerto Rico’s economic crisis.

“It’s bad, period, if it takes away the rights of the working class,” she said.

The recently approved pension cuts are one of the main reasons that Ramon Caban, a 60-year-old retired worker from Puerto Rico’s power company, decided to join the march.

“It will be unbearable,” he said. “The future of Puerto Rico is extremely unstable. It’s exasperating because nobody can make plans for the future.”
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California, 16 other states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its plan to scrap Obama-era auto emissions standards that would require vehicles to get significantly higher gas mileage by 2025.

At issue is a move by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to roll back 2012 rules aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Under those rules, vehicles would have to get 36 miles of real-world driving per gallon (58 kilometers per gallon), about 10 miles (16 kilometers) over the existing standard.

“Pollutants coming out of vehicles, out of the tailpipe, does permanent lung damage to children living near well-traveled roads and freeways. This is a fact. The only way we’re going to overcome that is by reducing emissions,” Governor Jerry Brown said in announcing the lawsuit along with other top California Democrats.

The rules were set six years ago when California and the administration of then-President Barack Obama agreed to a single nationwide fuel economy standard.

Pruitt, who has sought to block or delay an array of environmental regulations, has argued that assumptions about gas prices and vehicle technology used by the Obama administration to set the standards were too optimistic. And he said the standards would hurt automakers and consumers who can’t afford or don’t want to buy vehicles that are more fuel-efficient.

Automakers have likewise argued that the Obama-era rules would cost the industry billions of dollars and raise vehicle prices because of the cost of developing the necessary technology.

EPA representatives did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.

California officials say the standards are achievable and the EPA’s effort to repeal them is not based on any new research. They argue the plan violates the federal Clean Air Act and didn’t follow the agency’s own regulations.

California has a unique waiver that allows it to set its own tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles, which it has used to combat smog and, more recently, climate change. Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California standards as their own.

California has now sued the administration of President Donald Trump more than 30 times on topics including immigration and health care policy.

“The world is not flat, pollution is not free, and the health and safety of our children is not for sale,” said Democratic state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, standing alongside the governor.

Brown, who has made fighting climate change a core of his policy and political platform, said the state’s battles with Washington over climate are the most essential.

“If we follow the Pruitt-Trump path, we follow our way off the cliff to disaster,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Joining California were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia. All have Democratic attorneys general.
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Special counsel Robert Mueller has given a list of almost four dozen questions to lawyers for President Donald Trump as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump obstructed justice, according to a report published in The New York Times.

The Times obtained a list of the questions, which range from Trump’s motivations for firing FBI Director James Comey a year ago to contacts Trump’s campaign had with Russians.

Although Mueller’s team has indicated to Trump’s lawyers that he’s not considered a target, investigators remain interested in whether the president’s actions constitute obstruction of justice and want to interview him about several episodes in office. The lawyers want to resolve the investigation as quickly as possible, but there’s no agreement on how to do that.

Many of the questions obtained by the Times center on the obstruction issue, including his reaction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation, a decision Trump has angrily criticized.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow declined to comment to The Associated Press on Monday night, as did White House lawyer Ty Cobb.

The questions also touch on the Russian meddling and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin in any way. In one question obtained by the Times, Mueller asks what Trump knew about campaign staff, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, reaching out to Moscow.

Mueller has brought several charges against Manafort, but none are for any crimes related to Russian election interference during the 2016 campaign. And he has denied having anything to do with such an effort.

The queries also touch on Trump’s businesses and his discussions with his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, about a possible Moscow real estate deal. Cohen’s business dealings are part of a separate FBI investigation.

One question asks what discussions Trump may have had regarding “any meeting with Mr. Putin,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Another question asks what the president may have known about a possible attempt by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel with Russia before Trump’s inauguration.

Additional questions center on Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.

“What did you know about phone calls that Mr. Flynn made with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, in late December 2016?” reads one question. Another asks if there were any efforts to reach out to Flynn “about seeking immunity or possible pardon.”

Flynn was fired Feb. 13, 2017, after White House officials said he had misled them about his Russian contacts during the transition period by saying that he had not discussed sanctions.

The following day, according to memos written by Comey, Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials and encouraged Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn.
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The White House is praising new intelligence from Israel on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, calling it “new and compelling” though officials in Washington have stopped short of charging Tehran with outright violations of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

U.S. officials reviewing the cache of documents, charts, blueprints, photos and videos recovered by Israeli intelligence said late Monday that the materials they had seen were authentic and consistent with information amassed by the U.S. over many years.

“This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” she added.  “The Iranian regime has shown it will use destructive weapons against its neighbors and others.  Iran must never have nuclear weapons.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first leveled the new accusations Monday during a televised news conference, saying the cache of documents and other files show Iran was “brazenly lying” about its nuclear weapons program.

The initial response to Netanyahu’s allegations was lukewarm.  Intelligence experts and diplomats said much of the evidence the Israeli leader presented during his news conference dated to before Iran signed the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran, too, downplayed the intelligence, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif taking to Twitter to deride the Israeli claims.

 “The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” Zarid tweeted before Netanyahu spoke. “You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

But U.S. officials say while much of the intelligence is consistent with what has long been known, some of it sheds new light on Tehran’s activities.

Specifically, officials said the Israeli intelligence provided new details on Iran’s effort to develop its Shahab-3 ballistic missile into one capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

“I think this makes very clear that at the very least the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters late Monday. “The Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this.”

In a statement, the secretary of state was even more blunt.

“It is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material,” Pompeo said.

The new round of allegations against Iran comes at a critical time.  The Trump administration has given U.S. allies a May 12 deadline to fix what it sees as the flaws with the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.  If that does not happen, Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the deal and reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran.

Still, top U.S. officials have so far stopped short of accusing Iran of actually violating the landmark nuclear deal.

“I’ll leave that to lawyers,” Pompeo said when asked if Tehran had in fact cheated on its commitments.

U.S. President Donald Trump was likewise vague when he spoke earlier during a White House news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“If anything is proven right what Israel has done today with the news conference…that is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said.

But he quickly added, “if anything, what’s happening today and what’s happened over the last little while, and what we’ve learned, has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.”

“They’re not sitting back idly. They’re setting off missiles which they say are for television purposes,” Trump said. “I don’t think so.”

As recently as last month, top U.S. military commanders, including the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told U.S. lawmakers that Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the Pentagon Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to go into details when asked whether the U.S. believes Iran was in violation.

“I’m giving my advice, as you know, in the ongoing decision process that the president will come to closure on soon, so I’d rather not go into details,” Mattis told reporters. “I will say there are parts of the JCPOA that certainly need to be fixed.”

But Mattis also reaffirmed comments he made to lawmakers last week that the deal was robust enough to deal with any potential violations.

VOA’s Steve Herman, Nike Ching and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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The United States and its allies would not want to pull troops out of Syria before diplomats win the peace, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday, one of the strongest signs yet a full U.S. withdrawal was unlikely anytime soon.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he wants to withdraw American troops from Syria relatively soon, but appeared to temper that position by voicing a desire to leave a “strong and lasting footprint.”

A footprint, in military-speak, usually refers to a U.S. troop presence.

Mattis said the United States and its allies were on the cusp of victory against Islamic State and added they would not want to simply abandon Syria while it remained in a state of war.

“We do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace. You win the fight — and then you win the peace,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

Mattis said he was due to meet later on Monday with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to “see where the Geneva process is and what we can do to assist.”

Efforts are stuck to forge a negotiated end to Syria’s civil war, which has killed half a million people over seven years and displaced millions.

The Pentagon and State Department have also held that a longer term U.S. effort will be needed to ensure a lasting defeat of Islamic State. The group seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq but has gradually lost its territory since the United States and its allies started a military offensive in 2014.

Some of the harshest critics of a potential withdrawal from Syria come from Trump’s own Republican party, which blasted President Barack Obama when he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Iraqi forces began to unravel and eventually collapsed in the face of Islamic State’s advance into the country in 2014.
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It’s another busy day for Tony Price, who has a list of around two dozen restaurants and other seafood businesses to visit, to pick up discarded oyster shells. 

Fast and energetic, he moves barrels of smelly shells from restaurants’ back storage areas to his truck. “We do seven pickups a week, plus events on weekends. I’d say we’re getting somewhere between 500 and even 800 bushels a week,” he says.

That’s the beginning of a recycling process, a journey for the oyster shell to return to the water. 

Price is the operation manager with Shell Recycling Alliance, a program run by the Oyster Recovery Partnership.

Last year, the program collected 33,400 bushels of oyster shells from restaurants all around the Chesapeake Bay area. Every half shell collected becomes a new home for around 10 baby oysters. 

On the menu

Oysters have been a popular item on the menu of Mike’s Crab House since 1958.

The famous seafood restaurant, in Riva, Maryland, is one of more than 330 restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. that now recycle their oyster shells.

Tony Piera says he and Mike’s other owners joined the program four years ago.

“It’s a win-win for us. It’s a win-win for the environment,” he explains. “Before we did it, the trash would come and get them. Now, the Oyster Recovery comes two days a week, picks them up.”

Mike’s Crab House is one of the top ten contributors to the program this year, with more 822 bushels of recycled oyster shells in 2017.

“I think I’m getting more customers here because they know we recycle here,” Piera says. “They know it’s good for the environment, the Chesapeake Bay.”

Saving oysters, saving the bay

The Oyster Recovery Partnership began in 2010 with 22 restaurants. Spokeswoman Karis King says the program has been well received and is expanding.

“We continue to grow and expand from us basically knocking on doors, trying to get people involved,” she adds. “It’s turned out into getting requests every single day, ‘How do we become part of this program?’ ‘I’m really excited about the program.’ ‘I want to do my part.’ ‘I want to be sustainable.’”

The recycling program offers incentives to encourage more restaurants to join. “In Maryland, tax credits that restaurants can claim based on how many bushels they recycle. We also provide them with support, restaurant training to talk to the servers about what the program is and why it’s important.” 

Multi-step recycling process

Done with his day’s rounds, Tony Price heads to a facility where the first phase of the process – cleaning the shells – begins.

“The shell is taken down here, it’s aged, it sits for about a year. It dries out, sun, wind, rain,” he explains. “(It) kind of decomposes a little all the tissue that’s left. Behind me is the shell washer. There are jets of a high pressure water from a pressure water system tumbles the shells, just give it a nice cleaning. So, it comes out brilliant white as opposed to the stuff on the other side is the raw shell. It’s a little bit grayer.” 

Then, the shells go to the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Oyster Hatchery for further processing. 

Hatchery manager, Stephanie Alexander, says her team gets tiny baby oysters, called spat, ready to be attached to the clean oyster shells. “We get the adult oysters, we spawn them and create the babies. Then, we grow those baby oysters for two to three weeks. Then they mature and we attach them to the shell to become spat on shell.”

Now firmly attached to the recycled natural shells, the spat are put back in the Chesapeake Bay. Here, they will grow and flourish, increasing the oyster population.

Alexander says new generations of oysters are crucially important for the health of the bay. They filter the water.

“That kind of makes them the bay’s kidneys,” she explains. “The cleaner water you have, the more sunlight can penetrate, the more grasses you end up having, which results in nursery area for fish and crabs when they are small and juvenile so they don’t get eaten. They also are spawning and reproducing, adding to the population. They (oyster shells) create habitat for many, many creatures. They are kind of the coral reefs of the bay.”

The success of the Recycling Shell Alliance program encourages more restaurants to join. That’s good for the bay and for people who love to eat oysters.
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Collecting discarded oyster shells from restaurants and returning them back to the water is the idea behind Shell Recycling Alliance, a program by the Oyster Recovery Partnership. Last year, the program collected 33,400 bushels of oyster shell from restaurants across the Chesapeake Bay area. Every half shell collected becomes a new home for around 10 baby oysters. And as Faiza Elmasry tells us, the recycled, spawned shell benefit the eco-system in many ways. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that providing whatever assistance is necessary to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace is an “incredible priority” for the United States, and he urged the Palestinians to “return to that political dialogue.”

“We will continue to work for peace in the great hope of offering the best outcome for both the Israeli and Palestinian people,” Pompeo said alongside Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman.

Pompeo said it is up to the two parties to ultimately decide on what the right resolution is, and that the United States is open to the “likely outcome” of a two-state solution.

Safadi called resolving the longstanding conflict key to the “lasting and comprehensive peace” for the region. He said that for Jordan a two-state solution is the only way forward.

Pompeo’s visit comes after a month of Palestinian protests in Gaza that have turned violent, with Israeli forces killing about 40 Palestinians. The Palestinians accuse Israel of using excessive force, while Israel says it is protecting its borders and only targeting instigators.

When asked about the violence, Pompeo said, “We do believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and we’re fully supportive of that.”

In addition to agreeing on the need for a U.N.-led resolution to the conflict in Syria, Pompeo said he and Safadi discussed how to best counter what he called Iran’s “malign influence and activity in the region.”

Earlier in his first overseas trip as secretary of state, Pompeo said during a stop in Israel that U.S. President Donald Trump “has a comprehensive Iran strategy that is designed to counter the full array of threats emanating from Tehran.”

He also reiterated that unless the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is changed to meet Trump’s satisfaction, the president intends to withdraw from the deal.

“President Trump’s been pretty clear, this deal is very flawed. He’s directed the administration to try and fix it and if we can’t fix it he’s going to withdraw from the deal. It’s pretty straightforward,” Pompeo said.

Iran agreed in 2015 to limit its nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected U.S. calls to alter the deal it reached with Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States. Trump stands alone among the six signatories to the accord in threatening to withdraw from it, and faces a May 12 deadline for deciding whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran.

En route from Saudi Arabia to Israel, Pompeo told reporters Sunday that he had briefed Riyadh’s leaders on U.S. talks with European officials on efforts to end Iranian missile tests and combat Tehran’s military involvement in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Mideast.

Iran rejected those comments Monday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi called Pompeo’s statements “baseless and repetitive,” and said as long as countries want Iran’s help, it will continue to do so.
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