VOA news for Wednesday, November 13th, 2019
This is VOA news. I'm Marissa Melton.
One day ahead of the start of public impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. President Donald Trump said [in a] in a speech that his presidency has transformed the U.S. economy.
AP's Ed Donahue has more.
The president told the Economic Club of New York his administration delivered on promises and exceeded expectations by a very wide margin, claiming creation of seven million jobs.
"We beat predictions by more than three times, the highest estimate that I saw during the campaign.”
The actual number showed job creation was closer to six million. The president says part of the turnaround was to get rid of what he called "disastrous trade deals.”
"... in short, the failed political class sold out American workers, sold out American prosperity, and sold out the American Dream.”
The president also said the economy could be even stronger without the influence of the Federal Reserve.
I'm Ed Donahue.
President Trump is set to meet Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Reuters Emily Wither has more.
Barely a month seems to go by before Turkey and the U.S. are thrown in to yet another diplomatic crisis. But there's a simple reason why President Trump will still warmly welcome Turkey's leader Tayyip Erdoğan at the White House on Wednesday - he likes him.
"... we've had a great relationship ....”
He's called him "a friend" and a "hell of a leader.”
Since becoming the U.S. president, Trump has openly complimented Erdoğan and his combative ruling style. It's this fondness that's seen by many as the only reason why relations haven't completely collapsed.
Some lawmakers tried to push Trump in to rescinding Erdoğan's invitation at the last minute. But after a warm telephone call between the two leaders just last week that "bromance" still trumps major policy disagreements.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the firearms industry, rejecting a gun company's bid to escape a lawsuit by families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012. The shooter used a Remington weapon to kill 20 children and six adults.
Reuters Zachary Goelman has more.
The plaintiffs' lawyer made the case before Connecticut's top court in 2017, saying it was no accident. The Bushmaster and other AR-15 style rifles have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
"Remington's words, this is their words advertising the weapon: 'Forces of opposition bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.' That those words in a marketing campaign, they don't happen accidentally. We all know that.”
The Connecticut state Supreme Court ruled that the lawsuit could go forward and Remington appealed to the Supreme Court. But the justices did not hear the appeal and did not include any comment on why they refused to take the case.
The move paves the way for the lawsuit against Remington to proceed.
That's Reuters Zachary Goelman reporting.
UK [later] Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn today appeared ??? about any pending trade deals between the United Kingdom and the United States.
He said that will threaten all of our regulations, all of our conditions and threaten our public services.
"I think what we have before us is an alliance between Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. We know where that alliance is designed to take us - into a sweetheart trade deal with the United States that will threaten all of our regulations, all of our conditions and threaten our public services.”
That's UK Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Republican supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump are planning a vigorous defense of him as public congressional impeachment hearings started on Wednesday.
Trump administration officials are bracing for hours of testimony from William Taylor, the current top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, who oversees [a] Ukraine affairs for the State Department. Both officials have said that Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of Trump's chief 2020 Democratic challengers, Joe Biden, before he would release $391 million in military aid.
An airstrike carried out by American forces in eastern Afghanistan has mistakenly killed at least four Afghan soldiers and injured six others.
A provincial police spokesman said the overnight incident occurred in the troubled Logar province during clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents.
A Taliban attack prompted the Afghan National Army to call in U.S. air support, which resulted in what is called the "friendly fire" incident.
I'm Marissa Melton. You're listening to VOA news.
